The standard copyright rap holds that creators need to bottle their work in objects in order to make money from it, but distributing the objects creates the risk that pirates will take the objects and copy them without compensating the creators.  Copyright in the creative “work” allows the creators to stop the pirates and capture [...]

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… a little seltzer down your pants.
Are you old enough or enough of a pop culture geek to remember that line? If so, enjoy your own private Mary Tyler Moore moment, laughing and crying at all the right and wrong times, as you remember the life and times of David Lloyd, who wrote the [...]

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A recent article in the Boston Review by Evgeny Morozov laments the influence of Wikipedia. I found this passage a particularly interesting take on the epistemology (and ecology) of the web:
Wikipedians . . . are obsessed with popular culture and less equipped to document the high-brow. The 711-word entry on nouvelle vague filmmaker [...]

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In case anyone missed it, Glenn Beck unsurprisingly was unsuccessful in a WIPO arbitration proceeding seeking transfer of the domain name:
“http://glennbeckrapedandmurderedayounggirlin1990.com/”
An amusing account of the decision and the aftermath is available here.
(Thanks to my student Carolyn Blake for passing this along to me.)

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From the SF Chron:
Did Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s office use a coded veto message to send the f-bomb to Tom Ammiano, soon after the San Francisco assemblyman made news by telling the governor to “kiss my gay ass”?
Schwarzenegger’s people say no. But the X-rated evidence is hard to miss in a message that Schwarzenegger sent to [...]

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From the NYT:
Where’s my pancakes, read Rodney Bradford’s Facebook page, in a message typed on Saturday, Oct. 17, at 11:49 a.m., from a computer in his father’s apartment in Harlem.
At the time, the sentence, written in indecipherable street slang, was just another navel-gazing, cryptic Facebook status update — words that were gobbledygook to anyone besides [...]

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The New York Times reported on virtual economies yesterday, noting how the U.S. economy for virtual goods is estimated to be around $1 billion this year, with a $5 billion economy worldwide.  Here’s a quote:
“It’s not about the good itself, it’s about the underlying human emotion or desire,” said Moshe Koyfman, a principal at Spark [...]

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Yesterday, while sitting in Toronto airport I had an hour or so to kill so I thought I’d take advantage of my new ear buds (Ann, they’re pink!) and plug into my netbook to watch some video on demand.  To my surprise – although I shouldn’t have been surprised being an IP prof – I [...]

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Via.

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With thanks to my colleague Cassandra Robertson for bring this article in yesterday’s NY Times to my attention.  The article describes ongoing battles between the FTC and Experian to have Experian stop using the “freecreditreport.com” domain name for credit monitoring services that are not, in fact, free.  What interested me in particular about the article [...]

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Blogger Matt Soniak answers:

The international Christian humanitarian aid group works with Major League Baseball, the NFL, and the NBA to collect misprinted merchandise and distribute it to people living in impoverished nations. (MLB used to require the destruction of shirts and hats proclaiming the wrong champions, but two years ago they began donating their postseason [...]

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One of my favorite things in the Sunday New York Times these days is the Corner Office column, which reports a bit of an interview each week on “leadership” from the perspective of a CEO.  Usually, these interviews consist not of tips from would-be management gurus, but instead anecdotes about the interviewees’ own experiences.
Last [...]

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Jotwell, the “Journal of Things We Like (Lots),” has been incubating for a long time, and at last it’s alive, thanks to the persistence of Michael Froomkin and lots of support from the University of Miami, including students there.
Jotwell is an effort to look at the mass of new legal scholarship and highlight books and [...]

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