"Having to read a footnote resembles having to go downstairs to answer the door while in the midst of making love" - Noël Coward
***
MATTEL, INC.
v
MCA RECORDS, INC. etc
"If this were a sci-fi melodrama, it might be called SpeechZilla meets Trademark Kong.
Barbie was born in Germany in the 1950s as an adult collector’s item. Over the years, Mattel transformed her from a doll that resembled a “German street walker,” as she originally appeared, into a glamorous, long-legged blonde. Barbie has been labeled both the ideal American woman and a bimbo. She has survived attacks both psychic (from feminists critical of her fictitious figure) and physical (more than 500 professional makeovers). She remains a symbol of American girlhood, a public figure who graces the aisles of toy stores throughout the country and beyond. With Barbie, Mattel created not just a toy but a cultural icon.
With fame often comes unwanted attention. Aqua is a Dan- ish band that has, as yet, only dreamed of attaining Barbie- like status. In 1997, Aqua produced the song Barbie Girl on the album Aquarium. In the song, one bandmember imperson- ates Barbie, singing in a high-pitched, doll-like voice; another bandmember, calling himself Ken, entices Barbie to “go party.” (The lyrics are in the Appendix.) Barbie Girl singles sold well and, to Mattel’s dismay, the song made it onto Top 40 music charts.
Mattel brought this lawsuit against the music companies who produced, marketed and sold Barbie Girl: MCA Records, Inc., Universal Music International Ltd., Universal Music A/S, Universal Music & Video Distribution, Inc. and MCA Music Scandinavia AB (collectively, “MCA”)...
A trademark is a word, phrase or symbol that is used to identify a manufacturer or sponsor of a good or the provider of a service. See New Kids on the Block v. News Am. Publ’g, Inc., 971 F.2d 302, 305 (9th Cir. 1992). It’s the owner’s way of preventing others from duping consumers into buying a product they mistakenly believe is sponsored by the trademark owner. A trademark “inform[s] people that trademarked products come from the same source.” Id. at 305 n.2. Limited to this core purpose—avoiding confusion in the marketplace —a trademark owner’s property rights play well with the First Amendment. “Whatever first amendment rights you may have in calling the brew you make in your bathtub ‘Pepsi’ are easily outweighed by the buyer’s interest in not being fooled into buying it.” Trademarks Unplugged, 68 N.Y.U. L. Rev. 960, 973 (1993).
The problem arises when trademarks transcend their identifying purpose. Some trademarks enter our public discourse and become an integral part of our vocabulary. How else do you say that something’s “the Rolls Royce of its class?” What else is a quick fix, but a Band-Aid? Does the average consumer know to ask for aspirin as “acetyl salicylic acid?” See Bayer Co. v. United Drug Co., 272 F. 505, 510 (S.D.N.Y. 1921). Trademarks often fill in gaps in our vocabulary and add a contemporary flavor to our expressions. Once imbued with such expressive value, the trademark becomes a word in our language and assumes a role outside the bounds of trademark law...
The trademark owner does not have the right to control public discourse whenever the public imbues his mark with a meaning beyond its source- identifying function. See Anti-Monopoly, Inc. v. Gen. Mills Fun Group, 611 F.2d 296, 301 (9th Cir. 1979) (“It is the source-denoting function which trademark laws protect, and nothing more”)...
The song does not rely on the Barbie mark to poke fun at another subject but targets Barbie herself. See Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc., 510 U.S. 569, 580 (1994); see also Dr. Seuss Ents., L.P. v. Penguin Books USA, Inc., 109 F.3d 1394, 1400 (9th Cir. 1997). This case is therefore distinguish- able from Dr. Seuss, where we held that the book The Cat NOT in the Hat! borrowed Dr. Seuss’s trademarks and lyrics to get attention rather than to mock The Cat in the Hat! The defendant’s use of the Dr. Seuss trademarks and copyrighted works had “no critical bearing on the substance or style of” The Cat in the Hat!, and therefore could not claim First Amendment protection...
If we see a painting titled “Campbell’s Chicken Noodle Soup,” we’re unlikely to believe that Campbell’s has branched into the art business. Nor, upon hearing Janis Joplin croon “Oh Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes-Benz?,” would we suspect that she and the carmaker had entered into a joint venture. A title tells us something about the underlying work but seldom speaks to its origin...
Rogers concluded that literary titles do not violate the Lanham Act “unless the title has no artistic relevance to the underlying work whatsoever, or, if it has some artistic rele- vance, unless the title explicitly misleads as to the source or the content of the work”...
Mattel separately argues that, under the Federal Trademark Dilution Act (“FTDA”), MCA’s song dilutes the Barbie mark in two ways: It diminishes the mark’s capacity to identify and distinguish Mattel products, and tarnishes the mark because the song is inappropriate for young girls. See 15 U.S.C. § 1125(c); see also Panavision Int’l, L.P. v. Toeppen, 141 F.3d 1316, 1324 (9th Cir. 1998).
“Dilution” refers to the “whittling away of the value of a trademark” when it’s used to identify different products. 4 J. Thomas McCarthy, McCarthy on Trademarks and Unfair Competition § 24.67 at 24-120; § 24.70 at 24-122 (2001). For example, Tylenol snowboards, Netscape sex shops and Harry Potter dry cleaners would all weaken the “commercial magnetism” of these marks and diminish their ability to evoke their original associations...
After Mattel filed suit, Mattel and MCA employees traded barbs in the press. When an MCA spokeswoman noted that each album included a disclaimer saying that Barbie Girl was a “social commentary [that was] not created or approved by the makers of the doll,” a Mattel representative responded by saying, “That’s unacceptable. . . . It’s akin to a bank robber handing a note of apology to a teller during a heist. [It n]either diminishes the severity of the crime, nor does it make it legal.” He later characterized the song as a “theft” of “another company’s property.”
MCA filed a counterclaim for defamation based on the Mattel representative’s use of the words “bank robber,” “heist,” “crime” and “theft.” But all of these are variants of the invective most often hurled at accused infringers, namely “piracy.” No one hearing this accusation understands intellectual property owners to be saying that infringers are nautical cutthroats with eyepatches and peg legs who board galleons to plunder cargo. In context, all these terms are nonactionable “rhetorical hyperbole,” Gilbrook v. City of Westminster, 177 F.3d 839, 863 (9th Cir. 1999). The parties are advised to chill."
L'origine de Bert
Showing posts with label copyright. Show all posts
Showing posts with label copyright. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 17, 2015
Sunday, May 20, 2012
Hoodies I would (almost) wear in Singapore
Too bad the guy got sued
Apparently whether you can copyright costumes is a legally open question.
Also fun:
"Angel Grove H.S."
"Angel Grove Youth Center - Gym & Juice Bar"
Post ID: 5762895170245517518
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Saturday, January 31, 2009
"I shall not go out of my way to offend, but nor shall I don kid gloves to handle religion any more gently than I would handle anything else." - Richard Dawkins
***
"Also missing from the Secular Islam Summit are Western women’s organizations. One would expect that the oppression of women in Islamic societies would be a defining issue for Western feminists. Instead, as philosopher Martha Nussbaum observed in 1999, "Feminist theory pays relatively little attention to the struggles of women outside the United States." Western intellectuals’ “hip quietism,” she said, “collaborates with evil.” The Web site of the National Organization for Women lists the following as its “Top Priority Issues”: abortion rights/reproductive issues, violence against women (domestic violence in the United States), constitutional equality (the Equal Rights Amendment to the US Constitution), promoting diversity/ending racism, lesbian rights, and economic justice. Yet if it is a feminist issue that some women make less than men for the same work, then it must be a feminist issue that other women are forbidden from leaving their homes unaccompanied by a man. If it is a feminist issue that some women are stigmatized for their sexual orientation, then it must be a feminist issue that others are murdered with impunity by their male relatives for the crime of “dishonor” or stoned to death by the government for extramarital sex. (“Paradise,” Muhammad is said to have remarked, “lies at the feet of mothers.”) Yet in a morally relativistic universe, all are given equal gravity. It is a bizarre case of moral dysmorphia that blows the failings of one’s own society out of all proportion while diminishing the failings of others. And this for the sake of respecting difference.
Admirably, political leftists instinctively seek solidarity with the dispossessed and oppressed. So, when they see that the perpetrators of Islamic terror are brown-skinned people from backward societies, they assume they must in some way be allies against the common foe of Western imperialist aggression led by America. They are blinded to the fact that the enemy of Islamism—the self-professed enemy—is secular liberalism itself.
A noteworthy exception is the Feminist Majority Foundation, which launched a campaign in 1997 to call international attention to the inhumane treatment of women under the Taliban in Afghanistan. Working with human rights groups, the Feminist Majority Foundation (FMF) succeeded in persuading the United States and the United Nations to deny formal recognition to the regime. This was too much for some of their sisters. An article in the International Feminist Journal of Politics accused FMF of colonialism: “The FMF’s campaign narrative is one of colonialist protection rather than of solidarity. [It] capitalizes on the images of prominent white Western women who construct themselves as ‘free’ and ‘liberated’ and thus in the best position to ‘save’ Afghan women.” For these pious feminists, the preservation of their own imagined moral purity appears more important than protecting real women’s lives.
In 2006, Ayaan Hirsi Au emigrates to the United States and publishes two popular books critiquing Islam from a woman’s perspective. The reception in the liberal press ranges from condescension to hostility, while “neoconservatives” embrace her... Renaissance humanist Montaigne had a line from Terence inscribed on the wooden beams of his tower library: Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto (I am human, nothing human is foreign to me). The slogan of too many Western feminists is Tu quoque (You, too). Incessantly pointing a finger at their own societies, they cannot reach out to others...
The mainstream left wing remains more fixated on embarrassing local conservative parties than on protecting women and religious minorities in the Islamic world. As Salman Rushdie put it in a speech on Manhattan’s Upper West Side in October 2006, “The fellow traveling of a great section of the left with Islamic radicalism” is a “historical mistake as great as those who were the fellow travelers of Stalinist Communism in an earlier age.”...
As Iranian-born journalist Amir Taheri observes:
... Practices that would today be considered intellectual piracy were crucial to America’s technological ascendance. Early American patent and copyright systems rewarded those who introduced technologies taken from European markets...
A public good invites “free-riders,” making it difficult for the producers to extract value from it. Just ask the Pythagoras estate about the royalty check they don’t cash each time someone calculates the area of a triangle...
Religious institutions ought to be private, but the religious conscience is not. The Privacy Fallacy must be abandoned. Sectarian reaSons cannot be barred from public debate; they can and must be held to the same critical conversational standards as all serious contributions to public debate. Religion inevitably makes truth-claims that are susceptible to examination and evaluation by others and continuous at many points with the sciences. Many beliefs that go by “faith” are actually attempts at reason: trusting on the basis of past experience; believing in the face of uncertainty. So-called religious experience is not a reliable guide to truth. The sole alternative to reason is raw, baseless, intransigent intuition, something to which no decent person aspires. But even “subjective” intuition can be evaluated and found immoral or unwise. Faith cannot escape the judgment of reason."
(Footnotes):
"Political liberals might insist that respect makes the further demand that we offer to each citizen reasons that are compelling to him or her. Call this the strong conception of respect. The strong conception of respect, however, places liberals in a dilemma. The principle of public reason would have us construct our political arguments out of public reasons. But especially for the devout, public reasons sometimes will not be among the most important or relevant with respect to a political decision. For example, a Christian opponent to capital punishment might regard the Ten Commandments as a reason more important than some “public” considerations, like fairness or racial justice. This might be the case even if he endorses the public considerations as well. If respect demands that one offer each citizen reasons that are compelling to him, then arguably one ought to offer religious considerations to such an abolitionist. By offering public reasons to all, one fails to offer to some the reasons that they find most compelling."
"Rawis claims that reasonableness is an attitude that lies between rational self-interest and altruism. It includes rationality but also a certain commitment to social cooperation. Reasonableness among citizens, in his view, is like the relations among acquaintances who share an apartment building. They are bound to interact with one another under conditions of limited scarcity (peace and quiet, hot water, and so on) and they mutually and openly seek cooperative arrangements to govern these interactions. In these arrangements, tenants are not expected to sacrifice themselves altruistically to satisfy the preferences of their neighbors. Yet neither are they expected to simply aim at maximizing their self-interest but instead to genuinely seek and follow rules for the collective that are generally regarded as fair."
"In America, God is always on the ballot. This is an American tradition that did not begin with Bush, or even Jimmy Carter. Woodrow Wilson’s internationalism was rooted in a Presbyterian belief that America should “exemplify that devotion of the elements of righteousness which are derived from the revelations of Holy Scripture.”...
Harry Truman worked to enlist Catholic, Anglican, Lutheran, and Greek Orthodox churches in the cold war, to “mobilize the people who believe in a moral world against the Bolshevik materialists” (Spalding, “True Believers,” p. 44). In his 1949 inaugural address, after taking the oath of office on a Bible laid open to the Ten Commandments, Truman intoned that “human freedom is born of the belief that man is created equal in the image of God and therefore capable of governing himself.”...
A candidate’s religion is often a poor predictor of how he will behave in office and what policies he will pursue. The religion of the 2004 presidential hopefuls was a perfect example [on stem cells, abortion and preemptive war] which most denominations opposed...
The Pew Foundation found that 42 percent of Americans said politicians should be guided by religious principles, and 46 percent said "religion and poltiics don't mix." A 2000 survey by Public Agenda indicated that among those who want religion and poltiics to mix more, three-quarters don't care which religion it is, only that it's sincere... the American preference for religious candidates is not necessarily a preference for religious politics"
"Sometimes science hits upon unanticipated methods of inquiry. A recent colorful example comes from the field of hyperbolic geometry. Hyperbolic geometry, created in the 1820s and '30s, studies certain kinds of spaces and objects that don’t obey Euclidian assumptions. A hyperbolic plane, for example, is a counterintuitive surface in which the space curves away from itself at every point. Since the 1950s, geometers had been trying to construct models of hyperbolic spaces but with limited success. Many believed it impossible, until Daina Taimina came along. Taimina, then a mathematician at Cornell University, made a discovery in the handicraft she had learned as a girl in her native Latvia: crocheting. In 1997, she crocheted the first usable model of a hyperbolic space. Together with her Cornell colleague and husband, David Henderson, she wrote up the results and submitted them to the journal Mathematical Intelligencer. According to Taimina, the editors’ response was something like, “You want us to publish what? A sewing pattern?” Of course, it was the first time that crocheting directions had been submitted to a peer—reviewed math journal"
"Maybe such suffering is permitted by God for good reasons that we finite, imperfect beings cannot know. Then again, one can just as easily imagine that there is a being who permits the good things that occasionally happen in our world because they ultimately serve a higher evil, which we cannot know. Maybe every silver lining has a cloud, and every success is necessary to bring about failure on a grander scale. We have no reason to believe that there are any such unknowable evils, but we have no less reason to believe in them than to believe in unknowable goods. The insistence that there must be such goods is merely an attempt to save the hypothesis of a perfectly good God from refutation at all costs, not a rational response to any independent reasons."
--- The Secular Conscience: Why Belief Belongs in Public Life / Austin Dacey
***
"Also missing from the Secular Islam Summit are Western women’s organizations. One would expect that the oppression of women in Islamic societies would be a defining issue for Western feminists. Instead, as philosopher Martha Nussbaum observed in 1999, "Feminist theory pays relatively little attention to the struggles of women outside the United States." Western intellectuals’ “hip quietism,” she said, “collaborates with evil.” The Web site of the National Organization for Women lists the following as its “Top Priority Issues”: abortion rights/reproductive issues, violence against women (domestic violence in the United States), constitutional equality (the Equal Rights Amendment to the US Constitution), promoting diversity/ending racism, lesbian rights, and economic justice. Yet if it is a feminist issue that some women make less than men for the same work, then it must be a feminist issue that other women are forbidden from leaving their homes unaccompanied by a man. If it is a feminist issue that some women are stigmatized for their sexual orientation, then it must be a feminist issue that others are murdered with impunity by their male relatives for the crime of “dishonor” or stoned to death by the government for extramarital sex. (“Paradise,” Muhammad is said to have remarked, “lies at the feet of mothers.”) Yet in a morally relativistic universe, all are given equal gravity. It is a bizarre case of moral dysmorphia that blows the failings of one’s own society out of all proportion while diminishing the failings of others. And this for the sake of respecting difference.
Admirably, political leftists instinctively seek solidarity with the dispossessed and oppressed. So, when they see that the perpetrators of Islamic terror are brown-skinned people from backward societies, they assume they must in some way be allies against the common foe of Western imperialist aggression led by America. They are blinded to the fact that the enemy of Islamism—the self-professed enemy—is secular liberalism itself.
A noteworthy exception is the Feminist Majority Foundation, which launched a campaign in 1997 to call international attention to the inhumane treatment of women under the Taliban in Afghanistan. Working with human rights groups, the Feminist Majority Foundation (FMF) succeeded in persuading the United States and the United Nations to deny formal recognition to the regime. This was too much for some of their sisters. An article in the International Feminist Journal of Politics accused FMF of colonialism: “The FMF’s campaign narrative is one of colonialist protection rather than of solidarity. [It] capitalizes on the images of prominent white Western women who construct themselves as ‘free’ and ‘liberated’ and thus in the best position to ‘save’ Afghan women.” For these pious feminists, the preservation of their own imagined moral purity appears more important than protecting real women’s lives.
In 2006, Ayaan Hirsi Au emigrates to the United States and publishes two popular books critiquing Islam from a woman’s perspective. The reception in the liberal press ranges from condescension to hostility, while “neoconservatives” embrace her... Renaissance humanist Montaigne had a line from Terence inscribed on the wooden beams of his tower library: Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto (I am human, nothing human is foreign to me). The slogan of too many Western feminists is Tu quoque (You, too). Incessantly pointing a finger at their own societies, they cannot reach out to others...
The mainstream left wing remains more fixated on embarrassing local conservative parties than on protecting women and religious minorities in the Islamic world. As Salman Rushdie put it in a speech on Manhattan’s Upper West Side in October 2006, “The fellow traveling of a great section of the left with Islamic radicalism” is a “historical mistake as great as those who were the fellow travelers of Stalinist Communism in an earlier age.”...
As Iranian-born journalist Amir Taheri observes:
The only valuable dialogue between Islam, in its multiple forms, and the West, also in its diversity, can take place at a people-to-people level. Muslims should be allowed to read books and newspapers, see films, watch television and listen to the music produced in the West. In exchange the peoples of the West should be able to have direct access to Islam’s cultural, artistic and philosophical production. And, yet, we know that this cannot happen as long as censorship remains a key element in the policies of most majority—Muslim states.
... Practices that would today be considered intellectual piracy were crucial to America’s technological ascendance. Early American patent and copyright systems rewarded those who introduced technologies taken from European markets...
A public good invites “free-riders,” making it difficult for the producers to extract value from it. Just ask the Pythagoras estate about the royalty check they don’t cash each time someone calculates the area of a triangle...
Religious institutions ought to be private, but the religious conscience is not. The Privacy Fallacy must be abandoned. Sectarian reaSons cannot be barred from public debate; they can and must be held to the same critical conversational standards as all serious contributions to public debate. Religion inevitably makes truth-claims that are susceptible to examination and evaluation by others and continuous at many points with the sciences. Many beliefs that go by “faith” are actually attempts at reason: trusting on the basis of past experience; believing in the face of uncertainty. So-called religious experience is not a reliable guide to truth. The sole alternative to reason is raw, baseless, intransigent intuition, something to which no decent person aspires. But even “subjective” intuition can be evaluated and found immoral or unwise. Faith cannot escape the judgment of reason."
(Footnotes):
"Political liberals might insist that respect makes the further demand that we offer to each citizen reasons that are compelling to him or her. Call this the strong conception of respect. The strong conception of respect, however, places liberals in a dilemma. The principle of public reason would have us construct our political arguments out of public reasons. But especially for the devout, public reasons sometimes will not be among the most important or relevant with respect to a political decision. For example, a Christian opponent to capital punishment might regard the Ten Commandments as a reason more important than some “public” considerations, like fairness or racial justice. This might be the case even if he endorses the public considerations as well. If respect demands that one offer each citizen reasons that are compelling to him, then arguably one ought to offer religious considerations to such an abolitionist. By offering public reasons to all, one fails to offer to some the reasons that they find most compelling."
"Rawis claims that reasonableness is an attitude that lies between rational self-interest and altruism. It includes rationality but also a certain commitment to social cooperation. Reasonableness among citizens, in his view, is like the relations among acquaintances who share an apartment building. They are bound to interact with one another under conditions of limited scarcity (peace and quiet, hot water, and so on) and they mutually and openly seek cooperative arrangements to govern these interactions. In these arrangements, tenants are not expected to sacrifice themselves altruistically to satisfy the preferences of their neighbors. Yet neither are they expected to simply aim at maximizing their self-interest but instead to genuinely seek and follow rules for the collective that are generally regarded as fair."
"In America, God is always on the ballot. This is an American tradition that did not begin with Bush, or even Jimmy Carter. Woodrow Wilson’s internationalism was rooted in a Presbyterian belief that America should “exemplify that devotion of the elements of righteousness which are derived from the revelations of Holy Scripture.”...
Harry Truman worked to enlist Catholic, Anglican, Lutheran, and Greek Orthodox churches in the cold war, to “mobilize the people who believe in a moral world against the Bolshevik materialists” (Spalding, “True Believers,” p. 44). In his 1949 inaugural address, after taking the oath of office on a Bible laid open to the Ten Commandments, Truman intoned that “human freedom is born of the belief that man is created equal in the image of God and therefore capable of governing himself.”...
A candidate’s religion is often a poor predictor of how he will behave in office and what policies he will pursue. The religion of the 2004 presidential hopefuls was a perfect example [on stem cells, abortion and preemptive war] which most denominations opposed...
The Pew Foundation found that 42 percent of Americans said politicians should be guided by religious principles, and 46 percent said "religion and poltiics don't mix." A 2000 survey by Public Agenda indicated that among those who want religion and poltiics to mix more, three-quarters don't care which religion it is, only that it's sincere... the American preference for religious candidates is not necessarily a preference for religious politics"
"Sometimes science hits upon unanticipated methods of inquiry. A recent colorful example comes from the field of hyperbolic geometry. Hyperbolic geometry, created in the 1820s and '30s, studies certain kinds of spaces and objects that don’t obey Euclidian assumptions. A hyperbolic plane, for example, is a counterintuitive surface in which the space curves away from itself at every point. Since the 1950s, geometers had been trying to construct models of hyperbolic spaces but with limited success. Many believed it impossible, until Daina Taimina came along. Taimina, then a mathematician at Cornell University, made a discovery in the handicraft she had learned as a girl in her native Latvia: crocheting. In 1997, she crocheted the first usable model of a hyperbolic space. Together with her Cornell colleague and husband, David Henderson, she wrote up the results and submitted them to the journal Mathematical Intelligencer. According to Taimina, the editors’ response was something like, “You want us to publish what? A sewing pattern?” Of course, it was the first time that crocheting directions had been submitted to a peer—reviewed math journal"
"Maybe such suffering is permitted by God for good reasons that we finite, imperfect beings cannot know. Then again, one can just as easily imagine that there is a being who permits the good things that occasionally happen in our world because they ultimately serve a higher evil, which we cannot know. Maybe every silver lining has a cloud, and every success is necessary to bring about failure on a grander scale. We have no reason to believe that there are any such unknowable evils, but we have no less reason to believe in them than to believe in unknowable goods. The insistence that there must be such goods is merely an attempt to save the hypothesis of a perfectly good God from refutation at all costs, not a rational response to any independent reasons."
--- The Secular Conscience: Why Belief Belongs in Public Life / Austin Dacey
Post ID: 432108669610471680
Friday, August 15, 2008
"The generation of random numbers is too important to be left to chance." - Robert R. Coveyou
***
More sloppy news reporting by the local media; they are too used to summarising press releases from ministries as "news", so when the MPAA gives them press releases they only know how to summarise them, and not criticially evaluate them:
Warning against illegal recording of movies stepped up
"SINGAPORE: If you watch a movie in a theatre now, you will almost certainly see a message warning you against recording the movie illegally.
This comes after a sudden spike in the number of such cases. There were three such cases in the last two months, where the culprits recorded the movie on their mobile phones.
It also comes on the heels of an exponential rise in cases in the Asia Pacific.
Last year, the region saw 33 cases of illegal camcording, which was a 65 per cent increase compared to the year before.
The Motion Pictures Association said it wants to raise public awareness that recording a movie in a theatre using any recording device is illegal.
It said that such piracy has an enormous impact on jobs in the movie industry.
Mike Ellis, Asia Pacific President of Motion Pictures Association, said: "The impact that camcord piracy has on the movie industry and on the jobs the industry creates is enormous as copies of movies are often made available on the internet and duplicated onto pirated DVDs within hours of movies opening in the cinemas." -CNA/vm"
Somewhere along the way, there was a bait and switch and filming short clips on your mobile phones became filming the entire movie with a camcorder.
If you try to film a movie using your mobile phone, one or more of the following will happen:
1) Your phone will run out of battery power
2) Your memory card will fill up
3) Your recording quality will be so shitty, no one will want to watch it
4) You will get carpal tunnel syndrome
5) Someone will call you and your movie will be ruined
6) The person behind you will kick your chair or beat you up because your bright screen is distracting him
Besides which, most cams (movies shot from camcorders) are shot from the projection room. And apparently they haven't heard of screeners (movies burnt onto DVDs which are sent out and which get ripped by pirates). To say nothing of telecines and R5s.
In other words, most piracy is committed by people within the movie industry, not people who want to record short clips they find amusing, or the easter eggs during/after the credits.
(As someone said, "i dont see local films available on the net immediately after release" - evidently piracy in the Singapore film industry [let alone people filming in cinemas] is not a significant problem.
Though that could be because no one wants to watch them)
What is a CAM, Telesync, Telecine ETC.. Release catagories explained.
"CAM (CAM)
A cam is a theater rip usually done with a digital video camera. A mini tripod is sometimes used, but a lot of the time this won’t be possible, so the camera may shake. Also seating placement isn’t always perfect, which might cause the picture to be filmed from an angle. If cropped properly, this is hard to tell unless there’s text on the screen. Sound is taken from the onboard microphone of the camera. Comedies can be most annoying to watch due to the laughter that can be heard from the audience. With all of these factors, picture and sound quality are usually quite poor.
Telesync (TS)
A telesync is the same spec as a CAM except it uses an external audio source (most likely an audio jack in the chair for hard of hearing people). Remember though a direct audio source does not ensure a good audio source. You will notice a telesync usually has a better chance of being better quality then a CAM, but for the most part you won’t see a huge difference.
TELECINE (TC)
A telecine machine copies the film digitally from the reels. Sound and picture should be very good, but due to the equipment involved and cost telecines are fairly uncommon. Generally the film will be in correct aspect ratio, although 4:3 telecines have existed. A great example is the JURASSIC PARK 3 TC done last year. TC should not be confused with TimeCode , which is a visible counter on screen throughout the film.
WORKPRINT (WP)
A workprint is a copy of the film that has not been finished. It can be missing scenes, music, and quality can range from excellent to very poor. Some WPs are very different from the final print and some look exactly the same as the final. It is always important to look at samples and read up on a certain workprint before you download it.
DVD-SCREENER (DVDscr)
A pre release copy, sent to rental stores and various other places for promotional use. The main drawback is sometimes you will find a anti-copyright message appear on the screen throughout the movie. However, this is usually annoying at worst. For the most part this is where you can start to expect quality in the release. Also, you may find a lot of the Screeners only come in “Full Screen” versions. That could also be considered a drawback for some.
R5 (R5)
R5 refers to a specific format of DVD released in DVD Region 5, the former Soviet Union, and bootlegged copies of these releases that are distributed on the Internet. The image quality of an R5 release is generally comparable to a DVD Screener release, except without the added scrolling text and black and white scenes that serve to distinguish screeners from commercial DVD releases. The quality is better than Telecine transfers produced by movie pirates because the transfer is performed using professional-grade film scanning equipment. The only possible drawback of an R5 is sometimes you will find it has weak audio.
DVDRip (DVDrip)
A copy of the final released DVD. This is the best quality possible in a movie release. It is also possible for this to be released before its retail counterpart. DVDrips are released in SVCD and DivX/XviD."
More on Pirated movie release types from Wikipedia.
Microsoft Product Activation
"The goal of Product Activation is to reduce a form of piracy known as "casual copying" or "softlifting." Casual copying is the sharing of software between people in a way that infringes on the software's end user license agreement (EULA). An example of casual copying is if someone were to obtain a copy of Office XP and load it on his or her PC, then share it with a second person who loaded it on his or her PC, then share it with a third person who loaded it on his or her PC, and so on."
At least Microsoft admits that Product Activation is not meant to go after the big fish.
Shouldn't the MPAA come clean as well?
***
More sloppy news reporting by the local media; they are too used to summarising press releases from ministries as "news", so when the MPAA gives them press releases they only know how to summarise them, and not criticially evaluate them:
Warning against illegal recording of movies stepped up
"SINGAPORE: If you watch a movie in a theatre now, you will almost certainly see a message warning you against recording the movie illegally.
This comes after a sudden spike in the number of such cases. There were three such cases in the last two months, where the culprits recorded the movie on their mobile phones.
It also comes on the heels of an exponential rise in cases in the Asia Pacific.
Last year, the region saw 33 cases of illegal camcording, which was a 65 per cent increase compared to the year before.
The Motion Pictures Association said it wants to raise public awareness that recording a movie in a theatre using any recording device is illegal.
It said that such piracy has an enormous impact on jobs in the movie industry.
Mike Ellis, Asia Pacific President of Motion Pictures Association, said: "The impact that camcord piracy has on the movie industry and on the jobs the industry creates is enormous as copies of movies are often made available on the internet and duplicated onto pirated DVDs within hours of movies opening in the cinemas." -CNA/vm"
Somewhere along the way, there was a bait and switch and filming short clips on your mobile phones became filming the entire movie with a camcorder.
If you try to film a movie using your mobile phone, one or more of the following will happen:
1) Your phone will run out of battery power
2) Your memory card will fill up
3) Your recording quality will be so shitty, no one will want to watch it
4) You will get carpal tunnel syndrome
5) Someone will call you and your movie will be ruined
6) The person behind you will kick your chair or beat you up because your bright screen is distracting him
Besides which, most cams (movies shot from camcorders) are shot from the projection room. And apparently they haven't heard of screeners (movies burnt onto DVDs which are sent out and which get ripped by pirates). To say nothing of telecines and R5s.
In other words, most piracy is committed by people within the movie industry, not people who want to record short clips they find amusing, or the easter eggs during/after the credits.
(As someone said, "i dont see local films available on the net immediately after release" - evidently piracy in the Singapore film industry [let alone people filming in cinemas] is not a significant problem.
Though that could be because no one wants to watch them)
What is a CAM, Telesync, Telecine ETC.. Release catagories explained.
"CAM (CAM)
A cam is a theater rip usually done with a digital video camera. A mini tripod is sometimes used, but a lot of the time this won’t be possible, so the camera may shake. Also seating placement isn’t always perfect, which might cause the picture to be filmed from an angle. If cropped properly, this is hard to tell unless there’s text on the screen. Sound is taken from the onboard microphone of the camera. Comedies can be most annoying to watch due to the laughter that can be heard from the audience. With all of these factors, picture and sound quality are usually quite poor.
Telesync (TS)
A telesync is the same spec as a CAM except it uses an external audio source (most likely an audio jack in the chair for hard of hearing people). Remember though a direct audio source does not ensure a good audio source. You will notice a telesync usually has a better chance of being better quality then a CAM, but for the most part you won’t see a huge difference.
TELECINE (TC)
A telecine machine copies the film digitally from the reels. Sound and picture should be very good, but due to the equipment involved and cost telecines are fairly uncommon. Generally the film will be in correct aspect ratio, although 4:3 telecines have existed. A great example is the JURASSIC PARK 3 TC done last year. TC should not be confused with TimeCode , which is a visible counter on screen throughout the film.
WORKPRINT (WP)
A workprint is a copy of the film that has not been finished. It can be missing scenes, music, and quality can range from excellent to very poor. Some WPs are very different from the final print and some look exactly the same as the final. It is always important to look at samples and read up on a certain workprint before you download it.
DVD-SCREENER (DVDscr)
A pre release copy, sent to rental stores and various other places for promotional use. The main drawback is sometimes you will find a anti-copyright message appear on the screen throughout the movie. However, this is usually annoying at worst. For the most part this is where you can start to expect quality in the release. Also, you may find a lot of the Screeners only come in “Full Screen” versions. That could also be considered a drawback for some.
R5 (R5)
R5 refers to a specific format of DVD released in DVD Region 5, the former Soviet Union, and bootlegged copies of these releases that are distributed on the Internet. The image quality of an R5 release is generally comparable to a DVD Screener release, except without the added scrolling text and black and white scenes that serve to distinguish screeners from commercial DVD releases. The quality is better than Telecine transfers produced by movie pirates because the transfer is performed using professional-grade film scanning equipment. The only possible drawback of an R5 is sometimes you will find it has weak audio.
DVDRip (DVDrip)
A copy of the final released DVD. This is the best quality possible in a movie release. It is also possible for this to be released before its retail counterpart. DVDrips are released in SVCD and DivX/XviD."
More on Pirated movie release types from Wikipedia.
Microsoft Product Activation
"The goal of Product Activation is to reduce a form of piracy known as "casual copying" or "softlifting." Casual copying is the sharing of software between people in a way that infringes on the software's end user license agreement (EULA). An example of casual copying is if someone were to obtain a copy of Office XP and load it on his or her PC, then share it with a second person who loaded it on his or her PC, then share it with a third person who loaded it on his or her PC, and so on."
At least Microsoft admits that Product Activation is not meant to go after the big fish.
Shouldn't the MPAA come clean as well?
Post ID: 3540011936280616044
Sunday, January 13, 2008
"Never confuse movement with action." - Ernest Hemingway
***
I hate my Matsushita UJ-850S drive. It seems to be one of the few RPC-2 drives which BOTH has no cracked firmware available AND defeats every software tool people throw at it; even the makers of DVD Region+CSS Free, who boast that "it fully supports region-protected (RPC2) DVD drives, and does not require any firmware modifications. It will even work if you have used up your region counter and can no longer change the DVD drive's region", note that "DVD-RAM, Matshita XX-8xxx, SW-9xxx series DVD drives, and Torisan DRD-Uxxx series DVD drives are not supported now, and there is no plan to support them".
[Addendum: The AnyDVD people say:
"AnyDVD works with Matsushita (Panasonic) drives, as long as:
1.) The drive is set to a specific region code. If your drive isn't, set your preferred region.
2.) CSS protected discs match this region
AnyDVD does not allow you with Matsushita (Panasonic) drives to watch or copy a CSS protected disc, which has a different region then the drive, unless you have a patched firmware. (AnyDVD allows this with every other drive)
The reason is rather simple:
MMC standard requires, that a drive should not reveal a title key on a region mismatched CSS protected disc. (It should return "Illegal request - region code does not match"). Some drives are even less restrictive and even give you the title key on region mismatch.
But AnyDVD can usually reveal the title key with a brute force attack, as long as the drive allows you to read the scrambled sectors.
Matsushita (Panasonic) drives do not! You CANNOT read the scrambled data, if the region code doesn't match.
No other drive behaves this way, only Matsushita (Panasonic) drives do, as the standard does not require a drive to not reveal the protected data on region mismatch, but Matsushita (Panasonic) drives are more restrictive as they need to be.
There is nothing AnyDVD, DVDDecrypter, or any other software can do about this. Sorry.
Solution: Set the drive to a region, and only use matching discs. AnyDVD will remove CSS/Macrovision/Adverts/User prohibitions/forced subtitles/FBI warnings/... no problem.
It cannot bypass region codes with Matsushita (Panasonic) drives."]
Luckily, Media Player Classic works (somehow - from what I read it was hardware-locked), though according to the people on The Firmare Page forums using this or VLC tool doesn't always work.
[Addendum: I found a DVD both MPC and VLC won't open, shocking all the VLC afficionados. Hah.]
Not a few people have suggested that I just download movies instead. Which, of course, is what region coding (and similar silly measures to increase supernormal profits) does - makes people download and buy pirated DVDs instead of original ones.
Pffffft.
On a side note, getting DVDs off eBay is much cheaper than buying them here - even including shipping. The only place I've seen cheaper DVDs in Singapore is at Seah Im hawker centre (S$6 each), and then they're all crappy titles (whose names elude me at the moment).
***
I hate my Matsushita UJ-850S drive. It seems to be one of the few RPC-2 drives which BOTH has no cracked firmware available AND defeats every software tool people throw at it; even the makers of DVD Region+CSS Free, who boast that "it fully supports region-protected (RPC2) DVD drives, and does not require any firmware modifications. It will even work if you have used up your region counter and can no longer change the DVD drive's region", note that "DVD-RAM, Matshita XX-8xxx, SW-9xxx series DVD drives, and Torisan DRD-Uxxx series DVD drives are not supported now, and there is no plan to support them".
[Addendum: The AnyDVD people say:
"AnyDVD works with Matsushita (Panasonic) drives, as long as:
1.) The drive is set to a specific region code. If your drive isn't, set your preferred region.
2.) CSS protected discs match this region
AnyDVD does not allow you with Matsushita (Panasonic) drives to watch or copy a CSS protected disc, which has a different region then the drive, unless you have a patched firmware. (AnyDVD allows this with every other drive)
The reason is rather simple:
MMC standard requires, that a drive should not reveal a title key on a region mismatched CSS protected disc. (It should return "Illegal request - region code does not match"). Some drives are even less restrictive and even give you the title key on region mismatch.
But AnyDVD can usually reveal the title key with a brute force attack, as long as the drive allows you to read the scrambled sectors.
Matsushita (Panasonic) drives do not! You CANNOT read the scrambled data, if the region code doesn't match.
No other drive behaves this way, only Matsushita (Panasonic) drives do, as the standard does not require a drive to not reveal the protected data on region mismatch, but Matsushita (Panasonic) drives are more restrictive as they need to be.
There is nothing AnyDVD, DVDDecrypter, or any other software can do about this. Sorry.
Solution: Set the drive to a region, and only use matching discs. AnyDVD will remove CSS/Macrovision/Adverts/User prohibitions/forced subtitles/FBI warnings/... no problem.
It cannot bypass region codes with Matsushita (Panasonic) drives."]
Luckily, Media Player Classic works (somehow - from what I read it was hardware-locked), though according to the people on The Firmare Page forums using this or VLC tool doesn't always work.
[Addendum: I found a DVD both MPC and VLC won't open, shocking all the VLC afficionados. Hah.]
Not a few people have suggested that I just download movies instead. Which, of course, is what region coding (and similar silly measures to increase supernormal profits) does - makes people download and buy pirated DVDs instead of original ones.
Pffffft.
On a side note, getting DVDs off eBay is much cheaper than buying them here - even including shipping. The only place I've seen cheaper DVDs in Singapore is at Seah Im hawker centre (S$6 each), and then they're all crappy titles (whose names elude me at the moment).
Post ID: 7147563943849016891
Thursday, June 14, 2007
A prominent notice stuck at the start of The Political Blog: The Struggle for Hegemony in Singapore's Emerging Blogosphere; Tan Jie Ying, Dorothy (2006/2007 Political Science Thesis):
"WARNING
This dissertation/thesis/academic exercise may be used only for private study or research purposes. No part of this work may be reproduced without permission, quoted without acknowledgement and no information derived from it may be published without the copyright owner's written consent."
Meanwhile, the form for photocopying reads:
"I declare that I require the copy for:
- My own private study
- My own research
and that I will not use it for any other purposes...
I recognise that the copyright... rests with the author... and that no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without the prior written consent of the author or university (as may be appropriate)."
Looks like the doctrine of Fair Use doesn't apply to NUS theses.
Then again it's probably to prevent all the students (and their supervisors) for being incarcerated for sedition, and the University being shut down for fomenting dissent.
"WARNING
This dissertation/thesis/academic exercise may be used only for private study or research purposes. No part of this work may be reproduced without permission, quoted without acknowledgement and no information derived from it may be published without the copyright owner's written consent."
Meanwhile, the form for photocopying reads:
"I declare that I require the copy for:
- My own private study
- My own research
and that I will not use it for any other purposes...
I recognise that the copyright... rests with the author... and that no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without the prior written consent of the author or university (as may be appropriate)."
Looks like the doctrine of Fair Use doesn't apply to NUS theses.
Then again it's probably to prevent all the students (and their supervisors) for being incarcerated for sedition, and the University being shut down for fomenting dissent.
Post ID: 6728453026723836841
Saturday, April 14, 2007
An Economic Analysis of the Protestant Reformation
"This paper seeks to explain the initial successes and failures of Protestantism on economic grounds. It argues that the medieval Roman Catholic Church, through doctrinal manipulation, the exclusion of rivals, and various forms of price discrimination, ultimately placed members seeking the Z good "spiritual services" on the margin of defection. These monopolistic practices encouraged entry by rival firms, some of which were aligned with civil governments. The paper hypothesizes that Protestant entry was facilitated in emergent entrepreneurial societies characterized by the decline of feudalism and relatively unstable distribution of wealth and repressed in more homogeneous, rent-seeking societies that were mostly dissipating rather than creating wealth. In these societies the Roman Church was more able to continue the practice of price discrimination. Informal tests of this proposition are conducted by considering primogeniture and urban growth as proxies for wealth stability."
Why can't we have funky stuff like this in the Premier Institution of Social Engineering?!
THE COPYING PRACTICES OF FRENCH INTERNET USERS: AN ECONOMIC ANALYSIS
"Copying behaviour is not the result of a rational cost-benefit financial assessment – the individual does not copy as a function of a benefit (amounting to saving the price of a CD) which he would compare with a cost (being taken to court and punished), but as a function of a "viral" effect: the individual copies because his peers copy, and the more his peers copy, the more he himself copies. This phenomenon of the circulation of a behaviour from peer to peer certainly explains the
disappointing results of the current policy of suppression in place in most countries...
Three strategies are possible for dealing with P2P:
(1) Suppression (court cases against individuals, reinforcement of legal protection, etc.), which is widely used at present.
Our results call into question not only the effectiveness of this strategy, but also its economic foundations: it is largely based on a hypothesis consisting of a purely substitutive principle which holds that the principal effect of copying is to eat into sales.
(2) Non-intervention, which has historical precedents such as early cinema, and radio competing with records.
The hypothesis is that, at worst, copying has no effect (on the drop in sales) and that, at best, it has a positive impact on the cultural industries. In this case, the least costly solution socially consists in leaving the stakeholders to innovate and negotiate between themselves, while ensuring respect for competition law and privacy.
(3) Tolerance accompanied by compensation (for example based on the model of perceived royalties for photocopying books and magazines).
The underlying hypothesis is that all work deserves payment (idea of the philosopher John Locke, 1690). Our study shows that copiers are prepared to pay the artists, and all the more so because their copying practices cause them concerns of an ethical nature. Therefore, the entire difficulty lies in defining a socially viable compensation mechanism (that is to say fair, feasible and acceptable).
In view of the results of the survey, solutions (2) and (3) are preferable."
"This paper seeks to explain the initial successes and failures of Protestantism on economic grounds. It argues that the medieval Roman Catholic Church, through doctrinal manipulation, the exclusion of rivals, and various forms of price discrimination, ultimately placed members seeking the Z good "spiritual services" on the margin of defection. These monopolistic practices encouraged entry by rival firms, some of which were aligned with civil governments. The paper hypothesizes that Protestant entry was facilitated in emergent entrepreneurial societies characterized by the decline of feudalism and relatively unstable distribution of wealth and repressed in more homogeneous, rent-seeking societies that were mostly dissipating rather than creating wealth. In these societies the Roman Church was more able to continue the practice of price discrimination. Informal tests of this proposition are conducted by considering primogeniture and urban growth as proxies for wealth stability."
Why can't we have funky stuff like this in the Premier Institution of Social Engineering?!
THE COPYING PRACTICES OF FRENCH INTERNET USERS: AN ECONOMIC ANALYSIS
"Copying behaviour is not the result of a rational cost-benefit financial assessment – the individual does not copy as a function of a benefit (amounting to saving the price of a CD) which he would compare with a cost (being taken to court and punished), but as a function of a "viral" effect: the individual copies because his peers copy, and the more his peers copy, the more he himself copies. This phenomenon of the circulation of a behaviour from peer to peer certainly explains the
disappointing results of the current policy of suppression in place in most countries...
Three strategies are possible for dealing with P2P:
(1) Suppression (court cases against individuals, reinforcement of legal protection, etc.), which is widely used at present.
Our results call into question not only the effectiveness of this strategy, but also its economic foundations: it is largely based on a hypothesis consisting of a purely substitutive principle which holds that the principal effect of copying is to eat into sales.
(2) Non-intervention, which has historical precedents such as early cinema, and radio competing with records.
The hypothesis is that, at worst, copying has no effect (on the drop in sales) and that, at best, it has a positive impact on the cultural industries. In this case, the least costly solution socially consists in leaving the stakeholders to innovate and negotiate between themselves, while ensuring respect for competition law and privacy.
(3) Tolerance accompanied by compensation (for example based on the model of perceived royalties for photocopying books and magazines).
The underlying hypothesis is that all work deserves payment (idea of the philosopher John Locke, 1690). Our study shows that copiers are prepared to pay the artists, and all the more so because their copying practices cause them concerns of an ethical nature. Therefore, the entire difficulty lies in defining a socially viable compensation mechanism (that is to say fair, feasible and acceptable).
In view of the results of the survey, solutions (2) and (3) are preferable."
Post ID: 4247147404547917966
Saturday, February 10, 2007
Journal of Political Economy Volume 115, Number 1, February 2007:
The Effect of File Sharing on Record Sales: An Empirical Analysis
Felix Oberholzer-Gee, Koleman Strumpf
"For industries ranging from software to pharmaceuticals and entertainment, there is an intense debate about the appropriate level of protection for intellectual property. The Internet provides a natural crucible to assess the implications of reduced protection because it drastically lowers the cost of copying information. In this paper, we analyze whether file sharing has reduced the legal sales of music. While this question is receiving considerable attention in academia, industry, and Congress, we are the first to study the phenomenon employing data on actual downloads of music files.We match an extensive sample of downloads to U.S. sales data for a large number of albums. To establish causality, we instrument for downloads using data on international school holidays. Downloads have an effect on sales that is statistically indistinguishable from zero. Our estimates are inconsistent"
Unfortunately I will only be able to read this after my term paper. Hurr hurr.
The Effect of File Sharing on Record Sales: An Empirical Analysis
Felix Oberholzer-Gee, Koleman Strumpf
"For industries ranging from software to pharmaceuticals and entertainment, there is an intense debate about the appropriate level of protection for intellectual property. The Internet provides a natural crucible to assess the implications of reduced protection because it drastically lowers the cost of copying information. In this paper, we analyze whether file sharing has reduced the legal sales of music. While this question is receiving considerable attention in academia, industry, and Congress, we are the first to study the phenomenon employing data on actual downloads of music files.We match an extensive sample of downloads to U.S. sales data for a large number of albums. To establish causality, we instrument for downloads using data on international school holidays. Downloads have an effect on sales that is statistically indistinguishable from zero. Our estimates are inconsistent"
Unfortunately I will only be able to read this after my term paper. Hurr hurr.
Post ID: 5530063103132010244
Monday, January 01, 2007
One of my Bayeux Tapestry pictures made it to the Wikimedia Commons. The copyright information reads:
"The two-dimensional work of art depicted in this image is in the public domain worldwide due to the date of death of its author (if it is was published outside of the U.S. and the author has been dead for over 70 years), or due to its date of publication (if it was first made public in the U.S. before 1923). Therefore this photographical reproduction is also in the public domain, at least in the United States (see Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp.), in Germany, and in many other countries."
This reminds me of a conversation about museum copyright which I thought I blogged but which I appear not to have:
Someone: "t has just occured to me that museums have no right at all to restrict non-flash photography or impose other funny restrictions (eg no commercial use), since copyright expires 70 years after the death of the author. Even more reason to spite the incorrigible ones which try to increase postcard sales by restricting visitors' rights."
not entirely true
though i agree with your stand and support it
Me: so please clarify the legal fine points
Someone: well... you see most museums have photographed archives of their works
rite
they argue that their photograph of the non-copyrighted work has copyright
thus by taking a photo, you might infringe their copyright
so they don't allow you to
;)
cool eh
Me: wth
the photo you take is a new work
ridiculous lah
you're not taking a photo of their photo
tell them to go and die
Someone: hahaha
but it has been upheld in the US
and some in the uk argue that tt's the stand in the uk as well
and thus, one might as it's the same in Sg and other unenlightened common law countries
which doesn't bring us to italy
but i suppose their copyright code would be crouched in similar terms, and in fact they offer greater protection normally
Me: aiyah
US sucks
mickey mouse protection act
well in UK copyright expires after 50 years
so george harrison is kao pehing haha
I give them more leeway since they're not so bastard
eh how sound is the stupid principle of the photograph
it's total rubbish
your photograph is not related to theirs
maybe it's under conditions of admittance to the museum
Someone: lol
tt's one way they enforce it
via contract
but since you argue copyright
i give you the copyright argument
Me: yes
I'm going to draw up a "scummy ways museums can earn more money"
anyway the artefacts belong to all humanity
not just to the scum
Someone: hahaha
i agree
i agree with you
haha
in fact, it's a way to create perpetual copyright
if the theory is upheld
but but
u must understand that photography and photographs sit uneasy with copyright, esp in common law jurisdictions
ie. history etc etc
too much for me to type out
hahaha
Me: I prob won't understand also
if you can write about something why can't you take a photo of it
Someone: actually hor
well
u see...
what's the dif between a photo and a photocopy
tt's the crux
Me: it's like intellectual property lah
except intellectual property - copyright expires
but the photos - code of hammurabi made so many thousands of years ago
Someone: o0oo0oo
there was a copyright case over the dead sea scrolls
Me: photo and photocopy... photocopy - you're taking the essence of something
and it's an idea for a text
for a photo the image is not the essential property of the thing
wth?!
Someone: hahaha
in the israeli courts
see...
hahaha
rocks your world eh
Me: (this is why law is stupid)
Someone: say for eg
what's the material dif in outcome between u photocopying the musemum's photo of the mona lisa
and you deliberately or even accidentally taking a photo identical to the one the museum has
just because it's a new work isn't a defence for infringement of copyright
tt's their argument...
obviously i feel it's got holes and against the fundamental raison d'tre of copyright
Me: it's a cock argument
so if I go and sketch the mona lisa and someone else has a copyrighted sketch of the mona lisa and they happen to be the same... am I liable?
you can never take an identical photo
the museums have them in special poses, lighting conditions, film...
it's just a fudge lah
museum lobbying
Someone: depends
lol
maybe
or the court's own intiative considering tt museums are often non profit
Me: I understand US copyright is meant to benefit the public after a while
but in other jurisdictions is copyright also meant for the public good? or private only
Someone: wah... tt's another 1-2 hour chit chat wor
hahaha
first copyright code was in the uk
anyway it's just food for thought lah
just to let you know... hahaa... it's a crazy world out there
Me: yeah the misery of the human condition
Someone: yeah
Me:
"The two-dimensional work of art depicted in this image is in the public domain worldwide due to the date of death of its author (if it is was published outside of the U.S. and the author has been dead for over 70 years), or due to its date of publication (if it was first made public in the U.S. before 1923). Therefore this photographical reproduction is also in the public domain, at least in the United States (see Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp.), in Germany, and in many other countries."
This reminds me of a conversation about museum copyright which I thought I blogged but which I appear not to have:
Someone: "t has just occured to me that museums have no right at all to restrict non-flash photography or impose other funny restrictions (eg no commercial use), since copyright expires 70 years after the death of the author. Even more reason to spite the incorrigible ones which try to increase postcard sales by restricting visitors' rights."
not entirely true
though i agree with your stand and support it
Me: so please clarify the legal fine points
Someone: well... you see most museums have photographed archives of their works
rite
they argue that their photograph of the non-copyrighted work has copyright
thus by taking a photo, you might infringe their copyright
so they don't allow you to
;)
cool eh
Me: wth
the photo you take is a new work
ridiculous lah
you're not taking a photo of their photo
tell them to go and die
Someone: hahaha
but it has been upheld in the US
and some in the uk argue that tt's the stand in the uk as well
and thus, one might as it's the same in Sg and other unenlightened common law countries
which doesn't bring us to italy
but i suppose their copyright code would be crouched in similar terms, and in fact they offer greater protection normally
Me: aiyah
US sucks
mickey mouse protection act
well in UK copyright expires after 50 years
so george harrison is kao pehing haha
I give them more leeway since they're not so bastard
eh how sound is the stupid principle of the photograph
it's total rubbish
your photograph is not related to theirs
maybe it's under conditions of admittance to the museum
Someone: lol
tt's one way they enforce it
via contract
but since you argue copyright
i give you the copyright argument
Me: yes
I'm going to draw up a "scummy ways museums can earn more money"
anyway the artefacts belong to all humanity
not just to the scum
Someone: hahaha
i agree
i agree with you
haha
in fact, it's a way to create perpetual copyright
if the theory is upheld
but but
u must understand that photography and photographs sit uneasy with copyright, esp in common law jurisdictions
ie. history etc etc
too much for me to type out
hahaha
Me: I prob won't understand also
if you can write about something why can't you take a photo of it
Someone: actually hor
well
u see...
what's the dif between a photo and a photocopy
tt's the crux
Me: it's like intellectual property lah
except intellectual property - copyright expires
but the photos - code of hammurabi made so many thousands of years ago
Someone: o0oo0oo
there was a copyright case over the dead sea scrolls
Me: photo and photocopy... photocopy - you're taking the essence of something
and it's an idea for a text
for a photo the image is not the essential property of the thing
wth?!
Someone: hahaha
in the israeli courts
see...
hahaha
rocks your world eh
Me: (this is why law is stupid)
Someone: say for eg
what's the material dif in outcome between u photocopying the musemum's photo of the mona lisa
and you deliberately or even accidentally taking a photo identical to the one the museum has
just because it's a new work isn't a defence for infringement of copyright
tt's their argument...
obviously i feel it's got holes and against the fundamental raison d'tre of copyright
Me: it's a cock argument
so if I go and sketch the mona lisa and someone else has a copyrighted sketch of the mona lisa and they happen to be the same... am I liable?
you can never take an identical photo
the museums have them in special poses, lighting conditions, film...
it's just a fudge lah
museum lobbying
Someone: depends
lol
maybe
or the court's own intiative considering tt museums are often non profit
Me: I understand US copyright is meant to benefit the public after a while
but in other jurisdictions is copyright also meant for the public good? or private only
Someone: wah... tt's another 1-2 hour chit chat wor
hahaha
first copyright code was in the uk
anyway it's just food for thought lah
just to let you know... hahaa... it's a crazy world out there
Me: yeah the misery of the human condition
Someone: yeah
Me:
Post ID: 4968759009742105759
Sunday, November 12, 2006
Update:
Here's a video made by darling JB!
xxoos, the Queen of Animated Gifs, has also turned it into one:
(Click on the thumbnail to see it in its glory)
You wouldn't vandalize a Car.
You wouldn't vandalize a Book.
You wouldn't vandalize a Wall.
You wouldn't vandalize a Person. Even if he vandalized Cars.
You wouldn't vandalize a Movie.
Movie.
Movie Censorship is Vandalism.
Vandalism is prescribed by the Law.
Vandalism. It's A Travesty.
(Original: http://www.respectcopyrights.org/video_download/piracy_its_a_crime_300.mov)
Techdirt: File Sharers Aren't Stealing, But The RIAA Is...
"Not only is file sharing not theft, the Supreme Court has even said so. They clearly distinguished between copyright infringement and theft in a 1985 case... the record labels represented by the RIAA often don't have the digital rights to the music from the artists they represent. However, they are collecting money (from fee-based services like iTunes and from these legal cases) and not giving it to the artists they represent. Thus, the argument goes, isn't it really the RIAA who is stealing (used properly) from musicians?"
"MOVIE PIRACY IS STEALING
STEALING IS AGAINST THE LAW
BUT AT LEAST ON A PIRATE VIDEO...
YOU WOULDN'T HAVE TO PUT UP WITH THIS FUCKING ANNOYING UNSKIPPABLE AD"
Here's a video made by darling JB!
xxoos, the Queen of Animated Gifs, has also turned it into one:
(Click on the thumbnail to see it in its glory)
You wouldn't vandalize a Car.
You wouldn't vandalize a Book.
You wouldn't vandalize a Wall.
You wouldn't vandalize a Person. Even if he vandalized Cars.
You wouldn't vandalize a Movie.
Movie.
Movie Censorship is Vandalism.
Vandalism is prescribed by the Law.
Vandalism. It's A Travesty.
(Original: http://www.respectcopyrights.org/video_download/piracy_its_a_crime_300.mov)
Techdirt: File Sharers Aren't Stealing, But The RIAA Is...
"Not only is file sharing not theft, the Supreme Court has even said so. They clearly distinguished between copyright infringement and theft in a 1985 case... the record labels represented by the RIAA often don't have the digital rights to the music from the artists they represent. However, they are collecting money (from fee-based services like iTunes and from these legal cases) and not giving it to the artists they represent. Thus, the argument goes, isn't it really the RIAA who is stealing (used properly) from musicians?"
"MOVIE PIRACY IS STEALING
STEALING IS AGAINST THE LAW
BUT AT LEAST ON A PIRATE VIDEO...
YOU WOULDN'T HAVE TO PUT UP WITH THIS FUCKING ANNOYING UNSKIPPABLE AD"
Post ID: 116333831644665547
Wednesday, December 28, 2005
"People seem to enjoy things more when they know a lot of other people have been left out of the pleasure." - Russell Baker
***
Someone: "bet i'm sure one of the search engine referrals to your blog will be "narnia aslan slash fanfic""
***
Novel copyright protection:
""FADE": This is not a common method of CP, in fact I only have one game with it, Operation Flashpoint. This is a very complex system in that the game somehow detects when a CD has been copied (from what I have found, in a similar method to Safedisc) but doesn't stop the game from working. Over time, the game degrades, guns aren't as accurate, enemies are stronger, and things just "don't work right", but you can still play. This is very clever, as someone copying the game will have no immediate indication that something is wrong."
***
I have this theory about Bhangra music. I've a friend whose housemates and her like to laugh when they dance along to Bhangra. Other sources inform me that others also laugh when they listen to Bhangra. The reason they're laughing is because... they're racist!!!
***
One of the best justifications for genocide I've seen so far:
"When I read about Numbers 31, the whole chapter, it was about God commanding the Israelites to take vengeance on the Midianites. And in verse 15 the reason for killing the women was given. It's because they were the means to turn the Israelites from their God. There's also something about a Balaam which also needs reference to previous chapters to get an idea of what he did. I think this also is helpful setting the background of the context
In v17, if we understand it as it is without knowing the culture and background that may give us some foreknowledge of what sets apart virgins from the rest, it would seem cruel n unjustified that the rest be killed. so i think that there needs to be more context and background knowledge given and known first before using it as an irony to the title (which i take to imply an apparent contradiction between the standards of the god in question)
In Deuteronomy 20:13-17, as i was reading it, i read on to verse 18 and it says.
v18 Otherwise, they will teach you to follow all the detestable things they do in worshipping their gods and you will sin against the Lord your God.
And though it may seem very cruel in v13-17, when i came to v18, my attention was drawn to v18 and i'm forced to consider the 'otherwise' statement....
but anyway,..the thing is, i think given the title and the verses quoted, the apparent contradiction that is meant to be pointed out in this post is not brought out fairly because i think there needs to be sufficient attention to be paid in understanding the background and context of which the verses occur in."
In short, it's justified to commit genocide to retain the attentions of a people, rather than through any merits of your own.
Bravo!
***
I'm getting spam in the form of the "Bible Answers Monthly Newsletter". Wth.
***
Someone: "bet i'm sure one of the search engine referrals to your blog will be "narnia aslan slash fanfic""
***
Novel copyright protection:
""FADE": This is not a common method of CP, in fact I only have one game with it, Operation Flashpoint. This is a very complex system in that the game somehow detects when a CD has been copied (from what I have found, in a similar method to Safedisc) but doesn't stop the game from working. Over time, the game degrades, guns aren't as accurate, enemies are stronger, and things just "don't work right", but you can still play. This is very clever, as someone copying the game will have no immediate indication that something is wrong."
***
I have this theory about Bhangra music. I've a friend whose housemates and her like to laugh when they dance along to Bhangra. Other sources inform me that others also laugh when they listen to Bhangra. The reason they're laughing is because... they're racist!!!
***
One of the best justifications for genocide I've seen so far:
"When I read about Numbers 31, the whole chapter, it was about God commanding the Israelites to take vengeance on the Midianites. And in verse 15 the reason for killing the women was given. It's because they were the means to turn the Israelites from their God. There's also something about a Balaam which also needs reference to previous chapters to get an idea of what he did. I think this also is helpful setting the background of the context
In v17, if we understand it as it is without knowing the culture and background that may give us some foreknowledge of what sets apart virgins from the rest, it would seem cruel n unjustified that the rest be killed. so i think that there needs to be more context and background knowledge given and known first before using it as an irony to the title (which i take to imply an apparent contradiction between the standards of the god in question)
In Deuteronomy 20:13-17, as i was reading it, i read on to verse 18 and it says.
v18 Otherwise, they will teach you to follow all the detestable things they do in worshipping their gods and you will sin against the Lord your God.
And though it may seem very cruel in v13-17, when i came to v18, my attention was drawn to v18 and i'm forced to consider the 'otherwise' statement....
but anyway,..the thing is, i think given the title and the verses quoted, the apparent contradiction that is meant to be pointed out in this post is not brought out fairly because i think there needs to be sufficient attention to be paid in understanding the background and context of which the verses occur in."
In short, it's justified to commit genocide to retain the attentions of a people, rather than through any merits of your own.
Bravo!
***
I'm getting spam in the form of the "Bible Answers Monthly Newsletter". Wth.
Post ID: 113549122899343353
Monday, December 05, 2005
"Historians are like deaf people who go on answering questions that no one has asked them." - Leo Tolstoy
***
I was in Balestier today and I happened upon the infamous 'Fragrance Hotel'. Near the branch where this picture was taken, there was a sign reading "ROSE" pointing into the hotel.
Meanwhile, the whole area was filled with cheap hotels - there was another branch of Fragrance Hotel down the street, and there was a Hotel 81 on either side of the road.
***
September 2002 archives are restored.
Excerpts:
"We medics are tasked with the horrible area cleaning task of washing the toilets. What makes our unenviable task worse is people's disgusting toilet habits - mainly, not flushing. These people are at least 18, if not 19, 20, 21 or beyond, and in the army to boot, and they still don't know that you should flush a toilet after you use it. Or maybe they just don't like us."
"We had another change of command parade, this time for my brigade. Parade Commanders for Armour Parades travel in style - on Jeeps!"
"I think next week I'll book in on Sunday morning. No one cares, not that anyone is around to anyhow. Anyway the punishment meted out to one person for missing Weekend RT was 1 confinement, so I assume the worst they can do to me is give me 1/2 a confinement!"
"I'm very happy that I have not been forced to glimpse any naked male members in camp so far! Of course, I notice that the number of "sightings" is roughly proportional to the number of Malays in my bunk."
"Probably not by accident, I've been tasked by the Senior Medic to take care of the "Weight Management for Obese Regulars Scheme". Gah."
"Mysteriously, the ET (Entrenching Tool) stick I borrowed from Wen Fa for 4NTM disappeared from my fieldpack, and the groundsheet he lent me became a poncho. Perplexing and disturbing this mystery is, and I'll have to bear the losses and replace his items! :("
"His latest stunt failed miserably when I strode into the MO's room and saw him typing in a SMS to send via the Internet to "90483827" and which started, "Hi, I'm your secret admirer". Unaware of my sudden entrance, he continued typing for a while while those around him started laughing hysterically, and I finally exited the room with sounds of amusement."
***
Under the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, if copyright owners are and have been vigilant, works made in 1923 or after will not be in the public domain till 2019. I'm positive that in 2018 or thereabouts, another Copyright Term Extension Act will be passed in the US Congress. In fact, I recall some site where you could make bets about this sort of thing, but by 2018 I'd have forgotten about the bet, so.
"Honour Intellectual Property Laws' Original Spirit - Be HIPLOS; Insane copyright terms kill creativity"
(This putative advertising campaign seems to have more going for it than my "Honour Artists' Original Intentions - Be HAOI; Censorship kills creativity" proposal)
***
Quotations on criminal justice from the Norwegian writer Jens Bjørneboe:
"Take away the "immoral" criminal, and we'd be robbed of one of the lies we need in order to live: namely the belief that there is someone who is even more immoral than we are. We all need someone to despise and look down on as not having full value. This is another of our strong points of likeness with that same criminal: in prison there always develops a hierarchical type of society, where the safecracker and the gunman rank highest and the sexual offender lowest.
The prison is a true copy of our own society.
—"Crime as a way of life" (1967)
"A judicial system's first task will always be to secure and protect itself: the judicial system must necessarily regard itself as justice and the rule of law incarnate, and it thus becomes entirely logical that defense of the judicial system must have the very highest priority followed by protection of the state and its officials and civil servants. The inevitable consequence will be that the judicial system and its administration will comprise the very skeleton of society, its innermost, immutable, reactionary mineral core. The circle is complete: the prosecuting authority can only be reported to the prosecuting authority, whereupon the prosecuting authority "rejects" the accusations and declares the prosecuting authority free of any guilt.
It cannot be otherwise.
-"The righteous and the innocent" (1967)
***
I was in Balestier today and I happened upon the infamous 'Fragrance Hotel'. Near the branch where this picture was taken, there was a sign reading "ROSE" pointing into the hotel.
Meanwhile, the whole area was filled with cheap hotels - there was another branch of Fragrance Hotel down the street, and there was a Hotel 81 on either side of the road.
***
September 2002 archives are restored.
Excerpts:
"We medics are tasked with the horrible area cleaning task of washing the toilets. What makes our unenviable task worse is people's disgusting toilet habits - mainly, not flushing. These people are at least 18, if not 19, 20, 21 or beyond, and in the army to boot, and they still don't know that you should flush a toilet after you use it. Or maybe they just don't like us."
"We had another change of command parade, this time for my brigade. Parade Commanders for Armour Parades travel in style - on Jeeps!"
"I think next week I'll book in on Sunday morning. No one cares, not that anyone is around to anyhow. Anyway the punishment meted out to one person for missing Weekend RT was 1 confinement, so I assume the worst they can do to me is give me 1/2 a confinement!"
"I'm very happy that I have not been forced to glimpse any naked male members in camp so far! Of course, I notice that the number of "sightings" is roughly proportional to the number of Malays in my bunk."
"Probably not by accident, I've been tasked by the Senior Medic to take care of the "Weight Management for Obese Regulars Scheme". Gah."
"Mysteriously, the ET (Entrenching Tool) stick I borrowed from Wen Fa for 4NTM disappeared from my fieldpack, and the groundsheet he lent me became a poncho. Perplexing and disturbing this mystery is, and I'll have to bear the losses and replace his items! :("
"His latest stunt failed miserably when I strode into the MO's room and saw him typing in a SMS to send via the Internet to "90483827" and which started, "Hi, I'm your secret admirer". Unaware of my sudden entrance, he continued typing for a while while those around him started laughing hysterically, and I finally exited the room with sounds of amusement."
***
Under the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, if copyright owners are and have been vigilant, works made in 1923 or after will not be in the public domain till 2019. I'm positive that in 2018 or thereabouts, another Copyright Term Extension Act will be passed in the US Congress. In fact, I recall some site where you could make bets about this sort of thing, but by 2018 I'd have forgotten about the bet, so.
"Honour Intellectual Property Laws' Original Spirit - Be HIPLOS; Insane copyright terms kill creativity"
(This putative advertising campaign seems to have more going for it than my "Honour Artists' Original Intentions - Be HAOI; Censorship kills creativity" proposal)
***
Quotations on criminal justice from the Norwegian writer Jens Bjørneboe:
"Take away the "immoral" criminal, and we'd be robbed of one of the lies we need in order to live: namely the belief that there is someone who is even more immoral than we are. We all need someone to despise and look down on as not having full value. This is another of our strong points of likeness with that same criminal: in prison there always develops a hierarchical type of society, where the safecracker and the gunman rank highest and the sexual offender lowest.
The prison is a true copy of our own society.
—"Crime as a way of life" (1967)
"A judicial system's first task will always be to secure and protect itself: the judicial system must necessarily regard itself as justice and the rule of law incarnate, and it thus becomes entirely logical that defense of the judicial system must have the very highest priority followed by protection of the state and its officials and civil servants. The inevitable consequence will be that the judicial system and its administration will comprise the very skeleton of society, its innermost, immutable, reactionary mineral core. The circle is complete: the prosecuting authority can only be reported to the prosecuting authority, whereupon the prosecuting authority "rejects" the accusations and declares the prosecuting authority free of any guilt.
It cannot be otherwise.
-"The righteous and the innocent" (1967)
Post ID: 113378380017384327
Monday, October 03, 2005
"Anyone can do any amount of work provided it isn't the work he is supposed to be doing at the moment." - Robert Benchley
Random Playlist Song: Raffles Chorale - Mate Saule
***
Magnatune: MP3 music and music licensing (royalty free music and license music)
"We're a record label. But we're not evil.
We call it "try before you buy." It's the shareware model applied to music. Listen to 418 complete MP3 albums we've picked (not 30 second snippets).
We let the music sell itself, because we think that's the best way to get you excited by it.
Our selection is intentionally small: we never waste your time with mediocre music.
If you like what you hear, download an album for as little as $5 (you pick the price), or buy a real CD, or license our music for commercial use. And no copy protection (DRM), ever.
Artists keep half of every purchase. And unlike most record labels, they keep all the rights to their music.
No major label connections.
We are not evil...
Give 3 Free Copies to Your Friends
While other record labels are busy suing their customers for introducing their friends to great music...
At Magnatune, we want you to copy our music for your friends.
Yes, at Magnatune you can legally copy any album you buy for up to 3 of your friends."
***
Event Title: Exploring The Da Vinci Code
Organizer: Campus Crusade For Christ
Description: Hello everyone! Heard about the bestseller novel The Da Vinci Code? Read it already? This fictional thriller, being a mix of fact and fiction has intrigued many and raised controversies on the true origin of Christianity! Was Jesus really married to Mary Magdalene? Is the bible collated by Constantine? Find out the biblical truths behind this novel by Dan Brown. This is a video talk lasting 65 mins by apologeticist Mike Licona, director of Apologetics Evangelism at the North American Mission Board. So come and join us in discovering the truths behind the claims made in the The Da Vinci Code! Refreshments will be provided after the video. All are welcomed!
Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha
Unfortunately, I'll be having a midterm then.
***
EULAlyzer - Analyze license agreements for interesting words and phrases - "EULAlyzer can analyze license agreements in seconds, and provide a detailed listing of potentially interesting words and phrases. Discover if the software you're about to install displays pop-up ads, transmits personally identifiable information, uses unique identifiers to track you, or much much more."
Lithium Ion battery care tips - So troublesome. I'd rather get a new one. Even longer essays on batteries at Battery University.
I Am A Terrorist Or “How I Threatened To Burn My Professor At The Stake” - "According to the bible, “Thou shalt not suffer a Witch to live.” (Exodus 22:18) I feel strongly that “Dr.” Patton’s heretical teachings in the voodoo field of neuroscience constitutes witchcraft. Therefore, next Wednesday before lecture, I call on my fellow Christians to gather rope and kindling so that we may burn “Dr.” Patton at the stake. It is my firm belief that we must set fire to ALL heretics who seek to destory our most cherished Christian beliefs. This may be crazy or irrational, but it is the only recourse I have that might actually accomplish something. Sure, I could boycott class all semester, but who else aside from me would care?" (Link from Post Hoc, Egro Propter Hoc)
Random Playlist Song: Raffles Chorale - Mate Saule
***
Magnatune: MP3 music and music licensing (royalty free music and license music)
"We're a record label. But we're not evil.
We call it "try before you buy." It's the shareware model applied to music. Listen to 418 complete MP3 albums we've picked (not 30 second snippets).
We let the music sell itself, because we think that's the best way to get you excited by it.
Our selection is intentionally small: we never waste your time with mediocre music.
If you like what you hear, download an album for as little as $5 (you pick the price), or buy a real CD, or license our music for commercial use. And no copy protection (DRM), ever.
Artists keep half of every purchase. And unlike most record labels, they keep all the rights to their music.
No major label connections.
We are not evil...
Give 3 Free Copies to Your Friends
While other record labels are busy suing their customers for introducing their friends to great music...
At Magnatune, we want you to copy our music for your friends.
Yes, at Magnatune you can legally copy any album you buy for up to 3 of your friends."
***
Event Title: Exploring The Da Vinci Code
Organizer: Campus Crusade For Christ
Description: Hello everyone! Heard about the bestseller novel The Da Vinci Code? Read it already? This fictional thriller, being a mix of fact and fiction has intrigued many and raised controversies on the true origin of Christianity! Was Jesus really married to Mary Magdalene? Is the bible collated by Constantine? Find out the biblical truths behind this novel by Dan Brown. This is a video talk lasting 65 mins by apologeticist Mike Licona, director of Apologetics Evangelism at the North American Mission Board. So come and join us in discovering the truths behind the claims made in the The Da Vinci Code! Refreshments will be provided after the video. All are welcomed!
Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha
Unfortunately, I'll be having a midterm then.
***
EULAlyzer - Analyze license agreements for interesting words and phrases - "EULAlyzer can analyze license agreements in seconds, and provide a detailed listing of potentially interesting words and phrases. Discover if the software you're about to install displays pop-up ads, transmits personally identifiable information, uses unique identifiers to track you, or much much more."
Lithium Ion battery care tips - So troublesome. I'd rather get a new one. Even longer essays on batteries at Battery University.
I Am A Terrorist Or “How I Threatened To Burn My Professor At The Stake” - "According to the bible, “Thou shalt not suffer a Witch to live.” (Exodus 22:18) I feel strongly that “Dr.” Patton’s heretical teachings in the voodoo field of neuroscience constitutes witchcraft. Therefore, next Wednesday before lecture, I call on my fellow Christians to gather rope and kindling so that we may burn “Dr.” Patton at the stake. It is my firm belief that we must set fire to ALL heretics who seek to destory our most cherished Christian beliefs. This may be crazy or irrational, but it is the only recourse I have that might actually accomplish something. Sure, I could boycott class all semester, but who else aside from me would care?" (Link from Post Hoc, Egro Propter Hoc)
Post ID: 112807013842620706
Tuesday, May 17, 2005
"Only fools are positive." - Moe Howard
Random Playlist Song: Chopin - Etude Op 25 No 9 in G flat Major (Butterfly)
***
The Sordid Story of SMU
"The true story is that one day a bunch of MIW were sitting around in the Vice-Chancellor's place having a drink. And one of them lamented that his super-smart, ultra-perfect son had qualified for NUS engineering but wanted to go to NUS business instead. And NUS business cut-off point (another national secret) had surged upwards in recent years.
And the group of them chatted about this phenomenon of all these bright kids going into something as stupid Undergrad Business... instead of that holiest of holies ENGINEERING...
So they decided to that in order to make NUS B-School less attractive to Singaporeans, they would have to destroy its brand. So NUS would have to lose its business school...
The NTU Dean pointed out... that if NTU lost its business school.... then all of a sudden.. you would have a gazillion male nerdy engineer dudes living in an ulu part of the island with no women at all...
No women = no babies = no future peasants!!!
And that was when the whole plan fell apart, so SMU was set up."
***
Philip Yeo Sparks Surge in Sex Change Operations and Emigration
"“It’s true that we guys get whiny thanks to NS,” said Corporal (NSF) Choe Sai Kang, who is also contemplating an A*Star scholarship. “But that’s all you can do when you encounter stupidity and can’t do anything about it because if you do, you’ll kena DB. Anyway, if we’re whining about A*Star scholarship conditions even after doing NS, what does that say about A*Star except that they’re more condemned than the SAF? I guess that’s Singapore for you: they want us not only to face up to stupidity, they want us to like it too.”
Those who can’t bear changing their sex, have opted to change their nationality instead.
“After taking two years of shit for my country, not only is it not appreciated, I’m told they’d rather have foreigners who have never endured a single day for Singapore,” said Mr. Mohd Cabut bin Negara. “I wish I’d known earlier. If so, I’d have emigrated long ago so I can be the kind of person that Mr Yeo wants for Singapore.”
Meanwhile, a spokesman for A*Star has said that the hoopla has only proven Mr. Yeo’s point that Singapore men are whiny, thin-skinned girly men who can’t take unpleasantness.
“Yeah, right,” said Corporal Choe. “I really accept that criticism from someone who threatens to sue obscure bloggers for defamation.”"
***
Mindjack - Piracy is Good?
"British satellite broadcaster SkyOne — part of NEWS Corp's BSkyB satellite broadcasting service — ran the premiere episode of the re-visioned 70s camp classic Battlestar Galactica... so three months would elapse between the airing of "33" in the UK, and its airing in the US. Or so it was thought...
The British aficionados of the series provided torrents for each episode within a few hours of each broadcast. Many fans in the US picked them up and watched them; so did many people in Australia.
While you might assume the SciFi Channel saw a significant drop-off in viewership as a result of this piracy, it appears to have had the reverse effect: the series is so good that the few tens of thousands of people who watched downloaded versions told their friends to tune in on January 14th, and see for themselves. From its premiere, Battlestar Galactica has been the most popular program ever to air on the SciFi Channel, and its audiences have only grown throughout the first series. Piracy made it possible for "word-of-mouth" to spread about Battlestar Galactica...
The pervasive culture of TV downloading leaves the producers of pre-produced television programs high and dry, receiving nothing of value for their work. But is this really true? The absolute, basic motivation of a TV producer is not money — though money is needed for production — but to gain and hold an audience's attention. TV producers want their programming to be watched as widely as possible — by everyone. That's what they care about, and that's all they care about, because, with viewers, everything else takes care of itself: audiences equal money."
***
magic missile () - video
Cop: Your friend says you shot him with an arrow
Guy: No, my friend opened a booby-trapped chest and a Magic Missile booby trap set by goblin sappers - that is what hit him
Cop 2: The booby trap, which was you
Guy: No, he was trying to show me that he could duck out of the way of an arrow - of an arrow and I had to show him that a longbow at close range with a Magic Missile, uh, enchantment on it - there's no way to duck out of the way in -
Cop: So you rolled a 18 and then what happened?
Guy: I rolled a 18. He failed his saving throw [Cop: Ah] and then the arrow got him between where the greave adjusts
Cop: Ah, well there's only the 3 points you can tell
Later...
Guy: I live in a world of cold steel, and dungeons, and mighty foes, and
Cop: Oh, I live in a world of dungeons too. The dungeon where I'm taking you is called the Reno County Jail... You gonna love that
Cop 2: There's a dragon there named Nick the Grip and he's been - uh
Even later...
Guy: I'm wearing Boots of Escaping! I'm wearing Boots of Escaping! *Guy gets shot by a taser* I will call down a mighty reckoning on you!
***
The Illusion of Racial Harmony? - "Upon hearing this, fellow conscript said that Malays ought to buck up and ‘prove themselves to the other races’. And he sincerely believed that it was the Malays fault. Most Singaporeans consider Malays to be lazy and that their relative poverty is their own fault. I used to think so too but at least I grew smarter and escaped from the government’s Chinese chauvinist rhetoric."
Three People Killed Over Role-Playing Game in Southeastern Brazil - "A 21-year-old man and his parents were killed after the man agreed to be murdered along with his family if he lost a murder-mystery role-playing game, local media reported Saturday"
Random Playlist Song: Chopin - Etude Op 25 No 9 in G flat Major (Butterfly)
***
The Sordid Story of SMU
"The true story is that one day a bunch of MIW were sitting around in the Vice-Chancellor's place having a drink. And one of them lamented that his super-smart, ultra-perfect son had qualified for NUS engineering but wanted to go to NUS business instead. And NUS business cut-off point (another national secret) had surged upwards in recent years.
And the group of them chatted about this phenomenon of all these bright kids going into something as stupid Undergrad Business... instead of that holiest of holies ENGINEERING...
So they decided to that in order to make NUS B-School less attractive to Singaporeans, they would have to destroy its brand. So NUS would have to lose its business school...
The NTU Dean pointed out... that if NTU lost its business school.... then all of a sudden.. you would have a gazillion male nerdy engineer dudes living in an ulu part of the island with no women at all...
No women = no babies = no future peasants!!!
And that was when the whole plan fell apart, so SMU was set up."
***
Philip Yeo Sparks Surge in Sex Change Operations and Emigration
"“It’s true that we guys get whiny thanks to NS,” said Corporal (NSF) Choe Sai Kang, who is also contemplating an A*Star scholarship. “But that’s all you can do when you encounter stupidity and can’t do anything about it because if you do, you’ll kena DB. Anyway, if we’re whining about A*Star scholarship conditions even after doing NS, what does that say about A*Star except that they’re more condemned than the SAF? I guess that’s Singapore for you: they want us not only to face up to stupidity, they want us to like it too.”
Those who can’t bear changing their sex, have opted to change their nationality instead.
“After taking two years of shit for my country, not only is it not appreciated, I’m told they’d rather have foreigners who have never endured a single day for Singapore,” said Mr. Mohd Cabut bin Negara. “I wish I’d known earlier. If so, I’d have emigrated long ago so I can be the kind of person that Mr Yeo wants for Singapore.”
Meanwhile, a spokesman for A*Star has said that the hoopla has only proven Mr. Yeo’s point that Singapore men are whiny, thin-skinned girly men who can’t take unpleasantness.
“Yeah, right,” said Corporal Choe. “I really accept that criticism from someone who threatens to sue obscure bloggers for defamation.”"
***
Mindjack - Piracy is Good?
"British satellite broadcaster SkyOne — part of NEWS Corp's BSkyB satellite broadcasting service — ran the premiere episode of the re-visioned 70s camp classic Battlestar Galactica... so three months would elapse between the airing of "33" in the UK, and its airing in the US. Or so it was thought...
The British aficionados of the series provided torrents for each episode within a few hours of each broadcast. Many fans in the US picked them up and watched them; so did many people in Australia.
While you might assume the SciFi Channel saw a significant drop-off in viewership as a result of this piracy, it appears to have had the reverse effect: the series is so good that the few tens of thousands of people who watched downloaded versions told their friends to tune in on January 14th, and see for themselves. From its premiere, Battlestar Galactica has been the most popular program ever to air on the SciFi Channel, and its audiences have only grown throughout the first series. Piracy made it possible for "word-of-mouth" to spread about Battlestar Galactica...
The pervasive culture of TV downloading leaves the producers of pre-produced television programs high and dry, receiving nothing of value for their work. But is this really true? The absolute, basic motivation of a TV producer is not money — though money is needed for production — but to gain and hold an audience's attention. TV producers want their programming to be watched as widely as possible — by everyone. That's what they care about, and that's all they care about, because, with viewers, everything else takes care of itself: audiences equal money."
***
magic missile () - video
Cop: Your friend says you shot him with an arrow
Guy: No, my friend opened a booby-trapped chest and a Magic Missile booby trap set by goblin sappers - that is what hit him
Cop 2: The booby trap, which was you
Guy: No, he was trying to show me that he could duck out of the way of an arrow - of an arrow and I had to show him that a longbow at close range with a Magic Missile, uh, enchantment on it - there's no way to duck out of the way in -
Cop: So you rolled a 18 and then what happened?
Guy: I rolled a 18. He failed his saving throw [Cop: Ah] and then the arrow got him between where the greave adjusts
Cop: Ah, well there's only the 3 points you can tell
Later...
Guy: I live in a world of cold steel, and dungeons, and mighty foes, and
Cop: Oh, I live in a world of dungeons too. The dungeon where I'm taking you is called the Reno County Jail... You gonna love that
Cop 2: There's a dragon there named Nick the Grip and he's been - uh
Even later...
Guy: I'm wearing Boots of Escaping! I'm wearing Boots of Escaping! *Guy gets shot by a taser* I will call down a mighty reckoning on you!
***
The Illusion of Racial Harmony? - "Upon hearing this, fellow conscript said that Malays ought to buck up and ‘prove themselves to the other races’. And he sincerely believed that it was the Malays fault. Most Singaporeans consider Malays to be lazy and that their relative poverty is their own fault. I used to think so too but at least I grew smarter and escaped from the government’s Chinese chauvinist rhetoric."
Three People Killed Over Role-Playing Game in Southeastern Brazil - "A 21-year-old man and his parents were killed after the man agreed to be murdered along with his family if he lost a murder-mystery role-playing game, local media reported Saturday"
Post ID: 111616029338792175
Wednesday, February 09, 2005
SPD Emergency! / Men with Long Hair in Singapore / NUS's rankings / Overheard / Intelligent Design and Begging the Question / Self-Contradictory Notices / Copyright / God and Miracles
"Always read stuff that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it." - P. J. O'Rourke
I hope no one dies when reading Balderdash!, then
***
A new season has started! Power Rangers SPD - protecting Earth from evil space aliens.
SPD emergency!
Ahh...
Power Rangers SPD,
Power Rangers to the rescue!
Go, Go, Go, Go!
Power Rangers SPD,
Power Rangers to the rescue!
Go, Go, Go, Go!
Heroes on your side,
Heroes for all time,
Out to save the universe!
No matter where you are,
If it's near or far,
You can always call out
Space Patrol,
Space Patrol,
Space Patrol,
Space Patrol Delta!
Go, Go, Go, Go, Go, Go
Power Rangers Go!
Power Rangers SPD,
Power Rangers to the rescue,
Go, Go, SPD!
The theme indeed lives up to the promise of the demo tape; Aaron Waters aka Ron Wasserman is back to do the music for Power Rangers SPD, not having been on the show since the early Zeo days! And I must say the music (theme and score for the show) is fantastic.
All 5 rangers are also American - no more annoying assumed American accents!
***
"Males with long hair will be attended to last"
More Keywords: "Men with long hair", "Guys with long hair"
FriskoDude dug this up some time ago, so I decided to see how many of the criteria I flout.
"Hair falling across the forehead and touching the eyebrows" - My finger points to my eyebrow. Check.
"Hair covering the ears" - I am pointing to the bottom of my earlobe. Check.
"Hair reaching below an ordinary shirt collar" - This one's not so clear, but you can see the hair at the right of the picture reaching below my collar. I have a short neck, so the hair at the back of my head isn't as long as it might seem, but - heck. Check.
Now let's hope I get a decent hair length by the time the next semester opens!
My uncle told me last night that he had longer hair than me in the 70s, reaching down to his upper back. I asked if he was ever served last, and he said that if anyone did that you could just give them a piece of your mind, so.
***
NUS beats Princeton, Cornell in social sciences ranking
"The National University of Singapore (NUS) has come out ahead of well-known American institutions like Princeton, Cornell and Columbia in a worldwide ranking of universities for the social sciences.
In the latest survey results, released by the Times Higher Education Supplement (THES), NUS came in 10th among 101 universities. Princeton came 11th, Cornell 13th and Columbia 14th."
I recall that when the prior ranking came out, some people pointed out that much of the ranking depended on "peer review" - asking academics their opinions of various universities in their region, and so all the PRC academics who feted NUS for its Science and Engineering faculties boosted it disproportionately.
This time, this is much less of a factor than previously, so.
***
Someone on an essay: i can't believe it
i'm using an irc log as one of my references
:0
Someone on the Miranda Forums: "Can i use "By some mysterious process, it makes people change nicknames more often than they changes their clothes" as a sig pleaaaase? :)"
A heartening tale:
"I also believe in secular philosophies too...unfortunately my herdmates still don't...
did I tell you my bro and I have started going into deconversion...
he deconverted one of his friends...by instilling in him a lack of self-doubt...
telling him that all he needed to do in life was to change the way he acted and thought to become more confident...
and even imparted him some pickup skills...
basically he told his friend that God does nothing, and all that Xtianity does is take your self-doubt away by placing it in the idea of a "God" and giving you friends in church..."
Verily, this tale puts me to shame; I haven't been doing my part.
***
Those who support Intelligent Design over Evolution, when shown clear cases of bad design, like to argue that this semeingly bad design may in fact be good - we just don't know it yet. Champions of theodicy likewise argue that what may seem to be bad or evil may in fact be necessary to further the greater good - we similarly lack the wisdom to see it.
The problem with this line of thinking - second guessing our judgment or knowledge, besides the obvious one of starting with a conclusion and then working backwards, torturing all the data to fit the conclusion, which happily makes the conclusion unfalsifiable, is that then anything may be justified. Heads I win, tails you lose. The game is rigged against reason and reality.
For example: The Holocaust was justified because it serves the greater good! In that case, why blame Hitler and the Nazis? What they did after all was in service of a greater good.
War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength. This sort of Orwellian Double Talk does nobody any good.
Hell, two can play at this game. Who's to say that what looks like good design is not in fact bad design? All supposed proof of an Intelligent Designer may then work against him. Might we not posit that all the arguments that ID theorists use may not one day come crashing down on them?
Who's to say that what looks like goodness, grace, benevolence and blessings is not ultimately, in the long run, bad?
***
You come across the following notice on the wall:
"All notices posted on this wall will be considered illegal. -- By order"
Would you be legally bound by it?
If the prohibition declared by the notice is valid, then it will also include itself. This means that the notice itself is considered illegal. If it is illegal, its declaration cannot be legal.
The notice itself is a self-contradictory statement.
Unfortunately, this argument won't hold up in a court of law, especially not a Singaporean one.
In other news about screwed up law:
When is copying not right? Here's a video guide
"Like that image you see on the Internet? Don't even think about copying it for your presentation. You may end up on the wrong side of the law... owners of copyrighted material can bring civil suits against violators. And there is provision for copyright owners to pursue damages of up to $200,000 under the Act.
'IP owners have the right to institute civil action against all infringement activities regardless of scale. It is therefore in everyone's interest to be educated on the proper use of copyrighted works in our everyday lives'"
Fair use and academic use have just gone down the drain, not to mention the principle of proportionality of punishment. It is fitting that justice is both blindfolded and a female, for otherwise miscarriages of justice would be impossible [Addendum: A theory I heard a lawyer espouse was that Justice is female because only females can have miscarriages].
The problem with instituting policies by fiat is that when you screw up, you cannot blame anyone else, and the unintended consequences are unpredictable. For example: the "Stop At 2" policy comes to mind: it was successful - too successful, and policy makers now are still suffering from its successes.
What will be the unintended consequences of our draconian copyright laws, I wonder? A dearth of creativity, which we are supposedly encouraging?
***
Young Johnny had been blind since birth. His mother had always explained to him that it was God's will and must be accepted.
One Sunday, Johnny's mom came home from church and told Johnny that she'd had a conversation with God and He agreed that it was time to let Johnny see. "He said if you'll pray real hard and fast every day this week, next Sunday you'll be able to see".
Young Johnny hardly ate a bite that week and spent his every waking hour praying and waiting for Sunday. By Saturday night he was weak from hunger and exhausted from praying and he dropped off to sleep in great anticipation of morning. Johnny woke to the sound of church bells on the soft Spring morning. He lay with his eyes closed for several minutes to savor the coming event. Slowly, he opened his eyes, and to his great dismay, realized he was still blind.
"Mom!" the lad yelled, "I still can't see."
His mother, touching the boy's head softly, said, "Yes, I know Johnny, April Fool!"
This is awful (in more than one sense), even by my standards.
I hope no one dies when reading Balderdash!, then
***
A new season has started! Power Rangers SPD - protecting Earth from evil space aliens.
SPD emergency!
Ahh...
Power Rangers SPD,
Power Rangers to the rescue!
Go, Go, Go, Go!
Power Rangers SPD,
Power Rangers to the rescue!
Go, Go, Go, Go!
Heroes on your side,
Heroes for all time,
Out to save the universe!
No matter where you are,
If it's near or far,
You can always call out
Space Patrol,
Space Patrol,
Space Patrol,
Space Patrol Delta!
Go, Go, Go, Go, Go, Go
Power Rangers Go!
Power Rangers SPD,
Power Rangers to the rescue,
Go, Go, SPD!
The theme indeed lives up to the promise of the demo tape; Aaron Waters aka Ron Wasserman is back to do the music for Power Rangers SPD, not having been on the show since the early Zeo days! And I must say the music (theme and score for the show) is fantastic.
All 5 rangers are also American - no more annoying assumed American accents!
***
"Males with long hair will be attended to last"
More Keywords: "Men with long hair", "Guys with long hair"
FriskoDude dug this up some time ago, so I decided to see how many of the criteria I flout.
"Hair falling across the forehead and touching the eyebrows" - My finger points to my eyebrow. Check.
"Hair covering the ears" - I am pointing to the bottom of my earlobe. Check.
"Hair reaching below an ordinary shirt collar" - This one's not so clear, but you can see the hair at the right of the picture reaching below my collar. I have a short neck, so the hair at the back of my head isn't as long as it might seem, but - heck. Check.
Now let's hope I get a decent hair length by the time the next semester opens!
My uncle told me last night that he had longer hair than me in the 70s, reaching down to his upper back. I asked if he was ever served last, and he said that if anyone did that you could just give them a piece of your mind, so.
***
NUS beats Princeton, Cornell in social sciences ranking
"The National University of Singapore (NUS) has come out ahead of well-known American institutions like Princeton, Cornell and Columbia in a worldwide ranking of universities for the social sciences.
In the latest survey results, released by the Times Higher Education Supplement (THES), NUS came in 10th among 101 universities. Princeton came 11th, Cornell 13th and Columbia 14th."
I recall that when the prior ranking came out, some people pointed out that much of the ranking depended on "peer review" - asking academics their opinions of various universities in their region, and so all the PRC academics who feted NUS for its Science and Engineering faculties boosted it disproportionately.
This time, this is much less of a factor than previously, so.
***
Someone on an essay: i can't believe it
i'm using an irc log as one of my references
:0
Someone on the Miranda Forums: "Can i use "By some mysterious process, it makes people change nicknames more often than they changes their clothes" as a sig pleaaaase? :)"
A heartening tale:
"I also believe in secular philosophies too...unfortunately my herdmates still don't...
did I tell you my bro and I have started going into deconversion...
he deconverted one of his friends...by instilling in him a lack of self-doubt...
telling him that all he needed to do in life was to change the way he acted and thought to become more confident...
and even imparted him some pickup skills...
basically he told his friend that God does nothing, and all that Xtianity does is take your self-doubt away by placing it in the idea of a "God" and giving you friends in church..."
Verily, this tale puts me to shame; I haven't been doing my part.
***
Those who support Intelligent Design over Evolution, when shown clear cases of bad design, like to argue that this semeingly bad design may in fact be good - we just don't know it yet. Champions of theodicy likewise argue that what may seem to be bad or evil may in fact be necessary to further the greater good - we similarly lack the wisdom to see it.
The problem with this line of thinking - second guessing our judgment or knowledge, besides the obvious one of starting with a conclusion and then working backwards, torturing all the data to fit the conclusion, which happily makes the conclusion unfalsifiable, is that then anything may be justified. Heads I win, tails you lose. The game is rigged against reason and reality.
For example: The Holocaust was justified because it serves the greater good! In that case, why blame Hitler and the Nazis? What they did after all was in service of a greater good.
War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength. This sort of Orwellian Double Talk does nobody any good.
Hell, two can play at this game. Who's to say that what looks like good design is not in fact bad design? All supposed proof of an Intelligent Designer may then work against him. Might we not posit that all the arguments that ID theorists use may not one day come crashing down on them?
Who's to say that what looks like goodness, grace, benevolence and blessings is not ultimately, in the long run, bad?
***
You come across the following notice on the wall:
"All notices posted on this wall will be considered illegal. -- By order"
Would you be legally bound by it?
If the prohibition declared by the notice is valid, then it will also include itself. This means that the notice itself is considered illegal. If it is illegal, its declaration cannot be legal.
The notice itself is a self-contradictory statement.
Unfortunately, this argument won't hold up in a court of law, especially not a Singaporean one.
In other news about screwed up law:
When is copying not right? Here's a video guide
"Like that image you see on the Internet? Don't even think about copying it for your presentation. You may end up on the wrong side of the law... owners of copyrighted material can bring civil suits against violators. And there is provision for copyright owners to pursue damages of up to $200,000 under the Act.
'IP owners have the right to institute civil action against all infringement activities regardless of scale. It is therefore in everyone's interest to be educated on the proper use of copyrighted works in our everyday lives'"
Fair use and academic use have just gone down the drain, not to mention the principle of proportionality of punishment. It is fitting that justice is both blindfolded and a female, for otherwise miscarriages of justice would be impossible [Addendum: A theory I heard a lawyer espouse was that Justice is female because only females can have miscarriages].
The problem with instituting policies by fiat is that when you screw up, you cannot blame anyone else, and the unintended consequences are unpredictable. For example: the "Stop At 2" policy comes to mind: it was successful - too successful, and policy makers now are still suffering from its successes.
What will be the unintended consequences of our draconian copyright laws, I wonder? A dearth of creativity, which we are supposedly encouraging?
***
Young Johnny had been blind since birth. His mother had always explained to him that it was God's will and must be accepted.
One Sunday, Johnny's mom came home from church and told Johnny that she'd had a conversation with God and He agreed that it was time to let Johnny see. "He said if you'll pray real hard and fast every day this week, next Sunday you'll be able to see".
Young Johnny hardly ate a bite that week and spent his every waking hour praying and waiting for Sunday. By Saturday night he was weak from hunger and exhausted from praying and he dropped off to sleep in great anticipation of morning. Johnny woke to the sound of church bells on the soft Spring morning. He lay with his eyes closed for several minutes to savor the coming event. Slowly, he opened his eyes, and to his great dismay, realized he was still blind.
"Mom!" the lad yelled, "I still can't see."
His mother, touching the boy's head softly, said, "Yes, I know Johnny, April Fool!"
This is awful (in more than one sense), even by my standards.
Post ID: 110776677730692602
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