Congrats to Jen Bekman on getting funding for 20x2001.
"I love the idea of taking the friction out of the art world," said Mr. Conrad. "A lot of people want to buy nice things, but don't know how. Jen has built a business from that, which is growing very nicely and has a lot of repeat customers."
[1] In light of the new FTC guidelines for disclosure by bloggers2, a few somewhat relevent statements. 1. 20x200 has in the past paid $1200 to sponsor the kottke.org RSS feed. 2. I have linked to 20x200 and Jen Bekman's gallery several times on kottke.org, for which Jen Bekman has thanked me, which is a good feeling, to be thanked, and perhaps that subconsciously predisposes me towards future linking because who doesn't like to be thanked? 3. Jen Bekman is a friend. 4. I also know Caterina Fake, Zach Klein, and Scott Heiferman socially; they are a few of 20x200's angel investors. 5. I am a resident of New York City, in which 20x200 is headquartered. 6. I have purchased art from 20x200 in the past. 7. I may have received a 20x200 print from Jen Bekman herself, either as a straight-up gift or as a promotional item. Honestly, I can't remember if she gave me anything, what it was, or the circumstances of the giving. 8. I have received 20x200 prints as gifts from others. They are thanked. 9. I know my wife and my wife knows Jen Bekman. 10. I may have unwittingly posed for photos next to 20x200 artwork hanging in my residence or in the residences of others, giving the impression that I am endorsing said artwork. Apologies. 11. I have agreed to, at some point in the future, curating a selection of artworks for 20x200 and then chatting casually with Jen Bekman about my choices, an edited transcript of which will appear on the 20x200 web site. As far as I know, no payment for this service is forthcoming and if it was, I would refuse it politely. 12. Jen Bekman's dog's name is Ollie. So is my son's. ↩
[2] Why just for bloggers? Do New York Times book, music, and movie reviewers disclose that they received review copies for free? ↩
David Treuer, an American Indian, is writing a series of dispatches for Slate in which he visits Indian casinos. I'd never heard the story of how casinos on Indian lands came to be. It seems a state tax bill on a mobile home led to a lawsuit which led to a legal precedent that state and federal governments have no regulatory jurisdiction on Indian lands.
The Supreme Court ruling in the Bryan case was expansive. More than just a ruling on taxation, it declared that states and the feds had the right to police the reservation only in the interest of "law and order" and had no civil or regulatory jurisdiction over sovereign Indian nations. Until this time, tribes and states more or less assumed that states had civil and regulatory power on reservations. But the Supreme Court maintained that as sovereign nations, Indian tribes had always had the right to govern themselves (including civil and regulatory powers), just as all nations do, and that tribes should deal with the U.S. federal government, not with states. Kansas, for example, has no power to levy taxes in Luxembourg -- and not only because Luxembourg is far away.
I often enjoy what Christopher Hitchens says and how he says it. Here he wades smartly into the Henry Louis Gates Jr. arrest.
It is the U.S. Constitution, and not some competitive agglomeration of communities or constituencies, that makes a citizen the sovereign of his own home and privacy. There is absolutely no legal requirement to be polite in the defense of this right.
(via gruber)
Here's a new wrinkle in the ongoing battle with people that inline other people's images: I stole your images, put them back or I will call a lawyer.
Why is business so hard? (thx, jillian)
Update: That image is from 2005...here's the rest of the story and a couple more images. (thx, andy)
Yesterday I linked to a long piece by attorney Brock Shinen discussing whether individual posts to Twitter are copyrightable and asked:
Does this mean that nearly all of Twitter's content is in the public domain? Or can you copyright a collection of tweets...the entire output of one person, for instance?
Brock sent along a short reply to my question, reprinted here with his kind permission:
This is information and not advice: It's possible (and likely) that the majority of individual Tweets are in the public domain. But copyright protection may extend to a compilation of otherwise non-protectable Tweets. The question of whether 'you' can do that as opposed to the author of those Tweets is tricky and would depend on how it's done. If the compilation is authored in such a way as to suggest a false designation of origin (i.e., that the person compiling the Tweets actually authored them), you might run into false designation claims. Also, as a practical matter, you may still get sued and forced to spend tens of thousands of dollars to defend a lawsuit you might otherwise win - if you can afford to get to trial. In the end, if you are a Tweet author and want to protect your Tweets, then you should probably compile them and seek protection with the US Copyright Office. If that works out for you, you're set. If the Copyright Office denies your application for registration, you have your answer.
In the opinion of intellectual copyright attorney Brock Shinen, the short answer is "no".
I admit, I think a protectable Tweet exists in theory. I have read hundreds if not thousands of Tweets and have yet to read one I believe would be protectable, but the possibility exists. The question is not: Are Tweets Copyrightable. The question is: Is This Tweet Copyrightable. The copyrightability of Tweets is not dependent on the fact that they are Tweets. Rather, it's dependent on the analysis of the Tweet in question. The all-encompassing response that all Tweets are either protected or not protected is misguided. The real response is that it depends. However, when you analyze most Tweets, they would never individually pass copyright muster.
Does this mean that nearly all of Twitter's content is in the public domain? Or can you copyright a collection of tweets...the entire output of one person, for instance? Let's say I want to publish Tweatise: The Wit and Wisdom of Merlin Mann, an unabridged book of Merlin's Twitter stream...can I do that?
Update: Another opinion: tweetCC.
tweetCC makes it easy for you to offer your tweets under a Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication or other Creative Commons licenses.
(thx, dan)
Update: Yet another perspective.
Reading two-week-old 13-page New Yorker articles about Rwanda probably isn't your favorite thing to do, but if you're a subscriber, I'd urge you to check out Philip Gourevitch's fascinating article about what's been happening in Rwanda in the fifteen years since the genocide. It's a complicated situation (boldface mine):
On the fifteenth anniversary of the genocide, Rwanda is one of the safest and most orderly countries in Africa. Since 1994, per-capita gross domestic prduct has nearly tripled, even as the population has increased by nearly twenty-five per cent, to more than ten million. There is national health insurance, and a steadily improving education system. [...] Most of the prisoners accused or convicted of genocide have been released. The death penalty has been abolished. And Rwanda is the only nation where hundred of thousands of people who took part in mass murder live intermingled at every level of society with the families of their victims.
Like I said, complicated. This is the best thing I've read in the New Yorker in a long while.
Update: As We Forgive is a documentary film about the Rwandan reconciliation.
Can survivors truly forgive the killers who destroyed their families? Can the government expect this from its people? And can the church, which failed at moral leadership during the genocide, fit into the process of reconciliation today? In As We Forgive, director Laura Waters Hinson and narrator Mia Farrow explore these topics through the lives of four neighbors once caught in opposite tides of a genocidal bloodbath, and their extraordinary journey from death to life through forgiveness.
(thx, misty)
The New Yorker is being sued for $10 million over a story written by Jared Diamond. The fascinating story, Vengeance Is Ours, tells of blood feuds in New Guinea and now two of the men described in the article as participating in those feuds say they have been falsely accused of "serious criminal activity" and "murder".
When foreigners come to our culture, we tell stories as entertainment. Daniel's stories were not serious narrative, and Daniel had no idea he was being interviewed for publication. He has never killed anyone or raped a woman. He certainly has never stolen a pig.
I get the impression that Diamond has spent a lot of time in Papua New Guinea and, as a result, might not be taken in so easily by locals telling tall tales. Indeed, a fact-checking research team was told by one of the men in question that "the stories he told Diamond were in fact true".
More on the Saigon Grill saga: the owners were arrested yesterday on over 400 counts of "violating minimum-wage laws, falsifying business records and defrauding the state's unemployment insurance system".
"Like so many restaurants across New York City, Saigon Grill was run on the backs of its workers," Mr. Cuomo said in a statement. "These workers allowed the business to thrive, and in exchange they were allegedly cheated out of wages, fined for ridiculous reasons" and, he said, "pulled into a painstaking ploy to cover it all up."
(thx, nick)
Lawyers representing Roman Polanski have asked a California judge to dismiss the statutory rape case against him because of evidence presented in Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, a documentary about the case, that the judge in the original case engaged in unethical and unlawful behavior.
Tuesday's filing said Judge Rittenband, who is now dead, intentionally violated a plea agreement with Mr. Polanski after having engaged in what it called "repeated unethical and unlawful ex parte communications" with a deputy district attorney who was not involved in the prosecution, but was independently advising the judge.
Love this.
A federal judge has awarded $4.6 million in back pay and damages to 36 delivery workers at two Saigon Grill restaurants in Manhattan, finding blatant and systematic violations of minimum-wage and overtime laws.
We live right around the corner from one of the SGs and have avoided eating there despite the decent and close Vietnamese food. The fired workers were out in front of the place protesting for months and months...it's great to see hard work pay off like that, particularly when the protestors probably couldn't actually afford to be out there.
As anticipated, Muxtape was unable to maintain its original form under assault from the RIAA and slow moving legal negotiations with the labels.
The first red flag came in August. Up until then all the discussion had been about numbers, but as we closed in on an agreement the talk shifted to things like guaranteed placement and "marketing opportunities." I was denied the possibility of releasing a mobile version of Muxtape. My flexibility was being constricted. I had been worried about Muxtape getting a fair deal, but my biggest concern all along was maintaing the integrity and experience of the site (one of the reasons I wanted to license in the first place). Now it wasn't so simple; I had agreed to a variety of encroachments into Muxtape's financials because I wanted to play ball, but giving up any kind of editorial or creative control was something I had a much harder time swallowing.
Instead, the site will become more of a stripped-down MySpace for bands wanting to put their music online. Disappointing because Muxtape, as originally conceived, was obviously what everyone but the "music industry" wanted. Some of that simplistic magic will likely transfer over to the new incarnation but it won't be as cool as mix tapes for your pals. (thx, mark)
Update: For posterity, I'm pasting Justin's whole note in here.
I love music. I believe that for people who love music, the desire to share it is innate and crucial for music itself. When we find a song we love, we beckon our friends over to the turntable, we loan them the CD, we turn up the car stereo, we put it on a mixtape. We do this because music makes us feel and we want someone else to feel it, too.
The story of Muxtape began when I had a weekly show at my university's radio station in Oregon. In addition to keeping the station's regular log I compiled my playlists into a web page, with each show represented by a simple block that corresponded to a cassette recording for that week. At the time, mixtapes were already well into their twilight, but long after my show ended I couldn't stop thinking about how the playlist page served a similar purpose, and in many ways served it better. Like a mixtape, each playlist was a curated group that was greater than the sum of its parts. Unlike a mixtape, it wasn't constrained by any physical boundaries of dissemination, but... it also didn't contain any actual music. Someone might come across the page and smile knowingly at the songs they knew, but shifting the burden of actually compiling the mix to its intended listener defeated the purpose entirely.
Five years later, internet technology had advanced significantly. I was working on experimental user interfaces for web sites when I started thinking about that playlist page again, and ultimately set out to bring it to life. My desire to share music (in the mixtape sense) hadn't gone anywhere, but the channels to do so were becoming extinct. Popular blogging services allow you to post audio files in an ephemeral sort of way, but it wasn't the context I was looking for. A physical cassette tape in your hands has such an insistent aesthetic; just holding one makes you want to find a tape player to fulfill its destiny. My goal with Muxtape's design was to translate some of that tactility into the digital world, to build a context around the music that gave it a little extra spark of life and made the holder anxious to listen.
The first version was a one-page supplement to my tumblr, and was more or less identical to what it would become later. The feedback was great, and the number one question rapidly became "can you make one for me, too?" At first I started thinking about ways I could package the source code, but the more I thought about it the more it seemed like massively wasted potential. Distributing the source would mean limiting access to the small niche of people who operate their own web server, whereas I wanted to make something that was accessible to anyone who loves music. The natural conclusion was a centralized service, which suddenly unfolded whole other dimensions of possibility for serendipitous music discovery. What seemed before like the hollow shell of a mixtape now seemed like its evolution. I knew I had to try building it. Three weeks of long nights later, I launched Muxtape.
It was successful very quickly. 8,685 users registered in the first 24 hours, 97,748 in the first month with 1.2 million unique visitors and a healthy growth rate. Lots of press. Rampant speculation. Tech rags either lauded it or declared it an instant failure. Everyone was excited. I was thrilled.
There was a popular misconception that Muxtape only survived because it was "flying under the radar," and the moment the major labels found out about it it'd be shut down. In actuality, the labels and the RIAA read web sites like everyone else, and I heard from them both within a week or so. An RIAA notice arrived in triplicate, via email, registered mail, and FedEx overnight (with print and CD versions). They demanded that I take down six specific muxtapes they felt were infringing, so I did.
Around the same time I got a call from the VP of anti-piracy at one of the majors. After I picked up the phone his first words were, "Justin, I just have one question for you: where do I send the summons and complaint?" The conversation picked up from there. There was no summons, it was an intimidation tactic setting the tone for the business development meeting he was proposing, the true reason for the call. Around the same time another one of the big four's business developers reached out to me, too.
I spent the next month listening. I talked to a lot of very smart lawyers and other people whose opinions on the matter I respected, trying to gain a consensus for Muxtape's legality. The only consensus seemed to be that there was no consensus. I had two dozen slightly different opinions that ran the gamut from "Muxtape is 100% legal and you're on solid ground," to "Muxtape is a cesspool of piracy and I hope you're ready for a hundred million dollar lawsuit and a stint at Riker's."
In the end, Muxtape's legality was moot. I didn't have any money to defend against a lawsuit, just or not, so the major labels had an ax over my head either way. I always told myself I'd remove any artist or label that contacted me and objected, no questions asked. Not a single one ever did. On the contrary, every artist I heard from was a fan of the site and excited about its possibilities. I got calls from the marketing departments of big labels whose corporate parents were supposed to be outraged, wanting to know how they get could their latest acts on the home page. Smaller labels wanted to feature their content in other creative ways. It seemed obvious Muxtape had value for listeners and artists alike.
In May I had my first meeting with a major label, Universal Music Group. I went alone and prepared myself for the worst, having spent the last decade toeing the indie party line that the big labels were hopelessly obstinate luddites with no idea what was good for them. I'm here to tell you now that the labels understand their business a lot better than most people suspect, although they each have their own surprisingly distinct personality when it comes to how they approach the future. The gentlemen I met at Universal were incredibly receptive and tactful; I didn't have to sell them on why Muxtape was good for them, they knew it was cool and just wanted to get paid. I sympathized with that. I told them I needed some time to get a proposal together and we left things in limbo.
A few weeks later I had a meeting with EMI, the character of which was much different. I walked into a conference room and shook eight or nine hands, sitting down at a conference table with a phonebook-thick file labeled "Muxtape" laying on it. The people I met formed a semi-circle around me like a split brain, legal on one side and business development on the other. The meeting alternated between an intense grilling from the legal side ("you are a willful infringer and we are mere hours from shutting you down") and an awkward discussion with the business side ("assuming we don't shut you down, how do you see us working together?"). I asked for two weeks to make a proposal, they gave me two days.
I had to make a decision. As I saw it I had three options. The first was to just shut everything down, which I never really considered. The second was to ban major label content entirely, which might have solved the immediate crisis, but had two strong points against it. The first, most visibly, was that it would prevent people from using the majority of available music in their mixes. The second was that it did nothing to address the deeper questions surrounding ownership and usage for everyone else who wasn't a major label: mid-size labels and independent artists who have just as fundamental a right to address how their content is used as a large corporation, even if they don't carry quite as big a stick.
The third option was to approach a fully licensed model, which I had been edging toward since I met with Universal. I knew other licensed services so far had met with mixed success, but I also knew Muxtape was different and that it was at least worth exploring. The question about whether or not the labels saw value in it had been answered, the new question was how much it was going to cost.
It was June. I approached a Fifth Ave law firm about representing me in licensing negotiations with the major labels, and they took me on. Two weeks later I met with all four, flanked by lawyers this time, and started the slow process of working out a deal. The first round of terms were stiff and complex, but not nearly as bad as I'd imagined, and I managed to convince them that allowing Muxtape to continue to operate was in everyone's best interest. Things were going well. I spent the next two months talking with investors, designing the next phases of the site itself, and supervising the negotiations. A big concern was getting a deal that took into consideration the fact that Muxtape wasn't a straightforward on-demand service, and should pay accordingly less than a service that was. Another reason I liked the licensing option from the outset was that it seemed like an uncommon win-win; I didn't want the ability to search and stream any song at any given notice, and they were reluctant to offer it (for the price, anyway). Muxtape's unusual limitations were its strength in more ways than one.
The first red flag came in August. Up until then all the discussion had been about numbers, but as we closed in on an agreement the talk shifted to things like guaranteed placement and "marketing opportunities." I was denied the possibility of releasing a mobile version of Muxtape. My flexibility was being constricted. I had been worried about Muxtape getting a fair deal, but my biggest concern all along was maintaing the integrity and experience of the site (one of the reasons I wanted to license in the first place). Now it wasn't so simple; I had agreed to a variety of encroachments into Muxtape's financials because I wanted to play ball, but giving up any kind of editorial or creative control was something I had a much harder time swallowing.
I was wrestling with this when, on August 15th, I received notice from Amazon Web Services (the platform that hosts Muxtape's servers and files) that they had received a complaint from the RIAA. Per Amazon's terms, I had one business day to remove an incredibly long list of songs or face having my servers shut down and data deleted. This came as a big surprise to me, as I'd been thinking that I hadn't heard from the RIAA in a long time because I had an understanding with the labels. I had a panicked exchange of emails with Amazon, trying to explain that I was in the middle of a licensing deal, that I suspected it was a clerical error, and that I was doing everything I could to get someone to vouch for me on a summer Friday afternoon. My one business day extended over the weekend, and on Monday when I wasn't able to produce the documentation Amazon wanted (or even get someone from the RIAA on the phone), the servers were shut down and I was locked out of the account. I moved the domain name to a new server with a short message and the very real expectation that I could get it sorted out. I still thought it was all just a big mistake. I was wrong.
Over the next week I learned a little more, mainly that the RIAA moves quite autonomously from their label parents and that the understanding I had with them didn't necessarily carry over. I also learned that none of the labels were especially interested in helping me out, and from their perspective it had no bearing on the negotiations. I disagreed. The deals were still weeks or months away (an eternity on the internet) meaning that at best, Muxtape was going to be down until the end of year. There was also still the matter of how to pay for it; getting investment is hard enough in this volatile space even with a wildly successful and growing web site, it became an entirely different proposition with no web site at all.
And so I made one of the hardest decisions I've ever faced: I walked away from the licensing deals. They had become too complex for a site founded on simplicity, too restrictive and hostile to continue to innovate the way I wanted to. They'd already taken so much attention away from development that I started to question my own motivations. I didn't get into this to build a big company as fast as I could no matter what the cost, I got into this to make something simple and beautiful for people who love music, and I plan to continue doing that. As promised, the site is coming back, but not as you've known. I'm taking a feature that was in development in the early stages and making it the new central focus.
Muxtape is relaunching as a service exclusively for bands, offering an extremely powerful platform with unheard-of simplicity for artists to thrive on the internet. Musicians in 2008 without access to a full time web developer have few options when it comes to establishing themselves online, but their needs often revolve around a common set of problems. The new Muxtape will allow bands to upload their own music and offer an embeddable player that works anywhere on the web, in addition to the original muxtape format. Bands will be able to assemble an attractive profile with simple modules that enable optional functionality such as a calendar, photos, comments, downloads and sales, or anything else they need. The system has been built from the ground up to be extended infinitely and is wrapped in a template system that will be open to CSS designers. There will be more details soon. The beta is still private at the moment, but that will change in the coming weeks.
I realize this is a somewhat radical shift in functionality, but Muxtape's core goals haven't changed. I still want to challenge the way we experience music online, and I still want to work to enable what I think is the most interesting aspect of interconnected music: discovering new stuff.
Thank to you everyone who made Muxtape the incredible place it was in its first phase, it couldn't have happened without your mixes. The industry will catch up some day, it pretty much has to.
Justin
A list of illegal behaviors that are also mainstream: pirating media/software, alcohol during Prohibition, speeding, marijuana, and sodomy. (via waxy)
Muxtape finally runs afoul of the RIAA.
Muxtape will be unavailable for a brief period while we sort out a problem with the RIAA.
Update: On their blog, Muxtape emphasizes that the outage is temporary:
No artists or labels have complained. The site is not closed indefinitely. Stay tuned.
This story about a "most outrageous case of neglect" was extremely difficult to read at times, but it's an amazing tale.
"It's mind-boggling that in the 21st century we can still have a child who's just left in a room like a gerbil," said Tracy Sheehan, Danielle's guardian in the legal system and now a circuit court judge. "No food. No one talking to her or reading her a story. She can't even use her hands. How could this child be so invisible?"
There's a collection of video and audio that accompanies the story as well. (via waxy)
In California, it's pretty much legal now to buy, sell, grow, and smoke pot, provided you've got the proper documentation from a doctor, which is pretty easy to get. This article from the New Yorker details the industry that's sprung up around this legalization, filled with people who, you get the feeling, really like smoking pot for recreational and not medical reasons.
The counties of California were allowed to amend the state guidelines, and the result was a patchwork of rules and regulations. Upstate in Humboldt County, the heartland of high-grade marijuana farming in California, the district attorney, Paul Gallegos, decided that a resident could grow up to ninety-nine plants at a time, in a space of a hundred square feet or less, on behalf of a qualified patient. The limited legal protections afforded to pot growers and dispensary owners have turned marijuana cultivation and distribution in California into a classic "gray area" business, like gambling or strip clubs, which are tolerated or not, to varying degrees, depending on where you live and on how aggressive your local sheriff is feeling that afternoon. This summer, Jerry Brown, the state's attorney general, plans to release a more consistent set of regulations on medical marijuana, but it is not clear that California's judges will uphold his effort. In May, the state Court of Appeal, in Los Angeles, ruled that Senate Bill 420's cap on the amount of marijuana a patient could possess was unconstitutional, because voters had not approved the limits.
Senate Bill 420! The LAPD and DEA have taken the stance that federal law takes precedence over state law and are routinely busting people for growing, selling, and possession. It'll be interesting to see what happens in the future here.
Too Weird for The Wire, a story of a number of Baltimore drug dealers and their unusual "flesh-and-blood" defense in federal court. It's a tactic used by white supremacists and other US isolationists groups in tax evasion cases and the like.
"I am not a defendant," Mitchell declared. "I do not have attorneys." The court "lacks territorial jurisdiction over me," he argued, to the amazement of his lawyers. To support these contentions, he cited decades-old acts of Congress involving the abandonment of the gold standard and the creation of the Federal Reserve. Judge Davis, a Baltimore-born African American in his late fifties, tried to interrupt. "I object," Mitchell repeated robotically. Shelly Martin and Shelton Harris followed Mitchell to the microphone, giving the same speech verbatim. Their attorneys tried to intervene, but when Harris's lawyer leaned over to speak to him, Harris shoved him away.
David Simon, I believe you've got enough here for a sixth season of The Wire. Hop to.
A list of ways to get yourself excused from the jury pool in the R. Kelly child pornography case.
I (heart) R. Kelly. Nothing gets prospective jurors booted faster than telling the prosecution they are a fan of Kelly's. Just ask the woman who called him a "musical genius." When prodded to say something negative about Kelly, the best she could come up with was: "He and [rapper] Jay-Z don't get along?" Prosecutors bounced her soon after.
Another potential juror was excused for suggesting that Kelly "led the Taliban in attacking us on 9-11".
The purpose of the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008:
To prohibit discrimination on the basis of genetic information with respect to health insurance and employment.
It passed the Senate earlier this year is expected to be signed into law by the President soon. No Gattaca! (via nyer conference)
<72pt text>What?</72pt text> Clarence Thomas hasn't asked a question in a Supreme Court session in over two years...that's 142 cases. Says Thomas:
One thing I've demonstrated often in 16 years is you can do this job without asking a single question.
(via clusterflock)
If anyone steals a base during the World Series, Taco Bell is going to give everyone in the US a free taco. They did something similar last year and the terms and conditions of the offer were pretty amusing.
Columbia Law School professor Tim Wu has written a really interesting 5-part series on Slate about "the laws we are allowed to break in America and why".
Tolerated lawbreaking is almost always a response to a political failure -- the inability of our political institutions to adapt to social change or reach a rational compromise that reflects the interests of the nation and all concerned parties. That's why the American statutes are full of laws that no one wants to see fully enforced -- or even enforced at all.
Topics include copyright, obsenity, and drug legalization.
Louisiana pastor Eddie Thompson feels that the media and activists have gotten the story wrong about the Jena Six. In this article, he attempts to correct some of the misconceptions and erroneous statements made about the case.
The actions of the three white students who hung the nooses demonstrate prejudice and bigotry. However, they were not just given "two days suspension" as reported by national news agencies. After first being expelled, then upon appeal, being allowed to re-enter the school system, they were sent to an alternative school, off-campus, for an extended period of time. They underwent investigations by Federal and Sate authorities. They were given psychological evaluations. Even when they were eventually allowed back on campus they were not allowed to be a part of the general population for weeks.
(thx, james)
The story of the Jena Six reveals only a small part of the discrimination in the American justice system.
The Sentencing Project, a research and advocacy group, released a state-by-state study of prison populations that identified where blacks endured the highest rates of incarceration. The top four states were South Dakota, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Vermont; the top ten included Utah, Montana, and Colorado -- not places renowned for their African-American subcultures. In the United States today, driving while black -- or shoplifting while black, or taking illegal drugs, or hitting schoolmates -- often carries the greatest risk of incarceration, in comparison to the risk faced by whites, in states where people of color are rare, including a few states that are liberal, prosperous, and not a little self-satisfied. Ex-slave states that are relatively poor and have large African-American populations, such as Louisiana, display less racial disparity.
A 1993 New Yorker story by John Seabook called The Flash of Genius is being made into a movie starring Greg Kinnear. The story revolves around Bob Kearns, the inventor of the intermittent windshield wiper and his struggle to get the US auto industry to pay him for infringing on his patent. "There's no question that Dr. Kearns' wiper circuit was interesting. He had a three-brush motor, with dynamic brake and intermittent on one speed only -- his system was a concatenation of a lot of different ideas. But we figured there was just no way in the world it was patentable. An electronic timing device was an obvious thing to try next. How can you patent something that is in the natural evolution of technology?"
BTW, the phrase "flash of genius" refers to a test of patentability enacted in 1941 saying that the act of invention had to be a "flash of creative genius" on the part of the inventor and not the result of tinkering. That standard was replaced in 1952 by the non-obviousness test.
A summary of one of the several Chinese knockoffs of Harry Potter, courtesy of the NY Times:
Snape breaks into Hogwarts and rescues Lucius Malfoy from Azkaban Prison. Harry believes that he can defeat Snape and Voldemort only by strenuously practicing charms. Professor Slughorn, inspired by a book from the East provided by Cho Chang called "Thirty-Six Strategies," devises a plan enabling Harry to seize Snape in the Ministry of Magic. But Gryffindor's sword, which hung in the headmaster's office, assassinates Professor McGonagall.
When Harry confronts Voldemort at Azkaban, the Dark Lord tries to win Harry over as a fellow descendant of Slytherin. Harry refuses, and together with Ron and Hermione, kills Voldemort instead. Now what will Harry do about his two girlfriends?
In another of the books, Harry is assisted by Gandalf. No appearances by Han and Chewy, AFAIK.
Regarding the food plagiarism business from yesterday, Ed Levine reports that he visited both restaurants yesterday and has some further thoughts on the situation. I think he nails it with this observation: "He was her right-hand man for six years, with complete and unfettered access to her creativity, recipes, craftsmanship, and even the combination to her safe. Charles is a smart, fiercely independent, tough-minded chef and businessperson who misplaced her trust when she gave her chief lieutenant all that access. McFarland, bereft of his own ideas, decided to open what is, for all intents and purposes, a clone of Pearl."
Rebecca Charles, owner of the Pearl Oyster Bar in NYC, a seafood place modeled after hundreds of similar restaurants in New England offering similar menus, is suing a former employee (of six years) for copying too closely her restaurant and menu in opening his new place, Ed's Lobster Bar.
Many parallels here to the design/art/film world...what is mere inspiration versus outright theft? The key question in these kinds of cases for me is: does the person exercise creativity in the appropriation? Did they add something to it instead of just copying or superficially changing it? Clam shacks are everywhere in New England, but an upscale seafood establishment with a premium lobster roll is a unique creative twist on that concept brought to NYC by Charles. An upscale clam shack blocks away from a nearly identical restaurant at which the owner used to work for six years...that seems a bit lame to me, not the work of a creative restaurateur. Who knows how this stuff is going to play out legally; it's a complex issue with lots of slippery slope potential.
Meg has more thoughts on the issue and Ed Levine weighs in over at Serious Eats with information not found in the NY Times article. It was Ed who first raised the issue about Ed's Lobster Bar earlier in the month.
Update: I forgot to link to the menus above. Here's the menu for Pearl Oyster Bar and here's the menu for Ed's Lobster Bar. For comparison, here are the menus for a couple of traditional clam shacks: the Clam Box in Ipswich, MA and Woodman's in Essex, MA.
A five-minute crash course in constitutional law by Walter Delinger, former Solicitor General to the Supreme Court and current law professor at Duke.
Remember the guy who was suing his dry cleaner for lost pants to the tune of $65 miilion? He lost and has to pay court costs for the dry cleaner (and may have to pay their attorney's fees as well).
Larry Lessig is shifting the focus of his work away from IP and copyright issues and toward tackling what he calls corruption. "I don't mean corruption in the simple sense of bribery. I mean 'corruption' in the sense that the system is so queered by the influence of money that it can't even get an issue as simple and clear as term extension right. Politicians are starved for the resources concentrated interests can provide. In the US, listening to money is the only way to secure reelection. And so an economy of influence bends public policy away from sense, always to dollars."
Roy Pearson, the judge who is suing his former dry cleaner for $65 million in damages for a lost pair of pants, started crying in court today when describing the moment when the dry cleaner tried to give him the wrong pants. And this was after a witness called by Pearson likened her treatment by the dry cleaners to Hitler's treatment of the Jews. The judge should have invoked Godwin and declared a mistrial. Also, nice headline from CNN: Judge aims to have pants suit ironed out next week. Haw haw.
Time to lower the drinking age? "The age at highest risk for an alcohol-related auto fatality is 21, followed by 22 and 23, an indication that delaying first exposure to alcohol until young adults are away from home may not be the best way to introduce them to drink."
Jeffrey Toobin, the New Yorker's legal writer, has penned a piece about Google's book scanning efforts and the legal challenges it faces. Interestingly, both Google and the publishers who are suing them say that the lawsuit is basically a business negotiation tactic. However, according to Larry Lessig, settling the lawsuit might not be the best thing for anyone outside the lawsuit: "Google wants to be able to get this done, and get permission to resume scanning copyrighted material at all the libraries. For the publishers, if Google gives them anything at all, it creates a practical precedent, if not a legal precedent, that no one has the right to scan this material without their consent. That's a win for them. The problem is that even though a settlement would be good for Google and good for the publishers, it would be bad for everyone else."
Top 10 most litigious US companies from 2001-2006 (based on trademark cases): 1. Microsoft. 2. Cendent. 3. Altria/Philip Morris. 4. Best Western. 5. Dunkin' Donuts. 6. Lorillard Tobacco. 7. Levi Strauss. 8. Baskin-Robbins. 9. Chanel. 10. Nike. Found in the sidebar of this article on Levi Strauss suing other jeans companies for their triangle pockets.
The following is a great 2004 BBC documentary about Tetris, the man who created it, and the lengths that several companies went to in order to procure the rights to distribute it. Tetris - From Russia With Love:
Alexey Pazhitnov, a computer programmer from Moscow, created Tetris in 1985 but as the Soviet Union was Communist and all, the state owned the game and any rights to it. Who procured the rights from whom on the other side of the Iron Curtain became the basis of legal wranglings and lawsuits; the Atari/Nintendo battle over Tetris wasn't settled until 1993. There's an abbreviated version of the story, but the documentary is a lot more fun. A rare copy of the Tengen version of Tetris, which was pulled from the shelves due to legal troubles, is available on eBay for $50.
(Like this story? Digg it.)
As part of a World Series promotion, Taco Bell will give away a free taco to everyone in the United States if someone hits a home run over the left field wall in tonight's game 3. This is a big offer for a big company so of course their lawyers want to make darn sure that we know precisely what "Taco Bell" means when they say "home run", "left field", and "free taco" with an extensive list of terms and conditions. Surely the first legal document containing the phrase "a completely outside the bun idea", the T&C is a fun read, but my favorite is the first condition that you agree to if you take advantage of the offer:
...to release, Major League Baseball Properties, Inc., Major League Baseball Enterprises, Inc., MLB Advanced Media, L.P., MLB Media Holdings, Inc., MLB Media Holdings, L.P., MLB Online Services, Inc., the Office of the Commissioner of Baseball, and the Major League Baseball Clubs, and each of their respective shareholders, employees, parents, directors, officers, affiliates, representatives, agents, successors, and assigns (hereinafter, "MLB Entities") and Sponsor and their affiliates, subsidiaries, retailers, sales representatives, distributors and franchisees, and each of their officers, directors, employees and agents ("Promotional Parties"), from any and all liability, loss or damage incurred with respect to participation in this contest and/or the awarding, receipt, possession, and/or use or misuse of any Free Taco
Man, I really hope someone hits a left field home run tonight. I'm dying to see some creative misuse of free tacos.
Notes from day 3 at PopTech:
Chris Anderson talked about, ba ba baba!, not the long tail. Well, not explicitly. Chris charted how the availability of a surplus in transistors (processors are cheap), storage (hard drives are cheap), and surplus in bandwidth (DSL is cheap) has resulted in so much opportunity for innovation and new technology. His thoughts reminded me of how surplus space in Silicon Valley (in the form of garages) allowed startup entrepreneurs to pursue new ideas without having to procure expensive commercial office space.
Quick thought re: the long tail...if the power law arises from scarcity as Matt Webb says, then it would make sense that the surplus that Anderson refers to would be flattening that curve out a bit.
Roger Brent crammed a 60 minute talk into 20 minutes. It was about genetic engineering and completely baffling...almost a series of non sequiturs. "Centripital glue engine" was my favorite phrase of the talk, but I've got no idea what Brent meant by it.
Homaro Cantu gave a puzzling presentation of a typical meal at his Chicago restaurant, Moto. I've seen this presentation twice before and eaten at Moto; all three experiences were clear and focused on the food. This time around, Cantu didn't explain the food as well or why some of the inventions were so cool. His polymer box that cooks on the table is a genuinely fantastic idea, but I got the feeling that the rest of the audience didn't understand what it was. Cantu also reiterated his position on copyrighting and patenting his food and inventions. Meg caught him saying that he was trying to solve the famine problem with his edible paper, which statement revealed two problems: a) famines are generally caused by political issues and therefore not solvable by new kinds of food, printed or otherwise, and b) he could do more good if he open sourced his inventions and let anyone produce food or improve the techniques in those famine cases where food would be useful.
Richard Dawkins gave part of his PopTech talk (the "queerer than we can suppose" part of it) at TED in 2005 (video).
Bob Metcalfe's wrap-up of the conference was a lot less contentious than in past years; hardly any shouting and only one person stormed angrily out of the room. In reference to Hasan Elahi's situation, Bob said that there's a tension present in our privacy desires: "I want my privacy, but I need you to be transparent." Not a bad way of putting it.
Serena Koenig spoke about her work in Haiti with Partners in Health. Koening spoke of a guideline that PIH follows in providing healthcare: act as though each patient is a member of your own family. That sentiment was echoed by Zinhle Thabethe, who talked about her experience as an HIV+ woman living in South Africa, an area with substandard HIV/AIDS-related healthcare. Thabethe's powerful message: we need to treat everyone with HIV/AIDS the same, with great care. Sounds like the beginning of a new Golden Rule of Healthcare.
2.7 billion results for "blog" on Google. Blogs: bigger than Jesus.
Pete Wells writes in Food and Wine about recipes, copyrights, and patents. Meg picks up the thread and argues that copyrighting recipes would stifle innovation, not promote it, rewarding mostly the lawyers who insert themselves between our food and mouths. A commenter says, "By nature, food people are generous of spirit, and recognize that the great fun of food is in the sharing."
Google is not starting to become concerned about their name being used as a generic verb meaning "to search"; they've been concerned for more than 3 years (more here). This movement to expose Google as big, dumb, and humorless strikes me as big, dumb, and humorless.
Speaking of brand genericide, Heroin was actually a brand name trademarked by the Bayer drug company. (thx chris, who joked, "Can I interest you in some Heroin brand morphine substitute?")
Harris Interactive recently released a list of products ranked by brand equity, a measure of the brand's popularity with US consumers. Here's the top 10:
1. Reynolds Wrap Aluminum Foil
2. Ziploc Food Bags
3. Hershey's Milk Chocolate Candy Bars
4. Kleenex Facial Tissues
5. Clorox Bleach
6. WD-40 Spray Lubricant
7. Heinz Ketchup
8. Ziploc Containers
9. Windex Glass Cleaner
10. Campbell's Soups
Marketing can be a double-edged sword. The companies who manufacture these products have done a fantastic job in marketing these products, so fantastic in some cases that the brand name is in danger of becoming a genericized trademark. From the list above, I routinely use Ziploc, Kleenex, WD-40, and Windex to refer to the generic versions of those products, even though we sometimes use Glad products instead of Ziploc, Puffs instead of Kleenex, or another glass cleaner instead of Windex. If the companies on this list aren't careful, they could lose the trademarked products that they've worked so hard to market so successfully.
Here's a list of American proprietary eponyms, or brand names that have fallen into general use. Some of the names on the list are so old or in such common use (escalator, popsicle) that I didn't even know they had been brands. Two current brands I can think of that might be in danger of genericide: iPod and Google. (via rw)
The WSJ hosts a DRM debate between Fritz Attaway of the MPAA and Wendy Seltzer of the EFF. "Digital rights management is the key to consumer choice." Zur? Are those irritating anti-theft packaging stickers on DVDs the key to consumer choice as well?
Mexican president Vicente Fox didn't sign the bill legalizing small quantities of drugs for personal use because of US pressure due to drug tourism fears. What I don't understand is...why not just make it legal for Mexican citizens to allay US fears? Besides, anyone who goes to Mexico for drugs can get them if they want anyway, law or no.
Michael Crichton on the sad state of patents in the US, particularly those related to medicine. "Any doctor who reads a patient's test results and even thinks of vitamin deficiency infringes the [homocysteine/B-12] patent. A federal circuit court held that mere thinking violates the patent."
Because of the Eolas patent crap, Microsoft is updating Internet Explorer so that you need to click to "activate" any Flash or Quicktime applet. There's a workaround that involves replacing all your <object> <embed> and <applet> tags with JavaScript functions that write those tags. This is going to make a lot of web sites a pain in the ass to use with IE and developers are going to have to modify a lot of code. What a nightmare. (thx, dunstan)
I was recently wondering if any of the Creative Commons licenses had been upheld in court; a CC license was recently upheld in a Dutch courtroom.
Rogers Cadenhead, after receiving a letter from Dave Winer's attorney: "I've never been more retroactively embarrassed to have paid someone a compliment in my life."
Andy got a cease and desist from Bill Cosby's legal team for hosting the satirical House of Cosbys videos, and he's going to fight it. "More than anything, this strikes me as a special kind of discrimination against amateur creators on the Internet. Mad Magazine, Saturday Night Live, South Park, The Simpsons, Family Guy, and countless other mainstream media sources have parodied Bill Cosby over the years."
Meghann Marco, the woman who was upset at her publishing company for 1) not putting her book on Google Print, and 2) instead suing Google, has finally gotten her book listed on Google Print.
The fashion industry doesn't try to control its creativity the way that the music and film industries do. "The fashion world recognizes that creativity cannot be bridled and controlled and that obsessive quests to do so will only diminish its vitality. Other content industries would do well to heed this wisdom."
This guy has had enough of the pre-exit receipt checking at Best Buy (you're under no legal obligation to comply) but is hassled by Best Buy employees about seeing his receipt all the way out to the parking lot.
Andreas Pavel was the inventor of the portable music player (aka Walkman). "I was in the woods in St. Moritz, in the mountains. The snow was falling down. I pressed the button, and suddenly we were floating. It was an incredible feeling, to realize that I now had the means to multiply the aesthetic potential of any situation."
Scott Nelson produces a "tribute brand" called MIKE that's an homage to Michael Jordan, Nike branding, and shoes. After looking at his products (photos and interviews here and here), I'm amazed Nike hasn't sued him back to the Stone Age. Nelson's site is mike23.com.
"no sampling, please", a photoset depicting binge-sampling of nearly everything in sight, contrary to posted signage.
On the copyright of recipes. Recipes are covered by US copyright law but not very well and very few suits get brought against those who republish them without permission. For the most part, it sounds like food folks recognize the essential remix culture of cooking. (via matt)
Surowiecki on the sorry state of the US patent system. "Since the [USPTO] is funded by patent fees, as opposed to getting its budget from Washington, it has a financial incentive to process applications as quickly, rather than as diligently, as possible."
The 419 Nigerian spammers are getting smarter. This letter I received the other day offered URL references:
Dear Friend,
I am Larisa Sosnitskaya and I represent Mr. Mikhail Khordokovsky the former C.E.O of Yukos Oil Company in Russia. I have a very sensitive and confidential brief from this top (oligarch) to ask for your partnership in re-profiling funds US$46 Million. I will give the details, but in summary, the funds are coming via Bank Menatep. This is a legitimate transaction. You will be paid 20% as your commison/compensation for your active efforts and contirbution to the success of this transaction.
You can catch more of the story on This website below or you can watch more of CCN or BBC to get more news about my boss.
http://www.mosnews.com/mn-files/khodorkovsky.shtml
http://www.mbktrial.com/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3213505.stm
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2005/04/11/041.html
http://www.nndb.com/people/633/000025558/
If you are interested, please do indicate by providing me with your confidential telephone number, fax number and email address and I will provide further details and instructions. Please keep this confidential as we cannot afford more political problems. Please do send me your response as soon as possible via my personal email :larisacoll@walla.com OR larisacoll@netscape.com.
look forward to it.
Regards,
Larisa Sosnitskaya
Seems like pretty good evidence to me...where do I send the check?
**That's right, evolution. Sit on it, Potsie.
George Dyson visits Google on the 60th anniversary of John von Neumann's proposal for a digital computer. A quote from a Googler -- "We are not scanning all those books to be read by people. We are scanning them to be read by an AI." -- highlights a quasi-philosophical question about Google Print...if a book is copied but nobody reads it, has it actually been copied? (Or something like that.)
Our short national nightmare is over, Harriet Miers has withdrawn her nomination for the Supreme Court (her letter). However, our long national nightmare still has 1181 days to go.
Parable about Google's Library Project and copyright (discussed here last week). "All I have to do is borrow the CDs or DVDs, downloaded music or video or whatever, copy them, and then offer some sort of 'fair use' excerpt index service, just like Google is doing with the books. It's the perfect gimmick."
I got an email this morning from a kottke.org reader, Meghann Marco. She's an author and struggling to get her book out into the hands of people who might be interested in reading it. To that end, she asked her publisher, Simon & Schuster, to put her book up on Google Print so it could be found, and they refused. Now they're suing Google over Google Print, claiming copyright infringement. Meghann is not too happy with this development:
Kinda sucks for me, because not that many people know about my book and this might help them find out about it. I fail to see what the harm is in Google indexing a book and helping people find it. Anyone can read my book for free by going to the library anyway.
In case you guys haven't noticed, books don't have marketing like TV and Movies do. There are no commercials for books, this website isn't produced by my publisher. Books are driven by word of mouth. A book that doesn't get good word of mouth will fail and go out of print.
Personally, I hope that won't happen to my book, but there is a chance that it will. I think the majority of authors would benefit from something like Google Print.
She has also sent a letter of support to Google which includes this great anecdote:
Someone asked me recently, "Meghann, how can you say you don't mind people reading parts of your book for free? What if someone xeroxed your book and was handing it out for free on street corners?"
I replied, "Well, it seems to be working for Jesus."
And here's an excerpt of the email that Meghann sent me (edited very slightly):
I'm a book author. My publisher is suing Google Print and that bothers me. I'd asked for my book to be included, because gosh it's so hard to get people to read a book.
Getting people to read a book is like putting a cat in a box. Especially for someone like me, who was an intern when she got her book deal. It's not like I have money for groceries, let alone a publicist.
I feel like I'm yelling and no one is listening. Being an author can really suck sometimes. For all I know speaking up is going to get me blacklisted and no one will ever want to publish another one of my books again. I hope not though.
[My book is] called 'Field Guide to the Apocalypse' It's very funny and doesn't suck. I worked really hard on it. It would be nice if people read it before it went out of print.
As Tim O'Reilly, Eric Schmidt, and Google have argued, I think these lawsuits against Google are a stupid (and legally untenable) move on the part of the publishing industry. I know a fair number of kottke.org readers have published books...what's your take on the situation? Does Google Print (as well as Amazon "Search Inside the Book" feature) hurt or help you as an author? Do you want your publishing company suing Google on your behalf?
Twenty percent of the human genome is patented. I expect that someday in the future, my morning will be interrupted by a lawyer telling me that the company he represents holds a patent on the biochemical conversion of foodstuffs to energy suitable for powering a biological organism and that I should cease and desist eating my Cheerios.
The right of Conde Nast to sell The Complete New Yorker (which is completely awesome from a content standpoint, BTW) without paying authors for republish rights is a gray area legally. National Geographic has stopped selling a similar collection because of the unsure legal terrain.
Librarian gets even with an annoying junk faxer and even gets the guy's airplane seized...and all the proceeds from the sale will go to the Leukemia Society.
An ethical will is a good way to pass on your values to your descendants. Here's a template and some advice to get you started.
Tattoo copyrights and lawsuits. David Beckham is being threatened with a lawsuit by his tattooist should he and his wife "go ahead with a promotional campaign highlighting their body art".
Ugh, riders on the NYC subway are going to have their bags randomly searched by the NYPD. "People who do not submit to a search will be allowed to leave, but will not be permitted into the subway station." What the fuck?!?
Another use for Google Maps: getting out of traffic tickets in the courtroom. Many traffic cases are decided in favor of the state because of a lack of information on the part of the defendant...you'd be surprised at how good a chance you have of fighting a ticket if you show up armed with good information.
Coke is using 500,000 liters of water/day in India despite water shortages. Coke is threatening to sue a photographer who put up a billboard critical of that water usage.
Nike is catching some shit for appropriating some imagery for one of their skateboarding events from a 1984 album cover by Dischord Records' Minor Threat. Dischord is alledging that Nike stole the image:
No, they stole it and we're not happy about it. Nike is a giant corporation which is attempting to manipulate the alternative skate culture to create an even wider demand for their already ubiquitous brand. Nike represents just about the antithesis of what Dischord stands for and it makes me sick to my stomach to think they are using this explicit imagery to fool kids into thinking that the general ethos of this label, and Minor Threat in particular, can somehow be linked to Nike's mission. It's disgusting.
Here are the images (original on the left):
Setting aside the difference in philosophy between the two parties, this is obviously an homage on Nike's part (or rather, on the part of the designers working on this campaign for Nike...they probably love skating and that album and are paying their respects). Graphic design, filmmaking, pop culture, and music is full of stuff like this...sampling and ripping and riffing and homages are all part of the deal. Seems like a punk label like Dischord should be aware of that but in the above quote they sound more like a big company afraid of losing their intellectual property. Isn't punk all about taking without permission? Or does that not apply when you don't like the folks doing the taking? Lighten up, Dischord.
Update: Nike has apologized for producing the poster. Lame.
Update #2: I'm getting a ton of mail about this, the most about a single post in quite awhile. Without exception, you all disagree with me.
Choirboy. "As head boy at a legendary choir school, Lawrence Lessig was repeatedly molested by the charismatic choir director, part of a horrific pattern of child abuse there. Now, as one of America's most famous lawyers, he's put his own past on trial to make sure such a thing never happens again."
Microsoft is sponsoring a short film contest called Thought Thieves about intellectual property theft. And the entry form states: "I will formally license on terms acceptable to Microsoft, all intellectual property rights in my film and agree to waive all moral rights in relation to my film if requested to do so". Heh.
A quick take on Apple's control freakishness. "Running a tightly controlled company has worked well for Jobs. But being a little out of control can pay dividends, too - by fostering creative freedom, not to mention goodwill. Jobs need only look at his own slogans. Life Is Random. Enjoy Uncertainty. At Apple, this is marketing, not a way of life."
Keeping tabs on Martha Stewart on parole. Is attending a dinner party "essential employment"?
