I’m variously amazed, amused, bemused by the amount of misinformation about IP issues in circulation, and the attitude of hapless bewilderment adopted by many otherwise competent professionals in relation to them. While copyright law, trademark law, and patent law certainly have their complexities, the basic principles thereof, including the “fair use” exception to the copyright law, hardly qualify as arcane. Don’t let the laziness or ineptitude of others discourage you from learning about this. It ain’t rocket science. Even trademark law and patent law, much less familiar to the lay public, function according to elementary rules and reasoning that aren’t hard to grasp. […]
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As should be obvious to even the most casual visitor, I don’t produce this blog for dumb-and-dumber types who call people “dude” and think suckxmyxkiss@yourserverhere.com is a clever email address, nor for self-absorbed Brit-twit fashionista wannabes convinced the world takes an interest in where they shit. How on earth did these twerps find their way here? Another mystery of the intertubes. Immanuel Velikovsky was right: See what can happen when universes of discourse, definitely not parallel, collide? […] In selling a work of visual art — a painting, a sculpture, a photographic print — the artist doesn’t commonly sell the IP rights thereto. The artist gets to benefit for decades from the licensing of all IP rights to the work, as do his heirs and assigns. Presumably the artists cheering on the follow-up rights campaign don’t intend to give any share of that income to collectors of their works. But shouldn’t that be part of any droit de suite deal? […] The IP thieves and copyright infringers are out in force, multiplying like rabbits. And, like all good zombies, they want to eat you — with a special hankering for your brains. I’d advise that educators should exercise wariness in using their sites as teaching resources; the enabling of serial infringers isn’t much different from doing the infringing yourself, and most schools have stringent prohibitions against the use of pirated materials in the classroom. […] |
 SPJ Research Award 2014 |
Dog Days (1): News & Notes
I’m envisioning a performance piece for TverCA, the “new contemporary art centre” in Russia, to commemorate that phase of the infamous Katyn Massacre perpetrated therein April 1940. For ten hours at a stretch, with the occasional break, the performer places a cantaloupe on a shelf attached to the log wall, puts the barrel of the pistol against it, and fires a single shot — maintaining NKVD executioner Vasili Mikhailovich Blokhin’s implacable pace of one every 3 minutes. Bottles of vodka are passed around at the end of each session, as was Blokhin’s custom. […]