Dowbrigade

Last summer I had a law student named Sosumi. Really. This summer
I have again been spending 4 hours a day in a basement room with a dozen
lawyers, an obligation
which
has
but
three
more
days to
run and which I will miss as much as I celebrate its ending. As a result,
I have
been thinking a lot about legal matters. Specifically, about the possible
ramifications of publishing all of this bizarre shit on a server at the
Harvard Law School.

As a non-lawyer, I am the first to admit when my ignorance matches my
interest and ask for advice and counsel from the experts. Which I plan
to do on
Thursday at the next meeting of the Open Blogger’s Workgroup, where there
are many wise minds and experienced web-publishers. In the meantime,
I am blogging this as a way to organize my thoughts and solicit additional
opinions.

Like most educators I habitually claim blanket absolution in the Fair
Use exception to exclusive rights. Between that and Dave’s E-TAG site
license
(Everything That’s Available on Google), I felt pretty secure. But spending
the summer with the devious minds of a group of lawyers has instilled
the fear of God in me, and so I recently ventured into the actual code
referring
to "Fair use":

(1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is
of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;

Now, returning to number 2, please check out this hypothetical concerning
linking to or independently posting (copying) copyright material of various
"natures."

Q: What would be the hypothetical liability of an innocent (until proven
guilty) academic blogger who appropriated the following materials:

[Before going any further with these examples let me categorically state
for the record that I have never personally engaged in any of the activities
described therein and that the specific instances are wholly fictitious
and made up]

A: Copying the lead paragraph of a newspaper article from a public access
site and posting it with a sentence or two of commentary and a link to
the complete article.

B: Copying significant portions, with commentary, of a subscription-based
internet publication like the New York Times. (Does it make a difference
if I grab the article off of their RSS feed? Doesn’t its presence on the
RSS feed indicate they WANT people to repost?)

C: Copying and linking to an article in a for-pay subscription publication
like the Chronicle of Higher Ed, which I have accessed through Lexis-Nexis,
to which I have access through my University’s site license.

D: Copying a photo from a news source like MSNBC. Copying a photo from
Google image search. (Does it make a difference if I copy the Google thumbnail
-which is often just the right size- and not the "original" image in situ?)

E: Publicly available documents like Press Releases, court records or financial
filings.

I would really be interested in what people who know more about this stuff
than I do think about these cases. Of course, it’s probably already too
late for me. Actually, I am waiting for the RIAA to come break my door
down. I figure I owe them a little over $1 Billion dollars and they could
lock me up for 20,000 years.

For those of you who just can’t
face another day without a mullet, a hairstyle
which is short on the top, short on the side and long in the back .
For the closet trailer trash, wannabe towtruck drivers and unrepentant
Glam
rockers, the Original
Mullet Wigs ($19.95) are priceless.

from
mulletwigs.net

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Convicted
Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski wants the U.S. government to return a
pipe bomb and other items seized from his Montana cabin so that they
can be used for "research," according to court papers made
public on Monday .

Kaczynski, serving a life sentence for killing three people and injuring
23 others in a 17-year bombing campaign, also asked for his books, personal
papers and chemicals used in making bombs. The court had no immediate
response to the requests.

from Reuters

You may have read
here or elsewhere about the draconian Author, Consumer and Computer
Owner Protection and Security Act (ACCOPS, HR 2752) currently
being debated in Congress.  You may be aware that you could
spend up to five years in prison, pay a $250,000 fine and lose your
right
to vote for trading a *single* copyrighted song.

Now there’s something you can do to make your opinion heard on this crucial
issue. The Electronic
Frontier Foundation has made
is easy to send a letter to your congressman. Check it out NOW, before
it’s too late.

Miss
Vietnam Missing, Believed Kidnapped

Relatives of Vietnam’s reigning beauty queen, who disappeared a week
ago, say they believe she was kidnapped by her boyfriend to stop her
moving to Britain to study.

Trieu Kim Oanh said her daughter Pham Thi Mai Phuong was forced into
a car last Tuesday by a group of young men as she was leaving an English
class.

The 18-year-old had recently been awarded a scholarship to study at the
University of Luton.

Phuong was crowned Miss Vietnam in September. Communist Vietnam
discouraged beauty contests for years as a sign of capitalist decadence.

Oanh said Phuong’s boyfriend, a policeman and the son of Haiphong Police
Chief Nguyen Binh Doan, had repeatedly said he did not want her to go
to Britain.    from Anaova

William Dolge, 45, was accused of violating his work release for having alcohol
on his breath when he returned to jail from his job last month.   from
CNN

How to Run a
Recall: Begin by Juggling the Alphabet

SACRAMENTO – The race to replace Gov. Gray Davis, often likened to a
carnival, looked more like a political version of "Wheel of Fortune" today. Even
the alphabet is getting an official makeover as part of the California
recall election. The official order in which
the candidates will be listed is: R, W, Q, O, J, M, V, A, H, B, S, G,
Z, X, N, T, C, I, E, K, U, P, D, Y,
F and
L.

from the New York Times

Man Drinking Beer In Ditch Just Wanted to Be Left Alone

HOUSTON — A police standoff with a man in a southwest Houston drainage
ditch ended peacefully Monday morning. Firefighters were called around
2 a.m. on a report that a man was drowning in a drainage ditch.

When they arrived, they found the man was
fine and drinking a beer, but he refused to get out of the 20-foot deep
ditch.

Police arrived at the scene and tried to coax
the man out of the ditch for the next two hours. He threw beer bottles
and other glass objects at officers, police said, in an effort to be
left alone. He was taken into custody, and then transported to Ben
Taub Hospital
for evaluation.

from
Click2Houston.com