drat fink

mousekatears

"When the Court ruled against Eldred, the Disney Corporation issued a collective sigh of relief. Before the Bono Act passed, Mickey Mouse was set to enter the public domain in 2004, with his best-known animated pals following shortly afterward. One reason Disney put its weight behind the 1998 legislation was to keep Mickey and the gang on the plantation; Eldred's backers subsequently adopted Free the Mouse as an unofficial slogan."

"Mickey's own reaction to the decision was less enthusiastic. Telling his keepers that he was going on an "ice run for the boss," the mouse made his way to a dive bar a few miles outside Disneyland, where he gave reason an exclusive interview."

writers on the storm

"The Eldred decision, in the words of University of Buffalo law professor Shubha Gosh, "deconstitutionalizes" copyright, pushing it father into the realm of policy and power battles and away from the principles that have anchored the system for two centuries. That means public interest advocates and activists must take their battles to the public sphere and the halls of Congress. We can't appeal to the Founders' wishes or republican ideals. We will have to make pragmatic arguments in clear language about the effects of excessive copyright on research, teaching, art and journalism. And we will have to make naked mass power arguments with echoes of "we want our MP3" and "it takes an industry of billions to hold us back."

l.a. phantitis

"Ridgel added: "Your sniveling letter makes me sick, young man; you are a superstar because you are a black Republican, and you love it. Now I wonder if you can make it as just a Republican ... like the rest of us. And don't try any of that Jesse Jackson, Maxine Waters racist garbage on me."

looks like a snoozer

the subconscious takes center stage on the sci/fi channels new show dreamtime where dream analysis gets the couch treatment.

telefrission

pretty good weblog story on pbs's media matters tonight. couple of interesting points -- instapundit's glenn reynolds was talking about whether or not big media companies would allow enough freedom for webloggers on the same day that his msnbc weblog goes live. i wonder what kind of latitude he got.

also they ran an la times infographic which listed the number of webloggers in 1999 at 23 and estimated 200000 at present. while it may be true that at one point in 1999 there were only 23 weblogs, i know that at the end of the year there were approximately 400 blogs listed on eatonweb. i dont know if i have a point just that their precise imprecision annoyed me.

pot party

"The Green Leaf Party sits on the liberal left and wants all the appropriate things—peace with the Palestinians, separation of synagogue and state, and lots of social benefits. But everyone knows what they really want—the legalization of marijuana."

picture perfect

"Image Gate is The New York Public Library's first full working version of its new digital image database. Image Gate provides free and open access to thousands of The New York Public Library's digitized images, taken from the Research Libraries' collections. At its inception, the Image Gate database contains approximately 80,000 images spanning a wide range of subjects. This number will grow as The Library digitizes more images; this phased rollout will end in 2004, when the site will include more than 600,000 images."

copyulation

"After an hour or so of scribbling in a notebook, Wearing showed us her idea. It was obviously shocking, but it also seemed to synthesise, in three short words, the point we were trying to make. This wasn't Wearing saying fuck Cilla or the Guardian saying fuck Cilla, but the voice of Mean TV passing judgment on a cuddly matriarch from another age of television. And Wearing's casual use of the F-word seemed to capture precisely the coarsening of TV culture that Stuart Jeffries would write about inside."

le carping

"America has entered one of its periods of historical madness, but this is the worst I can remember: worse than McCarthyism, worse than the Bay of Pigs and in the long term potentially more disastrous than the Vietnam War. "

caught in the web

i had a dream about weblogging last night. wonder if my brain needs a few fresh inputs. went outside to put a pressed shirt in my van for some function i was to attend the next day and someone was shooting a movie on the street. thought it was low budget kidstuff but then i recognized a voice in the dark. the lighting was insufficient. they were literally shooting in the dark. my front door creaked open as i went to go inside and the guy behind the camera swung around to see where the noise was coming from. turns out it was kevin smith. he kind of glared at me for a moment and then turned back to what he was doing. and as i was going upstairs i thought about posting the encounter on my weblog. then i walked up one too many flights, and after retreating the key to my door didnt work. and while i was trying a bunch of different keys, my friend al who i havent seen in ten years shows up, smiley as usual. i was glad to see him but instead of embracing i hand him some boxes im holding and go back to work on the lock. i never do get in before waking up.