"Sexual Consent" -- just about the funniest net-video I've seen this year. A couple in bed -- and their lawyers -- negotiate the terms of the night's nookie. Link (via Lawgeek)

Update: Brad sez, "The Kids in the Hall perform a hilarious sketch that covers some of the same ground as the 'Sexual Consent' video, albeit before the proposed date even happens. Best line: 'That's panty-peeler and you know it!'"

Like the jackalope and the flatbed truck-sized trout, the long-horse became extinct around the same time that the black-and-white postcard went out of vogue.

In the comments section of Robyn's blog, a reader questioned the authenticity of these photos, suggesting the images may have been altered to make the horses appear longer than they really were. But Robyn replied: "Oh no, I assure you, they are absolutely real. Their demise is a sad one. A lesson indeed for future generations!" Link

Reader comment:

Some people have written to tell me that long horses aren't real. But if you read the comments section of Tinselman's blog post, you will read first-hand accounts of people who walked among these gentle giants. For example:

When I was in the Army in Italy in 1944 I saw a long horse that unfortunately had to be put down after a minor shrapnel wound to it's leg. So remarkly big and docile, she was. Her owner wept when we shot her at his request.

This Sunday (December 3) Machine Project in LA is teaching a workshop on BEAM robotics. They'll be using Gareth Branwyn's article from MAKE Vols. 6 and 8 as the textbook, and the cost of the workshop includes materials, so you can take you very own robot home with you. Link

As soon as I saw the "Naked Lunch" plate set at PopInk ($40), I immediately bought a set for myself and another for a friend. PopInk also has a lot of other fantastic dinner plate sets. I want them all. Link

A seal pup was picked up on a country road in Capernwray, Lancashire, England, several miles from the nearest seashore. A woman and her daughter nudged the seal into their car trunk and caged him in a calf pen until the animal collection officers arrived. Named Sid, the seal is currently at a wildlife center and will eventually be returned to the sea. From the BBC News:

Nick Green, animal collection officer for the RSPCA, said: "Wild seals don't like being around humans at all, but this one seemed really quite tame, which suggests he could have been a pet..."

Link

This year, only two books have made me laugh until tears ran down my face: John Hodgman's The Areas of My Expertise, and this parody of the hideous SkyMall catalog, appropriately titled SkyMaul.

The fake products and their descriptions in the SkyMaul catalog are exactly like the ones you'd find in the SKyMall catalog, except they're wet-your-pants funny.

I don't usually like magazine parodies (Pre-1980 National Lampoon was the only publication that could do a funny, dead-on magazine parody), so when Jesse Thorn of The Sound of Young America sent this to me, I wasn't expecting much, but I was hooked from the very first product (Reality-Canceling Headphones from the Image Sharpener: "Using a simple principle called "science," the professor was able to invent headphones that block all the bullshit and responsibilities in your life. You can still hear things such as the microwave going off but not babies or the doorbell or dogs.") and couldn't stop reading it until I got to the last (A "Bettering your WordPower" audio CD set: "We will send you 2 of the first 200 CDs, packed with two hours of crippling content; including the "top gun" words, the vocabulary principals overview, and a VHS tape called Nature's Killers where an orca throws a sea lion around like a rag doll. You will shit at how powerful these whales are, and how cruel.")

Just looking it is making me laugh again. There's the "Hitler-Turning-into-Werewolf Nightlight" for your baby, a Divorced Dad "Pancake Time" Trumpet, Christian Over-the-Clothes Massage Lotion, a combination Retirement Crutch/Metal Detector, a Tiger Arm Extender, and lots more.

It was written by the comedy group, Kasper Hauser, which has a podcast produced by Jesse. Link

Forbes has a new special issue on the future of books, and I have a lead op-ed in the issue, called "Giving It Away."

The thing about an e-book is that it's a social object. It wants to be copied from friend to friend, beamed from a Palm device, pasted into a mailing list. It begs to be converted to witty signatures at the bottom of e-mails. It is so fluid and intangible that it can spread itself over your whole life. Nothing sells books like a personal recommendation--when I worked in a bookstore, the sweetest words we could hear were "My friend suggested I pick up...." The friend had made the sale for us, we just had to consummate it. In an age of online friendship, e-books trump dead trees for word of mouth.

There are two things that writers ask me about this arrangement: First, does it sell more books, and second, how did you talk your publisher into going for this mad scheme?

There's no empirical way to prove that giving away books sells more books--but I've done this with three novels and a short story collection (and I'll be doing it with two more novels and another collection in the next year), and my books have consistently outperformed my publisher's expectations. Comparing their sales to the numbers provided by colleagues suggests that they perform somewhat better than other books from similar writers at similar stages in their careers. But short of going back in time and re-releasing the same books under the same circumstances without the free e-book program, there's no way to be sure.

What is certain is that every writer who's tried giving away e-books to sell books has come away satisfied and ready to do it some more.

Link, Link to special books issue of Forbes

Cryptozoologist Loren Coleman is interviewed in the December issue of Chicago monthly paper The Skeleton News. The interview is accompanied by Becca Taylor's wonderful illustration of Loren with a menagerie of cryptids, a portion of which is seen here. From the interview:

Has the willingness of the greater scientific establishment to listen to or respond to your work substantially changed since the late-60s?

Yes, it has increased positively. Many childhood fans of cryptozoology are now professors in universities...

Which cryptid mysteries do you think are most likely to be settled in the public eye in the next couple decades?

The discovery of a new Asian great ape, whether it is the Orang Pendek in Sumatra, the Ebu Gobo in Indonesia, or an unknown orang in China, will occur, I think, in the next 25 years.

Link to the interview republished at Cryptomundo, Link to Loren Coleman's appearance on Boing Boing's Get Illuminated! podcast

Hugo-award-winning author James Patrick Kelly is podcasting his "On the Net" columns rom Asimov's Science Fiction Magazines. In these columns, Jim takes us on a thematic tour of the Internet, running through themes like "Time travel" and "Faster than light travel." This week, he podcasted his "Afraid of the Darknet" column, about copyright, science fiction, DRM, and the future of the Internet. It's a great piece. Link, Podcast feed link, Text transcript link

The world's greatest type designers, House Industries, are coming to Los Angeles. They will present a lecture and play music at the Petersen Automotive Museum on December 7. And on December 8, they'll have an art opening at the Reserve Gallery. Link

Tom sez, "CNET editor and former TechTV product reviewer James Kim is missing along with his family while on vacation in the Pacific Northwest. James, his wife and two children left last week on a road trip. They were last seen in Portland on Saturday November 25th, where they visited with friends. His family has filed a police report and we currently working with the San Francisco Police Department, which has opened a missing persons investigation, to help in any way we can. We are also working with local news station who are planning to air stories tonight in the hopes that more visibility will help locate the family. We are all very worried about James and his family, and will keep you up-to-date with any developments. If you know anything about James' whereabouts, you can contact the SFPD by calling 415-558-5508 during normal business hours and 415-553-1071 after hours." Link (Thanks, Tom)

The winners of TokyoFlash's impractical Japanese watch giveaway have been announced. Congrats to BB readers Dallas Cloud (Texas), Justin Russell (Washington) and Dylan!

TokyoFlash's Christian sez, "please also mention that as a thank you to all our customers we are running a Christmas giveaway. The prizes are a Playstation 3 with 2 games and 10 watches."

Link

Fox has invented a new copyright law: the right to control who links to clips of your work. They're sending takedown notices to websites that link to supposedly infringing clips on YouTube:

The below links are specific examples of quicksilverscreen.com web pages linking to video files that infringe upon Fox’s intellectual property rights. Fox hereby demands that quicksilverscreen.com promptly remove and disable the links to all unauthorized copies of Fox Properties on the quicksilverscreen.com website of which it is aware, including the infringing links identified below:

Copyright law doesn't allow you to control who links to things you don't like. Links don't infringe copyright. It's not a violation of copyright to link to material on the Internet.

I'll tell you what is illegal, though: sending fraudulent takedown notices. Diebold was hammered by the courts for sending out DMCA takedown notices for something that isn't copyright; now career troll Michael Crook faces a similar fate.

I'd love to see Fox creamed over this, too. Link (Thanks, Steve!)

Update: EFF senior IP attorney Fred von Lohmann sez, "Whether linking to infringing materials can itself create copyright liability is still a somewhat murky question. Some cases suggest that linking to material you have reason to know is infringing (i.e., after the copyright owner notifies you that the material you're linking to is infringing) can give rise to liability (Intellectual Reserve v. Utah Lighthouse Ministry), while other cases point the other way (Perfect 10 v. Google). Of course, I think the latter cases have the better of the argument. But one thing is clear -- the DMCA's 'safe harbors' for online service providers (OSPs) give linkers a strong incentive to remove links upon receiving a DMCA takedown notice, because if they do so, they are protected from paying damages in any copyright infringement case. That's one of the problems with the DMCA safe harbors -- because OSPs have such a strong incentive to simply comply with takedown notices, courts get fewer chances to decide the underlying copyright questions, like whether linking to stuff on YouTube is infringing. So things stay murky. "

During the Q&A at last night's screening of Kirby Dick's "This Film is Not Yet Rated," Dick recounted the story of how his film was unlawfully duplicated by the MPAA's ratings board. He submitted one copy of his movie to the MPAA, extracting a promise that no more copies would be made -- the MPAA's own anti-piracy materials describe making a single unauthorized duplication as an act of piracy.

Once it got out that the MPAA had made its "pirated" copy of Dick's movie, one of the MPAA's lawyers called Dick up to admit that the cartel had indeed made an infringing copy, but not to worry, "The copy is safe in my vault."

At this point, I raised my hand and asked if Dick thought anyone caught downloading movies from the Internet could get off the hook by saying, "Don't worry, I keep my copies safe in my vault?" Link

The MPAA has killed a California law that would have outlawed "pretexting" -- fraudulently misrepresenting yourself to gain unlawful access to someone's private information ("Hi, this is Fred Frederickson, I'm at the office and need to look at my phone records for last month, can you fax them to me?").

Pretexting was used in Hewlett-Packard's crooked investigation into boardroom leaks, in which board-members, journalists and others had their privacy invaded by HP's investigators.

The MPAA opposes the bill because they want to have a broad arsenal of tools available to them as they attack movie-lovers who share films online.

Ira Rothken, a prominent technology lawyer defending download search engine TorrentSpy against a movie industry copyright suit, says he didn't know about the lobbying, but can guess why the MPAA got involved. Rothken is suing (.pdf) the MPAA for allegedly paying a hacker $15,000 to hack into TorrentSpy's e-mail accounts.

"It doesn't surprise me that the MPAA would be against bills that protect privacy, and the MPAA has shown that they are willing to pay lots of money to intrude on privacy," Rothken said. "I do think there needs to be better laws in place that would deter such conduct and think that it would probably be useful if our elected officials would not be intimidated by the MPAA when trying to pass laws to protect privacy."

Link