My friend Tim Wu, a legal scholar at Columbia U, has finally posted his paper "Copyright's Authorship Policy," which I read some years ago in draft. I've been assigning drafts of this paper to my students all year, because I think that Tim's captured something here that I'd never heard articulated before in all the papers about copyright I've read.

Tim's point is that copyright ends up choosing what kind of authors are allowed to make art, and which ones aren't. For example, extending copyright over sampling -- but not over reproducing distinctive licks or melodic snippets -- means that mashup artists' music is illegal, but the white skiffle and R&B artists who adapted black music for their own (the Rolling Stones, Elvis and the Beatles, for example) get to make all the music they want.

Tim goes on to suggest a simple and cunning mechanism for minimizing copyright's impact on authorship, a method that will allow the largest variety in art and expression. This is great stuff, and has been the basis of some great discussions in my classes.

For that reason, the paper introduces a new justification for authorial ownership of copyright—both the vesting of the initial copyright in authors, and for providing ways for the right to find its way back to authors.1 The argument relies on the concept of authors as agents of decentralization in the copyright system. Vesting rights in authors, the argument goes, provides new ways to seed the development of both new forms of distribution, and also support for changing modes and forms of creation. Centuries ago in England, authorial copyright helped introduce competition into bookselling, beyond an centralized publisher’s cartel. Today, there are lessons for copyright’s authorship policy in the more than five million items under Creative Commons licenses,2 the proliferation of Open Access licensing in academia, and the use of open source licenses by commercial entities like IBM and Apple. These experiments show the potential of a decentralized copyright system for promoting a full range of production modes.

Link

See also:
Why wireless carriers should be forced into neutrality
Jack Valenti says stupid things -- really, really stupid things
Searchable index of Judge Posner's decisions - law for the people
Network neutrality - why it matters, and how do we fix it?
A simple prescription for keeping Google's records out of government hands.
Understanding broadband regulation
Killer audio file of killer lawyers talking Grokster

Goddammit. Every time I swear I'm gonna put a kibosh on any plural noun that begins with LOL, someone reboots the meme in a genuinely funny way. And so it is with LOLbots, which was created by Dieselsweeties' R. Stevens.

I hate myself for blogging you. LOLS. ROFL. NSFW. LMAO.

Incidentally, I hear Scott Beale's working on a dissertation-sized über-düper post of every LOL variant evar. I promise not to blog that, either. (posted from the road, in central america / xeni)

Update: The LOLbots site got Boingdotted, and is not working too well as of Thursday AM. "my durn admin thinks getting email and business related traffic out is more important than LOL," says R. Stevens. Stay tuned. Here's something to tide you over.

Cory Silverberg, the "sexuality" guide for About.com, tells BoingBoing:

The Associated Press is reporting on a story about a Catholic priest in New Franken, Wisconsin, who gave his church organist of thirty-five years a surprising ultimatum; quit her sex toy home party job or quit the church.

Apparently after meeting with Linette Servais, who is 50 and apparently does most of her work for no pay, to express his dissatisfaction with her other work (you know the work that pays), Rev. Dean Dombroski sent a letter to his congregation explaining that "Linette is a consultant for a firm which sells products of a sexual nature that are not consistent with Church teachings" and that she would have to make a decision. Linette, who says she started selling sex toys after treatment for a tumor left her experiencing sexual dysfunction, says the decision was easy; she’s still selling sex toys.

Linette is not the only woman of faith who has made sex toy sales her ministry. And while part of me is wondering where in the Church teachings it says Thou Shall Not Sell Sex Toys, knowing the kind of poor quality merchandise her company carries, I have to wonder, as the kids say, WWJD.

Link

Reader comment: Pete Duniho says,

Reading the quote from the letter by Rev. Dean Dombroski, "Linette is a consultant for a firm which sells products of a sexual nature that are not consistent with Church teachings", it seems entirely plausible that the reason that the "products of a sexual nature" are not "consistent with Church teachings" is that they are of sub-standard quality. Perhaps Servais could have resolved the conflict simply by switching to a different supplier of products, rather than quitting her church job. :)

The Lizardman says,

As you postulated about the organist fired for seeling sex toys WWJD, I think its almost obvious he would opt for biblically inspired sex toys.

Here's a fantastic 1976 Gong Show appearance of The Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo who later shortened their name and shifted their musical style from pure cabaret insanity to New Wave.

From their Wikipedia entry:

The name ("The Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo") was inspired by a fictional secret society on the Amos 'n' Andy TV series called "The Mystic Knights of the Sea." Most of the members performed in whiteface and clown makeup; a typical show would contain music ranging from the 1890s to the 1950s, in addition to original material. This version of the band employed as many as fifteen musicians at any given time, playing over thirty instruments, including some instruments built by band members...

Various reasons for the band's transformation from musical theatre troupe to rock band were given, including cutting costs and increasing mobility, exploring new musical directions (such as Danny {Elfman}'s interest in Ska and New Wave), and a desire to perform music that didn't need theatrics to support it. Although there was some confusion about what name this new venture would operate under (in the 1980 short subject "Face Like A Frog", the band is credited simply as The Mystic Knights), the name was eventually and permanently shortened to Oingo Boingo for the Rhino Records "Los Angeles Rock And New Wave Band" compilation, L.A. In, featuring their song "I'm Afraid."

Link (Thanks, Gil Kaufman!)

Previously on BB:
• Roald Dahl's Oompah Loompah song lyrics cut from movie by Elfman Link
• Three Day Stubble's 25th Anniversary Link

Lord Andrew J. Andrews II wrote an essay on the troll as an archetypal trickster:

The troll comes to the door of a new forum and sets down his bag of tricks. If he has a grudge against the people inside discussing and debating their passions with a certain degree of amicability, peacability and decorum, he does not show them. He has the cracked, stoic smile of Robin Goodfellow, a Puck with the simple desire to disrupt peace itself. He loves chaos; his bag is full of golden apples he can lob to set the masses squabbling. He has also many masks, smoke bombs, straw men, cloaks, puppets, matches, ethanol, knives, dust, sand, and magicks of the most arcane sort. He knows what he is about -- causing trouble. Why? This is the troll’s darkest mystery -- if any one knew his secret, he would die. For all trolls, their motive power is this: without contraries, they cannot progress...

Link

British performance artist Mark McGowan ate a few bites of a corgi dog live on the radio to protest Prince Philip's hunting of a fox. Yoko Ono had a bite as well. The corgi is apparently the Queen's favorite breed. According to McGowan, it tastes lousy. From Reuters:

The dog died of natural causes at a corgi breeder and was prepared and cooked by others for McGowan...

McGowan is well known for his outlandish performance stunts. He ate a swan in another protest against the queen. Swans are protected by the monarchy.

Link (Thanks, Vann Hall!)

UPDATE: Yoko didn't eat the dog. Reuters issued a correction. Link

A retrospective of works by the "imaginary soul superstar" I reported on for NPR not long ago (Link 1 / Link 2) will open Friday Saturday in Washington, DC, at this gallery: Link. If I wasn't approximately one gajillion miles away this week, I'd totally be there. If you are nearby, I heartily encourage you to attend -- I hear Mr. Mike will be in the house signing copies of his excellent new book, and he seems truly a wonderful and talented human being. There will also be a listening booth where you can listen to his tunes.

Previously:

The Mystery of Mingering Mike: part 1, part 2, proto-post

(posted from the road in Central America / Xeni)

Last week, eight Tibetan monks were halfway complete with an incredibly intricate sand mandala they were creating in Kansas City's Union Station when a young boy went under the protective rope and messed up the entire design. The monks were gone when it happened but the episode was caught on a security camera. From the Associated Press (photo by monk Dhukar Tsering):

"He did a little tap dance on it, completely destroying it," said Lama Chuck Stanford, of the Rime Buddhist Center in Kansas City.

A security tape shows the boy's mother returning to the mandala, grabbing her son by the arm and walking out of camera range...

"No problem," Geshe Lobsang Sumdup, leader of the group from the Drepung Gomang Monastery in southern India, said through a translator. "We didn't get despondent. We have three days more. So we will have to work harder."

Link (Thanks, Jennifer Lum!)

UPDATE: BB reader Duane Morin points to the surveillance video here. And thanks to *all* the readers who commented about Buddhism and impermanence.

The Homeland Security Department has called up their special team of science fiction authors, a group called Sigma, to help them imagine various terror scenarios and ways to fight the "war" on terror. Sigma members Jerry Pournelle, Arlan Andrews, greg Bear, Larry Niven, and Sage Walker, all attended a Homeland Security conference in Washington this month about science and technology. Andrews formed the group fifteen years ago and apparently the last time they met was to envision a post-nuclear age. From USA Today:

The group's motto is "Science Fiction in the National Interest." To join the group, Andrews says, you have to have at least one technical doctorate degree.

"We're well-qualified nuts," says Jerry Pournelle, co-author of the best sellers Footfall and Lucifer's Hammer and dozens of other books.

Pournelle and others say that science-fiction writers have spent their lives studying the kinds of technologies and scenarios Homeland Security officials have been tackling since the department began operating in 2003.

"We talk to a lot of strange people and read a lot of weird things," Bear says.

At the Washington conference, Bear offered to put biometrics researchers in touch with movie special-effects experts. The experts might be able to help the government determine how to match the face of someone walking through an airport to a grainy photo of a known terrorist.

Link (Thanks, Dave Gill!)

Doom9, the forum that made headlines last year by extracting and publishing a "processing key" used to lock HD-DVD discs, has published a new key.

Processing keys can be used to make software that allows users to make unapproved uses of their HD-DVDs, like backing them up, playing them on GNU/Linux systems, and running them on mobile and handheld devices like iPods. The movie studios use the AACS scrambling system to prevent these uses, preferring to ban some of these uses and attach pricetags to others.

The last processing key leak created an Internet firestorm when the AACS licensing authority sent hundreds of legal threats to sites that published the key. The strategy backfired: within days, more than a million pages had published the key, ensuring that more people knew how to break HD-DVD players than owned the devices.

AACS has the capacity to "revoke" a processing key. When they do this, all HD-DVD players are unable to play new discs unless they get an update (woe betide you if your DVD player is on your boat, in your cottage, or at your grandparents' place where there is no Internet access). The big question is whether the AACS can revoke keys faster than hackers can extract them.

It's a race. AACS is losing.

Six days before the revocation of the original processing key, a company in the Caribbean updated its DVD-ripping software with a new key. Apparently, they had broken this key long in advance and held it close to their chest, awaiting a revocation event. The revocation was nullified before it even took effect.

Doom9's new key was released yesterday -- it's unclear whether it's the same key -- and it already appears on more than 244,000 pages. I'm betting that this breaks a million by Friday.

DRM takes years and costs millions to develop. It is generally broken in days, by hobbyists, for free. That's because DRM relies on hiding keys in devices that users own and have unlimited control over, and because every single vendor has to implement its key hiding perfectly in order to keep the secret. All a hacker has to do is find one mistake, the weakest implementation, and it's game over.

The amazing thing is that the entertainment industry keeps on shovelling dollars down the DRM pit. If I were a shareholder at Universal, Fox, Disney, Sony or Warners, I'd fire or repurpose every employee whose job it was to make my products less attractive to customers with magic, nonfunctional anti-copying technology. Link (Thanks, Alex!)

See also:
Blu-Ray AND HD-DVD broken - processing keys extracted
AACS DRM body censors Cory's class blog
Digg users revolt over AACS key
AACS vows to fight people who publish the key
Why AACS keys will leak faster than they can be patched
New AACS crack "can't be revoked"
HD-DVD re-cracked six days *before* it is patched
EFF explains the law on AACS keys

David Weinberger is conducting a public interview on the WELL's Inkwell conference about his new book Everything is Miscellaneous. I was really excited by this book, which explains how the Internet is exposing and undermining the arbitrary categories we use for knowledge, social organization, and employment.

First, in the philosophical portion of my "career," I reacted viscerally against the dominant schools of thought that assumed the aim of philosophy is to be clear and distinct. Analysis of course has its place, but it has always seemed obvious to me that most of what matters can't be said. So, when a Web form asks you to list your interests, you freeze. I do, anyway. Or if you ask me to describe my children, at the end I'll always be left with the feeling that I left out the most important parts. The power of language - as many have noted - is in what it doesn't say. (Ring one up on the Cliche-O-Meter!)

Second, in the late 1980's and early 1990's, I survived the SGML wars. SGML would enable complex document sets to be created, maintained, retrieved, and reused far more easily. But, industries couldn't agree on the details of which metadata to capture, and lots writers saw the creation of metadata as red tape. Explicit metadata sucks. Usually. (Cory Doctorow made these points in his enlightening and entertaining way in his MetaCrap article.)

So, I knew I wanted to write about metadata because it's crucial and maddening and elusive. On the other hand, who cares about metadata? What counts is the effect it's having on our institutions and their authority. So, at various times, the rubric of the book was the promise of the implicit, messiness as a virtue, social knowledge, and even (for about four minutes) the problem with Aristotle.

Link

See also:
Everything is Miscellaneous - how the Web destroys categories, disciplines and hierarchies
Cory interviewed by David Weinberger about metadata
Everything is Miscellaneous: prologue and chapter 1 online

WFMU found this cool 1976 US government funded cartoon commemorating the US Bicentennial. It's by Vince Collins. Link

A couple weeks back, I went to Google and spoke there as part of their Authors@Google series. I talked about how US trade policy had driven the US to abandon the tech sector and all the enterprises it supports in favor of a doomed plan to replace American industry with Police Academy sequels and Happy Meal toys. They've posted the video to YouTube. Link

Just one month remains to apply for Viable Paradise, the week-long science fiction writing boot-camp in Martha's Vinyard, Mass, next Sept 30-Oct 5. Viable Paradise is seven days of incredibly intense instruction from a large group of instructors (this year, it's Campbell Award winner Elizabeth Bear, the writing team of Debra Doyle and James D Macdonald, the editorial team of Patrick Nielsen Hayden and Teresa Nielsen Hayden, and Steven C Gould and Laura Mixon -- and me!) along with daily peer-workshops. I taught last year as well and left it utterly exhausted, with a permanent grin from all the amazing experiences I had with the writers I met there.

Martha's Vinyard is a gorgeous setting for the workshop, and the homey feeling among participants, volunteers and instructors is furthered y expeditions to see some of the natural beauty (including a midnight run to see the bioluminescent jellyfish). But the real meat is the one-on-one sessions and supervised peer workshopping where the absolutely vital skill of critically appraising a work with an eye to improving it is taught. The workshop runs from first thing in the morning to last thing at night, cramming what felt like a lifetime into a scant week.

I hope to see some of you this fall! Link

See also: Viable Paradise, 7-day bootcamp for sf/f/h writers

Instructables's latest HOWTO shows you how to make a silicone ice-cube tray that you can use to make Tetris ice-cubes -- or anything else moldable. Tetris beef-chunks, for example. Link (via Make)

See also:
Tetris Shelving
Real-life Tetris video
Plush Tetris blocks
Giant 3D plush Tetris blocks
Sub-micro Tetris

Humuhumu says: Ooga-Mooga has grown by leaps and bounds since it launched two years ago -- it now has information on more than 2,500 tiki mugs and other Polynesian Pop collectibles. Nearly 300 people have put their collections up on display on Ooga-Mooga, and there are just shy of 15,000 photos. It has become a tremendous resource for learning more about tiki mugs.

There's a small fee to put your own collection up on Ooga-Mooga (though it's free to store up to ten mugs). However, all the information and pictures in Ooga-Mooga -- information like who designed a mug, where it was used, when it was created, what different versions are available -- all of that is freely available to anyone. There are even price sightings entered continually by Ooga-Mooga's users, so you can get a general idea what a particular mug tends to go for.

A great example is one of my favorite mugs (and one I have on my own wish list), a mug used at the Mainlander in St. Louis in the '60s. It's based on a Witco fountain. Link

Painter and filmmaker Bill Barminski and Chris Louie made this great music video for Modest Mouse's "Miss the Boat." Link

Previously on Boing Boing:
• Funny d-CON ad from 1971
• Video from the actual notebook of an 11-year-old bully victim
• Bill Barminski exhibit at Glu in Los Angeles viewable online

BB reader David says,

Couldn't help but enjoy the irony of these two stories breaking today. One (Link) discusses how CNN's Lou Dobbs says Mexican immigrants are causing increased leprosy in the US (the data is widely considered to be inaccurate). In the other, an American traveling abroad with a rare strain of TB has possibly infected people in Europe and Canada (Link).

Update: Dobbs responds to the New York Times piece, and CNN issues a statement defending him: Link 1, Link 2, Link 3, Link 4. Gawker takes a second look at the response, and the disputed data at the heart of this controversy, here.

Last week I bought a mutant Tweety Bird ice cream bar from the ice cream truck and took a photo of it.

Today, Eric sent me this photo. He says: "The ice cream truck just came here in Boston: Bugs is a bit skewed as well. I'll get the Ninja Turtle next time. I've been reading Boing Boing for years now- great!" (Click on thumbnail above for enlargement)

Reader comment:

Kate says:

I've been fond of the ice cream truck's latest media tie-in ever since I was a child and you could get Slimer-themed misshapen things. And now that I've moved to England, I've missed them more than I thought I would.

I went back to L.A. in March and, when the ice cream truck rolled around, I picked up what was called a "Darth Vader" ice cream.

Berry, Fruit Punch, and Cherry Flavor with Sour Cherry gumball eyes.

Great fan of the site, love random things like this.

Benjamin says: "It seems like those mutant popsicles are a hot topic these days. You might be interested in this great X-Entertainment article from a few years back."

In frozen, edible form, Hulk comes to us simply as a giant green head with two purple gumballs acting as "eyes." Don't let the gamma-inspired color scheme fool you -- much like the terminally yellow Spongebob, Hulk also tastes like lemonade. With a painted-on scowl and a drooping brow that identifies his inner rage, the Incredible Hulk's Ice Head is a formidable foe. As for Spongebob's frosty funpop, it's a little more haphazard than Hulk, though adequately "bumpy" along the sides with two plain black gumball eyes. Black isn't a typical color even in those machine-refiller boxes, so Spongebob's eyes seem way more important than Hulk's. Still, neither will be judged on any of this. It's a dangerous game they're playing, but the rules are simple. They just gotta make sure they ain't the first to melt to death.

Chris says:

I went to the Blue Bunny website (makers of the ice cream treats Mark has bought) and they don't feature the ice-cream truck items there, but they do at their Bomb Pop website. And, according to the pictures on the website, the eyes are supposed to be centered.

On behalf of those who initially thought the manufacturers were trying to emulate the Tweety wrapper, we concede.

Link

I'm grabbing a bunch of little detail snapshots while I'm wandering around through Central America. Here's the growing flickr set of little stuff that adds up to my memory of texture here. Most of what's uploaded now is from urban areas, though I've been elsewhere, too. Includes: internet laundry, tortillas and more tortillas, a bus named Daniela, telephone utility covers in the street, an interesting "no pets" sign, local citizen journalism, baby cocos, coca cola chickens, trompe l'oeil en el mercado, political paint jobs, lots of patterns to recognize, ethanol rides, pan dulce, economic indicators, footwear for honkys, and salas de video juegos.

Previously: Google Maps is spying on my cat, says freaked out BB reader

Reader comment: tucker g perry says,

Perhaps this would best be referred to as LOLcaching.

Update: At long last! Here it is! Anonymous found this on Google Maps with the zoom feature, and shares with all Boingkind:

Merlin Mann of 43 Folders writes about "the strange allure (and false hope) of email bankruptcy," which is Lawrence Lessig's last-resort method for getting out from under thousands of emails waiting for replies. I especially liked this part:

Email is such a funny thing. People hand you these single little messages that are no heavier than a river pebble. But it doesn’t take long until you have acquired a pile of pebbles that’s taller than you and heavier than you could ever hope to move, even if you wanted to do it over a few dozen trips. But for the person who took the time to hand you their pebble, it seems outrageous that you can’t handle that one tiny thing. “What ‘pile’? It’s just a fucking pebble!”

Link

I have no need for this wireless video teddy bear, but I think it would be fun to get it anyway and mod the body. It's only $53.99. The fact that the camera is where the bear's nose belongs makes me think you could easily turn this into an all-seeing cyclops doll. Link (Via Popgadget)

BoingBoing reader Mary Kalin-Casey says,

The new Google Maps zoom feature zooms all the way into my living room window. See cat on cat perch.

I'm all for mapping, but this feature literally gives me the shakes. I feel like I need to close all my curtains now. I'm going to look into whether it's possible for a person to have pictures of their home removed from Google Maps. Meanwhile, I'm happy to show bb readers the photo in the interest of illustrating creepy privacy violations. Heck, the whole world can see him anyway.

Link. Dang, it's so detailed, I can even see he's a tabby!

Reader comment: Rich Gibson warns us of the global threat of "delusional cat fanciers," and their dastardly luddite cartel:

Mary Kalin-Casey may be sane, but I doubt it, and it is a Good Thing that Google now provides 'Street View.' Google, and contractors (and several other mapping companies), are driving vans with cameras up and down the streets.

Please don't support the paranoid rantings of deluded cat fanciers who want to have public data censored to serve their own psychosis.

You don't have a right to 'privacy' over what can be seen while driving the speed limit past your house. Boing Boing regularly blogs about evil security guards beating down poor photographers who just want to take pictures of pretty buildings. How is the case made different when the 'poor photographer' is replaced by a van of camers, and the evil security guard is replaced by a person who, if not evil, is certainly a cat owner, which is pretty suspicious in itself?

danKissam says,

I was looking at it and it dawned on me: if she succeeds on removing her home from Street View it will be a real-world '404: site not found' proffered by Google. I kind of hope this happens as I'm sure it would be surreal.

KevinQ says,

There could be even more privacy issues than "they can see my cat." For example, the link provided here shows a car sitting in a driveway, and you can read the car's license plate clearly. I don't know exactly what you could do with that information, but there it is.

Daniel Terdiman from CNET News says,

Riffing on--and linking to--your post about the cat that is being spied on using Google Maps Street View, we're looking for submissions for the best examples of this dynamic, and we'll post a story and/or gallery of the best in a couple of days. Link.

Anonymous says,

Here is a humorous image concerning a method to ask Google not to show your home (that's the 'grammar' used in the robots.txt standard to ask robots not to index your website).

Pen Waggener says,

Interesting story. Has nobody else noticed that there's a _person_ in the crosswalk beside this apartment complex? Following the link in the story to Google Maps, Zoom out 1, then click the little arrow to the right to see her, and then you can zoom in 4 times to clearly make out a high level of facial detail.

Mark says,

The ironic thing about Mary Kalin-Casey's submission, is that her name and home address are now spread across the internet, which is a much more significant privacy concern than a view of a cat in her window.

Bob Arctor says,

Here's a detailed picture of my neighbor taking out the trash. At least he can use it to prove to his roommates that he actually does some work around the house!

Invisible BB reader says,

There is a way to have an image removed from Google's Street View -- or at least an interfact that allows you to report an inappropriate image. If you hit "Street View help" from the image window, there's a link at the bottom that allows you to "Report inappropriate image." One of the options is "this image infringes on my privacy."

This link will allow the cat in question to report the image as "inappropriate".

Incidentally, a little ways south down the street, the camera captured a lady getting into her car. You can identify her, and her license plate, with excellent clarity. Left as an exercise for the reader.

David Herman says,

I think this lady may have a cat in a plastic bag. She's right down the street from the cat in the window.

Mike Outmesguine says,

Looking into the Belagio in Vegas... Why? Link.

Scott Beale says,

Just to follow-up on your post about the new Google Maps Street View feature, someone has located San Francisco's legendary Frank Chu and another person is trying to track down world famous street busker Bushman. Link.

Goudenvacht50 says,

Here's a toll booth operator at the Golden Gate Bridge. This is truly frightening.

Elinor Mills of CNET News.com says,

I wrote this article before being alerted to your item on Google maps spying on a reader's cat. Coincidentally, I included photos of my former front windows where you can see the pillows my cats loved to sit in, but no cats in the shot. Pity.

Bryan Eisenberg says,

We just posted on our blog pictures of the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel where cameras are not permitted since 9/11 but street view has images with traffic.

Bill (Digitaleejit) says,

Of all the times to be coming out of a strip club: Link.

Ryan Singel from Wired News says,

I'll do Daniel one better. Come submit and vote on your favorite inadvertant, urban snapshots here: Link.

edmDusty says,

6th and Howard (by the building with chairs and shit on it) has been blacked out for some reason on google street level maps. Link.

RayK

I took a "walk" in downtown Denver using Google Maps' Street View, and i discovered a couple of buildings that "disappear" when you get close to them. It's really interesting to look at and makes me think of the real-world "404: Site Not Found" that danKissam mentions. Link.

Anonymous says,

2 fellows going into the cannabis club "Sanctuary" at 669 Ofarrell in San Francisco: Link. zoom out and scroll to the left a little to see the address. Pity they didn't have their marijuana leaf/physician's cross thingie sign out. You can obscure their face a little more by going one click west.

See also:

Google Maps Zoom and kitty on perch: the inevitable LOLcatting

Bbum says: "I had the folks at roastmyweenie.com cut me a Cthulhu Hot Dog roaster on a water jet based cutter. Works really really well." Link

The Wall Gear Clock (out of stock) is pretty snappy. I'm a sucker for any exposed clockwork mechanisms. Link (via OhGizmo)

BoingBoing reader Madeline says,

A group called "Warriors for Innocence" has approached Six Apart, the company that owns LiveJournal (arguably the most popular fandom blog service online) demanding that certain journals be purged. These journals contain, among other things, fanfiction containing slash and incest. According to WFI, the goal is to purge LJ of all references to child molestation, incest, child pornography, and pedophilia. In short, the targets are ostensibly "real-life" predators. But out of the purges that have taken place, flesh-and-blood predators rank low on the list. Mostly, fandom and fanfiction communities have been the victims.

There are many troubling things about this story -- not least of which is the fact that child rapists get together online and swap stories -- but one of the things that bothers me most is the fact that anyone who has been a victim of incest, child rape, paedophilia, or other similar abuse might find his or her journal deleted. If, for example, one has listed "incest" in the interests column alongside "activism," the journal might still be purged. And if one dares to actually have a community online for survivors of incest, it might suffer a similar fate.

Link to to a list of deleted journals and communities, as well as a minor history of the event and links to other, more in-depth posts. Other relevant links include: rumours of the purge, and this conversation between WFI and an LJ user whose community was deleted; this post is possibly the best.

The "Warriors for Innocence" website is located at http://www.warriorsforinnocence.org/search/label/LiveJournal. WARNING: some BB readers report that the site is spyware-laden, and some claim to have been infected by visiting.

The "Warriors" maintain they're only going after sites that promote real-world acts of sexual violence against children, not "Lolita sites" or "survivor sites." They say they're only asking LJ to enforce its current terms of service with users who are abusing the system, and committing criminal acts.

Warren Ellis has a related post here, and he says:

Personally? I have an eleven year old daughter. I’m with Warriors For Innocence on this.

Update: More from Warren:

For what it’s worth: Warriors For Innocence come off a little weird, to say the least. Mind you, so does Andrew Vachss. But LiveJournal’s response bears more study. Their sloppy, blanket response indicates that they simply don’t have a process in place to differentiate between nonce-news and people writing about furry widdle brother and sister unicorns who love each other very much.

The outcome, therefore, has been pure comedy, with comments that read very much like “I love spending all day reading about forced underage incestuous sex with squirrel fisting on top, but of course I’m not interested in that in real life — that’d make me a pervert!”

LiveJournal is part of Six Apart, which has in times past proved itself to be, shall we say, socially backwards. They’re not good at dealing with people. The questions of importance are less about the somewhat gung-ho and poorly informed Warriors For Innocence, and more about the panicked spasm LiveJournal had, that appears to have had very little thought put into it.

Update 2: Warren Ellis has decided to stop updating his LiveJournal content until "LiveJournal/Six Apart work out how to tell the difference between fantasy fiction communities/support groups/fashion discussion communities/survivor histories and actual criminal use and traffic." Link. To all the idiots flaming him for "backtracking" or "eating crow" -- I don't think that's what happened here at all. Grow up, this is what people do on blogs. They post what they observe, as they observe it, and detail their understanding as it evolves.

Reader comment: sea0tter12 says,

Here's a news article describing the LJ strikethru, complete with quotes from LJ officials.

The Slurpr is a giant, homemade WiFi access-point that uses several WiFi cards to grab all the open networks it can see and combines them into a single Internet feed for your network. Mark Hoekstra, the maker is taking pre-orders for €1000.

Well, the idea is to bundle all the traffic from these six wireless network interfaces (and maybe a wired interface too) into one big connection which, if you keep the wireless interfaces down to five, otherwise you need to hook up to it by wire, could be retransmitted into one powerful new connection! *^_^*

The box at this moment happily boots Debian and the bonding of all the network traffic is done in a load-balancing way, but the other way around. Instead of balancing the load of one connection over multiple servers, we balance multiple connections into one device.

Link

In January, 1933, Popular Science reported on a "repeating match" that could be lighted up to 100 times. Like the secrets of the pyramids and the the ancient technique for finding happiness while scrubbing in a field for root vegetables, the details of this technology have been lost to the mists of time.

If you borrow a match from the gentleman pictured at the right, he is likely to want it back! He is one of the users of a new repeating match recently produced in England. The match may be struck and relighted more than a hundred times. A small box, coated with a special composition used as the striking surface, serves as a holder for the repeating match when it is not in use. The device is much thicker than an ordinary parlor match and gives a correspondingly larger flame.

Link

Update: Spoilsport Hens points out, "Not really lost in the mists of time."

Update 2: Emily sez, "My friend returned from a year spent teaching in China last summer, and brought me this bitchin' Mao Tse-tung reuseable match. Everyone I showed it to seemed temporarily amazed by it. I used it for a few months before it stopped working. On the side it says it's made by the Nanyang Yanju Co, LTD. As you can see from the picture, you take the little match stick out from the top, and then strike it on the side. I believe it's just your basic flint and steel."

The Canadian Parliament won't let you post video of its proceedings online without permission -- and there's no exception for political speech or parody. To make the point, they've gone after a parody video of a Parliamentary committee hearing appearance by Robert Rabinovitz, the president of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

As if on cue, the Tea Makers Blog reports that the House of Commons (presumably acting on behalf of the Speaker) sent a notice and takedown notification to YouTube, asking it to remove a parody video of a Parliamentary committee hearing appearance by CBC President Robert Rabinovitz. The clip has been reposted to MySpace, yet the incident highlights the fact that the concerns associated with this form of online speech are real. Without a change to the rules, takedown notices involving political speech are likely to become more common in Canada.

Link

Snip from a Variety article today:

In the wake of the controversial shutdown of Venezuela's oldest broadcaster, RCTV, on Sunday night, President Hugo Chavez's government is stepping up the pressure on other local webs and even rattling its saber at CNN for any hint of opposition to its strong-arm tactics.

Minister of Communications William Lara has cited two segments aired by CNN, one depicting crowds of protesters and another placing a photo of Chavez alongside that of a late Al Qaeda leader and of some demonstrations in China. Lara claims latter images were meant to "associate the image of Chavez with that of violence and death" while footage of a demonstration was in fact taken in Acapulco when people took to the streets after the killing of a journalist and was not, as CNN claimed, of protests against the closure of RCTV (Radio Caracas Television).

Lara claimed these images formed part of an international campaign to discredit and attack Venezuela, which would take its case against CNN to an international court.

Link.

That bit about suing CNN (or, perhaps, parent company Time Warner) in "an international court" intrigues me. Is there some global television justice tribunal I don't know about? Does Judge Judy preside? Can I file a complaint there about the person who decided that the Sopranos must sleep with the fishes, come June 10?

More on the dispute with CNN, and on protests in Venezuela related the Chavez government's recent media-related actions, in this Times UK story: Link.

Here's a CNN piece, with a response statement from the network: Link.

Previously on BoingBoing:

Venezuela: Chavez to shut down a second TV station

Venezuelan media crackdown: the other POV

Venezuelan media crackdown: TV anchors sign off, mouths shut

(posted on the road in central america / xeni)

Reader comment: RobW says,

It's perhaps only an amusing coincidence, but Otto Neustald worked for CNN. He was the CNN reporter in Venezuela who alleged that coup leaders gave a videotaped press-conference calling for Chavez's resignation because of the deaths of anti-Chavez protestors, hours _before_ those deaths had occurred, while requesting that the networks play the video at a later time.

This link is to the Journeyman documentary "Venezuela: Anatomy of a Coup" which includes Neustald's allegations and is in any case an excellent overview of events surrounding the coup attempt for people who can't get hold of "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised". The Journeyman doco was broadcast on Australia's second government network SBS in October 2002, first in two parts on their foreign news current affairs program "Dateline" then again by popular request in a single showing.

Colleen M. Costello, from World Organization for Human Rights USA, writes:

Our human rights group, which filed suit against Yahoo! last month for its complicity in sharing identifying information of internet users with Chinese authorities, leading to their arrest and long-term detention, has just added another plaintiff to the lawsuit. Shi Tao, a well-known Chinese journalist, joins Wang Xiaoning and Wang's wife, Yu Ling, in their lawsuit against U.S. internet company Yahoo! Inc. and its subsidiaries.

Shi Tao was sentenced to prison by a Chinese court in 2004. The court's verdict, just like the verdict issued against Wang Xiaoning in 2003, cited evidence tying Yahoo! to Shi Tao's arrest by Chinese authorities. Specifically, Yahoo! handed over Shi Tao's identification information, including his anonymous internet user ID, as well as the location from which he had sent his e-mails. Yahoo!'s cooperation with Chinese authorities led to Shi Tao's arrest, detention, and long-term imprisonment. Both Shi Tao and Wang Xiaoning are currently serving ten year sentences for their expression of free speech via the internet in China.

Here's the group's legal complaint, from April: PDF link. Here's detailed information about their lawsuit against Yahoo: Link.

I don't see any specifics about today's news from this organization online, so I'll just dump their press release in entirety here, after the jump. (posted from the road in Central America / Xeni)