England's buildings are littered with blue plaques placed by English Heritage, commemorating the birthplaces of important people, famous architecture and so on. English Heretics put Black Plaques up to commemorate an entirely different kind of heritage:

The Black Plaque scheme was instigated in October 2003. Its purpose is to commemorate and draw public attention to historical figures in such diverse fields as sorcery, the Royal Art, left hand path occultism and witchcraft, as well as the mentally infirm: tortured poets, psychopaths and village idiots.

Link (via Oblink)

I just finished watching the torrent of episode five of this season of The IT Crowd, the awesome geek sitcom from Graham Linehan, the creator of the uproariously funny Father Ted. On his blog Graham noted that this wasn't the best episode ever, but it still made me laugh out loud. There's a lot more transvestitism and boob-jokes in this episode than IT jokes, alas, but there's still plenty of funny stuff here. I ended up watching the torrent as usual -- though Channel 4 has a video-on-demand service, the (ineffective) DRM means that the easiest way to watch this on Linux is to get it via P2P. Torrent Link (Thanks, Dave!)

(Disclosure: I was an unpaid consultant on series one of The IT Crowd, and my fiancee works at Channel Four)

See also:
IT Crowd Season 2, Episode 4 -- and DVD! IT Crowd Season 2, Episode 3: Great anti-piracy PSA sendup
IT Crowd Season 2, Episode 2 -- keyboard-destroying nerd sitcom
The IT Crowd -- season two, episode one

James Surowiecki (author of the great book The Wisdom of Crowds) has a fantastic, tight little article about copyright and fashion in this week's New Yorker. Fashion designs aren't covered by copyright, and this means that couture designs are knocked off and sold at huge discounts in department stores and shops like H&M within seconds of appearing on the runway. This upsets many designers, but there's plenty of evidence that it's good for the industry as a whole -- the knockoffs sell to people who'd never buy the couture originals, so they don't really cannibalize sales; what's more, by making a hot new look ubiquitous, the knockoffs contribute to making it look tired and boring, which creates the market for next season's clothes.

This reminds me of the story of database copyrights, which exist in Europe and not the in the USA. Advocates for these monopolies argue that a copyright spurs investment and makes the industry bigger. But the fact is that the European database industry has stagnated over the past 25 years, while the US industry has grown 25-fold, and the biggest difference between the two is that European firms can prevent competition by using the database right.

Even though the evidence is that a database right has retarded the industry and limited growth, European database firms still profess a great love for their regulatory monopoly, and American firms still bemoan its absence.

The recipients of regulatory monopolies are like kids getting candy: they all believe that they need more, and nothing will convince them otherwise. But monopolies end up costing the public and the next generation of creators: by limiting competition in databases, Europe has created a smaller and less useful database industry. By encouraging competition in fashion, the world has created an easy means for all of us to get cheap clothes, while creating a huge amount of investment in the "next thing," making it easier for new designers to break into the field.

Designers' frustration at seeing their ideas mimicked is understandable. But this is a classic case where the cure may be worse than the disease. There's little evidence that knockoffs are damaging the business. Fashion sales have remained more than healthy--estimates value the global luxury-fashion sector at a hundred and thirty billion dollars-- and the high-end firms that so often see their designs copied have become stronger. More striking, a recent paper by the law professors Kal Raustiala and Christopher Sprigman suggests that weak intellectual-property rules, far from hurting the fashion industry, have instead been integral to its success. The professors call this effect "the piracy paradox."

The paradox stems from the basic dilemma that underpins the economics of fashion: for the industry to keep growing, customers must like this year's designs, but they must also become dissatisfied with them, so that they'll buy next year's. Many other consumer businesses face a similar problem, but fashion--unlike, say, the technology industry--can't rely on improvements in power and performance to make old products obsolete. Raustiala and Sprigman argue persuasively that, in fashion, it's copying that serves this function, bringing about what they call "induced obsolescence." Copying enables designs and styles to move quickly from early adopters to the masses. And since no one cool wants to keep wearing something after everybody else is wearing it, the copying of designs helps fuel the incessant demand for something new.

Link (Thanks, Scott!)

In the new issue of Arthur, Douglas Rushkoff calls bullshit on alternative theories about 9/11. Not only that, he argues that the endless speculation is bad for the counterculture. From Doug's column:

Yes, I believe that 9-11 theorizing debilitates the counterculture. It robs us of some potentially creative thinkers. It replaces truly important questions with trivial ones. It marginalizes more constructive investigation of American participation in the development of Al Qaeda as well as its subsequent aggravation. And perhaps worst of all, it is precisely the sort of activity that government disinformation specialists would want us to be involved with.

9-11 theorists are unwittingly performing as the unpaid minions of the administration’s propaganda wing. (At least most of them are unpaid; no doubt, some of the loudest are working as contractors for the same agencies whose activities they pretend to deconstruct.) That’s why, instead of nodding along with their long-winded, preposterous yarns under the false belief that any critique is better than no critique, we—the informed, intelligent, and reasonable members of the war resistance—must instead disassociate ourselves from this drivel. In other words, we must draw the line between the kind of analysis done by Greg Palast and that done by Pilots for Truth. If we don’t apply discipline to our thinking, we risk falling into the trap that even some of our best intellectuals have—like Harper’s editor Lewis Lapham, who on reading a bit too much 9-11 conspiracy, has concluded that it all has some merit.

I’m all for supposing. It’s how the best science fiction gets written, the best science gets speculated, the best innovations get developed, and the wildest thoughts get hatched. But forensics is a different beast. As any detective will tell you, the most straightforward solution is usually the right one...

Link

Dig this prototype Japanese arcade game where you get to be a witch flying around on a broom. Certainly more imaginative than a steering wheel controller. Joel has more over at BB Gadgets.
Link to BBG post, Discuss

Our pals at eBoy, creators of the Boing Boing logo and our mascots Jackhammer Jill and the GadgetBeast, designed a wonderful line of PEECOL toys for Kidrobot. The first figurines will be available in a few weeks for $10. Congrats, eBoy! I wish people looked like this in real life. Link

The Harvard Coop bookstore had the police remove students who were writing down the ISBNs of textbooks, in defiance of the store's ridiculous position that ISBNs are "property." Of course, the store is private property (albeit property owned by a co-op that is supposed to be serving Harvard students) and they're free to demand that students leave the premises, but busting students whose "crime" is writing down detailed information about which books Harvard students are required to read in order to get their degree is hardly appropriate for a store that nominally serves the students' interests.

The Harvard Coop called police yesterday after three undergraduates collecting information for a student-run textbook-shopping Web site refused to leave the bookstore. The two Cambridge police officers who arrived allowed the students to continue copying down book identification numbers, which they did for two and a half hours before leaving on their own terms.

The Cambridge Police Department said its officers removed three or four males from the Coop's third floor, where textbooks are sold, at a Coop official's request after receiving a call from the store at 4:34 p.m. But a Crimson reporter and photographer present did not see anyone removed, and the three students collecting data for the Crimson Reading Web site also said they did not witness the police escorting anyone from the floor.

Link

Random House and eMusic have begun to sell DRM-free audiobooks on their site. This is pretty big news, since iTunes has an exclusive deal with Audible for ebooks, and Audible won't sell non-DRM ebooks (though they have other non-DRM products), even when the author doesn't want any DRM. I wonder if Random House will buy audio rights from authors who refuse to allow their works to be released with DRM on iTunes, though.

Back when i still used a Mac, I bought tons of Audible books -- thousands of dollars' worth. When I switched to Linux, those books were the hardest part of my switch. I had to re-encode each one as an MP3 by playing it back while running AudioHijack, which took almost a month, using two Powerbooks at once.

So these days, I buy most of my audiobooks on CD and rip them, then give away the discs to charity, which is kind of a pain in the ass, but it beats the alternative. Nice to know I can buy some titles from eMusic (though I'm still bummed that none of the major audiobook publshers will do DRM-free releases and that Apple won't allow non-DRM audiobook publishers to sell through the iTunes store). Link (Thanks, Ben!)

ThePirateBay has been digging through the enormous chunk of leaked email from MediaDefender, the sleazy enforcers used by the entertainment industry to fight P2P, and they've discovered evidence of illegal sabotage. So they're suing all the big movie and record comapnies in Sweden:

* Twentieth Century Fox, Sweden AB
* Emi Music Sweden AB
* Universal Music Group Sweden AB
* Universal Pictures Nordic AB
* Paramount Home Entertainment (Sweden) AB
* Atari Nordic AB
* Activision Nordic Filial Till Activision (Uk) Ltd
* Ubisoft Sweden AB
* Sony Bmg Music Entertainment (Sweden) AB
* Sony Pictures Home Entertainment Nordic AB

Link to Slashdot thread, Link to Pirate Bay thread

See also:
MediaDefender's source code leaked?
MediaDefender sends takedowns for leaked mail, gets savagely taunted
Giant email leak from MediaDefender -- MAFIAA hitmen

These vegetable animals (shown here: eggplant penguins) are incredible -- I imagine that getting kids to eat their veggies is much easier if said food is pre-sculpted into elaborate animals. Just think of the sound-effects you could make at the dinner table: "Oh God no, please don't eat me, ow ow ow!" Link (via IZ Reloaded)

Update: Thanks to Edd in the comments thread for identifying the source of these pix: Food for Thought, by Joost Elffers and Saxton Freymann.

This tutorial sets out the multi-step process by which you can stencil your clothes with bleach, working in inverse to create ever-lighter fabric sections by spraying on diluted bleach. Link (via IZ Reloaded)

It's a little early to be getting ready for Hallowe'en, but I really enjoyed this tutorial on making "witches' jars" for your Hallowe'en decor. They'd work just as well on the back shelf of your rec-room bar, after all. Link (via Neatorama)

Dafyd sez, "Several British MPs' personal websites and blogs (including that of the popular London mayoral candidate Boris Johnson) were forced offline earlier today when Alisher Usmanov, an Uzbek billionaire (he's the guy who bought an entire auction for £20m on Monday) complained about a blog posting by Craig Murray, a former British ambassador to Uzbekistan. Fasthosts, Murray's ISP, pulled the plug on his blog, apparently also killing the sites of several other customers.

"Murray is the author of the fascinating "Murder in Samarkand - A British Ambassador's Controversial Defiance of Tyranny in the War on Terror", which - to say the least - does not portray Usmanov in a good light. Schillings, the lawyers acting on behalf of Usmanov, have already succeeded in getting Murray's host to alter some of his posts to present Usmanov in a different light. They also appear to have sent threatening emails to owners of Arsenal Football Club fan sites (Usmanov is an Arsenal shareholder), threatening libel action if any of Murray's statements appear on their sites.

"The Google cache of Murray's blog makes for some interesting reading.

Yet More Schillings Bollocks

On my article about Alisher Usmanov which so incensed his lawyers Schillings, let me ask this question. Has anybody seen an argument posted or published from any credible source to argue that what I say about Usmanov is untrue?

I ask the question because one of the edits to this log my webhost made at Schillings' behest was to say that my claim was "regarded as false by many people". I have altered that edit, because there is no justification for such a claim. I have yet to see evidence of anybody, not one solitary person, arguing that I am wrong about Usmanov, other than his lawyers. Who are these "Many people", and why are they peculiarly silent?

I am very sympathetic to my webhost having to change things for Schillings, but not to the extent of altering things to become defamatory of me!!!

(Thanks, Dafyd!)

This music video for Masala's "Od Tarnobrzegu po Bangladesz" is a remarkable example of Polish "ragga-bhangra" music -- funky Indian music performed by Poles with a proper bollywood-style video. Link (via Beyond the Beyond)

This notional tiered-pricing graphic -- from a world where there's no Net Neutrality and ISPs are allowed to block various web-sites if the companies that run them don't pay for "priority delivery" -- scared the pants off of me. I think that this is what it's really all about -- not just charging three times for every bit on the Internet (you pay your ISP for your connection, the web-host pays its ISP for its connection, and then it pays again for "carriage" to your ISP), but rather, turning the Internet back into cable TV, where access to anything except MPAA content costs extra and is walled off from the majority of users. Link

Update: Thanks to Eripsa in the comments thread for identifying the original source of this: "this image was created in May 06 by Something Awful forum member echobucket in response to the failed neutrality amendment to the telecom bill drafted that summer."