Dwiff sez, "Pissed off filmmaker BJ DAVIS sues film reviewer for panning his film - and uses DMCA to do it. I guess nobody told BJ that all's fair in Fair Use & war..."

In case you haven’t heard, director and producer BJ Davis and his wife Julia Davis want to sue me over a negative review I wrote of the mob comedy Forget About It. Seriously. Despite BJ officially serving me “legal notice” through an e-mail, I still don’t know what I’m being sued over. The original e-mail sent to me by Julia Davis said, and I quote, “illegally using artwork to the feature film “Forget About It” and disseminating fraudulent, misleading and materially false information about the film in question.” For one, using artwork in a review would undoubtedly fall under fair use laws. Secondly, Allumination Filmworks likely owns the artwork used to promote Forget About It to U.S. DVD buyers. And third, court papers posted at Big Screen Entertainment’s website cast doubt on whether or not BJ Davis even owns the movie’s copyright at this point.

Link

Today in my ongoing series of photos from my travels: some of the kick-ass carny art from Vienna's Prater Park, a huge pleasure park in the middle of town that's been going since 1765. Today, Prater sports many traditional pleasure pier spook houses and the like, and tons of vintage 70s airbrush art advertising the wares. Link

Josh sez, "The folks at BMC (Black Mustang Club) automotive forum wanted to put together a calendar featuring members' cars, and print it through CafePress. Photos were submitted, the layout was set, and... CafePress notifies the site admin that pictures of Ford cars cannot be printed. Not just Ford logos, not just Mustang logos, the car -as a whole- is a Ford trademark and its image can't be reproduced without permission. So even though Ford has a lineup of enthusiasts who want to show off their Ford cars, the company is bent on alienating them. 'Them' being some of the most loyal owners and future buyers that they have. Or rather, that they had, because many have decided that they will not be doing business with Ford again if this matter isn't resolved."

I got some more info from the folks at cafepress and according to them, a law firm representing Ford contacted them saying that our calendar pics (and our club's event logos - anything with one of our cars in it) infringes on Ford's trademarks which include the use of images of THEIR vehicles. Also, Ford claims that all the images, logos and designs OUR graphics team made for the BMC events using Danni are theirs as well. Funny, I thought Danni's title had my name on it ... and I thought you guys owned your cars ... and, well ... I'm not even going to get into how wrong and unfair I feel this whole thing is as I'd be typing for hours, but I wholeheartedly echo everything you guys have been saying all afternoon. I'm not letting this go un-addressed and I'll keep you guys posted as I get to work on this.

I'm sorry, but at this point we will not be producing the 2008 BMC Calendar, featuring our 2007 Members of the Month, solely due to Ford Motor Company's claim that THEY own all rights to the photos YOU take of YOUR car. I hope to resolve this soon, and be able to provide the calendar and other BMC merchandise that you guys want and deserve! This thread will remain open for you to comment however you wish, and I'll update it as needed.

Link

P2P Consortium's interview with Rick Falkvinge, leader of the Swedish Pirate Party, is really meaty and interesting. Falkvinge devotes most of it to an incredibly frank discussion of the long-term strategy and tactics of the copyfight, where it will all go when 100/100mbit broadband is everywhere. This guy isn't (just) a bomb-throwing (metaphorically speaking) anarchist, he's a serious tactician and a sharp rhetorician, too:

What was remarkable was that this was the point where the enemy - forces that want to lock down culture and knowledge at the cost of total surveillance - realized they were under a serious attack, and mounted every piece of defense they could muster. For the first time, we saw everything they could bring to the battle.

And it was... nothing. Not even a fizzle. All they can say is "thief, we have our rights, we want our rights, nothing must change, we want more money, thief, thief, thief". And shove some poor artists in front of them to deliver the message. Whereas we are talking about scarcity vs. abundance, monopolies, the nature of property, 500-year historical perspectives on culture and knowledge, incentive structures, economic theory, disruptive technologies, etc. The difference in intellectual levels between the sides is astounding.

Link (via /.)

Over at Laughing Squid, Scott Beale has a neat post up about these fried-egg molds from Urban Trend that allow you to cook your sunny side ups in the shape of a gun. There's a lethal cholesterol joke in here somewhere, but my arteries are too clogged to think it up. Link.

Update: BB reader Jere7my came up with the best description for fried eggs prepared this way: "over-Uzi." And if you like guns with your eggs, you may also like grenades with your waffles.

The latest volume of the magazine Index on Censorship focuses on issues related to free speech online. I'm among the contributors. Here's a snip from the issue overview:

The Internet was supposed to spell the end of censorship – instead governments now have unprecedented possibilities for controlling what we do and what we read. But this is a revolution in free expression that can’t be stopped. Index examines the explosion in communication, the rise in new forms of censorship (and the ways to get round them) and the impact on social attitudes.

I wrote about what I've learned about internet filtering technology from my experience co-editing BoingBoing, which is routinely blocked by various censorware applications for all sorts of silly, inaccurate reasons. Nearly every day (certainly every week) we receive a perplexed message from a would-be reader asking "why is BoingBoing blocked from [library/airport/hotel/whatever place name] in [location name somewhere in the world]?"

Subscribe to the Index in print here. Longer list of other contributors to this issue, and their chosen topics, after the jump. This is a fine publication, and a fine bunch of writers from around the world sharing important ideas and testimonies -- what a shame the contents are not freely available online.

Since last June, I've been podcasting a weekly reading from Bruce Sterling's 1992 classic journalistic history of the founding of the online civil liberties movement, The Hacker Crackdown, which chronicles the events that led to the founding of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, my former employer. Hacker Crackdown was the first book I ever read electronically, the first piece of "literary freeware" I ever met. It's a fantastic book and it was a fantastic read.

Yes, I'm done. It took 28 installments, and included some of the strangest stuff I ever read aloud (for example, a mind-bogglingly bureaucratic phone company document around which a great deal of controversy once swirled). Now that I've finished it, I've put together an XML feed for all 28 parts, as well as direct MP3 and Ogg download links -- it's all under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license. I hope someone'll download all the parts, normalize 'em, trim out the intros, and piece them together into a single file.

I need to thank Bruce Sterling here for his gracious permission in allowing me to read this aloud. Reading Hacker Crackdown back in 1992 -- actually, 1991, since I got hold of an advance copy through Bakka, the bookstore I worked at in Toronto -- absolutely and permanently transformed my life. Reading it again has made me revisit more than a decade's worth of striving, writing, imaginging, working and agitating. This book's an education and a half.

Thanks, Bruce.

MP3s: Part 01, Part 02, Part 03, Part 04, Part 05, Part 06, Part 07, Part 08, Part 09, Part 10, Part 11, Part 12, Part 13, Part 14, Part 15, Part 16, Part 17, Part 18, Part 19, Part 20, Part 21, Part 22, Part 23, Part 24, Part 25, Part 26, Part 27, Part 28,

Ogg: Part 01, Part 02, Part 03, Part 04, Part 05, Part 06, Part 07, Part 08, Part 09, Part 10, Part 11, Part 12, Part 13, Part 14, Part 15, Part 16, Part 17, Part 18, Part 19, Part 20, Part 21, Part 22, Part 23, Part 24, Part 25, Part 26 Part 27 Part 28

Podcast feed of the whole book

My podcast feed

Our friends at the gaming blog Kotaku did a neat feature in which workspaces of gaming biz / blogging biz / news biz folks are displayed, with little descriptions about the person behind them: Link. Featured workaholics include Sid Meier, Ken Levin, Dylan Jobe, Peter Molyneux, some Naughty Dog and Sims folk, and many others -- including BB Gadgets' own Joel Johnson, and yours truly. One snap from my "office" on the road for the past few weeks in the rural Guatemalan highlands is above. Full description of each item in that massive pile of crap after the jump. (thanks, Brian Crecente and Brian Ashcraft!)