News & Media

By J. DeVoy Following up on the leaked Republican Study Committee report on copyright law reform from a few months ago, The American Conservative offers this analysis on the political right’s flirtation with scaling back certain copyright protections, such as the duration of copyright and statutory damages of up to $150,000 that can be wielded like a cudgel against small-time infringers.  From the piece: Today’s copyright law exhibits a pattern typical of crony capitalism—regulations restrict new entrants and creators (DJs and other remix artists in the music field, for instance) to shore up the market position of current players (record

When a university student performed fellatio in a photobooth at her sorority’s formal ball, she probably wasn’t thinking about copyright issues.  When the images were, unbeknownst to her, uploaded onto facebook, she probably wasn’t thinking about the fact that the person who captured the images took the rights, or the complexity of who may own the images, depending on how they were created, as we’ve seen before.  (The automatic upload of these images to facebook is very common for these services, and may be governed by their contracts with the entities holding the events where they provide services.)  She was

By J. DeVoy Pubic lice (better known as “crabs”) aren’t necessarily going extinct, but reported cases are way down due to brazilian waxing and the pubic grooming trends staked out by the porn industry.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wv_CGlzRPhw]

According to the Today Show, “pubic hair grooming injuries jumped five-fold between 2000 and 2010.”  Good god, people!  Be careful down there!

In Sullivan, Indiana, the local high school declined to ban gays and lesbians from bringing their same-sex dates to the prom. So, a group of “christian” students and their parents decided to have an “alternate prom,” where the queers wouldn’t go fagging up the place. Or something like that. (source) To help “preserve their beliefs,” parents, students, and other homasssholes got together where most homassholes congregate, at a church — the Sullivan First Christian Church. Sidebar — I am not going to use the word “homophobic” anymore. That’s a really stupid term. There’s a quote going around that says “Phobia”

USA Today Reports: PORT MORESBY, Papua New Guinea (AP) — A mob stripped, tortured and bound a woman accused of witchcraft, then burned her alive in front of hundreds of witnesses in a Papua New Guinea town, police said Friday after one of the highest profile sorcery-related murders in this South Pacific island nation. … Kepari Leniata, a 20-year-old mother, had been accused of sorcery by relatives of a 6-year-old boy who died in the hospital the day before. She was tortured with a hot iron rod, bound, doused in gasoline, then set alight on a pile of car tires

On this day in 1512, the Spanish killed Hatuey, the Taíno chief. He led an armed insurrection in Hispaniola for about 10 years, and then in 1511 he and 400 resistance fighters landed in Cuba, hoping to raise an armed insurrection against the Spanish. The Dominican priest Bartolomé de Las Casas documented Hatuey’s motivation: “The intruders worship gold, fight and kill, usurp our land and makes us slaves. For gold, slaves, and land they fight and kill; for these they persecute us and that is why we have to throw them into the sea.” Hatuey’s forces had little chance to

Small time blogger writes something mildly lame about Richard Marx. Richard Marx appears to get overly bent out of shape about it. Marx and blogger go back and forth. And, just when you think you want to root for the little guy, just when you think this is a case of someone being thin-skinned, Richard Marx wins you over… or at least he won me over. Read Richard Marx hates my guts

Masnick, over at TechDirt has a philosophy that, if you oversimplify it, boils down to “even if people give your stuff away for free, you can still make money charging for it if you give superior service.” Here is proof that he is right. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJfYAJJYMqg] Well, I dunno… Mike also says stuff like “if you can’t compete with free, [something bad about you].” But, by the way the hippie gets all upset, it looks like the opposite. Free can’t compete with paid! Meh, lets just stick with Masnick proven right.

George Stephanopoulos thought this was Morgan Freeman. Idiot… anyone can tell that this is Nelson Mandela and Condoleeza Rice.