3 hours a day
1000 beads
4 generations of pride
0 chances of huffing things to get high
Making an ad that creates this much discussion: Priceless
...er, wait...
I think the real problem I have with cutting off copyright at death is that it treats artists who work in this sort of media differently than it does any other person who creates something. Picasso could leave the paintings he had painted and still owned to his heirs. A founder/owner of a company can leave the company to her heirs. Why does the ownership of a writer's copyright have to end immediately at death?
I don't think a perpetual copyright is a good idea either, but it seems odd to impose a rule that copyright ends at death.
Avram - you can desire your family to own and control your work for some period past your death, even if your "primary" motivation is to create art. Few people have leaving a legacy as their primary motivation, yet their heirs can inherit the things they create. Is it fair to the writer or recording artist to make what they have created completely uninheritable?
Avram - why are you only looking at the after-death portion of the scenario? My point was that some people (Jane and others like her) have a strong desire to have their creations benefit their family after they die.
WRT incentive, what if Jane lived in a world where copyright did not pass to her heirs, but went into public domain immediately after her death? What if, based on that, she decided to work at some other profession, or only write part-time? Direct monetary payment to the creator is only one form of incentive. The knowledge that their heirs will be helped after they die is an incentive for some artists to continue to create. I use the word "helped" very specifically - Tolkien and Roddenberry aside, most writers do not make enough to leave their heirs on easy street forever.
Avram: Are you saying that direct payment to the artist is the only form of incentive? Jane holds that creating works that her heirs can inherit is something she wants and values. I would say it is arguable that the value she finds in inheritability is part of her incentive to create.
Just finished Hugh Laurie's The Gun Seller (I was curious as to how one of my favorite actors would write). As 'tis the Season, I'm on to Pratchett's Hogfather. Also on the pile from the library are a couple of Stephen Fry's (The Liar and The Hippopotamus). I finished Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norell a while back and started it on its journey to various interested friends.
MKK, IMHO the #1 Ladies books are different from the standard mystery-reader's fare. There is little peril and no murder. I would actually highly recommend the recorded books if you ever lean in that direction. The reader (Lisette LeCat) is absolutely marvelous - each character's voice is distinct and unique, without being over-the-top or distracting. If you want a sample, go to www.audible.com and have a listen.
Julia, I agree re: the Evanovich books. Unfortunately, I tried the latest on recorded books and on top of the author's increasing cartooniness, the reader was adding her own cartooniness (Grandma Mazur sounded like a chicken being strangled). I got about five minutes into it before the headache started. Ick.
Jon H: "President Pupa"?
or "President Papoose" or "The Presidential Burrito"?
Nah. The first is insulting to Native Americans and for the second, I like Mexican food.
Not disagreeing with you on any point.
In addition, his directional shift from "I have a problem sleeping, let's try this," to "Whee! Let's try using this as a party drug!" midway through the piece seemed particularly idiotic, especially since he was already having odd side effects.
Overall, the piece just gave me the impression that this guy thought he was a character in a Brett Easton Ellis novel. ecchh.
Errr...
...so I am wondering if my increasingly negative reaction to Provigil is about my own physical and mental constitution or just bad karma for using a drug in a way it's not supposed to be used.
Yeah. Bad karma because you're downing a prescription drug you have no business taking.
What an asshat.
Larry - I noticed that too, but I suspect it's just a routine ISP messup and Prof. B will be back on line lickety-split.
Eeek. Prof B. still not on. Should I be legitimately paranoid (if that isn't an oxymoron) now?
Speaking of denial of service spam attacks, free speech issues, and the Internet, I notice that the domain account for Michael Berube's blog has been suspended.
I'm doing some resentful nutbar conspiracy theorizing right about now.
Oh, geez.... I'm so sorry ginmar is going through this. Trying to figure out why these things are instituted (machine-mind vs. allegedly human) can be incredibly difficult. When I worked at NASDAQ, we had both web and e-mail filtering. I would get a new client (a NASDAQ-listed company), try to find out about their business, find out the site was blocked (for "sexual content" or some such thing) and run across that "If it's blocked, it must be a bad site" reaction from tech. And these sites were generally innocuous (nay, boring) telecoms providers.
In some ways, e-mail was even worse. One of the VP of marketing's internal, business e-mails was bounced back to her as "inappropriate." It turned out that the text she had included (for a mailer) was flagged because she didn't know the response phone number that was to be used and she had substituted XXX-XXX-XXXX for the number. At a different point, I had a bunch of clients who made the "Hot 100" list for growth companies. When I sent congratulations notices to them, I got a bunch of aggressive bounce-messages from the system telling me that I was trying to send inappropriate content. I contacted tech (and luckily got a semi-helpful human - I had to put the text of the suspect e-mail in a Word document just so I could e-mail it to him) and we finally determined that it was probably my three (three!) iterations of the word "hot" (it was the "Hot 100" list, after all) that tripped the switch.
I'm convinced these things foil more real work than anything else.
If the Gmail invites are coming fast and furious, I would personally love to have one. I kept out of the first plea-group, feeling that folks who just had kids and such were the more worthy recipients...
So you don't have to click through to my website to e-mail me, it's jill (at) writingortyping.com.
Thanks!
Fourth Amendment Bag - want, want, want.
That is all.
Yet the curious fact is that Kerry´s party with super delegates and efforts to limit ballot choice appears to be far less democratic than Bush´s. It´s not a big PR coup, but the Republicans have outmaneuvered the Democrats on democracy, and I hope Kerry´s gang are working on ways to fight back.
I'm sorry if I'm being dense here, but - "wha?"
Republicans, IMO, have outmaneuvered Democrats on gamesmanship, which is not the same as democracy. The people who are looking to get Nader on the ballot on behalf of the Republican Party have admitted that they are doing it for their candidate (which does not, in effect, enhance choice).
I say that their intent does matter, as does anyone else who is looking to get their candidate on the ballot.
YMMV.
It's a sad thing when Republicans are expanding choice and Democrats are restricting it.
Does intent count for nothing? The Republicans are not fighting to get Nader on the ballots because they are champions for choice. They are fighting to get Nader on the ballots because they believe that a Nader "alternative" helps their guy. So, does it matter that the Republicans are engaged in a cynical fight to cosmetically "expand choice" while truly attempting to game the eventual outcome to benefit their candidate?
...Those same plot conventions would cause a Regency romance to be thrown across the room (should a reader of Regency romance be so indelicate to do such a thing).
I read Regencies and I've been known to throw a few volumes in my time when they irritated me. In fact, one of them was a horrible Jane Austen mystery pastiche.
So, Alexander - you have a sample size of at least one. Make of it what you will. ;-)
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2005 | 6 |
| 2004 | 52 |
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