Not to split hairs or anything, but these aren't, (or mostly aren't: arguments could be made for some of them ("Horny Potter" as some sort of comment on sexuality in HP, the smoking bunny on the martinis/cigars/dames roots of the magazine), but one is hard pressed to see how "Cockblocker" is a commentary on "Blockbuster") parody protected under Trademark law (setting aside, for a moment the issue of whether they should be -- I think this sort of assault on branding qua branding should count as parody, but so far it's not a settled issued, leaning towards "no").
Of course, that doesn't allow the LAPD to shut it down. A court order from Blockbuster (or whoever), maybe, but at the moment, tarnishment and dilution aren't considered a good reason for police action.
So yes, boo on the LAPD (as if we needed any more reasons to boo that particular entity), boo on the sheeplike silence of Media (ditto), and, I also suppose, boo on my exam-exacerbated pedantry.
[Added during preview]: I suppose that Blockbuster's no-porn stance makes "Cockblocker" a sort of parodic statement. Similar arguments could be made for other changes (Faux for Fox), but not all comedic use of a trademark is parody, and I doubt that actual parody was in the mind of the creator for each logo. The gist of my post stands.
Sorry, Avram. (You really are right here: I was not aware that this went back up to the Federal Circuit. I meant 185 F.3d 1364 (Fed. Cir. 1999). Considering that this went back up in 292 F.3d 728 (Fed. Cir. 2002) (about prior use) and in the case you cited to (about damages). Whew. I suppose I should have said Juicy Whip (I). Or just given the cite.)
And Juicy Whip v. Orange Bang IS as much fun as the name. And quite clear reading, too. (Summary is kind of unimportant, but the point is that things can be patented, even if deceitful. It's one of my favorite, and most familiar, expressions of the rule that constitutional point of a power does not necessarily restrict individual effects of the power.)
actually I'm not sure that I envision them as rights-violators because I'm not sure that money for individual reproductions of an item of IP is an inherent right.
Not inherent, perhaps, but one that we choose to grant if we choose to grant copyright. If you don't like the exclusive reproduction right, then say so.
I thought I posted ~4pm yesterday something meant to be concillatory, but it seems I failed to post it.
I'm not accusing you of trying to tear down copyright, PNH, nor am I accusing copyfighters in general of doing so. I am accusing certain specific persons of doing so, and warning copyfighters in general to beware abandoning copyright (the crazies with the axes in my above metaphor were the content-cartels, and the hand-wringers preparing to jump ship and make for shore are the CC-folk (see below for my worries about EULAzation)).
And as far as my above statement being crap, I'm going to note that the purpose of the power is to promote innovation, but the individual uses of that power need not do so. Patent terms certainly stifle innovation for the duration of the term, but the bargain aids innovation down the line. And promoting progress and the useful arts is a fairly broad aim, anyway (I'm going to ref Juicy Whip here, just because I'll do so at nearly any opportunity).
And yes, treating IP as property is subtly weird-and-wrong, but it lets us do lots of neat stuff like sale, lease, partial versions of the above (life estates, fractional ownership, etc.) without creating a whole new doctrine of law, and I'm having trouble thinking of a model that gives us as many benefits as the property model for IP without about a gazillion times the work.
What really bothers me, though, is the abandonment, on both sides of the fight, of statutory copyright in favor of special contracts for every media-transfer interaction. The Creative Commons blocktext deeply worries me every time I see it, because it is a tacit abandonment of the middle (statutory) ground to the bad actors on the other side. Conversely, first-sale and fair-use excluding contracts found in things I buy worry me less (though I still hate 'em) because they're an admission by the content-owner that copyright protects these things and they need a special private contract with me to protect me from doing these things. I think the DMCA is stupid law, and would rather fight it in the courts and legislature than accede to it and its successors and have to contract into old-style copyright whenever I wanted it.
What's my point? To me, it seems like a lot of copyfighters are fighting against, rather than for, copyright.
And also, it's terribly important to distinguish between Grokster itself (protected under Betamax, but they're not going to stand on Betamax, so who the hell knows what the court will say, though I suspect it will be a Betamax-like standard) and infringing Grokster users (thieves if you envision IP as property, rights-violators if you envision it as something else).
Quite on the contrary, I think the purpose of our intellectual property laws should be to protect intellectual property. Promoting innovation is the purpose of intellectual property itself.
Whether or not there is a measurable harm to creators by infringers, we have chosen, as a society, to grant creators certain rights and the ability to protect those rights. Infringement is, because we have chosen propertization in order to motivate creators (rather than, say, subsidies or the patron system), theft. To say that there is no harm because that harm is not measurable is to attack any law that punishes anything that lacks a measurable economic harm (this is an attack that could certainly be made -- but if that is the attack being made here, we're talking about something much larger than IP law).
But of course, this is not really the issue. Tearing down copyright (a generally good system tainted by some rather stupid statutes) is not the way to defeat the bad actors among the content owners -- protecting copyright as a general scheme, as opposed to individual licenses for everything you read, listen to, or watch, is a good way to protect the rights of the reader/listener/watcher. What the MGM side of Grokster wants is an end to a settled principle of copyright law, the rule of Betamax, and the answer to that is to preserve Betamax and protect fair-use rights, not decide that because a crazy or two is hacking holes in the side of the ship, the ship already has holes and we'd better abandon it rather than simply taking the axes away from the idiots.
Chirelstein on Federal Taxation (can't remember the exact title)
Federal Rules of Evidence + Selected State Statutes
Park, Leonard & Goldberg: Evidence.
I was thinking about this just this morning, about how the European dominance of the world back in the day, and our current sole-superpower status are both due not to China being unable to project force or control, or further behind (although they did fall behind at one point, they have now more than caught up), but that the Chinese State was, and apparently is, simply uninterested in subduing the entire planet. All it takes is China declining to turn over maturing US bonds inton new US bonds, and our financial system collapses. All it takes is a decision on the part of the state apparatus to put the PLA to use in conquest, and our options become either going to thermonuclear war or allowing the PRC to control whatever it chooses.
But hey, it's not like we're going to be under their thumb or anything. It's just another transition in world-dominance. By my count, if this opportunity is taken, this makes China country #2 to hold the spot twice (I count Italy twice, once as Rome, once as non-unified rennaisance Italy).
I really don't have much to say, other than second-hand (If she weren't a more private person, I'd tell the story of my real-life-friend Teresa), about Evangelicals, though there is a parallel something going on among American Jewry, but that is more oriented towards Zionism and Israel-issues than directly-religious issues.
And it's good, too. I was able to find the paper I attended a talk on last night in about 15 seconds (well, the abstract -- the paper's no out yet).
Mr. Murphy: See the case I referenced for a NY court's view on that topic. (Well, not exactly, but if I had to argue the case you bring up, I'd certainly cite it.)
(To summarize: Yeshiva U (full disclosure, I go to their law school, case was at their med school) maintains married and non-married housing. You need to prove marriage to live in married student housing and have a non-student live with you (children of an unmarried student, though not directly referenced, are presumed to be permissible in a footnote). A pair of lesbians (not a couple) bring suit because they wanted to live with their partners in subsidized housing and couldn't. Their suit is initially dismissed, but the NYCA (highest court in NYS) eventually finds that if the policy discriminates against gay students in housing matters, it's impermissible under NYC law.) NOTE: I AM NOT A LAWYER. THIS IS NOT LEGAL ADVICE.
Xopher, you are completely correct, and that is a very good reason for a unitary name for legally recognized relationships with the same benefits and implications.
Just to correct what seems to be a common misconception: Marriage grants many, many more rights than simple kinship (even next-of-kinship/lowest consaguinity number), and where a right exists in both relationships, it is often substantially stronger in the marriage.
From what I've seen, Civil Union Statutes tend to be written to simply incorporate all benefits of marriage by reference (though of course, mileage varies by jurisdiction), and though common law marriage is mostly dead in most places, some courts will preserve marriage-like rights for same-sex couples without the benefit of union or marriage (see: Levin v. Yeshiva University 96 N.Y.2d 484 . Most notably, see the dissent on what constitutes immediate family. Have I mentioned lately how much I love NY?).
But, generally, I have two points here:
1: Non-union, non-marriage declarations such as suggested by Dave above, are, without such statutory language as I suggest, essentially meaningless.
2: Unions, where the statutory language says so, are simply marriages-that-are-called something different. Of course, depriving a certain class of a certain name simply to be spiteful (as far as I can tell) serves little policy purpose.
Oh, and my third point? As a hypothetical, I support the civil recogntion of non-binary unions. However, there is a reason besides walk-before-you-run to table that issue for later: Many of the benefits of marriage, as currently conceived, either only make sense when considered in the binary mode (off the top of my head, election rights in estates), or are extremely vulnerable to misuse if serial marriage is permitted (off the top again, inter-marital transfers). While I'd like to see a future where whatever sort of family you choose to build for yourself is recognized by the civil authorities and receives the rights of any other family, there are a number of questions that have to be settled before we can step into that future (again, off the top of my head: time/space unity of commencement and cessation? Serial, Plural, Parallel, Cyclic (flashback to graph theory when I try and think about poly-marriage cladistics)? Is there a primary spouse who gets the benefits only available in a binary mode or are all the spouses (insert spice joke here) considered, as a group, to be the recipient of those rights?).
Mr. Moles: What, then, was your Dear Old Granny voting for? Was she unaware of Abu Ghraib? Was she unaware of Bush's seething hatred of homosexuals? Had she been living in a hole for the past four years?
Mr. Moles: What, then, was your Dear Old Granny voting for? Was she unaware of Abu Ghraib? Was she unaware of Bush's seething hatred of homosexuals? Had she been living in a hole for the past four years?
"I voted on Moral Issues" = "I Hate Gays"
Let's not be wishy-washy. Let's not even call it voting on religion, or "gays and X" (where X is guns, abortion, evolution, whatever).
Anyone who voted for Bush is complicit in bigotry and a homophobia. Anyone who voted for one of those anti-gay measures is a bigot and homophobe.
On the brighter side, we've picked up two (and possibly four) seats in the NY Senate, and widened even further our domination of the Assembly. Between Spitzer and Chucky, we've got an embarrasment of riches for Governor in two, and Mike's willing submission to the much-hated-by-NYC Bush is NOT going to help him next year.
Is this what it was like, living in Richmond ca. 1860?
I use this nym because it is my fandom nym, born from fandom, used in fandom and among most fannish friends, and it maps trivially to my aim and lj usernames (it is, in fact, the initials of my full nom de fanatique, variations of which I tend to use in places where my full, legal name is either overloaded or not the best choice for autodisplay (of course, note my email...).)
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