Tuesday, June 10, 2003

Where the hell am I when these auctions go down !?!?!: For sale by government: used car, loaded (with pot) A Mexican national is looking to sue the US government after Customs agents arrested and imprisoned him for driving across the border with199 pounds of marijuana stuffed into his car's bumpers. The irony is that he bought the car, pre-packed with the pot, at a US Marshals Service Auction in San Diego. The car had been seized by the INS when it was used to run illegal immigrants into the US. The INS officials had apparently missed the hidden weed though. Link 4:08:11 PM    comment [] This reported by the very cool Cory Doctorow: Willful Infringement -- illegal copyright documentary Willful Infringement is a feature film about the ways that copyright has harmed free expression and creativity. The movie features clowns talking about the legal threats they got for twisting balloon-animal Barneys, Negativland conspiracists discussiing life after being crushed for making music out of samples, as well as lots of legal geniuses and iconoclasts talking about how we got here and where we're going. I was interviewed for this flick, but I didn't make the cut I saw (who knows if I made it to the DVD?). The movie is now out on DVD -- in glorious infringe-o-rama, sure to be removed form the market in short order. Get your copy while you still can! At $50, the price-tag is a little steep, but it's a fascinating watch. Link 4:05:42 PM    comment [] Your hands are a camera This is a groovy new Japanese UI widget: a wearable that can detect the presence and orientation of your hand. By framing a rectagle with your hands, you can snap a picture of whatever you're looking at and store it to your beltpack computer. Link 4:03:51 PM    comment [] OW !  Don't flush me please...  My friend (and fabulous performer) Barry Humphries (aka Dame Edna) voices the evil shark in this movie.  Here's a funny 'technical note' on the concept though: Grinding Nemo A company that makes sewage-treatment equipment is warning parents whose kids have seen "Finding Nemo" that flushing a fish down a toilet is a bad way to get it to the ocean: ...drain pipes do lead to the ocean -- eventually -- but first the fluid goes through powerful machines that "shred solids into tiny particles." "In truth, no one would ever find Nemo and the movie would be called 'Grinding Nemo,"' wrote the JWC Environmental company, which makes the trademarked "Muffin Monster" shredding pumps. Link 4:02:48 PM    comment [] And yet more fascinating copyright stuff: RIAA/MPAA make Edison's mistakes George Ziemann, editor of MP3NewsWire, is serializing a fascinating series of essays about the history of copyright on music and movies, and drawing particular attention to the way that today's copyfights echo the mistakes that Edison made. It's funny that the record labels and especially the movie industry don't see the irony of history. The Hollywood companies that are now trying to use every possible and impossible way to hinder the evolution of the Internet, are the very same independent companies that 100 years ago moved to Hollywood to be out of reach of Edisons agents. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5 3:59:10 PM    comment [] Signs of an increasing physical fitness trend in the theatre: Aerobic Shakespeare Shakespeare on the Run is a Manhattan twist on Shakespeare in the Park. Every 5-7 minutes, the show is moved 50 yards away, and the entire audience has to run to the next stage to see it. Link 3:58:18 PM    comment [] More in the ongoing intellectual property debate.  Some of you might have seen the article Colleen and I wrote on it (2 actually) for Entertainment Design... Here's some new developments, with pretty shocking market numbers.  Clearly the content industries are going to have to figure out a different model, or... ? Mexico's music business meltdown Pirates armed with CD burners and cheap discs are bringing the industry to its knees. The U.S. could be next. June 9, 2003  |  If hell had a special section reserved for recording industry executives, it would probably look a lot like Tepito. The Mexico City neighborhood is a mile and a half of exuberant, unabashed intellectual-property piracy: thousands of people eddying through a labyrinth of street stalls, buying CDs, movies and software at a tiny fraction of the legal price. It's also the center of a nationwide piracy business that the Recording Industry Association of America and other groups say probably took almost a billion dollars from the music, film and software industries last year -- a business that is almost single-handedly killing Mexico's music industry, crushing legitimate record sales, and sending potential stars fleeing from the country... Link to the rest of the article: http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2003/06/09/mexican_piracy/index.html   1:27:55 PM    comment [] I'M BACK !!!!!  Back from the Antipodes, the land of opposites, a place where the toilet water whirls the other way... Australia. 10:11:55 AM    comment []

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