For those of you who pay close attention to college sports apart from the big conferences, you can skip the next paragraph.

The Western Athletic Conference (WAC, pronounced “whack”) is one of the oldest top (sub)division conference. More than one in five Football Bowl Subdivision (FCS, formerly Division I-A) schools have played in the WAC at one point during its existence. However, it’s historically been a launching bad to another conference. Most of the founding members bolted the conference at once to form the Mountain West Conference, and the MWC has been incorporating WAC schools since. The last round of realignment means the likely end to the venerable conference. They were having trouble getting back up to 8 football-playing teams before, and now they’re losing five of the seven members they have to the MWC, Conference USA, and even the lowly Sun Belt Conference (generally considered the weakest of the lot). The remaining two football schoolsare Idaho and New Mexico State, and the latter is well-positioned to go back to the Sun Belt from whence it came seven or so years ago. Idaho is typically a poor performer - a relatively small school living in Boise State’s shadow. Idaho’s existence as an FBS program hangs in the balance.

So with only Idaho and New Mexico State remaining as football programs, and Boise State, Seattle University and the University of Denver as non-FB schools (Boise plays football obviously, but their membership does not include football), how does the conference survive? It probably doesn’t. But there is one intriguing possibility that could actually leave the conference stronger and more stable than it has been in a long time. Not “stronger” in the sense of performance (all hope is probably lost there), but in the sense of having an identity rather than being a temporary home for schools from Louisiana to Hawaii. East of the Mississippi lies the Mid-American Conference, which provides a good blue-print as a generally unimpressive but nonetheless stable conference with only a few of its many (13, at the moment) members angling for something better.

The first step to the plan is to start approaching a couple of state governors. This might be best left to Butch Otter, the governor of Idaho. Approach the governors of Montana, North Dakota, and South Dakota. Those three states are relevant because they have no representation in the FBS division. Montana, Montana State, and North Dakota are or will soon be in the Football Championship Subdivision (FCS, formerly Division I-AA) Big Sky Conference. South Dakota, South Dakota State, and North Dakota State are in the Missouri Valley Football Conference (and the Summit League for other sports).

Montana and Montana State were approached about joining the WAC last year and declined to do so. One of the main reasons behind their decision was the perceived instability of the WAC. The other was uncertainty about rising to the level of the competition and fear of ending up where Idaho (a former Big Sky power) did, as well we the required initial investment for Montana State to meet the WAC’s standards. The arguments in favor of making the jump were financial (the FCS playoffs are expensive and being in the FCS limits income from payout games where they play the Washington Generals to a powerhouse school), logistical (FCS playoffs add weeks to the schedule and scheduling out-of-conference games at home can be tough), and most important prestige: they want to be associated with the likes of Idaho and (likely departing WAC member) Utah State rather than Eastern Washington and Weber State. Almost all of the reasons for making the transition still hold true (scheduling is less of an issue now due to Big Sky expansion), and most of the reasons against are mitigated under my plan.

The Dakota schools were never approached. They only recently made the transition from Division II, though they have succeeded in FCS (North Dakota State is the reigning champion). Their attendance makes them less attractive than they otherwise would be. But as institutions that Montana and Montana State would want to be associated with, they’re a better pick than some of the schools that are leaving. This represents a unique opportunity for the Dakota schools to make the jump to the highest subdivision without having to do the sorts of things a school has to do to make the transition. They’d be on the hook for the extra scholarships (FBS has 22 more scholarships than FCS), the Title IX compliance (adding football scholarships means adding something to women’s sports as well), and sponsoring a couple more sports, but they can probably get by without the customary stadium upgrades and such. It would require some investment, but it is an opportunity that will not come around again.

If you can bring along the two Montana schools and four Dakota schools, with Idaho, Seattle, and Denver, that makes seven football programs and ten total programs in six almost-contiguous states. That’s a very healthy conference core, which the WAC has lacked since 1996. From there you try to get New Mexico State to stick around. Due to the nature of the new conference - one of state flagship and land-grant universities - with which it fits, they might be willing to do it over the Sun Belt (which, in addition to being a weak conference, has a number of colleges of less-than-stellar reputations that are second or third tier in their own states). So you have either 7/10 or 8/11 teams (football/othersports) with seven or eight state flagships/land-grants, two urban privates, and Boise.

The last trip involves going to California. Two schools that were on the conference’s radar before are UC-Davis and Cal Poly. Both ultimately declined, in part because they had an invitation to the Big Sky Conference, which was good enough, and because they didn’t want to leave the Big West for non-football sports. The Big Sky Conference without Montana and Montana State is notably less prestigious (Montana or Montana State has won the conference title or a share of it for eighteen of the last twenty years). And the WAC could easily extend the two schools a football-only invitation (as football-playing counterparts to football-less Denver and Seattle). Once again, this is a unique opportunity for those two schools. And though they are not a good fit geographically, they are a good fit academically.

That would bring the conference to 9/10 or 10/11, full of like-minded schools that aren’t going anywhere. The village has been pillaged. The slate has been almost blanked. The conference can redefine itself as something other than the hodge-podge. The level of competition would probably be the weakest in the FBS. But that actually allows the schools to grow together without having to suffer the immediate poundings that caused Idaho such problems. But more than that, six of the schools come from states that have no college football allegiances. In Montana, they pre-empt SEC games to show Montana and Montana State play Northern This State and Eastern That. New Mexico State has all of their games televised. The Dakota schools probably could, too, in the Dakotas. This isn’t the same as having big markets, but the depth of the devotion will definitely outstrip that of most of the departing schools (Utah State has to compete with BYU for affections, Texas State with a plethora of power schools, and so on).

They would have to get waiver upon waiver from the NCAA to go forward with this, but I think under the circumstances they would have a pretty good chance of doing so. Nobody save the MWC has any reason to want the WAC dead. But more to the point, you have six senators and three governors to contend with representing three states with no representation in the FBS. They had already worked to accommodate the WAC’s troubles. This adds much more incentive to do so.

In the scene of the second episode of Fringe, a woman is opening a Kia Sedona. I guess Kia isn’t paying them for it, because they replaced the Kia logo with a generic one, but I guess it was too much trouble to replace the Sedona decal?

I don’t know why, but knowing which cars the characters are driving is a subject of interest to me. Particularly since there is so little consistency. One week, FringeDiv drives Ford, the next Lincoln. Those are both Ford products, but I’ve even seen it switch the Chevy, even though all of the vehicles look about the same. But the entire fleet changes from one week to the next.

This isn’t as bad as Chase was, though. On Chase, in three straight episodes, the main character had three separate smartphones. One week, she was specifically given an iPhone as a gift. But the next week, she was using what was conspicuously a Windows Phone 7 phone, and the next week a generic Androidy phone.

I don’t know why I am as fixated on some of this stuff as I am, but it’s something I’ve been keeping an eye out on for a while now. It used to seem that every laptop someone used was an Apple. At some point, I guess, Microsoft started paying up because you would get a black laptop with a generic Windows logo on the back of it. When it’s not one of these things, it’s as often as not going to be some generic-ish logo like on the pseudo-Kia. Usually a globe.

One of the interesting things I’ve noticed is how frequently I am seeing a non-standard OS. Maybe this has always been the case and I just never noticed it until recently. We all remember the Mac/PC hybrid in Office Space, right? It seems like a Mac right up until you get to the C-prompt as Peter is shutting down. Anyhow, on Person of Interest, Burke is using a non-standard OS that looks just a little Linuxy. I suppose if you want a generic-looking OS, Linux is a pretty good place to start from. I’ve never seen a brand, though (Ubuntu, SUSE, etc), so I guess the Linux makers aren’t paying up.

Now, if it were me, I would show it anyway. It’s the sort of thing that can get a segment of a show’s viewership talking (”Burke uses SUSE!”). Not a large segment, but a passionate one. Is there a ban on that? I mean, if I was making a movie, would I have to get Microsoft’s permission to show Windows? Lenovo’s to use my Thinkpad (without obscuring the logo)? I am thinking not, provided that you’re not relying on the product. Any Linux distro worth its grain of salt would likely have no problem with it. Nor would Microsoft, though presumably they’re at the point where they would want Microsoft to pony up. I actually wonder if that’s the reason for the shift away from Windows: “We’re not going to use your product in our product unless you pay us to.”

Or something like that.

Speaking of Fringe and endorsements, one of the things I wonder is the usage of Harvard in that show. Now, they’re using Harvard University when it’s actually Harvard College, but I’m not sure that distinction matters. And, in any event, they use college brand names all the time in a way that does actually lean on the product. By which I mean, if they want a super-intelligent (or snooty, for that matter) individual, they’ll say “He went to Harvard.” Which is actually different than happening to use a Thinkpad. You’re relying on the brand to give information about the character. I assume Harvard does not object, but can it? You rarely see the logo, which might be crossing a line, though Chuck’s title character flashed off a degree that looked very much like a Stanford degree. And, additionally, did not call it Stanford University or Stanford College, which might be the dodge that they may be using for Harvard, but rather “Leland Stanford Junior University” which is apparently Stanford’s full name (I did not know until I saw it on TV).

I do wonder how the rules on these things go.

For some reason, I got it in my head to watch an episode or two of Voltron. I have fond memories of Voltron. I remember the playground at West Oak Elementary where we used to argue over who would get to be which lion. I never got any of the figures myself, but I got access to them when I played with friends.

One of the things I remember was the inconvenient of the Blue Lion being female. No females at West Oak Elementary wanted to play Voltron, and no boy wanted to be the female Blue Lion. The way out of this was to say “Well the original Blue Lion was a boy!” Truthfully, I thought we were making that up. It turns out that we weren’t. There was another Blue Lion before the Princess became the Blue Lion.

One of the thoughts I had while watching it was a fan dub idea wherein the bad guy was actually a freedom fighter of sorts, who was pointing out how ridiculous it was that the townspeople lived in squalor while the royal family had all of these super-neat toys and a comparatively opulent castle. It’s funny how I notice these things as I get older.

US vs Sweden

When I heard that they were making a TV show based on The Firm (a sequel, really, taking place ten years later), I decided to finally consume the book and watch the movie (I saw it when I was a yungun, but only paid half-attention). Hollywood has a tendency to make movies about two grades worse than the book. The Chamber was a mediocre book that became an obnoxious movie that reversed the few good traits of the book. The Firm was actually a good book, but the movie was rather mediocre. Not in the way that books are hard to translate to movie because of what you have to cut out, though that’s always an issue, but rather because they completely changed the ending. Warning, spoilers ahead for the book, the movie, and the TV show.

The basic story of both the book and the movie is that Mitchell McDeere, fresh out of law school, is hired on by a corrupt law firm in Memphis that is in bed with the Chicago mafia. In the book, McDeere, his wife, and his brother all sneak off to the Carribean. McDeere gives the Feds enough on both the firm and the mafia that the feds won’t go after him, but skedaddles for fear of what the mafia does. In the movie, he works it so that he gives the feds some dirt on the firm, but not the mafia, so that he can stay in Memphis.

Which makes no sense. The FBI isn’t interested in the law firm except as a way to get to the mafia. So the dangling question, after watching the movie, was why the mafia was okay with this when the inevitable result of the firm’s arrest is that they would flip on them (I don’t believe that lawyer-client confidentiality applies when both are acting in concert in the commission of a crime).

Well, the makers of the TV show saw the same thing that I did and decided to use it for the show. In the show, the feds leaned on the firm, who then rolled on the mafia and put their don in prison. At which point, of course, McDeere is in the mafia’s crosshairs and has to go into Witness Protection. The show takes place ten years later as they are getting out of Witness Protection because, well, they’re tired of it. Surprise surprise, the mafia is still after him. He’s with a new (also corrupt) firm. And that’s the premise of the TV show. So far, I am not hugely impressed. I’ve only seen the first two-in-one episode, and I’ll give it a couple more, but it’s pretty low on my list of priorities.

Anyhow, I thought it was funny that they devoted a new TV show to the egregious plot hole in the movie. I still don’t understand why the movie changed the ending, except as a possible sequel (like another one starring Tom Cruise, not a TV show fifteen years later).

I happened to be subbing in heavily Irish-American (among other euro-ethnicities) Redstone the day before St. Paddy’s Day. Since it falls on a weekend this year, Wearing Green was done on Friday. Not realizing this, I wore read (but I came so close, my second choice was a green shirt). Anyhow, here are my favorite Flogging Molly songs!

Computer geek that I am, I thought this commercial was brilliant:

Adweek disagrees:

It’s almost a laugh-out-loud moment—this is what everyone was referring to?! Thank God it was only their files! And that’s the weird thing about this approach—it makes the viewer realize that photos and files and music and videos and the like, while sometimes of great sentimental value, really, in the end, is just stuff. It can’t compare to actually life, which is what the viewer is made to feel is threatened by the whole faux-horror tactic. The spot is nicely produced, but Carbonite is deflating its own importance here, which may not lead to too many new customers. Check out some print work after the jump.

I agree that it is jokey, but to me there is no “only [your] files.” I lose sleep over the possibility of losing my files, which are twice or thrice (for some files) quice backed up (depending on the file and its importance). I don’t use a service like Carbonite. Maybe, for the ones I feel the need to back up more than once, I should. One piece of subtlety I think AdWeek misses is that among the files lost would be those from the wedding itself. Or maybe I feel that way because our wedding photographer did everything digitally and provided no prints. But I suspect I am less than unusual among the sorts of people that would even consider using a service like Carbonite.

On a sidenote, the groom in the ad is Joe Egender, the same guy that played a sniper in the second episode of Alcatraz. When I saw him in Alcatraz, I swore he looked familiar. I hadn’t yet seen this Carbonite ad and going through his IMDB profile, nothing jumped out at me as familiar. I think that he simply reminds me of Kurt, one of my post-college roommates.

A suggestion of how Phantom Menace should have gone…

I’m not actually an Episode I hater. It had its problems, but is not nearly as bad as a lot of people made it out to be. But this guy’s ideas seem a lot better to me than the movie that was made.

Forbes’s Paul Tassi argues that piracy is, first and foremost, a service problem:

So, what to do? Go the other direction. Realize piracy is a service problem. Right now, from the browser window in which I’m writing this article, it is possible to download and start watching a movie for free in a few swift clicks.

(This is all purely theoretical of course)

1. Move mouse to click on Pirate Bay bookmark

2. Type in “The Hangover 2? (awful movie, but a new release for the sake of the example)

3. Click on result with highest seeds

4. Click download torrent

5. Auto open uTorrent

6. Wait ten minutes to download

7. Play movie, own it forever

He also cites price. I am sympathetic to this argument, but I have become increasingly less so over the years. In large part because it ignores the existence of the music industry.

Namely, the music industry has something very much like what he’s talking about. Except that it’s a buffet. I have subscribed to Rhapsody since 2005 and with it comes a lifetime’s library of listening. As much as I want, whenever I want. It does require a computer, but if I want to listen to it in my car, I can buy it with less hassle than I can download an illicit copy of it. And now, with Spotify, you can listen to music for free. In short, the music industry has (reluctantly, belatedly) done everything that has been asked of it.

Has piracy abated? I don’t know, but I don’t think it has. If it has, I haven’t heard about it. (Note: I am not saying that piracy is to blame for the industry’s doldrums.) Instead, we’re hearing the same things about the music industry we’ve heard all along. Namely, that they’re just going to have to deal with it.

And you know what? They are. The only way to really crush down on it would be burning the village to save it. Or rather, burning the Internet down to protect their turf. I have my doubts that even SOPA/PIPA would have been sufficient.

Now, to get back to movies, I don’t disagree with Tassi’s plan, in the overall. Not as a way to combat piracy in any meaningful sense, but as a way to make a few extra bucks.

The music industry isn’t actually necessary for music. As music has become easier and cheaper to produce at professional-sounding levels, they can actually outsource and crowdsource their artist selection and focus more on the real service they provide, which is promotion (and, to a lesser extent, distribution). And that’s something of a zero-sum game where everybody can make due with less as long as everybody is spending less (at least I think).

Movies are in a bit of a different predicament, because we need movie-makers and networks in a way that we don’t need the record industry. Good movies, and good TV shows, tend to be pretty expensive. Ultimately, there has to be a way for them to recoup those costs. The good news is that movies have more at their disposal to do so. Initial release. International release. Video release. Commercials on television. Music has other forms of revenue, too (licensing), but it has fewer bases.

So I am not particularly worried about the destruction of Hollywood. And at least tentatively, I am actually inclined to say the same of the movie/TV industry as I do the music industry. A worst case scenario, if it were to come to fruition, though, is far worse for video entertainment than audio. But it doesn’t seem to be affected. While theater movies seem to be getting more and more conservative, (something I might attribute to piracy, if it weren’t for…) secondary movies seem to be proliferating. Look at the average Redbox or Safeway rental stand and you’ll see a lot of movies with recognizable names still getting made. And when these movies to straight to video, that’s a pretty strong suggestion of a strong market for such things, which is precisely where piracy should cut the deepest.

So, who knows what tomorrow brings. I’d still like to see Tassi’s service. Somehow, this is all going to have to get organized. I think it’s unfortunate that the Netflix model has taken the lead on this. Not because I don’t like the Netflix (streaming model). I do! But the all-you-can-watch is problematic and as people get used to it, the notion of paying for individual movies (even at a dollar or two) becomes increasingly foreign. That leaves us in a model where everything is a stable and everything will be spread out between Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, and so on. And worse, there will be little in the way of content reliability. You can (more or less) count on Rhapsody to have this month what it had last month. You can’t found on Hulu. Which itself may be enough for people to say “Hey, if I download it, it’ll be there as long as I don’t delete it.”

An interesting look at the intersection between automobiles, Justin Bieber, IP law, and comic books:

Last year, DC Comics, a subsidiary of Warner Bros., sued Mark Towles, who operated a business called “Gotham Garage,” which sold imitation batmobiles. DC, represented by attorney Andy Coombs, accused Towles of violating its copyright and trademark and confusing the public into thinking that his cars were authorized products.

Trademark is one thing, but can an automobile design really be copyrighted?

According to U.S. District Judge Ronald Lew, it can if it’s really special.

Towles moved to dismiss the lawsuit, arguing that the Copyright Act affords no protection to “useful articles.”

But Judge Lew begs to differ, ruling that Towles “ignores the exception to the ‘useful article’ rule, which grants copyright protection to nonfunctional, artistic elements of an automobile design that can be physically or conceptually separated from the automobile.”

In other words, the judge looked at the Batmobile and found there could be elements there that served no real purpose except it was pictorially unique. The judge will likely begin a fact-finding examination, such as whether the car really needs to be bat-shaped for it to be a crazy, cool ride.

ED Kain asksOn a side note, wouldn’t you think the occasional custom Batmobile would be just about the best sort of free advertising DC Comics could hope for?

It is! Right up until it’s being drunk driven, or involved in some sort of accident.

On The Drew Carey Show, Drew won a Batmobile in some contest. He lost it when he was caught having sex in it because apparently the car came with a “morals clause.”

In all seriousness, the benefits of advertising are probably outweighed by potential hazards and potential lose revenue if they ever decide to work with a carmaker on a limited-release or something-or-other. And, more to the point, copyrights that are not defended are lost. So, in a weird way - that makes some sense after deep thought - Warner Bros is compelled to actually defend this.

And, as far as the free advertising goes: Batman, as an entity, doesn’t really need the advertising. It already has brand recognition.

Behind all of this is the bigger stink: is that DC (or anybody) still owns the rights to Batman at all. Of course, that would not likely have any bearing on the physical likeness of the Batmobile, which is more recent (and would, of course, cover a lot of different designs).

Thanks to ED Kain, I learned that the Superbowl was streamed over the Internet. So I can watch it while doing various computer stuff at my console instead of on my laptop while sort of watching it on TV. I am only sort of watching it because there is little that interests me less than a game from a team from New York (that doesn’t play in New York) and a team from Boston (that doesn’t play in Boston, but doesn’t call itself Boston, either) playing for a championship. Even the fact that it’s a rematch to the game that proved what a travesty the NFL playoff system is.

Really, the streaming of sporting events is still relatively unexplored terrain.

There is no reason why any game in which there are cameras should not be available somewhere. Kain mentions less popular sports, but I would add to that less popular teams and leagues.

Among the various subscriptions/services I have having to change credit cards on includes CBS All-Access. CBSAA simply plugs in to the jumbotron of the home team and hooks up audio from the radio announcers. No one is going to confuse it with a televised event. For instance, you see a “GO WILDCATS! ROAR!” in between plays, because they’re trying to get the Wildcat fans riled up. Also, in football, there are no replays because they don’t like fans looking at the jumbotron and seeing what a moronic call the refs just made.

I was able to watch 8 of the Southern Tech Packers 12 games last season on bonafide television (excluding post-season), with an additional two on ESPN3.com (which is a traditional broadcast feed), and the last two on CBSAA. Comparatively few teams allow you to watch all 12 games. And almost none where you can watch all of the basketball games. It’s great to use streaming to plug in those gaps. And, if you’re willing to go the jumbotron route, it’s comparatively cheap to do so. I’d also like to see them add college baseball to the mix.

The only non-traditional sport I like to watch is rugby. Every now and again I see them on BBCA. I sometimes watch because the sport is interesting, but I never have any context. Given the chance, I might follow a rugby team of some sort. Or maybe I would get into lacrosse and watch the NLL.

The sports networks are always trying to find something to get us to watch. Particularly during football season, when they are throwing money low-bar conference teams (MAC, WAC) to get them to play a game on a Wednesday night. They’ve thrown their weight behind women’s basketball, soccer, and college hockey. I don’t know whether it’s stranger that they show people playing cards on cable, or that it was more successful than all of the others. The problem with trying to add new sports, at least from my perspective, is that coverage is so scattershot I can never get into it (or figure out the rules, in some cases). If I stumble across a lacrosse game between the Buffalo Bandits and the Rochester Knighthawks, I know the likelihood that I will ever see either of these teams again is slim. If I knew that I could follow a team, I might get into it.

The trick is to come up with a good advertising model (whether we’re talking about lacrosse or Big Sky Conference football). CBSAA is based on subscriptions and doesn’t bother to run ads (most of the time, sometimes you get the radio ads). ESPN3 is based on backroom deals between your ISP’s and ESPN. ESPN3 does run ads, but most of the time when it’s a commercial break, you’re looking at a black screen as they run a different set of ads (usually the same ad over and over again). Not only is it a place to add ads, but the ads would be *welcome*. Watching the Superbowl, the adspace is mostly taken up by Dwight Shrute asking you to click on ads and watch them.

A while back, there was a Guardian article on corporations claiming ownership over videos in the public domain:

But one titanic problem with ContentID has received little attention: the use of ContentID by those who falsely or incorrectly assert ownership over public domain works – works that have no copyright at all – and then either block access to the videos, or collect the advertising revenue from these videos.

FedFlix is a charitable project launched by Carl Malamud, a “rogue archivist” who raises funds to digitise and upload videos created at US government expense. Under US law, government creations are in the public domain and can be freely used by anyone, but the US government is remarkably lax about actually making its treasures available to the public that owns them.

Malamud’s group pays the fees associated with retrieving copies from the US government – sometimes buying high-priced DVDs that the government issues, other times paying to have unreleased videos retrieved from government archives – and posts them to YouTube, the Internet Archive and other video sites, so that anyone and everyone can see, download, and use them.

Malamud’s 146-page report from FedFlix to the Archivist of the United States documents claims that companies such as NBC Universal, al-Jazeera, and Discovery Communications have used ContentID to claim title to FedFlix videos on YouTube. Some music royalty collecting societies have claimed infringements in “silent movies”.

Here is more on FedFlix.

One of the ostensible reasons for SOPA and Protect IP is that it provides an undue burden on content IP owners to find and locate every single instance of copyright infringement. One of the main pushbacks against SOPA and PIPA is that it would apply an undue burden on the part of user-generated sites to approve each and every piece of content that someone uploads. And what we have hear can validate each argument. The content producers’ recklessness can at least potentially be attributed to having to scan over so much material that they get some things wrong (if we are to take the most benign explanation). And the burden that the sites face make it so that they simply don’t have time to straighten things out (this benign explanation is, I believe, more reasonably applied here).

But what jumps out at me here is the difference between a right you have and a right that is respected. I’ve mentioned this before with regard to the TSA. It doesn’t matter what kind of rights you have if they are arbitrarily ignored. In fact, it makes it worse because at least rights you are denied have to be justified somewhere along the chain. To use the TSA example, if they are going to force all milk-bottles to go through an X-Ray machine, the TSA has to make the case that this is safe and necessary. If you have the right to have your milk bottle not go through the machine, but they penalize you for ever asserting this right, then they have effectively made a rule without justifying it.

So here we have a case where videos that CBS and Discovery do not own are being flagged. Their ability to claim ownership over these videos has never been justified. The ability to post these videos is, at least in theory, granted because they are in the public domain. In practice, however, there is simply no way to actually assert this right without being severely penalized. This applies to more than YouTube videos. You are theoretically in the right if you choose to make and release a Little Mermaid video. However, if you choose to do so, Disney can turn around and claim that you infringed not on the Little Mermaid that exists in the public domain, but their variation of it. They may have absolutely no case, but if ABC/Disney sends you a letter saying that they are going to use all of their legal might to run you out of business, are you going to risk it? Are you going to pay thousands and thousands in legal fees to emerge victorious… and broke?

I am considering a superhero project. In it, I would love to use some of the (few) superheroes that have fallen into the public domain. But these have been used by the Big Boys. The Big Boys can make all sorts of arguments (similar to Little Mermaid), and once they get to court, I’ve already lost. And so while I have the right to use these heroes, I am not free, in any meaningful sense, to actually assert that right. And so I won’t.

Copyright carries with it loads of ambiguity and logistical problems. Either they have rights that are extremely difficult to enforce, such as a proliferation of videos on YouTube that they have to have taken down one by one or thousands of BitTorrent downloaders that they have to single out (and get a lot of bad publicity in the process)… or we have rights that are difficult to assert. The theoretical, but constantly challenged, right to back up content that we own. The ability to actually own, rather than merely rent, works that we buy. The right to upload material that nobody owns the right to. This creates a real zero-sum environment wherein either content producers have insufficient ability to enforce their copyrights, or an ability so broad as to create real headaches for people tagged with false positives.

And where you sit is where you stand. It becomes worthwhile to ask questions about how much we - the consumers - can actually trust the content owners to behave ethically. Their apparent entitlement to endless copyrights, and their willingness to engage in shoot-first-ask-questions-later tactics, and their propensity use the money they make to lobby for laws that reduces access to the public domain, makes me inclined to restrict their power as much as possible. Even if, as they claim, it has a detrimental effect on the arts in the long run.

This post is at least partially about the new TV series, Boss. It will contain little in the way of spoilers and will also not require you to have actually seen the show.

In the beginning of the first episode, Chicago Mayor Tom Kane (Kelsey Grammer) is hit with what may be the worst medical diagnosis there is, something called Lewy Body. It’s a cross between Parkinson’s and Alzheimers. His body, and his mind, are betraying him. His time left as an independent, cognoscente person is perilously short. The show is about Grammer’s attempts to conceal his illness and reaffirm his political power in the face of various external and internal threats.

It’s not The Wire, but I thought it was a really good show. If I were Tom Kane, though, it would have likely been a very boring show. It would have been a show about using my last day’s to assure a stable and ordertly transition into quiet retirement. Kane, though, fights on. The only transition he tries to manage is to replace Governor Cullen (Francis Guinan) with young upstart State Treasurer Zajac (Jeff Hephner), and rather than backing down from politics, he throws himself further and further into it. The notion of backing down, or losing, never occurs to him even to the point where he does something that left me literally uttering “Oh, my god.” It becomes apparent, as the show progresses, that Kane has little or nothing to retire to. He is in a loveless marriage and he and his wife both disowned their only child in the name of political expediency. There are some attempts to reconcile with his daughter, but that’s about as personal as he gets.

The whole mentality is rather alien to me. That’s one reason why I would never have a successful career in politics.

Of course, I look back at some political figures in astonishment at the degree to which they went the opposite track. There was a young politician in Colosse, Alex Leventis, who had an astonishing career ahead of him. Some were saying that he could go on to become president. A moderate Democrat, he was thought highly of across party lines. Then, in an announcement that everyone assumed was going to be for a gubernatorial bid, Leventis announced his retirement from politics. Nobody had any idea why. Less than a decade later, Leventis was in prison.

The bizarre thing about the Leventis story is what it came to be apparent did happen to him. He fell in love with a stripper. Apparently, an avaricious one. And in an attempt to make her happy, he did things in his political office that he shouldn’t have done. He retired to go to the private sector (and so that he could marry a former stripper without cocking as many eyebrows) and made more money there until his past caught up with him. The guy that everybody loved suddenly had no friends. He’d burned his bridges with Democrats by being something of a maverick. He’d burned his bridges with Republicans by being a Democrat. The stripper left him while he was in prison.

Leventis and Kane represent opposite sides of the political spectrum. One who threw it all away for the woman that he loved and the other held on tight in part because he loved nothing but what he had.

A minor pet peeve in TV shows. For various reasons, they often use fictitious entities like universities and sports teams. I know why they do it and I don’t mind at all (says the guy who fictionalized the entire United States of America). But if you’re going to do this, jot down the name of the entity you created and use it in the future.

I’m watching an episode of Cold Case, where they have a fictitious Penn University. Not to be confused with the University of Pennsylvania, which they used in a previous episode (I think in that case it was referring to the real Penn). Having these two coexist doesn’t sit entirely right, but I wouldn’t make waves about it. What does bug me, though, is that Penn U’s mascot is the Jaguars. That bothers me because another episode had a Pennsylvania University with a mascot of the Warriors.

People. It’s a single show. This is not like asking DC Comics, with its dozens and dozens of titles under scores of writers/artists, to keep things straight.

Las Vegas was also really bad about this. UNLV existed in that show, but then they would have “Nevada State University” (there is a Nevada State College - little more than a community college - but no NSU) in a plot involving a crooked card-counting professor. Then, a season later, they had Las Vegas State University. This isn’t quite as bad as the above since NSU, LVSU, and UNLV can all co-exist, but would it have been too much to ask them to dip into the same well when they needed a fictional U?

On the other hand, Law & Order, despite spanning several shows, was actually decent about using the same universities repeatedly. They were less good about sports teams, however. giving New York two additional basketball programs.

Over at NaPP, I am in charge of the weekly trivia question. I thought I would reproduce it here.

This week’s question is going to be a little trickier than some, so I am going to give out several hints at once.

Arizona, Connecticut, Florida, Idaho, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Missouri, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, and Vermont have none.

There were roughly 650 of these in 2006 in the entire world, on every continent but Antarctica. There are over 700 now.

There are roughly 150 in the United States. Over a third of these are in one of three states.

Canada has roughly 20, with one in most provinces.

Direct answers here.

I am watching and enjoying the show Revenge. However, I am a bit behind on it. I’d like to look up the filmography of some of the actors, but I don’t want to spoil anything and by knowing how many episodes they appear in, I’ll know something I shouldn’t. So if someone could copy and paste the filmography of the actors for these three characters on IMDB, I’d be really grateful. They all look familiar, but I can’t quite place them:

Daniel
Lydia
Frank

And this is important: Please remove any reference to the show Revenge.

Thanks!

There are a few I haven’t seen yet, and I’ve only seen one or two episodes of a few shows, but so far, this fall season has stunk to high heaven as far as new comedies go. I’m not sure there are any that I am going to watch on a regular basis save one: Man Up. Which I will watch a handful more episodes of, because that’s all there are. It has, of course, been canceled.

Man Up is one of three Men in Crisis shows coming out, which the press has made a big deal of. I haven’t seen the other two. One has not only already been canceled, but has already gone off the air. But Man Up is, or was, a winner. Partially because it’s not the woe-is-manhood demonstration that it was cracked up to be. The first episode centers on masculinity as the main character, Will Keen, tries to deal with what to give his about-to-be-a-man son. But from there it’s a three-sided buddy comedy with Keen, Star Wars fanatic Kenny, and mildly effeminate Craig.

The fourth guy in the picture is Grant, who is the boyfriend of Kenny’s ex-wife. Grant is the Total Package, as far as men go. He’s muscular, intelligent, excessively friendly, and both masculine and sensitive at the same time. He is sort of the metric that Keen, Kenny, and Craig find themselves trying and failing to match up against. I was afraid that Grant was going to be a one-off character, but it looks like he’s around for the long haul. He reminds me of some of the people I’ve known where you kind of stand around and try to figure out a reason that they’re not better than you, and all you can come up with is that they are irritating in their perfection. And that sort of suffices.

Keen’s relationship with his wife is partly - but only partly - the typical responsible-wife-helping-husband-along that you see in sitcoms. But Will Keen is competent enough, and Theresa Keen good enough, that I don’t find it particularly grating. Rather than simply rolling her eyes at her husband, works with him and tries to understand where he’s coming from. It’s a bonus that TK is played by Teri Polo, who is always pleasant to watch.

Kenny is a bit more stereotype than person and I would expect that over time that would be worked upon. His ex-wife is the second main-stay female. There is an interesting dynamic between the two of them where they were playground sweethearts and fell in love before either of them realized that she was way out of his league (landing her with Grant, who ought to be way out of hers). Bridgette is the “slutty friend” (to Theresa) and also needs to be worked on, character-wise. Craig is something of a non-entity thus far, mainly rounding out the set.

But thus far, the show has been funny without being excessively predictable. And though it rely on awkward moments, it has yet to get painful to watch as other laughtrackless comedies sometimes get. So it’s a show to keep an eye on, which is more than I can say for the other shows. Which, of course, means it has already being canceled.

My complaints about the other shows:

Whitney - The title character is irritating as hell. I like the boyfriend okay, though the reviews say he’s irritating as well and I’ve only seen the first episode. Excessive laughtrack, also.

Up All Night - I didn’t warm to either of the characters. I didn’t find it funny. It’s slow. Also, a show where the main character(s) are in the TV biz has a strike against it.

New Girl - Yes, Zoey Daschanel is quirky cute. I don’t know how worthwhile it is to build an entire show around that premise, though, and the supporting cast is roundly obnoxious.

2 Broke Girls - Spoiled Rich Girl meets Streetwise Poor Girl. Except the rich girl isn’t rich anymore. And they’re not girls, they’re cardboard stereotypes.

Okay, so I’ve only seen four new shows. But that’s a pretty low average, and these are the ones I thought I might like.

New York Magazine has an interesting slideshow on the ratings of various shows. These are what I thought were the highlights (Quotes are in italics):

Men and women are more in sync about Two and a Half Men, however: It’s the No. 2 show on TV among both men and women. // Really? The Gamesters are going to have a field day with this, bad boy Charlie Sheen (even if he isn’t on the show anymore) and all that. This is one of those shows that I really thought would tilt pretty heavily in the male direction.

Not counting football, NBC has zero shows in Nielsen’s list of the 40 most-watched shows on TV. // There really is no end to the bad news of NBC doldrums. Given the success of USA (owned by NBC) you wonder at what point they don’t just start taking USA show ideas and putting them on NBC instead.

NBC may not have a lot of viewers, but the viewers it does have are well educated. The Peacock boasts eight of the top ten shows with the greatest concentration of adults 18-49 with four or more years of college. // This doesn’t surprise me. For a network nobody watches, it’s #2 among the shows I watch. So that’s good news, but…

TNT’s Rizzoli & Isles, with nearly 9 million viewers, is the most-watched scripted show on cable this season, and its overall audience is bigger than every show on NBC save SVU and Harry’s Law. // And Harry’s Law “doesn’t count” because its viewership is old. I’ve been meaning to watch HL, but the more I read about it, the more I fear that the politics of the show will make Boston Legal pale in comparison. Notable tidbit: Kathy Bates replaced James Spader as the headliner in a David E Kelley legal drama (albeit not the same show) and Spader replaced Bates on The Office. I’ve seen a couple episodes of R&I, and while it’s not bad, I don’t for the life of me understand the popularity. I guess I’m not the target audience.

Young women hate nerds: Among females 18-34, the lowest-rated scripted show on any network, including the CW, is Chuck, with a 0.7 rating. // So they’d rather be watching programming where the women are the butt of jokes rather than where an alpha chick falls in love with a nerdy guy. Gamester vindication, again.

The network show rich people like the least? Fox’s Cops, which averages a mere 0.6 rating in upscale adults 18-49. // No further comment.