Devo’s always maintained that they’re not selling out, rather using the corporations to get their music out to the masses. However, I suspect that’s just what they say to keep from alienating their fanbase.

Just goes to show, everything is inspired by something.

Either way, I hope they get a lot of money from McDonald’s.

If Devo were genuinely Punk (like, say, “Crass”) then I wouldn’t doubt for a second that the case had merit. Otherwise…. show me the money, yeah?

Because you’re not making money from wearing a Halloween costume. See? Simple.

Why should they be able to exert control over what others do with their own tangible property?

Because it isn’t their property. Oh I know, in your special world IP isn’t anyone’s property. This goes back to my first point that no one wants to live in that house because it sucks. Copyright and IP laws need to be cleaned up but they are still valid tools for constructing a society that works for most people. Economic theory should serve our needs not the other way around which is what libertarianism, including the Austrian school, does. It’s an axiomatic machine that would crush individuals, forcing them to conform to it’s inhuman laws.

You’re talking about Alan Greenspan?
Sorry, I was unclear. I was talking about von Mises who was very closely identified with Rand. You label Greenspan a Monetarist. Meh… all I know is that he himself identified as Libertarian and an admirer of Rand. That and his record of dismal failure is all I need to know.

Perhaps I am over generalizing but I have to. I don’t have a lifetime to spend on every topic and these in particular can be an endless morass. So I cut the Gordian knot by looking at larger ideas and concepts. I read Ayn Rand’s book on epistemology 20 years ago. Saw through her sophomoric drivel and dismissed her and her minions (the libertarians and other narcissist hangers on) ever since.

From the anti-copyright / movement against “intellectual property” line of thinking, government writs such as copyright, patents, and trademarks are exclusionary privileges exercised through force, and do not constitute voluntary exchange. (Thus more akin to extortion.)

All law is enforced by the power of the state and the state, ideally, is us. And yes, participation is totally voluntary. I have a landscape of mine mounted and framed, you want it? You have to agree to my terms. My terms are that I retain the right to profit from copies made from the original. You can ever resell it for whatever price you can get. You don’t like that? Too bad, disobey and I, through my representatives the police, will throw your thieving ass in jail. You want a system with no copyrights and no IP? Fine, go ahead and build it. Oh you did? And no one came (how’s Vermont these days)? Gee I wonder why.

remember folks
TOIL IS STUPID

It also points out the fact that big corporations aren’t “pro-trademark” and “pro-copyright”— they’re just in favor of the idea that corporations own all things.

If Devo loses this suit, it will be awfully tempting to start marketing Ronald McDonald bareback porn. OK, no one would buy that, but something. Dress someone up to look exactly like Ronald McDonald, imitate the voice they use for him, and talk to kids about how evil fast food is, and how they should all eat vegetarian and tell their parents to do so too.

Say what you want about Devo having sold their songs to Swiffer and making Ronald McDonald cartoons, or even that the Energy Dome hats have become a ‘pop culture icon,’ but the outfit and design just screams Devo specifically and if they didn’t give McD’s permission to use the image then I feel like they’ve got a case.

This is not to say that the toy isn’t adorable, though, and that I wouldn’t take one were it offered to me. Love the colors.

I know people collect them, but all I see is garbage.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Ny7CkvfjI4

They couldn’t have let it be having something as iconic as the energy domes, people would absolutely think Devo endorsed this crap.

I’m seeing them on the 31st, I’m so excited

You want a system with no copyrights and no IP? Fine, go ahead and build it. Oh you did? And no one came (how’s Vermont these days)? Gee I wonder why.

The Pirate Bay is actually quite popular, FYI. Hooray for data havens.

Economic theory should serve our needs not the other way around which is what libertarianism, including the Austrian school, does. It’s an axiomatic machine that would crush individuals, forcing them to conform to it’s inhuman laws.

Yeah, it’d be awesome to wish away the inconvenience of the force of gravity or laws of thermodynamics so I could vacation on Mars whenever I like too.

Touché. However, that model works fine for leeches. I still don’t see how it benefits the host. Here the host being the creator of the goods being consumed. Boingboing does not advocate this model as far as I know. I understand the creative commons model. Cory writes a book. He makes derivative content available for free but if you want the real thing, the book, you gotta pay.

This seems to work out fine for now but he relies on this secondary content being less than satisfactory. What happens when that is no longer true? Do you see a PDF link for all his books here? I don’t. Do you think a link to torrents of his books would be tolerated? They exist, I checked. What about a torrent of an AudioBook version of his books?

If all digital media must be free where do I make my living? In short, in the “all digital media wants to be free” model. How is monetary value calculated and then subsequently rewarded? Reputation? You can have a great rep and live under the freeway in a cardboard box.

it’d be awesome to wish away the inconvenience of the force of gravity

Re: Facts vs values “Ayn Rand claimed to have solved the ‘is-ought problem’ posed by David Hume, writing, “The fact that a living entity is, determines what it ought to do. So much for the relation between ‘is’ and ‘ought’.”

And so much for Ayn Rand and her arrogant philosophy. I’m reasonably confident that nobody ever has or ever will derive an ought from an is. More precisely, my claim is that substantive ought-statements can’t be validly derived from any set of is-statements that do not themselves presuppose substantive ought-statements.

the point remains that economics is properly a descriptive rather than prescriptive framework.

This is simply false. The case has not been made. What has been attempted so far is to assume that everyone pursues their rational self interest only, is objectively false.

you CANNOT copyright fashion designs.

http://www.copyright.gov/docs/regstat072706.html
http://www.styledash.com/2008/02/15/fashion-copyright-issues-go-to-congress/

So this matter is an issue of trademark and/or patents, though as a previous comment pointed out, the patent would be expired.

That’s my $.02 on the issue. Carry on.

Fair enough. I tend to say things in very stark terms and I guess that is trollish behavior. I’m just trying to figure things out and from what I’ve seen I think I can safely ignore Ayn Rand’s economist.

Marja “I was stating a fact: copyright is extortion.”
You don’t even know what copyright and I doubt you’ve ever created a thing. You just say that because it justifies your theft.

Copyright is a choice.

Actually, it’s not. It’s automatic, ever since 1978.

My *union* and I copyright my plays.

Are you also zappin’ rats and roaches, and making sure kids don’t drink piss from the fucking water fountain?

but the outfit and design just screams Devo specifically and if they didn’t give McD’s permission to use the image then I feel like they’ve got a case.

Do I need permission from Devo to wear an “energy dome” on Halloween?

Fair enough. I tend to say things in very stark terms and I guess that is trollish behavior. I’m just trying to figure things out and from what I’ve seen I think I can safely ignore Ayn Rand’s economist.

You’re talking about Alan Greenspan? Because he has very little to do with the Austrian School of economic theory. Even the ties between Greenspan and Rand are weak, IIRC; he was in her cult for awhile but eventually fell out of it. My point is beware of making sweeping generalizations, oversimplifications, and prejudices about all “libertarians”.

Marja “I was stating a fact: copyright is extortion.” You don’t even know what copyright and I doubt you’ve ever created a thing. You just say that because it justifies your theft.

Actually, I wouldn’t interpret Marja’s comment as apologist for copyright infringement; certainly less so than Stewart Brand’s “information wants to be free” has been popularly interpreted. From the anti-copyright / movement against “intellectual property” line of thinking, government writs such as copyright, patents, and trademarks are exclusionary privileges exercised through force, and do not constitute voluntary exchange. (Thus more akin to extortion.) Furthermore, since ideas, information, and techniques are non-rival, they do not have the “natural” exclusion that material goods do — the latter of which is the historic basis for common property law, and hence why “theft” is defined as denial of use, not “use by others”. However, those writs do creep into your home or office and impose limits what you can do with your own tools, your own printing press, your own computer, etc. (Again, because they enforce exclusion on others.)

It may be cliché, but I highly recommend reading Thomas Jefferson’s letter to Isaac McPherson:

It has been pretended by some, (and in England especially,) that inventors have a natural and exclusive right to their inventions, and not merely for their own lives, but inheritable to their heirs. But while it is a moot question whether the origin of any kind of property is derived from nature at all, it would be singular to admit a natural and even an hereditary right to inventors. It is agreed by those who have seriously considered the subject, that no individual has, of natural right, a separate property in an acre of land, for instance. By an universal law, indeed, whatever, whether fixed or movable, belongs to all men equally and in common, is the property for the moment of him who occupies it, but when he relinquishes the occupation, the property goes with it. Stable ownership is the gift of social law, and is given late in the progress of society. It would be curious then, if an idea, the fugitive fermentation of an individual brain, could, of natural right, be claimed in exclusive and stable property. If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property. Society may give an exclusive right to the profits arising from them, as an encouragement to men to pursue ideas which may produce utility, but this may or may not be done, according to the will and convenience of the society, without claim or complaint from anybody. Accordingly, it is a fact, as far as I am informed, that England was, until we copied her, the only country on earth which ever, by a general law, gave a legal right to the exclusive use of an idea. In some other countries it is sometimes done, in a great case, and by a special and personal act, but, generally speaking, other nations have thought that these monopolies produce more embarrassment than advantage to society; and it may be observed that the nations which refuse monopolies of invention, are as fruitful as England in new and useful devices.

Yeah, Zuzu, economics is a science. Only it’s a little closer to the science of voodoo than to the science of physics.

I don’t take her meaning too well but this is a funny clip.

Oops, ok, got that wrong. I am still very nervous about just giving everything away on the hope someone likes it enough to pay me. If my only product is digital where do I earn a living?

“Seriously, though… my toddler HATES it. With a passion. If I hand it to him,make it play the little music, he throws it angrily across the room.”

Ok, they’re not really good toys, per se. I mean if you’re kid hates it, I don’t blame them. In fact out of the 5, only two of mine actually play music–the others don’t work at all, and the the music they do make is generic, tinny and grating. They’re cheap and arguably trashy. I don’t collect happy meal toys or really any toys besides the ones designed by Jim Woodring. But I like these designs. They may not be well-designed toys, as far as a thing that a kid might like to play with, but they’re nicely designed objects. They have a an pleasant simplicity of design that goes above and beyond the typical happy meal toy. Every once in a while something like this will happen–by accident or hapinstance, something in the mainstream of disposable culture ends up interesting despite itself. I don’t think they’re mind-blowing or anything, I just happen to like them.

I also like Devo, and they may or may not have an argument against McDonald’s for copyright infringement. I don’t know the law. However, I find it very hard to believe that McDonald’s is cashing in on Devo or the hip cache of the Devo hat. The kids who get these most likely couldn’t care less about Devo. It seems like a fun thing the designer slipped in there as a kind of tribute–Devo as an icon of the eighties. I don’t think that anyone is going to get confused and think that Devo endorsed this. The people that know and like Devo are the ones who are going to recognize the hat, and those that don’t are probably indifferent.

I mean, the law aside, isn’t the main ethical issue in contention that someone is benefitting financially by exploiting an idea that doesn’t belong to them? I don’t see McDonald’s doing that here.

I think this falls somewhere in the gray area of fair use. Maybe Nigel himself is very Devo-like, but the toys as a collection of toys aren’t principally about Devo. they’re not even about American Idol really.

I would like to think that I can use a Devo hat in a piece of art that I make without getting Devo’s permission, just as I feel I should be able to use Mickey Mouse Ears in something I make, as long as it’s not ABOUT Mickey Mouse. Whether either action is covered by the law, I have no idea, but it seems just to me.

What I think Devo should do, and this would be very much in the spirit of Devo–is to make a piece of art using McDonald’s iconography as a part of that art. Why not celebrate, reiterate and defend the idea of fair use instead of giving further precedent to restrict it?

Besides this case getting dismissed SJ faster than your Mc-Order is ready, I’d suggest they better watch out for evil Mc-Lawyers to ‘Whip it’ in retaliation for a frivolous lawsuit including proof of harassment with that lovely McD/American Idol quote quickly spreading all over the Internet…