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An advertising agency is suing the creators of Cartoon Network's The Annoying Orange, accusing them of ripping off a character, The Talking Orange, that they created for a 2005 public information ad. [Mercury News] — Rob
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Rob Beschizza at 6:12 am • • 
Media companies have dirty hands when it comes to copyright infringement? Timothy B. Lee at Ars:
Warner Brothers is facing a federal lawsuit for using two feline-themed Internet memes in a video game without their creators' permission. The authors of "Keyboard Cat" and "Nyan Cat" have sued the media giant arguing that the game Scribblenauts, published by WB Games, infringes their copyrights and trademarks. The game's developer, 5th Cell, is also named in the lawsuit.
Derek Khanna at 11:30 am • •
Yale Law Fellow with the Information Society Project, columnist and policy expert Derek Khanna authored the controversial House Republican Study Committee memo “Three Myths about Copyright Law.” The memo on copyright reform was praised throughout the tech community as being "brilliant" and a "breath of fresh air." He has spoken at the Consumer Electronics Show as a technology expert and will be speaking at Freedom to Connect and the Conservative Political Action Conference. Derek was referred to as a “rising star” in the party by David Brooks in the New York Times. Mr. Khanna continues to be a major thought leader on technology issues and disruptive innovation
With SOPA, the industry had the money, the lobbyists, and the organization. But we, the digital generation, are the trump card—and we won. Now it’s up to us to make sure that the historic protest was not merely a historical aberration.
When I wrote the copyright report for the House Republican Study Committee, I had no idea the outpouring of support I would receive from the digital generation that I belong to. I wrote it solely to start a conversation amongst our Congressional Members, but instead I have seen it engage thousands of average people. The report was published on November 16, 2012. Two weeks later, on December 7, 2012, I was informed that I would not be retained as a staffer.
Despite the personal consequences, I am not giving up. I'm just getting started, and I'm not scared by a temporary setback. I'm emboldened by it. And I don't think I'm the only one, or that I'm one of a few.
The conversation that the copyright report started is inspirational, in the face of a political establishment (on both sides of the aisle) which often refuses to acknowledge that we are paying attention. It is up to us, the public, to be engaged. If we are not satisfied with our policy-makers and the policies that they enact, we can change the policies by challenging them.
We have the ideas, we have the tools, and we have the organization.
President Obama and the Tea Party show that an energized and engaged citizenry can elect candidates in grassroots movements. And we have seen them stop legislation in its tracks. SOPA’s opposition proved that a united digital movement can stop legislation that is expected to pass despite overwhelming odds, special interest’ cronies, and powerful politicians.
Read the rest
Rob Beschizza at 11:09 am • •
This has to be some kind of brilliant hoax: a Twitter 'attribution troll' is showering threats on anyone who tweets a popular one-line poem. Read the rest
Xeni Jardin at 1:06 pm • •
My mom used to work at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, VA. I am in town today visiting, so we took a quick trip to the museum to check out the beautiful new building (completed in 2010), and a current show of the über-famous, über-promoted Dale Chihuly, whom I used to mock as the Thomas Kinkade of glass. You know what? That was unfair. His work is so beautiful when you're surrounded by it up close, and while I'd seen individual works before, I hadn't seen it like this. I get it now.
This show includes work from the eighties through the twenty-teens, and a site-specific "Mille Fiori" installation called Laguna Torcello that is the largest platform installation every assembled by the artist.
I am testing out a new iPhone 5, and shot some pictures to share with everyone on Boing Boing. I'm digging how it handles low-light and high-color-saturation environments, and this is certainly one of them.
Apart from how beautiful the exhibition is, and how beautifully lit and presented everything is, I wanted to share a little conversation we had with one of the guards.
The museum's policy is generally to prohibit all photography, and to create physical boundaries between the public and 3-dimensional works in shows like this.
A guard told us today that Chihuly explicitly demands in his contract that all photography (except flash use) must be allowed, and arranged things so that this work—remember, it's glass, folks!—would be presented naked, not behind guard rails or velvet ropes or barriers of any kind.
It's so accessible that I felt a little nervous, and wondered how inevitable it was that some clumsy visitor would drop a purse or bang into something, shattering hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars worth of art.
Apart from the guards, however, the only real barrier was an electric sensor in a few places that made an annoying sound when people got too close to one of the works.
Anyway, this attitude of openness and accessibility seemed rare for an artist in that kind of space. It made me respect and appreciate Chihuly in a new way. Yes, of course, people snapshotting and sharing his work serves to promote it further. But not every artist, and not every institution, recognizes this.
The show's great. Check it out if you're in the area before February, 2013. Don't miss the "reeds" in the water garden outside of the café.
Chihuly at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. Oct 20, 2012—Feb 10, 2013.
Cory Doctorow at 8:38 am • •
Even if we win the right to own and control our computers, a dilemma remains: what rights do owners owe users?
Read the rest
Rob Beschizza at 7:27 pm • •
The EFF reports that Charles Carreon has withdrawn his mad lawsuit against Matthew Inman, creator of The Oatmeal.
Attorney Charles Carreon dropped his bizarre lawsuit against The Oatmeal creator Matthew Inman today, ending his strange legal campaign against Inman's humorous and creative public criticism of a frivolous cease and desist letter that Carreon wrote on behalf of his client Funny Junk.
To recap briefly: website FunnyJunk hosted many unauthorized copies of Inman's work. Inman mocked it. FunnyJunk threatened to sue him for mocking it. Inman mocked it again and established a wildly successful charity drive to lampoon FunnyJunk and fight cancer. Carreon soiled his legal drawers and dragged Inman, the charities, anonymous critics, and the entire Internet's attention into a demented knot of litigation. Now this. What will the new dawn bring?
Rob Beschizza at 7:14 pm • •
The European Union's Court of Justice ruled today that software licenses may be resold.
By its judgment delivered today, the Court explains that the principle of exhaustion of the distribution right applies not only where the copyright holder markets copies of his software on a material medium (CD-ROM or DVD) but also where he distributes them by means of downloads from his website. Where the copyright holder makes available to his customer a copy – tangible or intangible – and at the same time concludes, in return form payment of a fee, a licence agreement granting the customer the right to use that copy for an unlimited period, that rightholder sells the copy to the customer and thus exhausts his exclusive distribution right.
The case concerned Oracle, which sued UsedSoft, a German company which bought and resold "used" software licenses which provided access to software downloads.
Rob Beschizza at 9:08 pm • •
Cartoonist Donna Barstow often broaches political themes.
Paging Charles Carreon! Someone on the internet wants money from mocking critics, but may need a hand with the legal not-so-niceties.
Slate cartoonist Donna Barstow railed on Monday at online forum Something Awful, whose denizens often repost her work and subject it to withering ridicule. Though one of many artists to find their work attacked online, Barstow is fighting back, demanding payment and accusing the site of copyright infringement. Read the rest
Rob Beschizza at 6:07 am • •
Miami Heat stakeholder Ranaan Katz is suing a blogger over an "unflattering" photo published online, reports Tim Elfrink in The Miami New Times. In the lawsuit, Katz claims copyright violation; coincidentally, the blogger—who has not removed the photo at his site—is a noted critic of Katz. Katz's lawyer, Todd Levine, even threatened the New Times in a Streisand-tastic effort to prevent it running a story about his lawsuit. [New Times via GigaOm]
What makes Tetris Tetris? The mobile app explosion threw gasoline on the game's already-numbing history of copyright battles. At Ars Technica, Kyle Orland takes a look at the Tetris Company's endless efforts to kill them. These efforts hinge on a seemingly straightforward question: is Tetris simple enough to be defined by a set of rules (to which copyright cannot apply) or does it qualify as protected expression? — Rob
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