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Cory Doctorow at 7:15 pm • 
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DeviantArt's TommyFilth modded a KitchenAid mixer and gave it a perfect Boba Fett makeover: "I asked for a Kitchenaid mixer for Christmas, I pointed my wife toward a broken one on eBay so that I could refurbish it, as I was taking it apart I got some inspiration for the paint job and this is what came out of it, still needs a phase board for speed control and two decals to be applied to the sides but I couldn't wait to share."
Boba Fett Mixer (Thanks, Fipi Lele!)
Cory Doctorow at 5:43 pm • •
Alan Wexelblat comment on the news that Nintendo has claimed "monetization rights" to fan videos on YouTube that feature tips on playing its games. Some of these videos are incredibly popular, and while their use of Nintendo's creations are often fair use, Nintendo gets to use YouTube's monetization system to advertise on all the videos:
The basic idea is that if someone makes a video of themselves playing a Nintendo game and uploads it to YouTube any ads shown with that video will be of Nintendo's choosing and revenue from it will flow to Nintendo. Ads may appear beside the videos or actually be inserted before and after the video when people go to play it.
The problem here is that "Let's Play" style videos are a pervasive form of information and sharing throughout the industry. I did a quick YouTube search for "let's play" for this blog post and got back over 9.1 million hits. People create these videos to show off their skills, to highlight interesting things they've seen such as game "easter eggs", to provide guides or walk-throughs, or just to share a bit of fun with friends. There are a few professional or semi-professional games writers who use this style of video to promote themselves or their channels, but they are a tiny minority of that nine million.
Nintendo has positioned its action as a gentler approach; rather than trying to ban content related to Nintendo games, they just want to make money off it by changing the video that an individual uploaded. Yeah, um, guys that's not a whole lot better. It also comes across as cheap and lazy - rather than creating content for YouTube that fans and players would want to watch, Nintendo is just taking over other peoples' content.
Cory Doctorow at 7:19 pm • •
Kristen sez, "The DoomBuggies website has released a version of the Haunted Mansion Corridor of Doors wallpaper in fabric, wallpaper and gift wrap, and according to the DoomBuggies facebook page, it's the same graphic that has been used by Disney. 'This is created from the same artwork that we created for Disney's official Haunted Mansion 40th Anniversary CD box set and CD insert,' according to Jeff Baham, the owner of DoomBuggies.com."
Cory Doctorow at 3:00 pm • •
The Brony Thank You Fund spun out of a Reddit forum Indiegogo fundraiser for fans of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic ("bronies" and "pegasisters"). After raising money to run an ad thanking the show's creators for doing such a great job, the organizers donated the hefty excess balance to Toys for Tots. The project continued to gain momentum and it is now a registered 501(c)3 charitable organization through which fans of My Little Pony can make tax-free donations that will be funneled to worthy causes. They claim that they're the first media-related fandom to register as a charity -- I'm pretty sure that some science fiction conventions are run as 501(c)3s, though.
Cory Doctorow at 5:41 am • •
Kevyn Jacobs snapped this knit (crocheted?) Dalek bollard cover at the corner of West Magnolia Street and Commercial Street in Bellingham, WA. No clue as to the manufacturer of said confection, but bravo.
#Knitted #Dalek bollard cover (Thanks, Hagrid!)
Cory Doctorow at 12:21 pm • •
Cherazor's "Guide: Posing in Cosplay" was a fascinating look at the thought that goes into showing off your cosplay with well-thought-through body-language that takes into account your own morphology, the depiction of your chosen character, and the line between playful and sexualized posing.
Cory Doctorow at 6:45 am • •
This five-minute video takes you on a tour of the astounding Beetlejuice roller-coaster created by Nuropsych1 and friends. It incorporates many of the best visual elements from this outstanding film, all set to an excellent remix of the Beetlejuice soundtrack, one of the great instrumental pieces of all time.
This was done on the XBOX 360 in creative mode. We worked on it off and on for two months.
Beetle Juice - A Minecraft Roller Coaster (Thanks, Fipi Lele!)
Cory Doctorow at 8:00 am • •
This wonderful Jawa birthday cake was made by adapting a teddy-bear cake mold, garnishing it with chocolate fondant and adding mini-party-light LEDs from a craft store. It was created by the wife of Flickr user Fat Tony 1138 for their daughter's fifth birthday. Lucky kid!
Cory Doctorow at 11:39 am • •
` Spocko sez, "Brilliant, and well made parody of the 9/11 video 'Loose Change.' It points out all the 'coincidences' in the destruction of the Death Star. Was it an inside job?"
An examination of some questionable events and circumstances leading up to the destruction of the Death Star, through the eyes of an amateur investigative journalist within the Star Wars galaxy. The focus is mainly on the connections between the people who created and operated the Death Star and those responsible for destroying it.
Luke's Change: an Inside Job (Thanks, Spocko!)
Cory Doctorow at 9:14 am • •
From the Mario Piano site, where you'll find "authentic, high-fidelity Mario sheet music that was entirely faithful to the original Mario themes and sound effects, and which could be trusted to be 100% accurate," the sheet music for the Mario "coin" sound.
Cory Doctorow at 9:42 am • •
Redditor Volpinazzurra made her own reversible hoodie inspired by the hero of the indie-game smash Journey. Alas, the labor that went into this makes it uneconomical for wider production and sale ("it took me way too long to be profitable!") but Volpinazzurra says she's considering offering the pattern for sale.
I wondered why no one had thought to make a Journey hoodie.... So I made a Journey hoodie! (via Waxy)
Cory Doctorow at 12:45 pm • •
Steve sez, "In 1926 Hugo (Award) Gernsback established the science fiction genre with the introduction of Amazing Stories magazine. Sadly, the magazine ended its run in 2005.
Now it has returned once again, this time in the guise of a social networking platform for fandom, featuring multiple daily blog posts from nearly 60 different authors, editors, artists and fans.
Amazing Stories' publisher, the Experimenter Publishing Company, hopes that fans of the genre will join the site and by doing so will help bring back a once revered short fiction market.
Membership is free and all contents now and in the future will remain free."
I was once published in one of the print incarnations of Amazing -- felt great to join the storied world of those pages.
Cory Doctorow at 6:11 am • •
Jere7my sez, "This lovely young woman brought the house down at Arisia this year with her stunning "TARDIS Princess" dress. A "door" on the skirt opened to show the TARDIS control room, giving it the illusion of being "bigger on the inside"... I believe the creator/model is Sasha Trabane."
TARDIS dress. (Thanks, Jere7my!)
Cory Doctorow at 3:53 am • •
But when Lionsgate bought out Summit Entertainment, the company that made the Twilight franchise, they started to aggressively "monetize" the remixes of the series online. That meant that they claimed ownership of them using YouTube's ContentID system, which would automatically place ads alongside all the video clips from the series -- including "Buffy vs Edward."
McIntosh objected to this. His video was fair use -- the Copyright Office itself said so -- and had never had ads placed in it. Lionsgate had no claim over it. He appealed to YouTube. YouTube punted to Lionsgate, who insisted that they were legally in the right. McIntosh hired a lawyer to write an letter explaining the fair use analysis to YouTube, who agreed, and reinstated the video, and Lionsgate (seemingly) dropped the claim.
But Lionsgate came back with another claim: the "audiovisual" elements in the video were fair use, but the "visual" elements were not (yeah, I know). McIntosh went through the process again, with the same result -- and so Lionsgate filed a complaint with YouTube that resulted in it being taken offline altogether.
McIntosh's correspondence with Lionsgate has been very unsatisfying. The company claims that since he refused to let them make money off of his creativity, they had "no choice" but to have it censored from YouTube. The company's representatives refuse to address the fair use claims at all.
Meanwhile, to add insult to injury, McIntosh had to complete an insulting "copyright education" course in order to continue using YouTube (even though he is an expert on fair use and had done no wrong), and is permanently barred from uploading videos longer than 15 minutes to the service -- all because of the repeated, fraudulent assertions made by Lionsgate.
In the past, companies that sent similar fraudulent takedowns to YouTube have faced penalties (remember EFF and the dancing baby versus Prince and Universal Music?). It would be an expensive and difficult proposition for McIntosh to bring Lionsgate to court for repeating the fraud, but let's hope that these copyfraudsters don't get off scot-free.
In the meantime, here's a really cool version of the video with annotations courtesy of Mozilla's popcorn.js tool.
Cory Doctorow at 2:55 pm • •
Tamás Kánya, who produced the beer-can X-wing fighters, has also done a great series of Star Wars silhouettes cut out of vinyl record albums.
star wars silhouettes vinyl records art (Thanks, Tamás!)
