Month: December 2004

Saying Goodbye

Today was a very unhappy day, as my wife and I attended the funeral of my aunt, Opal Shrontz.

Not too long after my wife and I were married, Opal was diagnosed with Huntingdon’s Disease — a genetic degenerative brain disorder. Currently there is no cure for Huntingdon’s.

The disease is caused by a defective gene which, to oversimplify a bit, causes the overproduction of a protein in the brain. As the protein accumulates, it gradually destroys brain functions (exactly how this happens is still not understood). The cruelest part of Huntingdon’s, then is that before the victim dies, he or she experiences years of gradual mental deterioration accompanied by symptoms such as involuntary movements and difficulty controlling basic motor skill such as walking or speaking. Typically, death occurs 15-20 years after onset.

My aunt was only 53. One of the more vivid memories I have of her is visiting amusement parks like Cedar Point. At a very young age I concluded that my aunt had inherited the brains in the family since, like me, she refused to go on many of the rides. We agreed, for example, that ferris wheels were clearly the devil’s work.

Unfortunately I didn’t get to know my aunt as well as I would have liked as a child due to some BS family conflicts that had nothing to do with her, and then Huntingdon’s robbed me of the chance to get to know her better as an adult.

Challenge-Response=SPAM

I lurk on a mailing list about e-mail lists, and recently the list has been going back and forth over using challenge/response systems to control SPAM.

In a challenge/response system, typically if you e-mail an individual using such a system, you will get back an automated message which requires you to reply to it in order to prove you are not a spammer. Some systems require complex “challenges” to demonstrate that you are not a spammer.

Personally, I consider all challenge/response e-mails to be just as annoying as spam and tag them as such within my e-mail client. Such e-mails are especially annoying since 99 percent of the the one’s I’ve received have come from people who contacted me first. If someone’s going to e-mail me requesting a response and then not take the time to add me to their white list, it must not really have been as urgent as they claimed in the e-mail.

Happy Birthday Emma

My daughter turns 8 later this month and we had a birthday party for her this weekend. We’re sort of cycling through all of the cheesey birthday party themes, so this year we took her and several friends bowling.

Now nothing beats getting home from a party, looking through the pictures and seeing your 8-year-old striking a pose you might see at a Kid Rock concert (she’s actually just twirling her hair there).

Hey, these are my M&Ms, dad!

Heaven is a french fry.

The birthday girl ready for takeoff.

Hmmm… I got dad’s computer to reboot, I wonder if I can figure how to do the same thing with this one.

This is the only way to bowl. Run up to the lane and simply drop the ball. Then lay down and wait for five minutes while the bowl makes its way leisurely down the lane.

Any day now, that ball is going to get close to the pins.

Emma on the other hand was all professional.

Colin, on the other hand, could care less about bowling.

Fascinating. Really? You don’t say.

Contemplating plans for world domination.

Balloons! Ohmigod, they got me balloons!

Fred von Lohmann on Marvel vs. City of Heroes

EFF senior staff attornney Fred von Lohmann has an interesting op-ed about Marvel’s lawsuit against players in City of Heroes infringing on Marvel’s intellectual property by playing Wolverine or Cyclops characters in the game. Von Lohmann writes,

Marvel’s assertion of copyright and trademark rights over the noncommercial expressive activities of its fans is both unprecedented and unnecessary. The fundamental justification for copyright is that we must tolerate a limited statutory monopoly on expression in order to secure an adequate incentive for the creative industries. That’s an adequate incentive, not the maximum conceivable incentive. Trademark law, meanwhile, is meant to protect the public from confusion in the marketplace for products and services. Measured by these yardsticks, Marvel’s claims fall short. Does anyone believe that Marvel will fire its authors and close up shop if it can’t prevent little Johnny from pretending to be Wolverine online? And no one is going to be confused into buying something by mistake when they run into another player in-game who has donned the green skin and purple shorts of the Hulk.

On the other hand, if the court accepts Marvel’s notion that playing Wolverine or the Incredible Hulk online is unlawful, you can expect a chill to spread through all the MMO universes. Rights holders will begin insisting that MMO operators police their games for unauthorized elements — robots that look too much like C3PO, uniforms that look too much like Captain Kirk’s, haircuts that mimic Bart Simpson’s, in-game face paint that evokes KISS, or blonde vampire slayers named Buffy.

Those who want to appropriate characters and objects from their favorite movies, comics, games or television shows will be limited to virtual worlds either operated or licensed by the corporations that own those cultural objects. If they want to mix and match characters and genres, they will be hunted down and deleted, either by the rightsholders themselves or by MMO operators deputized by fear of secondary liability. In essence, the open-ended universe of MMOs would be reduced to a limited set of tightly controlled theme parks. All this, thanks to the censorial side of copyright and trademark law.

So let’s recognize Marvel’s lawsuit for what it is — not just a tussle between competing corporations, but as an assault on the basic expressive rights of the fans that have supported the comic book industry for decades. Be prepared when your children, heading out into the virtual backyard of the future, ask “Mom, I want to play Spider-Man with my friends today. Did we pay for the Marvel license this month?”

Source:

Et tu, Marvel?. Fred von Lohmann, Law.Com, December 3, 2004.