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Saturday, June 22, 2002 |
 Disney Challenges Town Library's New Mouse Logo
"Walt Disney Co. officials have until July 30 to decide whether to challenge the Genesee District Library's mascot for an alleged similarity to Mickey Mouse.
Last summer, the library submitted a trademark registry request with the U.S. Patent and Trademark office for 'Book Mouse,' a blue, large-eared rodent wearing red-rimmed glasses and a backpack. Book Mouse appears on bumper stickers and in coloring books, and even marches in local parades.
In April, Disney got a 90-day extension to consider challenging the Book Mouse trademark." [The Daytona Beach News-Journal, via LibraryPlanet.com]
Addendum: A local news broadcast picked up the story and did a great job with it, including some copyright infringement of their own! You can watch the video online until June 29 (I think), although maybe a letter writing campaign would get them to leave it up permanently! (Requires the free Real player.) Note that the Library District is in Michigan, the article is in a Florida newspaper, and the broadcast segment is from the area Michigan ABC affiliate!
12:21:17 PM Permanent link here
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" 'Let's drive down the elephant this evening....'
Jeremy Wood and Hugh Pryor are part of a new breed of artists crisscrossing the planet, creating artwork on a par with the ancient Nazca line drawings of Peru. With the help of GPS, these artists have discovered a fish in Wallingford, an elephant in Brighton, not to mention a huge spider lurking in Oxford.
Employing satellite technology for a colossal connect-the-dots puzzle, their virtual drawings are created by using the GPS receiver like a geodesic pencil to map out their journeys across roads, bridges and streets.
'GPS drawing is about recording lines using one's journey as a mark-making medium,' says Wood. 'Most GPS receivers record your whereabouts as a track, like a dot-to-dot or a digital 'breadcrumb trail.' This is often displayed on liquid crystal display on the device, and the track is updated as you move about. When the line is viewed on its own, you have a GPS drawing.'
With the help of software created by Pryor, the raw logistical data spanning miles of road is sized down into a smaller digital image that can be shown on a screen-size canvas. Most of their drawings can be seen online at their website where they also welcome contributions from GPS artists the world over....
The duo will soon be presenting the world's biggest 'If' -- a journey from Ifley in Oxford to Ifold in West Sussex. Approximately 460 kilometers long, the drawing is being completed in two stages. And their next drawing after 'If'? 'What do you think?' asks Pryor with a grin, but -- 'Only.' "[Wired News]
11:57:37 AM Permanent link here
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"DAN GILLMOR: In your lively blog for the San Jose Mercury News, you wrote: 'I have appeared on NPR quite a few times in the past. I doubt I'll be appearing there much in the future.' You might rethink that. The people who set the NPR linking policy are not the grunts who produce and report the programs. If you're for unfettered linking, you might as well be for unfettered interviewing.
JEFFREY DVORKIN, NPR OMBUDSMAN: While Dan G would be wrong to cut back on NPR interviews, his comments typify the reaction your network is stirring up among the clueful--vexation that will continue as long as you're not open to linking by "left-handed socialist diabetics." And notice? Dan uses a blog to help stay in touch with the needs and interests of his readers.
Not every NPR listener is on the Net, and only a fraction keep blogs or otherwise publish on the Web, but I suspect that millions of NPR listeners are readers of small Web sites and heartily dislike your network's attempts to restrict linking. Why not do a Gillmor and use a blog to keep up with the pulse of the Net so you can avoid similar mistakes in the future?" [TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home]
David makes an interesting suggestion that NPR start using blogs, which are built primarily on links, in order to better understand links (although I think individual blogs, rather than a top-level NPR blog, is a better idea). However, an organization that is this scared of incoming links is going to be even more terrified of outgoing links. Until they understand the fundamental principles of linking, NPR will never blog.
11:49:23 AM Permanent link here
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Slashdot Comes to Forbes
"Forbes online has added a box of Slashdot headlines to its technology pages ("providing senior-level business readers with access to cutting-edge, high-tech content online."). Pretty cool to see /. getting this kind of mainstream cred. (via Raelity Bytes)" [Boing Boing]
Isn't this akin to the hippies becoming baby boomers? When the "subversive" becomes part of the corporate culture? Not that Slashdot has been considered "underground" in years....
10:55:37 AM Permanent link here
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"I talked about [Jon Stanley]..., but I've been reading and re-reading his article (very brief) on 'Emerging Legal Paradigms.' Wow!!! Does he nail it. Just go read it. Trust me. This guy needs a blog!" [Ernie the Attorney]
Upon reading the above statement, I naturally went to read Jon's article. In it, he questions how laws will interact with the internet:
"Now, in the information age, knowledge hangs in the air, ubiquitous, expanding exponentially and circulating around the globe with an audible hum. We are heading into what Ray Kurzweil, author of The Age of Spiritual Machines, describes as the knee of the curve, a period of steep, inevitable, unifying acceleration and discovery....
Only the law is liable to intervene, to interpret, to direct the traffic and regulate the flow. New internet technology and the law are a natural combination because there is no principle of stare decisis in terra incognita. Kurzweil is among the theoreticians who believe that, 'in the next century most conscious entities will have no permanent physical presence.' How will a Writ of Habeas Corpus apply? What will Descartes' famous, 'Cogito ergo sum' mean then?
A cyber Code of Hammurabi will not suffice. There was no artificial intelligence in Babylon. Another Magna Carta will be required, another Grotius, another Blackstone. Within the body of law that does not yet exist Dred Scott and Marbury v. Madison may seem trivial or quaint.
To interpret the music of the spheres where computers and the law intersect requires an ability to read the score and hit a moving target. It is difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff when the wind is blowing at the speed of light."
I'd like to believe that there could be an unwritten code that covers internet technology, rather than codified laws, but as NPR, BT, and CIPA have recently proven, laws probably will be needed to govern certain aspects of behavior that involve internet technology (it's okay to link, you didn't invent links, and you can't infringe on a person's right to information). I hate that thought because then it becomes a question of whose laws win out and which persons influence the decision makers (see 2600, CARP, Deutsche Bahn).
The best thing about the internet so far - and the reason it's become ubiquitous and embedded so quickly - is because of its self-policing nature. AOL newbies learn the ropes, Microsoft Smart Tags get slapped down, spammers reap what they sow.
So who in our society has the authority and knowledge to "read the score and hit a moving target" accurately at the speed of light? So far, we've been light-years behind.
10:50:28 AM Permanent link here
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I haven't posted any chocoholic links lately, so here's a roundup.
12:13:19 AM Permanent link here
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© Copyright 2004 Jenny Levine.
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