cleolinda | Entries tagged with copyright

A linkspam that has been THREE DAYS IN THE MAKING.

@bathbomb: Also, today I did a little sketch of @cleolinda. This is what she looks like in my head.

@cleolinda: @bathbomb Other than the fact that I'm about twice as wide, it's actually pretty good.

@foresthouse: @cleolinda You look like that in my head too. Except there is a Pallas cat grumping over your shoulder.

@cleolinda: @foresthouse Considering that you've seen me in person, the likeness must be impressive.

@foresthouse: @cleolinda Well, okay, actually I confess that in my head you have purple hair, and no amount of seeing you IRL can change that. :P

Linkspam! ( Read more... )

... on THAT OF WHICH WE DO NOT SPEAK:

I went on another photo safari (this seems to be a new Saturday morning tradition), this time at Hobby Lobby, a terrifyingly huge artsy-craftsy emporium. (The reason the photo safaris happen on Twitter is because you can take a picture on your phone and email it straight to TwitPic from there, which then appears automatically on your Twitter feed.) I mean, I spent fifteen minutes in that thing and I am ready to craft THE SHIT out of something. You take TLE there, he'll think he's died (again) and gone to heaven. Note on photos: we did not even get into any of the vertical aisles at the store. This is simply the shallow end of the pool.( Read more... )

Back to work. Apparently the best part of the movie (minus John Cusack's best line) is online completely legally. Enjoy.

(Zomg e-book! The Annotated Movies in Fifteen Minutes: Wizards!)

So here's what happened with my phone: that last picture of the teacup, the one with the blueberry-colored New Moon Red tea in it, was taken 0.85 seconds before the phone slipped out of my hands and plunged directly into the cup. I let out a great shriek and whipped it out so fast that it was like the phone simply fell in and bounced out ("FIVE SECOND RULE! FIVE SECOND RULE!!!!"). Sister Girl (who admits to heckling me right before it happened) put on a face of pure shocked :O, like someone had just been shot (she's lost a number of iPhones to the liquid element herself) and ducked behind the fridge door ("I CAN'T LOOK!"). So I dried the phone off in a panic and even tried to suck liquid out of the bottom of the phone, since it had fallen in straight down, which gave the whole procedure something of the air of CPR ("Stay with me! *huff huff* STAY WITH MEEEEEE").

And then ( The man who showed up had the most magnificent... )

And finally, from

tasterainbows: Artist sued by manufacturer stealing his work, and if he runs out of funds to fight it, he'll lose by default?

(Zomg e-book! The Annotated Movies in Fifteen Minutes: Wizards!)

Okay, since I think I was waxing a bit verbose about this on a site meant for 140-character messages:

What happened was, A History of Violence screenwriter Josh Olson informed the internets that He Will Not Read Your Fucking Script.

Cole Abaius thought this made him a bit of an asshole, although more for the tone than the sentiment.

John Scalzi weighed in (more calmly) and agreed, although he mostly focused on the "Writers have no obligations to strangers" and "I do not owe you my time" and "I do not need to piss off people I know by asking for favors for every single stranger who approaches me" aspects.

And then David Gerrold brought up my own worst fear. See, I don't think people realize the legal jeopardy other people's unpublished work puts a working writer in. Three words for you: Marion Zimmer Bradley (fifth paragraph under "Literary Career"). If you read someone's unpublished work and you then write anything that's the least bit similar, that person could sue you for copyright infringement (i.e., plagiarism). The problem is, there are certain things, certain similarities, that are going to occur in any two works on the same subject, and the established writer may have no way of proving they did not copy. They might be able to defend themselves in court and win, if they can argue that there are more differences than similarities, or that the similarities are not strong enough, but they still have to go to court and pay those legal fees and waste that time.

Here's both sides of that, from my own experience: ( Read more... )

... which could probably change on a dime.

First off--had a couple of requests to talk about saving the show Chuck:

library_of_sex says, "There's the usual letter-writing campaign and voting at E!Online's Save One Show, but there's also the Finale and Footlong, involving Subway, a big sponsor of the show," and

foresthouse has more ideas here.

Oh, by the way: super cute charm necklaces. I have the Love Letter (wearing it right now, actually) and the Chat Noir.

( Linkspam! )

Current Mood: mellow

Early linkspam so I can go take some pictures for something I'm a bit behind on posting. Cough.

Re: the previous post: Okay, you know me. I love me some Tonners. That is not a factory fresh "original" Tonner Jacob. Now that I've gotten a good look at it, you can't convince me that it is. I know for a fact that the other two are repaints, because I know what the originals look like. That is just not a Tonner paint job, and you cannot tell me otherwise. ETA: Aha! Solved.

The new Made of Fail podcast is up, for real this time.

( More linkspam )

Current Mood: busy

Attn: Etsy people: If you are selling anything--say, pins or buttons--made with pictures from movies, that's copyright infringement. As in, it's (let's say) Summit Entertainment's right to decide who gets to make money off images from (let's say) Twilight. It's one thing if you're going to do Twilight-"themed" jewelry; it's another to actually use movie stills. If you don't specifically have their permission, they could very easily come after you. And all they would really have to do is search "Twilight buttons," which is what I did after someone told me about it.

How is this different from icons on LJ or "flair" on Facebook? It's different because you're making money off it. I'm not going to rat anyone out, but... it's a bad idea. And I don't know about Etsy, but I know on CafePress that sellers have to agree in the terms of service not to sell anything they don't have the rights to, so the same goes for them, too.

And who knows--maybe they're too busy rushing out sequels on a five-dollar budget to go after you. But I know other movie studios have done it, and some of them are testier about it than others. If you want to roll those dice, be my guest. Just don't ask me to contribute.

ETA: Hm. A lawyer weighs in.

Late again today, because there was MOAR CHRISTMAS SHOPPING. Which was fun, so I had that going for me.

Important: I got an email the other day from someone who said that reading The Gift of Fear hours before she attended a seminar helped her realize that the seminar was Bad News; she was able to run away, literally, out of the building, before they got their hooks into her (they immediately started telling people to ignore gut instincts, interestingly enough). Turns out the seminar was the cult Lifespring under a new name--please be aware that variations operate under the names "Mastery In Transformational Training" and "Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness," according to Wikipedia. So basically, I wanted to alert everyone to that before anyone else got sucked in, and also, READ THE GIFT OF FEAR, SERIOUSLY, IT IS ON SALE RIGHT NOW, I AM NOT KIDDING.

Also: in the interest of slimming down the linkspam entries, I've looked into using FriendFeed for the less crucial stuff. Basically, anything I post on Livejournal or Twitter will show up there, and anything I "share" from Google Reader will as well. I won't hit share on anything I intend to use on the linkspam posts--the good and/or movie stuff--so at least that way you're not getting it twice, but if it's just something randomly kind of interesting, I'll throw it up there anyway. (And you'll also see the kind of stuff I initially flag and then don't use.) And you can then add the RSS feed of that to Google Reader if that's what you use. It's a whole recursive tangle of feeds, but you know, whatever. It gives people options. I'll try it for a while, see if it works for people.

Meanwhile, the Twilight sequel trainwreck has gotten EVEN WORSE. ( Hey, can you be in Vancouver on Monday? )

( More linkspam )

Current Mood: Do I want ice cream? I cannot decide
Current Music: Britney Spears, "Circus," plz send help

The tree is up! And Sister Girl and her boyfriend are coming over to help decorate it tonight! Thus, linkspam will be early.

Oh, and I had a request to syndicate my ever-so-scintillating Twitter feed, so... here it is:

cleotwitter. (Deeply fascinating sample Twit: "Aaaaand the new Britney song has eaten my brain. Well, it's not like Twilight left me with all that much of one anyway.")

From

punzerel: "

urbanfictions is pledging to donate 100% of her etsy proceeds in the next week to UNICEF, specifically for emergency relief of the cholera epidemic in Zimbabwe. She has some very cool items (check out the doorknob hangers, especially) which would make awesome stocking stuffers or gifts. Would you be willing to post a link in your next linkspam post? Her post here has all the information plus a link to her shop. Thank you!"

Sci-fi’s grand old man Forrest J. Ackerman dies.

( More linkspam )

Current Mood: cheerful
Current Music: Britney Spears, "Circus"

Okay. I know that putting your shit out onto the internet means that you essentially can't control what people do with it, even if YOU DO HAVE THE RIGHT TO TELL THEM TO STOP, BY THE WAY. But "Twilight in Fifteen Minutes" is now floating around on MySpace without my name on it, which I should have expected, quite honestly, but putting in "© 2008 Cleolinda Jones" invisitext is a pain in the ass and it annoys people, so I didn't do it this time. Well, I've gone back and put it in. So if you read Tw/15M now and highlight something and see the invisitext and it annoys you, well, this is why we can't have nice things.

It's also really, really funny when someone copypastes it and runs off all like, "HAI GUYZ I FOUND THIS THING DONT KNO WHERE IT CAME FROM HOPE U LIEK IT" and posts something like this without paying attention:

EDWARD: I AM VAMPIRE. HEAR ME TWINKLE.
© 2008 Cleolinda Jones. Please quote or link back, do not repost. m15m.livejournal.com
BELLA: Oh, wow, I spent like $60 at Sephora trying to get sparkle like that. What is that, Urban Decay?

I've actually seen that with a couple of the Harry Potter 15Ms, in fact.

(You know what makes me mad? Not that they made off with my shit, because that's what people do and it's not really very surprising. It makes me mad because it's like, come on, I know you know better. I've made it abundantly clear that I am politely asking you not to do that. And if you got it from someone else who didn't credit me, well, they should have known better. You wouldn't want someone to do that with your shit, so why would you do it with my shit? I just really have not wrapped my mind around the notion that people on the intertubes do not have any common sense, I guess, and you'd think that after ten years I would have come to terms with that, but no.)

(Oh, and by the way? There was a Creative Commons graphic/license on that thing from the moment I posted it. See how very terribly effective they are?)

(MySpace. Why did it have to be MySpace? Of course it was MySpace.)

Current Mood: sorry, I just need to vent
Current Music: I'll get over it in a minute

Lexicongate ETAs march on: a bunch of blogs weigh in without actually reading the ruling; I can't even believe what Stanford Law said; NORA ROBERTS HAS SPOKEN.

I will say this: if you actually read the ruling, or summaries of it, you'll see that Judge Robert Patterson (no, Patterson. He does not sparkle in direct sunlight. That I know of) is very careful to note that this is not a ruling against the general concept of fan comment and critique, for profit or not.¹ The issue is not that the Lexicon is a derivative fan work; the issue is that it isn't. It is, in large part, copy/pasting of the original books' phrasing with little to no criticism or commentary--it's Rowling's work alphabetized. It is, in fact, an enterprise that makes the rest of creative fandom look bad. That's the issue. That's why she isn't suing the other guide books and commentaries² (or me, for that matter, and I also published): because those works actually contributed original thought.³ ( More )

And also, if you're going to play the JKR IS SO GREEDY OMG card, keep in mind that she said she'd donate anything they won to charity, and that His Honor did, in fact, award her and WB the princely sum of $6,750. No, I did not leave any zeroes off.

Anyway. Linkspam. (I was promised a ~~Suantum of Quolace~~ Quantum of Solace trailer! Where is my ~~Something of Boris~~ Quantum of Solace trailer?) ETA: IT'S HERE!

( When Oasis Fans Attack, This Fall on FOX! )

Current Mood: exanimate

For those of you just joining us this afternoon: JKR WON THE LEXICON CASE.

As much linkspam as I could pull together given that I have ~~130~~ ~~146~~ 158 unread Lexicon-related emails (and counting): ( VMAs, film festivals, deep chagrin )

Current Mood: swamped
Current Music: Rihanna, "Disturbia"

OH SHIT YOU GUYS GET TO YOUR BOMB SHELTERS

Breaking: Judge rules for Rowling in 'Lexicon' book case.

I'LL BE OVER AT FANDOM WANK IF YOU NEED ME

Current Mood: CAPSLOCK
Current Music: Rihanna, "Disturbia"

Well, today was a busy day. Linkspam: ( More on the Bale situation, Twilight Tuesday gets trolled, real dinosaur on the loose )

Did not go swimming again, as I felt a little sun-sensitive from spending so much time outside yesterday. Have a few mosquito bites on my arm that I keep scratching in my sleep, leading to prolonged swelling and itchitude despite cortisone cream. Also discovered that the ice cream in the freezer downstairs was almost completely melted ~~but still delicious~~, which suggests that the freezer may be borked. Which will probably cost us more money. Still feeling pretty good anyway.

( Linkspam )