Daily Office: Thursday
Morning
¶ Collage: I’m not sure what made Girl Talk’s “rising profile” newsworthy today, but Robert Levine’s report, “Steal This Hook? D.J. Skirts Copyright Law,” reminded me of James Surowiecki’s Financial Page in this week’s New Yorker.
Noon
¶ YourNameHere: Take a break from the important stuff you’re doing and have a laff, courtesy of Cake Wrecks, Jen’s so-far inexhaustible stream of high-larious professional disasters (these cakes weren’t baked at home, you know).
Night
¶ Book Party: I went to a marvelous party…
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Oremus…
Morning, cont’d
§ Collage. Lawyers like Barry Slotnick (keep reading), who believe that there is a difference between “comment” (criticism) and “creativity” ought to find another line of work — outside the law altogether:
“Fair use is a means to allow people to comment on a pre-existing work, not a means to allow someone to take a pre-existing work and recreate it into their own work,†said Barry Slotnick, head of the intellectual property litigation group at the law firm Loeb & Loeb. “What you can’t do is substitute someone else’s creativity for your own.â€
That is a distinction without a difference. The go-to book for this discussion is Michael Heller’s The Gridlock Economy. The go-to villain, of course, is your friendly neighborhood lobbyist for Disney, Mattel & al. Our bloated copyright protections make the nation’s obesity problem look manageable by comparison.
Noon, cont’d
§ YourNameHere. The horrors of Cake Wrecks fall into two categories: the disasters manifest from ten feet away and the signage snafus. Today’s belong to the latter group. Consider my side split.
Night, cont’d
§ Book Party. And not only did Joseph O’Neill sign my suitcase full of books (okay, all three of them), but I met Kate Christensen! Who was manning the cash register! If Ms NOLA hadn’t told me who she was…