SIVACRACY.NET

Posted by Ann Bartow at 09:00 AM | Comments (0)

Here is the abstract:

Copyright law currently forces all intellectual production into a doctrinal model shaped by individualistic assumptions about the authorial ideal. To the extent that the truly original author-owner is conceptualized as an individual (and not a function or fiction), he depends upon Enlightenment ideals of individuation, detachment, and unity. A competing view of the author sees her as necessarily engaged in a process of adaptation, translation and recombination. This version of authorship coheres with a view of the individual as socially constituted: her expression is the result of the complex variety of texts and discourses that she encounters (and by which her subjectivity is shaped). The tension between competing constructions of authorship thus mirrors a larger tension between competing constructions of the self. Feminists have struggled to find a conception of the self that acknowledges social embeddedness without precluding individual autonomy or creative capacity. The process of authorship encapsulates the tension between the autonomous self and the society in which she exists, because the materials of authorship are both given and created. Employing the tools of feminist dialogism and relational theory, I hope to show that we can re-imagine the author not as source, origin, or authority, but as participant, citizen. These ideas illuminate the nature of authorship as a social and formative process, but they also offer the foundation for a coherent justification of copyright: copyright law, which aims to encourage creativity and exchange, should thereby encourage participation in cultural dialogue and facilitate the relations of communication that are central to this conception of selfhood and society.

Download this paper here.

Posted by Ann Bartow at 10:47 AM | Comments (1)

Lessig's post starts out:

Engaget reports that “the head honcho of Macmillan Publishers” lifted a couple Google laptops at a recent BookExpo America, and then when he returned them, retorted “hope you enjoyed a taste of your own medicine,” and “there wasn’t a sign by the computers informing him not to steal them.”

Obviously not. And let us count the ways:

Read the rest here.

Posted by Ann Bartow at 08:25 AM | Comments (1)

According to this Yahoo News story:

Archaeologists unearthing the remains of George Washington's presidential home have discovered a hidden passageway used by his nine slaves, raising questions about whether the ruins should be incorporated into a new exhibit at the site.

The findings have created a quandary for National Park Service and city officials planning an exhibit at the house. They are now trying to decide whether to incorporate the remains into the exhibit or go forward with plans to fill in the ruins and build an abstract display about life in the house.

Read the whole thing here.

Posted by Joe Belk at 12:20 AM | Comments (1)

As Sivacracy’s San Antonio correspondent, I’ve been asked by our fearless leader to comment on the upcoming NBA finals.

It’s about time the world was treated to a San Antonio/Cleveland matchup, which is intriguing on several levels. First, you’ve got the potential river parade comparison (ours is excessively touristy; theirs has seen spontaneous combustion). Musically, they’ve got the Rock’n’Roll Hall of Fame; our claim to fame is Sir Douglas Quintet/Texas Tornados (ironically, the Sivacracy poll’s entrant into the Hall). Basketball-wise, the Cavs are the upstarts, but feature most of the national hype and hope due to their heavily-marketed, globally-iconic, Chosen One superstar.

Conversely, the Spurs are on the verge of a dynasty, but I’ve heard way too many times a lot of their local fan base feels their success has been unjustly marginalized or insufficiently respected.

But get past the Cavs, and dynasty they are, putting them only behind Russell’s Celtics, the ‘50s Minneapolis Lakers, the showtime Lakers, and Jordan’s Bulls (and ahead of Bird’s Celtics and the Shaq/Kobe Lakers) in terms of championships in the history of the league.

The odds are in San Antonio’s favor; top to bottom, the Cavs look like the worst team the Spurs have played in the playoffs. That’s no knock: San Antonio beat a Denver team as loaded as anybody in the NBA (Melo AND AI, just for starters), a terrific Phoenix team (hurt by a ridiculous rule interpretation costing them superstar Amare Stoudamire for a game), and a retooled Utah Jazz (featuring Deron Williams as Stockton and Carlos Boozer as Malone).

The problem with Cleveland is, of course, the top part: the Spurs have to get past poster manchild LeBron James, who it would seem the Spurs have no answer for. Small forward/defensive stopper Bruce Bowen, who did a great job against Steve Nash in the Phoenix series, generally struggles against stronger players (Ron Artest gave him fits in the first round last year, and he’s a level below LeBron).

I suspect, knowing that James is going to have his way, the Spurs will try to shut down everyone else. That’s been the pattern so far (previous championship run patterns featured pure domination in ’99 and wild three-point binges in ’03). Against Phoenix and Utah, one player (Stoudamire and Williams respectively) exceeded his normal output; another (Nash and Boozer) shined in stretches but disappeared significantly in others. In both cases, the rest of the team was shut down.

Cleveland brings not only the most promising young talent in the game but also a team defense modeled on the Spurs themselves. As a Spurs fan, my hope is that the Cavs won’t have an answer for Tim Duncan or Tony Parker (most teams don’t), Manu Ginobili takes over games in stretches, and the numerous Spur outside shooters keep their touch. After all, in local parlance, that’s what brung ‘em.

Posted by Siva at 01:41 PM | Comments (0)

The Chronicle: Wired Campus Blog: Some Publishers Warm to Google Book Search:

When Google first announced its intention to scan books from around the world and post them online, the project was “portrayed in the press as a kind of rapacious monster,” says Jim Zarroli of NPR’s All Things Considered. But now that Google has digitized more than 1 million volumes, some pundits and publishers are changing their tunes.

This has been so effective, says a representative of Oxford University Press, that “321,000 times in the last two years, people have clicked on an Oxford book saying ‘I want to buy this.’ We spent nothing to do that. That’s why we’re a big fan of this program.” —Brock Read

Posted by Ann Bartow at 09:53 AM | Comments (0)

Posted by Ann Bartow at 04:17 PM | Comments (0)

How perfect would it have been if Adam "Major League Asshole" Clymer (Bush called him that, I'm not calling him that!) had written this NYT story? Here's an excerpt:

If President Bush and Vice President Cheney can blurt out vulgar language, then the government cannot punish broadcast television stations for broadcasting the same words in similarly fleeting contexts.

The decision, by a divided panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York, was a sharp rebuke for the F.C.C. and for the Bush administration. For the four television networks that filed the lawsuit — Fox, CBS, NBC and ABC — it was a major victory in a legal and cultural battle that they are waging with the commission and its supporters. ...

Here is another:

...Although the judges struck down the policy on statutory grounds, they also said there were serious constitutional problems with the commission’s attempt to regulate the language of television shows.

In his dissent, Judge Pierre N. Leval defended the commission’s decision to toughen its indecency policy. ...

I guess Leval got tired of fleeting expletiving up trademark and copyright law and decided to try to mess with the First Amendment for a change of pace. More by Paul Horwitz at my temporary auxilliary blog, Prawfsblawg.

Posted by Liz Losh at 12:56 PM | Comments (1)

The Wall Street Journal claims that tech-savvy parents are choosing the names of their children and that professionally astute wives are keeping or jettisoning maiden names with an eye toward being more "Googleable." In "You're a Nobody Unless Your Name Googles Well," Kevin J. Delaney talks about the practice of "vanity searching" among actors and performers to make sure that their monikers appear in the first page of results. Otherwise, those with common names are resorting to dusting off more unusual middle names or resuscitating quirky family names. (As a parent with kids whose middle names are "Aloysius" and "Inigo," apparently it wasn't child abuse to do that to them in the hospital.)

I've always been pretty happy with the relatively rare last name Losh, which I didn't change at the altar, despite years of childhood torment, since it's short and fits nicely into an e-mail address or a user name. Of course, there is some competition from Susan Losh who studies the psychology of gender and computing or the free BSD advocate Warner Losh, but I've suffered from relatively little brand confusion overall.

My first name is a little trickier, however, since professionally I'm "Elizabeth Losh" (and sometimes "Elisabeth Losh" on papers that I give in Europe), but no one who actually knows me calls me anything other than "Liz." For years, you could get hundreds of totally different Google results from "Liz Losh" and "Elizabeth Losh" respectively. It was like a kind of digital split personality disorder. Thanks to social media, these two online identities have begun to merge, but in general the former is still the activist, blogger, and wiseacre, and the latter is the much stodgier professional scholar and university bureaucrat.

On Collision Detection, science and technology writer Clive Thompson has provided his own great commentary on the WSJ article, in which he explains how even a "John Smith" can improve his Google ranking by participating in social media practices on open networks, such as blogging or music sharing. As Thompson points out, the corporate-oriented newspaper overrates pay-to-play solutions.

Apparently Thompson is right in that blogging has clearly helped Siva's Google ranking, although Wikipedia has improved the standing of the Hindu god for whom he is named; check out the results he found here and here!

For more on the social politics of naming, I recommend the excellent article by my Humanities Core colleague Vinayak Chaturvedi, "Vinayak & Me." The writer describes how his name, most obviously a reference to the Hindu god Ganesh, also has a cultural history related to the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi. It's a great scholarly study of the rise of Hindu nationalism and its relationship to ideologies about class and gender, but it also is a personal detective story about the doctor who named him and the author's anxieties about the possible complicity of his family in approving of political murder.

(And if you spend enough time away from a computer screen that you are mystified by the title of this posting, look up "Google Bombs," on -- where else? -- Google.)

Posted by Ann Bartow at 09:42 AM | Comments (3)

The reason I am buying thicker curtains.

Posted by Ann Bartow at 08:24 AM | Comments (0)

Some are pretty good, like number 3. Many are sort of stupid. Number 42 is kind of appalling. Maybe I'm just getting too old for tee shirt activism? Vote for your favorite Anti-DRM tee shirt here.

Posted by Ann Bartow at 08:15 AM | Comments (0)

Pearl Jam's Yellow Ledbetter edition:

Posted by Ann Bartow at 05:10 PM | Comments (0)

The First Carnival of Radical Feminists is a ridiculously difficult act to follow, because Heart did such a fantastic job with it. It is a great resource, and I hope this one will be at least somewhat useful as well. My approach has been to separate the material by broad (yes, bad pun) subject designations, which I have done imperfectly in places, due to overlapping issues. Also I can't really do some of the linked posts justice by describing them, so in many cases all you have to work with is post titles. I hope you will not be put off by a lack of enthusiastic adverbs or exclamation points, and check them out. You won't agree with everything you see at these links, but I think you will learn things and be made to think.

Continue reading "Second Carnival of the Radical Feminists" »

Posted by Ann Bartow at 11:45 AM | Comments (0)

From this site:

Warning: Notwithstanding the wording of the t-shirt to the contrary, your wearing this t-shirt may not be effective in shifting legal responsibility to the management of the establishments that you patronize. Please do not sue us if you ultimately do not prevail in bringing a test case. In making this disclaimer, we are sadly engaging in a version of the liability shifting that we seek to mock with the t-shirt itself.

More information here. Via Grimmelmann at Prawsblawg.

Posted by Ann Bartow at 10:19 AM | Comments (1)

The Consumerist reports:

A billboard depicting a model wearing little more than a shirt has drawn the ire of the women of Glenview, IL. From the Chicago Tribune:

The spa owner claims that the billboard appeals to his male clientèle: "I don't want to sound like a chauvinistic pig, but this is a man's world," he said. "I don't want to sound cocky, but I'm so big in the business that if I lose a handful of clients, we'll get some new ones."

Posted by Liz Losh at 05:08 PM | Comments (0)

Thank heavens that ABC is running stories like Cleavage the Owners Manual so that I can experience some extra outrage with my morning coffee.

Apparently respectably chesty women should be pleased as punch because surveys show that men think well of their pectorally well-endowed colleagues. Otherwise the article suggests that some padding is in order. Of course, make sure to hide that pregnancy ladies, since it's really a turn-off to your guy co-workers. I'd like to know who is funding this so-called scientific research, and why they feel compelled to conduct it in the first place.

Oh, and comments from appreciative readers of the article suggest that women are to blame for their own sexual harassment.

(Via Women in Media & News)

And did I mention that there was a political action by advocates for breast feeding in the Philippines?

Posted by Siva at 11:47 PM | Comments (0)

Sorry to do this to y'all. But for the next few weeks, LeBron James' heroics notwithstanding, this blog will be overtaken once again with too many sports-related posts.

This time, we will be celebrating the inevitable triumph of the mighty San Antonio Spurs!

Posted by Siva at 11:12 PM | Comments (0)

Good Copy Bad Copy:

Good Copy Bad Copy
June 1st, 2007

It is licensed under Creative-Commons so you are allowed to copy and “remix” it for non-commercial use.

Posted by Ann Bartow at 08:44 AM | Comments (1)

Let's say that hypothetically you disagree with the Supreme Court's recent holding in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., Inc. (NB: Paul Secunda has a good overview here) and you decide you want to girlcott all of the company's goods and services. Or, maybe you had your own negative experience with the company.  Assuming you don't regularly purchase rubber,  your initial focus is likely to be upon purchasing tires from sources other than Goodyear. If you do a quick search at the USPTO's webpage, you'll find about 83  Goodyear related federally registered marks, including many variations of this logo:

Goodyear has also registered phrases like "On the wings of Goodyear" (note to Goodyear: blimps don't have wings)  and "If it doesn't say Goodyear it can't be polyglas" (and goodness knows we all want glas in our tires!). You'll also see a host of alphanumeric indicators such as "G395," "GT45V" and "G622RSD" which are probably supposed to make the tires bearing them seem especially high tech or scientific, as opposed to marks like Assurance  which makes the tires sound like feminine hygiene products.  Some of these marks are "dead" but most are "live" and therefore in commercial use. It sounds simple enough to avoid, perhaps,  but an effective girlcott is going to be a little trickier than simply avoiding tires bearing  "Goodyear" trademarks.

Goodyear  produces and sells tires under other  brand names including Dunlop, Kelly, Fulda, Sava and Debica. Goodyear manufactures and sells more than 50 private brands of tires as well to companies like Wal-Mart (Douglas private brand); Sears (SuperGuard, Weather Handler, Eagle, Acqua Handler, Wrangler, Trail Handler and Patriot private brands; NTB private brand through acquired Western Auto stores); Heafner/American Tire (Winston, Regul and Lee private brands); and Martino (Star and Hallmark private brands).

According to its webpage:  For the better part of a century, Goodyear's corporate values have been centered  on the phrase, "Protect Our Good Name."

One way that the company can do that is by selling a lot of products under alternative trademarks, making it difficult for consumers to reward or punish corporations for their actions. Given that one of the primary policy justifications for having a trademark legal regime is to protect consumers from confusion, this is sadly ironic. The lack of a requirement that trademarks be affirmatively linked to their sources permits companies to obfuscate corporate connections whenever it is useful.



"Because there's a lot riding on your lawsuit."

Cross-posted at Prawfsblawg, where I am guesting for a couple of weeks.

Posted by Ann Bartow at 09:45 PM | Comments (1)

Here.

Posted by Liz Losh at 01:39 PM | Comments (1)

The PBS Online NewHour recently broadcast an interesting story about how issues about intellectual property, free culture, and digital libraries can intersect. "India Works to Shield Traditional Knowledge from Modern Copyrights" describes the project of scientists, archivists, activists, and translators to digitize ancient texts about health and medicine to prevent the pharmacological industry from claiming proprietary rights to knowledge from a shared cultural legacy. After hearing about attempts to patent turmeric for wound-healing and copyright certain yoga postures, Indian scholars began the Traditional Knowledge Digital Library to discourage royalty-seekers in the West. (Thanks to Kathleen Seyfarth for the link to the video.)