Tag Archive for 'my stupid ideas'

Intellectual Property Law Has Gone Quite Far Enough and Is Now Hereby Null and Void

A court has ruled that it is legal to remove works from the public domain and put them back under copyright in the United States.

Okay. That’s it. I can’t take these ridiculous decisions anymore. I’ve been thinking this for a long time, but now I’m just gonna come out and say it:

Intellectual property law in the United States no longer serves the public, and until it has been reformed to do so, it is to be ignored.

We the people of the United States of America have the right, and duty, to disregard and oppose these unconstitutional sections of the law. They no longer serves to, as stated in Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 of the Constitution, “promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.” The law in its current incarnation actively impedes the Progress of Science and the Arts, and the limited Times are now so lengthy so as to be effectively unlimited. Copyright, patent, and trademark law together not only no longer matches the description in I.8.8, but it in many cases violates the First Amendment.

I believe in the necessity for there to be laws which promote the progress of science and art, and grant the creative persons responsible for such advances the exclusive right to claim a reasonable level of authorial control for a limited time. The former need is not being met by the law at all, and the latter is incidentally met in an unsatisfactory way by the current overarching and easily-abused law. But by upholding the current useful portions of the law, we validate the entirety of it.

As a citizen of the United States, I hereby declare that I do not consent to governance by Intellectual Property law, including, but not limited to, the current laws pertaining to copyrights, patents, and trademarks. I encourage the like-minded people of the United States to join me in affirming our non-consent, and continuing to do so until the law once again serves the public good as outlined in our Constitution.

In regards to my own work, I would appreciate it if the spirit of the Creative Commons licenses I release them under were respected, but please do so out of goodwill, and not out of a false sense of legal obligation to do so.

CC0
To the extent possible under law, Zacqary Adam Green has waived all copyright and related or neighboring rights to Intellectual Property Law Has Gone Quite Far Enough and Is Now Hereby Null and Void and the header image preceding it. This work is published from the United States. Not that any of this matters as of this writing, of course, because copyright is null and void; I’m just saying this for when one day it’s valid again.

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Droll Musings From an Early 20th Century British Gentleman on Txting Ur Peepz

British gentleman wearing a monocleI say, Wilfred, I do believe that it would be rather marvelous were I to have a telegraph machine that could fit in my pocket.

Why, if such a remarkable thing were to exist, I could send Aunt Agnes a telegram from anywhere in the world simply by retrieving the machine from my jacket, keying in the message, and sending it on its way via radio broadcast. Perhaps she might even carry a similar machine of her own with which to receive my telegrams wherever she might be, whether seated in her parlor, or out in the country on a velocipede.

In fact, while we’re imagining such splendid ideas, perhaps this telegraph machine could be constructed in the shape of miniature typewriter, which I could operate with my thumbs. Continue reading ‘Droll Musings From an Early 20th Century British Gentleman on Txting Ur Peepz’

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Do Human Eyes Have “Film Grain”?

FIlm Grainy Eyeball
You’ve probably noticed from looking at photos or movies that no photograph is absolutely, 100% pristine. Each one has a speckly, spotty texture — usually barely perceptible if the photographer’s done their job right — which is formed as a technical artifact of the film or image sensor.

For pictures or movies taken on film, it’s called film grain, and it’s determined by the physical structure of the photographic film. On a digital photo, it’s image noise, which is an often random pattern created by the circuitry of the camera’s sensor.

Grain usually has to be very, very extreme for our brains to immediately perceive it; at normal levels, we often don’t even notice it unless we’re looking closely. But our brains are generally quite skilled at perceiving small visual patterns — the pages of a closed book, the bumps of paint on a wall, etc. — so does the average case of grain or noise fail to register? Perhaps it’s because we’ve learned to ignore the noisy, grainy pattern that we’re constantly seeing all the time.

Yes, our eyes have a film grain of their own.

So is this grain caused by a physical texture in our eyes, like film grain, or by something in our circuitry, like image noise? A little of both, in fact.
Continue reading ‘Do Human Eyes Have “Film Grain”?’

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How One Simple Cut Could Have Made Avatar’s Story Excellent and Let It Win Best Picture

WARNING: The following post discusses key story points in Avatar. They are not “spoilers” per se, because everyone has already seen this movie (if not literally, then figuratively).

Avatar’s story is the one thing that has elicited a near-universal “meh” from the entire world. We’ve all heard it before: hero infiltrates enemy, learns the enemy is his friend and his friends are the enemy, helps former enemy fight former friend, and said fight is a standard progression of hero almost succeeds, then he fails, but then he miraculously succeeds. Archetypes like this aren’t a bad thing; after all, we humans have been telling this same basic story for thousands of years, keeping it fresh with minor variations (i.e. Avatar’s transhuman motifs), and it’s always interesting if not particularly groundbreaking. But with all the love and attention Avatar’s visuals got over the alleged 14 years James Cameron worked on them, the script is admittedly less polished. That’s probably one of the big reasons why Avatar didn’t win Best Picture at the Academy Awards.

There are many little things which Cameron could have done to twist the Hero’s Journey archetype — perhaps Jake Sully should have betrayed the Na’vi willingly before feeling remorse later on, for example — or simply cleaning up some of the dialogue and filling some plot holes would have sufficed. But perhaps the best thing Cameron could have done to Avatar is to make one simple removal, changing nothing else. This one removal would make Avatar’s criticisms of the War on Terror, racism, technology, and destruction of the environment immensely more powerful.

Following the scene after Hometree’s destruction, when we see slow-motion shots of Jake and Grace being wrestled out of the avatar links, Grace shouting “you murderer!” at Parker, fade to black. Roll credits.

Okay, that may be a “simple” cut, but it’s pretty major. Still, it would have made Avatar a much better film. Here’s why:
Continue reading ‘How One Simple Cut Could Have Made Avatar’s Story Excellent and Let It Win Best Picture’

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Why a World In Which Movie Piracy Were Legal Would Have No Drawbacks Whatsoever

Why a World In Which Movie Piracy Were Legal Would Have No Drawbacks Whatsoever — Average US movie ticket price: $7.50; Time the decision to pay this price is made: Before the movie; Total US gross of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen: $402,111,870; How much money would it have made if the decision to pay $7.50 were made AFTER the movie? See? No drawbacks.

Sources:
» Ticket Price
» Gross

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