...actual distinct voices speaking in my mind? Or is it just the weblog of James Lindenschmidt? Here you can see me wrestle with this and other questions, while spewing forth my writings, opinions, and hallucinations.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

 

Harry Potter, Tanya Grotter, Porri Gatter, and international copyrights

There is an article (on MSN, funnily enough) that explores some issues about international copyright as applied to the Harry Potter empire. Let me say first of all that I think HP is great. I've enjoyed all five books greatly; my daughter loves it. It's a great story, with great writing. It's amazing that the hottest thing you can currently get for a kid is a big, thick, hardcover book. How cool is that?

But this article points out some interesting facts. Apparently there are number of Harry Potter take-offs around the world, and Rowling and her publishers are trying to stop "unauthorized" publication of these books. The article explains a bit about how the process works:

Rowling's ability to stop the Potter pretenders is largely a function of the new regime of international copyright. Until recently, countries varied considerably in how they protected literary works, especially works from abroad. The United States, for instance, has a long history of providing less protection than the Europeans. Benjamin Franklin was a kind of pirate: He did good business as a printer of unlicensed English writing. In the 19th century, the United States generally refused to recognize foreign copyrights, allowing American readers to get the latest Dickens and Doyle cheaply. And the borrowing of characters itself has a longer tradition. For example, the princess we know as Cinderella originally hails from China, where she goes by the name Yeh-Shen and relies for help on a magic fish who gives her golden slippers.

Unfortunately, the WTO has brought a homogeneity to this system, where every nation in the WTO must comply with the property rules of the WTO. But what about rip-offs, parodies, or derivative works? The author makes a persuasive argument showing that rip-offs do not tarnish the reputation of the original character or author:

It is also true that these rip-off works make authors angry and may tarnish the reputation of the character. But what makes authors angry is precisely what they are least likely to write, and therefore often what copyright needs to permit.

In other words, if the works tarnish the reputation of the character, then the rip-off is putting the character into a situation he/she would never be in. It is precisely because it is NOT the original character that means it is offensive. This argument, in other words, is circular: because the ripoff is clearly NOT the character, it is damaging the original character.

Anyway, it's a very good read. Check it out.

^ posted at 12:18 PM

 

The Guantanamo Bay story is still going

That's right. The US government is still illegally holding "detainees" at its military base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. According to this story, "Afghans and Pakistanis who were detained for many months by the American military at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba before being released without charges are describing the conditions as so desperate that some captives tried to kill themselves."

Among the "detainees" are "three teenagers under 16." Not good.

Furthermore, this story claims that "The US has floated plans to turn Guantanamo Bay into a death camp, with its own death row and execution chamber. Prisoners would be tried, convicted and executed without leaving its boundaries, without a jury and without right of appeal."

The legal groundwork has been set for complete and utter repression of anyone opposed to the Bush administration's imperialism.

A friend of mine wrote me this:

We're told these people are "the worst of the worst" and that they are so dangerous to us that they must be held in this camp far away from anyone and without due process or other rights provided to prisoners of war by international law. But they've released 41 of these guys without charges. Whoops, our bad! And now we're getting ready to kill them. Great. This country makes me sick sometimes!

Well said, Pam. Hope you don't mind me cutting and pasting your comments. :-)

^ posted at 4:00 PM

 

Perish the thought

Hmmm. I wonder. What if this WMD in Iraq controversy becomes a major scandal, and is truly an impeachable offense and bigger than Watergate? Well, in Watergate, the president resigned rather than face impeachment. What if the same thing happens here?

President Cheney? Naahhhhh...

On another note, it seems to me that there are 2 possibilities on the WMD story in Iraq. Either: (1) there were no WMDs at all, the the Bush administration was lying; or (2) there were WMDs, but they have disappeared and are no longer in Iraq. If this is so, who knows where they are, or in whose hands they are in now. In this scenario, the world has been significantly destabilized and the world is at a much higher risk of a WMD being used in a terrorist attack. Therefore, the waging of the "war on terror" is ineffective and contrary to the stated goals of reducing the capability of terrorism worldwide.

So, either way, the Bush administration is either lying or making the threat of terrorism worse through its actions.

^ posted at 1:32 AM

 

Did you FLOSS today?

Well, I found a new acronym for Free or OpenSource software. It's FLOSS, which stands for Free/Libre/OpenSource Software. I saw the term in a new article: "Liberation Technology" on the Linux Journal website, which "looks at the impact of FLOSS in specific countries, and he also views the implications of what it means for a cash-strapped economy." A short an interesting read.

^ posted at 3:38 PM

 

Weapons of Mass Distraction

The Weapons of Mass Destruction issue is getting lots of progressive press recently. John Dean, Derrick Jackson, John R. MacArthur, Ruth Rosen, Robert Jensen and Rahul Majahan, Jason Leopold, Paul Krugman, Jim Lobe, Helen Thomas, Pierre Tristam, and Sean Gonsalves all have pieces archived on Common Dreams about the subject, all published in the past few days alone.

But my new hero (sort of) has to be Sen. Robert Byrd. He recently spoke on the Senate floor. Some excerpts:

The fundamental question that is nagging at many is this: How reliable were the claims of this President and key members of his Administration that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction posed a clear and imminent threat to the United States, such a grave threat that immediate war was the only recourse?

What amazes me is that the President himself is not clamoring for an investigation. It is his integrity that is on the line. It is his truthfulness that is being questioned. It is his leadership that has come under scrutiny. And yet he has raised no question, expressed no curiosity about the strange turn of events in Iraq, expressed no anger at the possibility that he might have been misled. How is it that the President, who was so adamant about the dangers of WMD, has expressed no concern over the where-abouts of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq?

And yet...and yet...the questions continue to grow, and the doubts are beginning to drown out the assurances. For every insistence from Washington that the weapons of mass destruction case against Iraq is sound comes a counterpoint from the field - another dry hole, another dead end. As the top Marine general in Iraq was recently quoted as saying, "It was a surprise to me then, it remains a surprise to me now, that we have not uncovered weapons, as you say, in some of the forward dispersal sites. Again, believe me, it's not for lack of trying. We've been to virtually every ammunition supply point between the Kuwaiti border and Baghdad, but they're simply not there."

Such weapons may eventually turn up. But my greater fear is that the belligerent stance of the United States may have convinced Saddam Hussein to sell or disperse his weapons to dark forces outside of Iraq. Shouldn't this Administration be equally alarmed if they really believed that Saddam had such dangerous capabilities?

Saddam Hussein is missing. Osama bin Laden is missing. Iraq's weapons of mass destruction are missing. And the President's mild claims that we are "on the look" do not comfort me. There ought to be an army of UN inspectors combing the countryside in Iraq or searching for evidence of disbursement of these weapons right now. Why are we waiting? Is there fear of the unknown? Or fear of the truth?

Iraq's weapons of mass destruction remain a mystery and a conundrum. What are they, where are they, how dangerous are they? Or were they a manufactured excuse by an Administration eager to seize a country? It is time to answer these questions. It is time- past time - for the Administration to level with the American people, and it is time for the President to demand an accounting from his own Administration as to exactly how our nation was led down such a twisted path to war.

Frankly, I'm stunned that this is even being said in the Senate. I wonder how many Senators applauded. This story is just going to get bigger, as many people saw months ago. There never were WMDs in Iraq, at least none that endanger the US. This war is about the "sea of oil" under the Iraqi desert, and the profits that can be made exploiting it.

^ posted at 8:43 PM

 

It's been a year...

...since I began to blog. My first post, interestingly enough, was about wasting time. A prelude to the blogging ethos, perhaps? :-)

^ posted at 3:28 PM

 

Effecting Positive Change

Well, my consciousness has returned to this most central question: if effecting positive change is my goal, what is the best way to attain it? I've spent a lot of time ranting against the establishment power structures and its associated violence and repression lately. This is Nietzsche's lion mode, where the lion utters the "sacred no" in rejecting harmful mores and customs that are culturally transmitted. But the lion is not yet the child, which creates according to its own inherent set of innocent creation, unaffected by outside expectations. But does Nietzsche's model imply that progress toward the child is good? that the camel and the lion are to be avoided once transcended? Or is it more desirable to cultivate a balance of the three (camel, lion, child)? Or does each energy pattern presencing in the person go through these distinct phases?

These questions are relevant to my creative activities. Is ranting so much a good thing? In some ways I feel like I'm in lion mode, whereas when I was in school (graduated last year) I was in camel mode. The child, then is presumably forthcoming. That'd be nice. The argument that I should just pursue what's in my head at the time is good (attending the present, in other words), but then where do I choose to put my attention? Do I surrender my will and just become passive, pursuing whatever pops into my head?

The other argument is that following your muse will impact the world most forcefully in a positive way, as opposed to feeding the establishment, even feeding it negatively. But the problem with this argument is that the establishment will eventually impose itself upon me. Some measure of defense or counterattack is necessary, if the establishment (or an unacceptable part of the establishment) is undesirable.

The biggest problem seems to be in terms of my writing. My music, funnily enough, is going remarkably well. I should have some recordings within a few months. But I never know what to write. I was talking to a friend yesterday, a fellow writer. And she said I need, basically, to stop worrying and to just write. So I'm back to that. I have the capability to choose what to write about, but at this stage I'm probably better served to Just Write and save the analytical stuff for the editing phase.

^ posted at 3:26 PM

 

will missing WMDs lead to a Bush impeachment?

this article, written by John Dean, analyzes the possibility that Bush could be impeached because of inaccurate statements about WMDs are a justification for the Iraqi invasion. The fact is that there still is no evidence of Iraqi WMDs. This invasion, which confused generic industrial capacity with the possibility of WMD manufacture, is arguably the biggest political blunder in US history.

Furthermore, one of Bush's lines about Iraqi oil comes to mind. According to Bush, Iraq's oil "belongs to the Iraqi people." This is socialism, where the means of production belong to the people. Also, I find it interesting that Bush seems to be preaching the gospel of economic prosperity, universal healthcare, and well-being for all Iraqis. As Barbara Ehrenreich points out, these are socialist concerns through and through. Why are they good for the Iraqi people, but evil for the American people?

^ posted at 3:13 PM