I'm editing an anthology of critical responses -- both written and artistic -- to the United States diplomatic cables released by Wikileaks in November and December of this year.

Details at the link above, and under the cut. Please feel free to spread this far and wide! I'm happy to answer any questions in the comments.

( Call for PapersCollapse )

My friends list today has been swept by a storm of fear, uncertainty and doubt surrounding this article by Mark Simon on Animation World Network about the issue of orphaned works. "Orphaned works" are creations likely still under copyright -- photographs, illustrations, written works, music, &c. -- for which the original creator cannot be found, and thus their copyright status cannot be determined. Orphaned works present a thorny problem in today's litigious society, because when the question of "who owns X?" can't be answered, very few people are willing to do anything with X if they fear that they'll be sued for it.

For instance, suppose that you have your parents' wedding album, and the photos in it are starting to fade. You go to a photo shop to get the pictures scanned and digitally retouched, so that you can save them on DVD to show your kids in ten years. However, the copyright on those photos belongs to the photographer, not you or your parents. The photo shop tells you that unless you can get permission from the copyright holder, they can't do anything with the photos. Do you know who your parents' wedding photographer was? Do they remember? What if the company the photographer worked for has since gone out of business, and nobody can track down the individual person who took the photos? The pictures are "orphaned works", and no one knows who owns the rights on them.

Or what if you're cleaning out your great-aunt's attic, and you find a box full of pictures of your town as it was 100 years ago? The local history museum would love to add them to its collection -- but it can't, unless you, your great-aunt, or somebody can track down the original photographer and secure his or her permission (or the photographer's estate's permission, if the photographer's dead) to donate the photos. (Copyright in the United States lasts for life of the creator plus 75 (EDIT: 70, for works created today, older works are weird, see here for details; thanks for the correction, internets) years, so chances are, even 100-year-old photos are still under copyright. Thank Disney for that one, guys.)

But Mark Simon apparently believes that enacting legislation to handle orphaned works in a way that protects people who legitimately try to find the original copyright holder, but can't, will lead to the effective invalidation of copyright on ALL UNREGISTERED ART EVERYWHERE OMGZ CALL OUT THE CAVALRY. His article, which I linked above, is miserably poorly researched, jumps to completely illogical conclusions, and, most retardedly of all, implores artists to letterbomb Congress in protest of proposed legislation which does not actually exist. Someone please tell me where this guy is getting the crack he's smoking, because I want to avoid that streetcorner and everything in a six-block radius, kthx.

So, here are six misconceptions that are making the rounds about orphaned works, and a short explanation of why each one is a misinterpretation or just a flat-out lie. I also give links to useful supporting material, and resources you can use to keep track of this issue as it evolves.

(  1. "There’s legislation before Congress right now that will enact major changes in US copyright law regarding orphaned works! We have to act immediately!"Collapse )

( 2. "If I want the copyright on my art to be recognised, I’ll have to pay to register each piece!"Collapse )

( 3. "If I don’t pay to register my copyright, anyone in the entire world will be able to use it for free!" Collapse )

( 4. "Someone else could register the copyright on my work, and use that against me!" Collapse )

( 5. "If I don’t track down people who are illegally using my copyrighted works, I’m SOL!" Collapse )

( 6. "Displaying my artwork anywhere means that it automatically becomes orphaned, and anyone will be able to use it!" Collapse )

---

I hope this addresses any fears you might have about orphaned works and the sort of legislation that might come up regarding them. If you have any questions, please feel free to comment and I'll do my best to answer them. Likewise, please feel free to link this article or reproduce it in full or in part; I am placing it under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States license.

kynn also has some cogent observations about orphaned works, Mark Simon, his sources, and some follow-the-money fun here.

While I'm still fuming mad about the recent passage of the Military Commissions Act of 2006, I am starting to get even fuming madder about the incorrect allegations, misrepresentations, and in some cases outright lies being spread about this law. When even a law professor at Yale blows right past the fact that the MCA applies only to people who are not citizens of the United States, I get pissed.

So, in the interest of Doing My Part, I give you A Layman's Guide to Dealing With the Military Commissions Act of 2006, linked and under the cut. It's a flowchart detailing who the MCA applies to and what you can do if you find yourself charged under it. Note that I am absolutely not a lawyer -- not even a law student -- and this is merely a layman's reading. If you find yourself charged with terrorist activities or conspiracy to commit same, for God's sake, get a competent attorney.

But, with that said, please feel free to spread this image around; it's free under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-ShareAlike.

( Large PNG belowCollapse )

EDIT: I've seen a lot of arguments claiming that U.S. citizens can be tried under the MCA, and some people have taken me to task for supposedly neglecting this. They cite the first definition given in Sec. 948a:

(1) UNLAWFUL ENEMY COMBATANT- (A) The term `unlawful enemy combatant' means--
(i) a person who has engaged in hostilities or who has purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States or its co-belligerents who is not a lawful enemy combatant (including a person who is part of the Taliban, al Qaeda, or associated forces); or
(ii) a person who, before, on, or after the date of the enactment of the Military Commissions Act of 2006, has been determined to be an unlawful enemy combatant by a Combatant Status Review Tribunal or another competent tribunal established under the authority of the President or the Secretary of Defense.

and point out that "person" can apply to anyone, including citizens.

However, that's a definitions section. "Alien" is defined two bullet-points down:

(3) ALIEN- The term `alien' means a person who is not a citizen of the United States.

And, finally, Sec. 948c, "Persons subject to military commissions" consists wholly of the following statement:

Any alien unlawful enemy combatant is subject to trial by military commission under this chapter.

So, no. Maybe you can be declared an unlawful enemy combatant, but as long as you're a U.S. citizen, you can't be declared an alien unlawful enemy combatant, and the MCA does not apply to you.

FWIW, the Cato Institute agrees with me.

In my Copious Free Time, I've been reading a delightful little volume from 1948, John Read's A Direct Entry to Organic Chemistry. It's a slim book, paperbound, targetted at college students -- and its style, above all else, reminds me of what a liberal education used to mean.

As an example, from the chapter on esters:

Nature comes by her ends in many ways, often to the elfin strains of a harmony so subtle that 'whilst this muddy vestore of decay doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it'. In her many variations on the esteric theme the ever-changing music soars to the sweet treble of the simple essences, and leading thence through the gay alto of the waxes sinks slowly note by note adown the rich tenor cadence of the hard fats, to swell at last into the full polyesteric diapason with the entry of the deep and melancholy basso profundo of the heavily unsaturated fish oils. Here are subtle variations on a theme which might well bring envy to a Brahms.

Okay, yes, this is one seriously tortured metaphor; I'll bet madbard is pounding his head on his desk right now, trying to get rid of the comparison between fats and tenors or basses and fish oil. But I bring it up not because it's good art, but because it reminds me of a technique we just don't see any more. Mathematicians still get to make lofty comparisons between their work and the liberal arts, and computer scientists often compare hacking to music or painting (hi, Paul Graham), but when was the last time you read a physics essay that invoked parallelism and metaphor?

I miss synthesis in my learning. Maybe it was because I never had much of it, and what little I can recall is precious. I remember the day in my high school physics class when we started learning about power, and I realised that everything we'd done the entire semester was designed to get us to that point: distance leads to velocity leads to acceleration leads to force leads to work leads to power. Okay, that's synthesis within a discipline, not cross-disciplinary, but it's still important.

I've heard rumblings that there is a change underway in the public education system, aiming to reinstate cross-disciplinary learning as a teaching tool. Yesterday, my younger sister started a new job as a P.E. teacher at an elementary school, but she's not just teaching P.E.; her lessons are supposed to include other subjects as well, particularly math and science. If you think about it, P.E. is a great way to teach not only some important human anatomy topics, but some useful basic mathematical concepts and even the scientific method. Suppose you have the kids run for three minutes, then take and record their pulses. Then have them run for three more minutes, lather, rinse, repeat. Congratulations: you have just taught them about linear sequences and introduced the notion of a limit. For that matter, if you talk about what you're going to do beforehand and get the students to hypothesize about what will happen to their heart rates as a consequence of running, and show them how to test that hypothesis, congratulations, you're educating scientists.

My advisor would have me shot if he knew I took out a couple of hours to do this, but I'm vaguely proud of it anyway.