gratitude

On a week when I didn't get around to thankful thursday, Peggy preaches on gratitude. I'm not so sure about having no complaints, myself, but I totally agree with her description of using God as an "unedited sounding board. If I have to yell at somebody, why not God, I mean God’s a tough mother and can take it, right?" Amen.

Though it is true that some things you hate may end up leading to something useful in the long run. So I'm including the knee pain that various people have had to listen to me bitch about this week in my this week's thankful list:

• Cozy sweaters.
  
• Seeing more of jw1776.
  
• Dinner & shopping with dianthus.
  
• Relaxing time at yoga, even when I do lose my balance.
  
• Periodic knee pain is reminding me to keep my knee soft and to build muscle.
  
• jw1776, skydancer, dianthus, and others who've listened to me kvetch about the knee.
  
• zoethe passed the bar exam.
  
• Catching up on some things at work.
  
• I'm good enough at massage to ease a dear one's mouse arm.
  
• I'm still laughing at this Home On The Strange sequence.
  secanth is finally at home with falconcat. Congratulations!

The advantages of providers not being responsible for customer actions

From a Slate article on the Online Copyright Liability Limitation Act, which became Title II of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 (§512 of the Copyright Code):

[A]ll these companies are now protected by a "notice and take down" system when they host user content. That means that if Jon Stewart notices an infringing copy of The Daily Show on YouTube, Comedy Central can write a letter to YouTube and demand it be taken down. Then, so long as YouTube acts "expeditiously" and so long as YouTube wasn't already aware that the material was there, YouTube is in the clear.

This gives advantages to the providers, obviously, and also to users. But it also gives advantages to ... the entertainment industry.

[T]he content industry actually likes §512 more than anyone will admit. The notice-and-takedown system gives content owners the twin advantages of exposure and control. When stuff is on YouTube, the owners have an option. They can leave it posted there, if they want people to see it, and build buzz. But they can also snap their fingers and bring it all down. And for someone who is juggling her desire for publicity against her need for control, that's ultimately a nice arrangement.

Stated otherwise, much of the copyrighted material on YouTube is in a legal category that is new to our age. It's not "fair use," the famous right to use works despite technical infringement, for reasons of public policy. Instead, it's in the growing category of "tolerated use"—use that is technically illegal, but tolerated by the owner because he wants the publicity.

The article also points out that this compromise is a result of a clash between the entertainment industry's lobbyists and ... lobbyists for the Bell companies, aka, internet providers :)

Steve Howard

As a followup to this post, here's a "local profile" in the Rocky Mountain News on Steve Howard. Who's Steve Howard? He's a former lobbyist who found out that telling Vice President Cheney, "Your policies in Iraq are reprehensible" can turn into an arrest for assault. He's suing a Secret Service agent "for illegal search and seizure and retaliation while exercising free speech, violations of the Fourth and First Amendments, respectively" (Vail Daily News).

Here's a Vail Daily News article from the arrest in June and another from a couple days later. The blog entries from Daily Copy Editor Mugs Scherer at the same newspaper are mildly ( amusing...excerpts behind the cut )

The kicker? It's not the first time.

Halloween / Silly people FYI

Snopes' has a Halloween page.

Dr Joyce Brothers also wrote a column on "Myths of Halloween" last year. (Yeah, it's a repeat. It's good.)