Creative Commons Crap

Thursday, March 24, 2005

So everyone is talking about (most spewing idealism out of their asses, and in their zeal confusing shit for gold) Yahoo!'s new Creative Commons search engine, which in theory should return things that you can copy and use for your own projects with a variety of free-ish licenses.


Match #1 for “tattoo”
I know the owner of this tattoo (and it's on BME also), and I know that he doesn't like his image being copied like this. Not only that, but you can see that his email address has been blacked out of the photo. Additionally, this instance was stolen not just from the source, but from an E/N site that had previously stolen it and now claims their own copyright on it — you can see their logo bottom center. Yeah, “Creative Commons license”. Whatever.

I call “bullshit!”

I did some test searches for terms where I am very familiar with the media on the subject (BME stuff and so on), and ignoring pointless inane blog posts that no one would want to copy in the first place, a vast percentage of the media returned is copyrighted commercial content and I even found materials stolen from BME and other projects friends (or I) have been involved in!

Somehow I doubt “but Yahoo! told me I could copy it” will fly in court, and I would hope that they'll ammend their license and surrounding notes to reflect their incompetence and inaccuracy soon.

But I'd be surprised if the people pushing CC so hard really care about ripping off pornographers and deviants, and will do little to correct these rampant problems… Hell, for all I know Yahoo! and other big corporations playing with CC-stuff right now are playing a double agent game that will one day destroy these shortsighted crusaders cheerleaders.

Note: To be clear, I suppport Creative Commons licensing, and have released a ton of software, music, video, and images under various free licenses. However, I have a BIG FUCKING PROBLEM with people stealing copyright-controlled media and claiming it's free and then passing it on.

Update from a forum thread…

Me: “They will NEVER be able to build an automated search for copyright free material.”

Smart Friend: “Unless every piece of content ever created and ever to be created had metadata inserted with no human intervention. IOW, yer right.”

Me: “Actually, the real reason it can't be done is 95% of the material released as 'free' (under one 'license' or another) is done so FRAUDULENTLY… that is, the person releasing it is claiming it has a different license than it does. Claiming that warez is shareware does not make it so.”

“The only way for this to work is a method of authenticating authors, linking them to their productions, and giving them direct and implicit control, without the ability to separate these elements. Oh wait, that's DRM, and no one likes that either. ;-)“

Meh. A la guns don't kill people, I kill people, one must point out, DRM doesn't sue people, the RIAA sues people… It's always interesting how politically motivated technologists on both sides of the debate will choose one technology and say “it's a tool that can be used for both good and evil, but just a tool” while denouncing something else equally tool-like…

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Well that's nice…

Thursday, March 24, 2005

So I was going to head out to El Centenario today to check out the big sand bar that wraps around La Paz bay, but my car and car keys appear to have been taken while I was in the shower getting ready to go, without anyone asking me about it.

Combine that with an email server going offline this morning and stalling my work for about three hours and I'm looking forward to a far longer and more pissed off work day than I'd hoped for.

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Image update posted

Wednesday, March 23, 2005

.

I've just posted another thousand images to BME, scattered across various sections. Thanks to everyone who helped out and to sid_suicide for showing off her, umm, corset piercing on the cover.

There will be another image update tomorrow, but it won't be a full one… the goal will be to do some restructuring of galleries and so on to partner more closely with suspension.org and branch some of what's currently in the ritual area back into a culture subsection.

I'm really losing a lot of brain cycles to this pi-art problem, and lying in bed with my heart pounding, staring at the inside of my eyes as I think about it makes it seem far more urgent than it probably is. Given the multitude of tattoos on the subject I think I am not alone in that impulse though.

As you know, the atypical application of statistical profiles is an interest of mine, and I believe that treating pi not as a raw number but as “instructions” is the right approach if your goal is to convert it into music, art, or even poetry and stories. I've also never seen anyone take this particular approach, but to me it makes a lot more sense to treat irrational numbers as manuals than as blueprints if you are trying to use them to talk to God extract meaning from the universe order from chaos.

PS. Our currently single cover-model from Boston is looking for a tattooed boyfriend. I wonder if IAM is a good place to find one? Note: Sleaze-bag IMs are generally considered a turn-off (I assume she agrees).

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On a much lighter note…

Wednesday, March 23, 2005

Tara may have the longest tongue of anyone I know.

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I just want water I just want an ocean An endless river to wash away all of my tears

Wednesday, March 23, 2005

Apparently I was using my computer last night and have zero memory of doing so. At least when blackouts involve blogging there's a record thereof… maybe that's not a good thing, I don't know. It is a little disturbing to come to one's page in the morning and see something like that.

In a bid to end this current wave of madness and get some much needed rest I tried going to sleep in a different bed in a different room. As feared, by 3 AM I was awake. I tried switching beds… Just lay there thinking about algorithms that might pull something meaningful out of pi, but no sleep came even though I know I need it more and more every day.

     I don't even feel it
But lord how I need it
When I'm not with her
I'm not all myself
Sometimes have my breakfast right
Off of a mirror
And sometimes I have it
Right out of a bottle

To pass the time I listened to a few old CDs and it's a little disconcerting how similar my life is to any given Spiritualized album. One of the things that I don't like about being in Mexico is the lack of pot. I think it pushes me to want alternate medications. It's not that marijuana isn't here — I could get it easily — it's that it's very illegal and I promised Rachel I wouldn't break that law. But I can legally get oxycodone pills and every day I struggle not to crush them into powder, dissolve them, and push that sweet medicine into my veins and feel it run down my spine.

Anyway, I feel like my page here is becoming a bit of a trainwreck, something that people read not because they enjoy it or have some respect for my writing or ideas, but because there's a sick, morbid fascination with watching me crumble... like some sort of non-famous Britney Spears gossip...

Rachel will be back later today. I think I will feel better then and she'll put the pieces back together.

She's my sunset. Without sunsets, the stars don't come out.
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