Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, but art, it seems, is whatever a court says it is.
The folks at Lucasfilm, creators of the "Star Wars" franchise, took the designer of the original Stormtrooper costume to court in the UK and had their light sabers thrust right back at them.
According to London's Times, Andrew Ainsworth, the man who originally created the helmets and armor for the first "Star Wars" movie, decided to capitalize on his design by selling replicas made from the original mold online.
Lucasfilm clearly thought Ainsworth's view of copyright was from a very strange planet. So, after taking him to court and winning in the US in 2006, it thought it would strike a further victory in British courts.
However, Britain can often show itself to be a constellation like no other.
So perhaps one should not be entirely surprised that Mr. Justice Mann and, subsequently, three more justices in the Court of Appeal, decided that Stormtrooper uniforms are not art, but mere industrial design. You see, art enjoys British copyright protection for 70 years. But industrial design is only worth 15 years of protection.
Lucasfilm promises it will now send its legal Stormtroopers all the way to the British Supreme Court. The company told the Times: "The judges in the case dismissed the creative efforts of film designers and prop makers in general, saying that props are the work of people who 'did not make it as artists' and not fine art that should be valued under the law."
Ainsworth was, at the time of the costumes' creation, an industrial designer. This is what he told the Times of his design: "I didn't even know it was for a film to begin with." At the time the costumes were made, the machine Ainsworth used was, he told the Times, "churning out kayaks and watersports stuff."
Almost every court case in the world these days seems to be about money rather than art. So it's hard to imagine that these fine judges didn't scratch their rather beautifully designed wigs and feel sympathy for Ainsworth, as he faced the conglomerated Darth Vaders from Northern California.
Surely they had heard that every part of moviemaking is supposed to be art-- even the making of bacon sandwiches on set. So their interpretation is, indeed, an interesting one.
If Britain's Supreme Court doesn't offer Lucasfilm relief, what might the Lucas Army do?
Perhaps it will create a new "Star Wars" movie--entitled "Star Wars: Attack of the Clones II"--in which the bad guys are movie prop makers who attempt to create a parallel universe called Replica World.
In the pulsating finale, The Jedi Master would take on the Prop Master in a weird industrial design facility somewhere west of, um, London. Surely you can hardly wait.
Playing fantasy sports can be as addictive as watching "The Biggest Loser."
My own lowest point was when I went to see the Golden State Warriors play the Los Angeles Clippers and cheered when the Clippers' Michael Olowakandi snagged his 10th rebound. I am a Warriors fan, but Olowokandi was in my NBA fantasy team.
It took a team of bullish psychiatrists and several wily girlfriends to remove me from this iniquitous pursuit, which is why I have some sympathy with Cameron Pettigrew and three of his fellow Fidelity Investments employees.
Actually, they are former Fidelity employees, as, according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, they were all fired from Fidelity's Westlake, Texas office for playing fantasy NFL during their hours of employment.
Fidelity is the world's No. 1 sponsor of mutual funds. These are, I believe, the folks who tell you in their ads to follow the green line on your way to having hairy gray ears and a condo in Boca. It sounds like a sure thing, but we all know how this 401(k) thing can sometimes work out.
So perhaps you might find it curious that Fidelity frowns on gambling. And fantasy NFL, where money might be involved, is, according to the company, gambling.
"We have clear policies that relate to gambling. Participation in any form of gambling through the use of Fidelity time or equipment or any other company resource is prohibited," Fidelity spokesman Vin Loporchio told the Star-Telegram.
He added: "In addition to being illegal in a lot of places, it can also be disruptive. We want our employees to be focused on our customers and clients."
Righteous words, indeed. However, Pettigrew made some rather human points. "Firing a guy for being in a $20 fantasy league? Let's be honest; that's a complete overreaction," he told the Star-Telegram.
This whole thing started in October when e-mails pertaining to a different fantasy league fell before the eyes of Fidelity management. It was then that they realized that Pettigrew was the commissioner of an office league.
Pettigrew, however, said that managers and leaders played in at least 10 fantasy leagues around the office. This was despite the fact that Fidelity does have a policy against fantasy leagues, a policy that Pettigrew says was routinely ignored.
Even though Pettigrew says he never sent fantasy-related e-mails at work, it all seems to have come down to two IMs that Pettigrew received.
"One of my buddies sent me something about how bad Trent Edwards was playing or something like that," Pettigrew told the Star-Telegram. "So they called me in and talked to me for about 90 minutes on everything I ever knew about fantasy football. They interrogated me as though I was some sort of international gambling kingpin."
Shortly afterward, four league commissioners, including Pettigrew, were fired.
Corporations have many rules. Indeed, I know people in corporations who rather enjoy making up rules and enforcing them.
But perhaps the first rule should be to ascertain whether an employee's private behavior, even if occasionally on company time, actually does adversely affect his work performance. Or whether it might actually help it.
The court case between eBay and Craigslist is increasingly beginning to seem as if it was scripted by John Grisham. It's the little guy against the big machine.
Craigslist would like us to dedicate all our sympathy to its cause, as it describes its dealings with the big, bad wolf, aka eBay. Or, as Monday's court session heard, the big, bad she-wolf.
Jim Buckmaster, Craigslist's CEO, told the court that Garrett Price, an eBay executive, had written him an e-mail that waved a large rainbow-colored warning flag, according to a Reuters story.
"He said he needed to tell me there were two Meg Whitmans," Buckmaster told Craigslist's counsel in court, according to the report. "We had met and reached an agreement with Good Meg. There was another Meg, an Evil Meg. We would be best served to know that Meg could be a monster when she got angry and frustrated."
A monster? That nice lady who, in her run for governor, promises to make California solvent without resorting to punitive taxation or pumping iron? This is surely hard to believe.
The proceedings are being streamed live by the Courtroom View Network, and one wonders just what joy the network might bring Tuesday when eBay's no doubt friendly counsel attempts to hide his fangs from the Craigslist CEO, while simultaneously snipping at his vulnerable parts.
In case you had missed the cause of this kerfuffle, eBay is claiming that Craigslist illegally diluted its 28.4 percent shareholding by "self-dealing," underhand methods.
Craigslist is claiming that eBay made a promise not to start its own Craigslist-type site and then went right ahead and created Kijiji. It seems that such a promise did not appear in what some laypersons might describe as the written form, according to the Associated Press.
Buckmaster also declared that Whitman promised him that if any problems arose between the two companies--an e-mail was produced to the court on Monday in which an eBay executive described Craigslist people as being "definitely on another planet"--then eBay would sell its shares, according to Bloomberg.
"I believed that I could rely on her statements," Buckmaster told the court, Bloomberg said.
Just as Grisham protagonists seem slightly naive to the workings of the world, Buckmaster seems to want the court to believe that Craigslist were nice guys who couldn't imagine how beastly business people could be.
In many Grisham novels, the heroes flee to freedom in some lovely place, with enough money to enjoy the rest of their blissful lives.
Has that thought never crossed the minds of Buckmaster and founder Craig Newmark? Just wondering.
When rich people sue rich people, it often seems that the only possible winners can be rich people.
Which perhaps doesn't engage the emotions of spectators quite as much as, say, when rich people are caught with their plus fours around their ankles.
Still, the current lawsuit between eBay and Craigslist does offer a small window into our own daily lives. You know, the one through which we decide whether we believe what someone is telling us.
This legal spatula is being flipped in Delaware Chancery Court, its essence revolving around how much of Craigslist eBay really owns. Is it 28.4 percent, on which they initially agreed in 2004? Or is it the 24 percent that appears to have emerged after what eBay believes was a "self-dealing" and underhand scheme by Craigslist to dilute the value of its stock?
eBay's executives have already protested both their innocence and niceness. On Thursday and Friday, it was the turn of Craig Newmark and Jim Buckmaster of Craigslist. (Oh, if you're in need of human fascination, it continues Monday and is being streamed live by the Courtroom View Network.)
So here we are having to decide who is, well, the nicest person, the one who isn't telling the odd fib or two.
Perhaps the most moving remark of the first couple of days came from former eBay CEO Meg Whitman, who told the court that the moment she became concerned about the dealings between the two companies was when eBay founder Pierre Omidyar allegedly became frustrated with Craigslist.
"To be honest," she told the court, "I was starting to get concerned because really, nobody doesn't like Pierre."
And so we had eBay claiming the niceness higher ground. "We are sweet. We are lovely. We are kind to animals," seemed to be her refrain. The folks at Craigslist, though they might seem pleasantly libertarian at times, are not immune from a little folksiness of their own.
So when Newmark and Buckmaster took the stand, it was surely hard not to see them as the smaller, more idealistic Merry Men trying to avoid being slammed into the stocks by the big, bad Sheriff of Nottingham.
Newmark, he of the dour-colored suits and the slightly Elvis Costello-ish mien, sounded like Elvis at his lowest when he described how he felt betrayed by eBay.
He came to believe that his lady suitor's aim was not true. "eBay, specifically Meg Whitman, made commitments, and broke them," he told the court.
The Craigslist team, you see, became very concerned when eBay began to create its own classified site, with the slightly uncomfortable name Kijiji. Whitman, claimed Newmark, had promised exclusivity, but she was clearly playing around with Craig's confidential data and his feelings.
Buckmaster, Newmark's blessedly calm Friar Tuck, no doubt tugged at some heartstrings on Friday, when he described a correspondence between himself and Whitman.
On July 12, 2007, he allegedly wrote to the then-eBay CEO: "It is my sad duty to report that we are no longer comfortable having eBay as a shareholder." He went on to explain that Craigslist rather wanted to "explore options for our repurchase, or for otherwise finding a new home for these shares."
This all seemed like Whitman and her less than merry people were being dumped. Which is why you might be rendered somewhat insensate by her alleged reply: "We are so happy with our relationship with Craigslist that we could neither imagine doing anything to disturb our personal rapport with you or [Craigslist founder] Craig [Newmark], nor parting with our shareholding in Craigslist Inc. under any foreseeable circumstances."
She allegedly continued: "Quite to the contrary, we would welcome the opportunity to acquire the remainder of Craigslist Inc. we do not already own whenever you and Craig feel it would be appropriate."
Buckmaster told the court he found the cheery tone of this note to be "threatening."
So there you have it. Buckmaster continues with his possibly painful story on Monday. You, meanwhile, have all weekend to discern who might have slipped a little Rohypnol into their facts and who might be appealing to more fundamental human frailties.
You might also wonder what on earth these two sides were doing trying to have a relationship with each other. Somehow, it all seems a little like Angelina Jolie trying to get it on with Ross Perot.
Is there some etiquette one should follow when receiving a spam text?
Should one at least read it before erasing it? Should one even attempt a polite reply, even if it is in the negative? Or should one sue the rotten behind off the ungracious crasher who deigns to invade one's cell phone?
If your name is Elizabeth Espinal, you gravitate toward the latter option.
According to the Miami New Times, Espinal was inconvenienced by that slightly creepy King texting her with what she describes in her suit as "cryptic" messages.
You know the kind of thing, enticements to nosh on a splendidly nourishing Burger King steakhouse burger. Or entreaties to please, please try a Mocha BK Iced Coffee. After the first, Espinal allegedly texted back "stop." But the King kept creeping electronically into her life certain, it seems, of winning her over. At least twice more, apparently.
Unimpressed by his wooing her with his "perfect mix of rich coffee and chocolate syrup," Espinal slapped him with what she hopes is a perfect mix of a lawsuit.
The New Times suggested that within Espinal's veritable onion ring of pain lay the idea that she was "caused actual harm" and was "subjected to aggravation."
(Credit:
CC Ted Murphy/Flickr)
Now, we all have our own opinions of fast food. Yes, the purchasing process can be aggravating, and yes, very occasionally our digestion can slip a cog in its delicate machinations, resulting in some temporary harm. But could this all be worth $5 million?
Oh, perhaps I didn't mention, but Espinal is allegedly looking for 5 million whopping dollars. Perhaps the King would merely have to sell a couple of his crowns, but still, it does seem like a lot of money.
She appears to have filed the suit in April of this year as a class action and it has not yet received certification. Her no doubt clever lawyers are relying on Section 47 of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, which "prohibits unsolicited voice and text calls to cellular phones."
I understand that Espinal might be on the blistered side of peeved to discover she had to pay for the texts that Burger King sent, even though they might have contained patently irresistible enticements.
But $5 million suggests either that she is a very sensitive human being, or that she believes that the only way to deal with an alleged harasser is to harass them right back.
What if she were to somehow win? Might we all be able to sue those who text us with unwanted inducements? I'm not thinking merely of AT&T, which keeps sending me texts with numbers and concepts far beyond my meager rationality.
What about those slightly odd people we meet at parties and networking events? You know, the insurance salesmen to whom we regret giving our phone number, our business cards, even our names--the ones who contact us suggesting a meeting and then contact us three more times. Might we be able to take them for a few million?
I think I'll text my lawyer and ask him.
An increasing number of people are meeting the loves of their lives, or at least of their months, on Facebook.
However, a consequence of this might be that an increasing number of people think they will encounter love's intrepid arrow by socially networking. It seems, indeed, that some might be making advances toward their psychologists. Or even their proctologists.
The U.K.'s Medical Defense Union, an organization whose goal is to "defend the professional reputations of our members when their clinical performance is called into question," is concerned that some of its members resort to politeness when patients request the pleasure of their company via Facebook.
According to the Telegraph, the MDU believes that doctors have become well aware of the need to be careful about material they post on their Facebook pages.
But Dr. Emma Cuzner, the MDU's medical-legal adviser recently wrote in the MDU Journal: "Doctors may be less prepared for patients using sites like Facebook to ask them out on a date."
Some doctors apparently feel one ought, at the very least, to politely reply in the negative. However, Cuzner contended: "Given that this is not a professional route of communication, any correspondence of this sort would clearly stray outside the doctor/patient relationship."
But sometimes even the definition of what is professional is open to interpretation.
What if one of your patients happens upon you at the local corner shop and suggests you have coffee? It would hardly be possible to look him or her in the face, say nothing, turn away, and recommence your search for peanut butter and a large tub of Ben & Jerry's Magic Brownies.
So one can perhaps understand a doctor's natural urge to at least politely decline. What if that patient then badmouths them to other patients? What harm can possibly be done by a simple "no, thank you"?
Moreover, the thing about the Web is that if someone wants to find you, if someone wants to contact you, they can and they will. Yes, you can have better privacy controls on your Facebook account. But information tends to take on a freedom that is hard to anticipate and approaches can come in ways that one least suspects.
The MDU's first priority is protection. Yet one can imagine that some doctors, when approached in any kind of public forum, might feel more inclined to reply in that same forum, however politely, just so that it can be clear and known what their reply really was.
Of course, they could always reply by sending a "Which Kind of Drug Are You?" quiz. Or perhaps the even more popular "What Kind of Evil Creature Are You?"
That's the thing about Facebook. It just brings you so many new, fun ways to communicate.
Tiburon, Calif., is a twee little place. If you aren't familiar with the old-country colloquialism "twee," it means, well, something like "precious." Like one of those dogs Paris Hilton used to carry in her purse.
When one wanders through its little streets, just north of San Francisco, one gets the sense that a few of the residents, on seeing someone who appears not to be from around those parts, reach for their handkerchief and hand sanitizer.
How can one, therefore, be surprised that a meeting of the Tiburon Town Council voted on Wednesday by 4 to 0 to install cameras to photograph every single car that enters or leaves this little Disneyland?
The San Francisco Chronicle reported that this may be the first community in the country to have defended itself with cameras in such a way. The idea is to photograph the license plates of every car that treads Tiburon's hallowed roads and compare the information with the police's list of the stolen and nefarious.
The Tiburon police chief, Michael Cronin, told the Chronicle: "I think it makes the community safer."
There are certainly even more definitions of the word "safety" than of the word "twee." However, it is heartwarming that the Tiburon police--inspired, perhaps, by Google--promise that the information will be kept for only 30 days.
The strange thing is that Tiburon, a northern suburb of San Francisco, isn't exactly Oakland. It doesn't enjoy high crime figures. Indeed, some might say that the most criminal elements in the place are to be seen on the racks of its clothes stores.
The town is fortunate, however, in that it is on a peninsula, from which there are only two roads. So the total cost of putting up six cameras is estimated to be no more than $200,000, which works out at something near $20 per resident. (Tiburon residents enjoy, by the way, a median income somewhere above $125,000.)
I know there will be some who believe you can never have enough security cameras in this heinous and half-witted world. But perhaps some will worry that the police might make rather instinctive judgments about the provenance of certain cars and their intentions.
Others will wonder whether this decision might affect businesses in Tiburon. Still others will ponder whether the police might be willing to offer a Web site showing the movements of all its officers.
I merely wonder how many people, knowing they might have to go to Tiburon for a meal of organic Kobe beef, rosemary ice cream, and plenty of Stags Leap cabernet, will choose to remove their front license plates. You know, just to be on the safe side.
There is a view that removing all 15-year-old boys from this earth would not only help global warming but also our cultural horizon.
Supporters of this view will then be heartened to hear the story reported by the Chicago Tribune of a 15-year-old boy who suffered a serious trauma. His parents took away his Xbox.
The boy, a resident of Buffalo Grove, Ill., which sounds like the sort of place where discipline is imparted along traditional lines, decided to express his feelings and exert his identity. He called 911 in order to ask the police whether his parents were, indeed, within their rights to remove his gaming equipment from his sensitive little fingers.
However, brave as all 15-year-olds are, he appears to have hung up. So the Buffalo Grove police which, on its website, declares that it is "dedicated to making our community a better place to live and work", wandered along to his house.
Where they may have just laughed until their shirts billowed like the kaftans of the late Luciano Pavarotti.
Commander Steve Husak told the Tribune that the officers not only told the little tyke that parents do, indeed, have the right to take away his gadgetry, but that it might be an idea to listen to what they had to say.
It is not recorded why the parents took away the boy's Xbox. Perhaps it was because he's a vastly intelligent youth who will soon be the governor of Illinois.
Vermont is an interesting place with some very interesting residents. Brigham Young and John Deere are both said to hail from this mountainous state.
But will either turn out to be quite as fascinating as Jacob Rehm?
According to WCAX News, Rehm stands accused of illegally borrowing a $500,000 tour bus and taking it for a little spin. Rehm is a former employee of the bus company and will make an appearance in the Vermont District Court on Tuesday.
However, something else will also be making a court appearance at the same time--a video entitled "The Fabulous Bus Ride," which was posted on YouTube on November 5.
It does not appear to have been made by a concerned and civic-minded passerby. No, it is alleged to have been made by Rehm.
In the notes accompanying the YouTube posting, someone whose handle is vudushuz, says: "Vermont to Connecticut in the Middle-O-the-Night :)Originally thought about heading to Pennsylvania but... anyways, stopped in Bradford for GREAT pizza at the Exit."
As you will see from the embedded piece, the video is quite a work of art, with music by Yes and some very interesting camera work.
I wonder what the judge will think of the alleged director.
Sometimes a man can be betrayed by his wife in a good way.
A 61-year-old woman from Bridgend, Wales, had been married to her husband, for almost 20 years when, according to a court report from the Telegraph, she noticed a curious message on their computer at home.
She focused and realized that the message had been sent by an underage girl to whom her husband had been sending messages in a chat room. The message was of a sexual nature and included her husband's original message to the girl.
Perhaps some spouses would have been so stunned as to not know how to react.
This woman was different. She decided to use another computer in a different part of their house. She then entered the same chat room her husband had been using, posed as a young girl and made contact with him.
(Credit:
CC James Jhs/Flickr)
The prosecuting lawyer told the court: "Her husband had no idea but soon he was chatting with his own wife, believing it was a 14-year-old girl."
The woman didn't merely get written replies from her husband. He also used a Webcam to film himself for their supposed mutual pleasure.
Still, the court heard, she didn't confront him. Instead, she went straight to the police and the British National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children.
The man, who has grown-up daughters, only discovered that it was his wife who had betrayed him when interviewed by the police. He was given a three-year community order. He was also banned from having any contact with children under the age of 18, a ban that holds for both the real and the online worlds.
After the case, the woman, who is now divorcing her husband, told the Telegraph: "I did the right thing and I don't regret it. Now I just need some time to think and put all this behind me."
However, she was indignant that her husband did not receive a more stringent penalty. She said: "I thought the judge would be a lot harder and that he might go to prison."
Sometimes, we never even know those closest to us. Or sometimes we do, and then one day, they just change.
