Ramblin' with Roger

Public Figure Punishment and Race

As you may have heard, Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger, who helped his team win the Super Bowl a couple times, will be suspended the first six games of the 16-game season for “violating the NFL’s personal conduct policy.” The punishment, handed down by NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, involved “a 20-year-old college student who accused him of sexually assaulting her in a Georgia nightclub in March.” The district attorney declined to prosecute, fearing he could not make his case, but he spoke in rather damning terms at a press conference HERE and HERE and HERE and HERE. I didn’t to the whole thing, maybe 10 of the 40 minutes, but it was enough. This is not the first time allegations about Ben’s sexual improprieties have surfaced.

What surprised me, but should not have, is this barrage of comments suggesting that he fared better or fared worse because he is white. Just Google Roethlisberger race. Some people complained that Michael Vick, dog killer, got only a two-game suspension; however, he also went to jail.

1. Is the punishment adequate, too much or too little?
2. What does race have to do with it, if anything?
3. Should Ben get traded to another team? CAN he get traded?
4. Does the NFL Commissioner have too much authority as “judge, jury and executioner”, as one pundit called it? In other sports, there is an appeals process, but the only appeal to the NFL Commissioner is to the NFL Commissioner.

My thoughts: it’s a judgment call, it got the QB’s attention, but I wish action had been taken on some of these earlier incidents; much ado about not much, but race still gets infused in EVERYTHING; another team would be crazy to take him; yes.

–ROG

The Copyright Law Is A Ass

Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 of the United States Constitution, known as the Copyright Clause, the Copyright and Patent Clause (or Patent and Copyright Clause), the Intellectual Property Clause and the Progress Clause, empowers the United States Congress:
“ To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.

Note the word “limited”.

The current law says that copyright is for the “life of the author plus 70 years and for works of corporate authorship to 120 years after creation or 95 years after publication, whichever endpoint is earlier. Copyright protection for works published prior to January 1, 1978, was increased by 20 years to a total of 95 years from their publication date.”

I’d like to say that the continuing extensions of the copyright law is unconstitutional. I’d LIKE to say that, but I can’t, because the Supreme Court ruled otherwise in 2003.

To be fair, this law is more or less consistent with the Berne convention, signed by the United States in 1988

But in a more fundamental way, there seems to be a gross lack of understanding about copyright generally. Copyright protection is not an absolute. People can use other people’s copyrighted materials all the time through fair use, use in reviews, parody.

An interesting take on copyright comes from Paul Rapp, intellectual property lawyer from around these parts. He is also F. Lee Harvey Blotto, drummer of the almost legendary band Blotto.

Web portals like YouTube are protected by the “safe harbor” provisions of a law called the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which says that YouTube generally doesn’t have to actively monitor what’s being posted on its site. Once the portal is informed that there’s infringing stuff posted, it has a duty to investigate and take down offending material. This merely reaffirms that it’s the copyright owners’ duty to police its copyright, not someone else’s. In other words, it’s Viacom’s job, not YouTube’s.

This makes perfect sense. Because often the copyright owner is fine that their stuff has been posted without permission. A few years ago I noticed that folks had posted Blotto’s old videos on YouTube. My reaction was “great, now I don’t have to do it.” I’d been meaning to do it myself but was too lazy to figure out how. We wanted the videos up, for whatever promotional value they might bring. Somebody even posted “Lifeguard” under the heading “Worst 80’s Video Ever.” It’s closing in on a quarter-million hits, and the comments are amazing. And I ain’t touchin’ it.

And I’m certainly not alone here. Lots of copyright owners turn a blind eye to “unauthorized” posts…

Several times a day someone sends me a YouTube link, usually of some old music video that’s brilliant, funny, or revealing, often all three at once. Does somebody own the copyrights to these things? Undoubtedly. Did they put them up themselves? Maybe, maybe not. And are they mad that their stuff’s on the internet? Probably not. They’re probably delighted.

So copyright, both in law and as a practical matter, is not as “obvious” or “simple” as it may appear.
***
And speaking of intellectual property gone awry, I think it’s reprehensible that one company can “own” a patent on human genes and I was thrilled when the company Myriad lost a ruling over breast cancer-gene patents, a suit brought by the ACLU, plus the March of Dimes and a number of medical organizations.

ROG

Earth Day 2010

It’s been forty years since the first Earth Day. 40 years since I was on my knees Picking up over 1300 cigarette butts from the lawn of my high school, which has forever made me irritable about smokers using the ground as their ashtray. Hey, people, those filters don’t break down very easily.

Since then, there have been very definite successes. Consumers increasingly have sought out products or services that promise to improve the environment. Well, sometimes. The Hummer, for instance, was initially unfathomably popular, then, done in by higher gas prices, became the poster child for wretched excess.

The Environmental Protection Agency was formed in 1970, under a Republican President, Richard Nixon, with William Ruckelshaus as its first head. In a recent wall Street Journal piece, Rucklehaus discusses what should happen next here.

(Nixon wasn’t that bad a President, except for, you know, the war and Watergate. Ruckelshaus, BTW, was fired as Deputy Attorney General a result of the Watergate “Saturday Night Massacre”; here is his recent account of that event.)

But there continues to be a debate green or growth, as though one could not have both, that \environmentalism is somehow anathema to capitalism. As a business librarian, I just don’t believe that is the case.

Much has been made of all the “green” jobs the Obama administration has promised that have not yet come to fruition. Thinking back to the Industrial Revolution, in some ways, it was more evolutionary in that the old ways didn’t disappear overnight. Patience is required.

Meanwhile, we need to respect those canaries in the coal mine, those polar bears drifting on ice floes, those penguins that have to travel 25% further for food, the potential loss of species, not from natural selection, but rather from human activity.

Yet there are people who not only think that the earth’s temperature rise is a naturally occurring phenomenon – I don’t believe that, but people are allowed to disagree – but that the earth isn’t warming at all. They take examples such as the especially snowy winter in parts of the United States as “proof”. MY proof is this chart from NASA:

No, not every year is warmer than the last. But the trend line is clear. We ignore it, literally at our peril.

ROG

No, I’m NOT Doing Kill Your TV Week

The annual tradition of encouraging people to forgo their television viewing is upon us again. Frankly, I had forgotten this until my wife sent an e-mail.

Have you thought about how much TV you have watched this year? I think you will be surprised to see the statistics on this web site. For example the number of hours the average youth spends watching TV in a year is 1500 hours! YIKES!

National Turn off the TV week begins today. See if you can challenge yourself and your children to “turn off” to TV and “turn on” to reading!

This is all well and good. The problem is this: I LIKE TV. I don’t get to watch it all that often, sharing it with The Wife and the Daughter. Not that the Daughter watches it all that much either. She watches maybe 15 minutes in the morning, when she’s getting her hair done, then less than a half hour at night when she takes her medicines, including using her nebulizer. The average youth may watch over 1500 hours a year, but our youth sees less than 300. And all of it, on PBS Kids and Nick, Jr. with some legitimate educational content; I’m actually all right with that. In fact, in honor of Earth Day, Nick, Jr. is going to have a series of new shows on the topic which I had recorded for her.

So when the Wife came home Monday night and said to the Daughter, “Hey, how would you like it if I read you a story while you nebulize instead of watching TV,” and the Daughter frowned and said, “I don’t want to do that,” I was a bit sympathetic to the Daughter. I told the Wife that she had to sell the concept. So, a half hour later, AFTER I HAD WATCHED THE NEWS, BTW, the Wife repeated what she said before. The Daughter said, “Daddy doesn’t want to stop watching his news, does he?” Well, no, actually he does not.

By “selling it”, I mean to find the key to MOTIVATE the Daughter not to want to watch TV. There was this article a book review, really, in TIME magazine a couple months ago. Regarding Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard, the piece begins: “Whether you’re a manager, a parent or a civic leader, getting people to change can be tricky business. In Switch, brothers Chip and Dan Heath–authors of the best-selling Made to Stick–survey efforts to shape human behavior in search of what works.

“Lesson No. 1: tell people what you want them to do in a way that will make intuitive sense to them.” Not watching TV, rather out of the blue, made no sense to her. She was going to get a story anyway before bed. Perhaps discussing how others were also doing this across the country, aligned with some reward, might have worked.

Besides, since I watch very little in real time with the DVR – even the news is taped – I don’t really want to give it up myself. Does no TV mean that we just fill up the DVR and watch more NEXT week? The DVR’s hovering around 50% full already.

In parenting, we really try to do the united front thing. But in this case, my heart simply wasn’t in it.

ROG

N is for New Zealand

I have not traveled extensively. I’ve been to about 30 US states. Outside of the country, I’ve only been to Canada, Mexico and Barbados, only the former more than once. So I get to “travel” through a number of blogs.

One of the blogs I visit is Nik Durga’s Spatula Forum. Nik is “an American journalist who now lives in New Zealand with my kiwi wife and son.” Somehow, this led me to http://amerinz.blogspot.com/. Arthur is another American expat living in New Zealand, of longer tenure, who writes: “I moved to New Zealand from Chicago in 1995 to be with my partner. I’ve worked in the printing and publishing industries for about twenty years.” It’s possible I found Arthur through Nik’s appearance on Arthur’s podcast, but I don’t recall.

Regardless, Arthur celebrated the third anniversary of his podcast last month, March 28, to be precise. In honor of that, he posed 20 questions, for which he kindly also presented the answers, which people were supposed to send him in order to win a “Kiwi prize pack”; alas, I did not win. Being a tad librarianish, I decided to send along links with the answers, which was not required. It later occurred to me that those links could be the basis of THIS VERY blogpost.

The information will not be in the order that Arthur gave it, since his was intentionally all over the place chronologically.

The Waitangi Treaty was signed February 6, 1840. This “extends to the Natives of New Zealand Her royal protection, and imparts to them all the Rights and Privileges of British subjects.”

The First_Taranaki War, fueled by a land dispute between the Maori and the Europeans,
began on March 17, 1860 and ended on March 18, 1861.

The New Zealand Cross was created on March 10, 1869, important “because New Zealand’s local military were not eligible for the [British] Victoria Cross.”

“New Zealand became the first self-governing nation in the world where women had won the right to vote” on September 19, 1893.

The Brunner mine disaster took place on March 26, 1896.

New Zealand achieved dominion status on September 26, 1907.

There are 453 New Zealand World War I memorials.

An agreement of Australian-New Zealand cooperation was signed in Canberra on January 21, 1944.

The Wahine Shipwreck disaster occurred on April 10, 1968.

The Homosexual Law Reform Act was signed on July 11, and went into effect August 8, 1986.

The first Kiwi to win an Academy Award took place in March 1994, the 21st in Los Angeles, when Anna Paquin was named Best Supporting Actress for “The Piano”. Anna was born in Canada, but raised in New Zealand.

The Prostitution Reform Act was passed in 2003.

Nationwide elections in New Zealand are held every three years, “or earlier, should it be necessary.” At this writing, the ruling party is New Zealand National Party and the leading opposition party is the New Zealand Labour Party.

There are about 13200 km from Chicago, IL US to Auckland, NZ.

As at Tuesday, 20 April 2010 at 02:58:46 am (local time), the estimated resident population of New Zealand was 4,364,669.

Most of the questions Arthur got from New Zealand History online, which celebrated its 11th anniversary last month.

ABC Wednesday

ROG