The NY Times Magazine has a chilling excerpt, in which Ebadi finds a surprising name on a death warrant.

(I wonder whether this entry will spark another incoherent rant from the same anonymous commenter who trolled here previously.)

Now, the original point of trademark law was to protect consumers, and by extension trademark holders, by avoiding marketplace confusion. If you’re Milton Hershey, marketing your new chocolate bar, you don’t want some fraudster to copy your name and package design to sell inferior chocolate. And if you’re a consumer who happens to enjoy Mr. Hershey’s product, you’d like to know that you’re buying the real thing, not some cheap knockoff.

So, tell me MTA: How is a subway rider likely to confuse F Line Bagels with the nearby Smith-9th St. subway station? Especially since F Line Bagels appears to be much prettier and cleaner than any Brooklyn stop along the F line?

Simply put, orphan works are copyrighted creative works for which the rights holder is hard to find. For example, perhaps your grandfather published a collection of poetry through a small publisher in 1947, having sold to that publisher his interest in the poems. You would like to republish the collection, but the original publishing house is now out of business. Who owns the copyright?

Or say your parents are celebrating a wedding anniversary. You are throwing a party for their dearest friends, and as party decorations, you want to enlarge and display some of your parents’ wedding photos. You take the originals to a nearby lab, but the lab owner refuses to reproduce the photos, saying the original photographer owns the rights.

The copyright office is seeking to clarify issues surrounding these orphan works. If this problem affects you, please consider telling the office.

Boing Boing points to a piece from the AP, in which a ranking Sony exec admits his company made a mistake.

Huh. Guess what, Sony. The market’s now three years ahead of you.

“[N]o longer does the Religious Right represent conservative, Christian values….Are we heading for a modern day religious inquisition, this one led not by the Catholic Church but by the Religious Right? Are we witnessing the type of marriage between Church and State that America’s founders originally feared?”

What should we do with US classics like Cat on a Hot Tin Roof or The Color Purple? “Dig a hole,” Gerald Allen recommends, “and dump them in it.” Don’t laugh. Gerald Allen’s book-burying opinions are not a joke.

Earlier this week, Allen got a call from Washington. He will be meeting with President Bush on Monday. I asked him if this was his first invitation to the White House. “Oh no,” he laughs. “It’s my fifth meeting with Mr Bush.”

So this is how Mr. Bush is exercising his “clear mandate” from the American people. Fuck you, America.

MONTGOMERY – An Alabama lawmaker who sought to ban gay marriages now wants to ban novels with gay characters from public libraries, including university libraries. [Emphasis added.]

A bill by Rep. Gerald Allen, R-Cottondale, would prohibit the use of public funds for “the purchase of textbooks or library materials that recognize or promote homosexuality as an acceptable lifestyle.” Allen said he filed the bill to protect children from the “homosexual agenda.”

…

The bill also would ban materials that recognize or promote a lifestyle or actions prohibited by the sodomy and sexual misconduct laws of Alabama. Allen said that meant books with heterosexual couples committing those acts likely would be banned, too.

From Alabama’s statutes regarding sexual misconduct:

A person commits the crime of sexual misconduct if…[h]e or she engages in deviate sexual intercourse with another person under circumstances other than those covered by sections 13A-6-63 and 13A-6-64. Consent is no defense to a prosecution under this subdivision. [Emphasis added; source.]

Deviate sexual intercourse: “Any act of sexual gratification between persons not married to each other involving the sex organs of one person and the mouth or anus of another.” [source]

But forget the focus on specific sex acts. I bring that up only to show that Allen would also ban books featuring or even implying sexual relations between unmarried heterosexuals.

What’s important is how broadly this law might be applied. Would Allen’s law prevent Alabama’s public universities from offering books discussing the sexuality of Alexander the Great? Would it prevent college teachers from distributing syllabi in which “deviant” conduct is mentioned? (From the article: “His bill also would prohibit a teacher from handing out materials or bringing in a classroom speaker who suggested homosexuality was OK, he said.”)

Searching the University of Alabama website turns up a broad set of courses in Human Sexuality, but if “handing out materials” is banned, how can an instructor create a syllabus or place articles on reserve in the university’s library? Also, how would such a law affect medical education? Oops! I’m sorry. AIDS and other STDs are now officially off the curriculum.

I can’t imagine this will pass. The universities will lobby hard against it. Even interpreted narrowly, it will interfere with the ability of the state’s colleges from educating its citizens. Moreover, Alabama’s universities will become less competitive at attracting out-of-state students.

Good work, Mr. Allen. You’ve demonstrated a tremendous disrespect for Alabama’s entire system of education.

Ebadi wishes to publish her book here in the U.S. because, in her home country, it would be subject to state approval–but ironically, it’s subject to state approval in the land of the “free” as well.

[more, via Blog of a Bookslut]

Now, I ain’t a sampler or musician, so the rights issues don’t really affect me, but I think it’s damn cool.