Ketchup is kind of a jerk. #hotdograce @clbclippers (at Huntington Park)

calamityjon:

kurtbusiek:

I’ll say this, though: 75 years after the debut of Superman…he ought to be in the public domain.

When Superman debuted, the expectation was that he’d be owned by the publisher for 56 years, maximum. Those 19 (so far) extra years were given by Congress to corporations, but the gift came from all of us, whether we agreed or not. Superman would have belonged to everyone by now, under the original deal. Not the publisher, not the creators’ estates, everyone. And I think it’s worth noting that we let — and are continuing to let — Congress and corporations simply take what would be ours and give it to the corporations.

Public domain enriches the world’s shared storehouse of artistic treasure. Unreasonable copyright extension harms that. Currently, Superman is scheduled to go into the public domain in 20 years. Unless copyright is extended again, of course. And that’s a big, big “unless.”

And keep in mind: when I say Superman should be in the public domain by now, I mean Batman, Captain America, Wonder Woman, Namor, the Shadow, Mandrake and others, too. All these characters should be as available to everyone as Dracula, Hercules, D’Artagnan and Dorothy Gale.

I’ve had a great time writing Superman and other DC characters, but there should come a point that Superman, like Sherlock Holmes or Tom Sawyer, can be used by anyone. And that time should have come years ago.

That wouldn’t mean DC couldn’t still tell Superman stories — they’d have a great advantage, in fact, since they’d still solely own all the bits that hadn’t gone PD yet, so they’d be able to maintain and continue their legend, while others would only be able to draw on those concepts that had been published 56 years ago or more. A little more stuff every year, but then DC would have another year of new stuff they’d created, too.

But if Superman, Batman, the Shadow and others could be used as freely as, say, Elizabeth Kostova used Dracula in THE HISTORIAN (or dozens of others who’ve used him, including me), it’d be an interesting world.

And as long as I’m musing on copyright: You know, if copyright length was tied to the life of the human creator, even in work for hire cases, companies would have good reason to keep those creators healthy and secure in their golden years. Food for thought.

Thought experiment for the tl;dr crowd: The natural realm of an idea is the public domain, copyright is a temporary allowance granted by law to encourage the creation of new ideas - not to mine one idea repeatedly for eons. 

Thomas Jefferson, speaking about patents, extols the virtues of the public domain:

If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.

That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property.

Society may give an exclusive right to the profits arising from them, as an encouragement to men to pursue ideas which may produce utility, but this may or may not be done, according to the will and convenience of the society, without claim or complaint from anybody. Accordingly, it is a fact, as far as I am informed, that England was, until we copied her, the only country on earth which ever, by a general law, gave a legal right to the exclusive use of an idea. In some other countries it is sometimes done, in a great case, and by a special and personal act, but, generally speaking, other nations have thought that these monopolies produce more embarrassment than advantage to society; and it may be observed that the nations which refuse monopolies of invention, are as fruitful as England in new and useful devices.

–Thomas Jefferson
13 August 1813

thefinalimage:

Forrest Gump, 1994 (dir. Robert Zemeckis)

How does it feel to be bludgeoned to death by the feather of cheap revisionist sentimentality, America?

Let’s all pretend that Zemeckis had just suffered a traumatic brain injury in 1992 and didn’t fully recover until 1995.

columbusiscapital:

columbusdispatch:

Mara, a member of the swim team and an actor in the school play to be performed later on the day she was expelled, pleaded to stay.

“You say you’re trying to help me, but you’re taking me from a place I love,” she told administrators at her private school in Powell.

The school had kicked her out suddenly and without recourse after learning that Mara had made cuts on her arm and posted the bloody photo on a personal blog that other students viewed.

More at Dispatch.com.

Photo, by Dispatch photographer Jonathan Quilter: Most days, Ana Dan says, her 15-year-old daughter, Mara, pictured, feels happy and healthy, her struggle with depression and anxiety kept in check.

In what world does that make sense? Yes, educators who are supposed to be supporting and instructing and assisting young people, you should totally make the bizarre choice of throwing them out of school for having clinical anxiety. As if the sad fact that this girl posted images of her externalized anxiety and depression would make it spread like a virus through her school. What in the hell is wrong with the admins of this school? Why aren’t you HELPING HER you paranoid, backwards bastards.

Reeve Superman autoreblog engage

(Source: punkstaypunk, via chrisroberson)

Truth.

seanhowe:

“‘Kindness’ covers all of my political beliefs. No need to spell them out. I believe that if, at the end, according to our abilities, we have done something to make others a little happier, and something to make ourselves a little happier, that is about the best we can do. To make others less happy is a crime. To make ourselves unhappy is where all crime starts. We must try to contribute joy to the world. That is true no matter what our problems, our health, our circumstances. We must try. I didn’t always know this and am happy I lived long enough to find it out.”

(via kellysue)

The wall on Flickr.

Snow and fire.