The World of Stuff .com

More things that have nothing to do with each other

Last time on The World of Stuff: I was looking for a way to notify readers of new blog posts by e-mail. In an update to the post, I mentioned a WordPress plugin called Subscribe2. At first I thought it wouldn’t meet my needs, but I’ve figured out how to make it work. The plugin automatically generates the subscription/unsubscription form on a WordPress page. This is what I didn’t like. But then I realized I could just copy the form manually and put it on the sidebar.

Subscribe2 is probably better than RSS-to-e-mail (or RSS-to-email) services because it can send out e-mails right after every post is posted. Plus, there’s no third party involved to collect addresses and send out notifications. Just me with your e-mail addresses, and you can trust me. The only minor downside is that I’ll get an e-mail for every post I write. That’s not too much of a problem because I can just have Thunderbird delete them automatically. [Update Wed Dec 31, 2008 11:48 UTC -5: By default, a single message is sent with the recipients in the Bcc: field, and the admin's address in the To: field. If you set the number of recipients per e-mail to 1, each recipient's address will be in the To: field, and you won't get a copy of the notifications.] So anyway, you’ll be able to subscribe by e-mail soon. Yay.

I’ve been to the movies twice since I’ve been home for the break. I saw Yes Man last week. It was actually pretty good — vintage Jim Carrey — and might be characterized by some as “cute.” And yesterday I saw Valkyrie, the true story of Tom Cruise as a one-eyed Nazi who tries to kill Adolf Hitler. I had never heard of the actual story, but if it’s anything like the movie, it’s pretty interesting. Despite that you know the ending (because Hitler wasn’t assassinated), there’s still a good deal of suspense. Oh, and Terence Stamp is in both movies. Not that I knew who he was before IMDbing them.

I’ve had another what-the-heck moment. Actually, it happened a few months ago. There’s a Norman Rockwell calendar on the fridge, featuring one picture each month from the prolific artist. Several of his earlier works are included, each with copyright notices like “Copyright 1917″ or “Copyright 1921″ along with the name of the alleged copyright holder. What’s wrong with this picture? Nothing published before 1923 is still copyrighted in the United States. Plus, Bridgeman v. Corel sets down that faithful photographs of two-dimensional works that are in the public domain are themselves in the public domain. The copyright holder of Norman Rockwell’s post-1922 works is claiming exclusive rights to art that belongs to everyone.

(Something I learned while I was looking that up: Only works created by humans are eligible for copyright. So paintings by animals and the computer-generated gobbledygook in spam e-mails are in the public domain. All right!)

Anyway, this isn’t the first time that a company has tried to exercise control over works that are probably in the public domain. I mentioned seemingly recently the case of “Happy Birthday to You,” which makes Time Warner millions each year. And remember that “This Land” video of Bush and Kerry from 2004 and how JibJab, the creators of the video, got sued by the copyright holder of “This Land Is Your Land”? In defending JibJab, the venerable Electronic Frontier Foundation discovered that the song has been in the public domain for decades, yet JibJab still had to pay up, I think.

Is there any whistleblowing blog that calls out corporations for claiming copyright over public domain works? I would like to see one if there is. But hopefully there aren’t enough cases to warrant creating a whole blog.

‘Tis the season: Patron Who Complained About Indiana Library Nativity Faces Retaliation. What was it doing there anyway?