Lord of the Dreams

Two weeks ago, when I was told to stay at home to weather a bout of the dizzy-flu (don’t ask), I decided to watch The Lord of the Rings again. Now I am a mild Tolkien fan, and was one of those people who was of the opinion that his books were unfilmable, and so Peter Jackson’s achievement was something in which I invested.

Since watching the movie in its initial extended version (we didn’t buy the complete, extra-extended version that was released after The Return of the King was released, figuring that we already owned enough of what would be included in the Big Package to make the purchase of another package indulgent), I then moved on to watching the supplementary information for the last film. I went through everything the first film had to offer, and thought I’d viewed the appendices of The Two Towers, but was pretty sure I hadn’t done so for ROTK (I was right).

Via Geoffrey Philp – Copyrights and Wrongs

Geoffrey Philp has a cautionary tale on the dangers of unregistered creative property:

… a few years ago, my son and I were walking through Blockbuster and we saw this movie, XYZ, that was set on a Caribbean island, so we decided to rent it.

As we settled back in our seats, a sickening feeling overcame me. This was my movie. A few changes had been made, but it was my movie. I’d been ripped off.

I called all my friends and then we contacted a lawyer, who after reviewing the case told me that because we couldn’t prove a “material connection” between he agent and the production company, we couldn’t bring a law suit. Plus, he added with the costs of expert witnesses, etc, the costs made it impossible to win.

I asked him about “Poor Man’s Copyright.”

Fall Cleaning

It’s time I got my life in order. This semester was a good one, not too hectic, with manageable courses and reasonable marking. Next semester I may be back to teaching English which is a far heavier load when it comes to marking — no group presentations and papers, and you have to read each word carefully and help students figure out their weaknesses.

I have been suffering from online snafus for the better part of a year now and have decided to take control. So I’ve begun! I’m going through my emails and am streamlining, streamlining. I’m gonna make enable the checking of mail from my iPhone at last (been ducking that because of all the high-class JUNQUE that I have been getting in my email boxes). I’m reconsidering my subscriptions to various RSS feeds and rethinking how I’m gonna follow them. I may even retool how I’m going to deal with the various blogs I have, which are mushrooming. Addicted to blogging, that’s what I am.