shadowkat | Ramblings to distract myself before making dinner

Since job thing-a-mig is currently driving me batty, am distracting myself flitting about on my lj and looking at emails, and pressing the back button alot. Currently feel as if the universe is biting its thumb at me, and saying n'yah, n'yah, n'yah.

Things that I've distracted myself with today:

1. Copyright battle between Universal and CafePRess. Which has the Firefly fandom up in arms. I wandered over and put in my two cents at Whedonesque. Okay it was more like my five cents, but whatever. It is an interesting case - not the part about the infringement, the Serenity artwork in question was clearly in violation of Universal's copyright - or at least what I saw of it was, no what is interesting about it is the possible defense. Or rather in non-legalese, the thing that has the browncoats so pissed off. Universal as everyone knows used the existing Firefly fanbase to sell Serenity. Instead of spending millions of dollars on a promotional marketing campaign for the film, they went the guerilla marketing route and had the fans sell it to fellow fans. This saved them quite a bit of money, it also cost them a bit - because fans tend to only pass the word to freinds, family and well fellow fans - and those people would have seen the movie without a marketing campaign. The tv shows fanbase can't sell the film to the mainstream - non-cult, non-fan audience, which is off-net. And like it or not, for a movie or tv show to do *really* well or at least well enough to justify a sequel - it has to appeal to that broader audience. (Cases in point: Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Harry Potter). So in a way, Universal's gamble didn't quite work out the way they wanted it to. My question is when Universal asked the shows fans to market the film did they give them permission to produce t-shirts, cups, fan-art on posters, etc - and did they do it in writing? If the fans can prove they did, and prove that it was not permission just for "promotional" reasons - then Universal may have a problem.

2. President Bush has expressed his dissatisfaction with what is happening in Iraq. He doesn't think things are going well over there - Or so I was told by ABC News. LOL! Say what you will about the current US Prez, but he certainly has a gift for stating the obvious. Now if only he'd admit that he's dissatisfied with the current economy, health insurance, and unemployment situation in the US and thinks that yes, perhaps the anti-trust law needs to be strengthened again to discourage all these stupid mergers and acquisitions that are causing people to get laid-off right and left.

3. Good news Studio 60 fans, while the show is not doing great ratings wise (no surprise there, after this week's episode, I've decided that I'm not the only one who is thinking it is too bright for tv - I think the writer of the show has also decided it is too bright for tv and has decided to tell us so. That said, die-hard fans, all 1000 of them, still adore it.), the income level of the fans watching is in the networks happy radar range - 69,000 and above. In short they are rich folks. No, wait, they aren't counting me. The currently unemployed folks. Goes to show you, market research is hardly an exact science. Also the network is behind it. Even though the network is currently trying to avoid bankruptcy and about to layoff a thousand employees, but hey, we'll ignore that, because Prez Bush says the economy is doing just peachy (if you say so, Mr. President) and guess what NBC Nightly News is beating ABC and CBS? Hee. Again no surprise. Considering it's the only one of the big three that is not touting the corporate line and actually presenting the news. ABC's Gibson's conservatism has begun to annoy me. I didn't like Katie Kouric when she was doing the Today Show.

4. Am tempted to swipe

buffyannatator unpopular fandom opinions meme - it provides multiple opportunities for me to make sarcastic remarks, which will undoubtedly piss off my flist. So am resisting. We'll see how long that lasts. Been pressing the back button all day long.

5. Oh and a bit of good news, the New Jersey Supreme Court has figured out why not permitting same-sex marriage is a bad thing and granted certain legal rights to homosexual partners that used to only be granted to heterosexual ones. Okay for people who know zip about Property and Family Law - I'll clarify - basically, when two people get married this grants the person's spouse certain legal rights in case say their partner gets ill or dies or has a kid or they buy a house together. The reason people get married (ignoring the whole religious aspect of it for a moment) is so the state recognizes them as a couple and grants them certain legal rights as a couple. They can file taxes jointly (which in some instances gives you a tax break), if they buy a house - it is in both of their names and if something should happen to one of the two, the other one automatically has right of ownership. If someone is hospitalized, their spouse or partner has the right to oversee their care, sign off on surgery, ensure their bills are paid, etc. If they die, the surviving partner gets the shared property - it does not go "intestate" or to surviving family members. If one is working and has insurance and the other doesn't - the insurance can cover both as a "married" couple. That's why it is important. The religious/morality bit should not come into play here at all - if it does come into play - then you fall into a dilemma because - hello, last time I checked there was another nifty constitutional clause stating "freedom of religion" and "separation of church and state". Us agnostics and athesists would really like that clause to stay in there.