kjv31 has a cool new picture. I just keep tuning in to stare at the curvy babe and smile. Thought of the day: Plagiarism as Pie, Explained. Fucking brilliant. And it's interesting, the use of the cookbook in this analogy--a cookbook is published with the expectation that people will use the contents to make pie. A TV show is "published" with the expectation that people will...what? In the traditional, consumer-based media model: watch it. That's all. At most, tape it for one's own use and rewatch it. What show creators are beginning to understand, I think, is that media consumerism is not a passive model. It's interactive. Consumers are creative and they'll use that product and not only will they discuss it, they'll create derivative works, ways of re-presenting the source material. And this is good, not bad, because it doesn't *take away* from the copyright holders--it in fact attracts more consumers to the product. So those consumers--viewers, writers, vidders, etc--*fans*--are like this vast resource of free marketing muscle. And if you're smart, you'll take advantage of that.*
[* Edited to add for non-U.S. users who might not be able to reach the site: the links are to (a) a promotional contest that Showtime ran inviting fan-fiction submissions (!), and (b) a program to affiliate your QAF fan web site with Showtime.]
All of which reminds me for, like, the third time, of A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy. It also reminds me of something I read recently on Salon.com, about how Friendster.com's owner is frustrated by how people are "mis-using" his site and services by creating false profiles to amuse themselves with. It all interrelates. Everything and anything you put out there as source is going to get creatively redefined by its users.
Which doesn't make it plagiarism.
In other news. I am still fascinated by Mark Morford's ability to spin a sentence:
Religious conservatives are pledging an all-out drive to enshrine a ban on same-sex marriage in the U.S. Constitution, calling it the last line of defense against an inevitable court-led destruction of a fundamental social institution, and also calling it their last line of defense against their own imminent demise as well as the onslaught of love and open-thighed bliss and losing their last iota of twitchy power and just shutting the hell up for once and letting the human soul evolve for a goddamn change instead of bitching and clenching their little faux-spiritual sphincters and decrying anything that doesn't reek of oppression or intolerance or uptight sexless dogma and self-flagellation.This is from his newsletter, The Morning Fix, "Mark's deeply skewed, highly satiric, well-lubricated thrice-weekly...email newsletter & column, which is absolutely free to subscribers but costs $10,000 if you don't like it. Strangely popular among politicians, sadomasochists, and Mormons."
Observation of the day: I am sleepy.