Stiff or Bendy?
Battle Damaged Spiderman, left for dead on my bedroom floor.
Copyright stuff bothers me. I was
hunting around the net for images to use on a site I am working on, and
the thing is, it's a commercial site. A lot of the images I need
are big-name properties, and I'd have to write for express permission and
probably get shot down, or use em anyway and take em down when the bloodhounds
come. Or make a half-assed attempt at appearing nice and sweet by
posting the copyrights on the site, although I didn't obtain permission
to use the intellectual properties and so therefore become a hypocrite.
This last option is pretty unpalatable.
Hehe, my kid cannot read what I am writing, but
this is what he is saying to me as I write:
"I don't like that picture of my Spiderman on your
journal. It is your journal but since it is a picture of my
Spiderman, it makes that picture mine too."
Already he is grasping the idea. And I never
even told him what I was writing about.
I kinda think the idea of copyright really no longer
applies in the information age. I mean, it is virtually impossible
to enforce. The Dyke Quotient is a case in point. That test
appeared in the Nice Jewish Girls mailing list, without any attribution
as to its authorship. It had been passed around by email and mailing
list and webpage, despite the author's having closely guarded the rights
to it. Turns out the author was a subscriber to the list, and was
naturally upset at her work having been severed from its author and spread
to kingdom come when she wanted to retain control of it. And I hope
you did notice that I reprinted it with her express permission, including
the copyright statement at the bottom of my main page. I did that
to respect her feelings about her work. But copyright is something
that simply cannot be enforced these days. The net is too big, too
widespread. Copy/paste is just too convenient.
I'd be flattered if something I said got
smeared all over the net. It would make me feel like I said something
darn good, if it deserved repeating. I'd hope not to be too devastated
if the quote wasn't attributed to me. Like "Stiff Cy, Bendy Cy."
I am the one who came up with that. Course, nobody in AW except the
people in the newsgroup knows that.
See, in this 3D environment, Active
Worlds, people are represented by avatars. Now, the oldest avatar
in the Alpha World bunch is Cy, actually was heisted from the Renderware
demo. This was long before avatars could move individual parts of
their bodies, look at their watches, smooth their hair, flap their wings,
etc. Cy is a faceless statue frozen in mid-stride, well, except for
now he has been reworked. There is now a fully animated version of
him available that does all the things the other avs do. Only problem
is, this Cy is abhorrent to those who are historically-minded. He
is not "authentic."
So, now there is to be a vote. Do we keep
the former or the latter? One of the Cy's must go. Stiff Cy,
or Bendy Cy? I myself am for retaining Bendy Cy. I am sure
that among the three hundred or so worlds, at least one has a Stiff Cy
archived somewhere. No need to preserve him in the flagship world,
where new people touch down every day, and should see the newest, most
advanced avatars.
I am in the minority, though. Stiff Cy is
beloved by many. Now my favorite stiff av is Knight. He is
also from the Renderware demo, and must stand 8 or 9 feet tall. I
have an extremely sentimental attachment to him. He is all done up
in brass-colored and forest green armor, with an impossibly long sword.
Penile statement there, I think. My favorite bendy av is an adaptation
of him that kinda wound up female, so although her name is Knight also,
I call her Joan. She is short and feisty, narrow waisted and virtually
bustless. Shapely calves. Half the time I wanna be her.
The other half, I wanna do her. Heh, you could say the same for the
stiff version, actually. The beauty of being bi.
link o' the day:
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