Pro Bono Geek

I am prepared to say, after much thought and deliberation, that the following three CDs have changed my life.

• Twin Cinema
• Electric Version
• Mass Romantic

All of these CD’s are by a Canadian band named The New Pornographers. It’s hard to explain the why behind my belief that these 39 songs have had such an important impact, but they have. Maybe some history will help…

I usually listen to what I call geek music, bands like the Barenaked Ladies, They Might Be Giants, etc. All excellent bands with good lyrics and clever takes on the world around them. In addition I have a soft spot of excellent vocalists like Sarah McLachlan and Dido. But around the time Lindsay and I broke up I started getting into a darker side of music… well, dark for me. My playlist included songs from The Killers, Snow Patrol, and Green Day. These are all great bands too; in fact, I went to The Killers’ concert not too long ago and really enjoyed it (other than being way older than the average attendee).

The problem with most of this music is that it takes a rather pessimistic view on relationships. A quote from Snow Patrol’s How to Be Dead:

Please take it easy it can’t all be my fault
I haven’t made half the mistakes
That you’ve listed so far
Oh baby let me explain something
It’s all down to drugs
At least I remember taking the and not a lot else
It seems I’ve stepped over lines
You’ve drawn again and again

Now, this song held a lot of meaning for me while I was first internalizing the end of my relationship with Lindsay. But it also reinforced certain bad feelings and assumptions… which means listening to their CD every day on the way to and from Renton over the summer was not exactly the best idea.

Then the New Pornographers walked into my life. At first it was just a CD that Brett picked up ’cause he heard them on NPR. Then I bought their earlier CDs. Then we went to a live concert. Now I listen to them pretty much non-stop when I’m walking around campus (Digital music players are truly a godsend). Their music is a cross between pop, folk, electric, and bubbles (not the music… the soapy stuff). It’s an eight person band with both a male and female lead singer, which gives each of their song a very unique feel. Contrast with the Killers who, as far as I can tell, have two unique songs that are each 15 minutes long.

The lyrics are also mind blowing… consider this verse from These are the Fables off Twin Cinema.

Heaven shook Hell
And down from its pockets
The ring in your bell
It fell through your hands
Hang at your feet
The doors that won’t open
Marking the journey of our friends complete
These are the fables of my street
My street

My street, my street
Lay down in glory, you’re not alone

I know exactly what this means… but I couldn’t even begin to tell you. It’s that way with most of their songs. Something about them just communicates concepts and feelings through emotional expression and mere sentence fragments. Best yet, I would say only 30-40% of their songs are about intimate relationships. Most, at least in my head, are out our other relationships… whether with our friends, our life choices, or the world at large. That being said, one of their best songs is a relationship song entitled All for Swinging You Around that I would proudly sing at the top of my lungs to the next person I fall in love with.

It also helps that they sound great and their music is lively.

I say this music has changed my life because for two reasons. One, it got me out of a nasty rut of listening to the dark music. Two, it gives me a means by which to think about my life in a whole new light. Through the lens of these whimsical words I find new meaning. If you’ve read this far, I strongly suggest you pick up one of their albums. Each one is excellent in their own right, but Twin Cinema is probably the best starter album (although All for Swinging You Around is on Electric Version).

And if you don’t… I just might have to buy you a copy for your birthday.

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I’m taking Antitrust this quarter. It’s a good class. I would say that in combination with Business Organizations these two classes explain nearly everything that you read in the New York Times business section that seems to make no logical sense. Really, you want to understand the why of the business world these are must take classes. But that’s besides the point…

Each week a different group presents to the class on a case study from the Professor. Thanks to twisted fate, I am assigned to a group that goes dead last. Our problem is probably the hardest, most complication question asked of any group. Add to this problem my failure to do much of the reading and you have an ever increasingly likelihood of my total failure. Or so you would think.

Turns out, no, I’m not the weak link in this particular three ring circus (check out that mixed metaphor). See, the rest of the group is comprised of 2Ls. My friends should remember this as a great time for me. You’re fresh out of 1L and your summer internship. The world seems to be your oyster. Turns out that’s just not true. See, you haven’t learned how to process huge areas of the law that are presented in upper-division classes. You’re still trying to fit the models that got you through 1L to actual law. You have yet to learn that you hardly know anything.

Prof. Drake, the Antitrust professor, isn’t interested in outdated modes of legal analysis. He’s interested in what’s going to win the argument. What’s your hook? Well, I’ve read the brief written by my able 2L teammates and I can say without equivocation… there is no hook. This wouldn’t normally be a problem if we were taking the easy position, but we seem to have decided to argue the hard side. Which means you need more than just a hook… you need a fantastic hook.

This past day I’ve been reading up on all the relevant merger cases, refactoring the brief into a workable presentation that might actually have a hook. Otherwise I go before the class tomorrow and look quite the fool. I don’t have a problem looking the fool, but it had better be of my own doing.

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Instead of actually studying or getting ready for my impending finals smackdown, I went computer shopping today. To aid me in my shopping I brought along Tom, Eric, and my trusty FlexCar. That’s right, I actually used my automobile! It was pretty cool, in retrospect. Keys in the glove compartment, RFID embedded card to open the vehicle, secret pin to unlock the ignition. All very sleek and modern. The car was even a hybrid, which was totally cool. You can actually see the battery charge and how much is charged back into the battery when you break. Behold technology.

We went to BestBuy and Circuit City to caress the laptops. Laptop caressing is very important… you need to know if it is going to provide the kind of robust experience one would expect when putting down $2000. I am pleased to announce that I have found just such a machine. I selected the Toshiba Protege R200. Having decided I drove home, went to NewEgg.com, and purchased it with same as cash for the next six months. Should arrive in three days.

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My regular readers (which I learned last night is one more than I original believed… hi Julianna) know that I worked last summer for Wizards of the Coast, the gaming company behind the hugely popular Magic: The Gathering and Dungeons & Dragons. Wizards, in turn, is owned by Hasbro. Hasbro is the Microsoft of the boardgame universe. While working at Wizards I was told that Hasbro controlled 80% of the gameboard market. We’re talking major market control.

Risk, the popular tabletop war game, is but one of the many games Hasbro owns. A few weeks ago an enterprising computer geek developed an online game conjoining the Google Maps API (which lets programmers create third party applications using Google Maps) with the game mechanics of Risk. Essentially Risk online.

Today I learned that Hasbro wasn’t all that pleased. They have sent a cease & desist letter to the developer. The letter claims two things: first, the game violates Hasbro copyrights, two, the game violates Hasbro trademarks. Now, I never actually played this online version, so I have no first hand knowledge, but with a few assumptions I think we can make a pretty good case that Hasbro is reaching for straws here.

The trademarks issue is solidly in Hasbro’s corner. But our hapless developer could have just as easily renamed the product “Online War Simulation” (the most generic term possible) and been in the clear. He could even have said “this game is like Risk” and been just fine under fair use. That doesn’t mean that Hasbro didn’t try to overreach even thought they had a winning argument. No, they also made a claim of dilution in their letter. Dilution isn’t something to be thrown around lightly… it requires a showing that the mark is very well known and that there is some sort of loss of consumer respect for the mark because of this third party use. Dilution is usually only brought out when there is a famous mark and someone else is using it in a non-related goods manner (like selling clothing under the brand Starbucks). Hasbro is just trying to scare them.

The interesting issue for me is the copyrights claim. Let’s look at the letter to understand exactly what they are claiming.

Your Game appears to copy elements of Hasbro’s RISK game and rules as well as its trademark. The RISK game, including the rules, is the copyrighted property of Hasbro. Hasbro also owns the trademark rights to the RISK name. Your unauthorized use of the RISK game constitutes copyright infringement in violation of 17 U.S.C. 501.

First, that’s bogus because the statute they cite is the infringement section which says you can’t violate this big list of items listed in a whole other section… they don’t bother to identify which of the myriad of items is at issue… not surprising, as we shall see.

I’ve seen how Wizards copyrights games and I’m guessing that Hasbro uses a similar model. That model boils down to “we copyrighted the game… and thus everything inside.” But as anyone who recently took Copyrights should know you can’t just copyright anything.

The game arguably breaks down into three distinctive pieces. First, the box and board artwork. The developer wasn’t using a box, so that’s out. Which leaves us with the board itself. Risk uses the world map divided into historically significant territories, all of which are public domain. Not much of a copyright there. Second, the text of the rules (distinctive from the rules themselves, which I’ll get to). The actually text is copyrighted, no question. Someone decided to put a comma here and a phrase there and that’s all expression owned by Hasbro. If the developer just copied that verbatim then he’s got a problem. But, if we assume he played the game a few times with his friends and then wrote new rules based on those experiences, Hasbro has no claim. Independent creation is a sufficient defense in these sorts of situations.

Lastly, number three, are the game mechanics (that’s the industry term… you and I know them as rules). There a lot of fighting about the proper IP protection surrounding game mechanics. I think that patents are the perfect fit. It’s a method of accomplishing something… bang, 20 years of protection. Problem is, patents are expensive and most game companies don’t bother (although Wizards got a patent for card games and makes a killing). So the game companies decided, ipso facto as far as I can tell, that you can also copyright game mechanics! I grappled with this extensively while I worked for them and eventually decided that it was okay because it essentially was an industry agreement that Game Company A would not rip off Game Company B. But when applied to a third party hobbyist I think that you’ve got to do the full analysis.

The full analysis says that copyright protect expression, not ideas. The written rules are an expression… the game mechanics are not. You want to get a patent, fine, pay for a patent. If not, the game mechanics are there for others to take and tinker with.

All that being said, the developer took down his game because there is no way he’s paying for a lawyer to defend against this arguably untenable legal claim.

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My laptop is so on its last leg. I’ve said this before. Roughly two years ago I started a fairly comprehensive policy of treating my laptop very poorly. Dropping it, stuffing it into a bag already full of books, using it in poorly ventelated areas. The result of my consistent abusive behavior eventually took its toll on my poor laptop… and now it has scant few days left.

The final death blow came Thursday when the fan, which had been acting up for months, finally bit the big one. Now, anytime it has to spin up it sounds like a playing card in a bicycle wheel spoke. Just an awful, awful sound. Adding injury in insult, the physical volume control broke off on the same day. Now the laptop is always muted… no digital audio goodness for me.

Now I’m in the market for a new laptop and I’m looking for something small. There are two models of interest. The Toshiba Libretto U100 and the Dell Latitude X1. The Dell option is somewhat tried-and-true, but I have a real aversion to Dell and due to their online retail nature there is no way to try before you buy. The Toshiba is a bit more, shall we say, controversial.

It weighs 2.2 lbs and it not much larger than a VHS tape. The screen is 7.2 inches diagonal. That’s super tiny. And the keyboard is equally tiny… so typing may be a problem. It’s also expensive, $2000 expensive. Futher testing will have to be in order.

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For those of you who have never seen a BlackBerry, God bless your innocent soul. The little devices have invaded not only American politics but the legal and IT elite. What, you might ask, is common about those three groups? Let’s just say I have a passing interest in all three. To the uninitiated, the BlackBerry presents the unique opportunity to be plugged into your email at all time, which is wonderful if you feel that inane email is of such importance as to warrant immediate access.

The Federal Government is hooked on these things, so you’ll imagine my giddiness when I learned that the entire BlackBerry network was going to be shutdown due to patent infringement. Finally, I thought, those in charge of the patent law in this country could see its damaging effects… see that a new balance needed to be struck to ensure innovation. But it would seem that my dreams are not to be.

NTP, the patent holder going after RIM (makers of the BlackBerry), is simply too smart to upset Congress and its friends. It has made clear to the Court that any injunction it might issue should exclude government users! Brilliant, simply brilliant. This CNN Money article does a good job summarizing the issue. Suffice to say, RIM is left with little choice now that the issue of patent validity and infringement have been reviewed by the Federal Circuit. They either face an injunction which will only impact the people who can do nothing to save them or pay over a likely billion dollar settlement to NTP.

Imagine what could have happened if Congress was actually impacted by the laws it passes…

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Today the ASUW Student Senate adopted the Legislative Agenda for the ASUW. The document must still be reviewed by the Board of Directors, but I doubt such review is going to be substantive. This marks the fifth time I’ve seen a Legislative Agenda go through the process, and like every year before, I am disappointed.

It’s not that the agenda says anything I disagree with… most clauses are progressive in nature and deal with issues I believe are important. What is disappointing is that the document fails to realize the larger picture. Student Senators get caught up in the grandeur of setting the guidelines for a real-life lobbyist, which switches the debate from “how to do I best represent my constituents” to “how do I best serve the lobbyist.” The Senate seemed to almost trip over itself in efforts to appease the whims of our unelected, unaccountable, student lobbyist.

When there was disagreement about what a term might mean Senators asked the lobbyist if the distinction would have any impact on how he lobbied. What kind of a question is that?! It has distinction if the Senate says it has distinction! Ambiguity in the text of such a document is not left to the lobbyist to interpret, it is up to the elected bodies to define. But this year the Senate drank the kool-aid… this year ambiguity was seen as the holy grail to effective lobbying.

The agenda as adopted is a plain and pedantic thing that covers too many topics and fails to bring any particular issue into sharp relief. There is no reflection of what issues are priorities and what issues are simply items of interest. The very question of weighing and balancing competing interests and limited resources is abdicated. Which means the ASUW will once again hold positions as delineated by the wholly unaccountable Office of Government Relations.

But that’s not the worst part. The worst part is when those few people who understand the larger picture become so wrapped up in the argument that they lose sight, and in losing sight they say things which undermine the limited effort to show the whole picture. So much of politics is keeping your eye on the ball… this year we let it slip right by us.

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There is a post today on Slashdot about an open source project going closed source. The claim, which may very well be true, is that too many people were taking the code and too few were giving back. Personally, I’m not sure how that’s a bad thing in the context of open source, but the developers are free to persue their own goals as they see fit.

That being said, not everything is amiss with the world of collective intellectual property creation. I give you Epic Legends Of The Hierarchs: The Elemenstor Saga. What is the Elemenstor Saga, you ask? It is the umbrella title of a 13 book, two movie, 17 video game, 4 cartoon series fantasy franchise. Contained within that webpage is the collection of the world’s memory about this amazing franchise, complete with Fan Art, a collectable card game, and a themesong.

What’s so special about all of this, you might be asking. It is 100%, completely and totally, fictitious. It all started with this innocent comic strip from Penny-Arcade. From that single inspirational spark of creativity, in the span of 19 days, the internet has filled in the entire backstory of this epic universe. No compensation, no glory, no reward… just a creative outlet and the opportunity to work with other creative folks. (Actually, I’m just discovering it now… but Wired found it just four days after inception and were reasonable impressed. )

It’s an important lesson for those of us who often look for incentives to drive the world. Incentives simply fail to explain the whole picture. There is something else going on here beyond what’s in it for me. My friend Tom, an amazing guy in his own right, has contributed. Why? Lord only knows… but he did. And if I had to guess, he’ll do so again. And so it will go until it stops. Why will it stop? Maybe for the same reasons Nessus stopped. But in the mean time the world is treated to the full force of the internet’s brilliance.

Drink deep friends, for the river will never run dry.

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But not in the sense that I once had a car. I haven’t purchased a car, or anything crazy like that. No, today I received my official Flexcar pass! This enables me to reserve a car for a measly $7.50 an hour which covers gas, insurance, maintenance, everything. I figure it costs about $150 or so a month to keep a car insured and in good condition. That doesn’t even include gas. So, I can use the car for 20 hours a month and have paid less than someone who hasn’t used their car at all!

Obviously if I used the car with any frequency it wouldn’t be a deal. But I need to use a car all of two times a month. I figure this is going to be a good investment and an excellent test run to see if this is a workable solution to avoiding buying an actual car.

probonogeek Personal

Today was a day to correct my course in life. To be honest, I wasn’t really expected all that much of it… but the end result was somewhat spectacular. First, I finished Freakonomics (on which I will post later). Always good to finish books. With that behind me, I finalized my schedule for next quarter by meeting with a couple of professors to establish research jobs in an effort to avoid taking Real Estate Transactions. The positions afford me cool opportunity to research the Circuit splitting efforts of the Congressional Republicans. I also will continue to work with Prof. Covington of the Technology Law & Public Policy Clinic on their website.

Beyond academics, I spoke with Prof. Wilkerson about the future of LegSim… things seem to be moving up in the world. Good movement on the high school sales front, finally finished up some outstanding contract work, and the Professor is excited about features that I’m just finishing up. After that meeting I visited the Congress class where Congressman Adam Smith was discussing his time in Congress. That was weird, for reasons related to Lindsay and all that… but it was also positive because he said, in no uncertain terms, that he wouldn’t care if one of his staff came with a JD but had not passed the Bar. Yet another data point for my continued investigation into whether I’m taking the Bar.

Then, in the magical land of student government, I had a meeting with a budgeting administrator on the issue of the S&A Fee Fund Balance (currently $6.7 million). The conversation quickly turned to other issues and the eventual validation of a long standing point of contention between myself and the administration. It was good to be right, but for reasons that are both complicated and best kept private, the fallout from being right may be bad for the long term health of the services funded by the S&A Fee.

After all of that, I got my hair cut at my fancy hair salon, Derby. This is my second time going there, and I continue to like the service and believe it to be worth the added cost. I don’t have any pictures to share with you this time, but feel free to browse the archives for previous jungle shots.

Lastly, I had a big old conversation with Lindsay. Details are not really worth going into… but it was certainly a helpful conversation in terms of closure. Which is, in itself, strange. Why am I still looking for closure five months after we broke up?! I have theories, but I’m going to let this play itself out and see where it all ends up.

Suffice to say, when all was said it done, my courses has been substantially corrected.

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