I'd be a dick and take copyright lapse back to what it was before they extended it the first time, which was something like 20 or 25 years plus one extension (that you had to enable if you were the creator), making copyright last a total of about 50 years if you took the extension, but only 25 if you didn't. This would mean that stuff from as late as the 80's would be entering the public domain right now if there were no extensions in place, and stuff from the 50's if there were an extension on those works.

That seems much more fair to me for both the creator and the culture that was shaped by those works.

Or maybe we could come up with some other way of looking at copyright altogether. Maybe there should only be the sort of modern copyright we have now for 25 years, and after that the rights to a work lapse into a lesser form of copyright that's more akin to a CC non-commercial license that would allow people to freely use that material so long as they weren't making money off it and attributing it to it's original author, etc. Let's say that lasts for another 25 years. Then it becomes public domain material.

OK, my thoughts.

SOPA will not make this gif:

a site-shuttering offense because the main purpose of the site isn't to distribute animated gifs from movies. It's a film commentary site that has practically no relevant infringement going on, aside from a couple of gifs. I guess you could make an argument that because the gifs are actually built into the board that there's some infringement going on, but the bill requires that the site's main reason for existing be to illegally distribute, enable the distribution of, etc, copyrighted material. A couple gag gifs are safe.

Anyway, the point is, it's not THAT that's the problem. It's the lack of due process. If you guys were, say, distributing the commentary tracks ripped from the movies themselves, then they could shut you down because that would be a primary use of the site. "But you can already do that with current legislation, so what's different?" you ask. Well, the difference is that with SOPA they don't have to send you a cease & desist letter telling you to shape up or they'll sue you. With this they can file some documents and get a court order to have your site's domain revoked, get you delisted from google, etc. Now you have to prove you're not violating copyright before you can get your site put back online, and even if you could prove it, it would damage you immensely in terms of lost revenue, lost traffic, lower ranking on google and who knows how well screwing with DNS / nameservers will go. You are now guilty until proven innocent based entirely on one-sided evidence provided by whoever's making the complaint.

Or if you have a blog on some site where people can make their own blog like tumblr or blogger and one of those blogs is targeted. The bill could get all of blogger, including your blog, shut down rather than that specific blog because it's all hosted under one domain.

The bill does define the sort of site that can be shut down with the bill. It's not that vague. There are vagueness problems in terms of what constitutes a website vs a user's created page or section of that website. Something like Flickr could be in trouble if there are tons of users with their own separate pages or blogs all being listed under one larger domain. That's not really defined in the bill and it's an issue because one persons entire blog or page on a site may be devoted entirely to distributing copyrighted content and thus may fall under the bill's definition of what exactly an 'infringing website' is. But this site and forum are safe, as are most sites and forums, because the objective of this site isn't to illegally distribute copyrighted content.

That said, SOPA does suck, it just sucks mainly due to the lack of any sort of due process and the fact that the bill seems to have been written under the idea that websites were still operated the same way they were back in the late 90's. There's not much in there in terms of user-uploaded content, and the lack of definition is what people are worried about.

But if you're flickr or youtube and you have systems set up where copyrighted content can be reported and you clearly state that you don't allow that sort of thing, and you don't market yourself as such, then I don't think the bill could be used to have your site shut down. It's the "I don't think..." part that's in need of fixing.

The lack of due process and the way it may screw up the technical functioning of the internet as a whole is the real issue I have with the bill.

Do you have an official fan club I can join? With laminated membership cards and everything?

Seriously, tho, this is really good. You should keep doing this.

That makes me want to know more about how that all came about. Did the guy actually kill her, or was it a "World's Best Dad" thing, where she OD's and he decided to make it look like suicide instead.

Unfortunately, the cops are totally gonna know she didn't write that letter if they find anything else she'd written.

I like this a lot.

If you've not seen the show, it's really quite good. I remember the first time I tried watching it was back when it was still on TV. Someone had posted a lot of the series to youtube, so I gave the first episode a shot. Stopped about ten minutes into it and said "nope, not my bag".

Then I got netflix and netflix kept telling me how much I'd like the show, so I said, "Fine, Netflix, I'll watch the god damn show just so you'll stop dumping it at the top of my "suggestions" page.

I think it's one of the better animated kid's shows ever done. It took me a few episodes to see the potential. There's a weak episode here and there, but the series overall is solid.

Appa was a character in the show. He's only on screen for about 5 minutes of the movie, and he's just an animal. The little flying dude is only in a few shots of the movie as well. One of those things where he'd fly into the frame and I'd suddenly remember "oh yeah, they did put him in there, didn't they?" and then he'd vanish for a half hour and I'd forget all over again.

Also, if you write a movie with a child actor in the lead, don't write in any scenes where that kid screams. And don't shove the camera up his nose every five minutes.

lol, I wasn't expecting the title card to actually say "Italian Spiderman".

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doo

Everyone's favorite adventuring archeologist finds himself inadvertently caught up in a local squabble between a group of villagers and a neighboring prince over the stench emanating from the prince's palace. Indy decides to investigate.

Wiseau was being completely serious with that movie. After it became an ironic cult comedy he went through a period of denial where he attacked anyone making fun of his movie and threatened lawsuits and sent out take-down notices and all that. I guess someone told him that he was making way more money off the movie now that it's known for being terrible and funny, so he has since tried to turn that into his schtick. Making bad, awkward stuff in the hopes that it will be as funny as the room. But it's not nearly as funny when he's trying to do that. The stuff he does now feels like bad parody of the acting in The Room. The show that he has now, The Tommy Wi-Show, actually feels really mean-spirited to me, like the guys writing and directing it are deliberately trying to get people to laugh at him because everyone thinks he's a moron. It made me feel really dirty when I watched the first episode, and I never went back to it. Their whole idea was "people think Tommy Wiseau's a retard, so let's cut together little episodes full of his weird eccentricities so people can laugh at what a retard he is".

It really feels to me like their laughing at someone with a mental disability, and people have been eating it up. It makes my blood run cold.