I sue you/ You restrain me/ You'll never find jurors/ Who like Barney

Robert Ambrogi reports that the Electronic Frontier Foundation is suing Barney's owners on behalf of the owner of an anti-Barney website:

[The EFF] claims that the Lyons Partnership, the company that owns the Barney trademark, is violating the free speech rights of Stuart Frankel, publisher of a Barney parody site.

Since 2002, Barney's lawyers have sent Frankel a series of cease-and-desist letters to shut down his site. The lawsuit, according to EFF, "asks the court to finally resolve the matter by declaring that his parody does not infringe Barney's copyright or trademark rights." CNET's Declan McCullagh reported in October that the cease-and-desist letters complained that Frankel's site "depicts a plush Barney toy in a violent manner or position" and asked that he "remove this violent content toward Barney on your Web site."

As the father of a young child, I can sadly attest that even if Barney is taken down, there are many, many more characters in dire need of extinction. When it comes to children's programming, I have an enemies list that would've impressed Nixon, and Noddy is right there at the top of it.

Don't Cry for Me, Silicon Valley

The Wall Street Journal (subscription required) reports that Google has amassed so much cash that it risks being treated as an investment fund under Securities and Exchange Commission rules:

The company, which wants to diversify its investment strategy but doesn't want to be regulated as a mutual fund, has asked the Securities and Exchange Commission to exempt it from regulations that can apply to a company with a lot of marketable securities on its balance sheet.

To that end, the Mountain View, Calif., company made a filing on July 20 to persuade the SEC that it exists not to make investments, but to conduct an "Internet and new media business."

Google's most recent quarterly balance sheet listed assets totaling $14.4 billion, including $4 billion in cash and $5.8 billion in marketable securities. Under the Investment Company Act of 1940, a company with more than 40% of its assets in certain types of securities is subject to different disclosure and operating rules.

"Google states that it is not in the business of investing, reinvesting, or trading in securities," the company told the SEC in the filing. Google, which reported $1.47 billion in net income for 2005, said that about 8% of that amount was investment income.

To help make its case, Google told the SEC that it will invest only for "bona fide business purposes" and won't invest "for short-term speculative purposes."

In the absence of an exemption, Google disclosed that its executives are authorized to create an investment mix for the company that ensures the 1940 investment-company law won't apply.

I wonder what will happen when I Google "world's smallest violin" . . . .

TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (78) . . . The Sequel!

This week's bonus joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of the Associated Press (from Wednesday, August 23, 2006; link good at time of posting):

Madin Azad Amin was stopped by officials on Aug. 16 after guards found an object in his baggage that resembled a grenade, prosecutors said.

When officers asked him to identify it, Amin said it was a bomb, said Cook County Assistant State's Attorney Lorraine Scaduto.

He later told officials he lied about the item because his mother was nearby and he did not want her to hear that it was part of a penis pump, Scaduto said.

Amin has been charged with felony disorderly conduct, said Andrew Conklin, a spokesman with the Cook County state's attorney's office.

Amin faces up to three years in prison if convicted.

[Update]
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TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (78)

This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of Reuters (from Wednesday, August 23; link good at time of posting):

A would-be robber was arrested after he tried to hold up his local town hall, mistaking it for a bank, Austrian police said Wednesday.

Wearing a mask and waving a toy pistol, the unemployed man burst into the town hall in the village of Poggersdorf, southern Austria, and shouted: "Hold-up, hold-up!"

. . . .

He realized his mistake when an employee explained to him where he was, police said in a statement, adding he fled to a nearby wood.

The 34-year-old man was arrested when he came back later to pick up his motorbike which he had parked outside the town hall.

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Idiocy Permitted

The QuizLaw blog notes an outrageous case of government idiocy.

The City of Brighton, Massachusetts halted a man's repairs to a stairway attached to his home because he had not obtained a permit for the work; when he then applied for the required permit, the City denied his application. Some time later, a burglar injured himself on the stairway while he was trying to break into the man's home and, in response, the City has cited the homeowner for having an "unsafe and dangerous" stairway.

I'm surprised by nothing about this story except that it didn't occur here in California.

Forget Snakes on a Plane; Raccoons in Olympia Is This Summer's Horror Blockbuster

"Psycho Killer Raccoons Terrorize Olympia" scream the headlines as a desperate community waits in fear:

A fierce group of raccoons has killed 10 cats, attacked a small dog and bitten at least one pet owner who had to get rabies shots, residents of Olympia say.

Some have taken to carrying pepper spray to ward off the masked marauders and the woman who was bitten now carries an iron pipe when she goes outside at night.

"It's a new breed," said Tamara Keeton, who with Kari Hall started a raccoon watch after an emotional neighborhood meeting drew 40 people. "They're urban raccoons, and they're not afraid."

. . . .

"We used to love the raccoons. They'd have their babies this time of year, and they were so cute. Even though we lived in the city, it was neat to have wildlife around," [Olympia resident Tony Benjamins] said, "but this year, things changed. They went nuts."

. . . .

Meanwhile, residents have hired Tom Brown, a nuisance wildlife control operator from Rochester, Washington, to set traps, but in six weeks he has caught only one raccoon. He and Carrell said raccoons teach their young - and each other - to avoid traps.

Brown said he had seen packs of raccoons this big but none so into killing.

"They are in command up there," he said.

Great. Now, in addition to hand lotion and cold beverages, those TSA bastards will probably confiscate my raccoons at the airport security gates.

In response to the numerous attacks, the article quotes a state wildlife department official as saying, "It's something were going to have to monitor." It looks like this is one more crisis where our government will fail us. George Bush doesn't care about urban pet owners!

At least Spike Lee will have a sequel for his latest film: "When the Raccoons Attacked: A Requiem in Four Acts".

Like "Dark Shadows", But Less Campy

Scientists studying the collision of two galactic clusters have, according to a forthcoming paper, proven the existence of dark matter:

While the scientists are still not sure exactly what dark matter is, since they have yet to identify it in a laboratory, they said that the workings of the universe cannot be explained without it.

The finding will have potentially great impact on an active debate among physicists and cosmologists about not only dark matter but also the workings of gravity that it helps explain. Indeed, the theory of dark matter evolved largely to explain the finding several decades ago that there was not enough visible matter in the universe to produce and account for the gravity needed to keep galaxies from flying apart.

"A universe that's dominated by dark stuff seems preposterous, so we wanted to test whether there were any basic flaws in our thinking," said Doug Clowe of the University of Arizona in Tucson, leader of the NASA-Harvard University study. "These results are direct proof that dark matter exists."

I won't pretend to have any profound understanding of dark matter or the scientific theories and principles associated with its study, but since I first heard of dark matter some years ago, the concept has been a strangely compelling one for me. Science has a tendency to lack the exuberance of religious faith simply because it's based as much on destroying false positions as validating true ones; that rationalism is absolutely essential to human progress, but it can leave one feeling discomforted and a bit empty emotionally.

Concepts like dark matter give me a sense of what true religious faith must feel like -- a charge of excitement that comes from knowing that a powerful thing exists without knowing its appearance or nature. Unlike religious faith, however, science must be tested and many remain unconvinced:

While the theoretical existence of dark matter has been broadly embraced for years -- and has now been further endorsed by some of the most prominent researchers and institutions in the field -- a strong countertheory has also grown, contending that the laws of gravity established by Newton and Einstein need modification. The group supporting this theory believes that a relatively limited tweaking of those laws, especially as they pertain to the massive nature of faraway galaxies, could explain the missing gravity better than could undetectable dark matter.

Stacy McGaugh, an astrophysicist at the University of Maryland, has been one of the dark-matter skeptics, and he said yesterday that he remained unconvinced.

"I've been aware of this result some time, and I agree that it is interesting and may make more sense in terms of dark matter than alternative gravity," he said. "However, it is premature to say so."

He said that a definitive detection of dark-matter particles would mean "grabbing them in the laboratory, not just inferring that their effects can be the only possible explanation for an observation before the alternatives have actually been checked."

NOBODY Expects the Blawg Review Inquisition!

QuizLaw plays twenty questions (go ahead, count them!) with this week's seventy-first edition of Blawg Review. This issue of the carnival is more inquisitive than my kindergartner and nearly as random in its questions.

QuizLaw takes justifiable pride in regularly providing its readership "Simple Answers to Complex Legal Questions". Their format is well-suited to this week's Blawg Review, which covers gubernatorial copyrights, fantasy baseball, unseen billboards, motions to compel lunch, constitutional trivia, and oxygen-enriched air. After all, you can't write "quae singula non prosunt, juncta juvant" without q and a (and a handy copy of Black's Law Dictionary).

TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (77)

This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of The Recorder (from Wednesday, August 16; link good at time of posting):

Clifton Terrell Jr.'s story may serve as a lesson to murder suspects everywhere: Resist the urge to call your momma.

When he was tried in San Francisco Superior Court for murdering the son of a state senator, the trial court excluded Terrell's confession to police. But the court allowed the prosecution to use a secretly recorded phone call Terrell made to his mother and three other relatives right after his interrogators left the room.

"He tried to grab the gun, and I pulled away and it went off," he told his mother.

The trial judge allowed a videotape and transcript of the call to be used at trial, and last week, the 1st District Court of Appeal backed him up in a published opinion. So, for now, Terrell's sentence to life without the possibility of parole stands firm.

Terrell's appellate attorney, San Francisco solo Victor Morse, said the defense plans to appeal to the Supreme Court.

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Arrested Development

A Lincoln, Nebraska man celebrated (?) his 226th arrest over the past weekend:

Kevin Holder's rap sheet is 43 pages long, dating back to 1980, and he just got another entry - his 226th arrest. Police say they caught him Sunday morning after a brief chase and found burglar tools in his possession.

"He's very well-known to Lincoln police officers," Police Chief Tom Casady said.

Holder's convictions include criminal mischief, marijuana possession, violation of protection order, assault, resisting arrest, assault on an officer, possession of cocaine. Many were misdemeanors, but he also has been sentenced to at least three prison terms for felonies, including a four-year stretch starting in 1996.

I was amazed just at that achievement, but was even more amazed to discover that that's not even close to the record:

A number of people have more than 500 arrests in the city of 226,000 people. The record was held by Edward Rooks, who died in 2004, with 652 arrests.

The cold-hearted prosecutor assigned to Holder's most recent case is pursuing felony charges which could result in a 60-years sentence and put a crimp in Holder's pursuit of the arrests record. With the can-do spirit of perseverence he's shown thus far, however, perhaps Holder will manage to overcome even this obstacle.

I wouldn't be less proud of him for breaking the record in his chosen field than I was when Barry Bonds passed Babe Ruth on the home runs list.

orangefurredamateurs.com

The Associated Press reports that orangutans are now hooking up via the internet:

Zookeepers in the Netherlands are planning to hook up Dutch and Indonesian orangutans over the Internet and believe the link could at some stage be used as an online dating service where apes could get to know one another and keepers could work out whether they would be compatible mates.

First things first: A romantic dinner for two.

"We are going to set up an Internet connection between Indonesia and Apeldoorn so that the apes can see each other and, by means of pressing a button, be able to give one another food, for example," said Anouk Ballot, a spokeswoman for the Apenheul ape park in the central Dutch city of Apeldoorn.

She said the chance of two orangutans actually mating as a result of the online interaction was small due to the problem of transporting them between the Netherlands and Indonesia. "But I wouldn't rule it out completely," she told The Associated Press.

If any of you still have internet-resistant relatives about, perhaps this bit of news will be just the thing to convince them that it's time to fully-embrace the modern age. After all, if it's so simple a monkey can do it . . . .

In the meantime, I'd suggest that you join me in capitalizing on lessons learned from earlier waves of internet adoption -- what starts with a higher purpose gets repurposed quickly.

I'm starting an online orangutan porn company as soon as I post this message.

Joy in Mudville

Several times over the past year or so, I've written about Major League Baseball's quixotic attempts to "own" baseball statistics for licensing purposes (see here, here, and here); nonetheless, I would have missed the happy news of MLB's litigation defeat but for a timely post by Marty Schwimmer. From Sports Illustrated:

Baseball and its players have no right to prevent the use of names and playing records, U.S. District Court Judge Mary Ann Medler in St. Louis ruled in a 49-page summary judgment.

. . . .

Major League Baseball claimed that intellectual property laws and so-called "right of publicity" make it illegal for fantasy leagues to make money off the identities and stats of professional players.

But even if the players could claim the right of publicity against commercial ventures by others, Medler wrote, the First Amendment takes precedent because CBC, which runs CDM Fantasy Sports, is disseminating the same statistical information found in newspapers every day.

"The names and playing records of major league baseball players as used in CBC's fantasy games are not copyrightable," Medler wrote. "Therefore, federal copyright law does not pre-empt the players' claimed right of publicity."

From the beginning, I predicted that MLB would not succeed, which makes me 1-0 in my baseball-related litigation predictions. You can use that statistic if you pay me a licensing fee.

Better Than Toughskins, Husky Pencils, and Big Chief Tablets

This week's back-to-school-themed Blawg Review #70, hosted by Dave Gulbransen at his Preaching to the Perverted blog, is a real treat. After nearly six dozen editions of this carnival, I'm still pleasantly surprised nearly every Monday morning when I see the creativity displayed by the hosts and the quality of the linked posts.

My daughter starts kindergarten tomorrow afternoon and her excitement over learning her teacher's name and preparing her new school backpack (featuring Disney Princesses, of course) reminds me of my own excitement a few decades ago when those back-to-school circulars appeared in the weekend paper. Blawg Review #70 may just do the same for those of you who aren't sending your princess out into the great unknown this week.

TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (76)

This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of Reuters (from Thursday, August 10; link good at time of posting):

Malaysian thieves used a net and rope to haul an ATM cash dispenser through a glass wall and down a flight of stairs, only to discover they had grabbed a check deposit machine by mistake.

. . . .

Automated teller machines (ATMs) have recently been the focus of a spate of robberies or robbery attempts in Malaysia.

In one case, thieves loaded an ATM onto a truck but abandoned it about 5 km (3 miles) away when they discovered it had no cash.

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Learning Something from the Unlearned

Unlearned Hand hosts the sixty-ninth edition of Blawg Review. Like myself, Unlearned (no, I'm not yet on a first-name basis with him, but "Mr. Hand" was already taken) admits that he's been away for a bit -- real life can occasionally intrude on one's time and inclination to blog; unlike myself, he's returned with a very worthwhile post. This Blawg Review covers it all, from bad faith to antitrust, from signing statements to the Convention on Cybercrime, and from WorldCom to Wikipedia.

Repeat offender Dave Gulbransen will host next week's edition of the carnival at his Preaching to the Perverted blog. Please note that you need not be a pervert to propose worthy legal blogging for inclusion in the issue. It might just help but, strictly speaking, it's not required.

TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (75)

This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of The Wall Street Journal (from Thursday, August 3; subscription required):

As the top Asia private banker for HSBC Holdings PLC, Mimi Monica Wong knows how to make wealth last. But these days, she is better known for the millions she lost perfecting her rumba.

Two years ago, Ms. Wong agreed to pay $15.4 million for eight years of unlimited Latin-dance instruction. About half of that sum she paid up front, in cash. The 61-year-old widow recently said she was "looking for the last bit of glory in life."

But the arrangement soured even before it took effect. Now Ms. Wong is suing her dance instructors in a Hong Kong court seeking the return of her $8 million pre-payment. The instructors, 15-time world Latin dance champion Gaynor Fairweather, of the U.K., and her Italian husband Mirko Saccani, are countersuing for the $7.4 million outstanding under the agreement.

. . . .

What upended the multimillion-dollar dance partnership was an incident on a Wednesday afternoon in August of 2004. At the Li Hua restaurant, a favorite afternoon dance venue, Ms. Wong and a group of other women were taking part in a mock competition.

That day, the banker was heavier in her step than usual, according to statements in court. In front of fellow dancers, Mr. Saccani shouted at her to "move your arse," and called Ms. Wong a "lazy cow," according to court documents.

Other dance teachers testified his verbal abuse contained threats of physical violence. Instructor Philip Redmond told the court he heard Mr. Saccani say, "If you do it again, Monica, I'll smash your head against the wall." Mr. Saccani denies having said anything beyond some "motivational" language, though he admits to shouting expletives at her.

. . . .

Ms. Wong has a new instructor, whom she is paying, according to statements in court, $21,000 a month.

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