Daily Archives: June 21, 2008

End of an era

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From CNN

Steve Ballmer was sobbing. He repeatedly tried to speak and couldn’t get the words out. Minutes passed as he tried to regain his composure. But the audience of 130 of Microsoft’s senior leaders waited patiently, many of them crying too. They knew that the CEO was choked up because this executive retreat, held in late March at a resort north of Seattle, was the last ever for company co-founder Bill Gates, as well as for Jeff Raikes, one of the company’s longest-tenured executives. “I’ve spent more time with these two human beings than with anyone else in my life,” Ballmer finally said. “Bill and Jeff have been my North Star and kept me going. Now I’m going to count on all of you to be there for me.”

Aw, shucks.

Sauce for the gander…

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If you’ve been following Associated Press’s absurd attempt to rewrite the law on Fair Use then you’ll enjoy Michael Arrington’s latest sally.

As far as I can tell, the Associated Press is sticking by its ridiculous and unlawful assertion that “direct quotations, even short ones” are copyright infringements and result in lawsuit threats and DMCA takedown notices.

This story led us to ban the A.P., call the New York Times out on undisclosed conflicts of interest and begin to investigate some ridiculous organization called the Media Bloggers Association before getting bored and wandering off to other topics.

But now the A.P. has gone too far. They’ve quoted twenty-two words from one of our posts, in clear violation of their warped interpretation of copyright law. The offending quote, from this post, is here (I’m suspending my A.P. ban to report on this important story).

Am I being ridiculous? Absolutely. But the point is to illustrate that the A.P. is taking an absurd and indefensible position, too. So I’ve called my lawyers (really) and have asked them to deliver a DMCA takedown demand to the A.P. And I will also be sending them a bill for $12.50 with that letter, which is exactly what the A.P. would have charged me if I published a 22 word quote from one of their articles.

Next time, A.P., ask permission before you quote me. I work hard to create content, and it just isn’t appropriate for you to simply cut and paste it into your own product and then sell that to others.

Absolute power…

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Guess who I came on the other day in the University Library? None other than Lord Acton, the celebrated Catholic historian, who in 1887 wrote to Bishop Creighton:

“I cannot accept your canon that we are to judge Pope and King unlike other men with a favourable presumption that they did no wrong. If there is any presumption, it is the other way, against the holders of power, increasing as the power increases. Historic responsibility has to make up for the want of legal responsibility. Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.”

Spot on. But didn’t these Victorian grandees have weird facial hair? How did they eat soup? I’ve seen a photograph of his Pa and he was just as bad.

Later: Bill Thompson emails with the information that,

The children’s writer Philip Ardagh has a similarly long and bushy beard and his party trick when he is talking to schoolchildren is to take a pencil case and hide all of its contents in his beard – pens, pencils, protractors, the lot. It’s very impressive. Perhaps Acton did something similar in the House of Lords…