Monthly Archives: February 2009

Album Cover Meme

Received this Meme from a Facebook friend:

1. Go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random – The first article title on the page is the name of your band.

2. Click http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3 – The last four words of the very last quote is the title of your album.

3. Visit http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days/ – The third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

4. Use your graphics program of choice to throw them together, and post the result.

I think it turned out well.

Happy Birthday, Victor Hugo

Victor Hugo was born on February 26, 1802.

Here’s a poem written by Alfred Lord Tennyson about Hugo:

Victor in Drama, Victor in Romance,
Cloud-weaver of phantasmal hopes and fears,
French of the French, and Lord of human tears;
Child-lover; Bard whose fame-lit laurels glance
Darkening the wreaths of all that would advance,
Beyond our strait, their claim to be thy peers;
Weird Titan by thy winter weight of years
As yet unbroken, Stormy voice of France!
Who dost not love our England–so they say;
I know not–England, France, all man to be
Will make one people ere man’s race be run:
And I, desiring that diviner day,
Yield thee full thanks for thy full courtesy
To younger England in the boy my son.

— Alfred Lord Tennyson, ‘To Victor Hugo’

For more infornation on Victor Hugo

Wishes for a better news media

From the original Consumerist article that broke the Facebook controversy

You hereby grant Facebook an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to (a) use, copy, publish, stream, store, retain, publicly perform or display, transmit, scan, reformat, modify, edit, frame, translate, excerpt, adapt, create derivative works and distribute (through multiple tiers), any User Content you (i) Post on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof subject only to your privacy settings or (ii) enable a user to Post, including by offering a Share Link on your website and (b) to use your name, likeness and image for any purpose, including commercial or advertising, each of (a) and (b) on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof.

That language is the same as in the old TOS, but there was an important couple of lines at the end of that section that have been removed:

You may remove your User Content from the Site at any time. If you choose to remove your User Content, the license granted above will automatically expire, however you acknowledge that the Company may retain archived copies of your User Content.

Poor Reporting. Very Poor Reporting.

Read the “New” ToS at the top of my previous post, and the old “ToS” that they reverted back to last night. The language is NOT the same. There are several differences beyond the sentence removed, as I point out at the end of the previous post.

Of course, every news story followed the Consumerist’s lead because today’s society reports the news they read from other news sources in a real-world version of the childhood game of telephone.

I do suspect that despite Facebook saying they have simply reverted to their prior terms temporarily, as they work on putting their new terms into non-legalistic language, the current last sentence is new: “Facebook does not assert any ownership over your User Content; rather, as between us and you, subject to the rights granted to us in these Terms, you retain full ownership of all of your User Content and any intellectual property rights or other proprietary rights associated with your User Content.” And the last sentence the Consumerist claimed was removed was truly the last sentence of the prior section.

Rights, Wrongs and Facebook

Before posting this I checked Facebook’s ToS again, and well, it’s changed (or more likely reverted to their prior ToS as they work on revising the language). However, I am posting this anyway, damnit. It’s long, and I am not tossing it. I’ll add a paragraph or two at the end of the post, making it even longer.

Note: I am not a lawyer. But I have grown up among lawyers. I have also taken one Media Law college course (though the knowledge gained in that course is now 14 years old.)

From Facebook’s Terms of Service (with added paragraph breaks for clarity)

“You hereby grant Facebook an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to

(a) use, copy, publish, stream, store, retain, publicly perform or display, transmit, scan, reformat, modify, edit, frame, translate,
excerpt, adapt, create derivative works and distribute (through multiple tiers), any User Content you

(i) Post on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof subject only to your privacy settings or
(ii) enable a user to Post, including by offering a Share Link on your website and

(b) to use your name, likeness and image for any purpose, including commercial or advertising, each of (a) and (b) on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof.”

And

“The following sections will survive any termination of your use of the Facebook Service” — after which follows a list of most of the
sections on the Terms of Service page. (This paragraph is about a week or two old. The other paragraph isn’t new.)

FoxNews says

In other words, while it doesn’t actually own your photos, scribblings and status updates — you do — Facebook can do whatever it wants with it, whenever it wants, in order to promote itself or create or sell ads.

Theoretically, it can even “license” a picture of your kids for use in a third party’s ad campaign.

Not really, as I read it. There’s a section (a) and a section (b). [Which is why I added the line breaks above – to emphasize this.] The “any purpose, including commercial or advertising” applies only to section (b). The idea that Facebook can use your name or image for advertising may worry some. However, the terms don’t allow them to use your “User Content” for advertising.
The end of the paragraph seems to say that section(a) applies to ‘promotion thereof’ but it’s still “subject to your privacy settings.”

So, what are Facebook Privacy Settings?

You can currently choose between
Friends only
Friends and Networks (default for most Facebook applications)
Friends of Friends

There is no Public/Everyone setting. If you’re not signed into Facebook, there is very little content you will see on anyone’s page.
If you are signed in, but aren’t in a person’s network or one of their friends, you will still see close to nothing.

Facebook is made up of many networks, each based around a workplace, region, high school or college.” Everyone chooses a network when they sign up. For example, my network is “St. Louis.” Facebook terms don’t allow them to share your content with anyone after you terminate your account you weren’t already sharing it with, unless someone new joins the network, or becomes a friend of one of your friends. You probably don’t want everyone in your geographical region to have access to your content. so you may want to set your privacy on all parts of Facebook to Friends Only.

Your name, image or likeness is another matter. You may find that bothersome, you may not. But that doesn’t apply to the picture you uploaded of your kids. That’s part of User Content. The ‘image or likeness’ in ‘name, image or likeness’ in all likelihood refers only to the one photo you have set as your profile image. I’d be interested in a Facebook explanation of why they need rights to use my name, image and likeness in their advertising, but it’s the only thing their ToS claims a right to use in their advertising.

Why does Facebook want perpetual rights to your content?

Facebook explains it fairly well

If User X writes something on User Y’s ‘Facebook wall’, when User X terminates their account, what they wrote on User Y’s wall will
remain. If Facebook didn’t claim perpetual rights, User X theoretically could sue Facebook after they terminated their account if their content remained on User Y’s wall. Say “no one would ever do that” all you like, in today’s litigious society someone would think of doing it. And they would win if Facebook didn’t have this paragraph in their TOS.

Some fellow bloggers have suggested the Facebook TOS is a good reason you should host your content solely on your own website. There is at least one argument against this. One argument suggesting that under some circumstances it is actually better to post stuff on Facebook than on your own website.

If you have your privacy setting to Friends Only – you might be able to argue that all your content remains ‘unpublished.’ If you have any hope of submitting your content later to a magazine or other publisher for payment, you don’t want to publish it on a publicly accessible website. Most magazines are primarily interested in unpublished material. They want to have “First North American Rights” (or if you are in another country “First other section of the world Rights”) They may even want “First Worldwide Rights”. But both of these disappear once the content appears on a publicly accessible website. You have limited your ability to make any money from your content. It’s possible they will consider posted to Facebook as still published, but you have a better chance they won’t.

A lot of people don’t care about that. And even those who do realize the world is changing a bit and some (emphasize some) bloggers are getting deals with publishers to republish blog posts. But this is rare. Most publishers are still seeking only previously unpublished material.

On the flip side, If you don’t care about making money from your content – the Terms of Service really shouldn’t bother you. At least not the part about Facebook having perpetual rights to your content. You posted it to Facebook for all your friends to see, why should you care if they get to continue looking at it once you delete your Facebook account?

Some have made a big deal out of this line:

(ii) enable a user to Post, including by offering a Share Link on your website and

Primarily, because they misunderstand what a “Share Link” means in Facebook terminology. Facebook allows you to add a widget to your newspaper, or blog, that any reader can click on, and by clicking on it, they can post the article to their Facebook page. Facebook terms must grant them rights to that content, or otherwise, you could sue them when someone uses it. If you don’t want someone posting your content to Facebook, don’t add a Share Link to your content. That’s simple.

A simple link from your Facebook profile to your content off-Facebook doesn’t “enable a user to Post” that content in any fashion. It only enables them to follow the link and read your content off-Facebook.

Finally, the list of verbs in section (a) do seem quite extensive.

use, copy, publish, stream, store, retain, publicly perform or display, transmit, scan, reformat, modify, edit, frame, translate, excerpt, adapt, create derivative works and distribute (through multiple tiers)

It’s more extensive than many sites, and at first glance I didn’t believe all of them are necessary for Facebook to claim. My suspicion was that Facebook lawyers dropped some standard language in and didn’t really think about what they needed to claim and what they didn’t to protect themselves against lawsuits. Then I thought about it. There are a lot of different applications on Facebook. I understand that when I post a long note, only an excerpt might appear in some places, and different words could be interpreted to apply to the various ways the Facebook applications manipulate content. Tagging photos with people’s names is modifying the photo, or perhaps creating a derivative work. ‘Publicly perform’ is probably necessary for videos. I suspect they might translate some text into foreign languages – probably using computer translation, or have plans for doing so. Scan is the only right I don’t comprehend the need for. Though conceivably the process of tagging individuals in photos involves scanning the image.

In short, except for their ability to use my name, image and likeness in their advertising, I have no problem with Facebook’s TOS as written. I understand why they claim what they do, and why they need to claim what they do to avoid lawsuits. I comprehend that I retain my ownership of content completely, and lose no rights that I wouldn’t lose posting the content on my own website. I might even retain more rights by posting it on Facebook. I comprehend that Facebook makes no claim to share my user content with anyone beyond what my privacy settings dictate. It could definitely be written more clearly in less legalese. If anyone thinks my interpretation is inaccurate, please explain why in the comments.

I have changed all my privacy settings to Friends Only. Those in my networks who want to be my friends probably only need to ask.

********
Here’s how the ToS now reads – either the old ToS or a still new one.

When you post User Content to the Site, you authorize and direct us to make such copies thereof as we deem necessary in order to facilitate the posting and storage of the User Content on the Site. By posting User Content to any part of the Site, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to the Company an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part) and distribute such User Content for any purpose, commercial, advertising, or otherwise, on or in connection with the Site or the promotion thereof, to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such User Content, and to grant and authorize sublicenses of the foregoing. You may remove your User Content from the Site at any time. If you choose to remove your User Content, the license granted above will automatically expire, however you acknowledge that the Company may retain archived copies of your User Content. Facebook does not assert any ownership over your User Content; rather, as between us and you, subject to the rights granted to us in these Terms, you retain full ownership of all of your User Content and any intellectual property rights or other proprietary rights associated with your User Content.

There is no reference to privacy settings. the “any purpose, commercial, advertising, or otherwise” applies to everything. The terms the Facebook community was in uproar about — I want them back. They were good. (hard to understand through the legalese, but good.) I am hopeful they are working at this moment on the language to make it clearer.

Another YouTube Video uploaded

It’s me performing the same poem I performed in the video I uploaded a month ago, but I’m working out the kinks, and I think the audio and video on this has improved slightly.

(Basically I found a place I could record “at higher volume” without offending neighbors. I’m also going to try some recording at an open mic.)

Hopefully the quality of the poetry outweighs the low quality of the performance. I know I don’t have professional tonal qualities.

Dickens and his Beard

When remonstrated with upon this ” disfigurement,” Dickens responded that “the beard saved him the trouble of shaving, and much as he admired his own appearance before he allowed his beard to grow, he admired it much more now, and never neglected, when an opportunity offered, to gaze his fill at himself. If his friends didn’t like his looks, he was not at all anxious for them to waste their time in studying them…Besides, he had been told by some of his friends that they highly approved of the change, because they now saw less of him.” He was, indeed, delighted with these adornments, and says, ” the moustaches are glorious, glorious. I have cut them shorter, and trimmed them a little at the ends to improve their shape. They are charming, charming. Without them, life would be a blank.”

From “Charles Dickens and His Friends” by W. Teignmouth Shore, 1909. full text

Modern Comprachico

(a recent poem)

Modern Comprachico

Thursday afternoon
while I worked unaware
outside in the office parking lot
a motorist, I use the term loosely
carved a comprachico grin
on my beloved five year old’s face.

I’m a Victor Hugo afficionado
but I didn’t appreciate
this homage to Gwynplaine
a character best known
as the inspiration
for DC Comics’ Joker

I assure you,
I am certainly not
a man who is laughing
as the so-called motorist
was also uninsured.

Conrad Veidt was memorable
in the 1928 film
but I would like to forget
my car’s disfigurement.

Halves and Wholes

“Squeeze bottle until nearly all liquid is gone. It is not necessary to empty the bottle completely, as it contains more liquid than needed.” — instructions on a bottle of Fleet Enema saline solution.

— B..b..but my parents taught me not to do anything half-*ssed.

A writer colleague was recently told that he had to start a blog. However, since he didn’t want to spend time writing for the blog he could spend writing fiction, he decided to make snide comments about “found writing” he discovers at home and on his daily journeys. Kind of like what I did above.

A couple days ago he picked up a recent collection of my poetry, and here’s the result. (He asked for permission, which I gave.)

A week ago he was reading William Blake, so I’m in good company.

Superbowl Prediction

Two years ago I came up with a mathematical formula of sorts to predict the Superbowl and World Series. It’s actually been somewhat successful.

So…some of you are probably wondering — who will I be placing my bets on today, and why?

My bet is on the Steelers.

My formula is dependent upon the numbers on the jerseys of the active roster of each team. How many multiples of 18 are there, and of equal value is the #42. (This is the best post on my blog for explanation of my system.)

Arizona Cardinals
54: Gerald Hayes
72: Brandon Keith

Pittsburgh Steelers
54: Andre Frazier
72: Darnell Stapleton
90: Travis Kirschke

Neither team this year has an 18, 36 or a 42 on their active roster (or among their inactive roster, for that matter.) I was disappointed in this, but it is clear that the Steelers have the edge.

Note: I have no(*) knowledge of either team. So I don’t know how important each player mentioned above will be in the actual offense and defense. However, when I was in third grade, the Optimist baseball team I was a member of was undefeated. I struck out every at bat. The team referred to me as their good luck charm. I look at the players above in the same way. Whether or not they are actively involved in the offense or defense, it is the charm of the numbers on the jersey that is working the magic.

(*) OK. I lie. I am familiar with the Arizona Cardinals quarterback, as I live in St. Louis, and recall when he was quarterback for the Rams. I read the newspaper even if I don’t watch many games. Here’s a poem I wrote seven years ago which partially explains why I am happy I don’t have to root for the Cardinals this year. Some might question whether my method of prediction is equivalent to what I complain about in the poem. It’s a fair question.