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Copyright Uncategorized

Warhammer 40KO’d: Fan film scuppered by Games Workshop

Damnatus an ambitious fan-film produced by German fans of the Warhammer 40K game, made by the company Games Workshop, may never be seen by an audience according to BBC News due to copyright issues.

The German producers of Damnatus had tried to make the film as professional looking as possible and spent over 10 000 Euros and months of filming on the project. Unfortunately Games Workshop say that due to German copyright law there is a danger of them losing control over their Intellectual Property should they let the fan film be distributed.

Andy Jones, legal and licensing head for Games Workshop, said this law confers rights on the creators of works that cannot be given away.

This means that the creators of Damnatus cannot assign their rights to Games Workshop even if they wanted to.

But by sanctioning the release of the film without this “assignment” Games Workshop would essentially be giving up the title to the Warhammer 40,000 intellectual property.

In a lengthy response explaining the ban on Damnatus Mr Jones wrote: “To lose control of Warhammer or Warhammer 40,000 is simply unthinkable.

“So we must be vigilant, and perhaps sometimes seemingly heartless in our decisions to safeguard the IP for the future success of the business and the hobby.”

I have to say that I’m dubious about the truth of Games Workshop’s position here. I’m no expert on German copyright law but I can’t believe there is no possible work around to this obstacle if Games Workshop truly wished to help their German fans release the movie.

If German law is like any other countries’ copyright law then there must be provision within that law to licence the copyrighted works of others to create new works. How else could the movie Perfume: The Story of a Murderer have been produced unless their licensed the right from the book’s author Patrick Süskind?

A contract could surely be drawn up to licence the copyright of Games Workshop on a limited basis for a nominal sum of 1 Euro to the German film producers that would allow the movie to be released on a non-commercial basis.

Mr Jones said despite Games Workshop’s “admiration” for Damnatus it could not change its policy and allow the film to be shown.

He said Games Workshop was not acting “malevolently” but that this was a case where an agreement has “failed to be reached”.

Said Mr Jones: “This is perhaps to be regretted, nonetheless in the final analysis we simply have no choice but to say ‘no’.”

I have a feeling that the BBC article does not tell the full story, either there is some genuine confusion here or Games Workshop is saying one thing in public and trying to muddy the waters with talk of copyright issues but is in reality opposed to the release of this movie.

Edit: A commenter at TechDirt with some familiarity of German law suggests that the company find a new copyright lawyer as like I wrote above it’s perfectly possible for them to grant a limited licence to use their copyrighted works without losing control over their Intellectual Property.

Also another commenter suggests that there might be some confusion and it is actually a Trademark issue instead, I could believe that this might be the case but surely there is a workable solution if this is the case too.

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Uncategorized

Ben Stein gets expelled: No intelligence

Ben Stein, actor, game show host, economist and White House speechwriter has embarked upon a heroic and, at times, shocking journey in the new documentary Expelled to confront the world’s top scientists, educators and philosophers, regarding their ‘persecution’ of the academics who support the non-science that is Intelligent Design.

Richard Dawkins and PZ Myers amongst others claim they were duped into appearing in the film believing it to be a film that was to be titled Crossroads (no not that Crossroads, nor this one) that would be a debate about creationism versus Darwinism. No wonder Ferris took a day off from school with this guy as his teacher (NSFW).

Evolutionary science is a wide discipline with differing theories as to the mechanics of how it happened, but when one resorts to a theory that there was a creator to fill the gaps in the theory of evolution rather than look for evidence, study that evidence and hypothesize then you’ve stopped being a scientist and have become a fantasist.

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Uncategorized

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

The title of the fourth Indiana Jones movie has been announced and it’s a bit of a mouthful.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

The movie is to have a simultaneous worldwide release on Thursday, May 22, 2008.

The title would suggest that our Indy will be making a trip south of the border to the Mesoamerica region the site of the discovery of Crystal skulls.

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Uncategorized

Real life Crocodile Dundee

Australian farmer David George was forced to take drastic action after having stumbled into a crocodile infested swamp.

He survived for a week up a tree with only two meat sandwiches to sustain him. Sounds much like the myth of Mick ‘Crocodile’ Dundee that brought journalist Sue Charlton to Walkabout Creek to interview Mick in the movie Crocodile Dundee.

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Uncategorized

Short Circuit to be re-circuited

I watched Short Circuit today on TV and got to wondering who did the voice of Number 5 and discovered to my mild horror that there is a remake in production. I’m always a little wary of remakes of pop culture from my childhood but have to admit that if they do a good job I’d be pretty happy to see more of Johnny Five also if this starts a trend of 80s remakes I’d be stoked to see the Gremlins return.

I also stumbled across the following semi-connected website Input-inc.com/

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Computing Security

Potty about Harry’s leakage on bittorrent

Bruce Schneier reports that the New Harry Potter Book Leaked on BitTorrent and that he’s been fielding press calls all day about it.

It’s online: digital photographs of every page are available on BitTorrent.

I’ve been fielding press calls on this, mostly from reporters asking me what the publisher could have done differently. Honestly, I don’t think it was possible to keep the book under wraps. There are millions of copies of the book headed to all four corners of the globe. There are simply too many people who must be trusted in order for the security to hold. And all it takes is one untrustworthy person — one truck driver, one bookstore owner, one warehouse worker — to leak the book.

But conversely, I don’t think the publishers should care. Anyone fan-crazed enough to read digital photographs of the pages a few days before the real copy comes out is also someone who is going to buy a real copy. And anyone who will read the digital photographs instead of the real book would have borrowed a copy from a friend. My guess is that the publishers will lose zero sales, and that the pre-release will simply increase the press frenzy.

I’m kind of amazed the book hadn’t leaked sooner.

And, of course, it is inevitable that we’ll get ASCII copies of the book post-publication, for all of you who want to read it on your PDA.

Harry Potter Fans Transcribe Book from Photos

Scholastic Loses It Over Harry Potter/BitTorent Story

The Harry Potter leaker left the EXIF data still in the jpgs they created.

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Movies Reviews

Angels and Demons: A mini-review

Have just finished Dan Brown’s Angels and Demons and I have to say that once you get past the science bit (and Brown has clearly researched the science but has utterly failed to understand it) there is a half-decent plot albeit with a rather obvious twist in the end.

It’s better plotted than The Da Vinci Code as it does actually build to a climax rather than a series of anti-climatic cliffhangers.

The characters are as poorly sketched as they were in The Da Vinci Code though and are little more than stereotypes.

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Uncategorized

We can forget it for you wholesale

It’s the crazy central device of the movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind made real. The Telegraph reports that scientists have found a drug that is able to help banish bad memories.

Researchers have found they can use drugs to wipe away single, specific memories while leaving other memories intact. By injecting an amnesia drug at the right time, when a subject was recalling a particular thought, neuro-scientists discovered they could disrupt the way the memory is stored and even make it disappear.

Ironically I think I’ve blogged about this before but I can’t really remember if I have or not. It seems to me to be a kind of drug assisted Neuro-Linguistic Programming and if effective could help many people deal with traumatic events they may have suffered.

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Movies Reviews

Review: Vacancy

Vacancy

This movie was probably designed to be a wonderful mix of Psycho, Peeping Tom, Wolf Creek and Breakdown but it fails to come anywhere close to any of its’ antecedents. It’s not even the bastard child of those movies it’s the runt of the litter of bastard children.

Don’t bother with this one I found it to be only mildly disturbing and though it’s just 80 minutes long it barely held my interest. It was a very pedestrian example of the genre and they seemed to waste a number of opportunities for shocks along the way.

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Movies Reviews Surveillance

Review: Taking Liberties

Taking Liberties

Most important UK documentary of the decade? Perhaps. Whilst it is not as well made as the Adam Curtis documentary The Power of Nightmares it is very powerful and has a hell of an impact. I only wish more people would see it, but I have a feeling that it will only end up preaching to the converted as those in the know are the only ones that will go to see it.

However if it inspires anyone and moves them to action then perhaps it be said to have succeeded. It made me rethink my decision no to join the march against the War in Iraq, I knew at the time that the government was committed to war and would not be swayed in that by any number of marchers but perhaps I should have stood up to be counted amongst those opposed.