Friday, May 19, 2006

Busted!

First, let me say that I was not arrested.

We're at the Motor City Comic Con this weekend, and within the first two hours we were there, we found ourselves in the middle of a police bust targeting the movie pirates who also frequent these conventions. Most of their wares are either out-of-production "cult" TV shows or human nature documentaries, but there is also a heavy showing of current or recent movie releases, usually bearing a disclaimer, "This film is presumed to be in the public domain." Now, having been hauled out in handcuffs, the vendors get to explain how someone who knows enough about copyright law to understand public domain can assume a movie still playing in theaters is a public domain work. The one vendor selling legitimately public domain works was sweating bullets during the raid.

Oh, and I also saw another rare sight at the con today: a centerfold model eating a chunk of fudge. On the one hand, it is an amusing sight; on the other hand, she eats fudge and still looks like that. Life is not fair.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Mark Evanier discusses this in today's News from me (www.newsfromme.com, of course).

I agree that it is About Time.

I'm going to quote you in my discussion of this in the OFF-TOPIC portion of the kongisking.net message boards, you eyewitness you!

Anonymous said...

We tried to tell you life was not fair.

Anonymous said...

We tried to tell you life was not fair.