It's a 'Shame' About NC-17 Tag for Waters Film
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The producer of the upcoming John Waters comedy "A Dirty Shame" has accused the U.S. movie ratings system of bowing to political pressure and a "family values" agenda by giving her project the commercially unfriendly NC-17 tag.
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There's been a mostly fantastic discussion about fair use in this neighborhood for the last few days.  It started when a photograph of Lane Hartwell's was used in a video spoof of the Billy Joel song "We Didn't Start the Fire."  The first I heard of this was in a Twitter post of hers where she said she was turning off access to her entire Flickr collection because this picture was used without permission. A series of communications with the people who did the video resulted in the video being taken down. Later Mike Arrington, who is a lawyer, wrote a piece saying she didn't have right on her side, and that the video's use of her picture was probably fair use. I found Mike's piece compelling. Others took offense. It thought it was a useful part of the discussion. I understand Ms Hartwell's point of view. I hate it when people copy a whole post of mine and paste it into theirs. But then I grab bits of images and put them on my blog and people rarely complain. The blogosphere is built on being loose about copyright and fair use.  I'm doing a deal with a content company and all these issues are coming up. We haven't been able to write a contract that covers all the things they want covered and make it possible for me to do what I need to do, and they want my product to work. It's a real mess we're in. Bloggers are supposed to be radicals when it comes to fair use and copyright, but that generalization doesn't work with many creative people. Hartwell's position in some ways is like the RIAA or MPAA, who bloggers often dismiss as clueless. How can we have it both ways? How can some defend her position yet not defend the entertainment industry? There's a lot to discuss here, and a lot of the discussion on the blogs has been informative and respectful. Not all of it, but to an unusually high degree.  So, I am interested in doing an in person "flash conference" on the subject of fair use in a few weeks. I'd say next week if it weren't Christmas. Most conferences are so boring. I want to do a conf on a hot subject when it's still hot in the blogosphere. This may be a good subject for such a quickly organized conference. What do you think of the flash conference idea for this??
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By S.J  I REFER to the report "The life drains out of Pedu Lake" (NST, Jan 31).   The failure of the resorts at Pedu Lake has little or nothing to do with the discovery of old graves, lack of promotion or remoteness as claimed.
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I have no problem with the photograph but why would you bother publishing the story of a complete waste-of space family in the first place? Giving such people any publicity is something you and all media should be ashamed of.
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Excerpt from report by Tajik news agency Asia-Plus website  International norms on the use of transborder water are making the "Tajik dream" totally senseless. Now all of them regret about this.
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By The Daily Oklahoman  Feb. 1--LIQUID, expensive, necessary and controversial. Water is the new oil in Oklahoma. We talk about it, fight over it and look apprehensively toward a time when we might have less than we need.
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WASHINGTON, Feb. 23  /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Today the Navy released a flawed environmental impact statement supporting its decision to build a landing field near Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge in eastern North Carolina.
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Wired News chats with the director of This Film Is Not Yet Rated and gets a glimpse of the secretive movie-ratings system. Oh, and we learn why John Waters rocks on. By Randy Dotinga.
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By The News & Observer, Raleigh, N.C.  May 31--It's official. We're in a drought.   The U.S.
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By The News & Observer, Raleigh, N.C.  Mar. 7--More people moving to North Carolina means more water usage in homes, businesses and industrial plants.
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Arts & entertainment: A Bafta manager has admitted to feeling 'uncomfortable' with screening a movie about disabled people. Rubbish, says disabled actor Mat Fraser
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Security at Britain's third largest airport in the northern city of Manchester has been highlighted as woefully inadequate by a BBC documentary to be screened on Tuesday.
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A film about the prisoner abuse scandal at the Abu Ghraib jail in Iraq will become the first documentary to enter the competition at the Berlin International Film Festival when it is shown next month, Agence France-Presse reported. Made by the Oscar-winning director Errol Morris (âThe Fog of Warâ), above, the documentary, âStandard Operating Procedure,â uses film, re-enactments and photographs that were published around the world to shed light on the treatment of inmates. Twenty-one films will vie for awards during the 58th Berlin film festival, running Feb. 7-17.
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How to avoid bad movies in the name of a good cause.
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Racial hatred, violence and suicide are among concerns for movie viewers questioned about film classification.
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Blog: The video is safe, but the download mod it advertises is not.
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For any movie outside of the mainstream, the Internet's ability to find and connect with likely fans has been a blessing. But even so, promoting John Waters' latest film, "A Dirty Shame," needed special handling both on- and offline.