The modern police state will not be ushered in by government, but rather by media conglomerates intent on destroying civil rights in the name of protecting intellectual property.

First it was the deceased Marilyn Monroe, now it is the alive and kicking Andy Griffith.

The so-called 'right of publicity' has the potential to mutate into another form of speech-stifling monopoly. Glad to see that the courts are getting it right in these instances.

Andy Griffith's trademark claims were also appropriately shot down. If reasonable people were actually confused that the television star was running for office, then I'd reconsider.

Former President Bill Clinton has just made a deal to get affordable generic AIDS drugs to patients in Third World countries. Kudos there.

Clinton said, "I believe in intellectual property and ensuring that manufacturers earn the profit margins they need to keep the discovery and supply of AIDS drugs sustainable. But that shouldn't prevent us from getting essential life-saving medicines to those who need them in low and middle-income countries alike."

If that's the case then he should be in favor of more robust IP/patent reform. In order to sustain his goals, he can still believe in some forms of intellectual property restraints, but it is impossible to support the current IP system as presently constituted in order to maximize both innovation and distribution.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all in favor of freeing Mickey Mouse into the public domain and having a robust fair use of his image. But if Disney is going to insist on bribing Congress to extend copyright terms in order to keep Mickey under copyright, and if they are going to bully casual Internet users over the unauthorized use of Mickey's image, why are they not suing Hamas over their own use of Mickey?

If I were to make my own video using Donald Duck to convince people to divest themselves from organizations connected to Hamas, am I to assume now that Disney would have nothing to say about that either??

A New York federal judge has ruled that Marilyn Monroe's right of publicity died when she did in 1962, paving the way for family members of the late photographer Sam Shaw to continue selling and licensing images of the icon, including the photo of her standing above a subway gate.

Complete story here.

He apparently thinks some of us here at this site are spoiled children and 'morons'. He makes the classic mistake of equating IP protections with "private property" - failing to distinguish between fungible IP and tangible/scarce real property without offering a cogent argument as to why they should be treated the same.

Strix.org has a response to Mr. Malone.

John Dvorak has a must read article on the DIGG controversy (and the larger problem of the legal community's response to the digital era). [Hat-tip: Instapundit]

Meanwhile, I received an unintentionally humorous PR release from Spence publishing regarding the Digg situation - likening copyright disputes to 'soul tarnishing' Internet porn. Some of these people are really desperate...

For immediate release May 4, 2007

Revealing copyrighted information: No better than publishing porn? Expert says the Internet fuels our ‘anything goes' culture

The millions of teens who gave away the secret copy protection numbers on HD-DVDs on Digg.com this week were bad enough. The website's founder, however, went further by arguing that unlawfully revealing secret codes that will cost Americans millions is a "right of free speech." But Silicon Valley expert MICHAEL S. MALONE says disclosing copyrighted information is no better than publishing porn online both exploit the law, hurt others, and tarnish the soul.

Michael Malone, author of Bill & Dave: How Hewlett and Packard Built the World's Greatest Company, believes it's time for website founders the so-called "police force" of the Internet to stand up for what is honest and true.

"Mike Malone is to Silicon Valley what George Orwell was to the Spanish Civil War."

Paul A. Gigot, editor, Wall Street Journal

Questions for Michael S. Malone:

▪ Why did the Digg.com fiasco occur? What now?

▪ Technology affects almost everything these days even how candidates campaign for president. What did Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard have to do with this trend?

▪ Why do you call Hewlett-Packard the "world's greatest company"?

▪ We're hearing good things about Mark Hurd. Can he really bring HP back to the old days?

CREDENTIALS: Michael S. Malone writes a weekly column for ABC. He hosted an award-winning TV show on PBS for eight years and writes about business topics for the New York Times, Forbes, and the Wall Street Journal.

Availability: California and via telephone

In the interest of neutral reportage, I would like to ask the following:

Do we wish to live in a society where it is unlawful to simply type out the following sequence of letters and numbers?

09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0

I suspect not. But I'd welcome other thoughts in the interests of objective journalism.

[Boing-Boing has more.]

After reading this article, I have a newfound respect for the art of the guys who hold advertising signs on street corners.

White is part of the competitive world of "human directionals," an industry term for people who twirl signs outside restaurants, barbershops and new real estate subdivisions.

Street corner advertising on human billboards has existed for centuries, but Southern California where the weather allows sign spinners to work year-round has endowed the job with style.

Local spinners have cooked up hundreds of moves. There's the Helicopter, in which a spinner does a backbend on one hand while spinning a sign above his head. In the Blender, a spinner twirls the sign behind his back. Spanking the Horse gets the most attention. The spinner puts the sign between his legs, slaps his own behind and giddy-ups.

Thanks to growing demand, the business has turned cutthroat. There's a frenzy of talent poaching. Spinners battle one another for plum assignments and the promise of wage hikes. Some of the more prominent compete for bragging rights by posting videos on YouTube and Google Video, complete with trash talking. One YouTube comment reads, "i don't know if you stole my tricks or i just do them better."

But the limits of my respect ended when I got to this section in the article -

Aarrow keeps dozens of moves in a "trick-tionary," which only a handful of people have seen, said co-founder Mike Kenny. The company records spinners' movements and sends them in batches to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. "We have to take our intellectual property pretty seriously," he said.

Got that folks? Even after the latest Supreme Court patent smackdown, the IP legal culture still fosters the idea that you can monopolize the way you twirl a piece of cardboard around your body. If try to do that yourself, you will be sued by the patent holder of this stunning new invention that pushes the boundaries of human progress.

Ah yes, we certainly need to "take our intellectual property seriously" don't we? Things like this will certainly help the public to do just that.

From Michael Barclay via the SCOTUS blog:

This decision makes it far easier to invalidate patents based on obviousness. Thus, this is the most important patent case of the last 20 years, and perhaps since the passage of the 1952 Patent Act. Virtually every litigated patent case includes an assertion of obviousness - and ones that might not have included that defense up until now are more likely to do so. The PTO examines every patent application for obviousness. KSR v. Teleflex will thus have an enormous impact on both the prosecution and litigation aspects of patent practice.

Here here. It is sad when the Supreme Court has to essentially issue a ruling on what the word "obvious" means. But at least they got it right. I would suggest that people start searching through all of the bogus patents out there, find a way to get standing in court, and start issuing challenges.