Go, Ken, Go! -- Part 5: Settlement!

2013-07-08, 9:57 pm
Categories: Comics, Games, Politics, Stream of Consciousness

For my previous coverage, check out the Ken Penders tag. In particular, the first post has a relevant disclaimer that (1) I tend to side with creators over publishers generally and (2) I corresponded with Ken Penders in the 1990's and he was a nice guy.

Anyhow, looks like I'm a bit behind on this, but last week brought the biggest news yet: per TSSZ News, Archie and Penders have settled and the suit has been dismissed.

What I predicted in Parts 3 and 4 still holds: we'll learn some of the terms of the settlement in the coming months (we already know Ken is moving forward with The Lara-Su Chronicles so I think we can safely say he has the rights to publish original comics with Lara-Su in them); some will stay confidential. Penders v Sega and EA is still ongoing, though this puts him in a better position as it establishes that he does have standing to sue for infringement, even if it still has to be established that Dark Brotherhood infringes his copyrights.

I think it's also safe to say that Ken would be happy for Archie to continue using his characters and reprinting his stories -- so long as they pay him his share for that use. And that if, say, the echidnas stay lost in that warp ring, that's Archie's decision not to pay Penders, not Penders's decision not to let Archie pay him.

But I think there's something much bigger coming.

Penders wasn't the only guy freelancing for Archie's Mamaroneck office in the mid-1990's. And he wasn't the only guy doing it without signing a contract first.

There are potentially dozens of other Sonic alums who have been watching this case and waiting to see if they've got a shot at winning their rights back, too. Scott Shaw has already filed for copyrights on his Sonic work. He won't be the last.

Archie v Penders is over. But this is only the beginning.

Update 2015-09-24: And Penders v Sega is over too; it was dismissed in 2014. I discuss it more in Part 6.

As for Scott Shaw and other creators seeking to reclaim their copyrights in the same way that Penders did, I haven't heard any news on that front, though I suspect we won't; given how the Penders case turned out, Archie is unlikely to file any more lawsuits, and I suspect that if other creators raise similar challenges Archie will settle with them quietly without getting the courts involved. It is possible that this has already happened, though it's likely that we'll never know.

Nagano

2013-07-06, 10:40 pm
Categories: Music

Via uploader YourArf:

Kent Nagano tells the story about how he got involved with Zappa and his classical music. Kent Nagano is an american conductor and opera administrator who conducted London Symphony Orchestra for Frank's music.

From the swedish radio documentary "Titties & Beer", broadcasted 1994-01-23 on SR P2.

On Solos

2013-07-05, 9:58 pm
Categories: Music

Uploaded by fruhko, who says it's from 1984. Sounds slightly sped up, or possibly helium is slowly leaking into the room.

Side Effects

2013-07-05, 9:40 pm
Categories: Announcements

Today I learned that my prescription migraine pills make my vertigo much much worse!

America Drinks

2013-07-04, 9:47 pm
Categories: Music

Well, it's got "America" in the name. That's good for a 4th of July post, right?

Vocals are pretty hard to hear but there's some great clarinet work by, if I'm not mistaken, Bunk Gardner.

Detroit, 1968; uploaded by Whoaduderighteous.

Weak

2013-07-04, 9:42 pm
Categories: Comics, Stream of Consciousness

My dizziness has mostly been improving, but today it was pretty bad. Wound up going to bed and staying there for about the past four hours.

Head's not really together enough to share much just now; no Fourth of July insights or reviews of comics I read today (the last half of the latest Sergio Aragonés Funnies was even better than the first, while the Unwritten/Fables crossover didn't really satisfy me as a fan of either series and frankly felt a little icky) -- maybe I'll get to that stuff another time.

Gumbel Interview

2013-07-03, 10:21 pm
Categories: Movies, Music, Politics, TV

The Today Show, 1990. Discussion of Zappa's influence in Czechoslovakia before, during, and after the fall of communism, his contribution to Jacques Cousteau's Outrage at Valdez, and his interest in politics combined with his distaste for major and third parties alike.

Image Goes DRM-Free

2013-07-03, 9:31 pm
Categories: Comics, Politics, Stream of Consciousness, Tech

Yesterday Image Comics announced that it's going to start selling digital comics from its own site, independent of third-party distributors, in standard formats and DRM-free.

There are a lot of reasons for Image to pursue a DRM-free option. Chief is that DRM doesn't fucking work and anyone who wants to get the latest issue of The Walking Dead illegally can get it whether Comixology's version has DRM or not. Second is that this rampant piracy of The Walking Dead has somehow failed to prevent it from being a sprawling multimedia bestseller.

But I think what really precipitated this decision isn't The Walking Dead at all -- it's Saga.

More specifically, Saga #12 and its asinine, albeit temporary, ban from the iOS version of Comixology.

I wrote about the story back in April. Gist is this: Saga #12 was an arguably-slightly-dirtier comic in an inarguably-already-pretty-dirty series; Comixology decided not to sell it in the iOS version of their app out of a reasonable but, it turns out, false presumption that it would run afoul of Apple's vague, capricious, and arbitrary content guidelines.

In a nutshell, it was an object lesson in the one thing DRM actually is good for: locking publishers into a single distributor who may not always have their best interests at heart.

You know, for those who needed an object lesson because they were too busy scratching their balls to notice how this exact thing caused a problem for the music industry and then later for the book industry.

But hey, it may have taken Image awhile, but this still puts them way the fuck ahead of all the other major publishers, and they absolutely deserve praise and encouragement for doing the right thing. And they deserve your business for it.

Only problem is, it's still early days and the Digital Comics section is looking a little sparse. I'll plan on coming back with links when my favorite Image books are available -- those'd be the aforementioned Walking Dead and Saga, plus Chew and Prophet, off the top of my head.

This is good news, and I hope and expect it will be just the first step in the comics industry realizing what the music industry already has and the book industry is starting to: that standards-compliant, DRM-free formats aren't just better for consumers, they're better for publishers, too.

Jerry Lawson

2013-07-02, 9:55 pm
Categories: Music

Lawson discussing his working relationship with Frank; the Persuasions published an album under the Straight label. This is from the documentary From Straight to Bizarre; I posted the trailer last October.