Insanity: Traffic Congestion and Courtesy:

Ever been walking down a sidewalk and find a group walking shoulder to shoulder who refuses to have at least one person move to the side when you're approaching, causing you to either step into the street, on the property next to the sidewalk (which is more often than not soaked from rain or melting snow), into the street, or having to bump into the person (which usually ends with you apologizing or ignoring them instead of them apologizing)?  How about trying to get to something in a store and finding two or three carts in an aisle all going the same way blocking off your passage to said item?  Pedestrian Traffic Congestion, we've all encountered it.  The thing is, it's insane.  I'm sure at one time or another either you've seen someone complain to the offenders about it, or done it personally yourself.  Yet, the offenders still continue after you or the 'complaining jerk' goes away.  What drives people to do this, knowing that much of society despises them for this?  How about people who pull their bike up onto the sidewalk?  Depending on a city's blue law, this may actually be not only dangerous, but illegal.  How about the flow of traffic in general?  In much of the world, traffic always stays on the left side of the road, sidewalk or other path, but in America we use the right side.  There are a few rules of etiquette to using a road, sidewalk or aisle:

1.  Stay to the appropriate side of the path you belong to.  Don't take up the entire space.  Your friends can still hear you if you're behind them unless the wind is howling too loud, they have headphones on, or they are deaf.  In any of those three cases, they wouldn't hear you anyway, and if they read lips you'd have to be in front of them instead of at their side anyways.  If you're in a store, put your cart on the side you are on, and use the correct side so everyone can get through.  If you're on a bike, stay on the side of the road going with traffic.  Going against it means your speed plus the speed of someone heading toward you are multiplied in the case of an accident, and they have less time to react if you take a spill.  If you go with traffic and fall, at least those in cars can see you wobbling up ahead and take the time to either try to slow down, stop or move out of the lane if possible.  If they don't, you still have a better chance surviving instead of being windshield or grill pizza.

2.  If you're going to text or read, either step off the flow of traffic, or keep it up so you can use peripheral vision to see motion and its cessation ahead of you.  Looking down at it is not only bad for your posture but means you can't see as far ahead of you and might walk right into a bus or a telephone pole.  Which, to be honest, would hurt you and make others either laugh or rush over to help you, depending on the severity of your impact and their sense of dark humor.  Don't rely on someone else to help you regardless, because there might not be someone around if you accidentally wander into street traffic.

3.  Don't litter.  Seriously.  It's not that hard to just keep your trash until there is some place to dispose of it properly.  Depending on what you throw away, not only do you face a large fine and possible community service picking up other people's refuse, but you could injure someone if it is glass or metal or something else and they accidentally step on it.

4.  Don't leave children and pets unattended or on a leash that's too long if they aren't trained yet.  Your little loved ones, human and animal, might wander into traffic, bother someone who might abuse them or you, or they could be abducted.  Not to mention,the disgusting things they might eat and get sick from.

5.  Report problems with the path.  If you're on a road, sidewalk or other path and you find a pothole, pitting or edge that someone can trip on, tell those responsible for its upkeep.  Not only do you help ensure you don't yourself fall prey later, you help others using the same path, and might keep unnecessary lawsuits from being brought to court.  Most times regulations will find that it is within the allowed limits and therefore the claim is denied, however, if someone is worried about a lawsuit and doesn't already know the current specifics of the regulations, they will repair it rather than risk it.  Unless it is the city, because more often than not they'll ignore it or patch it with substandard materials, but a patch is still better than nothing.

Ignorance and Insanity: Copyright Law Fair Use:

Many people frequently post music covers and remixes online, whether for non-profit or commercial purposes, and most of them don't gain enough attention to be pulled down or receive a cease and desist notice.  However, some do, and the creators of the cover or remix are either ignorant to the fair use copyright permissions and don't have a valid response to the problems they encounter, or are insane enough to keep uploading it over and over until they are banned.  Other examples of copyright violations include printing out works by an online artist and displaying them in a public place without permission, movie screenings for medium to large groups without terms of agreement and payment to the company that holds the copyright, and a large quantity of fan works if sold or publicly displayed.  Most Artist Alleys at comic conventions have works of popular characters being sold as fan works, and most fanfic boards have the majority of posts being blatant violations without any attempt to justify it under fair use.  It varies from country to country, but what are the rights under fair use in US Copyright Law?

US Copyright Law was originally created in 1790 to help an individual or group from imitation and loss of profit, lasting for only 28 years unless renewed and even if an creator renewed their copyright a day before their death it'd still only be 28 years.  Now, if a work was created in or after 1978, a copyright extends 70 years after the death of the creator, or 120 years after creation or 95 years after publication if it was a work for hire, such as scripting for a comic book, television series, movie or creating music for a record label contract, in which case the work for hire is copyrighted to whomever hired it, unless the contract explicitly states otherwise in which case it is the shorter original creator's extension.  With all the changes to copyright law over almost two centuries, it becomes a tricky dance through legal traps and loopholes to be able to use any copyrighted work without direct permission from the creators or copyright holders.  There are, however, several ways it can be used, so long as fair use is shown.  Sections 107 through 118 of US copyright law detail how a copyright holder may authorize other individuals to reproduce or copy parts or the whole of their work, as well as what is allowed as fair use without permission.  Four factors are used to determine whether something is considered a fair use of the material:

1.  The purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes.

2.  The nature of the copyrighted work.

3.  The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole.

4.  The effect of the use upon the potential market for, or value of, the copyrighted work.

Factor one allows a school to make quotes from a book as part of their homework and tests, as well as allow a private individual to make copies of a work for reference material if they don't sell or give it away.  Factors two and three are key issues some copyright law violators falter over.  Making a parody of a song that is already a parody, for example, doesn't deviate far enough if the original melody and harmony are used as the work is not considered transformative, but a parody of a more serious work might be.  Take, for example, Down with the Sickness by Disturbed.  The song is gritty, harsh and very dark in tone.  In the 2004 Dawn of the Dead remake a cover of it was heard which surprised a lot of fans of the original work.  Richard Cheese and Lounge Against the Machine had taken the work and turned it into an old fashioned lounge song, parodying the original harshness with a softer more mellow tone that still kept the same lyrics, but along with most of their cover works, changed the nature of the work into 1) A different genre of music, 2) A parody of the original work, 3) A different tempo, and 4) Different instrumental melody inspired by the original work but not taken note for note.  While the band may have paid the usage fees, under copyright law, they wouldn't have to...  So long as it was determined that their cover didn't adversely affect the profits of the original work, and satisfied factor three.  Seeing as they are little known, I'd say that the forth factor would be satisfied as well.  The third is a bit more tricky, as they did take the sum of the lyrics.

Some musicians take samples from other works for their own music for remixes and try to cite a limitation on the amount taken from another work, or authors on the limitation of words taken in quotation from that of another author's work not yet in public domain.  Let me make this perfectly clear:  There is no explicit minimum or maximum amount permitted under copyright law for sampling.  Unless if falls under more than just factor three, the work is a violation of copyright law.  I could make an entire song made solely from samples of other works, a mashup compilation or medley, and if I paid the dues for the samples (relatively inexpensive unless you're performing live) I would be permitted to do so, so long as I did so to the appropriate parties prior to sharing the work.  However, without paying the dues, I'd have to go the route of Weird Al Yankovic, with his various polka medleys.  Weird Al Yankovic, for those that don't know his work (and you really should, it's hilarious stuff), mostly has works parody the tone of the original work, but his polka medleys change not only the tone, tempo and genre of the samples, but create a flowing thread between them that is consistent in the new context and commenting or criticizing the original, transforming the work.  However, despite his permission under copyright law, Weird Al Yankovic still seeks the original artist's permission before releasing a parody.  This was most famous for his parody of James Blunt's "You're Beautiful" being parodied with Weird Al's "You're Pitiful" which was not released on an physical album but was released online, due to a political decision between his album agreement with Sony and James Blunt's agreement with Universal, despite James Blunt's permission being given.  Which brings up another point of contention on fair use.  A work for hire is often more contested than a personal work, as the party commissioning the work is generally more protective of it as they had to pay for it, rather than the original creator, who might find the parody funny enough to give permission without limitation, even if they didn't have to.  Michael Jackson famously loved his parodies enough to not only permit him to parody "Beat it" with "Eat it" and "Bad" with "Fat", but also allow him to use the original set used for "Badder" in the parody video of "Eat it".  However, concerned with the message, he did not grant permission to parody "Black and White" with "Snack all Night".  Weird Al politely did not do that parody and after the financial failure of the cult-classic UHF movie, approached Nirvana and got permission to do "Smells like Nirvana".  Through the years he and other parody artists have had to have lawyers navigate the law on specifics allowing a parody without a legal battle, and sometimes with one.  But what about the rights of works which are not parodies and what is protected?

Copyright pertains to the original works in the context that they are within.  It does not, however, protect facts, ideas, concepts, procedures, processes and systems, etc.  It protects architectural designs but not typeface, fashion design, domain names or names of any kind (those would be protected under trademark or patent laws as permitted).  Copyright on software may be held for it as a literary work or audiovisual display.  The first sale doctrine allows the copyright holder to limit the initial sale of a work, but allows libraries, retail chains, bookstores, rental stores, and individuals to resell the work copies they have, but not to market it as their own work.  The good faith defense allows libraries and other educational institutions to a liability of a $200 fine per abuse if they mistakenly believed it was under fair use and it was not.  But how is something able to gain copyright protection and what does it offer the copyright holder?  All work is copyrighted on first presentation to the public that can be verified through external means.  This blog post, for example, is copyright protected to me to prevent its reproduction without permission unless in a reference or parody material, and I can file a cease and desist to anyone who is not using it for those purposes.  However, having copyright alone does not grant me the right to sue someone violating said protection.  If I were to register the work with the US Copyright Office, I would be able to file not only a cease and desist, but also file a lawsuit that their use was not a fair use, as well claim that it has in some way hurt my profits, such as if someone else were to profit from it while I did not.  Without registering it, I would not be able to use that claim without a lawyer to directly show that I did file a cease and desist that continued to be violated, in which case I would be due the damages after the cease and desist.  With the copyright registered, however, I'd be able to sue for damages incurred before the cease and desist if I felt they were substantial enough to warrant action.  Most companies and individuals use this judgement before determining whether to merely send a cease and desist or whether to file a lawsuit as well.  Additionally, while Copyright Law may permit a parody of a work under fair use and protect the secondary work as it is, it does not protect the secondary work's imitation if the original primary work was being parodied, such as famously seen with the flagrant violation by FOX with the show Glee using their own version of "Baby Got Back" using the same arrangement method as Jonathan Coulton, since their work had multiple vocal artists and they didn't thus use the exact same arrangement since it was split across multiple parts.  While legally this is true, FOX went further to state that he should be grateful for the exposure, despite a lack of acknowledgement anywhere in the show or elsewhere prior to the investigation into whether it was permitted under copyright law or not.  This lack of protection and low-blow by Fox spurred Jonathan Coulton to upload his secondary cover in response, "Baby Got Back (In the Style of Glee)", which he was permitted to do, and not only outsold the Glee version due to the fan backlash, but the proceeds were donated to the VH1 Save the Music Foundation, and the It Gets Better Project.  The CBS drama The Good Wife, the episode "Goliath and David" broadcast January of this year, depicts the essential struggle and outcome, and also some of the legal shenanigans that go on with copyright law as well as being humorous even without understanding the context.

Jonathan Coulton, by the way, also allows creative commons rights to all his works, which means that anyone can make their own cover of his works legally so long as they acknowledge his original copyright and do not use it for commercial purposes.  More and more creative commons--which is a way for creative copyright holders to permit certain rights to individuals without needing an explicit agreement per use--is growing along places such as YouTube, deviantArt and other popular sites and their official search engine is a good place to look for people wanting to add more content to their various accounts and practice their own parody, cover and remix skills to upload online without the legal hassles and delays of communication (as I have found with certain small indie artists) so long as the person stretching their skills and portfolio does not use them for commercial work (and sometimes even if they are depending on the rights given), which may also help gain exposure for an artist of any medium who is seeking to draw in attention to not only their usage of other works, but also attract people who might be curious enough to look at their original works which may be commercially backed by ads or the like.

Ignorance: Self-Esteem and Bullying:

As a writer, I see symbols, meanings behind many things.  My own name, for example, has three parts.  I was named after one of my uncles on my dad's side, Michael Raymond Maloney, who died while on the way to the hospital from smoke inhalation caused by a fire he started in a closet.  He was only four.  My first name, Micah, is slightly different but the same root word and meaning.  It's Hebrew, meaning 'Who is like God?'  Hell of a lot to even try to contemplate, let alone live up to.  My last name is Maloney, which, to the best of my research merely means 'Descendent of the Disciple St. John', and has many spelling variations due to the poor education of the Gaelic people at the time it came into being.  John, on the other hand, means 'God is Gracious', meaning courteous, kind and pleasant, which I have to say some of my family fits while another part might be burying it a bit deep down.  My middle name, however, is Raymond.  It's not Gaelic or Hebrew, it's Germanic, which, a lot of my blood is, though less than the Irish/Gaelic percentage.  Its root parts are ragin (Advice) and mund (Protector).  When I was of a certain age I used to use my entire name when introducing myself, as many children do, but I quickly grew out of it to only using my first name or first and last if asked to introduce myself.  I started becoming deeply into writing in high school, and my passion for it and symbol grew out of my love for reading both prior to and during that time.  It was during my junior year that I started using my full name again online, and there's a story behind it, one which I didn't realize was linked at the time, but looking back even a couple years later made perfect sense to me.  It all happened because of a revelation, a friend, a bully, and a mix of apathy and friendship.

Alright, I'll admit that before my sophomore year of high school I cared way too much what people thought about me, and got bullied quite a lot.  Then I had a startling revelation one day that changed my outlook:  Who cares?  I was slow on the ball socially in my early years, but in high school I made five times more friends after making those two words my motto.  Who cares?  I realized I wouldn't see ninety-percent, and in fact more than that, of my fellow student body after graduation, and if they had some weird stories to tell each other about me further on down the road, oh well.  It wasn't like I'd be around them to be jeered at or have spitballs and rolled-up papers thrown at me, tripped in halls, or shoved against a locker or wall.  In fact, once I stopped caring about my own image, almost all of that stopped.  I let it all slide off me and those bothering me before didn't get the reaction they wanted.  So did I go and moon teacher I wasn't too fond of or spread rumors about a bully's questionable relationship between their extracurricular activities and the unmarked bottles they got from other students?  Pfft.  No!  That was between them and their team, between them and the teachers and staff and truancy officer.  It didn't matter to me in the long run since they weren't hurting anyone but themselves with their stupidity.  Armed with this new motto and worldview, did I merely tell one of my friends to buck up and not let it get to them when he started contemplating suicide?  FUCK NO!

One of my friends had been bullied an entire year, some of which I saw during the same time I was being bullied and some of which happened when I wasn't around.  I didn't know all the circumstances surrounding his home and his life in general, but I knew he at least didn't have any visible bruises or anything like that.  He wasn't physically fit, and while we shared interests, he wasn't as easily able to do the coursework as myself or our mutual friends.  He was picked on because of his weight, and because of his slowness to come up with comebacks or react in general to verbal taunting, and his inability to keep someone from shoving him even harder if he tried to resist.  Bully bait, as some of our group called people like him.  While I didn't have much in the way of muscles, I still had my height and less bodyfat, so it was harder to shove me around, hence, if it was him or me, the bullies would go after him.  Self-Esteem for me came as a breakthrough in the form of focused apathy.  I stopped caring about anyone I wasn't interested in being around, so I started doing things I wanted to do, stopped trying to dress like other groups, stopped trying to fit in.  While I don't have much of a 'personal style' even now, I had none then, just wearing whatever felt comfortable or had a coordination that I liked.  For most people, self-esteem takes small steps before the breakthrough I had, and the progression to seeing any difference is much slower.  For my friend it was still going on when I graduated two years later, but it almost was cut off entirely.

Between a couple of friends and I, we talked our friend contemplating suicide out of thinking about it, or at least out talking about it.  Getting him excited about manga, anime or games coming out in the upcoming months helped a bit, keeping a linked interest present to show others liked talking to him about such things, and hanging out in general.  Having spent years at non-suicidal (I never even contemplated it, just far too much I want to do with my life even at a young age) levels of low self-esteem, I knew that alone wouldn't help without some assistance in other areas as well.  Some of my friends told him to tell a teacher or staff member if it happened again, while I kept silent on that issue, already knowing how little good that did, usually causing a backlash after a worthless talk.  Especially since most of the bullies had parents who donated a lot to the school.  So, I took a different approach.  One that could have gotten me expelled or even sued.  I told my friend I'd see what I could do to get them to stop.

I caught the arm of the ringleader of the main bully crew in the hallway a couple days later and told him that he could do whatever he wanted to me, but to leave my friends alone.  I said that otherwise I would make him stop.  He laughed and pulled his arm away, continuing on to class.  Two days later, my friend was in the hall before classes and I saw him shoved in a circle by the ringleader and a few others.  I started heading toward him, but as the first bell rang, everyone had to go to class, including the ringleader.  Luckily for me, we shared a class.  As I passed him to sit, I glared and merely told him I saw what he did.  He rolled his eyes and we continued with class without another word or glance.  Between classes, however, I called his name as he started to ascend the nearest stairs.  He turned to face me, and what I did next changed my life and my friend's experience at my high school for that period in our lives.  I stupidly curled my thumb under my fingers and threw the first punch I'd ever thrown in my life, hitting the ringleader square in the nose, knocking him backward onto his backpack to the surprise of all the students around us.  I shook my hand for a moment at the pain and then just clenched it to keep from causing more, pointing at him with my other hand.  I told him that I had warned him, and that he could tell the staff or his friends or try to sue my broke ass or try to get me outside school, but that if I saw him mess with my friends again I'd jump him without another warning.  He looked at me, then checked to make sure his nose wasn't bleeding and I left, going to my next class.  For a week I expected retaliation, something, anything other than what I got.  Silence.  It took a full three weeks before that bully started giving half-hearted jeers and shoves, throwing paper balls that just harmlessly bounced off.  Did he stop bothering my friend?  Not completely, but the few times I did happen to see him messing with him he caught my eye and gave a grunt before leading his crew elsewhere.  Between that and what happened with another bully I felt on top of the world my following two years, and the number of people who regularly talked to me about things other than homework grew considerably.  Whatever happened to my friend?  Well, I never told him what happened between the ringleader and I.  I've not seen nor heard from him since high school, but two things I do know:  I never again saw him crying after being shoved around, and he didn't talk about contemplating suicide again.

Ignorance and Insanity:

Ignorance and Insanity are two things I see, hear, or read about on a daily basis, and while this blog was originally intended for something else, it has been re-purposed to let me express my continued view on these two dancers on the stage of life.  Like Comedy and Tragedy, Ignorance and Insanity are closely linked, though sometimes misunderstood.  Being ignorant is too often thrown around as an insult, when it merely means a lack of information on a subject, or sometimes in general.  This can be naivety, or just a lack of experience.  Ignoramus is an insult that used to be much more frequently used to mean someone who is willfully ignorant, empty-headed, and a dunce.  Ignorance of the law is no excuse, but ignorance of something of a non-legality and non-morality issue is something I can abide.  I work at in an international retail company in the electronics department of my particular store.  Technical things such as what the difference is between hard-drive storage capacity and RAM capacity are things I can understand the lay person being ignorant on.  Asking when we might get more product in stock comes from ignorance and I am more than glad to take a brief moment to explain the limitations of our foreknowledge on such matters.  It's not stupidity, a lack of intelligence, it's just a lack of the knowledge.  We are all born ignorant on most things, the culturally accepted names for different colors, shapes, objects, and so forth, but we grow as others teach us.  It isn't shameful to be ignorant.  To be insane, however, may be.

Insanity is a spectrum of behaviors that are abnormal and outside the range of what is considered socially accepted levels of normal.  Someone becoming a danger to themselves or others may be seen as insanity.  Someone how has a different worldview, theology, sexuality or other differences are sometimes seen as insane by close-minded individuals.  Someone who has a mental disorder may be seen as insane, though most professionals prefer to call them psychosis or psychotic episodes, though the lay person is far more blunt in that regard.  Some work on the insanity defense to get out of some measure of punishment for criminal acts, sometimes legitimate, though often not.  The best definition for insanity that I've heard, however, is often attributed to Albert Einstein:  "Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."  Now, this quotation may in fact have an earlier origin, which was itself quoted by Einstein, or misattributed to him as having said, but the point remains, it sufficiently summarizes the issue of those that are insane.  I regularly get people calling my work looking for a particular product that either we do not carry whatsoever, or that we are out of stock on and have no truck to unload that day.  These people will sometimes call on products we do not carry several times in the same week or even in the same day, and even more insipid are those that have been told we do carry something but that it would be best to call back in two days as we don't have a truck to unload that day.  These people are insane, and some exhibit other signs of their insanity in a manner that has been medically diagnosed already.  Most, however, seem to think either they are being lied to, or that perhaps it will change if they keep calling.  The difference between ignorance and insanity, dear readers, is up to you and I.  Do we learn from our mistakes and the mistakes of others, or do we continue an unending cycle?

This revamped blog will be my journey over a multitude of subjects dissecting these things and showing which they exhibit, and how one may rectify either situation.  Until next time, catch you all on the flipside.