Terran Franklin

Just to see if this program still workd

Any Muslim who thinks that anyone participating in any Drawing Mohammad day is akin to shitting on his grave, and deems that person a target of an assassination hit, has got to be the most thin-skinned melodramatic butthurt asshole I might ever hear about, and I pray to Allah that anyone who tries it gets shot dead in the process so that Mr. Peace Be Upon Him himself can flick you the bird and make you his bitch.  And I’m not even a Muslim.

Yes, Anwar al-Awlaki, I’m talking to you.  I just hope I don’t have to talk to all of Islam in the process.

This is the Internet.  Nothing is sacred.

Nothing makes a company more evil than suing their own fans for being fans.  That’s why I don’t buy Music CDs and consider the RIAA a bunch of pedophiles.  It’s why I say, if you don’t want people to make fan-works of your movie or comic book, don’t fucking make the movie or comic at all.  It’s why I use the Creative Commons license exclusively because I want people to make fan-works of my stuff—and plan to publish one such fan-work as part of the Scarlet PI cannon.

And it’s also why Disney isn’t exactly hammering down Cory Doctorow’s ass for his own Disney-themed “Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom.”  They won’t exactly authorize it in the way they did the Kingdom Keepers series, but they accept it as a humorous and flattering take on Walt Disney World set in a futuristic setting.  I think—or at least I hope—they consider the same thing to Scarlet PI.  I’ve even mentioned this concern to various Disney fans and they pretty much say the same thing:  That I should be okay because I show Disney in a positive light.  Granted, the light is in the backstage areas and some of it is bent a bit (“Scarlet, Captain Sparrow’s drunk again in Adventureland!”) but it’s not demeaning or debasing to the company or the product they made.  In that light, they’re pretty much letting me go.  (And my offer still stands, I’d love to have Scarlet PI done in an more official setting, working with the company.)

There’s another company that apparently feels the same way.

Link:  http://kotaku.com/5585802/nintendo-doesnt-want-to-criminalize-obsessed-fans

Some would say that Nintendo is plagued with Mario, Zelda, and Pokemon fan activities, some of them could be as elaborate as the original works themselves.  So much so that some people wondered what the company’s official position is on them.  In fact, I could see someone in the referred Shareholders Meeting going, “Don’t your lawyers know how to use a fucking phone?” in a drunken doggerel voice while sodomizing the pre-teen girl they’re berating like a gangsta pimp for the audacity of watching Justin Bebier on someone’s YouTube site.  (Who let that RIAA asshole into the room?  Link, Bouncer Duty!)

Nintendo president Satoru Iwata, answered with pure class in my book:

As the principle, please understand that the question is regarding a rather delicate issue to which no one can perhaps identify a clear-cut criterion. Of course, we cannot say that we can give tacit approval to any and all the activities which threaten our intellectual properties. But on the other hand, it would not be appropriate if we treated people who did something based on affection for Nintendo, as criminals. It is true that some expressions are detrimental enough to diminish the dignity of our intellectual properties, and others destroy our intellectual properties’ world-views by connecting them with something not based on fact. We think one of the criteria for deciding how to respond is whether the expression in question socially diminishes the dignity or value of our intellectual properties or not. Of course, it is very hard to have a blanket standard as this problem involves many complex elements that are very difficult to judge.

In these meanings, we cannot say OK to any and all such activities and, at the same time, it is not feasible for us to immediately respond to each small issue of this nature every time. However, these days an individual can easily transmit information through the Internet. Hearing your question today, as we cannot find these problems only by ourselves, we feel that a kind of contact window should be set up so that people can somehow report to us any inappropriate uses of Nintendo’s intellectual properties which diminish their dignities or values, so that we can respond appropriately.

(Emphasis added by Kotaku and Doubled by me)

See companies, this is how you do it.  As long as they’re not invoking Rule 34 or dragging people’s face into the dirt, don’t think of it as copyright infringement; think of is as free advertising.  Especially when the fans take the time and the consideration to link back to the company.  This is what I mean when I previously say that the Culture needs to be Libra—Free as in Speech—if not entirely Gratis—Free as in Beer.  Nintendo knows that if they squelch fan activities—all those fan web sites, fiction, costumes, and what not—to the point that the public would be worried about doing more than just watching the official movies or playing the official games, they might find themselves groping for people who would want to follow their narrow path of bring consumers.  These Nintendo fans are the company’s loyal—very loyal—customer base, and these need to be tended to and cared for if they’re going to keep on buying those motion sensing controllers and Metroid games created by the guys who make Ninja Gaiden.  You welcome their actions when they’re making fan pages so that you won’t have to deal with them putting up burn sites.  And if you criminalize fan activity, they will turn and burn you.

Mr. President, I made efforts in this blog to ensure you get a fair shake, but I have to side with the detractors in this one.  You really need to rethink what you’re doing with NASA.  This could really be the stained dress of this decade in my mind.  If you don’t turn from your current intentions, no matter how well intended they are, you might not be getting my vote in 2012:

Link:  http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/07/05/nasa-chief-frontier-better-relations-muslims/

In recent weeks, One of the admins of the TV Tropes site, of which I have a positive relationship with, found some of their pages way too negative and vitriolic, and decided to at first delete the pages, and then set up a cleaned—and locked—version of the above pages.  One such example would be Christian Chandler, of Sonichu fame.  Or rather infamy, more like it.  I’ve discussed him before.

Here’s an example of the previous version, as saved on one of the several sites (some fall into varying levels of burn pages) devoted to this psudo-gentleman.

And here’s the current TV Tropes article.

As some of you would expect, most of the people making the edits to the TV Tropes went into full on shit-throwing-monkey mode, decrying that Tv Tropes is becoming too sanitized and unfunny, that they have the right to dislike and hate something, and even invoking Goodwin’s Law by linking Fast Eddie to Joesph Stalin.  All in all, there was a lot of people acting like they’re twelve on the internet.

And maybe people like Fast Eddie don’t want to associate himself with people who act like they’re twelve on the internet, hmm?

I sided with the admins using the same principle as to why I stomp out flames and trolls in my DA page:  There are places for you to go throw your crap around and hate on CWC, Justin Bieber, The Shrub, Ba Rock, Twilight…me, oh dear lord oh so amio…but it’s just not appropriate anywhere else.  As what I posted in the comments pages.

This is not Wikipedia, I’ll give you that, but this is not Encyclopedia Dramatica either. TV Tropes is not, and should never become, a burn page. It’s here mostly to list the many tropes a Television Show, Book, Movie, or even a crappy web comic like the crap I made in the past, and describe each trope in depth. That’s where the draw is, and that’s why people waste their lives away reading this site. And if someone actually progresses as a human being, if not by talent, TV Tropes is not beyond putting that in there. Hell, they’d do the same to CWC if—HORRORS!—he suddenly woke up to be a normal fully functioning adult man who finds a well-paying job, moves out of his parents, and actually socialized like a normal human being at evenings. (After taking a shower, of course)

I’m not saying that you have the right to dislike, or even hate, something. It’s a free country. I’m saying that there are places on the internet to vent your dislikes and hatred. TV Tropes is not that place. The Internet _has_ a Hate Machine, but the Internet is not _the_ Hate Machine. I call for the civility to realize the difference.

It’s just a classic example of the right to throw your fist ends at the right for someone else to have his face unmarked.  Freedom of speech also means the right not to hear someone flaming on anyone else or see a burn page.  Or for that matter, have a turd of a comment get plopped on someone’s Art Archive page without that person daring to pitch it out with the ‘Hide Comment’ like, or get on Youtube and be able to watch some vids without some asshole hacking the site with evil code in the comments.  I’m not here puffing up my ego or railing against the trolls, I just don’t want to see them in my face all the time.  And I’m not the only one who feels this way.