Diabetes Auction and Your Weekend Quiz

[jimhines]

Every year, author Brenda Novak holds an online auction to raise money for diabetes research. She's aiming to raise over $300,000 this year. As someone who's been shooting up with insulin for more than 10 years, I heartily support this. My father is also diabetic, and the genetic component means my boy has a higher chance than average of getting

Comments

[temporus]

I should think, that so long as the author has not sold those rights elsewhere, there is no reason that the author could not voluntarily place a work into the public domain.

[temporus]

Hmmm...I hadn't given thought to the way the law was worded. I can see the instance where an author might claim to have released the work into the public domain, but then the heirs to the estate would want to claim the rights. And since the rights do extend after death, that's certainly a possibility.

Of course, I also come up against the thought that authors are expected to defend their copyright or lose it. Which would imply, that if you wanted to let something go into the public domain, couldn't you just not defend your copyright, at which point it would become public domain?

[jimhines]

Re: the defend it or lose it, is that copyright or trademark? I know you're required to defend trademark...

[temporus]

It's quite possible that I'm conflating the two concepts. However, if so I'm not the only one, because I've heard that repeated many times. In fact, I've heard it used as the explanation of why some authors make heavy efforts to go after copyright pirates.

[mizkit]

Every time I see your daughter in that icon I'm agog at how much the Stepsister character looks like her. That is SO COOL!

[jimhines]

I love my artist. I'm still amazed he was actually willing and able to do that :-)

[mizkit]

I love your artist too. :)

[merriehaskell]

Currently, US works are copyright when the item is "fixed in a tangible medium of expression." I supposed, technically, an author can't release into the public domain, but with Creative Commons to aid in the explicit licensing of works, it's for all intents and purposes possible. You'd have a hard time trying to enforce your copyright in a court of law after having released under a CC license, I suspect.

(edited to add: depending on the rights granted in the license, obviously. But the CC base license is "attribution"--so no one should ever be able to steal your attribution, even if you allow them to make money off your work. But you could sue for violations of the "non-commercial" license--and people have. There was a case related to Flickr, in which a picture was released under a non-commercial, attribution license, and Virgin Airlines(?) used the pic in advertising, and lawsuits, lawsuits, lawsuits...)

[jimhines]

I know I'd probably look like an idiot trying to defend my copyright after posting it with a CC license, but I don't know that this affects the legality.

[merriehaskell]

I don't either. Is there a test case out there? I doubt it...

Copyright is such a gray area, though, I'm not sure there's a right answer. Sure, there's the law, and all, but then there's how much the law is enforceable, and that's the real limit of copyright law.

experimental treatment

[bigherman]

My boyfriend's dad, who has type I diabetes, got stem cells harvested from his bone marrow injected into his pancreas, and he's reduced the amount of insulin he has to use by about 80%. Of course, you have to go to South America because they won't do this in the U.S., but...

Re: experimental treatment

[jimhines]

I know they've been doing a fair amount of work with stem cells, trying to regrow the insulin-producing cells of the pancreas. I'm not current on the cutting edge of that research, but it seems like it's a race whether they'll come up with the biological replacement or the mechanical one first. (Insulin pumps with built-in glucose meters that are able to respond and manage blood sugar.)

Either way, things have progressed incredibly since my father was diagnosed, and I'm hopeful that if my son comes down with it, by that time the disease will have been demoted to little more than a nuisance.