This April, a new comic book adaptation will hit the big screen. Mark Millar’s Kick-Ass is an absolutely brutal tale of powerless child vigilantes. That’s the lead in, now watch the trailer… if you aren’t easily offended by violence.

I absolutely can’t wait for the protesters!

One of my favorite advocacy groups, the Electronic Frontier Foundation has launched a new website called Copyright Watch. The site allows users to see the latest news in copyright law. The effort is to inform the general public about the threat that looming copyright laws poses to individual freedom, and maintaining an open Internet.

In other related news, here’s a quote from BoingBoing for you… I can’t improve upon their words:

“Two US Senators, Bernie Sanders (I-VI) and Sherrod Brown (D-OH), have written to the US Trade Representative demanding that the text of the secret Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement be made public. This is the treaty that allows for criminal sanctions against noncommercial file-sharers, demands border-searches of laptop hard-drives and personal media players and phones for pirated material, requires ISPs to spy on their users, and gives movie and record companies the right to take whole households off the Internet with unsubstantiated allegations of piracy.”*

This secret copyright treaty is pretty black and white to me; we must crush it. The consequences of this treaty are unimaginably dreadful.

For more information you can visit the following links:

The Geek Whisperer: Scary Secret Copyright Treaty: From Music to Purses, This is Bad News

Copyright Watch

The Electronic Frontier Foundation

* BoingBoing: Two US senators demand publication of secret copyright treaty

To followup yesterday’s post, Copyright, teh Internets & the Future, here’s a bit on the secret international copyright treaty known as the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA).

ACTA is an international copyright treaty that is being negotiated in secret; although a lot of details have been leaked. The sections regarding the Internet are obscenely draconian; three strikes and you lose your right to connect to the Internet for a year. If this passes, I want that applied to major media conglomerates as well. Three misuses of intellectual property and the whole company loses it’s connection.

This video explains the treaty as it exists today, it’s origins, and it’s potential impact. This isn’t the best video, but it does the job. You are on the Internet, and you are reading a blog, so this treaty will harm you. You should watch the video, don’t be ignorant on this issue.

Make no mistake about it, ACTA will impact everyone. We all handle intellectual property on a daily basis, and current copyright law just doesn’t make sense in a post-Internet world (see yesterday’s post for more on that).

How can the US Government participate in secret negotiations for a treaty that will directly impact so many American’s? This isn’t some right wing thing pro business thing, this is the Obama Administration (not that I care for either side, but some of you do).

Current copyright law turns everyone into a criminal.

Kill ACTA. Reform copyright law.

Copyright law has fascinated me since high school. I read a lot about it, I understand it (fairly well), I have a lot of informed opinions on it, but I have never been able to articulate my ideas on the subject in the way that I am confident.

Fortunately, law professor and Creative Commons founder Larry Lessig does it for me. His presentation perfectly explains Copyright law, then he breaks it down in ways that make so much sense. So much more sense then I could ever make. Not only that, the presentation uses PowerPoint in fun ways.

This isn’t short, but if you have any curiosity or interest in Copyright law and how it impacts you, watch this video. If you don’t have a lot of time, watch the first twelve minutes, and the last five; you won’t regret it.

“People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people.” ~V

I’m not ashamed to admit that I need to turn my brain off, and just take in some mindless television for an hour or two a week; I find it incredibly relaxing. Without fail, Castle always fulfills my compulsive need for something easy to watch. It’s not a cerebral show, it’s never hard to follow, and you don’t have to remember much of anything from week-to-week. However, the characters are amusing, and the murders stories never cease to hold my interest.

Anyway, this week Castle had a Halloween episode that seriously pandered to the sci-fi & comic geek crowds. The show opened with star Nathan Fillion, formerly of Joss Whedon’s sci-fi classics Firefly and Serenity, suit up in his Captain Malcolm Reynolds garb, bust into his living-room while drawing his pistol, and striking a one of his famous poses. I was amused.

They followed up with a generally geeky episode filled with Buffy references, comic book art, vampires, and the pretty female detective costar (Stana Katic) drawing a distinction between comic writer / artist Frank Miller’s work with publishers Dark Horse Comics & Epic Comics… It was a nice homage to Fillion’s past, and (what I’m assuming are) the Firefly fans that watch Castle simply because Fillion is in the show.

There’s too much going on today to just cover one topic…

• Happy birthday to TGW contributer Jason (TheLisnakFactor). He is now the official TGW tech question responder guy, so send him some questions!
• Happy 10th birthday Dreamcast; the defunct Sega gaming console. Oh Dreamcast… your graphics were so good, controller was freaking odd, and your games were unfathomably easy to pirate. Thems were the good ole days.

The wire coming out of the back of the controller was never a good idea.

• Steve Jobs and the folks at Apple announced a lot of iPod related things that didn’t excite me enough to write something original.
• DC Comics is going through some drastic changes… really it’s a corporate enema.

The Good

The new Batman: Arkham Asylum is easily the best comic book/ video game adaptation released to date. The story is interesting (written by legendary Batman Scribe Paul Dini); the voice acting is mind-blowing (most of the voices are provided by veterans of the 1990’s Batman the Animated Series), and the fighting is fluid.

By providing a simple attack/ defend method, the game designers created a superb fighting system that is easy to learn, but takes some art to master. I also love the variety of ways you can take down thugs… which is also my favorite part of the game. The planning that is necessary to take down a room full of armed thugs on hard is certainly challenging. One room in particular where the Joker has seven armed thugs wire the ceiling with bombs (essentially removing your ability to go vertical) took me a number of tries to triumph. I can’t remember the last time I had to work so hard to conquer a puzzle in a game; it was intellectually refreshing.

The scenes where you get fear gassed by Scarecrow, and have to escape your own madness, are really trippy and quite cool.

The Not So Good

My only substantive complaint is regarding the boss battles. On one hand, I have to give them some credit because no two boss battles are alike. On the other, they never made me feel like I was Baman beating the hell out of my crazy, ostentatious rogues. The boss battles were never as enthralling as the rest of the game.

One other graphic design issue bugs me just a bit. In cut scenes, Batman looks like he’s sweating buckets. This is probably because the game was created using the Unreal Engine. It’s not a huge issue, but it’s something I noticed.

The Ugly

Nada

Bottom-line

I typically don’t feel the need to complete all of the side challenges in a game, but something about the Riddler’s taunting has compelled me to go back and finish answering his riddles… so I’m not done with Batman: Arkham Asylum.

All-in-all, this game is a triumph. It looks good, is fun to play, and it gives you a reason to play some more after the main story is over. What more could you want out of a game?

Over the coming year, I’m sure we will see a variety of good and bad changes as a consequence.

"Four billion dollars... Muwhahaha Muwhahaha!"

I wish I owned Marvel Stock today.

Love it -

Thanks to G4’s Attack of the Show for sharing. It’s a geeky guilty pleasure on an evening when I am really out of it.