Poor Mojo's Newswire

Taking a page from the University of Southern California, UH is requiring film students to sign a lengthy agreement assigning copyright in their student works to the university. If students won’t sign, they are kicked out of their film production classes. If they do sign, UH gets exclusive rights to their work—they can’t sell it, rent it, show or display it, copy it or make “derivative” works from it. What is worse, UH won’t even promise to identify the student as the author of the work. As Professor Larry Lessig points out, this theory makes students into little more than artistic sharecroppers.

According to UH, it’s a simple quid pro quo—copyright assignment in exchange for education: “The University is providing you with a valuable opportunity to learn, grow and create during the course. Only a portion of the cost of providing courses is covered by your tuition and fees. Universities commonly use earnings from the licensing or sale of intellectual property to help cover their operating costs.” UH has also said that it will use its rights to protect UH’s reputation—in other words, to make sure students don’t go submitting works to festivals, posting them on YouTube, sending them to prospective employers, and so on, without UH permission. If any university tried to control the release and distribution of a professor’s latest book, such a policy would immediately be recognized for the censorship that it is. Too bad that recognition doesn’t extend to students.

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The gist of it is, members pay a hefty fee at the door to be allowed to... have sex with the animal of their choice - which is subsequently killed, cooked and served to the violator and his party for dinner!

CBS spokesman Dana McClintock called Rather's complaints "old news" and said the lawsuit filed Wednesday in state Supreme Court in Manhattan was "without merit." Former CBS parent company Viacom Inc. had no comment.

The lawsuit claims Rather was made a "scapegoat" to placate the Bush administration after questions arose about the story, which concerned President Bush's military service during the Vietnam War.

It is hard to know what to believe of the prisoner’s claims. At times he has declared his innocence and then later confessed to being a willing criminal. He mentions he has three children, later the number is four. His passport lists his name as Johan Ariffin, but Malaysian authorities doubt that’s his real name. His age is noted as 44 (streaks of gray in his black hair make that plausible) and his residence as Batam, an Indonesian island just south of Singapore. Men like him often come from Batam, a guard says.

Though his jailers remain unsure who he is, they know exactly what he is: lanun (pronounced la-noon). When asked for a direct English equivalent, an interpreter explains that there is none, that it is a word freighted with many layers of culture and history. The short, imperfect answer is: The prisoner is a pirate.

The 27-year-old shouted "this is YouTube material" as he degraded Christine Lakinski, 50, who had fallen ill, magistrates heard.

Miss Lakinski, who suffered a number of medical conditions, died from natural causes, an inquest found.

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Anderson had smoked a cannabis joint and been drinking when he and two friends spotted her.

He tried to rouse her by throwing a bucket of water over her, before urinating on her and covering her with shaving foam. The incident was filmed on a mobile phone.