Leettaschmidt

People at the Copyright Office seem to get mad at me every time I suggest that the Copyright Office is captured by Hollywood, and pointing out how top officials there all seem to bounce back and forth between the Copyright Office and Hollywood.

That's not to say there aren't some good people there, because there are. But the organization is dominated by former (and, if the past is any indication, soon to be again), lobbyists and lawyers of the biggest copyright abusers on the planet. So it's difficult to take the Office seriously as a steward for the public good (as they are supposed to be), when it's currently headed by the former top lawyer at IFPI, who, before that, was the top IP lawyer for Time Warner. And, when she then decides to hire Disney's top "IP lawyer" to become General Counsel of the Copyright Office (as has just been announced), it becomes really difficult not to be cynical.

This is what regulatory capture looks like.

But even worse, actions like this are why the public doesn't believe in copyright. Over and over again all we see is abuse of copyright, and then the government puts the same people who have abused copyright in charge of copyright at the Copyright Office, it makes the public cynical and (reasonably) distrustful of the intentions of the Copyright Office. That's disappointing, as there are plenty of people who have expertise in copyright law who would be great for the Copyright Office. But, for some reason, they never get hired into the top jobs unless they've spent time working for one of the giant Hollywood or recording industry organizations.

Whoopi Goldberg, co-host of ABC’s “The View,” set off a firestorm when she insisted on Jan. 31, 2022 that the Holocaust was “not about race.” Hands outstretched, she went on to describe the genocide as a conflict between “two white groups of people.”

As someone who writes and teaches about racial identity, I was struck by the firmness of Goldberg’s initial claim, her clumsy retraction and apologies, and the heated public reactions.

Her apology tour on her own show the next day, on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” and on Twitter raised more questions about her views on race, antisemitism and the Holocaust. Goldberg also seemed unaware of the non-Jewish victims of the Nazis. By the end of the week, the president of ABC News described Goldberg’s remarks as “wrong and hurtful” and announced that she was suspended from the show for two weeks.

How did a conversation about the controversial banning of the Holocaust graphic book “Maus” by the Tennessee Board of Education, which Goldberg opposed, turn into such a media spectacle? And what does it tell us about the social norms guiding how we talk about race and violence?

Filling the void

Sociologist and American Civil Liberties Union attorney Jonathan Markovitz defines “racial spectacles” as mass media events surrounding some racial incident that is passionately debated before dying down.

Think of Colin Kaepernick taking a knee or Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s apology to the Cherokee Nation after taking a DNA test. Markovitz argues that the lack of ongoing public conversation about racism fuels these events, leaving Americans to react intermittently to shocking violence and salacious confessions. While it’s not bad that these events get people talking about race and racism, Markovitz worries that what is learned is limited because emotions tend to run high and these moments quickly fade from the news cycle.

In the absence of sustained national dialogue, shows like “The View” and comedians like Goldberg can easily become lightning rods. The American public often overestimates their ability to unpack complicated social issues. Are they public intellectuals or entertainers? Critics might also ask why someone like Goldberg, who has already demonstrated odd thinking about racial identity and a willingness to defend racist acts, would have such a huge platform in the first place. But this isn’t just about Whoopi Goldberg.

Let’s clear up a few points: Race is an elastic social category, not a fixed biological one; Jewish identity and experience are not synonymous with whiteness; and Jewish people have historically been treated as a distinct racial group. The Holocaust was the systematic genocide of some 6 million Jews from 1941 to 1945, fueled by the Nazis’ belief that they were an inferior race. Other victims included Poles, Roma, gay men, lesbians and others.

The Holocaust is one of the most extreme and tragic examples of what sociologists Michel Omi and Howard Winant referred to as “racial projects.” In their work on racial formation, they used that term to describe how racial categories are formed, transformed and destroyed over time. In other words, the fact the Jewish people themselves may disagree over whether they are a racial or ethnic group does not undo their long history of being categorized and marginalized as such.

Still, it is unsurprising that an American, perhaps especially a Black one like Goldberg or myself, would think that race is about skin color given how it plays out in our lives. As a graduate student studying racial violence and collective memory, I was stunned to learn how ideas about racial difference varied wildly across societies and how those ideas could morph within the same society over time.

I learned that race is a social idea that is propped up by observable traits, only one of which is skin color. The racialization of Jewish people may not be about complexion, but physical markers are still often used to differentiate and stereotype the Jewish body.

[Interested in science headlines but not politics? Or just politics or religion? The Conversation has newsletters to suit your interests.]

It is also important to understand ongoing antisemitism in the U.S. and efforts to deny that the Holocaust even happened. Goldberg’s remarks were clearly the sort of “excitable speech” that gender theorist Judith Butler writes about, disorienting us by bringing violent histories to bear on us today. The way we talk about the past matters – as does the way people are held accountable for misrepresenting it – because so much of it helps to explain the contours of existing conflict.

Another lesson

At the same time, dismissing Goldberg’s comments and the backlash would mean missing an opportunity to appreciate what can result. For example, in light of the recent controversy, the Anti-Defamation League announced it will revise its definition of racism to include both race and ethnicity.

In this moment, people are talking about Jewish identity, racism and a violent history we’re meant to “never forget.” But they’re also talking about Blackness.

What can we make of the frenzied rush to chastise and publicly ridicule a Black woman for talking about race in the wrong way? On the one hand, this is similar to other celebrities condemned for racist speech whose apologies get scrutinized.

Yet, the Goldberg affair feels different to me. It reignites a recurring suspicion that Black people, while oppressed, suffer from twisted bigoted racial thinking – that Black people are not innocent victims after all. When a Black celebrity makes racist remarks, suspicions reawaken that perhaps it is a collective failing. This sort of projection of individual acts onto an entire group as if it were a shared trait is anti-Black.

Yes, many of us think Goldberg got it horribly wrong. And yes, her apologies made matters worse. There are better ways to think and talk about race and racism.

But observers shouldn’t be surprised when these conversations go awry, considering how little time is spent openly having them in the first place.

Robyn Autry does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Smog-ridden cities. Endless war. Water so polluted it cannot be drunk. Crop failure. Acid rain. A pandemic of antibiotic-resistant diseases. Declining life expectancy and human fertility. Endangered bees, collapsing agriculture. Mass extinctions have finished off most birds and fish. Only the wealthiest can afford quality organic food, while the poor subsist on lab-produced junk (with added tranquilisers). A celebrity president peddles misinformation in tweet-like slogans. A disillusioned academic tries in vain to bring about change, while his followers block roads and resort to terrorism.

This is not a bad dream version of recent climate change headlines. This is the dark vision in the 50-year-old dystopian novel, The Sheep Look Up, by John Brunner. A British author, Brunner was one of a handful of writers who were early advocates of environmental activism.

No more heroes

Experimental in style, bleak in outlook, the novel is short on heroes and villains. The chapters follow 12 months in which the United States gradually collapses as unrestricted pollution wipes out the water and food supply. Some of its best lines go to Austin Train, an environmentalist who attempts to persuade others that that they must act now to protect human life. But throughout the novel he is mostly ignored.

The book is a reminder that the courage of activists such as Greta Thunberg and Vanessa Nakate should not be ridiculed or ignored, but celebrated for speaking truth to power. All of us must heed their warnings and act now to reduce our impact on global heating. Western countries have become too dependent on outsourcing our pollution to far away lands. It’s time to stop outsourcing our dissent.

Read more: Plants are flowering a month earlier – here's what it could mean for pollinating insects

Failure to act

Brunner wrote his novel the same year that the Club of Rome, an international group of policymakers, economists and business leaders, published their influential report The Limits to Growth. Using computer projections, it warned that the planet lacked the resources to sustain current projections of human consumption and growth.

From the early 1960s there were signs that human activity was starting to be linked to environmental damage. Author Rachel Carson wrote her acclaimed Silent Spring in 1962 – and in 1965 the US science advisory committee report wrote to US president, Lyndon Johnson, about the dangers of air pollution.

Brunner was surprised that more people weren’t alarmed. The Sheep Look Up warns about what happens when people fail to act against an unfolding catastrophe. While the present might be endurable, the future will not be, as demonstrated in the recent scenarios forecast in the most recent IPCC report.

As one of Brunner’s characters observed: “This is the future, unless we prevent it.”

Fiction’s influencers

Some early readers drew a bleak analysis that environmental activism was futile, but many read it as a call to action. Brunner used sci-fi as a form of social and political criticism, something that was fairly new at the time.

Abstract projections about emissions, droughts and pollutions can be hard to grasp. But research shows that fictional narratives and metaphors have a significant role in helping us understand complex social issues.

Storytelling helps us recognise the consequences of our decisions to act or not act, as we follow the impact of choices made by characters.

Around the world, psychologists and clinicians are now observing a condition called “climate anxiety” or “eco-anxiety”. As the name suggests, it’s marked by anxiety, panic attacks, depression and feelings of anger and betrayal. A recent global survey of 10,000 young people found that 75% felt that the future was frightening and that 59% were very or extremely worried about climate change.

But what some researchers and campaigners have also found is that anxiety reduces when people get together and focus on collective action.

Great storytelling is all about revealing the choices that lie before us. And this is all part of Brunner’s technique. It connects the great 20th-century dystopias of George Orwell and Aldous Huxley to the modern-day climate fiction of Margaret Atwood and Amitav Ghosh.

What next?

Brunner’s dire predictions have not completely come to pass. Clearly there have been dramatic and dangerous environmental changes, but also steps forward in knowledge. This year marks the 50th anniversary of the United Nations Environment Programme, and the 30th anniversary of the Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit.

There have been some important achievements in curbing pollution, from the Montreal Protocol to the 2015 Paris Agreement. And around the world, voices young and old are now demanding urgent, systemic change, something that might have surprised Brunner.

Dan Taylor does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

There is a growing global body positivity movement to combat the stigma and prejudice that overweight and obese individuals face. Some of this stigma arises from the perception that obese individuals are unhealthy.

However, weight is only one of the metrics that medical professionals use to assess overall health. In fact, some studies have demonstrated that a significant number of obese people are metabolically healthy, leading to the contention that one could be healthy at any size. This phenomenon is referred to as metabolically healthy obesity (MHO). Research is now starting to explore what this means.

A person who is MHO has healthy blood pressure, normal levels of blood lipids (cholesterol and triglycerides) and normal blood sugar. Having high values of one or more of these measures significantly increases one’s risk for cardiovascular disease.

It has been proposed that metabolically healthy obese individuals might be protected against obesity-related diseases. The extent of this protection has been controversial within the scientific community, and this is partly because we still don’t have a standardized definition of MHO.

So, over the past few years, researchers have gone to work to find out who can be defined as MHO, and to what extent people with MHO are protected from chronic disease.

Emerging consensus

Several large population studies have been initiated towards this end. So far, results show that, indeed, more rigorous definitions of MHO are needed. This can be achieved by including other measures of health such as insulin resistance and blood markers of inflammation. Insulin resistance is when the body does not respond well to the insulin hormone that helps to take up sugar from the bloodstream for use as a fuel for energy. This leads to elevated blood sugar and the consequent health complications.

An emerging consensus has been that although MHO individuals show some protection from chronic disease, they still seem to be significantly less protected than those who are metabolically healthy and lean.

The fact that people with MHO still have a relatively higher disease risk led some researchers to suggest that the term “metabolically healthy obesity” could be a misnomer. Moreover, a majority of the MHO population tends to progress towards “metabolically unhealthy obesity” or MUO over a number of years, leading to enhanced risk of diabetes, cardiovascular disease and other disorders linked with obesity.

This leads to another question: is MHO truly protective over an entire lifetime, or is it just a question of time before MUO sets in, making MHO a transient state?

Protective factors

One factor to consider that might differentiate metabolically healthy versus unhealthy obesity is how fat is distributed in the body. A genetic predisposition for depositing fat under the skin, called subcutaneous fat, seems to play a protective role.

People with this predisposition are mostly premenopausal women who accumulate subcutaneous body fat in the hips rather than the waist (pear-shaped). They are better protected against diabetes and cardiovascular disease compared to people whose body fat is located more in the abdomen (apple-shaped).

In contrast, obese individuals with a high waist circumference show excessive fat deposition in the abdomen and a pro-inflammatory state that leads to insulin resistance, which can be a precursor to Type 2 diabetes.

Researchers have also looked at the lifestyle habits that differentiate MHO from MUO individuals to see if development of metabolically unhealthy obesity can be prevented.

One factor is exercise. People with MHO are involved in regular physical activity to a greater extent than MUO individuals. The other is diet. Although dietary studies show mixed results, it seems that MHO people consume healthier diets such as the Mediterranean diet, which is rich in fish, fruits, vegetables, whole-grain products, legumes, extra virgin olive oil and nuts.

Healthy diets provide anti-inflammatory and antioxidant benefits that help achieve a healthy metabolic profile. Indeed, of the MHO population, those who follow the Mediterranean diet seem to have lower mortality rates. Adopting these healthy lifestyle habits could help prevent the trajectory of metabolically healthy obesity moving towards metabolically unhealthy obesity over the course of a lifetime.

Is metabolically healthy obesity real?

So is MHO real and does it protect against disease? There isn’t a yes or no answer yet. The more we learn about it, the more nuance is injected into the concept that one can be perfectly healthy at any size. Based on the information we have so far, only a narrow segment of obese individuals are without risk of developing obesity-related chronic diseases.

We also know a lot more about their characteristics. They have less abdominal fat and more subcutaneous fat. They have less insulin resistance, less inflammation and a metabolically healthy cardiovascular profile. They also have healthy lifestyle habits such as regular exercise and a healthy diet. It seems that genetics play a role as well.

We can expect more insight from major international population studies and clinical trials that are currently underway. But in the meantime, the age-old advice holds truer than ever: regular physical activity and a healthy diet are crucial to maintain health and longevity.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

The Knight Parade is an annual celebration of Tampa civic pride. Hosted by the Krewe of the Knights of Sant’ Yago, the Knight Parade has been held in Ybor City each year since 1974. The parade’s rich heritage attracts families, and adults young and old alike to join in the revelry.

A true Tampa Bay tradition, the Knight Parade draws more than 100,000 spectators each year. It’s sometimes referred to as the “Sant´Yago Illuminated Knight Parade” and mistakenly called the “Night Parade” because it’s held at night.

The Knight Parade has been a tradition since 1974

It is always held on a Saturday evening in February, typically a few weeks after the Gasparilla Pirate Invasion. The Knight Parade, as well as other fundraising events, helps raise funds for the Krewe of the Knights of Sant’ Yago Education Foundation, which has provided nearly $3 million in scholarships for local students.

This year’s event will take place on February 12 at 7pm on 7th Avenue in Ybor City. You can learn more about the celebration by visiting the official event page.

Expect to see celebrities, local dignitaries, dozens of marching bands, performers and thousands of costumed participants who will toss scores of beads to the revelers and families lining the street. The Knight Parade, presented by MOR and co-sponsored by the City of Tampa, is a free, family-friendly event. We encourage attendees to arrive early to avoid traffic and grab dinner at one of the many wonderful restaurants in Ybor City. Then claim your spot along the parade route.

See the full parade route on the Knight Parade website.

What to read next:

• PHOTOS Inside the Esports Players Club
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The post The Knight Parade, a tradition since 1974, returns to Historic Ybor City appeared first on That's So Tampa.

Mindfulness is seemingly everywhere these days. A Google search I conducted in January 2022 for the term “mindfulness” resulted in almost 3 billion hits. The practice is now routinely offered in workplaces, schools, psychologists’ offices and hospitals all across the country.

Most of the public enthusiasm for mindfulness stems from the reputation it has for reducing stress. But scholars and researchers who work on mindfulness, and the Buddhist tradition itself, paint a more complex picture than does the popular media.

Medicalizing meditation

Mindfulness originated in the Buddhist practice of “anapana-sati,” a Sanskrit phrase that means “awareness of breath.” Buddhist historian Erik Braun has traced the origins of the contemporary popularity of meditation to colonial Burma – modern-day Myanmar – in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Meditation, which was practiced almost exclusively inside monasteries until then, was introduced to the general public in a simplified format that was easier to learn.

The gradual spread of meditation from that time to the present is a surprisingly complex story.

In the U.S., meditation first started to be practiced among diverse communities of spiritual seekers as early as the 19th century. It was adopted by professional psychotherapists in the early 20th century. By the 21st century, it had become a mass-marketing phenomenon promoted by celebrities such as Oprah Winfrey, Deepak Chopra and Gwyneth Paltrow.

The process of translating the Buddhist practice of meditation across cultural divides transformed the practice in significant ways. Modern meditation often has different goals and priorities than traditional Buddhist meditation. It tends to focus on stress reduction, mental health or concrete benefits in daily life instead of spiritual development, liberation or enlightenment.

A pivotal moment in this transformation was the creation of the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) protocol by Jon Kabat-Zinn, a professor of medicine at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, in 1979. The stress reduction program introduced a standardized way of teaching meditation to patients so that its health benefits could be more rigorously measured by scientists.

Research on this new kind of “medicalized” mindfulness began to gather steam in the past two decades. As of today there are over 21,000 research articles on mindfulness in the National Library of Medicine’s online database — two and a half times as many articles as have been published on yoga, tai chi and reiki combined.

Scientific evidence vs. mindfulness hype

Medical researchers themselves have had a far more measured opinion about the benefits of meditation than the popular press.

For example, a 2019 meta-analysis, which is a review of many individual scientific studies, pointed out that the evidence for the benefits of mindfulness and other meditation-based interventions has “significant limitations” and that the research has “methodological shortcomings.”

Based on their review of the scientific literature, the authors warned against falling prey to “mindfulness hype.” On the positive side, they found various forms of meditation to be more or less comparable to the conventional therapies currently used to treat depression, anxiety, chronic pain and substance use. On the other hand, they concluded that more evidence is needed before any strong claims can be made regarding treatment of conditions such as attention disorders, PTSD, dysregulated eating or serious mental illnesses.

More troubling, some researchers are even beginning to suggest that a certain percentage of patients may experience negative side effects from the practice of meditation, including increased anxiety, depression or, in extreme cases, even psychosis. While the causes of these side effects are not yet fully understood, it is evident that for some patients, therapeutic meditation is far from the panacea it is often made out to be.

Putting mindfulness back into context

As a historian of the relationship between Buddhism and medicine, I argue that mindfulness can be a beneficial practice for many people, but that we should understand the broader context in which it developed and has been practiced for centuries. Mindfulness is one small part of a diverse range of healing techniques and perspectives the Buddhist tradition has developed and maintained over many centuries.

In a recent book, I have traced the global history of the many ways that the religion has contributed to the development of medicine over the past 2,400 years or so. Buddhist tradition advocates countless contemplations, devotional practices, herbal remedies, dietary advice and ways of synchronizing the human body with the environment and the seasons, all of which are related to healing.

These ideas and practices are enormously influential around the world as well as in Buddhist communities in the U.S. Such interventions have been particularly visible during the COVID-19 pandemic – for example, through the medical charity of major international Buddhist organizations as well as through health advice given by high-profile monastics such as the Dalai Lama.

Buddhism has always had a lot to say about health. But perhaps the most significant of its many contributions is its teaching that our physical and mental well-being are intricately intertwined – not only with each other, but also with the health and vitality of all living beings.

Medicalized meditation is now a self-help commodity that generates over US$1 billion per year, leading some critics to label it “McMindfulness.” But placing mindfulness back into a Buddhist ethical context shows that it is not enough to simply meditate to reduce our own stress or to more effectively navigate the challenges of the modern world.

As I argue in my most recent book, Buddhist ethics asks us to look up from our meditation cushions and to look out beyond our individual selves. It asks us to appreciate how everything is interconnected and how our actions and choices influence our lives, our society and the environment. The emphasis, even while healing ourselves, is always on becoming agents of compassion, healing and well-being for the whole.

[This Week in Religion, a global roundup each Thursday. Sign up.]

Pierce Salguero does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

If you are new to copyright, there are many great guides on the internet, including this one here. However, for someone coming in with almost no understanding of how copyright works, it may not be the best place to begin.

The reason is fairly simple. Most guides, including my own, are geared toward helping people understand copyright within the context of the issues they dealing with. They aren’t meant to be complete overviews, just catch up guides for those interested in that specific topic.

If your interest in copyright is more broad, you need to be aware of the copyright circulars published by the U.S. Copyright Office. However, the circular of most interest is likely Circular 1, simply entitled Copyright Basics.

The guide is an amazingly thorough overview of copyright, written in a way to be understood by lay people and it includes nearly all of the important information one needs to know in just 10 pages and 4,000 words.

Best of all, since it was produced by the U.S. Copyright Office, which is part of the federal government, the work itself is in the public domain. This means that it can be freely copied, printed, shared, distributed without any permission from the U.S. Copyright Office.

This makes it great for classrooms, corporate environments and anywhere else where licensing for distribution might have been a problem.

In short, if you are new to copyright and looking to develop a better understanding of it, there’s no better place to start.

What it Includes

The document itself is very straightforward. It’s broken apart into multiple sections but, in the most broad terms includes the following:

• What Works Are Protected by Copyright
• What Those Protections Include and Don’t Include
• Who the Copyright Holder Is
• How Long Copyrights Lasts
• What One Can do With a Copyright-Protected Work
• Basics of Copyright Registration

If you’re either based in the United States or are interested in how copyright works in the United States, this is a great overview and it quickly dispels many of the copyright myths that still continue to plague the internet after decades.

Best of all, it’s written in plain language, making it very easy to understand, and offers references to other circulars for a deeper dive on particular topics if wanted.

As such, if all you are after is a general overview, this is likely the best place to begin.

What it Leaves Out

That said, the circular is not beyond criticism. This is especially true if you’re not interested in copyright from a U.S. perspective.

Though the circular touches on international issues some, much of the space of it is taken up with information about copyright registration. While there are definitely reasons that many creators outside the United States may want to register with the U.S. Copyright Office, it’s a fairly niche issue.

However, even when looking at it from a U.S. perspective, there are some elements missing. The largest, in my view, is any information about the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

The DMCA, which was passed in 1998, was a major revision to U.S. copyright law and, through its notice and takedown regime, is one of the most common ways individuals interact with the law. This makes it odd that there is no mention of the law (or any of its parts) in the Circular nor are there any circulars about it.

The U.S. Copyright Office does have an excellent page focused on the DMCA and provides good information there, but it’s not available in any of their circulars.

That is especially interesting since the Copyright Office operates the DMCA Agent directory, and Circular 1 was revised in September of last year.

In short, the circular is a great basic overview of copyright as it operates in the United States. But this omission is pretty glaring. Fortunately, it’s easily picked up elsewhere on the site.

Bottom Line

In the past I have been very critical of the U.S. Copyright Office, in particular the registration requirement in the United States if you want to actually file a lawsuit. It is unnecessary, no other country has it, it goes against the spirit of international treaties we are a party to and it burdens smaller creators or those that are not familiar with the requirement.

But that doesn’t mean that the U.S. Copyright Office doesn’t do many good things. These circulars are among the best things they do and Circular 1 is by far the most useful among those.

As such, if you are coming into copyright with almost no knowledge of the law and how it works, this circular is a great place to start. From there, one can easily drill down into either other circulars of more targeted interest or onto other guides in other places.

However, every journey has a first step and, for copyright, this is a great first step for nearly everyone.

The post The Best Starting Place for People New to Copyright appeared first on Plagiarism Today.

In June of 2021, Lorisia MacLeod, a librarian from the James Smith Cree Nation, published an article called “More Than Personal Communication: Templates for Citing Indigenous Elders and Knowledge Keepers,” presenting citation templates to recognize Indigenous knowledge in academia. Because both APA and MLA style guides encourage writers to cite any oral communication that does not have a written or audio recording as “personal communication,” Indigenous oral teaching gets put “on the same footing as a quick phone call, […] while even tweets are given a reference citation.” 

By using MacLeod’s templates to include a full citation in a References or Works Cited list, Indigenous oral knowledge can be “presented as an equal and valid information format alongside familiar formats like books and journals.” Lorisia has generously agreed to be interviewed for ACRLog about her work; I invite you to click the link above and read her original article as well! 

Q: In news coverage about this project, you’ve shared that you first realized the need for better citation of oral communication when you were an undergraduate studying anthropology, and that you worked with the Indigenous Student Centre at NorQuest College in Edmonton to develop templates for APA and MLA style. Tell me more about the process of creating custom citation templates. Was your institution supportive from the beginning? How did you select which elements to include? 

A: That’s right, I was very lucky to have two amazing anthropology professors during my undergraduate—Dr. Jack Ives and Dr. Kisha Supernaut (Métis)—who really recognized the importance of including Indigenous voices especially in a field that traditionally studied Indigenous people but in a very extractive way. I felt they both really highlighted the importance of community-engaged archaeology and taught about valuing Indigenous voices despite the historical academic records lack of Indigenous representation. Of course one of the tricky things about valuing something in academia is that often our value is shown by whose voices are highlighted, so if citation styles don’t recognize Indigenous ways of knowing it can be really hard to fully achieve that level of respect it deserves. At the time, I just remember thinking someone should change that limitation—make ways of citing our oral teachings more equal. Fast forward a few years and I’m talking about things academic institutions could do as actions to support reconciliation, indigenization, decolonization etc and I realize as an Indigenous librarian that maybe it was something I could be involved in doing. Since I had developed good relationships with the staff in the Indigenous Student Centre at NorQuest it really was about drafting up some examples of alternate citation templates and just asking if I could show it to them and talk.

I think I was really lucky because there was a lot of support—folks seemed to understand that it was important to take action, to make a change, in order to make the big buzzwords mean anything. I’ll admit, the fact that it was developed by an Indigenous librarian and the input from the folks in the Indigenous Student Centre helped (big shout out to Delores, Elliott, Conor, and Karie)— I had some great friends there cheering us on every step of the way and really trying to uplift our voices. When I started out drafting up something to talk about, I actually relied heavily on Elements of Indigenous Style: A Guide for Writing By and About Indigenous Peoples by Gregory Younging (an amazing resource for anyone and everyone to read in my opinion). It does a great job of talking about how nations differ so it’s important to try to be precise, and other key ideas that lead me to look at what relationships mattered in a citation. From there it really seemed to flow together, trying to mimic the way that other citations for books are done, I tried to interweave that with elements like who is their nation, what is the teaching about. I tried to keep it general so it could be flexible—not every nation, person, or teaching would be the same, so some elements became if applicable. This was a part where having the amazing folks in the Indigenous Student Centre was irreplaceable, just talking about how we’d use this piece of the template or maybe this part would be better phrased like this. They also helped to figure out which parts should be included so it really was a group effort that organically formed in some ways. I guess it’s really fitting that citation templates about citing and valuing our words were mostly made through chats!

Q: Undergraduate research assignments often direct students toward published, written information, and students might not consider consulting other sources, like Indigenous oral knowledge. What ways could professors incorporate Indigenous knowledge in research assignments? How can we design assignments that get students to branch out from “traditional” information formats like books and articles?

A: So I’m a strong believer that there are connections to Indigenous knowledge in pretty much every subject BUT the key when it comes to incorporating Indigenous knowledge is really relationships. If instructors want to incorporate Indigenous knowledges, especially oral teachings, I really hope they are looking to invest in long-term mutually respectful relationships with Indigenous knowledge keepers. It’s technically incorporation to get the Elder-in-resident to come to speak in class once or send students to them but it isn’t really a good relationship to me. We only have so many Knowledge Keepers and they only have so much time so using them for one-offs for a class to check some box—well, it doesn’t feel any different from the extractive knowledge processes of many early settlers. Long-term engagement is more work but it’s honestly the kind of investment that has the potential to create real change.

So that’s a long-term thing but that isn’t to say there isn’t something folks could do right now. I think for instructors you’ll want to start by looking at your own syllabus—look at the readings you have and whose voices they are. If you don’t have Indigenous voices, then maybe you should change whose voices you are raising up (this can also apply to other minority voices that may not be represented in your syllabus). 

In both your syllabus and in your assignments, consider why you are putting in requirements about works cited having to be academic articles? There are tons of amazing Indigenous scientists, Knowledge Keepers, language keepers, activists etc that are really active on social media platforms like Twitter and TikTok. Now I’m not saying only use Twitter feeds for your readings, but infusing these into your assignments and syllabus is actually also going to teach learners information literacy skills. It’ll teach them how to engage with social media with a critical eye and combine various information formats to get a better picture of something. But a lot of that does depend on instructors and institution policies, just remember—just because something has always been done one way, doesn’t mean it’s the best way or that it’s still the best way now.

Q: What other ways can academic libraries demonstrate respect for Indigenous ways of knowing? 

A: This can be a bit of a tricky question to answer generally because it really depends on where each institution is at—some have great ties with local Indigenous groups, others have only just started trying out land acknowledgements. But here are some broad ideas:

• Be honest with yourself, your institution, and your staff about where you really are: if you are still mostly doing virtue-signalling actions but aren’t able to acknowledge that’s what they are, it’s going to be really hard for anyone to be able to plan a realistic path forward. That can also impact the ability and interest of Indigenous communities to partner with you.
• Who is in your collection and how? Take a look at Indigenous authors in all fields and look at how they are catalogued, what is their metadata. And when do you promote them? Please don’t only bring out the Indigenous authors for Indigenous History Month- they deserve to be highlighted in your STEM displays, your general literature displays, and the same goes for however you promote resources to your faculty.
• Invest in staff learning: This has to be an ongoing area of learning and commitment with institutional support. Academic institutions have their roots in systems that kept out Indigenous peoples and our knowledges (or appropriated them) so for many professionals, the voices we have today probably weren’t something they learned about in their classes. So if there is a webinar panel of Indigenous scientists coming up then yes—the science liaison librarian should probably be attending.
• Look at the Calls to Action and the CFLA TRC report: I know, these documents are getting older and are Canadian-centric but that doesn’t mean that all the calls have been met or that they aren’t useful for others. Find actions you need to take and then hold yourself/your institutions accountable to working on them. An important thing to note with this is that process is often viewed as a linear path—in my experience, true respectful actions might take a less direct path. A library might realize that they didn’t have the relationships they thought they had and need to change the plan to develop those—I don’t think that’s a failure. To me, that kind of openness to adapt and change is a reflection of respect, it acknowledges that true respect requires ongoing engagement and the needs of the parties involved naturally will change over time.
• Have Indigenous knowledges in your library: Yes this, of course, means buying Indigenous books but consider how our knowledges aren’t limited to that format. What about art? What about having storytellers and Knowledge Keepers? What about partnering with your institutions’ Indigenous student centre or local Indigenous groups?

Q: Who are some librarians (or experts in other fields/identities) that inspire and influence you in your work?

A: Aside from those I talked about above, I have to start off with the obvious (and slightly sappy) answer which is that my Dad (Kirk MacLeod) and sister (Kaia MacLeod) are huge inspirations to me. My Dad was in the library field for over a decade before me, so he was one of those Indigenous librarians who helped make space for future generations like me and my sister. The field he entered was very different from when I entered shortly after the release of the TRC report; he has always cheered me on and been a role model on leading change but remaining humble. Kaia just entered librarianship and in addition to being a really awesome librarian in her own right, she motivates me to keep trying to improve the field for all future Indigenous librarians, just like our Dad did for us. Now that we are all in the same field, they give me feedback and their perspectives from other areas in the field too! Plus it’s a constant reminder that the field is full of amazing people to work with, like Jessie Loyer a fantastic Cree-Métis librarian, cousin, and friend who always seemed to know just the right thing to say to empower early-career Indigenous librarians to create change.

Gregory Younging (Opsakwayak Cree Nation): His book Elements of Indigenous Style was a huge inspiration. I’m pretty sure I recommended that read to everyone I knew—it was an amazing guide that somehow managed to walk a fine line between instructional and allowing for space for community engagement. That was a stance that I’ve really tried to emulate in my own work because I think it is a perfect way of tackling Indigenous matters without falling into the pan-Indigenous identity trap.

Eve Tuck (Unangax? ), K. Wayne Yang, Rubén Gaztambide-Fernández: If you haven’t taken a look at The Citation Challenge, I would highly recommend it. This was part of what drove home for me the important role that citation has in respect and power systems.

Dr Jessica Hernandez (Zapotec and Ch’orti’): An amazing Indigenous scientist who I’ve followed for years. Now I’m not a scientist but her work is a great example of the amazing work current Indigenous scholars make that deserves to be considered for syllabus readings. Supporting scholars like her is part of what inspires me! She recently just published a new book too: Fresh Banana Leaves: Healing Indigenous Landscapes Through Indigenous Science.

At the risk of creating a ridiculously long list I think I’ll cut myself off there.

Thank you to Lorisia MacLeod for her contributions to scholarly communication, and for sharing her thoughts with us here at ACRLog.

Author and physician Eric Topol made a chart using data from the CDC COVID-19 Response Epidemiology Task Force that shows how much more you are likely to die from Covd if you don't get vaccinated. @OurWorldinData redrew the chart to make it look prettier:

Police in the U.S. killed "at least 1,134" people last year, a significant rise on 2020. Nearly half the killings were mental health/welfare checks. Black and latino people were killed in disproportionate numbers. Only a handful of officers were prosecuted. — Read the rest

Around one-third of the food produced globally every year never gets eaten. This waste often occurs along the supply chain before the food even reaches us. But consumers who throw away food because it’s gone bad, or because they think it may have gone bad, are also responsible for a large proportion of food waste.

All food production results in greenhouse gas emissions. So wasting food is not only bad for your pocket – it’s also bad for the environment.

Recently, Morrisons supermarket announced that it will move from putting “use by” to “best before” dates on milk. It says this could save seven million pints of its own-brand milk from being wasted each year.

According to British charity WRAP, milk is the third most wasted food item in the home (after potatoes and bread) with more than 490 million pints thrown away in the UK annually. So changing the advice to encourage people to keep their milk for longer is likely to be good for the planet. But is this move safe for consumers? The short answer is yes.

First, let’s look at the terms “use by” and “best before”, which have long confused consumers.

“Use by” is the date until which the manufacturers know the product will remain safe. This is based on scientific analysis which has determined how long a product can be stored before there’s a risk that any dangerous microbes could reach levels that will cause harm. You’ll see use-by dates on foods that can pose a danger if they’re stored too long, such as cooked meats and dairy products.

“Best before” relates to the quality of the product. This date tells you how long you can keep something before the product starts to taste less fresh, or decline in quality (for example, how long you can store bread before it gets a bit stale). But this doesn’t mean the product isn’t safe to eat after this date. You’re likely to see best-before dates on preserved products, such as tinned or frozen foods, which you can safely keep for a long time.

Read more: What type of milk is best? The answer is follow your tastebuds

What about milk?

You might think milk should sit firmly in the “use by” category – it is a dairy product after all. But actually, shifting to a best-before date is safe for consumers, thanks to a process called pasteurisation. During pasteurisation, the milk is heated for a short time to a high temperature. This kills bacteria which can be present in raw milk and cause infections in humans (often called “pathogens”).

Although the pathogens are killed in this process, some non-harmful microbes remain in pasteurised milk. So milk is stored at a low temperature (in the fridge) to slow the growth of these remaining microbes. Nonetheless, they will still grow, and it’s the growth of these non-harmful bacteria that cause the milk to spoil. As the microbes grow they produce enzymes to help them break down the milk, which causes the milk to curdle and produces the “off” smell we associate with spoiled milk.

Notably, for pasteurised milk (and we need to be very clear that this ONLY applies to pasteurised milk) even when the milk starts to go off, there’s no evidence the microbes growing in the milk will cause you any serious harm. If you drink a significant amount of spoiled milk, you might find yourself with an upset stomach but there’s nothing to suggest spoiled milk causes infections or severe illness.

The best-before date is the manufacturers’ best estimate of how long the milk should last in the fridge before you can detect any spoilage, either by smell, taste or both. Every batch of pasteurised milk is different and will have more or less of these non-harmful bacteria remaining in it, so in reality the best-before date is an estimate of when the milk with the most bacteria left in it will spoil. But many batches of milk will be fine for much longer than this – hence Morrisons’ change in advice.

The sniff test

Morrisons have advised using the “sniff test” to see if the milk is safe to use. This is sensible advice. If there is no detectable evidence of spoilage, the milk is safe to drink.

If you’ve lost your sense of smell, or don’t fancy sniffing the milk, simply pour some into a cup of boiling water as if you were making a cup of tea. If it curdles then it’s started to turn; if it mixes in normally it’s fine to use.

Should you throw milk away if its started to spoil? If you’re just using it for drinking, it’s probably not going to taste too good. But milk that’s starting to turn can be safely used as a substitute for buttermilk, yogurt or sour cream in recipes like rice pudding, pancakes and scones, or can be used to make cheese sauces.

Clearly if the milk has really spoiled (if it’s fully separated, cheesy and slimy), it should be thrown away.

Read more: How virtual reality training could reduce your chance of food poisoning

Once again, this advice applies only to pasteurised milk. Raw milk can still contain pathogens and should never be consumed beyond the use-by date.

Also, because different foods naturally contain different types of microbes, this advice cannot be generalised. In other kinds of foods pathogens can reach dangerous levels without any real detectable evidence of spoilage. So generally, the advice is to stick to the use-by date.

But when it comes to pasteurised milk, we can balance expiry dates with our common sense, and reduce the impact of food waste on the planet.

Cath Rees does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

The Florida House of Representatives had its first reading of HB 5 on Jan. 11. This bill — along with its Senate counterpart SB146 — would serve as a statewide abortion ban after 15 weeks of pregnancy.

HB 5 is an invasion of civil liberty and unjustly applies personal ideology to medical care. Florida constituents must implore their representatives to fight for American freedom.

The bill — filed by Representatives Erin Grall and Kelli Stargel — would ban abortion of a fetus over 15 weeks unless two doctors agree there is an abnormality fatal to the fetus or mother, similar to the Texas Heartbeat Bill passed in May 2021. There are no exceptions for rape or incest.

Roe v. Wade (1973) is the landmark Supreme Court decision regarding abortion, and the legal precedent for this debate. The court found the U.S. Constitution protects a woman’s right to have an abortion without excessive government restriction. 

The court held that in most cases, restriction of abortion violates a person’s constitutional Right of Privacy, which is guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment.

As such, HB 5, while not outright banning abortion, encroaches on the decidedly constitutional right of a person to choose, and is an attempt to sidestep legal precedent and the court’s interpretation of The Constitution.

Supporters of this bill argue that it supports life, and that fetuses are aware and can feel pain.

“I have not seen that particular [bill], but obviously I’m supportive of 15 weeks. I think that’s very reasonable and I think that’s very consistent with being supportive of protecting life,” said Gov. Ron DeSantis in a Jan. 12 press conference.

The beginning of life is an ideological debate, and as such is difficult to apply to legislation without encroaching on the beliefs and personal freedoms of others. 

The conclusion widely agreed upon in the medical community, stemming from a 2009 study by pediatric researchers Hugo Lagercrantz and Jean-Pierre Changeux, is that fetuses begin to gain consciousness as early as 24 weeks. This is also the current cutoff for abortions in Florida.

Medical legislation should be based in scientific research, not in the popular opinion of ideological debate.

As the constituents of Florida, it’s crucial that we reach out to our local representatives and speak out against the impediment of personal freedom in our state. Popular ideology cannot trump individual freedom.

Over 120,000 Japanese Americans, many of them American citizens, were incarcerated in U.S. concentration camps during World War II. The government's War Relocation Authority hired photographers to document the process in a way that masked this massively cruel act

Among the photographers was Dorothea Lange, who famously photographed migrant agriculture workers for the Farm Security Administration during the Great Depression. — Read the rest

Joslyn Diffenbaugh, an 8th-grade student from Kutztown, Pennsylvania started the Teen Banned Book Club to discuss books that have been banned by the local school district. Nine students attended the first meeting on January 12 at Firefly Bookstore in Kutztown. They discussed George Orwell's Animal Farm. — Read the rest

Wishcycling is putting something in the recycling bin and hoping it will be recycled, even if there is little evidence to confirm this assumption.

Hope is central to wishcycling. People may not be sure the system works, but they choose to believe that if they recycle an object, it will become a new product rather than being buried in a landfill, burned or dumped.

The U.S. recycling industry was launched in the 1970s in response to public concern over litter and waste. The growth of recycling and collection programs changed consumers’ view of waste: It didn’t seem entirely bad if it could lead to the creation of new products via recycling.

Pro-recycling messaging from governments, corporations and environmentalists promoted and reinforced recycling behavior. This was especially true for plastics that had resin identification codes inside a triangle of “chasing arrows,” indicating that the item was recyclable – even though that was usually far from the truth. In fact, only resins #1 (polyethylene terephthalate, or PET) and #2 (high-density polyethylene, or HDPE) are relatively easy to recycle and have viable markets. The others are hard to recycle, so some jurisdictions don’t even collect them.

Wishcycling entered public consciousness in 2018 when China launched Operation National Sword, a sweeping set of restrictions on imports of most waste materials from abroad. Over the preceding 20 years, China had purchased millions of tons of scrap metal, paper and plastic from wealthy nations for recycling, giving those countries an easy and cheap option for managing waste materials.

The China scrap restrictions created enormous waste backups in the U.S., where governments had under-invested in recycling systems. Consumers saw that recycling was not as reliable or environmentally friendly as previously believed.

An unlikely coalition of actors in the recycling sector coined the term “wishcycling” in an effort to educate the public about effective recycling. As they emphasize, wishcycling can be harmful.

Contaminating the waste stream with material that is not actually recyclable makes the sorting process more costly because it requires extra labor. Wishcycling also damages sorting systems and equipment and depresses an already fragile trading market.

Huge waste management companies and small cities and towns have launched educational campaigns on this issue. Their mantra is “When in doubt, throw it out.” In other words, only place material that truly can be recycled in your bin. This message is hard for many environmentalists to hear, but it cuts costs for recyclers and local governments.

[Over 140,000 readers rely on The Conversation’s newsletters to understand the world. Sign up today.]

We also believe it’s important to understand that the global waste crisis wasn’t created by consumers who failed to wash mayonnaise jars or separate out plastic bags. The biggest drivers are global. They include capitalistic reliance on consumption, strong international waste trade incentives, a lack of standardized recycling policies and the devaluation of used resources. To make further progress, governments and businesses will have to think more about designing products with disposal and reuse in mind, reducing consumption of single-use products and making massive investments in recycling infrastructure.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

The idea of community and who belongs and who does not was a common theme in the Jan. 7, 2022, sentencing hearing of three white men convicted of killing Ahmaud Arbery.

“They chose to target my son because they didn’t want him in their community,” said Arbery’s mother, Wanda Cooper-Jones, during the hearing. “When they couldn’t sufficiently scare him or intimidate him, they killed him.”

Arbery was the 25-year-old unarmed Black man who was shot to death on Feb. 23, 2020, while jogging through a predominantly white, middle-class neighborhood in Brunswick, Georgia. Race went largely unspoken throughout the trial, but the idea of belonging was clearly drawn in black and white.

As a professor of sociology and criminal justice at Clark and Atlanta University, I have witnessed and studied perfunctory Southern ways that are often referred to as Southern “gentility” and Southern “hospitality.” These “Southern” ways of knowing and being get presented as niceties, but they often serve to maintain the racial order of the past.

On their face, these common rituals – like waving to neighbors and strangers – brand the Southerner as gentler and kinder than others, closer to God, and perhaps even more patriotic. As practice, the actions tie people not only to the land, but to a culture.

That culture seems innocuous, innocent and friendly – but it is not. And the death of Ahmaud Arbery is a powerful example of how that gentility can camouflage deadly discrimination.

Racial reckoning

In a nation still reeling from the murder of George Floyd and other violent attacks on people of color, many breathed a momentary sigh of relief after Greg McMichael and his son Travis were sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for Arbery’s murder.

McMichaels’ neighbor William “Roddie” Bryan was given life in prison with the chance of parole. He had filmed the cellphone video as Arbery fell dead in the street. A jury convicted the three in November of last year.

Before sentencing, Judge Timothy Walmsley paused for a minute of silence, which he later explained represented a fraction of the five minutes Arbery spent running from the three white men who chased him in pickup trucks on that Sunday afternoon.

“At a minimum,” Walmsley said, “Ahmaud Arbery’s death should force us to consider expanding our definition of what a neighbor may be and how we treat them. I argue that maybe a neighbor is more than the people who just own property around your house. …”

In a sense, Walmsley was asking those assembled in the courtroom and watching on television to put themselves in Arbery’s running shoes and imagine the sheer shock of discovering that Southern hospitality had a violent reality.

Terms commonly used among Southerners can likewise mean the opposite of how they sound.

Consider the “bless your heart” that is meant as anything but a blessing, and, in fact, is used as a heavy dose of sarcasm. Or the respectful and deferential, “Yes, ma’am,” “No, sir,” or other courtesy titles customarily given to whites and withheld from Blacks, irrespective of their age. W.E.B. Du Bois referred to this last practice as “the public and psychological wage of whiteness.” Du Bois was suggesting that even among low-wage white earners, the racial identity of whiteness paid dividends that people of color could not collect.

Simple Southern practices like waving to strangers are steeped with double meanings that work to preserve a de facto segregation.

Consider: There is an expected action-interaction order present in the deed of speaking or otherwise gesturing to strangers. The salutation itself is a performance of belonging in the space. A specific response is expected. It may be a nod of the head, tip of the hat, raised hand or a simple hello. The routine says, “I know the rules of engagement here, and I accept them. You want me to make you feel comfortable with my presence here, and I am willing to do that.”

Arbery did not engage the men or play the game of deference.

Race and public space

In “How Ingrained Racism Became Invisible,” I explain how place and where people belong and with whom is part of an often unspoken broader U.S. racial structure that positions whites on top and Blacks on the bottom.

In my larger body of research I argue that despite advances by racial and ethnic minorities and other disadvantaged groups, vestiges of this American Jim Crow belief system still operate in society. This racial ideology may be more pronounced in some parts of the nation, like the U.S. South, but my research shows that this racial order is present above, below and across the Mason-Dixon Line.

Kara Cebulko, a sociology and global studies scholar, explains how racial privilege allows whites and those who pass as white to “navigate public space without being stopped, questioned, arrested, detained and/or deported.”

That clearly was not the case with Arbery, who was Black and couldn’t claim that privilege.

Protecting the racial status quo

At sentencing, defense counsel continued to stress that the defendants had good intentions and simply wanted to support their community. In this telling of the story, the defendants were represented as good neighbors – hardworking individuals just looking out for one another. It was painted as the Southern way, and they were simply engaged in Southern hospitality.

But in the journal Study the South, Betsie Garner writes that Southern hospitality uses language and practices whose real purpose is “to exclude minorities and maintain their marginalized status in the community.”

“The politics of belonging in southern communities continues to be determined in large part by the practice of southern hospitality,” Garner says.

If the McMichaels’ and Bryan’s actions that day were to help their community, that community did not include Arbery.

Before his son, Travis, fired the shots that killed Arbery, defendant Greg McMichael told 911 dispatch the reason for his call: “I’m out here at Satilla Shores. There’s a Black male running down the street.”

During cross-examination by the prosecutor at their trial, defendant Travis McMichael explained, “I wouldn’t say [I] ordered [Arbery to stop running], I was asking him … [in order to] keep the situation calm.” But shortly after the murder, the senior McMichael told police, “We had him trapped like a rat.”

Travis McMichael argued he felt threatened by Arbery and feared for his own life until he pulled out his shotgun and shot him.

Ahmaud Arbery’s sister didn’t mince words when she said she believed race – not self-defense – played a role in her brother’s shooting.

[Over 140,000 readers rely on The Conversation’s newsletters to understand the world. Sign up today.]

“Ahmaud had dark skin that glistened in the sunlight like gold. He had thick, coily hair and he would often like to twist it,” Jasmine Arbery said at the sentencing hearing. “He was tall, with an athletic build. These are the qualities that made these men assume that Ahmaud was a dangerous criminal.”

By all accounts, Arbery was not a dangerous criminal. But in the eyes of three white vigilantes, Arbery was clearly not their neighbor.

Barbara Harris Combs has received funding from UNCF/Mellon and the James Weldon Johnson Institute for the Study of Race and Difference at Emory University.

Even Walmart Is Worse in the Metaverse

hello i have written about the metaverse and that cursed walmart video that’s been going around

Did … Pluto write this?

A group of researchers say Pluto was unfairly maligned by a decision to relegate it to "dwarf planet" status — and that we should consider our solar system to have more than 150 planets.

Part of the argument for classifying Pluto as a planetoid or dwarf planet was that there were many similar bodies orbiting the sun waiting to be discovered, and we'd end up with hundreds of planets. — Read the rest

Happy Public Domain Day! After a drought of some 20 years in which no works of art became publicly available to the American people, this year's newly available content includes Winnie the Pooh, Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, TE Lawrence's The Seven Pillars of Wisdom (the source for Lawrence of Arabia), Agatha Christie's The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, and an estimated 400,000 sound recordings from before 1923. — Read the rest

A new year is upon us and, while 2021 proved that a new year doesn’t mean a fresh start, it is still an opportunity to both reflect on the past and look ahead.

To that end, 2022 is looking to be a major year for copyright in a myriad of ways. However, in pretty much all the cases below, the table was set for them in years past.

But that raises the question, with the new year what are just a handful of the major copyright stories on the horizon. While there are far too many for any single list, here are 5 copyright stories that you should definitely watch in 2022.

1: The Copyright Small Claims Court

On December 2020, Congress passed the Copyright Alternative in Small-Claims Enforcement Act or the CASE Act. Part of that act established a Copyright Claims Board (CCB) that operates under the U.S. Copyright Office (USCO) and is intended to act as something of a small claims court for copyright matters.

The idea behind the CCB is simple, it’s meant to be a cheap and easy way to handle copyright disputes over small dollar amounts. To achieve that, the process is meant to be accessible without an attorney and is done remotely. However, damages are limited to just $30,000 per case.

According to the USCO, the CCB should be up and running some time in the first half of this year. However, many questions still remain regarding it. How much use will it see? Will defendants agree to use it since it is optional? Exactly how will the process work?

The USCO delayed the opening of the CCB by 180 days late last year, however, the Register of Copyrights, Shira Perlmutter, has said it will be in operation “well before” the new deadline.

2: The Battle Over Comedy Tracks

In December 2021, Spotify made the abrupt decision to remove a long list of comedy performers from their streaming service. The reason, was a dispute over alleged performance royalties for the compositions of the stand-up routines.

With every audio track, there are two copyrights, a copyright in the audio recording itself and a copyright in the composition behind it. Musicians receive royalties from both via their record labels and publishers. However, Spotify (nor other streaming services) have been paying royalties on the composition for comedy and other spoken word tracks.

However, a new performing rights organization, Spoken Giants, is aiming to change that and has been negotiating with streaming services to reach a deal on royalties. That has not happened yet as of this writing.

Spotify, in response to the lack of an agreement, removed the tracks of many of the comedians involved. Other streamers, such as Apple and Google, have the tracks still up as negotiations continue. A resolution on this issue is likely to come about in 2022, possibly creating a landscape shift for comedians and other spoken word artists.

3: Copyright and the Takings Clause

One of the more confusing areas of copyright law in the United States is how it impacts states. Under the current law, all copyright matters are federal. However, because of state sovereign immunity, it’s technically not possible to sue a state government or any of their components in a federal court.

This came to a head in 2017 when the filmmaker Rick Allen sued the State of North Carolina over alleged illegal copying of footage he shot of Blackbeard’s sunken ship. Allen lost that lawsuit last year when the Supreme Court ruled against him, saying that Congress had overstepped its bounds when trying to abrogate state sovereign immunity.

However, that ended up not being the end of the issue. The district court is allowing Allen to try again, this time pursuing the case under the takings clause, which prevents states from taking citizens’ property without proper compensation.

Several such cases are going on right now and, though we likely won’t see a definitive answer in 2022, it’s going to be a copyright story to watch.

4: The Unicolors Case

Unicolors is locked in a long-running case against fashion retailer H&M. According to Unicolors, the retailers infringed on one of their designs and sold various goods with it. Though the infringement isn’t in question, the copyright registration is.

In the United States, a copyright registration is required before a lawsuit can begin. However, H&M alleges that the registration contained an error, namely that it was included in a collective registration when it should have been separate. A ruling at the 9th Circuit put the lower court victory, and $800,000 in damages, in jeopardy, prompting Unicolors to petition the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court took the case and is scheduled to rule this year on whether an innocent error in a copyright registration can or should result in the case being dismissed.

5: The Public Domain Expands

Finally, with the new year comes new works that lapse into the public domain.

Due to the Sony Bono Copyright Term Extension Act in 1998, nothing entered into the public domain in the United States between 1999 and 2019. However, for the first few years of new public domain action, very little that is still culturally relevant has lapsed.

Though Robert Frost’s poem Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening lapsed in 2019 and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby did so in 2021, this year sees the original Winnie the Pooh story by A.A. Milne turn copyright free.

Winnie the Pooh is unique in that, even though the character was not originally a Disney character, it’s become wholly identified with Disney. Disney has produced countless movies based on the character and, though the copyright in Disney’s works remains, others will be free to adapt the original story.

It will be interesting to see if and how this changes both Disney and the public’s relationship with the iconic character as access to the original story begins to open up. It will also be a test for the impending lapse of Steamboat Willie, Mickey Mouse’s original cartoon, in a few years.

Bottom Line

It’s pretty clear that this will be a major year for copyright. The CCB alone has the potential to be a major ground shift in this area, but the other stories will continue to shift and change the landscape on their own.

So keep an eye on these and other important copyright stories. As with previous years, I’ll be covering them four times per week in the 3 Count column as well as in full posts right here.

So, if you haven’t done so yet, take a moment to either follow this site on social media or sign up for the newsletter using the links in the sidebar. This is definitely going to be a year that you don’t want to miss.

The post 5 Copyright Stories to Watch in 2022 appeared first on Plagiarism Today.

On January 1, 2022, works that were first published in the year 1926 lapsed into the public domain. Though the list of works that includes is long, some bigger names include Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises and Dorothy Parker’s Enough Rope.

However, the name that’s received the lion’s share of the attention has been A.A. Milne’s original Winnie-the-Pooh story.

The reason for the attention is pretty obvious. Disney acquired the rights to the book and its characters in 1961 and, since then, has released a steady stream of movies, TV shows and products featuring the book’s cast of characters.

Because of this, Winnie-the-Pooh is one of the most recognizable cartoon characters in the world. Disney’s animated works are still being heavily enjoyed today by adults and children alike and the character has even found itself in international news as a way for bloggers to troll Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Winnie-the-Pooh is likely the most culturally relevant character to enter the public domain since 2019, when works started entering the public domain again in the United States due to the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act. This has raised widespread speculation as to what this means for Disney and the character’s future.

However, while some headlines sure make it seem like the situation is pretty dire for Disney, the truth is that not a lot changed on New Year’s Day and Disney probably doesn’t have that much to fear from what did.

What Actually Happened

Under U.S. copyright law, works of corporate or pseudonymous authorship lapse into the public domain after either 95 years from first publication or 120 years after creation, whichever ends first.

What this means is that the Milne’s original Winnie-the-Pooh book is now free of copyright. This means that others are free to copy, publish, distribute, create new works based upon it and otherwise make use of it without a license. That is, potentially, a big deal in many ways.

It means that, for example, if a company other than Disney wanted to make their own animated adaptation of the work, they could. Anyone could also publish their own version of the book, either with the original art or new art that they created.

However, the freedom only extends to that particular book and that which is contained in it.

Milne actually wrote four books based on the character and books 2-4 have not lapsed into the public domain. This means that many of the characters from the series, most notably Tigger, have not lapsed and will not for a few more years. In fact, the image of Pooh wearing a red shirt was not published until 1932, meaning, much like Frankenstein’s monster, those seeking to exploit the public domain work may want to be careful about how they portray him.

Perhaps more importantly, this lapse does not impact any of Disney’s works. Disney did not release its first animated work based on the character until 1966, meaning that there are still four decades of copyright protection left on those.

Disney’s works and Disney’s versions of the characters are still very much protected and those that seek to exploit Winnie-the-Pooh will need to be careful to avoid those interpretations. The easiest way to do that would be to stick to the original work.

However, most people aren’t going to have a strong connection with that original work. The characters, in particular the line art drawings, look very little like the versions we know today and, though the book is still popular, it is far less recognizable than the Disney works.

For Disney, very little changes other than the prospect of competing adaptations of the original work. However, that’s something that I doubt they fear.

So What Can You Do?

One of the more interesting takes on this issue came from actor Ryan Reynolds. In a new add for Mint Mobile, he introduced a parody version of the character entitled Winnie-the-Screwed, where the lead character is upset about overpaying for his phone bill.

However, if you watch the commercial, it is limited to what is in that original book. It uses the art style and the meter of the original work, as well as the designs of characters from that book. Though it’s seen as a jab at Disney, it doesn’t actually use anything that Disney created.

Still, creations like this as well as fresh adaptations of the original work are possible now. Also, as the later books lapse into the public domain over the coming years, they too can be adapted similarly.

As a result, 2022 may not be much of a revolution for the character but, as the decade rolls along, we may see more adaptations of those work.

Some of those, like Reynolds, will be for comedy or novelty, but others may be more straightforward. Only time will tell.

Bottom Line

Disney is probably not worried about this work lapsing into the public domain. Their versions of the character are still very protected and what one can do with the characters in the story is very limited.

That said, this is something of a canary in the coal mine. In 2024, the cartoon Steamboat Willie will enter the public domain. That was the first appearance of Mickey Mouse. As important as Winnie-the-Pooh is to Disney, Mickey is an even bigger deal.

Disney and others will be watching over the next few years to see what the practical impacts of this transition are for Winnie-the-Pooh as a sign for what may happen in two years.

It will be interesting to see, that much is certain.

The post What Winnie-the-Pooh Lapsing into the Public Domain Really Means appeared first on Plagiarism Today.

Another New Year, another Public Domain Day! January 1, 2022 marks the end of copyright for works first published in the U.S. in 1926. For many years, only works published in the U.S. through 1922 were in the public domain because of retroactive copyright term extensions. Most works published between 1923 and 1977 currently have copyright protection for 95 years, so it wasn’t until the first day of 2019 that 1923 works could finally enter the public domain, and each new year brings more treasures.

Here are a few of the notable 1926 works that entered the public domain today:

• A.A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh
• Ernest Hemingway’s novels The Sun Also Rises and The Torrents of Spring
• F. Scott Fitzgerald’s short story collection All the Sad Young Men
• Langston Hughes’ first book of poetry, The Weary Blues
• Dorothy Parker’s first book of poetry, Enough Rope
• William Faulkner’s first novel, Soldiers’ Pay
• T.E. Lawrence’s Seven Pillars of Wisdom
• Edna Ferber’s Show Boat
• Hart Crane’s first book of poetry, White Buildings
• Agatha Christie’s The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
• S.S. Van Dine’s The Benson Murder Case, the first Philo Vance mystery novel
• Felix Salten’s Bambi
• Carl Sandburg’s Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years
• Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Land of Mist
• Arthur Rackham’s illustrations for Shakespeare’s The Tempest

The full texts of the 1926 books that have been scanned by the Internet Archive, Hathi Trust, Google Books, and other digital archives should soon be publicly available on their websites.

Visit the Public Domain Day 2022 website from Duke Law’s Center for the Study of the Public Domain to explore some of the books, music, and films that are now free to use, reprint, quote, remix, and adapt without permission or payment. Of special note, all pre-1923 sound recordings will finally enter the public domain today as well. The site is a great source of information on copyright and the public domain— don’t miss the legal updates and Jennifer Jenkins’ analysis of the complicated tangle of competing rights when a book like Winnie-the-Pooh enters the public domain but companies like Disney have their own copyrights and trademarks based on the work.

Enjoy these photographs of some of the 1926 first editions now in the public domain, courtesy of Bauman Rare Books:

Each January 1st is Public Domain Day, where a new crop of works have their copyrights expire and become free to enjoy, share, and reuse for any purpose.

Nothing says Christmas quite like a fruitcake – or, at the very least, a fruitcake joke.

A quip attributed to former “Tonight Show” host Johnny Carson has it that “There is only one fruitcake in the entire world, and people keep sending it to each other.”

It’s certainly earned its reputation for longevity.

Two friends from Iowa have been exchanging the same fruitcake since the late 1950s. Even older is the fruitcake left behind in Antarctica by the explorer Robert Falcon Scott in 1910. But the honor for the oldest known existing fruitcake goes to one that was baked in 1878 when Rutherford B. Hayes was president of the United States.

What’s amazing about these old fruitcakes is that people have tasted them and lived, meaning they are still edible after all these years. The trifecta of sugar, low moisture ingredients and some high-proof spirits make fruitcakes some of the longest-lasting foods in the world.

The original energy bar

Fruitcake is an ancient goody, with the oldest versions a sort of energy bar made by the Romans to sustain their soldiers in battle. The Roman fruitcake was a mash of barley, honey, wine and dried fruit, often pomegranate seeds.

What you might recognize as a modern-style fruitcake – a moist, leavened dessert studded with fruits and nuts – was probably first baked in the early Middle Ages in Europe. Cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg were symbols of culinary sophistication, and these sweet spices started appearing alongside fruit in many savory dishes – especially breads, but also main courses.

Before long, most cuisines had some sort of fruited breads or cakes that were early versions of the modern fruitcake.

Fruitcakes are different in Europe than they are in America. European fruitcakes are more like the medieval fruited bread than the versions made in Great Britain and the United States. The two most common styles of fruitcake in Europe are the stollen and panettone.

British and American versions are much more cakelike. For over-the-top extravagance, honors have to go to a British version that crowns a rich fruitcake with a layer of marzipan icing.

Sweetening the pot

Fruitcakes came to America with the European colonists, and the rising tide of emigration from Britain to New England closely mirrored an influx of cheap sugar from the Caribbean.

Sugar was the key to preserving fruit for use across the seasons. One of the favorite methods of preserving fruit was to “candy” it. Candied fruit – sometimes known as crystallized fruit – is fruit that’s been cut into small pieces, boiled in sugar syrup, tossed in granulated sugar and allowed to dry.

Thanks to this technique, colonists were able to keep fruit from the summer harvest to use in their Christmas confections, and fruitcakes became one of the most popular seasonal desserts.

A dessert with staying power

Fruitcakes were also popular due to their legendary shelf life, which, in an era before mechanical refrigeration, was extremely desirable.

Fruitcake aficionados will tell you that the best fruit cakes are matured – or “seasoned” in fruitcake lingo – for at least three months before they are cut. Seasoning not only improves the flavor of the fruitcake, but it makes it easier to slice.

Seasoning a fruitcake involves brushing your fruitcake periodically with your preferred distilled spirit before wrapping it tightly and letting it sit in a cool, dark place for up to two months. The traditional spirit of choice is brandy, but rum is also popular. In the American South, where fruitcake is extremely popular, bourbon is preferred. A well-seasoned fruitcake will get several spirit baths over the maturation period.

Credit for the fruitcake’s popularity in America should at least partially go to the U.S. Post Office.

The institution of Rural Free Delivery in 1896 and the addition of the Parcel Post service in 1913 caused an explosion of mail-order foods in America. Overnight, once rare delicacies were a mere mail-order envelope away for people anywhere who could afford them.

Given fruitcake’s long shelf life and dense texture, it was a natural for a mail-order food business. America’s two most famous fruitcake companies, Claxton’s of Claxton, Georgia, and Collin Street of Corsicana, Texas, got their start in this heyday of mail-order food. By the early 1900s, U.S. mailrooms were full of the now ubiquitous fruitcake tins.

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As late as the 1950s, fruitcakes were a widely esteemed part of the American holiday tradition. A 1953 Los Angeles Times article called fruitcake a “holiday must,” and in 1958, the Christian Science Monitor asked, “What Could Be a Better Gift Than Fruitcake?” But by 1989, a survey by Mastercard found that fruitcake was the least favorite gift of 75% of those polled.

Haters and disrespect aside, fruitcake is still a robust American tradition: The website Serious Eats reports that over 2 million fruitcakes are still sold each year.

Jeffrey Miller does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Thanks to the Music Modernization Act passed by US Congress in 2018, all sound recordings prior to 1923 will have their copyrights expire in the US on January 1st.

Unvaccinated mother, 27, dies with coronavirus as her father calls for fines for people who refuse jab.

This is the kind of headline you may have seen over the past year, an example highlighting public shaming of unvaccinated people who die of COVID-19.

One news outlet compiled a list of “notable anti-vaxxers who have died from COVID-19”.

There’s shaming on social media, too. For instance, a whole Reddit channel is devoted to mocking people who die after refusing the vaccine.

COVID-19 vaccinations save lives and reduce the need for hospitalisation. This is all important public health information.

Telling relatable stories and using emotive language about vaccination sends a message: getting vaccinated is good.

But the problem with the examples above is their tone and the way unvaccinated people are singled out. There’s also a murkier reason behind this shaming.

Read more: Why telling stories could be a more powerful way of convincing some people to take a COVID vaccine than just the facts

Why do we shame people?

Public shaming is not new. It is entrenched in human history and psychology. From an evolutionary perspective, shame is a way of keeping individuals accountable to the other members of their community for their perceived anti-social behaviours.

Philosophers Guy Aitchison and Saladin Meckled-Garcia say online public shaming is a way of collectively punishing a person “for having a certain kind of moral character”. This punishment (or “reputational cost”) can be a way of enforcing norms in society.

However, shaming others is also a way of signalling our own virtue and trustworthiness. Moralising about other people’s behaviour can help us feel better about ourselves.

The online world exacerbates this human tendency. It polarises two heavily moralised camps: the self-perceived good, responsible people on one side (the shaming ones), and the ones considered bad, irresponsible people on the other (the shamed ones).

Vaccination has become such a sensitive issue it easily triggers the instinct to shame others.

Read more: The power of public shaming, for good and for ill

Do people deserve to be shamed?

Shaming people for their health-related choices disregards the complexities about whether people are individually responsible for their own decisions.

Take obesity, another example associated with public shaming. The extent to which individuals are responsible for their obesity or for the lifestyle that causes obesity is complex. We need to consider issues including genes, environment, wealth, as well as choice. Indeed, shaming people for their obesity (“fat shaming”) is widely considered unacceptable.

Likewise, low levels of vaccine uptake in some communities is often linked to structural inequalities, including health inequality, and a resulting lack of trust. The blame for this situation is typically placed on broader society and institutions, and not on the affected groups or individuals.

If someone cannot be blamed for something, then shaming them is not ethically justifiable.

In discussions of responsibility it is now common to focus on “structural injustice” or “inequality” – the injustice of various social factors that shape choice and behaviour.

This applies not only to obesity, drugs, alcohol but also to vaccination decisions.

Even where this is not the case, there has been a targeted, systematic and even state-sponsored misinformation campaign about vaccines. People who are misinformed are victims, not perpetrators.

Finally, we should remember why medical ethics has designated autonomy and consent as foundational ethical values. Even where there is a clear expected benefit, and only very rare side effects, these won’t be shared equally. Many will have their lives saved. But some people will be the ones who suffer the harms. This a strong reason for respecting people’s decision about what risks to take on themselves.

Read more: There's no need to pause vaccine rollouts when there's a safety scare. Give the public the facts and let them decide

Barring any public health issue, an individual should make the decisions about health risks, whether they are from the disease or vaccines. Shaming them disregards the complexities of the distribution of risks and benefits, of the way individual values affect individual risk assessment, and of personal circumstances shaping individuals’ views on vaccines.

Granted, public health ethics is a broader area and autonomy does not have the same weight there, because other people’s health interests are at stake.

But when public health issues do arise, it is up to public health authorities to limit autonomy through appropriate and more ethical strategies.

One of us (Savulescu) has previously argued for incentives to vaccinate. Mandatory vaccination (such as imposing fines, or other penalties such as limitations on access to certain spaces) would require a separate ethical discussion, but could also be preferable in certain circumstances.

Read more: Anger, grievance, resentment: we need to understand how anti-vaxxers feel to make sense of their actions

Shaming is a form of vigilantism

One could plausibly imagine shaming pleases people who are vaccinated – especially the most self-righteous among them. But those who are opposed to vaccines, or who mistrust the government messages, are unlikely to be persuaded and may even be entrenched.

Even if shaming was effective, shaming wouldn’t necessarily be ethically justified. Not everything that is effective at achieving a goal is also ethical. Torture is, generally, not a justifiable way to obtain information, even if that information is credible and life-saving.

Shaming is a form of vigilantism, a mob behaviour. We have moved beyond burning witches or atheists, or lynching wrong-doers. We should stop doing these things also in the metaphorical sense.

We have parliaments and formal mechanisms for limiting behaviour, or incentivising it. We should leave it to these to regulate behaviour, not the media or the mob.

Julian Savulescu receives funding from the Uehiro Foundation on Ethics and Education, NHMRC, Wellcome Trust, Australian Research Council, UK Research and Innovation (Arts and Humanities Research Council) as part of the Ethics Accelerator Award AH/V013947/1, WHO. He is a Partner Investigator on an Australian Research Council Linkage award (LP190100841, Oct 2020-2023) which involves industry partnership from Illumina. He does not personally receive any funds from Illumina. He is a paid member of the Bayer Pharmaceuticals Bioethics Committee.

Alberto Giubilini receives funding from the Wellcome Trust.