FunBlog

Well, it seems to be official. Rumiko Takahashi will finally bring the InuYasha manga to an end with the next issue. That’s 558 chapters in 56 volumes over a period of almost 12 years. Will the ending be worth it? Come on. There’s no story in the world that justifies 56 volumes. I suspect most fans feel more exhausted than thrilled at this point.

But what about the anime series that ended 4 years ago, having caught up to the manga and run out of material? Will some animation studio pick up the series and finish it, now that it has an ending? Or will fans who slogged through the first 167 episodes be left without ever knowing whether Naraku got his just deserts, and whether Inuyasha and Kagome ever got off the dime and admitted their feelings for each other?
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Dreamworks brings us a new animated film which is both funny and a worthy addition to the canon of great Kung Fu movies.

The story is set in ancient China, where Master Oogway (Randall Duk Kim), a large tortoise who invented Kung Fu, has a vision that tells him that Tai Lung (Ian McShane), an evil snow leopard, will soon escape from prison and lay waste to the valley. He decides to find a worthy student to whom to give the Dragon Scroll, which will grant invincibility.

Master Shifu (Dustin Hoffman) is sure that the honor will go to one of his five top students: Tigress, Monkey, Mantis, Viper or Crane (played respectively by Angelina Jolie, Jackie Chan, Seth Rogen, Lucy Liu, and David Cross.)
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Rumiko Takahashi is surely the most successful living manga artist, and the most influential since Osamu Tezuka. Just about every anime fan is familiar with at least some of her work, including popular series like Inuyasha and Ranma 1/2. This one is less well-known. It is much shorter than most of her other works, and also much darker. (Inuyasha has some dark moments, but it alternates them with much lighter material.)

Takahashi’s success is largely due to the fact that she is a good storyteller (though she tends to have trouble bringing a long series to a conclusion in a reasonable amount of time.) This is evident here: the stories are unsettling but compelling.
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Elliotte Rusty Harold proposes pirate radio as the solution to the problem posed by the Copyright Royalty Board decision (see The Death of Internet Radio.)

The RIAA’s Internet radio purge is a temporary glitch, nothing more. Uncensored, free Internet radio is here to stay. The most the RIAA can hope to do is inconvenience a few American hobbyists for a few weeks before they find better solutions. The most they will do is transfer airtime from their artists to independents. Heck, if that means we don’t have to endure quite so many headlines about Britney shaving her head, I can only applaud. Go RIAA Go! We could never destroy you as fast as you’re destroying yourself.

This may be too optimistic. If you live in the United States and operate a pirate radio station from a server in a “friendly” country, you may get away with it as long as you are obscure enough, but if you are too successful the RIAA and its friends would have many ways to retailiate against you.

If they can identify you they can bring civil and criminal charges against you, and past experience suggests that there are many ways that they could identify you. For one thing, the U.S. is constantly pressuring other countries to adopt American-style copyright laws, so that “friendly” country could become unfriendly without warning.

Even if they don’t identify you they can use the DMCA to keep U.S.-based web sites and search engines from linking to you. They might even get U.S. ISPs to block access to your IP address. This has never been done in the United States, but it is common in other countries.

What about the idea of making deals with the individual artists so that you can broadcast their songs legally? That’s fine if you have a team of lawyers working for you, but it’s probably impractical for low-budget garage operations. Remember, to be safe you would need to get a sign-off from everyone who might possibly be involved in the creation of a song or video. Just identifying the copyright holders is often impossible, even for big publishers. The only thing certain is that if you make enough money from a work, someone will eventually show up demanding it.

Doc Searls on Linux Journal describes a remarkable case of a new industry being regulated out of existence to please its old-style competitors.

In a move that recalls the Vogons’ decision to destroy Earth to clear the way for a highway bypass through space (a thankfully fictional premise of Douglas Adams’ Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy), the judges comprising the Copyright Royalty Board have decided to destroy the Internet radio industry so the Recording Industry won’t be inconvenienced by something it doesn’t know, like or understand.
–Internet Radio on Death Row

via Linux Weekly News.