Ledger’s upcoming portrayal of The Joker in the next Batman film, “The Dark Knight”, looks to be an amazing piece of work, despite following in the shadow of a giant (Jack Nicholson), he appears to have indeed left his own mark on the character. I’m sure he had many more years of good roles in him- it’s a real shame when the talented ones passes so early in life, and leaving a young daughter no less. What a downer.

(raising a glass in memoriam)

The survey results are in- and although it didn’t crack the top 10 (among some heavyweight contenders), apparently Spry was the #1 write-in framework, to the degree that the surveyors added it as an official choice in the survey a day or two later. The excerpt of interest from Richard Monson-Haefel’s weblog post announcing the results:

“Spry is growing quickly and may be in the top 10 next year. Spry was left out of the survey for the first day or so and then added in as it was the most popular write in toolkit. It may have faired better if it was an option from the start.”

Great to hear. Now again- Spry wasn’t one of the top 10 frameworks, but for a designer-focused framework to make such a splash in such an application developer-heavy community this year can only be a positive sign that things are headed in the right direction (at least I’d hope so!), and we’re of course going to keep pushing forward on Spry to make it even better for next year. No resting on laurels here, that’s for sure.

Thanks to everyone who wrote Spry in on the survey! And if you haven’t checked out Spry 1.6 and all the new treats within, now would be a great time to do so. Make sure to drop comments and suggestions in on the Spry forums, too- the team’s always listening.

The issue of ownership of digital media is becoming incredibly convoluted due to the ‘mashup culture’ the Web 2.0 movement has brought on. Particularly with photography and imagery. I’ve lots of friends who make their living as photographers, and have a tough time promoting their work online without being subjected to what I’d consider creative theft. Fortunately the bulk of my own personal songwriting is either locked in a vault at an unnamed record label (I’ll tell that story in person, but not online), or in my own possession and not distributed – most of my professional music career has been studio and session work, focusing on other people’s songwriting. And my photography, although exhibiting an occasional spark of talent, is mostly average in quality- but despite that, I’ve granted usage permission to many people who’ve asked to ‘remix’ a picture here and there from my Flickr photostream. Hey, in general I don’t mind contributing a bit here and there to the mashup culture. But I also don’t make my living as a photographer, so the benefit-to-risk factor is extremely low to me anyway.

Enter the Lane Hartwell controversy.

In a nutshell, Lane Hartwell, an independent San Francisco photojournalist who has published her work in many publications including Wired magazine (among others), noticed a recent ‘parody video’ on YouTube using one of her copyrighted images. Now this is a key point- her image in question was reportedly posted on Flickr with an ‘all rights reserved’ copyright notice affixed to it. In a normal world, ‘all rights reserved’ should mean exactly what you’d expect- she does not want people to use her images without her express permission.

The guys who used this image were reportedly contacted by Ms. Hartwell and asked to not use her image, despite the fact that it only appeared for roughly a second in the video. They (reportedly) either declined or simply did not comply, and Ms. Hartwell – finding this incident the straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back after being creatively thieved many times in the past – consulted an attorney who was able to have the video removed from YouTube through legal channels. Now I’m certainly not a fan of indiscriminate litigation, but I can understand being frustrated with watching your work be repurposed without your permission and looking for some help to try and address the problem.

(You’ll noted I use the words ‘reportedly’ and ‘allegedly’ quite liberally within this post as I’m sure that both I and the rest of the incredibly judgmental online communities who have seen fit to comment on this subject do not know the entire story behind this with clarity.)

Anyway, once the video was taken off of YouTube, all hell broke loose. Lane’s now being subjected to verbal harassment, misogynistic slurs and flat out hatred for simply trying to protect her own work.

Web 2.0 analyst Michael Arrington, a lawyer before cashing in on the recent bubble economy with his site TechCrunch, went on record saying that Lane Hartwell was flat out wrong. ‘Fair Use’ provisions – being as the image was used in a parody – reportedly allow the video producers to steal her work without asking, and use it however they see fit as the video was simply a parody. No credit, no need to even ask her permission before taking the image- he implies that she’s an attention hound capitalizing on the situation to get publicity. Even worse, that she’s ‘ruining everyone’s fun’ by not wanting her work remixed- although the license agreement stated on her Flickr account should have made that clear before they decided to lift the image.

Emm… WTF?

Now again- I understand the ‘mashup’ culture is all about remixing and combining a conglomeration of assets (ill gained or not) into new forms. But these guys couldn’t even ask permission before using her photo, and give her the benefit of consent? Or even just simply read – and honor – the explicitly-stated license she’d placed on the image to begin with? And the insinuation that simply expecting your wishes regarding your own property to be honored is ruining the fun for thieves who would usurp said property is absolutely asine, regardless of ‘fair usage’ or not. It’s one thing if she hadn’t stated any license for her image, but she did- it was ignored, but according to Arrington, she’s still a party-wrecker for not having a sense of humor about being ripped off.

Shit- if I was putting up with the abuse Lane Hartwell’s getting right now, I’d expect my sense of humor to be stretched thinner than Kate Moss on a coke binge. And that’s putting it mildly.

If this is the state of our intellectual property laws right now, then I submit we need to fucking reset the system and start over. Even rappers who snag small samples of previously-published songs are well familiar with the need to acquire permission before doing so, and life’s been just ducky since that flap came to a head back in the early ’90s thanks to hacks like Vanilla Ice who tripped over their own egos. But today, simply as Ms. Hartwell had the poor judgment to post her image online, it’s – according to Arrington – fair game for taking and using in any way anyone sees fit – simply as the end result was a ‘parody’. Forget integrity and even good karma in asking someone’s permission before taking their property- since online imagery is easy to take, it’s apparently now OK to do so. Does that mean if I left a Chevy engine in my front yard, behind a fence, with a sign saying ‘PLEASE DO NOT STEAL’, that any jackass who wanted to use it in his own ‘project’ to poke some fun at Ford has the legal right to take it without recourse? Same general scenario.

Fuck that. I say Lane Hartwell was completely within her rights to ask for her photo to not be used in this video, and to take legal recourse when it was without her permission. And I think that Michael Arrington should stick to digging up dirt on the Web 2.0 day traders as although his legal credentials may be intact, his moral foundation is beyond suspect. Just take a look at the comment thread in Lane’s related Flickr post here, and you tell me how you would feel if you simply asked for a little bit of control over your own property, and received the kind of verbal abuse she’s clearly been taking. Methinks you’d probably feel much as she does- ripped off, yet somehow made out to be an opportunistic hack who’s simply trying to grab a spotlight.

The guys who made the ‘Bubble 2.0′ video simply didn’t ask for permission, and have even admitted as such in a reasonably calm tone once they were called on it. But what I find most reprehensible is that people like Michael Arrington, who I previously held in pretty high regard, seem to support this form of creative theft. I’ll simply quote Arrington’s closing shot in his recent post to illustrate my point:

Societal ideals around what constitutes ownership over art are changing. People who try to protect and silo off their work are simply being ignored. Those that embrace the community, and give back to it not only allowing but asking for their work to be mashed up, re-used and otherwise embraced are being rewarded with attention. At the core is a basic implicit understanding – if you want to be part of the community, you have to give back to it, too.

That’s all well and good, but what if you DON’T want to be “part of the community”, as the license statement on Ms. Hartwell’s original image post clearly stated – ALL RIGHTS RESERVED? Simply by posting an image online we absolve ourselves of any rights over our own property? That availability and convenience trumps a clearly stated copyright notice? That position seems utter bullshit to me- and even if you fully disagree with my opinion I’d hope that at least, should your threshold of talent be limited to reordering and remixing bits and pieces of creative product generated by someone elsehttp://www.thebigdark.com/blogadmin/mt.cgi?__mode=view&_type=entry&id=1121&blog_id=1’s hard work, you’ll at least have the courtesy to at least ask permission before just taking your source material, and respect the owners’ wishes should they decline.

The only glimmering hope I can see out of this morass is that others apparently share my opinion. That’s heartening, but I still have to shake my head and wish Lane Hartwell the best and all of my moral support, as she’s standing strong amidst a flurry of asshats who seem to still, in this advanced day and age, think that creativity is something you can steal.

A line needs to be drawn, or this ‘mashup culture’ will find itself hopelessly without source material- as those with the creative wherewithal to generate their own art, music and prose will simply move outside the community entirely. I’m sure a balance can be reached, but it certainly shouldn’t skew on the side of just absolving rights of ownership to one’s hard work due to the ease with which the Internet makes theft possible. That’s just a crock of shit, and another reason I find our legal system hopelessly and possibly irrevocably flawed in the areas of copyright law.

Enough said, soapbox complete.

Updates of note to this saga:

Lane Hartwell makes a public statement on her position. Well put, in fact.
Lane also sets the record straight- there is no lawsuit.
Valleywag – for once (usually I find ‘em pretty hackish) – kinda hits the nail on the head re: Arrington’s related bullshit and venom.
Derek Powazek sums it up elegantly (at least more so than I did). A must-read.

Yes, this list will likely be controversial to some – particularly if you’re relying on one or more of these features today. However, the team decided to publish this list early- to both help you prepare for the changes, evaluate other options and adjust your own workflows. Most all the deprecated features either have become more code-centric workflows in other dedicated IDEs/environments (JSP, .NET), or had visual user interfaces that enabled DW developers and designers to generate poorly-formed code in the back end (Layout Mode and Timelines, for example) – something the team takes very seriously.

My personal opinion is that this move will really free up resources to do a LOT in the next few releases of Dreamweaver, and start doing more ‘revolutionary’ feature and architectural work as opposed to strictly ‘evolutionary’ features and polish. If any of the features to be removed give you pause, post a note, and it’s likely we can suggest alternatives for the post-CS3 era to help smooth the transition.

Personally- I hope that when we’re able to talk more about what’s being planned for the next version (or two) of Dreamweaver, the tradeoffs made here will be more than justified in your eyes. But that’s a subject for a much later date with a lot more details- so keep posted.

I have no plans to move to the Mac platform for my personal use. That said, I have noticed that I’ve been recommending the machine to friends and neighbors when they want to know what kind of system they should buy.

I can see why the Mac is gaining market share, because the rationale for using one is simple. Do you want to deal with the agony of antivirus, firewall, antispyware, and other touchy software subsystems, many of which do not work well? Or do you want to boot Microsoft Word and write a document and be done with it?

Whoa. I’m stunned. Where’s the Mac-hatin’ Dvorak of old?

I tend to agree with Fake Steve in his post here – for a long time I’ve used the Dvorak Apple-bashings as a contrarian indicator – a false negative, so to speak – and considered anything he bashed as something I’d likely love. Now I’m all torn. What’s a Mac lover to do if all the Apple haters are drying up one-by-one?

Witness Tom Tomorrow’s ‘Great Moments In Punditry: Four Years Later‘. Brilliant cartoon, Tom. Hats off t’ya.

Check out the article.

(Thanks to Don Crowley for the twitter-nod and link.)

Linda posted a brief update today on the Omni Mouth blog showing the first known screenshot (under development) of OmniFocus, and talking a bit through the requisite feature set planned. Read all the details at the Omni Mouth site.

My initial thoughts- OmniFocus looks nice, but I’m very pleased with my experience in iGTD so far, and it’s price is damn fine – free. OmniFocus will be a commercial app, and there is no release date yet. I’m also still not sold that the feature set noted for OmniFocus is any significant boost over iGTD. Solid, yes – but not enough to move me over yet. Although the ‘quick entry’ form planned for OmniFocus sounds great, it doesn’t appear to cover the ground that iGTD’s rich Quicksilver integration covers – and I’d prefer to stick with Quicksilver’s undeniable and mind-blowing awesomeness than dedicating another hotkey combo to a myopic ‘data entry’ screen dedicated to OmniFocus alone.

[Update: Ken has now set me straight via comments- Quicksilver is supported via plug-in as well, so OmniFocus would appear to still be a strong contender for my tasklists! ]

Of course, the OmniGroup folk are also known for their awesomeness- so I’ll withhold true judgment until I can get my hands on a prerelease. For now I feel that they’re chasing iGTD’s tail, but time will tell…

Finally- an accolade you’re actually qualified to receive.

Is Imus wrong with his comment? You fucking bet he is. Mining negative stereotypes for a laugh – thus invoking the race card – is stupid any way you slice it in my book. I’m an equal-opportunity cynic. Stupidity, ignorance and the potential to be an asshole are colorblind traits. I reserve the right to dislike someone based solely on the merits of their personality and actions- and race (at least for me) really does not factor into the equation. Even if Imus was a hip-hop superstar instead of the wrinkled, pathetic excuse for a white man he is, he’d still be an asshole at the end of the day based on those words.

And on that note, Kansas City Star columnist Jason Whitlock finally called it like it is- I would stand up and cheer him from the rooftops if such a gesture translated into the online medium. Instead, I’ll just simply point to his column on the situation and offer up major props for the words he’s crafted within.

Read Jason’s article here – “Imus isn‚Äôt the real bad guy”.

You know, I cop a laugh at Dave Chappelle’s racial jabs just like everyone else – even when they’re pointed at me by proxy as a white man, but after a certain point you’ve just got to call the cards the way they lie on this issue. The gangsta-rap culture needs to own up to it’s share of the blame for propagating the current state of race relations and negative stereotypes – right along with the rest of us. There is no ‘get out of jail free card’ in this scenario, you’re either helping or hurting the situation. End of story.

So thank you, Jason. As a white boy in a rainbow-colored world, I certainly couldn’t say this as eloquently, or with as much weight, as you did. Excellent column.