Ban on gay-friendly guilds attracts queer-rights group warning

Cory Doctorow:
Lambda Legal, a queer-rights group, has sent a letter to the lawyers at Blizzard asking them to stop discriminating against gay players.

World of Warcraft's moderators have been shutting down gay-friendly guilds in the game on the tortured grounds that letting people mention that they're gay will encourage jerks to say nasty things about gay people, and since saying homophobic things violates WoW's policies, ignorant jerks shouldn't be tempted into being homophobes.

The Lambda Legal letter takes Blizzard to task for this bizarre ruling and warns them that this is a legally and morally dubious stance to take:

In order to avoid any similar incidents in the future, we ask that you inform all of Blizzard’s system administrators that they are not to discipline any players for mentioning or discussing sexual orientation or gender identity in a non-insulting fashion. We also ask that Blizzard confirm that LGBT-friendly guilds are allowed to announce their existence in the same manner as any other guilds. Of course, Lambda Legal would be more than happy to offer any advice we can to assist Blizzard in crafting a nondiscriminatory clarification of the terms of service for W.O.W., or in providing guidance to the administrators enforcing Blizzard’s anti-harassment guidelines. We ask that you respond within thirty days of the date of this letter to avoid the need for further action.

Link

(via Wonderland)

http://www.boingboing.net/2006/02/07/ban_on_gayfriendly_g.html

Ken Russell's portraits of 1950s UK "Teddy Girls"

It is just the strangeness machine today.

Xeni Jardin:
Spotted on WFMU's Beware of The Blog today, this incredible gallery of "Teddy Girl" portraits from the UK shot in 1955. Wikipedia explains the subculture here, and Coop, who pointed us to the gallery, elaborates:

The rockers in postwar Britain were called "Teddy Boys" because they adapted Edwardian-era styling cues (drainpipe trousers, long coats, etc.) to American rockabilly fashion. It's a scene that survived the fifties, kept going through the sixties, seventies, and is still around today.

In this case, "Teddy Girls" are women in the scene who opted for the male elements of the style, like short pompadour haircuts and trousers.

I've never seen these photos before, but it's interesting for the butch "drag king" elements, which seems pretty daring for the era.

Also, the photos are by genius gonzo director Ken Russell!

Image: "17 year old Josie Buchan was a fashion student with Russell’s future wife, Shirley, at the college Russell also attended. Josie introduced Ken to her Teddy Girl friends. Here she shows off a thin black velvet tie and D.A haircut. It would have been incredibly rare to find a woman sporting this type of men’s hairstyle back then."

Link

http://www.boingboing.net/2006/02/06/ken_russells_portrai.html

Lessig on the Significance of the Read/Write Web

To be honest, this is really just all for my own personal information. I guess I should be putting it on my other blog, but I'm lazy.

"We do not realise how significant the Read-Write internet could be." --Lawrence Lessig (12/05)

So if you've read this site for awhile you know that Lawrence Lessig is one of the people I really admire, not only for his brain but for what he's doing with it. His latest screencast on Google Book Search is definitely worth the look, and anyone who is trying to understand the significance of this Read/Write Web thing we're mucking around in needs to read this piece in the Financial Times. It's pegged on the animated music video phenomenon and how (guess what?) there are now attempts to rein it in. But it's also about the amazing potential of what we have here and the threats to it. A few excerpts:

AMVs are just part of a growing and important "Read-Write" internet-a world in which content is bought, but not simply to be consumed. Blogs, photo journals and sites such as Wikipedia and MySpace signal an extraordinary hunger in our culture for something beyond consumption. According to a recent Pew study, almost 60 per cent of US teenagers have created and shared content on the internet. That number will only grow next year. As it does, these creators will increasingly demand freedom to create, or more precisely, re-create, using as inputs the culture that they buy. In a sense, this re-creativity of the Read-Write internet is nothing new. Since the beginning of human society, individuals have remixed the culture around them, sharing with their friends the product of these remixes.

We've all got to understand this and take every opportunity to let people know what this means. Lessig writes that we're on the precipice of an era where an amazing explosion of culture could take place as long as it's not co-opted by those in power politically or financially:

It is hard for those of us from the couch potato generation to understand why the creativity of the Read-Write internet is important. But if you focus on something that we are likely to understand - market value - then the Read-Write internet, indeed, has a great deal to recommend it. The computers, bandwidth, software and storage media needed to enable an efficient Read-Only internet are but a fraction of the technology needed to support the Read-Write internet. The potential for growth with the Read-Write internet is extraordinary, if only the law were to allow it.

And if you don't think this is important to our kids, listen up:

But to those building the Read-Write internet, economics is not what matters. Nor is it what matters to their parents. After a talk in which I presented some AMV work, a father said to me: "I don't think you really realise just how important this is. My kid couldn't get into college till we sent them his AMVs. Now he's a freshman at a university he never dreamed he could attend." The father was right. We do not realise how significant the Read-Write internet could be. Nor can I even begin to imagine how policymakers could be made to see the harm that perfecting the Read-Only internet will have for this more vibrant and valuable alternative.

There is much to get our heads around, but if we don't recognize the urgency of this particular issue right now, there may not be too much left to think about in a few years.

Tagged: lessig, read_write_web, copyright

http://www.weblogg-ed.com/2006/01/18#a4526

Maria Dracula

I'm currently reviewing the book Maria Dracula for the JDS, and found out that the author has a blog. Thought it might interest my brethren and sistren:

http://mariadracula.blogspot.com/

what to say?

I've been invited to speak on "Children, New Media and Gaming" at a local uni. I wonder what I might say.