Okay, first I was really FUCKED up in the first place after reading Mark Simons' article from AWN, which really shows the 'Orphaned Works Legislation' to be such a FUCKED up bill and I couldn't help getting paranoid with Mark's fiery words in every lines he said about the bill and listening to the interview he had with Brad Holland from IPA regarding with the bill. After some clearing ups and researches, I finally got a clear insight at the bill which was posted by Mrs Marybeth Peters, a register of copyrights in the US:[link]

1. Why the bill is proposed?
First, let's look into the Orphaned Works problem, some people who wanted to get old photographs retouched or repaired but were denied service by the photo shops because:
A) Those pictures were taken by the photographer at the wedding then and should be the one (not the customers) who has copyright for the photograph and they need approvals from that guy.
B) The customers don't even know who-the-FUCK photographer at his/her parents' wedding and how the FUCK are they going to trace it? Do photo shops expect their customers to go on a wildgoose chase for some guy who shot their folks wedding 30 years ago?

Other examples are big organisations like museums and documentary filmmakers who want to use archival collections of old photos and celluloid footages and to do that they need approvals from the owners but should if the owners were buried 6 feet deep long long time ago, who the FUCK they're gonna turn to get permissions? At the end, the whole show&tell project FUCKED up all because the owner is DEAD and they can't risked getting HELL lawsuits from the other side.

2. The Proposed Solution
In Marybeth's statements recommended a framework whereby a legitimate orphan works owner who resurfaces may bring an action for “REASONABLE COMPENSATION” against a qualifying user. A user does not qualify for the benefits of orphan works legislation UNLESS he/she first conducts a good faith, reasonably diligent (but unsuccessful) search for the copyright owner.

It allows a copyright owner to present evidence related to the market value of his/hers work and, at the same time, allows the copyright user to more precisely gauge his/hers exposure to liability. Statutory damages are not apply to Orphaned Works but statutory damages are STAYING. If an owner were to emerge, his/hers legal ownership of the copyright in his/hers work is unchanged. Full remedies, including full statutory damages, would be used against both original and new users who are trying to use it for something else.

The copyrights guys also proposed one exception to the basic rule of reasonable compensation, which is a safe-harbor for certain limited uses performed without any purpose of direct or indirect commercial advantage. The exception would apply only where the user STOP using it after receiving NOTICES for infringement and is believed to be critical for orphan works solution. For example, a local museum wants to use multiple Orphan Photos available on its website or in pamphlets, it is possible that reasonable compensation would still rarely conflict with the legitimate interests of the copyright owner.

3. Public Responses:
Generally digital photographers are against this as they find that their works/pictures are sometimes thought to be ORPHANED when they're NOT. That's because their works are NOT WATERMARKED and they uploaded it directly from digicams to PC to sites like Fotopages, Photobuckets, Flickr etc. Unlike both traditional and CG paintings, pictures taken from digicams seldom provide any hard evidences that they OWN the pictures. Therefore, such situations are also the roots of PRECEIVED ORPHANED WORKS. So what are they gonna do? Go back to the old Kodak Film style? Man, even your UGLY ID photo and digital homemade porn videos are considered 'Orphaned' too.

The bill included revisions to the Copyright Office's original proposal and incorporated a number of changes that were designed to protect photographers and other visual artists in particular. These changes included a requirement that users document their searches, a definition of "reasonable compensation" (taken from the Office's Report), and the availability of attorney's fees under circumstances where a user fails to negotiate in good faith with an owner who has previously registered his work.

In conclusion, the bill is hoped to makes things more easier for museums, documentary filmmakers and publishers when it comes to using Orphaned Works where owners are DEAD and Marybeth stressed that the bill does NOT create an EXCEPTION; nor does it rescind an owner's COPYRIGHTS RIGHTS.

Above are are just summarised version and here is my opinions about the bill. It will be beneficial for any organisations to use pictures, footages and even letters which are more than 100 years old where the original owners are DEAD without much hassles with the copyrights laws, after all too many people are scheming enough to make money out of lawsuits by seeking statutory damages.

However, there is just one thing which is the matter of TRUST. How would I know if the law really guarantees that my rights to my works and I'm protected WITHOUT having some MUTHAFUCKAS using my works without my permissions and called my works as "ORPHANED" WITHOUT even did a FUCKING Diligent search? The real problem is that with piracy so RAMPANT these days, MUTHAFUCKAS may use ORPHANED WORKS as an excuse or loophole to get away scot free and we are talking about ABUSE here. Especially stock photos taken from digicams and uploaded online where the stockphotographers can seldom produce any hard evidences that the photos belong to them, even with hi-res photos which could also means that they bought from elsewhere.

What more, with so much hassles with the copyrights laws like the case mentioned above where photo shops won't retouch your parents' worn out wedding photos if you can't get approvals from the guy who shot it 30 years ago. Such hassles are the results of unnecessary acts in the copyrights laws where couples aren't OWNERS to their very OWN wedding albums, so I can't even be entitled rights to my ID photo with my ugly face on it?

As long it doesn't affect artists, writers and photographers who are still ALIVE, I don't FUCKING care about it as long MUTHAFUCKAS don't use that ORPHANED clause or I will FUCKING go after their asses. With image editing sotfwares capable of retouching and wipe away watermarks, MUTHAFUCKAS can FUCKING use that ORPHANED clause to cover up their acts. So what's the best way to protect your works? Never show them? Let's face it, the bill can't fully GUARANTEE protections of owners to their works as long PIRACY and ILLEGAL USES of copyrighted materials are still so RAMPANT where the ORPHANED WORKS clause only applies to those WHO ARE DEAD...

These days with the internet getting more and more advanced, you can just find anything from microscopic organisms to senators porn pictures/videos. Although with so much freedoms going around online recently, some lawmakers are out to twist realities and to commit crimes without getting arrested for. Thus, they come up with a bill known as "Orphaned Works Legislation", which really infuriates me and pissed off millions of artists out there.

What is an Orphaned Work? An Orphaned Work is any creative work of art where the artist or copyright owner has released their copyright, whether on purpose, by passage of time, or by lack of proper registration. In the same way that an orphaned child loses the protection of his or her parents, your creative work can become an orphan for others to use without your permission. Put it short, when your work become an orphan, you've already lost rights and ownership over it.

Currently, you don't have to register your artwork to own the copyright, you OWN A COPYRIGHT as soon as YOU CREATE SOMETHING. International law also supports this and allows you to sue for damages for any infringements of your works.

Imagine a LAW that legalizes THEFT. The only people who benefit from this are those who want to make use of our creative works without paying for them and large companies (particularly Corbis, Gettyimages, Pixar, Disney etc) who will run the new private copyright registries and FORCED you to PAY in order to register every single image, photo, sketch or creative work or your works will be ORPHANED. What more, it is currently against international law to coerce people to register their works for copyrights because there are so many inherent problems with it. But because big business can push through laws in the United States, which is about to break with the rest of the world, again(after breaking away from the Kyoto Protocol) and take your rights away. With the tens of millions of photos and pieces of artwork created each year, the bounty for forcing everyone to pay a registration fee would be enormous. We lose our rights and our creations, and someone else makes money at our expense.

So how will the Orphaned Works can affects artists? I took this from the US Illustrator Partnership Association:

"How Registries Will Orphan Your Work

When the Copyright Office spawned the Orphan Works bill (2006), they said it would not cause problems for artists. They were wrong. Now they concede the problems, but say registries are the solution. Wrong again.

PicScout is one of the technologies being developed for locating visual art. On March 13, they touted their capabilities to the House IP subcommittee:

“Our technology can match images, or partial information of an image – such as a single face of one person in a crowd, with 99% success... Over the years, we have established relationships with our partners and now track the use of millions of digital files stored in our huge centralized database.

PicScout is just one of several firms that hope to benefit from the Orphan Works bill. They envision a future registry in which registered pictures will not be available for review or browsing. Instead a searcher would feed in a desired image and if there’s a match, get back only the artist’s name and contact information – or be told there is “no match.”

So far, so good – for all the pictures in the registry. But “no match” – there’s the rub.

You Can’t Find What’s Not in the Registry: Let’s say you haven’t registered a particular image in the system. In that case, the best technology in the world won’t find it there. So unless every picture you’ve ever done is registered, the searcher’s failure to find a match would actually orphan a non-orphaned image.

But let’s say you comply with this coercive bill. You register tens of thousands of your works with one or more commercial registries. Are these works now safe from infringement? No! They can still be orphaned. Here’s how:

PicScout’s claim of “99% success” concedes a margin of error of at least 1%. Sounds small, doesn’t it? But consider:

– Google has already said they intend to use millions of orphaned works. Other businesses will use millions more.
– One percent of every million searches means 10,000 registered images “accidentally” orphaned.
– Multiply 10,000 accidental orphans by millions of millions of searches and you have an astronomical number.
– These are images that will be orphaned even though the artists spent the time and money to register them.
– Will these artists be able to sue for infringement?
– Yes, but at their own risk, because
– The users’ use of registries will prove they did a “reasonably diligent search.”

And there’s another problem:
– It’s statistically impossible for each million searches to orphan the same 10,000 images.

Therefore:
– Every image you register will be permanently vulnerable to an infinite number of orphan opportunities; also:
– An image may turn up as a “match” on one registry – while being orphaned on another.

There are many reasons why international law forbids coerced registration as a condition of protecting your copyrights.We’ve just given you some.

We believe the technology being developed by PicScout and others is fantastic. But it should be used to help artists protect their rights; not to facilitate cultural theft on an unprecedented scale.

Please help us spread the word about this bad bill. Post or forward this email in its entirety to any interested party.

from: Brad Holland and Cynthia Turner, for the Board of the Illustrators’ Partnership"

For more infos about the Orphaned Works legislation issues, just click to these sites:

[link]

[link]

[link]

[link]

A petition site created by a deviant can be found here:
[link]

So sign the petition if you're against the bill.

Currently, the bill has yet to be passed to be effective and 2 brave souls as mentioned above, Brad Holland and Cynthia Turner from the Board of the Illustrators’ Partnership are figthing against the bill to ensure that it will not happened or all artists are screwed.

It all goes back to the fact where the WEST ALWAYS ABUSE RIGHTS, even to be entitled LICENSED to ROB. All those years of academic studies and these academicians twisted and screwed up the system that ensures everyone are entitled to their own rights, is this what the US geniuses has become of today? A bunch of Dr. EVILs and MINI-MEs? It's clear that the US bright minds are NO different with the Al-Qaeda and what's all these CRAP TALKS about HUMAN and CIVIL RIGHTS? A BIG PILE OF BULLSHITS, that's what!

As an individual and an artist, it's YOUR RIGHT to be entitled for OWNERSHIP and COPYRIGHT for your works. Therefore, be SMART and SUPPORT AGAINST THE ORPHANED WORKS LEGISLATION.

PS. Pass this around if you're kind enough or our asses are screwed

Warning: For any of you who are FREE-TIBET supporters, don't even bother to read this. It will only increases your blood pressures and give you multiple strokes.

2008 is an auspicious year for China as by 8-8-08 is the Olympics to be held in Beijing. As China has been making so much improvements and constructions in preparation for the game, there are some jerk-offs out there plan to screw the game up like kidnapping foreign athletes, medias and TRYING TO SCREW UP THE TORCH RELAY.

First of all, I support the ONE CHINA policy and I always do.
Why? The reasons:
1. I'm an ethnic Chinese who lives in SE Asia while my ancestors migrated from China to here centuries ago in search for a new life, what more I have some distant relatives back in the province of Fujian, China.

2. I read about Chinese histories from the Xia, Shang, Han, Tang, Ming till the cultural revolution ages and I'm fucking mesmerized and proud with my culture background full of glories and falls of each dynasties till the modern times.

3. I know the meaning of "UNITED WE STAND, DIVIDED WE FALL" as China has been through a lot of ups and downs, break-ups and reunifications as time takes its course, any states secessions will only resulted in having more warfares like among the Balkan states and African nations.

4. The Chinese are the most people occupying in every corner of the world, and also among the discriminating races because of the white mens burdens.

5. The WEST has left a grave impression when 8 western countries invaded China during Qing dynasty and plundered the whole nation by selling OPIUMS to the people and STEALING state treasures. Even until today, the West particularly the US of A still plays a 2-headed snake to the Chinese authority. How can there be progress if there aren't transparency among countries?

6. The Chinese authority's statement are CLEAR-Tibet and Taiwan independences are a big NO because these states are always been a part of China. It always has been the West interest to see China breaking up again as it seems the West still haven't give up their colonising dreams, so why all the talks about human-rights and freedom of speeches when it's actually colonists talks?

The Olympic Games is not just only an international gaming event for athletes only, it is also an international playground for men and women of all races, religions and cultures to compete with each other in good spirit of SPORTS. Therefore, NO ONE should drag POLITICS into the PEACEFUL gaming event or not that you are only DISRESPECTING the game but also DISSING the entire world by DENYING other nations to host and compete in the game. Soon or later, other oppressed groups like Sri Lanka's Tamil Tigers, Basque ETA and Kurds will also pick up the habit by SCREWING UP the TORCH and RUIN the GAME. Till then there will be NO MORE OLYMPICS and our world blazed in WAR FIRE. Is that what you FREETIBET protesters really want? While protesting against the abuse of humanrights, you selfish hooligans are also DENYING other people RIGHTS to compete in the Olympics and PROMOTING VIOLENCES. Isn't that SELFISH and ABSURD?

The Dalai Lama has voiced his support for the Beijing Olympics and has call for violences and protesting to stop as he knows such acts will only worsen situations and soon there will be no chances for talks. See? Even the Dalai Lama supports the game because he knows it is meant for all nations, not just for Tibetans and certainly NO grounds for selfish political means. If any of you still carry on to screw up the torch relays, you are only making things WORSE and should the game is screwed, everything will fall into ground zero and the Dalai Lama will become the SCAPEGOAT for all of your SELFISH crimes, is that what you want?

So here's the word: RESPECT THE GAME, SCREW THE TORCH AND ALL LOST.

Currently, I'm craving for AHPO-KAI-FAN (claypot chicken rice) and CHAR-SIEW-PAU (grill pork bun) which are among the popular chinese delicacies here in Malaysia, but last few days as Setsuna Ibrahim fans know that Gundam 00 has just wrap up its first season after spanning for 25 episodes and will resume with season 2 later this year. Although I'm not so into this 00 hype, off and on I do check up on reviews and synopsis to gain some general insights of the bloody show. After years of watching and reading Gundam animes and MS specs, I came to realise that the anime has barely able to live out the shadows of the 2 most famous characters from the anime:

Amuro Rey: your regular guy who starts off as a nobody in the game of MS piloting but with strokes of odd-lucks, he was able to pull it off by destroying 2 Zakus at one go, taking on Char from time to time, kicking enemy acebutts and becomes a war hero.

Char Aznable: your typical Count of MonteCristo embark on a journey to avenge his deceased father and kills those who screwed up his life. Charismatic and mysterious, every girls and guys fall for him (he's obviously bisexual)

In the 25th(final) episode of 00, there is a golden MA laying waste on the Celestial Beings, which later hatched out a golden MS called "Alvaaron" (another butt ugly 00 MS) This bling' got shield barriers which can repel attacks from all directions but at the end it served its purpose after got whooped by Excia before Excia got whooped by Graham's Flag. For anyone who have watch UC0079 OneYearWar, you can find some similiarities between 00 and 0079. Excia vs Alvaaron is pretty much ripped from the Gundam vs Bigzam and the whole Setsuna vs Graham is very much similiar to the Amuro-Char rivalry. Put it together, Gundam animes are still in the 2 bigshots shadows after 20 years. The Gundam Meisters' fate and destiny are sealed as they are meant to play enemies and appeared hostile so that the world would unite and take them out. Once the Gundams' objectives are over, it's time for them to die as fallen enemies. As the show only spans for 25 episode, most of the storylines end up abruptly and nonsensical with emo boys shed tears and whine about their miserable pasts, senseless killings by triggerhappy nuts (trinities) and of course way too much dialogues than actions.

Like AHPO(claypot) chickenrice and CHARsiewpau, the name "AhPo" and "Char" have become so well-known among Chinese/HongKong Gundam fans that you just can't help seeing them reappeared in other Gundam animes like Wing, SEED and 00 as it is all too obvious that Sunrise keep reusing these 2 nunchunks over and over again. Unfortunately, it didn't work out so well as poor storylines and weak plots really kill the anime but hey, as long it sells Gunplas from Bandai and keep the EMO otakus eye on the bishies, who gives a damn about it? Man, aren't we SUCKERS at our own OBSESSIONS?

And speaking of chinese delicacies, let me tell you of what are my most anticipated mecha animes this year.

Macross Frontier does show some colours after its pilot episode few months back and I'm expecting it to outshine mediocre shows like 00. Especially after watching the chinese restaurant "Nyan Nyan" commercial, I couldn't help thinking about 2 chinese foods above.

CodeGeass may have end up abruptly the last time, the first season displayed strong plots and good story tellings, which definitely bash up 00 in every aspects, even the chinese Eunuch is more MAN than Tieria. Hopefully, it will be more satisfying than it's first season.

I'm not going for EMO craps like 'boy got his face sat on by a girl's ass and now his knows how underwears smell like' or 'any blockhead thinks he's a GUNDAM by wearing a BOX', what I really want is A GOOD SHOW, simple isn't it? But I just don't understand why all the hanky-panky, twisted all gone wrong senseless EMO craps shown in most animes I've came across before. Unless it's their idea to make more doughs with a BIG FLOP, now that's called CHEATING. If you think I'm bashing 00 out of its mediocrities, you betcha'ass I am. If the show sucks, then it's FLOP and so stop sucking it up like LAPDOGS. Sheesh! These days OTAKUS has turned into either RUNNING DOGS or LAPDOGS. Someone PLEASE reminds me to bring dog biscuits to make them beg and a whiplash to make them MUSH.

Alright, time to head down to the hawker center to feed my cravings and I won't be surprise if Amuro is selling claypot chicken rice while Char is selling dim-sums and char-siew-paus.
Yippee-ki-kay, MUTHAFUCKAS

"Whoever kills another one without justifiable cause, surely he is killing all of humanity. And whoever saves the life of another one, surely he saves the lives of all of humanity." [Sura Al Ma'aidah: Ayah 32]

Abdul Sattar Edhi, 80 started his life as a humanitarian after the founding of Pakistan, from opening a free clinic offers medical services to the poor to collecting the deceased of the city's homeless, washed and gave them proper burials.

In the years of Pakistan's shaky governances, where military expenses accumulate the country's budget by a quarter, less than 3 percent is spent on domestic wares like education, health and welfares. And so Edhi still tends to the dirty works, body by body. From a single station wagon grows into an army of 1,380 ambulances across the nation, tended by thousands of volunteers and always the first to arrive at the scene of tragedy.

Edhi was borned in the Indian town of Bantva in 1928. During the bad times where sectarian riots occured, his family joined more than 14 million muslims in exodus to cross the border into Pakistan after it was found. As everyone cheered "Pakistan Zindabad (Long Live Pakistan)" he saw a hindu man murdered by young muslim mobs
"They stabbed him with over and over again with a knife, and I'll never forget watching him writhe in pain on the ground. All over Karachi, Hindus were packing up and running away, EXACTLY as we'd done in India. Just like that, our joy turned to horror and shame. That's what I remember about the partition."

Today, the Edhi foundation is sprawling across the nation and have branches internationally. Every foundation offices has a crib with words "Don't kill your child" where a mother can leaves a unwanted child with no questions asked. Edhi's Karachi office received 90 babies per month, with only half of the figure alive. Orphaned children of both muslims and hindus, are given medical cares, educations and shelters. The foundation even throws in marriage packages for brides(the foundation's daughters) with carefully arranged marriages with proper job skills and dowries. On the foundation's bulletin board is filled with dozens of wedding pictures, each bride a miracle child from Edhi's crib.

Despite Edhi's selfless deeds, he is often being attacked for being "unislamic" by local hard-line mullahs who condemn his policy on KAFIRS(INFIDELS) For Edhi, he NEVER asks whether an abandoned child, a psychiatric, a deceased or a battered woman he came across a SUNNI or SHIITE, HINDU, BUDDHIST or CHRISTIAN- or for that matter, PUNJABI, SINDHI, PASHTUN, MOHAJIR or KASHMIRI.
"I'm a Muslim" said Edhi, "but my true religion is human rights"

The islamists even sent out death threats to him and harrass his offices- a campaign orchestrated by Pakistan islamist parties to compete against him for financial support. A few years ago, a newly built Edhi hospital cost over 3 million dollars was taken over by radical muslim students from madrassah north of Karachi. Complaints were reported to the authority but no actions taken, from a hospital initially for the poor has now become a militant cell for radical mobs.

Nevertheless, the Edhi foundation today holds the largest volunteer ambulance service in the world and Edhi himself holds the longest working hour record in the Guiness Book. Edhi is also well-known at turning down government aids because the aids come with CONDITIONS and the foundation lives on donations from funds raised by humanitarian NGOs across the world.


For a man like Edhi, he truly opens our eyes and touches hearts with his selfless crusades for humanitarian purposes. Instead of just giving lectures at every friday sermons, Edhi leads by actions and examples-where the rest of us who are only good at TALK ONLY NO ACTIONS. Even as a muslim, he tends towards others and take care of them regardless of races and religions. Truly a man of honour.

My Conclusion:

As in every religions, Abuse is pretty common among its devotees. Even in anime-manga, zealotry is unavoidable with humanity always ABUSE anything that is GOOD.
From the KluKluxKlan in the US to the Al-Qaeda in the middle easts and Money-cheating Buddhist-Taoists in Asia, these are fine examples where people cheat you in religion's name. Rules are made for FOOLS by those who called themselves GOOD GUYS, SO GET WISE.

Another thing I do find LOLZ: When asked to do a favour for good cause, nobody wants to listen; when asked to rob a bank, everyone jumps in. So are people more responsive to BAD THINGS? You be the judge.