VID: SPiŇA COLADA (Supernatural, PG-13)

Tap, tap. Is this thing on?

I think this is my last vid posting for July - and possibly the last for the summer, unless next month's heroes_lvms is super-inspirational. I'm getting greedy/needy for new content, so come September and the flood of shiny new shows...

But for now, have a little drink!

Title: SPiNa Colada

Song: "Escape (The Piña Colada Song)" by Rupert Holmes

Summary: "If you like piña coladas and getting caught in the rain..." Sam/Dean crack

Spoilers: for seasons 1 - 3

Download: * .mov version on Megaupload
* .mpg version on Megaupload

Watch it ( on YouTube behind the cut )

Long distance dedication: Happy (early) birthday, deirdre_c! (Posting early as I'm out of town for the rest of the week).

D, you're a terrific friend, a wonderful beta, a vidding mentor and a partner in squee! This vid's for you! And next month, I'll treat you to a RL pina colada, too!

Verification of Ages of Minors

Sorry, I know I just posted my new SPN vid, but I just saw this and wanted to post it, too.

Wired is reporting that the 3rd U.S. Circurt Court of Appeals upheld a lower-court decision from 2007 that the Child Online Protection Act violated the First Amendment.

Both courts also found that the standards for material that had to be hidden from open browsing were so loosely defined that any content not suitable for a four-year-old would have been hidden behind a age-verification firewall.

"Unlike COPA, filters permit adults to determine if and when they want to use them and do not subject speakers to criminal or civil penalties," the court wrote.

The Justice Department has been defending COPA since its passage in 1998, when the ACLU and others filed suit against the censorship law and won an immediate injunction. Since then, the court battle has made its way twice to the Supreme Court, though the government has never won any clear battles in the dispute.

COPA makes it a crime to knowingly post material that is "harmful to minors" on the web for "commercial purposes" without having some method -- such as a credit card -- to verify a visitor's age.

Critics assailed the law for infantilizing the internet and requiring website operators -- including news sites -- to live in fear of prosecution if even a small part of their website contained adult material.

How long has this been going on?

I'm posting this and dashing back to finish packing, and I'm on a plane half of tomorrow, but I wanted to make a quick comment re Laura Hale/Michela/PartlyBouncy/PurplePopple. Note: I'm not linking to her or even incorporating her actual usernames because as I learned years ago, she has clear gifs on her pages and her wiki and tracks where things come from, and I don't think anything needs to go directly from my LJ to anything connected to her.

Back in 2001, she emailed my law firm, as she posted on her voy forums (they're still public):

I e-mailed the firm Heidi was at and ASKED if what she said was legally sound... (They remember that too. Shortly after it, Heidi moved to NY I think...)

Date Posted: 13:55:46 09/09/02 Mon
Author: Laura

(Note: I didn't move to NY after that, although I had lived there three-plus years before. And I didn't leave the firm. But it sounds like she thinks I was fired because of her email or because I was discussing copyright laws online - and I wasn't.)

Five years later, in the middle of the whole bad penny kerfuffles, she registered the domain name heidi[insertlastname].com and pointed it to her fanhistory page about me, where she also used my real name. I believe that both of these acts were unethical - but that's not why I'm reiterating them now.

It clearly shows a pattern of using real names linked to fannish names/pseuds in connection with people she dislikes. This isn't something she thought of because some OTW members use their real names in connection with the nonprofit, while still participating in fannish interaction under pseudonyms. This is a standard practice for her and I personally would find it reprehensible even if she hadn't used it to hurt me.

ETA: Someone just sent me a link to this where Laura seems to be trying to sell fanhistory. The whole site.

Huh. WTF? Ew.

ETA2 There's something much cheerier here - caffienekitty's The Henchmans' Union's "So You're Evil, Now What?" Introductory Package from Doctor Horrible. The perfect cheer-up!

ETA on October 29, 2008 to redact my last name so I can make this public.