Hagrid is in the House!

I've been taking advantage of my time off and my newfound energy to scan a bunch of old stuff. Here's a treasure I found: My K-State yearbook photo from 1998.

I still have that leather jacket, incidentally.

Here's a piece of my past -- a photo I had taken on June 8, 1997, in order to apply for a visa to visit India as a Semester at Sea student.

The LiveJournal Abuse Team has contacted me, and informed me that my LJ entry with the photo of me with the megaphone has been suspended, because of a copyright infringement complaint:

Dear user kevynjacobs,

We have received a report, properly formatted under the provisions set forth by United States law, indicating that your entry located at [http://kevynjacobs.livejournal.com/184726.html] violates the copyright of another. As such, we have suspended this entry to disable access to this material.

If you feel that this report is in error or that your use of the material falls under one of the categories permitted under copyright law, you are entitled to file a counter-notification, also under the provisions of US law; please contact us for information on how to do this. Filing a counter-notification indicates that you are willing to defend yourself in court against a charge of copyright infringement, and you may be bound by civil and possibly criminal penalties if you are found liable.

Regards,
Annika
LiveJournal Abuse Prevention Team

I have written back, telling LJ that I wish to file a counter-notification under the DMCA, which means they must put the entry back up. My rationale is that I have posted it under Fair Use doctrine, which trumps copyright. Which means, it goes back up, and if The Western Front wishes to continue this game, they will have to take me to court now. Which I would welcome, because I know I'll win under Fair Use.

Incidentally, they also DMCA'd the image on my Facebook profile. I'm going to let that one slide for now, in the spirit of picking my battles. The LiveJournal entry is an easier case to prove Fair Use on.

And now I say to The Western Front: Your move.

The image you see to the right is an image of me taken from The Western Front, at the Prop 8 Gay Marriage protest in Bellingham this past month. (It is possible that Flickr will take it down as DMCA flagged, so I may need another server to host the image, preferably outside of the U.S.)

By posting it here, I have intentionally, with forethought and contempt of copyright law, taken a stand for bloggers everywhere.
( Click for copyleft drama )

Coming home on the bus after seeing "Battle in Seattle," a young woman started snapping my photo. (This one captures the moment just when I realized she was doing it.) She's a fine arts student at WWU, and likes to take pictures of people unawares on the bus, so she can draw them. Either she was telling the truth, or she's an agent of U.S. Homeland Security keeping tabs on me. Probably the former, because she agreed to email them to me, and email me a copy of the drawing when she's done. Then again, it may just be a cover story.
Photo by Kelly Björk.

(For kennapea)

I scanned my face and everything I was carrying on my person for the Face Your Pockets project (http://www.faceyourpockets.com/). At the time, I was carrying a pack of cigarettes, a lighter, my high school class ring (FKHS 1986), a Cingular cell phone that doesn't work, my keys, a handkerchief, my wallet on a chain, and a little LEGO figurine of Hagrid attached to the chain.

This imprint is pressed into the cement of one of the sidewalks leading into Old Main at the WWU Campus.

It reads:
"MACY BROS CONTR'S 1919 BELLINGHAM WN"

What is intriguing about this imprint is that it uses "WN" as the abbreviation for Washington State, instead of the ISO 3166-2 standard "WA," which the postal service now uses. I guess the standard hadn't been implemented yet in 1919.

I just wish that the AP Style and coast guard boat registrations would switch to the international standard abbreviations as well, but that's just a pet peeve of mine....