Capitalism and Politics

According to St. Louis Public Radio KWMU some crazy rich guys is playing sport with a sack full of money and the Science Center a la “Brewster’s Millions” or “The Most Dangerous Game” The St. Louis Science Center has launched an end-of-the-year fund-raising push in order to secure $500,000 from a long-time supporter. The museum must raise the same amount by December 31st. Science Center president Doug King says the museum has received similar challenge grants in the past, but they have been limited to specific projects. [Read More]

“Its all thanks to North Face.”

“When they tried to take me to court, it was like the best Christmas present ever.”

oh and…

“I really don’t know [why the North Face is trying to sue me].  I don’t see any similarities between the two companies.”

Those are the words from Mizzou student and owner of the now famous parody brand “The South Butt”.

Jimmy Winkelmann [Editor’s Note: Great freaking name! Seriously.] was recently interviewed by KSDK and came off calm, cool (totally rad?), and more than a little innocent as to trademark law.  (View the interview after the jump)

Will Jimmy lose this case?

From our research…probably.  Here’s what we found pertaining to copyright law and parody logos (Publaw.com):

Since copyright law prohibits the substantial use of a copyrighted work without permission of the copyright owner, and because such permission is highly unlikely when the use is to create a parody, it may be necessary for the parodist to rely on the fair-use defense to forestall any liability for copyright infringement. However, the fair-use defense if successful will only be successful when the newly created work that purports itself to be parody is a valid parody.

Although not every commercial use is presumptively an unfair use, and therefore conclusively determinative against fair use, this criterion emphasizes a preference that fair use will be granted to those works that are created for noncommercial or educational purposes rather than for commercial purposes.

The burden of proving fair use is usually much easier to demonstrate if the new work is for one of the “favored” purposes: criticism, comment, scholarship, research, news reporting or teaching

Winkelmann’s only hope is 2 Live Crew.  Yes 2 Live Crew’s case with Roy Orbison about the “parody” song “Pretty Woman”.  After going to the Supreme Court, 2 Live Crew’s version that they release and sold, was found to be a parody and thus protected, because they were found to be making a criticism of the original song.

There Jimmy Winkelmann, is your legal safe house.  Go there now.

You can get your own South Butt gear, while you can, at thesouthbutt.com

Oh and for the record, we think all of this is freaking hilarious.

[Read More]

After a year filled with layoffs, more layoffs and finally laying off that guy that everyone thought was totally going to be the first one to get canned but somehow making it until the third round, the GM plant in Wentzville, MO rolled out the 2 Millionth “full sized van” yesterday marking another time in history that no one will care about ever. At about 3:30 p.m., the 2 millionth full size van rolled off the assembly line here at the GM plant. [Read More]

Come Thursday it will all be official, the Wellston school district will be no more come June 30th, 2010. The students will be folded in to the Normandy school district, and the staff’s contracts will be terminated. Wellston’s facilities are inadequate, its students have not made enough academic progress, its superintendent is retiring, its finances are stable but weak, there is little hope of more help from the state and this is the right time to try something new. [Read More]

Did I just hear an advertisement for gin on the Bonneville (read: Mormon) owned 101 ESPN?  Gin?!  Are times really that tough, or did St. Louis try to slip one past the bishop?

…no, not that one.  The Mormon Bishop.

Every time a St. Louis has a hit on its hands, it gets knocked down on the national scene, like Imo’s or Ike Turner. Take for instance Mister Squiggles. Every Christmas season needs an “it” toy and every year, some bastards try to take it down. Why you gotta hate? The maker of Zhu Zhu Pets, one of the hottest-selling toys of the holiday season, defended its product after a consumer Web site said one of the robotic hamsters carries high amounts of a dangerous chemical. [Read More]

You know all the beautiful sunshine we’ve been getting lately? Oh right. Probably a bad time for this press release to come out. Ameren Corp. has planned their first solar power projects in St. Louis, Mo. and Illinois. This is a big step, as the company currently generates 85 percent of its power from coal, 10 to 15 percent from nuclear and a few watts from methane and hyrdoelectric sources. [Read More]

St. Louis native and creator of the freakishly popular social network Twitter has been promising something new from his brain for a while now. Today the big black sheet was pulled off the shiny new website for that idea: Square. Today the Square team is focused on bringing immediacy, transparency, and approachability to the world of payments: an inherently social interaction each of us participates in daily. We’re starting with a limited beta and rolling out to everyone in early 2010. [Read More]

Remember like a year ago when Charter started the whole bankruptcy proceedings? Well now its almost over. Charter Communications Inc. says a bankruptcy judge has confirmed its reorganization plan, clearing the way for the nation’s fourth largest cable TV operator to emerge from Chapter 11 in a few weeks. Charter said the plan whittles its debt burden by about $8 billion, leaving $13 billion. Bondholders who agreed to swap their $8 billion of debt will end up owning nearly all of the post-bankruptcy company. [Read More]

The whole point of this post over at subtraction.com by Khoi Vinh was to invalidate the “Yankees bought a championship!” argument, and although an interesting read, not really something that this blog gives a crap about. However, in the data he pulled something interesting did pop up that related to St. Louis and our National League Central champ Cardinals. Vinh pulled the revenue each team made in 2008 and the payroll for the team in the 2009 season and compared the “investment rate” that the team operated on for the 2009 season along with their final record. [Read More]