Joe Merante's Blog

Would more creators apply permissive licenses to their works if the attribution requirement included some sort of notification that the work was being used (maybe call it CC BY-NO?).  Professional courtesy, really.  While there are simple ways to find your work online, such as via search engine, Google Alert, monitored downloads via registration or otherwise, etc., the onus is still on the original author and assumes the author would be aware of such tools.  Yet reluctance to freely releasing creative work to the wilds of the Internet might abate if some sort of "reuse responsibility" beyond attribution were in effect-- perhaps so the original author can publicize the use, get in touch with the user or become inspired by the remixing.  Fuzzy objectives, to be sure, although in the link below, it is noted that software creators might have technical reasons for staying aware of downstream uses.  Still, a notification requirement begs the question of whether the or...

This one's been sitting around for about six months; I knew that similar research must exist somewhere and figured that I might as well just post it since I won't get around to researching the issue in the near future, or ever.  The idea is to look at the race and/or ethnicity of the random NYC pedestrians chosen by contestants on the television show Cash Cab, the show where unsuspecting NYC cab passengers might get into the "Cash Cab" and have the chance to answer trivia questions for money on the way to their destination. The show’s rules are basically that the questions get harder and worth more as time goes on, and three strikes and you’re out (i.e. kicked out of the cab, even if not at your destination yet).  If contestants do not know the answer to a question, they are given one mobile shout-out and one street shout-out.  If they use their street shout-out, the host tells them to “choose a pedestrian who you think might know the answer.”  I became intereste...

The Bystander Effect is a name for the behavior of groups of people individually or collectively ignoring or choosing not to respond to a situation because each person assumes someone else will or already has.  Onlookers might not respond out of fear of the consequences or just not wanting to get involved.  The law (in the United States) even supports this response.  On day one of bar review, we were reminded of first year torts and that there's no legal duty to strangers.  There are exceptions, such as for certain pre-existing relationships, but generally a gold medal swimmer or anyone else is free to walk by a drowning child without diving in or calling for help.  The most famous example of the Bystander Effect is the murder of Kitty Genovese.  Thirty eight onlookers failed to call the police or react as Ms. Genovese was chased and stabbed to death in Queens in 1964.  As Malcolm Gladwell summarizes in The Tipping Point on page 28, “… the lesson is n...