The NFL has even demanded that their copyright notice is under copyright and be taken down: http://www.boingboing.net/2007/02/14/nfl-says-dont-copy-o.html It's just ridiculous. As rubinass says, you can't copyright facts. We have too much corporately sanctioned news reporting as it is.

Maybe. Because, y'know, taste is subjective and everything, but some of those movies really *do* suck.

"Some theaters get movies, some don't." But see, that's a large part of why we HAVE video and DVD rentals -- so that audience who couldn't see your film in theaters now can. There's a big difference between opening a movie only on a limited number of screens because you think that's all the market can bear, and screwing a large percentage of your potential rental audience out of the chance of seeing it.

I also think a boycott is unnecessary. It's not the films themselves that have us upset. If the Weinsteins really wants to shoot themselves in the foot like this, I'm happy to let them. I will say this, though: if I can only rent Weinstein Company films at Blockbuster, then I guess I won't be renting many Weinstein Company films.

Well I guess I know which movies I'll be missing then... There are some of their movies I'd like to see -- including Matador -- but I'm not going out of my way to visit the (perpetually understocked) local Blockbuster, and I'm definitely not signing up for their service online when I'm perfectly happy with Netflix. Obviously I don't know all the business details, but I suspect the Weinsteins will lose many more customers than they gain with this deal.

380 in the queue 3 Very Long Wait 11 are Short Wait So just shy of 3.5% is unavailable. The Short Waits seem to come and go, I'm sure as discs are returned. The Very Long Waits tend to stay there for much longer. This may be a problem on Netflix's end, given that "MASH" is showing up differently in different queues.

Netflix has the second series of "Wire in the Blood" but not the first. (At least, last I checked. If I'm wrong, I hope someone would tell me. I'd like to rent this.) This doesn't make any sense to me.

I, too, have found the Local Favorites to be pretty fascinating. (Oddly, there's no information for my own hometown, but the town a half block over is a good substitute.) What I noticed back in November was that, often, people seem to be more interested in movies about what they supposedly already know. "Local favorites" often translated to favorite movies *about* the locale: http://www.unreality.net/weblog/archives/2005_11_01_index.html#113295850577977030

Trademarking "Windows" as it refers to software is not silly. We can debate who invented it the graphical user interface (more likely Xerox PARC than either Microsoft or Apple), but Microsoft does have a legal right to protect there. You won't get in trouble for using the word "windows," any more than manufacturers of "window cleaner" need to call their product something else. However, the trademark does restrict other *software companies* from using the term. That the software in question has become in many ways synonymous with Microsoft gives them all the more reason to protect the trademark. It *can* get ridiculous, but I'm not convinced it was in this case. "Friends," on the other hand, is a bit more dubious, I think. Netflix likely wasn't the first to use the term -- even in contexts similar to this. (Will livejournal, for instance, decide to sue?)

I've definitely had more unplayable discs arrive from Netflix lately. On occasion, they're just dirty or scratched and won't play in any of the DVD players I have access to. But I've had three or four discs within the past six months that were cracked well beyond repair. It's altogether possible that they were damaged in transit, but I've started to append Post-It notes to the envelopes to let Netflix know the discs are damaged and shouldn't be reshipped. Just in case they're not looking closely (or at all) at the discs inside. It doesn't happen a lot, and it never used to happen at all. It's annoying, but I also think it's inevitable as their member base increases. Some people probably will send back damaged DVDs, discs they themselves have damaged, rather than pay to replace/purchase them.