Opera About Walt Disney Refused Permission To Use Disney Images

Techdirt has noted before the hypocrisy of Disney in refusing to allow others to draw on its creativity in the same way that it has drawn on the art and ideas of the past. Here's another example, but this time it's an opera that's had difficulties: 

On Techdirt.

Torqueing of Monopolies....

I'd seen that Larry Lessig had written another fine rant about intellectual monopolies, this time in Newsweek. What I had missed in my cursory glance was something in the following paragraph:

Since the birth of the Republic, the U.S. government has been in the business of handing out "exclusive rights" (a.k.a., monopolies) in order to "promote progress" or enable new markets of communication. Patents and copyrights accomplish the first goal; giving away slices of the airwaves serves the second. No one doubts that these monopolies are sometimes necessary to stimulate innovation. Hollywood could not survive without a copyright system; privately funded drug development won't happen without patents. But if history has taught us anything, it is that special interests—the Disneys and Pfizers of the world—have become very good at clambering for more and more monopoly rights. Copyrights last almost a century now, and patents regulate "anything under the sun that is made by man," as the Supreme Court has put it. This is the story of endless bloat, with each round of new monopolies met with a gluttonous demand for more.

All good stuff. But what struck me was the "clambering for more": this, surely, was meant to be "clamouring for more". I can't believe someone as eloquent and erudite as Lessig got this wrong, so I can only assume we're looking at a sub-editor attack.

I wonder if it qualifies as an eggcorn?

All the World's a Stage/Film/MMORPG/Virtual World

More signs of the times:

Disney CEO Bob Iger showed off the revamped Disney.com during his CES keynote yesterday, but there was little "hard news" on offer—except for the announcement that Disney is bringing its hottest properties into the virtual realm. Iger announced that the company would launch a massively multiplayer Pirates of the Caribbean later this year.

And

James Cameron, the director whose “Titanic” set a record for ticket sales around the world, will join 20th Century Fox in tackling a similarly ambitious and costly film, “Avatar,” which will test new technologies on a scale unseen before in Hollywood, the studio and the filmmaker said on Monday.

...

The film, with a budget of about $200 million, is an original science fiction story that will be shown in 3D even in conventional theaters. The plot pits a human army against an alien army on a distant planet, bringing live actors and digital technology together to make a large cast of virtual creatures who convey emotion as authentically as humans.

Real and Virtual Pirates

Far be it from me to give any publicity to the arch-enemy Disney (hawk, spit), but this story about the latter's plans for a MMORPG spin-off from the "Pirates of the Caribbean" film is of note. It shows clearly how virtual worlds are entering the mainstream alongside traditional, "physical" merchandising.