Make It Real or Take It All Away

We had a discussion in class on Intellectual Property the other week, and this inspired me to write about something related to this - the fact that technically, it is legal to copy, steal, and reproduce fashion designs.

(Left: Fendi, 2008. Right: Kim Kardashian in Bebe, 2010. Photo via CocoPerez.com)

As originality (or lack thereof) is an important issue in today's world, it is, to me, rather shocking that there are countless people and companies which continue to make money by largely copying aka ripping off (except for like, the color or a button here and there) the artistic property of the more prevalent fashion designers and houses. And I'm not just talking about the counterfeit goods you can find in places like Greenhills; even some of the more upscale stores and labels found in malls have designs "inspired" by some of the latest looks coming down the runway (called fast-fashion retailers, which you can read more about here).

(Some of the most prevalent sources of "inspiration" for fast fashion industries today are fashion houses like Balmain and Prada. Photos via Style.com and FashionToast.com)

To gain more insight as to why knocking off fashion is legal, counterfeit experts and law professors Kal Raustiala and Chris Sprigman explain:

"Law does not protect most fashion designs. Copyright law views fashion designs not primarily as artistic works, but rather as “useful articles,” and useful things are not granted copyright protection. This rule reflects the fact that useful things are supposed to be the domain of patent law. But clothing designs virtually never qualify for patent protection, because they are almost never “novel” – i.e., truly new – in the way patent law requires."

The two also, however, present an important insight into the issue:

"Copying helps to create trends. It then helps to destroy them: as more and more designers hop on to a trend, the look becomes overdone, and the most fashion-forward consumers hop off. Copying, in other words, accelerates the fashion cycle."

Being a student not earning actual money and having to live off monthly allowance, I think that fast fashion is actually a good thing. From the consumer's point of view, allowing this to continue means that trends and great designs become more accessible, in that one can get the look for a fraction of the price that designers charge. And consumers are what keep the powers-that-be in the fashion industry, well, in power.

On the other hand, if I found myself in the position of these designers having people not only copy and rip off my designs, but actually make money from them, I would be outraged (then again, that kind of power to dictate what's in and what isn't could be appealing to some, and being victim of legal plagiarism could be the price of that).

There is also, I believe, a deep underlying issue of morality here, in the mentality that "If everyone's doing it, it isn't wrong." Having so many manufacturers copy designs, is it even plausible to monitor it? And how fine is the line between plagiarism and jumping on the trend bandwagon?

At the end of it all, one cannot deny that the two sides to this issue both present valid points. To put it in a way a model would understand it: Copying is bad because it is stealing. But copying helps the fashion industry operate. So is copying really that bad?

What are your thoughts on this?

Touch Me and I Will Follow in Your Afterglow

This is some fascinating stuff right here.


Though currently in its prototype-phase, Skinput looks pretty promising - it is an ingenious bit of technology which allows our skin to be used as an input surface (e.g. like a large touchscreen keypad or GUI). It works off the idea of bio-acoustics, in that different parts of the body produce a unique pattern of vibrations when tapped. Check out the video below.

(Perhaps the future is in the palm of your hand, after all.)

Imagine the possibilities, though. It continues to fascinate me just how quickly (aka exponentially) technology is evolving. It is dynamic in that obsolescence and innovation occur practically simultaneously.

Learn more about Skinput by clicking here.

It's All Ending; We Gotta Stop Pretending Who We Are

Seriously, anybody who's heard of the Mission Impossible movies has to be familiar with the exploding Oakley's (aka "This message will self-destruct in five seconds"). But for those of you who have forgotten this oh-so-iconic first scene (which, unfortunately was the best part of the second movie), here the video, just to refresh your memory:

(Acrophobia, oh my.)

Wanna send self-destructing messages too? Apparently, now you can! Not in the same way though, of course.

Tiger Text is this new application which allows you to control how long your text messages stay recorded on other people's phones, before they get erased (aka self-destruct). Pretty cool, eh? From 5 seconds after reading to a couple of hours, their lifespan is entirely up to you, the sender.

Unfortunately, however, as mentioned above, Tiger Text is not technically an SMS service provided by your network, but is more like a fusion between text and instant messaging in the form of an application available and compatible currently only with iPhones and Blackberries. (Boo.) Here's an image of the interface:

(And yes, as it is with most things in this world, it isn't free.)

Outside of the whole novelty aspect of it though, I see no actual, substantial use for this beyond people who aren't planning surprises or cheating on their significant others. It's sorta like the "private browsing" setting of Firefox or "Incognito Mode" of Chrome. I'm half-kidding.

But if you're interested, you can read more about Tiger Text here and here.

Put My Coat on Faster, This is a Disaster

The much-anticipated video for Lady GaGa's single featuring Beyonce, "Telephone" premiered earlier today. I'll be honest: I was disappointed. You'd think that a video to follow up the epicness that was "Bad Romance" would be a little less... WTF. I sort of miss the days when Lady GaGa was crazy and not insane. But still, this video is lightyears better than anything else out there right now. And yes, it is 9 and half minutes long.

(Nakedness, lesbian kisses, more nakedness, sandwiches, mass murder, oh my. Typical Lady GaGa. She really let all the WTF-ery out on this one, didn't she?)

P.S. Once you kill a cow, you gotta make a hamburger.


Edited to Add (03/15): Okay, it grew on me.

Swing It, Shake It, Move It, Make It; Who Do You Think You Are?

So I just got back from a party, and was in the mood to update. It is currently 3:15am.

I've been wanting to talk about the upcoming elections for some time now, and I figured that now would be the perfect time to do so -- since my school organization, The UP Junior Marketing Association (2009 Agora awardee, by the way), just held elections for next year's Executive Committee. The elected officers were announced earlier tonight, at the event I came from.

To be completely honest, it was surprising that I found myself agonizing over choosing who to vote for throughout this week. I had never been particularly fond of politics and have, in the past, tried as much as possible to stay away from it, so the fact that I was putting this much thought into the elections was rather uncharacteristic of me (which, perhaps, is a good thing, in this case). It might have been that it really was just difficult to choose between equally qualified candidates, but I would like to believe that part of what made this process challenging for me was that I felt that my vote could and would directly affect me -- that my single vote had the power to alter the future in ways more tangible and accessible within the context of the org, rather than when compared to something like the University Student Council.

Safe to say, a lot of thought went into making the decisions on who to vote for. It was a rather deep process, if I say so myself -- imperative was answering a single question: What is a leader?

The answer(s) to this question, I believe, vary from person to person, but my stand on it, first and foremost, is that leadership positions have to be both earned and deserved. The people aspiring for those positions need to have the credentials to back them up -- their experiences and the accomplishments must speak for themselves (and they will speak volumes). Second, is that a leader cannot be output-based. The ends never justify the means. As a leader, you need to be people-oriented, leading the people who elected you through a process of learning and growth to reach a goal. As it is said, the journey is more important than the destination. And finally, a leader needs to have a holistic, comprehensive, practical vision. He must know the organization he will lead by heart -- it's strengths and weakness, in order to facilitate a better and brighter future, with ambitious yet realistic action.

And at the end of it all, I am proud of myself for voting for who I did. I did what I thought was best for the organization. And although some of them did not win, I believe that, ultimately, the success of any social organism depends heavily on the people. I enter the next year with an open mind and complete faith that school year 2010 - 2011 will be a great year for JMA. Good night.

With regards to the national elections, however, if it's anything like electing an ExeComm for an organization, then I have a lot of thinking to do. For now though, enjoy this flowchart meant to acquaint people with the new automated election process. And I hope what I have said here helps you in your own decision process.

Can't Sleep in a City of Neon and Chrome

First of all, please know that yes, I am completely aware that this is the first actual (substantial) entry I am posting to this currently-barren blog (I apologize) but allow me to say that that is going to change - starting now! Exams are on temporary off-peak season - hallelujah - which leaves me with just enough spare time to update, hopefully regularly.

I was thinking about it earlier, and I decided that I wanted to write about the profoundly productive activity that has kept me occupied for the better part of this lazy Friday evening - watching episodes of the retro (aka old) X-Men animated series. Now, any kid or teenager who grew up in the 90's has to know this cartoon, but for those of you who don't, here's the first part of the first episode:

(Mutants and Sentinels, oh my. Note how the characters' faces never actually look the same from shot to shot -- that's 2D for you.)

Seriously though, once you get past the slight "crudeness" of its execution, you may, like me, end up really enjoying it - so much though that you'd choose staying in and marathon-ing with a bag of chips over going out and partying it up. The later seasons get better and more intense, and (I may be over-analyzing here) have generally more pronounced political and social themes: equality, oppression, discrimination, moral discernment between what is right and what is ideal - you know, the usual stuff you overlook when you're a child because you're too busy focusing on wanting mutant powers of your own (and also because well, you're 4 years old and don't even know what half those words mean).

I guess the reason why I'm talking about this is a result of both some sense of nostalgia (boo, college workload) and amazement over the vastness of technological progress resulting from just a decade or so of innovation. The world has changed so much. Hell, I've changed a whole lot, too.

In a time when much-anticipated weekly TV shows have been replaced by downloadable episodes, and 2D mutants by blue 3D alien humanoids from Pandora, I think we all just need to take a breather to re-appreciate the things we loved in the past and to realize how far we've come and just how much we've grown since then.

And also, perhaps, how a part of us will still always stay the same, no matter how much everything else hasn't.