Wayans brothers face trial for alleged joke theft

(Hollywood Reporter) - Trial alert! On July 12th, the best comedy in Los Angeles will not be heard at the Improv, but rather a federal court as the Wayans brothers face down a former assistant who charges that they ripped off jokes for their book, "You Know You're a Golddigger When..."

Jared Edwards worked for the comedy family for a decade and wrote jokes about women who prey upon wealthy men. He claims he pitched the idea for a book that would include material like "You know you're a golddigger when you know more about sports players' stats than an ESPN analyst."

Keenen, Shawn and Marlon Wayans rejected the idea, and then allegedly did their own version.
Joke theft allegations have been around almost as long as the first "Knock, Knock" joke, but recently, comedians have become more sensitive to laugh larceny, raising the copyright infringement card.



Because Edwards worked for the Wayans brothers, this case goes a bit above and beyond the typical plagiarism routine of a plaintiff struggling to prove the copying of expression rather than theft of unprotected ideas. Edwards is claiming that the Wayans (and St. Martin's Press) not only committed copyright infringement but also breached an implied promise to pay him for use of his ideas. Writers alleging this type of allegation have increasingly been successful in passing judicial muster.

To sum up the defense, you know you're a golddigging joke-theft plaintiff when:
* You can't be the owner of a valid copyright on jokes when the material is a work-made-for-hire.
* You can't own undivided rights on the jokes when, at most, the material was jointly authored.
* You consented to having the jokes performed by the famous Wayans clan.
* You didn't complain in time, and thus the statute of limitations has run out.

The trial is sure to provide some laughter and entertainment, but might not have the full shock value possible.
That's because the parties have stipulated that certain alleged "bad acts" won't be brought up, including allegations that Edwards committed check fraud and borrowed $12,000 from Shawn, that Edwards engaged in sexual acts in Shawn's vehicle, and that Edwards threw a phone at Marlon.

Still, the trial won't be devoid of highjinks. There's been a suggestion made in court papers that the attorney for the Wayans brothers will attempt to impeach Edwards for things he said during the deposition.

Finally, even if the Wayans brothers lose, they might not have to fork over a significant amount of money.
The book was hardly a best-seller, and so the judge has capped a damage award to the amount of money the Wayans got as an advance for writing the book, foreclosing any of the publisher's profits.


*This is crazy! One would think that the Wayan's wouldn't have to steal a joke from anyone. They seem to be funny all on their own without the help of people writing for them.

However, you never know what goes on behind closed doors. It seems this guy ( Jared Edwards )feels bamboozled by the brothers over the book ("You Know You're a Golddigger When...")

 which didn't even sell that well.  One has to ask, is he looking for 15 mins of fame by bringing  about a lawsuit against a famous family? Who knows, maybe he's just upset regarding something else.

If this goes to court, he might get something. Then again maybe not.

The bigger picture is, this guy wants fame outside of working for this family, if that's the case; why doesn't he write his own book of jokes and publish it?*


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Is feminism reducing the quality of America’s teaching force?

(The Lookout-Liz Goodwin) Thanks to feminism, American schools are no longer benefitting from an invisible wage subsidy that allowed them to attract bright, over-qualified college-educated teachers at low wages and poor working conditions.


That's the controversial conclusion reached in a recent report by Marc Tucker at the nonpartisan National Center on Education and the Economy. Tucker blasts the United States for largely ignoring teacher quality in favor of a focus on grade-by-grade standardized K-12 testing. He points out that those priorities are out of sync with the strategies of developed countries that appear to be churning out students who are better educated than ours.

Instead, countries such Finland, Singapore and the Chinese province of Shanghai--who far outperformed their American counterparts on the latest international PISA tests--are investing in an elite teaching force recruited from the top third or higher tier of each country's college classes by offering various incentives. In the United States, high school students who said in 2008 that their intended college major was education scored in the bottom third of American students who took the SATs.

Tucker argues that the United States has benefitted from an invisible wage subsidy that has now disappeared--the limited professions available to women until just a few decades ago. He argues that America "greatly benefitted for the better part of a century from having a teaching force largely made up of college-educated women whose choice of career was largely limited to nursing, secretarial work and teaching, and some minorities whose career choices were similarly constrained." Schools benefited from a capable workforce willing to work at "below-market wages under poor working conditions," he says. But that's now changed:

Those who accepted that deal are now leaving the workforce in droves.  There are now more women than men in the professional schools preparing young people for many of the most prestigious professions and they are taking advantage of those opportunities. The United States is now about to get the least capable candidates applying to our education schools when we need the best.

The higher status teachers enjoy isn't the only thing that separates the United States from Finland, however. As Valerie Strauss at the Washington Post points out, the country has a 3 percent poverty rate for its children, while 21 percent of American children are currently living in poverty.


*The US is an education mill, that can't stop. They are in to deep to stop the harsh cycle of low pay, crumbling schools, and bad teachers, who some aren't qualified. At this point if parents want their kids to have a decent education, then packing up (as some say) and moving to another country might not be a bad idea.*


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Census Update: What the World Will Look like in 2050

(Time.com) Here is the world in 2050, as imagined by the U.S. Census Bureau: India will be the most populous nation, surpassing China sometime around 2025. The U.S. will remain exactly where it is now: in third place, with a population of 423 million (up from 308 million in 2010). And declining birth rates in two of the world's most economically and politically influential countries, Japan and Russia, will cause them to fall from their current positions as the 9th and 10th most populous nations, respectively, to 16th and 17th.

The findings are the result of population estimates and projections of 228 countries compiled by the U.S. Census Bureau's International Data Base (IDB). They offer a revealing look into the future. "One of the biggest changes we've seen has been the decline in fertility in some developed countries such as China," says Loraine West , an IDB project manager, "while others are experiencing a slight increase." In other words, China's population boom is finally slowing down while Western Europe's long-declining birth rate is - in some places, at least - rising again. Spain and Italy are "on an uptick," says West, "but how high will [the birth rate] rise? Or will it simply fluctuate up and down on some long term level? We'll have to see." According to Italy's The National Institute of Statistics, the country's recent population increase can be largely attributed to its own immigrant population. See TIME's "Intelligent Cities.")

The two countries on track to make the biggest population gains are Nigeria and Ethiopia. Nigeria currently boasts 166 million people, but by 2050 its population is expected jump to 402 million. Ethiopia's population will likely triple from 91 million to 278 million, bringing the east African nation into the one of the top 10 most populous countries in the world for the first time. In fact, according to the United Nations Population Division, although only 18% of the world's population lives in so-called "high-fertility" countries (places where women have more than 1.5 daughters on average), most of those countries are in Africa; the continent is expected to experience significant population growth in the coming decades, which could compound the already-dire food supply issues in some African nations.

While the U.S. appears relatively stable - it's the only country in the top 10 whose ranking is not expected to change in the next 40 years - previous census reports have highlighted dramatic demographic shifts within the country's borders. Last week, the Census Bureau announced that more than half of children under two in the U.S. are ethnic minorities. Add to that the non-Hispanic white population's increasing age (in California, for example, the median age for non-Hispanic whites is almost 10 years older than that of the state as a whole) and America in 2050 will look a lot different than the America we know today. (See TIME's video: 10 Questions for Robert Groves.)

Perhaps the most unfortunate change is the one currently experienced by Russia. The cold, vast country has been undergoing steady depopulation since 1992 and the U.S. Census Bureau expects it to decline further, from 139 million people to 109 million by 2050. That's a 21% drop, even more than country suffered during World War II. Like many countries, Russia is experiencing declining birth rates, but it's also suffering form a relatively low life expectancy. According to the World Health Organization, Russian men have a life expectancy of just 62 years, a fact that is often attributed to the country's high rate of alcoholism and poor diet. (For comparison, Japan is also struggling with depopulation, but the World Health Organization puts its life expectancy at 80 for men and 86 for women).

So what does this mean? The U.S. is not yet experiencing the kind of population decline that Europe experienced in the 1990s and 2000s, although immigration and differing birth rates among races means that the country's ethnic composition is changing. Something similar will be going on in the rest of the world, as well: Africa and India's boom, Russia's decline and China's expected plateau (holding steady around 1.3 billion people between now and 2050) will change the makeup of the estimated 9.4 billion people who will call Earth home in 2050. The future, it seems, is not as distant as we think.


*WOW! This isn't anything new. We all know that people are mixing it up and having non-white kids...moving on. It seems that the two African nations (Ethiopia and Nigeria) will take the lead in population gains. Again this isn't news. With African women pumping babies out 24/7, it's very evident they will have population gains...moving on. The most eye opening thing about this whole article is that, those two African nations, where people were taken as slaves and placed all over the world and forced to do unspeakable acts; seems to be on top according to the findings. While other countries may be declining these two, according to the findings will be on top. Again, this article only says what we already knew about the world.*


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Birthers sue Esquire for more than $100 million over satire they say hurt book sales

(The Cutline-Dylan Stableford) If you thought birther conspiracy theorists went the way of Donald Trump's presidential hopes, think again.

Joseph Farah--who runs the World Net Daily website and a related book imprint--and Jerome Corsi, author of "Where's the Birth Certificate? The Case That Barack Hussein Obama Is Not Eligible to Be President," held a press conference in Washington, D.C., yesterday to announce that they have filed a lawsuit against Esquire magazine and its owner, Hearst, over an satirical article by Mark Warren published last month.

"This was a serious mistake by Mark Warren and Esquire for which they will pay dearly," Larry Klayman, lawyer for the plaintiffs, said. "It was obviously calculated with malice to destroy not just the book and its sales, but the reputations of Mr. Corsi and Mr. Farah."

The piece ("BREAKING! Jerome Corsi's Birther Book Pulled From Shelves!") was published shortly after President Obama released his longform birth certificate--also the time when Corsi's book was released. But, as Forbes' Jeff Bercovici noted, some readers failed to recognize the satire, forcing Esquire to add this disclaimer:

We committed satire this morning to point out the problems with selling and marketing a book that has had its core premise and reason to exist gutted by the news cycle, several weeks in advance of publication. Are its author and publisher chastened? Well, no. They double down, and accuse the President of the United States of perpetrating a fraud on the world by having released a forged birth certificate. Not because this claim is in any way based on reality, but to hold their terribly gullible audience captive to their lies, and to sell books. This is despicable, and deserves only ridicule.

"It was amateurish, it was rank, and it hurt," Klayman said at the press conference, which according to Adweek was attended by just three reporters. "There was nothing stating that it was satire."

Farah and Corsi--who authored the 2004 Swift Boat book that helped sink John Kerry's presidential bid--claim the article defamed them and hurt book sales. They are seeking compensatory damages of at least $100 million, punitive damages of $20 million, plus legal costs. (Forbes noted that, all told, the plaintiffs are demanding $285 million.)

Esquire claimed Wednesday it had not yet seen the lawsuit, but did not sound terribly worried.

"The blog post spoke for itself," a representative for the magazine said in a statement. "It was satire, an age-old and completely legitimate form of expression. Additionally, the piece was tagged as 'humor,' as are all of our frequent satire posts on Esquire's Politics Blog. That was not lost on our observant readers."


*WOW!! I think we should start by saying; "birthers go to hell...fo real."


In the ages that we live in, we have people like these dumb ass birthers who are so ravished with fear by a black man, that they keep this charade going about President Obama not being a US citizen. How dumb can you be?


On top of everything else, they decide to file a lawsuit because of hurt book sales. How ridiculous is that!! It's not the like we haven't heard of their conspiracy before. It seems like they just want to keep it going as much as they can and make as much money on top of that. Which also means they to are trying to make money off back of President Obama.


What a crying shame...my grandmother use to say.


If anything, these cheesy ass birthers need to pack up and leave the country.*


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