Though the story is still developing, there isn’t really another way to put this: it looks an awful lot like one of the songs Glee is planning to include in its soon-to-be-returning fourth season is a soft-rock cover of Sir Mix-a-Lot’s “Baby Got Back.” In fact, it’s a very specific soft rock cover of “Baby Got Back.” Nerd singer-songwriter Jonathan Coulton‘s cover. Which wouldn’t otherwise be a problem, except that Coulton himself was never actually contacted or asked about whether it could be used.

In 2009 Jonathan McIntosh made a six minute long video by splicing together clips from Twilight and Buffy the Vampire Slayer (and just a tiny, tiny bit of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire), where Edward Cullen finds his vampire instincts turning his affections towards Buffy Summers, and he bites off quite a bit more than his fangs can properly chew. At the time, Summit Entertainment had better things to do than shut down cleverly made internet videos with millions of views and a Webby nomination, but everything changed when the Fire Nation -

No, I mean. Everything changed when Summit Entertainment, and therefore The Twilight Saga was acquired by Lionsgate a year ago.

Good news for frequent guests — and the owners — of the Hobbit pub in Southampton, England: two allies with a pretty decent amount of clout are stepping forward to pay the licensing fees required to let the pub retain its J.R.R. Tolkien-inspired name. Ian McKellan and Stephen Fry, both of whom are appearing in Peter Jackson‘s The Hobbit, will buy the rights themselves, which will allow the Hobbit to remain the Hobbit. While this looks like a cut-and-dry case of an overzealous big corporation going after a small business, however, was the Hobbit actually unfairly ripping off Jackson’s movie? Meaning that the company with the rights to Tolkien’s work was in the right here?

The Hunger Games is already Lionsgate’s largest initial theater release in history. In the U.S. and Canada alone, more than four thousand theaters will have 10,000 copies of the movie in rotation, putting the movie at the twelfth widest box office opening in history.

Not bad for an action movie with a female lead. Reports from the rest of the world, hours ahead of us, are already breaking the records set by other blockbusters.

So, back in 1939, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer made a little movie called The Wizard of Oz, based on an 1899 novel by L. Frank Baum called The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Fast forward to 2012, when the story has been retold and adapted in a variety of ways, usually referring back to the novel. Why? Because it’s in the public domain, meaning, there is no issue of copyright or trademark. However, now that Disney has filed to trademark Oz, the Great and Powerful ahead of the 2013 release of its movie of the same name, Warner Bros. is clearing its throat, trying to remind everyone (as if we’d forget) that it owns the rights to The Wizard of Oz, and it filed for its own trademark of “The Great and Powerful Oz.” And now, they’re going after everything Oz-related, claiming that no one could have gotten their Oz-related ideas from anything but the movie — not even the novel that Warner Bros. based its own movie on.

DC Comics, safe to say my biggest love-hate media relationship, announced this morning in an veritable online media blitz that they are working on seven new miniseries, each based on a different major character from Alan Moore‘s Watchmen, expanding and adding to the “Watchmen universe.” Naturally, the comics world has kind of exploded.

This post is going to serves two functions. First, I’m willing to guess that, fractured as the geek community is, there are a lot of you out there that don’t understand why this move would be controversial, or why it touches on the subjects of creators rights, creative innovation, and the future of the mainstream comic industry in America. DC owns Watchmen, right? It’s just like making more Superman, right? Is this just a bunch of nerds complaining about adaptations of ’80s nostalgia and endless sequels, again? Second, I’m going to share some personal opinion.

So lets start. Allow Us To Explain: Before Watchmen:

A judge in California has ruled that custom Batmobiles, like the ones made by Gotham Garage owner Mark Towles and owned by toddler pop music sensation Justin Bieber, are subject to copyright law because cars, apparently, do not fall under the “useful articles” exception. I have no idea what this really means for people who spend their money on Batmobiles, but if it means trouble for Justin Bieber, then that is more fun for everyone.

The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), or Protect-IP Act as it’s called in the House of Representatives, has been the talk of the internet-town (and regular towns) for  months. Once everyone realized the implications this particular bill, they got extremely nervous and concerned phone calls and letters started pouring into Washington. The matter is still waiting to be settled when Congress returns from their winter recess but a list has surfaced showing particular companies who are in support of the controversial bill. And one of them is Marvel Entertainment. 

To the left is a screencap of Tumblr from earlier today, and you’re probably curious to know what it’s about. Well, we’re here to tell you, and you’re not going to like it. And not like “Kristen Stewart might be in Akira” “not like it.” Like “the United States government is taking cues from Iran and China and wants to put people in prison for five years for linking to a copyrighted site” “not like it.” In the name of protecting “prosperity, creativity, entrepreneurship, and innovation,” there is a bill currently being debated in Congress, the PROTECT-IP Act and its House version, the Stop Internet Piracy Act (SOPA), concerning censorship of the internet that intends to leave legal windows open to prosecute regular users like you, me, and your Aunt Ethel, who just wanted to show you what her cat was doing on YouTube and happened to be playing the soundtrack to Phantom of the Opera in the background. This is a matter of taking freedom of expression out of the hands of the people and giving it to corporations, who can then turn to all their consumers and say, “We have PR firms and advertising agencies to tell people about our TV show/album/movie — stop linking to it or we’ll have you pay for it.” And the worst part is that anyone who tries to read this thing in order to better understand it will find themselves even more confused — and possibly in serious trouble.

In the ’70s, Warner Bros. agreed to allow a window when the heirs of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster could claim their ownership of the rights to Superman and his origin story. Now that it’s actually coming around, they’re fighting tooth and nail to prevent the Shusters from submitting their claim, and to overturn the 2008 ruling that said the Siegel family had partial US rights to the character. Accounts of the proceedings do not paint Warner Bros. in a particularly nice light. In fact, they make them look like jerks.

To that end, Warner Bros. demanded access to some documents that they said “contain a formula for how the two estates will share proceeds on Superman once they successfully terminate Warner’s rights to the lucrative franchise.” The Siegels’ lawyer maintained (and was upheld) that the papers fell under attorney-client priveledge. …and then it gets complicated.