Techdirt. Stories filed under "alaska"

The Internet Wins Again! Writer Gets Rapper Pitbull 'Exiled' To Alaskan Walmart

Tim Cushing — Fri, 20 Jul 2012 18:32:00 PDT

Ah, the internet. Also: ah, social media. Powerful tools, which in the right hands, can turn unknowns into legends and overstepping entities into Wikipedia entries. However, in the fumbling hands of mega-corporations, these same tools become about as unwieldy as a screwdriver being used to hammer in nails. By a bear.

When these tools are put to "use" in amateurish ways, there's always the chance that they will be re-purposed for the amusement of internet natives, who know exactly how to turn these primitive tools into weapons of mass destruction/hilarity. Anyone remember Time Magazines' ill-fated effort to crowdsource the Most Influential in the World? Long story short: thanks to a combination of Time Mag's incompetence and No One's Personal Army suddenly cohering into one man's personal army, 4chan's moot ended up topping the list of names.

David Thorpe, writer for the Boston Phoenix and... wait for it... SomethingAwful, saw an opportunity too big to pass up when Wal-Mart announced (in conjunction with something called "Sheets Energy Strips") its plan to have Miami rapper Pitbull make a personal appearance at whichever Wal-Mart store could hoover up the most "Likes." Thorpe immediately mobilized his troops, (possibly with the help of Pitbull's Energy Strips) including other SomethingAwful contributors, in order to send the man of the hour to the most remote Walmart location in the US.'

Enter Boston Phoenix writer David Thorpe, a man so put off by celebrity marketing stunts that he rallied Web troops to"Help us help Wal-Mart exile Pitbull to Alaska."
"As of now, the Kodiak Walmart has over 22,000 new 'likes' on Facebook, putting it far ahead of any other Walmart in the nation - far ahead of Kodiak's actual population, in fact," Thorpe wrote.

By Pitbull's deadline, more than 70,000 users had liked the store, located on a southern isle of the Frontier State with a population of about 6,200.

To his credit, Pitbull has taken this all in stride, including tweeting about purchasing bear repellent and putting together a video explaining how he would "go anywhere for his fans." To top it all off, he invited Thorpe along for the promotional visit.

At this point, it looks as if Thorpe will have to pay his own way, but he intends on making the trip.

In an email to The Associated Press, Thorpe said it's "very likely" he'll be in Kodiak. Thorpe said he had to "raise the funds to get to Kodiak on my own, since Pitbull's invitation doesn't include actually getting me there."

Thorpe said he doesn't really have anything against Pitbull, and instead saw this as a way "to disrupt a corporate social media campaign, since they really set themselves up for it."

Thorpe's only regret seems to be that Walmart will somehow spin his prank into a social media "win" for the company, something he deems to be "gross." And in a way, it is a win for Wal-Mart, albeit one it scored without lifting a finger. Thousands saw its Facebook pages and thousands more are watching Pitbull's promo spot. And now both Pitbull and Thorpe are off to a destination best known for being way the hell away from anything else... and being home to Walmart store #2711.

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DailyDirt: Trains, Trains, Trains. I've Got a Thing About Trains...

Michael Ho — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 17:00:00 PDT

Trains are an often over-looked form of transportation in the US. But trains are actually one of the most fuel-efficient ways to travel -- able to move a ton of freight over 400 miles on just one gallon of fuel. Here are just a few quick links on some cool train projects.

German trains will be powered by renewable energy (and no cheating by using nuclear power...!) by 2050. "That’s not just a declaration of intent. It’s a concrete business target." [url]
This video demonstrates the 'Moving Platforms' concept -- which lets train riders get on/off a moving train via a small transfer train. Prior art from the movies: riding up on a horse and jumping onto a moving train. [url]
Russia is seriously thinking about building an underground rail line between Siberia and Alaska. If completed, this $65 billion project would create the longest underwater tunnel in the world. [url]
To discover other interesting transportation-related content, check out what's currently floating around the StumbleUpon universe. [url]

By the way, StumbleUpon can recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

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Alaska Officials Using Copyright To Try To Stifle Images Of Killed Wolves

Mike Masnick — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 07:44:00 PDT

So, we just had the story of police in the UK trying to abuse copyright to prevent the showing of speed camera photos. Now we've got a somewhat similar story in the US, pointed to us by Michael Scott, involving officials in Alaska using copyright to try to force offline photos of "aerial wolf kills." Apparently, the Alaskan gov't goes around and shoots wolves from helicopters to control the wolf population. Not surprisingly, some find this rather distasteful. One wildlife protection group obtained the government's photos of killed wolves from March of this year using a public records request, and put them online... at which point the gov't claimed that it was a copyright violation.

This seems questionable on a variety of fronts. In the US, we tend to have problems with the idea that gov't should copyright things. The federal gov't can't, though state gov'ts often have more leeway and often do claim copyright over documents (though, it can be controversial). More importantly, though, once again, this is clearly not the intention of copyright. It's quite obviously copyright law being used (yet again) to stifle free expression from protesters -- a form of free speech which should trump copyright law absolutely. Of course, in the end, like so many attempts to stifle speech, this is backfiring. The effort to suppress the photos is only serving to draw much more attention to them.

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State Of Alaska Threatens CrackHo After Confusing Redirect With Hijacking...

Mike Masnick — Wed, 13 May 2009 13:57:00 PDT

It's always bad news when the technically illiterate start filing lawsuits over technology issues. A few folks have sent in the news that the state of Alaska, under Sarah Palin's governorship, has (we're not making this up) sent a cease and desist letter to the website CrackHo.com supposedly for hijacking a page from the state's website and using the official seal of Alaska without permission -- which the state claims violates both state laws (fines up to $500 or six months in prison) and federal copyright laws.

So what did the site CrackHo.com do to deserve this? Well, it simply redirected anyone who went to Crackho.com to Sarah Palin's website on the state webpage. Yes. A simple redirect. And the state claims that this is hijacking the website, a misuse of the seal of the state and a violation of federal copyright laws. Based on that logic, with a few simple magic tricks, I've just made TinyUrl, Bitly and Is.gd guilty of the same things.

I mean... I'm sure the lawyers working for the state of Alaska have some free time on their hands right now... but... seriously? Did no one bother to actually investigate what they were threatening?

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