Protect and Serve

Yesterday mega-blog of things wonderful, Boing Boing, carried a story about how a local Los Angeles chapter of the Boy Scouts of America was offering a merit patch on "respecting copyright." They also linked to an earlier story about Hong Kong boy scouts and girl guides that appeared on both Sivacracy and Virtualpolitik with generous illustrations of Photoshopped possible imaginary badges contributed by Mel Horan of Garbage Island. (I think that our versions look better than the mish-mash planned by the real organization, which is shown above.)

Speaking of artists, it is interesting to note the number of Nigerian-style spam letters that are now purporting to be from professional artists needing help with large cash transactions (which anyone married to an artist would certainly know was a scam).

See these two examples for the introductory e-mail technique:

My name is Derek Trotter and I am an artist. I live in England, with my two kids, one dog and the love of my life. It is definitely a full house. I have been doing artwork since I was a small child when I was in Canada were I took interest in arts that gives me about 23 years of experience. I majored in art in high school and took a few college art courses.

My name is Susan Bryant, I am an artist with my husband John Bryant,We own SUS ART WORLD in London(United Kingdom)I live in London United Kingdom, with my two kids, four cats, one dog and the love of my life my husband John Bryant It is definitely a full house, I have been doing artwork since I was a small child that gives me about 23 years of experience. I majored in art in high school and took a few college art courses most of my work is done in either pencil or art brush mixed with color pencils.