*nods* I found AdSense works a lot better for me for some products than others. The real winner for me is the art fair panels I rent out, I get $125 for renting them out for a weekend, probably end up paying 25-50 cents for a click-through and I'd guess that about a third of click-throughs end up as a rental--and sometimes those folks become repeat customers. But I gave up trying to market photographic prints that way, it might be possible, but I haven't figured out how to make it work for me.
With other policies Google has, I'm told, been pretty direct about closing down publishers when their sites seem to be the source of fraudulent clicks. I'm OK with that, although it's a bit intimidating, I make a decent amount of money off of AdSense right now (legitimately, I believe), and I'd like that to continue, but then, I'm not trying to scam them, either, I've been happy with both AdSense and with buying ads on their system (for my photographic services as well as for the non-profit I work for.)
Did you consider reporting the problem? It's my understanding (from both Adwords and Adsense customers, not just Google itself) that Google will attempt to "undo the damage" of that sort of click fraud.
I both place ads (for my photographic services) and run them on my web site. I've been happy with the results I've gotten from running my own ads, and haven't had false click-throughs as an advertiser. (I have seen something like that once as a publisher, which I reported back to Google, etc.)
I'm not sure I understand your dismissal. It sounds to me like Google is not trying to avoid expensing options. It sounds to me like Google is using the method they're proposing, much as Coca-Cola already does, do determine a fair market price for the options, a step which makes the determination of the value of the expense to be included on their books a lot more direct. So, where's your beef?
I beg to differ. In most of the products markets I advertise in, and in most of the product markets that get advertise on my sites, Google is able to fill the entire set of ad slots. If Google's ad space were supply-limited, I would expect this not to be the case.
Heck, I put up a site (using blogger), and this is way TMI, discussing the circumstances around a recent colonoscopy, and the ad units on even that site are always filled.
Check your dictionary under "opportunity cost." I make photographs, I frame the photographs I sell. If I take one out of inventory and put it up on my wall instead of putting it into a gallery or cafe, I'm very much paying for it, even if I don't "have to pay for it."
I complain about it all the time, so do my students. When I use the camera enough that it gets irritating to clean it, the corners are hard to get to (either with wet or dry cleaning methods), and it's not difficult to accidentally do harm (haven't had this happen myself, but I can point you to people who have. I've sent my camera bodies to Canon for cleaning a couple times when things have gotten bad.
But... I use the camera a lot. I'm sure I see a lot more dust than a lot of folks.
The RAW format isn't the only proprietary trap of DSLRs.
It doesn't have to be deeply proprietary, Adobe provides a converter to a format called DNG that keeps the "non-lossy" properties of camera RAW files but to some extent bags them up in an allegedly more permanent and non-proprietary format. Several RAW tools work with this well. Now, this is still a fuss for novices, but it's not a fuss because of the proprietary formats. Finding one's way through the software mess is a just still quite a hassle for a novice.
If you are going to make the move to a digital SLR, I also highly recommend the Canon 20d/30d cameras as a good system to begin exploring a variety of different photographic styles from outdoors to action to macro and still life.
I'd put in a good word for the new Digital Rebel XTi/400D particularly for new DSLR owners. I'm working on doing a review of it for Photograblog right now (bought it for my wife, who is a talented photographer in her own right), and the dust-removal feature of the XTi seems really helpful right now. I use the 1Ds and 1D II N in my own work, but the XTi is nearly the resolution of the (older) 1Ds, a lot lighter, a lot better high ISO performance--it's just not built like a tank the way the 1Ds is, which does matter on the occasion that I end up shooting in, say, Greenland.
But the dust removal... the process of getting dust off most DSLR sensors is a surprising hassle at times, particularly for newer DSLR users.
1. Firefox 2.0 install cleared my bookmarks. There are what appear to be bookmark backups,
but copying them to the obvious place does not actually cause the bookmarks to reappear. Still trying to figure that out.
2. Find "^F" in Firefox 2.0 does not appear to work, text
is entered in the Find area bottom-left but no page
motion happens, queries that do not match text on the
given page are not marked in red, etc.
3. Only the first tab works. You can open a second and more tab, but you can't load files into it, nor can you close any of the additional tabs. You can close the tab that works, though, leaving you with an entirely useless browser window.
Most likely nothing. And that's as it should be. Why? Because he most likely thought that he was in the right.
I presume differently from you. If the photographer was correct (and maybe he wasn't, granted) that the police officer said there was a "new law....", then I don't believe the officer was in fact acting in good faith, it's difficult to believe that the officier in question "accidentally remembered" a non-existent "new law", and persued a guy on his own property, behind a gate (as witnessed) to enforce it. "Oh, I accidentally thought there was a new law that lets me punch people in the face with impunity, my bad" would ring just as hollow.
On the other hand, it was presumptuous of the previous poster to suggest that nothing has happened to the officer in question, since the photographer's report to IA would take some time to persue, and this event, IIRC, was pretty recent.
Again, you _did know_ it was altered, _same_ with the DVD service; no one is implying otherwise.
I knew it was altered because I'd seen the movie before. The viewers who had not seen it before were warned that the movie was "adapted for television", but were not given information about the nature of the changes, were likely, well, perhaps you will find the word "misled" too strong, I don't, but let's not quibble on that point. The fact is that, as evidenced by many, many discussions after the first showing of Brazil on TV locally, it was clear that many viewers were in fact left confused.
I think the case of the parent post is a weaker example of this, but the principle still holds. Clearly the people who purchase the modified works are aware of the modifications. Nonetheless, there is nothing to prevent those modified works from being shown to other people, there is nothing to insure that the nature of the alterations being made is complete. Ergo, there is some potential damage to the economic value of the author, thus the existence of derivative works rules.
The public has a right to modify works for their own use.
....so long as they don't sell it. I've got no bone with fair use, I'm a fan of fair use.
You seem confused by two different tests that are both present in copyright law, both of which are not entirely black-and-white checkboxes. There is the question of whether you harm the economic interest of the author, which we've covered here so far. However, there is also the separate question of whether the personal doing the modification is doing it for "their own use", which is clearly *not* the case in the case of CleanFlix, CleanFlix clearly has a commercial interest of their own.
This brings me to another point.
Let me put together another hypothetical. I create a new movie called "Hot Beer Dudes on the Run" or some such, and sell it. CleanFlix gets people to pay them for my version instead of theirs, without my permission. The idea that "it doesn't matter because CleanFlix bought a copy for each copy they sold" mitigates the possiblity that a cleaned up version of HBDR would actually be worth more than the original copy. Now, I will note that CleanFlix is in the business of making money. So, I will posit that they either make, or intend to make a profit. This means that the market value of the cleaned-up movies is in some circumstances greater than the value of the originals. CleanFlix these modified versions of the movies cuts into my right as the "fine art auteur" of HBDR to pimp my own cleaned-up modified versions of the movies.
Now, you might ask, why didn't I release a cleaned-up version of HBDR? Well, maybe I did. It's done all the time, television networks run the right to make cut versions of movies within some combination of economic return to the copyright holder and potentially some acceptance of the cuts by copyright holder. But if I never did, maybe it's because I've decided that it's in my long-term economic interest to never do that, that the damage that such a warm, wholesome cleaned-up version should not sully my pr0nalicious rep. Either way, I've got an interest in HBDR not coming in and cutting into my short-term or long-term economic interests, either way, CleanFlix takes my work and uses it in part to further their interests while decreasing mine.
I betcha a buck CleanFlix signs deals, just like the TV networks already do, to produce cleaned-up versions of flicks. The world will be kept safe from undedited versions of HBDR, but CleanFlix won't do it to their profit, at the expense of the copyright holder.
The Brazil movie example I've used elsewhere is as good an example as any, many people were subjected to a brutally ruined version of the movie because the network involved felt that the ending fo the original movie was too depressing for its audience. To my eye, it ruined the movie, had I not known that the movie had been altered from it's original form, I would have assuemd that what I percieved as a substandard work was (and, to some extent it is in the case of this movie, but bear with me) the author's original intent. Had the network done this without permission, it would have affected the viewing public's respect (in this case, this is a personal opinion) of that movie for the worse, which would have had negative downstream economic conseequences for the authors.
Here's another example. I promote my work as being 'accurate to the orginal scene." I don't want to get into a long discussion about what that means save to say that it is of value to the people who buy my work that I don't, for example, make substantial modifications to the images I produce. Producing derivative copies of my work that had the strong appearence of being manipulated, being sold with an implicit or explicit association with my name, would have a adverse effect on my reputation.
It might be. But it might, and I suspect it would, depend on the sticker, the original work, how it was sold, and so forth. I don't think the quesiton is just (always) as simple as "is it a sticker?"
IANAL, but the primary things the courts appear to consider (there's a lot of discussion of derivative works here [pdf]) are "are you making money from it?" (in this case, yes), "are you doing something which harms my ability to make money from it?" (in this case, arguably yes, depending), and "is it a parody in the sense that the change is being made in a way such as to make the new work comment on the old work?" (depends perhaps on precisely what change you do.)
It is tempting to want rules that say "if make a change with this tool, does that count?", and there are certainly cases (such as the case of framing paintings) in which the court has made a rule of that form, but it appears to me those aren't the fundamental axioms the court is using to make the decision, instead, it is my impression that the "axioms" here are the items listed above (and one or two more that are less relevant to your example, IIRC.)
I'll note that US Copyright Law, unlike the stronger copyright laws present in some European companies, does not give me absolute protection against the modification of my works "per se." France, for example, gives authors/copyright holders the "moral right" of control over people reusing their work, the US merely protects the authors commerical interest(s) in such derivatives. I have some sympathy to this, after the telecast of Brazil-minus-the-twist-ending....YUCK!
By the way, I'm not a rah-rah-rah we need more copyright law thug. I actually find the treadmill extensions to the length of US copyrights, desparately cycling to make sure Mickey Mouse stays locked down, entirely inappropriate. And I've given permission in more than a few cases for folks to make derivative works of my images that might (or might not) be in legal violation but in which I felt that I'd suffer no harm, often for no more compensation than a link and/or a proper copyright notice. But I do think that some protection for derivative works in copyright law is appropriate.
That's because the way in which you make money to eat is unlikely to be harmed by someone producing bastardized versions of you work that your audience will associate with you.
The best example I've come up with so far was the American TV edit of the movie Brazil in which the network decided (apparently with the permission of the copyright holders) to remove the ending of the movie, a move which changes the meaning and the quality of the result completely. The vast majority of viewers likely had (a) not seen the movie uncut, (b) reacted to the movie differently because of the change, and assumed that what they saw was original authorial intent, and (c) were likely exposed to the "this has been cut for television" label but didn't appreciate, and weren't given enough information to appreciate, the scope of the changes.
If the copyright holders of the movie Brazil felt that that was in their interest, well, it's not my place to say. But it signficantly harmed, IMHO, the reputation of the movie, and the people involved with it, that it was shown that way.
The correct analogy would be selling something labelled as "a Joe Decker photo with a smiley face painted on it". There is no misrepresentation here. In fact people are going out of their way to get this "sullied" version.
In your example, that instead would be using my authorship (name, brand) without my permission in a commercial venture. Do note, however, that artistic works are often separated from their "labels."
That is the argument they're using, the article does not go into the issue directly. Protection against the unchecked distribution of derivative works is part of copyright law because of the desire to protect artists of any stripe from having poorer versions of their works in any way harm the artist's ability to extract value from their creations. As I said elsewhere in this thread, buy one of my photographs--no problem, paint a smiley face on it--no problem, sell the result in such a way that people will associate the result with me (inevitable if this is mostly a work I originally made), you're making money off of work I created *and* in doing so you're (possibly) harming my reputation--and that is a problem.
I have seen works butchered by censorship, e.g., the cut of the movie Brazil with the ending cut off. No, really, it was shown that way on American television. I am comfortable with a copyright law that gives, at the start, the creator of Brazil (or the future owner of those 'rights') the ability to prevent such atrocities without their consent.
Buy one of my photographs and spray paint a smiley on it, I'll applaud you.
Try and sell the result as my work, or sell it in such a way that other people will see the result as my work? There, you and I will have a serious problem. You'll be using my own work to denegrate whatever I'm trying to accomplish with my work, you'll be doing something that in the long run will cost me money and I'll get pretty pissy.
Photocopy the modified result and sell the copies for big profit? Lawyers will ensue.
Personally, I think Hollywood's stance is transparently hypocritical. It's absurd to argue that films produced by many people at great cost are somehow a pure form of creative expression (were such a thing even possible). At every level they are designed as profit-making vehicles. Hollywood is, in effect, claiming that they have the right to allow market forces to influence their works, but no-one else does.
Your comment "were such a thing even possible" gets closer to the point than the rest, of course something can be made for profit and still be a form of creative expression, it's not a "one or the other" sort of relationship. Copyright law protects the creator of a work from derivative works, in part, from derivative works that the creator may not feel puts their own work in its best light. I make photographs, were someone to buy the entire edition of one of my nature photographs and insert obvious "photoshopping" and sell them, those works would indirectly reflect negatively on my work and decrease the value of my other work. Inserting 'care bears', or christmas ornaments on my trees might do the same thing. (Parody excepted, of course.)
I still think a lot of Hollywood stuff is crap, and a lot of photography too, but you can't base copyright protection on the quality of the work involved.
Actually, everyone who decided that Enron and a handful of others could be extrapolated to the entire US economy are the ones to thank for our having to live with Sarbanes-Oxley.
Oh, c'mon. SOX is in places pretty badly designed, but a good fraction of "standard corporate accounting" is pretty messed up, too, it's not entirely an overreaction to "a few bad apples" like Enron and Worldcom and Liberate and Adephia and Waste Management and Sunbeam and Arthur Andersen and Duke Energy and El Paso and Merrill Lynch and Cendant and Citigroup and Computer Associates and Kmart and Lucent and Tyco and Brystol Myers and Global Crossing and so on. Spend some time looking at how companies account for derivatives and, if you can get through it, you'll start feeling like it's time to buy gold and bury it. Ask yourself how the entire accounting profession could justify saying that it cost nothing to give away stock options for decades, and notice how the politicans tried to rewrite traditionally independent accounting standards the moment the accountants started talking about expensing stock options..
There are certainly high-quality companies out there, managed with responsiblity and integrity. I believe that if you look closely at issues of accounting responsiblity, however, you'll find them in the minority. (I think a majority of companies meet a looser standard, that they believe that they're being responsible, but are missing places where they're taking advantage of irresponsible accounting techniques., e.g., not expensing stock options.)
Slashdot Mirror
*nods* I found AdSense works a lot better for me for some products than others. The real winner for me is the art fair panels I rent out, I get $125 for renting them out for a weekend, probably end up paying 25-50 cents for a click-through and I'd guess that about a third of click-throughs end up as a rental--and sometimes those folks become repeat customers. But I gave up trying to market photographic prints that way, it might be possible, but I haven't figured out how to make it work for me.
With other policies Google has, I'm told, been pretty direct about closing down publishers when their sites seem to be the source of fraudulent clicks. I'm OK with that, although it's a bit intimidating, I make a decent amount of money off of AdSense right now (legitimately, I believe), and I'd like that to continue, but then, I'm not trying to scam them, either, I've been happy with both AdSense and with buying ads on their system (for my photographic services as well as for the non-profit I work for.)
I both place ads (for my photographic services) and run them on my web site. I've been happy with the results I've gotten from running my own ads, and haven't had false click-throughs as an advertiser. (I have seen something like that once as a publisher, which I reported back to Google, etc.)
I'm not sure I understand your dismissal. It sounds to me like Google is not trying to avoid expensing options. It sounds to me like Google is using the method they're proposing, much as Coca-Cola already does, do determine a fair market price for the options, a step which makes the determination of the value of the expense to be included on their books a lot more direct. So, where's your beef?
Agreed, my mistake.
I beg to differ. In most of the products markets I advertise in, and in most of the product markets that get advertise on my sites, Google is able to fill the entire set of ad slots. If Google's ad space were supply-limited, I would expect this not to be the case.
Heck, I put up a site (using blogger), and this is way TMI, discussing the circumstances around a recent colonoscopy, and the ad units on even that site are always filled.
Check your dictionary under "opportunity cost." I make photographs, I frame the photographs I sell. If I take one out of inventory and put it up on my wall instead of putting it into a gallery or cafe, I'm very much paying for it, even if I don't "have to pay for it."
That's pretty impressive, the only camera I knew of that wrote DNG directly is the new Leica M8, which isn't a DSLR but a Digital Rangefinder.
But ... I use the camera a lot. I'm sure I see a lot more dust than a lot of folks.
Pedantic: Not all DSLRs have reduced frame sensors, those that don't have the same lenses the film cameras do.
It doesn't have to be deeply proprietary, Adobe provides a converter to a format called DNG that keeps the "non-lossy" properties of camera RAW files but to some extent bags them up in an allegedly more permanent and non-proprietary format. Several RAW tools work with this well. Now, this is still a fuss for novices, but it's not a fuss because of the proprietary formats. Finding one's way through the software mess is a just still quite a hassle for a novice.
I'd put in a good word for the new Digital Rebel XTi/400D particularly for new DSLR owners. I'm working on doing a review of it for Photograblog right now (bought it for my wife, who is a talented photographer in her own right), and the dust-removal feature of the XTi seems really helpful right now. I use the 1Ds and 1D II N in my own work, but the XTi is nearly the resolution of the (older) 1Ds, a lot lighter, a lot better high ISO performance--it's just not built like a tank the way the 1Ds is, which does matter on the occasion that I end up shooting in, say, Greenland.
But the dust removal... the process of getting dust off most DSLR sensors is a surprising hassle at times, particularly for newer DSLR users.
An uninstall and reinstall corrected all three issues for me.
2. Find "^F" in Firefox 2.0 does not appear to work, text is entered in the Find area bottom-left but no page motion happens, queries that do not match text on the given page are not marked in red, etc.
3. Only the first tab works. You can open a second and more tab, but you can't load files into it, nor can you close any of the additional tabs. You can close the tab that works, though, leaving you with an entirely useless browser window.
I presume differently from you. If the photographer was correct (and maybe he wasn't, granted) that the police officer said there was a "new law....", then I don't believe the officer was in fact acting in good faith, it's difficult to believe that the officier in question "accidentally remembered" a non-existent "new law", and persued a guy on his own property, behind a gate (as witnessed) to enforce it. "Oh, I accidentally thought there was a new law that lets me punch people in the face with impunity, my bad" would ring just as hollow.
On the other hand, it was presumptuous of the previous poster to suggest that nothing has happened to the officer in question, since the photographer's report to IA would take some time to persue, and this event, IIRC, was pretty recent.
I knew it was altered because I'd seen the movie before. The viewers who had not seen it before were warned that the movie was "adapted for television", but were not given information about the nature of the changes, were likely, well, perhaps you will find the word "misled" too strong, I don't, but let's not quibble on that point. The fact is that, as evidenced by many, many discussions after the first showing of Brazil on TV locally, it was clear that many viewers were in fact left confused.
I think the case of the parent post is a weaker example of this, but the principle still holds. Clearly the people who purchase the modified works are aware of the modifications. Nonetheless, there is nothing to prevent those modified works from being shown to other people, there is nothing to insure that the nature of the alterations being made is complete. Ergo, there is some potential damage to the economic value of the author, thus the existence of derivative works rules.
The public has a right to modify works for their own use.
You seem confused by two different tests that are both present in copyright law, both of which are not entirely black-and-white checkboxes. There is the question of whether you harm the economic interest of the author, which we've covered here so far. However, there is also the separate question of whether the personal doing the modification is doing it for "their own use", which is clearly *not* the case in the case of CleanFlix, CleanFlix clearly has a commercial interest of their own.
This brings me to another point. Let me put together another hypothetical. I create a new movie called "Hot Beer Dudes on the Run" or some such, and sell it. CleanFlix gets people to pay them for my version instead of theirs, without my permission. The idea that "it doesn't matter because CleanFlix bought a copy for each copy they sold" mitigates the possiblity that a cleaned up version of HBDR would actually be worth more than the original copy. Now, I will note that CleanFlix is in the business of making money. So, I will posit that they either make, or intend to make a profit. This means that the market value of the cleaned-up movies is in some circumstances greater than the value of the originals. CleanFlix these modified versions of the movies cuts into my right as the "fine art auteur" of HBDR to pimp my own cleaned-up modified versions of the movies.
Now, you might ask, why didn't I release a cleaned-up version of HBDR? Well, maybe I did. It's done all the time, television networks run the right to make cut versions of movies within some combination of economic return to the copyright holder and potentially some acceptance of the cuts by copyright holder. But if I never did, maybe it's because I've decided that it's in my long-term economic interest to never do that, that the damage that such a warm, wholesome cleaned-up version should not sully my pr0nalicious rep. Either way, I've got an interest in HBDR not coming in and cutting into my short-term or long-term economic interests, either way, CleanFlix takes my work and uses it in part to further their interests while decreasing mine.
I betcha a buck CleanFlix signs deals, just like the TV networks already do, to produce cleaned-up versions of flicks. The world will be kept safe from undedited versions of HBDR, but CleanFlix won't do it to their profit, at the expense of the copyright holder.
Here's another example. I promote my work as being 'accurate to the orginal scene." I don't want to get into a long discussion about what that means save to say that it is of value to the people who buy my work that I don't, for example, make substantial modifications to the images I produce. Producing derivative copies of my work that had the strong appearence of being manipulated, being sold with an implicit or explicit association with my name, would have a adverse effect on my reputation.
It might be. But it might, and I suspect it would, depend on the sticker, the original work, how it was sold, and so forth. I don't think the quesiton is just (always) as simple as "is it a sticker?"
It is tempting to want rules that say "if make a change with this tool, does that count?", and there are certainly cases (such as the case of framing paintings) in which the court has made a rule of that form, but it appears to me those aren't the fundamental axioms the court is using to make the decision, instead, it is my impression that the "axioms" here are the items listed above (and one or two more that are less relevant to your example, IIRC.)
I'll note that US Copyright Law, unlike the stronger copyright laws present in some European companies, does not give me absolute protection against the modification of my works "per se." France, for example, gives authors/copyright holders the "moral right" of control over people reusing their work, the US merely protects the authors commerical interest(s) in such derivatives. I have some sympathy to this, after the telecast of Brazil-minus-the-twist-ending... .YUCK!
By the way, I'm not a rah-rah-rah we need more copyright law thug. I actually find the treadmill extensions to the length of US copyrights, desparately cycling to make sure Mickey Mouse stays locked down, entirely inappropriate. And I've given permission in more than a few cases for folks to make derivative works of my images that might (or might not) be in legal violation but in which I felt that I'd suffer no harm, often for no more compensation than a link and/or a proper copyright notice. But I do think that some protection for derivative works in copyright law is appropriate.
That's because the way in which you make money to eat is unlikely to be harmed by someone producing bastardized versions of you work that your audience will associate with you.
The best example I've come up with so far was the American TV edit of the movie Brazil in which the network decided (apparently with the permission of the copyright holders) to remove the ending of the movie, a move which changes the meaning and the quality of the result completely. The vast majority of viewers likely had (a) not seen the movie uncut, (b) reacted to the movie differently because of the change, and assumed that what they saw was original authorial intent, and (c) were likely exposed to the "this has been cut for television" label but didn't appreciate, and weren't given enough information to appreciate, the scope of the changes.
If the copyright holders of the movie Brazil felt that that was in their interest, well, it's not my place to say. But it signficantly harmed, IMHO, the reputation of the movie, and the people involved with it, that it was shown that way.
In your example, that instead would be using my authorship (name, brand) without my permission in a commercial venture. Do note, however, that artistic works are often separated from their "labels."
I have seen works butchered by censorship, e.g., the cut of the movie Brazil with the ending cut off. No, really, it was shown that way on American television. I am comfortable with a copyright law that gives, at the start, the creator of Brazil (or the future owner of those 'rights') the ability to prevent such atrocities without their consent.
Big difference.
Your comment "were such a thing even possible" gets closer to the point than the rest, of course something can be made for profit and still be a form of creative expression, it's not a "one or the other" sort of relationship. Copyright law protects the creator of a work from derivative works, in part, from derivative works that the creator may not feel puts their own work in its best light. I make photographs, were someone to buy the entire edition of one of my nature photographs and insert obvious "photoshopping" and sell them, those works would indirectly reflect negatively on my work and decrease the value of my other work. Inserting 'care bears', or christmas ornaments on my trees might do the same thing. (Parody excepted, of course.)
I still think a lot of Hollywood stuff is crap, and a lot of photography too, but you can't base copyright protection on the quality of the work involved.
Actually, everyone who decided that Enron and a handful of others could be extrapolated to the entire US economy are the ones to thank for our having to live with Sarbanes-Oxley.
Oh, c'mon. SOX is in places pretty badly designed, but a good fraction of "standard corporate accounting" is pretty messed up, too, it's not entirely an overreaction to "a few bad apples" like Enron and Worldcom and Liberate and Adephia and Waste Management and Sunbeam and Arthur Andersen and Duke Energy and El Paso and Merrill Lynch and Cendant and Citigroup and Computer Associates and Kmart and Lucent and Tyco and Brystol Myers and Global Crossing and so on. Spend some time looking at how companies account for derivatives and, if you can get through it, you'll start feeling like it's time to buy gold and bury it. Ask yourself how the entire accounting profession could justify saying that it cost nothing to give away stock options for decades, and notice how the politicans tried to rewrite traditionally independent accounting standards the moment the accountants started talking about expensing stock options..
There are certainly high-quality companies out there, managed with responsiblity and integrity. I believe that if you look closely at issues of accounting responsiblity, however, you'll find them in the minority. (I think a majority of companies meet a looser standard, that they believe that they're being responsible, but are missing places where they're taking advantage of irresponsible accounting techniques., e.g., not expensing stock options.)