While we're on the subject of intellectual property and that endangered noble beast we call the Public Domain, here's a little bit of ironic serendipity for you: the BBC World News reports that a 700-year-old fresco has been found in a church in Austria that bears an uncanny resemblance to Mickey Mouse, although art historians think that the water-damaged image might actually be that of a weasel (funny, some people feel the same way about Mickey and his creator, the Walt Disney Corporation). Now here's the kicker. The weasel fresco might look so much like Disney's beloved trademark that, strange as it sounds, it might invalidate the company's claim to it - since the likeness obviously existed centuries before Walt put ink to paper- and retroactively throw Mickey Mouse into the Public Domain. This would be just peachy, as far as I'm concerned, as Michael Eisner and the Walt Disney Corporation have been shamelessly courting the U.S. Congress for years, who in 1998 totally re-jiggered existing copyright laws to keep Mickey and the gang privately-owned and licensable likenesses, and probably would have again when the need arose. Many artists and writers have been intellectually shanghaied into supporting this awful piece of legislation, which was titled "The Digital Millennium Copyright Act", confusing the desire of the heirs (not the creators, mind you) of a body of work to profit from said work in perpetuity with the already-uncontested right of a creator to enjoy the fruit of his labor for his lifetime, and even then some. It's all well and good to want the recognition and compensation you as an artist or writer deserve, but it's another thing to deny future generations the ability to use your work as the wellspring of their own creativity. It serves the Rat right.