I write here today to discuss how a standard cease and desist scenario with a clear right and wrong is now turning into a PR nightmare for the USOC.

Ravelry, the largest yarn craft community online, has hosts a yearly event called the Ravelympics. Knitters and crocheters compete to finish challenging projects–in quantity or technical difficulty–for a two week period that coincides with the Olympic games. This year’s planning was well underway when the USOC had a legal clerk send what was supposed to be a standard cease and desist letter to Ravelry over the phrase “Ravelympics.”

It was not a standard cease and desist letter.

We believe using the name “Ravelympics” for a competition that involves an afghan marathon, scarf hockey and sweater triathlon, among others, tends to denigrate the true nature of the Olympic Games. In a sense, it is disrespectful to our country’s finest athletes and fails to recognize or appreciate their hard work.

The letter explains how hard it is to be an Olympian before shooting out the “denigrate the true nature of the Olympic Games” line. In context, that means this legal clerk said knitters and crocheters are not skilled, have no training, and have not worked hard their entire lives to learn how to do elaborate feats of yarn art in a ridiculously short period of time.

Apparently, knitting while watching the Olympics is a personal insult to every athlete in the world.

The outrage came fast and furious. Ravelry members began a twitter campaign (#Ravelympics) and have been tweeting at the legal clerk for the better part of a day.

The simple solution would be an apology for attacking the integrity and skills of a group of crafters who wanted to take on an extra challenge while watching the Olympics. Technically, the USOC tried to do that.

The letter sent to the organizers of the Ravelympics was a standard-form cease and desist letter that explained why we need to protect our trademarks in legal terms. Rest assured, as an organization that has many passionate knitters, we never intended to make this a personal attack on the knitting community or to suggest that knitters are not supportive of Team USA.

We apologize for any insult and appreciate your support. We embrace hand-crafted American goods as we currently have the Annin Flagmakers of New Jersey stitching a custom-made American flag to accompany our team to the Olympic Games in London. To show our support of the Ravelry community, we would welcome any handmade items that you would like to create to travel with, and motivate, our team at the 2012 Games.

Something has gone haywire here with internal communications. I highly doubt that the USOC’s standard cease and desist letter claims that the local barber shop with the Olympic rings on their window “[denigrates] the true nature of the Olympic Games.” I very much doubt that the USOC chooses to insult the integrity and skill of anyone who violates their trademark and would equally insult a school with an Olympics day, a library holding an Olympics-themed readathon, or a television station airing a parody Olympics episode of their show.

Perhaps most insulting of all is the effort to patch over the issue by saying they will “welcome any handmade items” that these terrible, horrible, not very good crafters who “[disrespect]…our country’s finest athletes and [fails] to recognize or appreciate their hard work.” So yesterday, knitters and crocheters were bad people mocking the Olympics. Today, they’re welcome supporters who have the privilege of giving away free things to a not for profit sponsored by McDonalds and Coca Cola. Right. That adds up.

I hope that the USOC will find a way to fix this PR mistake before it turns into a far bigger mess. I’m somehow doubting that will happen. It appears they may just be the latest company/organization to learn the hard way that the Internet is forever and you can’t rewrite history when anyone can access the insult-riddled letter that started the bad press.

Maybe they can start by apologizing for customizing that C&D letter to insult knitters and crocheters. The only other option is doubling down and claiming that, no really, they accuse everyone of insulting the hard work of the athletes who dares to use an ancient term without a licensing deal. I’m sure that will go over well with the elementary school field days and summer craft programs around the country.

UPDATE

Wow. Turns out the whole “denigrate” nonsense is in their standard cease and desist letter. So is including examples of “denigrating” content.

So, does that mean it’s time to double down?

UPDATE 2

Since the initial posting at 2:30 this afternoon, the USOC issued another apology on their Facebook page (that you can’t link to).

As a follow-up to our previous statement on this subject, we would again like to apologize to the members of the Ravelry community. While we stand by our obligation to protect the marks and terms associated with the Olympic and Paralympic Movements in the United States, we sincerely regret the use of insensitive terms in relation to the actions of a group that was clearly not intending to denigrate or disrespect the Olympic Movement. We hope you’ll accept this apology and continue to support the Olympic Games.

Remember, their C&D letter was written to stress that anything Ravelry members ever did was nothing compared to the hours their dedicated athletes spent in pursuit of competition. Their form letter chooses to address a trademark concern with insults and shaming rather than address a cut and dry trademark concern.

And again, there is a complete flip flop here. Yesterday, Ravelry members were bad people, mocking the US Olympians by daring to associate “ympics” with yarn work. Today, they’re asking for donations of free stuff to go where their massive corporate contributions. If you can’t see the cognitive disconnect between the two opinions, you’re being willfully obtuse.

The apology should have been delivered the first time around. Instead, they chose to spin it to say that Ravelry was mad that they were called on trademark violations, which wasn’t the issue.

My sincere apologies for not being able to update this post the minute the new apology was posted on a Facebook page I do not follow.

Thoughts? Speak your mind. Just remember, there’s an uptick in lawyers trying to sue people for discussing IPR cases. Love to hear from you.

This week was showtunes week. My wheelhouse, if you will. You can listen to what I did to “Luck Be a Lady” from Guys & Dolls at the one hour mark of the podcast.

Then, proceed to the voting site. In order to combat “ghosties” (fake accounts from contestants) flooding the polls, MJRI4 is using an IP restrictive preferential ballot. I would strongly encourage you to vote me as your first choice. Why? Because if you don’t rank a contestant, they automatically get 12th place points. That means indifference is deadlier than hatred in this contest. If people just don’t vote for you, you’re going home.

Two people are going home Thursday night. I hope to not be one of them. I got screwed over in their last parody contest over technical issues with an audio recording and then watched as literally everyone else from my group was invited back into the contest but me. That was embarrassing.

This time around, the judges like me. The people in the live chat like me. They’re just not mentioning me again at the end of the show. That hurts. There’s no recap ala Idol because the show is broadcast live. No one gets to be reminded of my ode to busted drag queens before they vote. They only get to hear raves about the 12th performer of the night.

Brass tacks: they claim I was in the bottom 2 last week. There’s debate over whether that’s true or not. I’m going with that plus the jump to Showtunes week as evidence to a less than stellar voting performance. They know I music direct for educational theater. Also, one of the hosts mentioned my chat comment about the coincidence.

That’s why I’m asking for your help. Please listen to the podcast and vote for me. That would be ideal. Everyone benefits from that. If you don’t have an hour to spare, then just toss a vote my way and forget the rest of the ranking. I’d rather not advance that way, but that’s the point we’re at in this contest.

Thank you.

No, not the copyright holder suing the copyright violater. Flip it around. It’s Threaten/Actually Sue People for Holding a Copyright and Publicly Trying to Defend It Month on the Internet. Didn’t you see the fliers?

I really didn’t want to go into The Oatmeal versus FunnyJunk business. I figured it was a very cut and dry case of a legal shakedown for some quick cash on a defamation suit. I was wrong. Terribly wrong.

Here’s the order of events so far:

Matthew Inman of The Oatmeal webcomic contacted the admin of FunnyJunk to have his comics taken down. Funnyjunk hosts user uploaded content and leaves it up to its users to police for copyright violaters. FunnyJunk complied with Inman’s first request.

Inman sents a second request to have hundreds, not dozens, of his comics removed. The FunnyJunk admin refused. Inman blogged about the experience. FunnyJunk tried to destroy The Oatmeal by falsely claiming Inman was going to shut down FunnyJunk. Inman decided to cut his losses and go back to making comics.

Lawyer Charles Carreon sent Matthew Inman legal notice of an intent to sue over defamation. Why? Because Inman never updated his original blog post (a year later) to change out the links to the stolen content on FunnyJunk. Carreon claimed it was defamation because the links were out of date and requested $20,000 on behalf of FunnyJunk to stop further legal proceedings. There were also claims of SEO shenanigans to make The Oatmeal post about FunnyJunk a top Google search, but that’s not how the Internet works at all. You can’t physically manipulate that data anymore like that to get a higher search engine ranking. If anything, those tactics can get you pulled from the Google listings.

But I digress. Inman posted Carreon’s letter–contact information blocked out–and added in his own response to Carreon’s threats. He defended his position and listed hundreds of other comics FunnyJunk hosted that were stolen from him. Inman then started a charity fundraiser to raise $20,000 for the American Cancer Society and the National Wildlife Foundation. He also drew a comic of FunnyJunk admin’s mom seducing a bear.

From here, we don’t know all the facts because there’s no way to verify a lot of the details of the story. It’s literally “he said, he said” territory. Where you can prove that FunnyJunk is still hosting comics from The Oatmeal and you can prove that Carreon sent Inman a letter (and Inman and his lawyer have responded), you can’t prove a lot of the other claims involved now.

Carreon claims that Inman intentionally called on his readers to harass him, hack his website, and ruin his reputation. Carreon claims his website was hacked and that people are impersonating him online to ruin him. He also claims that he will shut down the charity fundraiser.

Inman claims he didn’t do any of that. He claims he’s not responsible for the actions of his readers and just wants to make comics. He also claims that he didn’t make a yo mama joke about Carreon’s mother.

This was where I said, “there’s no way it can go further. Ignore it and everything will be fine.” I was wrong.

Carreon has now filed a federal lawsuit against Matthew Inman, IndieGoGo, the American Cancer Society, the National Wildlife Foundation, and 100 undisclosed defendants for trademark infringement, cyber-vandalism, false personation, and illegally raising money for charity.

To quickly break it down:

• Carreon’s name is trademarked. The Oatmeal’s letter damages the value of the trademark with allegedly false statements.
• Carreon claims his website was hacked. He says no damage was done before he changed the password, but the hacking counts as cyber-vandalism.
• Carreon claims that someone (and he suspects Inman) created a fake Twitter account in his name to damage his reputation.
• Carreon claims that IndieGoGo has not filed the proper paperwork to donate money to the American Cancer Society and the National Wildlife Federation. Therefore, the charity fundraiser is illegal because a PayPal-like crowd-sourcing site collected money for charity in the name of Matthew Inman.

I can’t speak on the first three (shaky on trademark law, saw no evidence of the website hacking, saw no evidence of the false personation). I will suggest that Mr. Carreon might not understand how IndieGoGo works. Their role in fundraising is providing a platform to raise money. They collect the funds and take a cut of the finished projects. They are not responsible for the people raising money the same way PayPal isn’t responsible for the companies who break the rules while using their service. IndieGoGo’s role is not raising money but providing webspace to raise money. Big difference.

Inman himself does not get the money until the donation period is over. Perhaps he is waiting to have the money in his account before filing paperwork to donate to the ACS and NWF. Maybe there’s a loophole allowing an individual to donate without the filings Carreon was looking for. That I cannot speak to.

The reason this case has become so interesting is the inclusion of IndieGoGo, the ACS, and the NWF. What do those three organization shave to do with a copyright/defamation dispute between Inman, Carreon, and FunnyJunk? Does Inman saying where the money is going constitute responsibility for the recipients and intermediaries? Carreon thinks so. I would disagree, especially based on the actual filing of the lawsuit.

Here’s what the case actually boils down to. Charles Carreon went after Matthew Inman because of a year old blog post. He claims that Inman cannot respond with legal action against FunnyJunk because he didn’t register copyright for every page on his website.

Matthew’s done a great job spinning it, but he’s not going to sue FunnyJunk. He couldn’t sue FunnyJunk. He couldn’t even counter sue FunnyJunk for copyright infringement if we sue him because he hasn’t registered the copyrights on any of those domains. Even if he did an expedited registration…he would get no per incident damages because the “infringement” occurred before the registration. He’s got nothing.

There’s a serious flaw to that logic. Matthew Inman published a book featuring a number of the stolen comics. Those are registered. He can easily prove damages based on those comics.

Furthermore, it is not necessary to file copyright to have a copyright. As soon as you put your novel idea down in a file, you have a copyright. It’s just not registered. A registered copyright only assists in taking legal action against violation. It’s not essential. It makes it easier to prove damages, but so does having each comic dated on the website with his copyright information on the bottom. It’s very hard to sue and win if you aren’t registered, but that doesn’t mean you can’t.

This is also why everything on the Internet isn’t free to use. You can’t just assume that because the little (c) is missing on a picture that no one has the copyright. Technically, the person who took the photo has the copyright. Now whether or not someone is willing to let you use their images is an entirely different issue altogether.

Carreon has actually claimed at this point that he didn’t know FunnyJunk ever hosted Inman’s comics without permission. His defense to that is claiming the only action is to file a DMCA takedown. That, too, is a bold assumption.

Every article I’ve ever encountered on how to handle DMCA disputes suggests contacting the person who stole the content first. You request they take down your copyright. If they refuse, you escalate to a DMCA claim. You don’t ever have to file a DMCA claim. Even if you do file a claim, it does not guarantee the content is taken down if the violater is combative. The only guarantee is if the webhost actually pulls the violater’s site and refuses to reupload it until the infringing content is removed.

If anything, FunnyJunk immediately deleting the hundreds of stolen comics that Inman posted linked to in the response to Carreon’s letter proves that FunnyJunk knew they were violating Inman’s copyrights. Carreon’s knowledge of the violation does nothing to mitigate this.

What we have here is a pretty cut and dry copyright case that blew up because of public action. If neither Inman nor the admin of FunnyJunk never blogged about the initial dispute, this might not have happened. Could you imagine if we heard about every DMCA/copyright violation claim in the news? I would guess that we would need a separate section of the paper just to cover the daily cases, not to mention an hour or two of programming on the major news networks every night to cover just the general interest cases.

But if the cases like this weren’t discussed, we wouldn’t know about all the different ways that lawyers can try to angle IPR law to create victims and villains. That’s useful information.

Look on the bright side. Someone has managed to make IPR law fun and trendy. That’s as good an excuse as any to brush up on your IPR knowledge and get a better perspective on how the US system works.

Thoughts? Please refrain from harassing comments or alleged defamation. Focus on the case, not the characters. Carreon’s not the only lawyer who thinks you can sue for defamation based on writing about news stories on a blog or website. Thanks.

Mr. Carreon will be happy to note that I did not use his name nor FunnyJunk as keywords on this post.

Then I got an account and understood. It’s very take it or leave it in its attitude. I might like a news story about a new Broadway musical, so I’ll pin it. At the end of the day, I get an e-mail digest telling me who else liked the story enough to repin it. I then check out there board and start going through their pins. It’s the nerdy trading circle at your elementary school, only you don’t have to worry about your never returned paperback box set of The Chronicles of Narnia.

College Humor picked up on the trend in a different way. They suggest that Pinterest is the social network for women because it’s more positive and filled with crafting, art, and fashion design. Their video “The Fall of Pinterest” is a hilarious tribute to the social network and features references to a whole bunch of pop culture war scenes, like Braveheart and Lord of the Rings.

Funny, right? Now what happens if a man like me pins the Pinterest video about the invasion of men on Pinterest to Pinterest? Does the Internet collapse on itself? Let’s find out.

Thoughts? Love to hear them. Sound off below.

When someone comes up with a great angle for selling Shakespeare’s work, I like to applaud them. The Great River Shakespeare Festival have done just that.

Their original comedy sketch called “The Real Housewives of Shakespeare” is funny. Take the terrible NJ cast’s disastrous first season dinner party and recast it with some of Shakespeare’s most memorable wives and lovers. Titania (feuding with lover Oberon over an orphan), Goneril (conniving married daughter of doomed King Lear), Queen Gertrude (Hamlet’s mother and the new king’s trophy wife), Juliet (of your worst two weeks of HS English class), and Lady MacBeth (of could have done it better without her husband fame) are all present. The blend works well and builds to a nice comedic climax before the credits roll.

The video has just under 4000 views right now. It’s also a promotional video for a two play Shakespeare summer season in Minnesota and only got published yesterday. That’s pretty good for reaching a small market. Let’s see if we can build more of an audience for it.

Shakespeare fans of the world unite. The only thing you have to lose is the silly notion that Shakespeare is stuffy and inaccessible. Share the video with your friends and family and convert some new fans. I’m pretty sure that I’ll be transcribing this for students to perform at a local Shakespeare festival next school year.

What do you think? Is The Real Housewives of Shakespeare a keeper? I’d love to see a short run web series, to be honest. Then they can bring in Ophelia and Desdemona and really stir up trouble. Sound off below with your own thoughts.

One of my favorite South Park episodes is called “Over Logging.” The citizens of South Park wake up one morning to discover that there’s no Internet left. No one can check their e-mail, play games, or chat with their boyfriends. News stations cannot report on stories because everything is based on computers. A new Western expansion begins, with thousands upon thousands of US citizens working their way “Californee-way” to use the last remains of the Internet.

Who would have thought that Matt Stone and Trey Parker would predict an actual technological phenomena? According to the FCC, spectrum crunch is caused by an increased demand for high speed Internet buffered through a limited spectrum of broadcasting frequencies. Smart phones, tablets, and WiFi are increasingly used in day to day life for all sorts of things. E-mail is one thing. Streaming movies to your cellphone or playing MMORPGs on your tablet is quite another.

The team behind Extra Credits, a animated-ish web series on game geek news, just released a video taking us through the grim basics of this rapidly growing problem. Unfortunately, you can’t embed Penny Arcade TV content, so I’m going to have to hope you click on that link and watch before you continue here.

Now you see why I said grim. The reason that we, the general Internet media consumers, can’t really do anything to help the bandwidth problem is the allocation of resources. If you just stop watching Netflix on your 3DS, you’re not doing anything but stopping yourself from streaming the entirety of Doctor Who during your daily commute. Why? Because the channels allocated to wireless Internet communications are already allocated or claimed. You not using it doesn’t stop program developers from creating more bandwidth zapping content.

You can't see it, but our bandwidth usage is all around us

So we’re in a strange situation where the proactive approach isn’t readily available. This isn’t like using a ceramic cup at the coffee shop or riding a bike to work. There is a finite scarcity of resources unless we accept random blurring of information ala a pirate radio station competing with the company that actually licenses that bandwidth. Do you want bad and grainy techno music playing over your WoW raid? Then you don’t want more frequencies shoved in where we’ve reached the closest usable proximity already.

As someone who didn’t get a real working computer in my household until the 1998*, I can remember how quickly home computers with Internet connections just seemed to pop up overnight. Working in schools since 2005, I can also remember how quickly WiFi came up out of nowhere. Now students are accessing their class resources and Facebook pages all day long. The former is encouraged by teachers.

If only there were a knockout magic bullet solution to spectrum crunch. There isn't.

You don’t go from doubling usage every year since 2007 to a plateau. This is “oh, look, electric lights” or “wow. Check out that automobile” or even “well what do you know? A gas stove” levels of expansion. I don’t doubt the 2014 estimate by the FCC at all. Tinfoil hats be damned. The science behind the trend makes sense.

We rely on the Internet all the time now. People like me can earn a living sucking up bandwidth all day long. Other people have abandoned TV in favor of streaming online media for all entertainment. New technology is being developed every day that relies on the ability to use bandwidth at any time. It’s shiny, it’s new, and people want it.

Can anything stop Spectrum Crunch? There has to be a solution. Unfortunately, the solutions right now are limited to forcing TV networks to ditch antennae based programming bandwidths or cellphone carriers raising their data fees to discourage use. There has to be a more moderate solution.

Now if you’ll excuse me, my marathon of American Dad! episodes on my WiFi-enabled PS3 with the Netflix app isn’t going to start watching itself. I’d love to hear your thoughts on spectrum crunch. Sound off below.

*Why, yes, I did learn to type book reports and essays on a typewriter. I also learned to use carbon paper to produce copies of a final manuscript before turning the paper/story into teacher for grading. I still own all of that equipment. Shame about the chewing gum and sand incident ruining its ability to work.

Cue this yoga practitioner who is also an amazing breakdancer. via Dude Craft

Alex Yde staged and filmed this video of dancer Arthur Cadre doing insane breakdancing enhanced by yoga moves. I don’t know what is the most impressive part about it. Is it his windmills where he’s bringing his leg behind his neck with every revolution? What about when he starts threading, hits a yoga pose balanced on one arm, threads again, and hits another pose? Or is it just how ridiculously bendy Cadre’s body is? I think Olive Oyl has more rigid bone structure than this dancer.

If there’s one disappointment–a minor one, at that–it’s that the video is a series of short stunts. I’d really like to have seen the full routine from start to finish. Yde’s edits are nice and sync well with the music. I’m just a purist who likes to see a whole dance piece.

Even that’s a stretch. Does editing take away from the impact of these moves? I don’t think so. Cadre’s an impressive dancer. There’s no taking away from that.

The big question is whether or not all breakdancers should start studying yoga for inspiration.

Thoughts? I’m leaning towards full Mariah, myself, crossed with a little bit of that “no way” laughing disbelief that follows a street magician. What about you? Sound off below.

No one is as consumed with the Harry Potter series as the author herself. Rowling spent seventeen years working on the seven mega hit novels. As she reveals in Pottermore, she even created what she calls “ghost trails”–side plots for major characters that didn’t even come close to making the final edits of the books. Her universe is so well-planned and researched that she sometimes forgets these side stories are not common knowledge.

Diagon Alley is filled with life in Pottermore

These are not random little tidbits being thrown out to earn money. For one thing, Pottermore is a free website that anyone can join. No, these are fully developed ideas that Rowling very easily could have turned into additional books. She already did that with The Tales of Beedle the Bard and Quidditch Through the Ages. Pottermore is fan service of a unprecedented scope.

Pottermore is an interactive online community with gaming elements. It’s not quite an MMORPG as I predicted when it was first teased, but it’s close. You explore all the various settings of the novels chapter by chapter. You interact with objects to find additional information and stories from J.K. Rowling.

Brew potions to earn points for your house in Pottermore

The only rule in Pottermore is that you have to follow the story in order. You can’t jump to the final chapter until you’ve explored the entire first novel. The locked features open in a specific order. Once content is unlocked, you can always go back and explore further.

I would not consider myself a big Harry Potter fan by any means. I read the books (to a point) and saw the films (all but the last three on TV or DVD). I am, however, having a good bit of fun exploring Pottermore. It’s a clever supplement and one that will only keep growing as they add on the rest of the series book by book.

So are you joining Pottermore? Sound off below.

I love doing recaps of the show. I really do. It’s just a very time intensive process. If I finish a recap in under three hours, I worked surprisingly fast. That doesn’t even include watching Drag Race and UnTucked! the night before. I have to figure out my angle, write the narrative, grab the supporting images, edit them for size/content/humor, edit them again so they actually come up right on the website, and obsess over whether or not a guest or contestant will come here to attack me for writing about them in a way they don’t like.*

Thankfully, my recaps typically got positive responses. Willam even stopped by on occasion to throw out a quick joke or add some insight to the episode. I got a lot of traffic from the recaps, my images were shared on a bunch of message boards, and I felt good connecting with other fans.

I’ve mentioned it before and I’ll say it again. Sketchy Details is not the end all be all of my writing. My work is all over the place and even extends into music direction, composition, and arranging.

For the past five years, I have been music directing for one local high school. They were the first group since I moved out of NYC to give me a chance and they have been very good to me ever since. Unfortunately, their shows run the second or third week of March every year.

If you’ve never worked on a musical, you might not realize how much work goes into the production. Even if you have worked on a show, you might not realize how much work the music director is doing outside of the theater. The only way anything gets done is if the music director takes their work home with them and works through the night to finish arrangements and fix major problems.

Two weeks out from a short run show, you go into tech. That means long, draining rehearsals that stop and start over and over until you’re ready to commit yourself to the local asylum. Just when you think you might have five minutes to maybe do something with that huge folder of Drag Race screengrabs, the rehearsal picks up again and you have to focus on playing that one music cue for the twelfth time that hour.

What it comes down to is this. I’ve had the great fortune of picking up a lot of new writing jobs in the past few months. Some of them fell through, others are ghostwriting or editing gigs I don’t get credit for and can’t share with you. I also get to work in musical theater, a lifelong passion of mine, for actual pay. When choosing between the work that has to get done to keep the electricity running and the work that boosts my ego through positive reinforcement, I have to go with the cash jobs.

There was just not enough time to recap Drag Race each week and meet my standards. At best, I could have finished recaps a full week after the episode, which–in Internet time–is about five years later. I will be picking up with the recaps again next week when I should finally be caught up with all my back work.

*It happened with Drag U and the perpetrator’s filthy diatribe filled with hate speech is why I have comment moderation on. No one should have to deal with that kind of language, especially in the context of a show on Logo.

It seems this faith might have been well-placed as two of the brand spanking new celebrity channels are hosted by geeks that I trust. Comedian Chris Hardwick and actress Felicia Day have made their names by focusing on the same kind of content YouTube is known for. They know gaming, comics, parody, and pop culture. We have our first tastes of their original content and both of their projects are shaping up to be interesting hubs of new media.

First, Chris Hardwick’s channel is Nerdist (aka the official YouTube expansion of all-consuming geek culture blog/podcast extravaganza Nerdist). If you’re familiar with Nerdist, you know what kind of content is coming. For examples, there’s a show all about digitally blowing up YouTube memes.

The channel’s focus right now seems to be original comedy programming. There are two animated series–Dr. Tran and Nana & Lil Puss Puss–as well as a live action/puppet hybrid detective series (featuring actual puppets designed by the Jim Henson Workshop) called S.U.D.S.. Chris Hardwick’s musical comedy duo Hard & Phirm (with Mike Phirman) also have music videos on the channel.

I’m more interested in the live action content still to come. The first All Star Celebrity Bowling went up a few hours ago and it’s entertaining. Chris Hardwick’s Nerdist team goes up against some of the guys who run Machinima in a one game charity bowling tournament. Cue puns, jokes, distractions, and pin flying action. The channel will also feature a Weird Al talk show and an undisclosed Rob Zombie project.

Felicia Day’s Geek and Sundry channel is taking a more regimented approach. There’s a programming schedule and everything. Mondays bring us The Flog, Felicia Day’s weekly video blog about her media consumption. Tuesdays bring us season 5 of The Guild and Wednesdays give up motion comics from Dark Horse comics, probably one of my favorite indie print publishers.

More importantly, Wil Wheaton has a show that should tickle any geek just right. It’s called Tabletop and it’s all about board games. The first episode saw Grant Imahara (Mythbusters), Jenna Busch (superstar blogger), and Sean Plott (Day[9]TV) play a game of Small World. Let me just say, after the terrible Family Guy extra of a Star Wars Trivial Pursuit match between the writers of one of their Star Wars parodies, I didn’t think you could make tabletop gaming interesting on video. Geek and Sundry proved me wrong. Plus, it’s Wil Wheaton trying to make everyone laugh while playing an overly complex German-styled board game. If you can’t laugh at yourself playing something like that, you need to learn to relax about gaming.

The only way this paid-celebrity YouTube channel experiment will work is if the celebrities fit into the fabric of YouTube. Chris Hardwick and Felicia Day are perfect choices for the geek demographic. Chris is like the 4chan/Newgrounds demo while Felicia Day feels more like the Whovians/Bronies–sillier and friendlier, perhaps. So long as what they put up on their channels feels authentic, they should have no problem keeping their subscription rates up.

If nothing else, celebrity channels on YouTube could convince more people to check out original programming on YouTube rather than jump in for the cute cat videos. Not that there’s anything wrong with cute cat videos.

Thoughts? Personally, I could talk about that “I’m the One That’s Cool” video all day long. Share your thoughts below. The moderation isn’t scary. I just delete hate speech and blatant spamming. Everything else goes through. Promise.