Australian Man Booted From Plane After Passenger Complains About His 'Terroristic' Notepad Doodles

from the pen-beats-common-sense dept

The apparent spike in terrorist activity -- a perception mainly due to the ongoing release of beheading videos by ISIS/IL -- has resulted in the Australian government setting its national threat level to the highest it's ever been. This has, of course, "heightened awareness" in other venues normally associated with terrorism (i.e., airlines), leading to the sort of reactions detailed below.

A Melbourne interior designer flying to the Gold Coast on Tiger Airlines was removed from the flight and questioned by authorities over some sarcastic doodles he made during the flight.

Oliver Buckworth, 28, claims he was removed from a Gold Coast-bound flight after a fellow passenger saw the contents of his notebook over his shoulder and informed Tiger staff.

Here's the page in question as photographed by Buckworth:


According to Buckworth, it was the passenger sitting next to him who brought it to the airline staff's attention.

Mr Buckworth said a neighbouring passenger told a flight attendant: "Look what he's writing." "I turned to him and said, 'Yes, look what I'm writing. Read the whole sentence. I'm just writing some notes.' "

Yes. Look what he's writing. Some people see the word "terrorism" or "terrorist" and refuse to look further. Both Buckworth's seatmate and Tiger Airlines couldn't get past those words, even if true terrorists wouldn't sketch out terrorism plans in the open during a flight and very definitely wouldn't refer to themselves as "terrorists" or their planned acts as "terrorism."

Here's the context:

"The irony is I was writing a sentence about the absurdity of the fearmongering when we live in such a happy country of ice-cream and beaches and fluffy things," he said.

A page of Mr Buckworth's notebook seen by Fairfax Media contains the sentence: "In a land of melting ice-creams, sandy feet and fluffy bears, how could anyone be fearful of terrorism."

Other doodles include a sketch of a chandelier – Mr Buckworth is an interior designer – and the play on words: "Terrorismadeup." In a cartoon of a child clutching his head, Mr Buckworth wrote in a thought bubble: "Tyrannosaurus Rex. Terodactyl. Tarantula. Terrorist."

He may as well have been carrying an [f] bomb. Off the plane he went to be questioned by the Australian Federal Police, who, to their credit, let him go with as minimal hassle as is possible when airplanes and terrorism are the subjects being discussed.

An AFP spokesperson confirmed they had "responded to a request for assistance" from an airline at Melbourne Airport. "The AFP briefly spoke to the individual concerned. No further AFP action will be taken."

Tiger Airlines hasn't acknowledged whether the incident was prompted by Buckworth's drawings, instead inferring that it was Buckworth himself who was the problem.

A spokeswoman for Tiger has defended the airline's conduct, claiming air crew were responding to a "disruptive passenger".

"Tigerair has a zero-tolerance policy towards inappropriate and antisocial behaviour. Safety and security of staff and passengers underpins the operation at all times and is never compromised," she said.

Yes, this sounds like the sort of "disruptive" behavior that gets kids kicked out of school, even though the only people actually being "disrupted" are the person lodging the ridiculous complaint and the staff members overreacting to it.

My guess is that the most disruptive person on the flight was the passenger who wouldn't shut up until the airline did something about the perceived threat seated next to him or her. Stuck with the unsavory prospect of convincing a paying customer alarmist that he/she would make it through the flight alive no matter what Buckworth drew in his notebook, the airline opted to take the easier route: boot the "offending" person. This decision probably irritated Buckworth, who likely expressed his irritation in a verbal fashion, turning him into a "disruptive passenger" -- something the airline has "zero tolerance" for -- and salving the mildly-troubled conscience of airline staff.

Tiger Airlines was in a terrible situation and did what it could to mitigate the damage. The real problem was the passenger who -- despite flying at the same altitude -- had the satire sail over his/her head. But if the airline had decided to boot the offended passenger, the story would have been "Airline Boots Passenger For Warning Staff About Potential Terrorist." There's no winning here, only the minimal gratification of erring on the side of safety.

Filed Under: doodles, fear, terrorists

Google Doodles Obvious Nod To...Some Games...Or Something...

from the no-names-for-games dept

Google users have long noticed the search page's "doodles", where Google redesigns their logo as an homage to something having to do with that day's history (Yes! I managed to link to a Techdirt story from two-thousand-and-freaking-two! Beat that, other Techdirt writers!). Often times these are nods to the birthdays of famous or important artists, scientists, or other historical figures and holidays. And if you have spent the past week or so living on Earth and aren't a rock, you can probably guess what these past days' doodles have been about.

But, as reader Jason writes in to note, the big Goog is apparently chilly on actually, you know, mentioning what the drawings are for when you roll over the image:

"The image url reference[d] the "opening ceremony" of something. But the tooltip for the image, which any seasoned Google user knows will tell you what's up with the logo that day, simply reads, "Hooray for sports!"

The two theories Jason came up with are that the search giant is afraid to even mention the sporting event in question for fear of reprisal by the committee that oversees said sporting event, or it's a sly poke in the eye at their overly aggressive sue-happy nature. Lord knows if the-games-that-shall-not-be-named are willing to go after gyro shops, a more prominent target like Google would seem to be a no-brainer. Now, it would seem to me that a prominent page like Google's home search page featuring the Olym...games-that-shall-not-be-named would be a great source of publicity for the sporting event, but thanks to the chilling effect created through lawsuit happy committees, that publicity is lost.

Filed Under: doodles, intellectual property, olympics
Companies: google

Patent System Gone Mad: Google Doodles Is Now Patented

from the please-make-it-stop dept

As far as I know, Google has never sued nor even threatened anyone else with a patent infringement claim (if anyone knows of any, let me know). The company does file for a fair number of patents, but so far it seems to be focused on using them for defensive purposes. However, as a bunch of folks are submitting, the company has now received a patent on the "invention" of changing your logo for special events. Yes, the concept of Google Doodles is now patented. The patent itself, 7,912,915, took nearly 11 years to get approved, but it still got approved. The claims are pretty short, but here's the key one:

A non-transitory computer-readable medium that stores instructions executable by one or more processors to perform a method for attracting users to a web page, comprising: instructions for creating a special event logo by modifying a standard company logo for a special event, where the instructions for creating the special event logo includes instructions for modifying the standard company logo with one or more animated images; instructions for associating a link or search results with the special event logo, the link identifying a document relating to the special event, the search results relating to the special event; instructions for uploading the special event logo to the web page; instructions for receiving a user selection of the special event logo; and instructions for providing the document relating to the special event or the search results relating to the special event based on the user selection.

I'm hoping that Google and Sergey Brin (who's the named inventor) are planning to use this patent to demonstrate just how ridiculous the patent system is these days. And people were just insiting that the USPTO's new faster approval patent process had safeguards to stop bad patents from getting through. Yeah. Right.

Filed Under: doodles, patents
Companies: google