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Thursday, May 24th, 2007

AC: Law

"SoundExchange, the nonprofit group that collects fees on behalf of major and indie record companies, has extended the olive branch to small webcasters in an attempt to reach a middle ground in what has become an ongoing battle regarding royalties paid for Internet radio. This peace offering came at the urging of Reps. Howard Berman (D-Calif.) and Howard Coble (R-N.C.), the leaders of a key House panel that deals with intellectual-property issues." (Mashable!)"We regularly complain about the fact that the legal system is unable -- or at least unwilling -- to police attorneys who violate the rules. But this failure is not limited to the plaintiff's bar in civil cases. Lawrence Floyd was a prosecutor in Cuyahoga County who, according to the judge, "deliberately committed prosecutorial misconduct" by making unconstitutional remarks at a murder trial, forcing the judge to declare a mistrial." (Overlawyered)
"It's a day that ends in "Y," and the sun is shining, so clearly it's time for Jack Thompson to threaten someone. This time, it's Bill Gates. Well, heck it was his turn." (Game | Life)
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Monday, May 21st, 2007

AC: Sleep, Song and Law

"An Australian kid has won a lawsuit against his former school for its failure to intervene during a decade of brutal bullying; he will likely be awarded AU$1,000,000." (Boing Boing)"Tony Wright is aiming to beat the world record for staying awake, and you can watch him on a webcam. The record is currently held by Randy Gardner who managed 11 days without sleep." (Mind Hacks)
"A little candy can add up to a rainbow of trouble.

A man caught removing tires from a truck has been charged with stealing the tractor-trailer containing $250,000 worth of Skittles, police said."

(Forbes)
"Will the Internet change the type of person who becomes a musician or writer? It’s possible to see these online trends as Darwinian pressures that will inevitably produce a new breed — call it an Artist 2.0 — and mark the end of the artist as a sensitive, bohemian soul who shuns the spotlight." (NY Times)"A Contra Costa County school district's use of wood chips in play boxes makes it harder for boys and girls in wheelchairs to get to swings and slides, a violation of the disabled children's rights, a federal judge has ruled." Rubberized mats, the main alternative, are eight times as expensive, according to a lawyer for the district in Northern California." (Overlawyered)
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Thursday, May 17th, 2007

AC: 2:1 For censorship of Web

"Console hackers: beware! Microsoft has officially taken the hard line on hacked consoles connecting to Xbox Live. According to the Xbox's Gamerscore blog, henceforth when a modded console is detected on the Live network, users can expect to have their account auto-banned, and their console permanently disabled from the system." (Engadget)"The study of thousands of websites across 120 Internet Service Providers and found 25 of 41 countries surveyed showed evidence of content filtering...Countries which carry out the broadest range of filtering included Burma, Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen, the study said." (BBC News)
"Google is currently fighting many fronts in its ability to show small images returned in a search from websites. Most recently, Google won the case against them in which they were displaying nude thumbnails of a photographer's work from his site. Prior to this, Google was barred from displaying copyrighted content, even when linking it to the site (owner) from its search results." (SlashDot)
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Wednesday, May 16th, 2007

AC: Potter, Cavemen

"You've heard that the Wii version of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix will have magic spells that you activate by waving the Wiimote. Well, here's a video from EA's recent Gamers' Day showing exactly how that'll work. So far it's not that amazing -- it just seems like the wand waving is replacing what would ordinarily be done with a button press on the other platforms. Plus, anyone knows that Wingardium Leviosa requires a swish and a flick." (Game | Life)"A British judge admitted on Wednesday he was struggling to cope with basic terms like "Web site" in the trial of three men accused of inciting terrorism via the Internet. Judge Peter Openshaw broke into the questioning of a witness about a Web forum used by alleged Islamist radicals. "The trouble is I don't understand the language. I don't really understand what a Web site is". he told a London court during the trial of three men charged under anti-terrorism laws." (SlashDot)
"The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals denied Roommates.com Safe Harbor status under the Communications Decency Act in a lawsuit brought by the Fair Housing Councils of San Fernando Valley and San Diego. Roommates.com was accused of helping landlords discriminate against certain kinds of tenants due to a couple of questions on the Roommates.com registration form: gender and sexual orientation. " (SlashDot)
"You gotta love Brent Bozell and his band of loonies at the Media Research Center. They're shocked, I tell you - SHOCKED! - that some people consider Jerry Falwell to be a bigot" (Dispatches from the Culture War)"On the heels of yesterday's upfront presentation, ABC has put up short clips of its new fall pilots on their website. All of the shows introduced, including the mid-season replacements, have clips on the site (the soap Dirty Sexy Money has two clips), including a brief scene from the much-anticipated and already-maligned Cavemen." (TV Squad)
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Tuesday, May 15th, 2007

AC: Games, Law and News

Games:
Law:
News:
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Sunday, May 13th, 2007

AC: DRM and Law

"Forbes.com informs us that the company Media Rights Technologies is suing Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, and Real Networks for not using its DRM technology and therefore 'failing to include measures to control access to copyrighted material.' The company alleges that their refusal to use MRT's X1 Recording Control technology constitutes a 'circumvention' of a copyright protection system, which is of course illegal under the Digital Millenium Copryight Act. I would say more, but without controlling access to this paragraph with MRT's products, I fear I have already risked too much ..." (SlashDot)"C-SPAN addicts might have seen this in the wee hours of last night, but not too many others. A bipartisan amendment by Reps. Schiff and Flake that would prevent illegal domestic wiretapping passed last night in the House Intelligence Reauthorization." (Daily Kos)
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Saturday, May 12th, 2007

AC: Mostly Fail

"New academic research suggests that neither social norms nor the threat of lawsuits are enough to keep college students from illegally downloading music." (Ars Technica)"Police officer Edward Sanchez of Dearborn, Michigan made some pot brownies with his wife and got so paranoid that he called 911 for fear they were dying." (Boing Boing)
"Media Rights Technology, a DRM crippleware vendor, has launched what may be the dumbest DMCA legal threat ever. They are threatening Adobe and Real with lawsuits for failing to buy their crummy technology. Forbes says that Media Rights Technology advanced the theory that since the DMCA makes it illegal to break DRM, companies with broken DRM have to buy someone else's DRM." (Boing Boing)
"In yet another case of a British individual nearly losing their life thanks to a complete and utter lack of common sense, a 20-year old Birmingham University student was following a GPS' directions to Carmarthenshire for the first time, only to have her vehicle destroyed by a speeding train while she watched." (Engadget)"A Heritage Foundation researcher testified yesterday that the average illegal immigrant family (as well as low-skilled legal immigrant family) receives about $20,000 in benefits more than they pay in taxes, resulting in an average lifetime net loss to American taxpayers of $1.2 MILLION." (The Raw Feed)
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Friday, May 11th, 2007

AC: Dick, ethics and science!

"Hide your irony meters for this one. The Washington Post reports that Tom DeLay is going to headline an ethics seminar. I don't even need to make a joke here." (Dispatches from the Culture War)"A federal judge ruled Thursday that the Girls Gone Wild impresario [Joe Francis] should be sent to Nevada to face tax evasion charges there once he finishes serving a jail sentence for contempt of court in Florida." (PerezHilton)
"[Dick Cheney] explaining that there will be no escaping for the rebels this time. As he departed in his shuttle, Cheney thundered to the base commander, “Don’t fail me again, Admiral.” Then he flew to a ship in the Persian Gulf and personally threatened to bomb Iran. Seriously, this is what he did next." (Wonkette)
"Scientists have developed an artificial plastic blood which could act as a substitute in emergencies." (Spluch)"According to a Space.com news article the cremated remains of 200 people were lost in the mountains after their trip to space. '..." (SlashDot)
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Wednesday, May 9th, 2007

AC: Picture Edition





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Tuesday, May 8th, 2007

AC: Here and now, then and might be

"Speaking to The Register, Last.fm founder Martin Stiksel said the RIAA had succeeded in masking the fact the huge payday their new royalty scheme would grant would not be passed on to artists. "They've managed to lead the discussion, when they shouldn't have been allowed to," he said...Cynical observers might suggest you know you've got problems when you're facing down the RIAA lobbyists armed with a petition. Ironically, until 1995 there was no performance royalty for sound recordings in the US." (The Register)(emphasis added)"U.S. Special Forces may soon have a strange and powerful new weapon in their arsenal: a pair of high-tech binoculars 10 times more powerful than anything available today, augmented by an alerting system that literally taps the wearer's prefrontal cortex to warn of furtive threats detected by the soldier's subconscious..." (Wired)(emphasis added)
"Ever wanted to rip all your DVDs to a big network server so that you could select and play them back to your TV? Up until now, manufacturers have been wary of building a device to allow this type of usage because they've been afraid a lawsuit. The DVD Copy Control Association had claimed this was contractually forbidden, but now a judge says otherwise stating, 'nothing in the agreement prevents you from making copies of DVDs. Nothing requires that a DVD be present during playback.'" (SlashDot)

"Generally, a company operating abroad is responsible for complying with local law, not US law. You can't sue a company in a US court for its behavior overseas. That's the the general rule; there are exceptions.

The law makes an exception for building devices in the US which would infringe a patent if sold in the US but are instead exported -- the patent holder can sue in the US where the device is made. Microsoft argued that the general principle (local law) applies here, not the exception, because the would-be infringing device was actually manufacturered abroad.

The Supreme Court agreed and applied the general rule: if AT&T wants to collect, they'll have to sue in the countries where the infringement occurred." (Comment by Spazmania on SlashDot)
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AC: Mostly Fail

"New South Wales teachers are attempting to have a website based in the United States closed down due to "defamatory" content. The site in question encourages students to rate teachers at their school, which obviously results in some colorful content. Now the story has hit the media, with some insightful quotes such as "The president of the NSW Secondary Principals Council, Jim McAlpine, said the Federal Government should block access to 'scurrilous American websites'." (SlashDot)"...It's a game that inherently favors the attackers," Felton wrote on his blog, Freedom to Tinker. "My guess is that the attacks will extract keys from the new software within about three weeks of its availability."..."This may be the test in whether AACS is going to provide any value to the movie studios in the long run," Halderman said. "If the new version is broken very shortly ... then it looks like the long-term prospects of AACS are very bleak. We'll probably see this game repeated forever." " (Yahoo! News)
"Andrew Gowers, former head of the Financial Times, led a UK inquiry into intellectual property rights last year and concluded (among many other things) that musical copyrights should not be extended from their current 50-year length to 95 years. Now, in an interview, Gowers says that the economic data he saw even supported reducing the 50 year term, but that political realities prevented him from recommending this." (Ars Technica)
"Since January, says the administration, they've been following FISA procedure and asking the FISA court for warrants for the NSA's wiretapping program. But in testimony in front of Congress the other day, the Director of National Intelligence says they were just doing that to be nice and they could stop any time they want." (Dispatches from the Culture War)(emphasis added)"The mere act of forwarding an email or posting an exchange to a website is grounds for legal action, according to University of Arkansas law professor Ned Snow. In a paper to be published in the Kansas Law Review this summer, Snow contends that one of the most common acts of the digital age is a violation of privacy and warns that our courts are running headlong into this issue." (Overlawyered)
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Monday, May 7th, 2007

AC: AACS == Fail

"The latest crack, once again formulated by the denizens of the Doom9 forums, is said to be immune to key revocation. The key can be extracted after de-soldering the HD DVD drive's firmware chip, reading its contents, and then reconnecting it. The approach bypasses the encryption performed by the Device Keys, so revoking these keys as applied by the WinDVD update. Although the latest approach involves voided warranties and potential solder burns, Ars Technica adds that the ruse takes hackers one step closer to using software to achieve the same ends." (The Register)"A new crack for the AACS anti-copying system claims it can't be overcome by updating DVD players and other devices. AACS is the anti-copying system behind Blu-Ray, HD-DVD and other crippled high-def video formats. These systems rely on a "revocation" system that allows new discs to ship with the intelligence to refuse to play on devices that are known to be cracked. However, the new crack, which comes from the must-read Doom9 forums, compromises the system in a way that can't be stopped with revocation." (BoingBoing)
"The chairman of the AACS Licensing Authority (AACS LA, for short) is neither intimidated nor impressed by the Internet "revolt" of sorts that took place earlier this week on sites like Digg. When the AACS used cease-and-desist letters to encourage scores of Internet sites (including Google) to remove an unencrypted HD DVD key, users responded by posting it everywhere. Now the AACS LA is out there talking tough, and it's as if we haven't seen this scenario played out once already before." (Ars Technica)

"The BBC is carrying the story that AACS has promised to take action against those who have posted the AACS crack online. Michael Ayers, chairperson of AACS, noted that the cracked key has now been revoked, and went on to say, 'Some people clearly think it's a First Amendment issue. There is no intent from us to interfere with people's right to discuss copy protection. We respect free speech.' The AACS website tells consumers how they can 'continue to enjoy content protected by AACS' by 'refreshing the encryption keys associated with their HD DVD and Blu-ray software players.'" (SlashDot)"Michael Ayers, the chairman of the AACS-LA (the organization that sent hundreds of legal threats to websites that published the random 16-byte number that represented one of the keys for cracking the copy-prevention on HD-DVDs) has given an interview to the BBC in which he vows to use technical and legal means to shut down the 802,000+ websites that have reproduced the key." (BoingBoing)(emphasis added)
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Sunday, May 6th, 2007

AC: Teacher, Jack, and McCain

"A teaching student at Millersville has been denied her teaching certificate because her MySpace profile showed a picture of her wearing a pirate hat and drinking from a paper cup, with the caption "Drunken Pirate." She's suing for the degree, her certificate, and $75,000." (Boing Boing)"Starting this fall, viewers can see what Jack Bauer was like as a child as Fox will spin off '24' into a Saturday morning cartoon. “We’ll see a little Jack Bauer as a member of the Cub Scouts, torturing Arab kids at camp who look suspicious,” says '24' creator Joel Surnow." (24 Weblog)
"Everyone know the UN has failed to solve all those wars and shit it was supposed to solve. This is because it was created and run by pussies. John McCain has a better idea: a thing that’s like the UN but started by a totally tough badass. And instead of like Finland and Sweden and shit it’ll have the USA and, uh… the Green Lantern." (Wonkette)"Cingular thinks it can determine who gets to link to their website, according to this snippet from their terms of service agreement. Somehow their lawyers operate under this misconception that they're in a position of being to grant, or revoke, the "right" to create a hypertextual link to their site. The likely intent is to try to set the stage so that then they could basically sue someone for linking to their website." (Consumerist)
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Friday, May 4th, 2007

AC: Picture Edition

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Monday, April 30th, 2007

AC: Picture Edition



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Saturday, April 28th, 2007

AC: Fail, Win

Fail:
Win:
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Friday, April 27th, 2007

AC: Copyright Edition

The past of the MPAA. The future of the MPAA?

The past and present of the RIAA. The future of the RIAA?
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Wednesday, April 25th, 2007

AC: Cylons, Bees!


Bees!
SlashDot has coverage of a post that covers an interesting division of two different "series of tubes" on the issue of Net Neutrality. One as a tool, another as source of entertainment and communication.
Boing Boing coming a bit late to the "Earth 2" story of a planet being found (by inferrence) that might have life.

"Robot Chicken: Star Wars"
Purple Earth?

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Tuesday, April 24th, 2007

AC: Earth 2, RIAA

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AC: Twitter, Kryptonite

“Using Twitter for literate communication is about as likely as firing up a CB radio and hearing some guy recite ‘The Iliad’ “ (ballpark.ch)
"This may be the most pathetic story I've seen in a long time. A guy in Arkansas (what a shock) is demanding $20,000 from the city because his sons actually saw a book about lesbians at the library." (Dispatches from the Culture Wars)
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