EndingPop - Slashdot User

Submission + - RIAA Adds More Colleges to Hit List

Submitted by

NewYorkCountryLawyer

on Wednesday March 21, 2007 @01:44PM

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: "The RIAA has sent 405 more blackmail letters, adding to its hitlist an additional 23 universities, including Boston University (50 pre-litigation settlement letters), Columbia University (20), Dartmouth College (11), DePaul University (18), Drexel University (20), Ferris State University (17), Ithaca College(20), Purdue University (38), University of California — Berkeley (19), University of California — Los Angeles (21), University of California — Santa Cruz (17), University of Maine system (27), University of Nebraska — Lincoln (25), University of Wisconsin system (66, including the following individual campuses: Eau Claire, Madison, Milwaukee, Parkside, Platteville, Stevens Point, Stout, and Whitewater), Vanderbilt University (20), and Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University (16). This follows on the heels of the offensive it launched last month targeting 400 students at 13 institutions."

Submission + - Small Developer Feels Pinch of Software Patents

Submitted by Penguinisto on Wednesday March 21, 2007 @01:33PM

Penguinisto writes: A business has so far felt the very real pain of sotware patent enforcement — but this time, it is a large company who extinguished the little guy. Reyes Infografica had recently sent a Cease and Desist notice to a small Poser hobbyist programmer named Phil Cooke for his "Clothing Creator" program, claiming that it violates one of their patents (Phil's own site/support forum contains the copy of Reyes' C&D, Phil's announcement, and relevant discussions.) Clothing Creator has been out for a couple of years now. Basically, it builds quick custom clothing for humanoid 3d figures within the 3d compositing/rendering program called Poser. Recently, E-Frontier, the current owner of Poser, had partnered with Reyes to sell a competing product in E-Frontier's online store, called "Virtual Fashion". To E-Frontier's credit, they recently announced that they would stop selling the Reyes product until the dispute is settled, though at time of writing the product is still available for sale. So is this the "innovation" that software patents were supposed to foster?

Internet Curfew for College Students? 342

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Wednesday March 21, 2007 @12:43PM from the no-more-overnight-torrents dept.

140Mandak262Jamuna writes "IIT Bombay, one of the top Indian engineering schools, is restricting internet access to its students. The restriction is simply to cut off all internet access at night from the dorms. The school claims the 24/7/365 internet access is hampering academic performance, personality development and extra curricular activities. Though these are the 'official' reasons, it appears there are other reasons too. Mr Prakash Gopalan, the Dean of Student Affairs, says, 'one only had to look at the hard drive of any of the students' computers to see that bad content dominated over good.'"

Yes Virginia, ISPs Have Silently Blocked Web Sites 204

Posted by CmdrTaco on Wednesday March 21, 2007 @12:00PM from the something-to-think-about dept.

Slashdot contributor Bennett Haselton writes "A recurring theme in editorials about Net Neutrality -- broadly defined as the principle that ISPs may not block or degrade access to sites based on their content or ownership (with exceptions for clearly delineated services like parental controls) -- is that it is a "solution in search of a problem", that ISPs in the free world have never actually blocked legal content on purpose. True, the movement is mostly motivated by statements by some ISPs about what they might do in the future, such as slow down customers' access to sites if the sites haven't paid a fast-lane "toll". But there was also an oft-forgotten episode in 2000 when it was revealed that two backbone providers, AboveNet and TeleGlobe, had been blocking users' access to certain Web sites for over a year -- not due to a configuration error, but by the choice of management within those companies. Maybe I'm biased, since one of the Web sites being blocked was mine. But I think this incident is more relevant than ever now -- not just because it shows that prolonged violations of Net Neutrality can happen, but because some of the people who organized or supported AboveNet's Web filtering, are people in fairly influential positions today, including the head of the Internet Systems Consortium, the head of the IRTF's Anti-Spam Research Group, and the operator of Spamhaus. Which begs the question: If they really believe that backbone companies have the right to silently block Web sites, are some of them headed for a rift with Net Neutrality supporters?" Read on for the rest of his story.

Submission + - Microsoft attacks Google on Copyright

Submitted by on Tuesday March 06, 2007 @04:43AM

An anonymous reader writes: The Financial Times reports that Microsoft is attacking Google on copyright. It appears that in an attempt to differentiate itself from Google, Microsoft is portraying itself as more sympathetic to copyright holders. Microsoft stated that Google's decision to take copies of books unless publishers tell it not to "systematically violates copyright, deprives authors and publishers of an important avenue for monetising their works and, in doing so, undermines incentives to create".

Submission + - Blogger Jailed for 4 Years in Egypt

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 05, 2007 @03:59PM

An anonymous reader writes: The Globe & Mail has a special report on a blogger who has been jailed for 4 years in Egypt, "three for incitement and insulting the Prophet Mohammed and Islam, and an extra one for defaming President Hosni Mubarak." The article also talks about how bloggers in Egypt are tacking difficult subject matter that is all but ignored by the mainstream media. This includes showing graphic videos of torture and violence that are used by the police in Egypt. I wonder if a loss of tourism dollars could help sway the government? http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM .20070302.wegypt02/BNStory/Technology/home

Submission + - U.S. Senators Threaten Canada Over Movie Piracy

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 05, 2007 @01:22PM

An anonymous reader writes: Michael Geist reports that U.S. Senators Dianne Feinstein and John Corwyn have written an angry letter to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper to complain about alleged Canadian movie piracy. The Senators rehash discredited claims about the extent and impact of camcording, bizzarely taking credit for the elimination of camcording in the U.S. due to their legislation.

Copyright Law Used to Shut Down Site 206

Posted by Hemos on Monday March 05, 2007 @12:22PM from the bad-usage dept.

driptray writes "The Sydney Morning Herald reports that an Australian mining industry group has used copyright laws to close a website that parodied a coal industry ad campaign. A group known as Rising Tide created the website using the slogan "Rising sea levels: brought to you by mining" in response to the mining industry's slogan of "Life: brought to you by mining". The mining industry claimed that the "content and layout" of the parody site infringed copyright, but when Rising Tide removed the copyrighted photos and changed the layout, the mining industry still lodged a complaint. Is this a misuse of copyright law in order to stifle dissent?"

Submission + - E-auction Company Uses Patent to Sue Nashville PD

Submitted by Synistar on Monday March 05, 2007 @10:11AM

Synistar writes: GovDeals, an Ebay-like government auction company, is using a patent that they were awarded on a "tiered method for auctioning government assets over a computerized network, such as the Internet"to sue the Nashville Police Department . Apparently GovDeals was rejected in their bid to become a contractor for the city government. They warned the city that they were in process of obtaining a patent and that the city would be in violation of it if they did not hire GovDeals. When they lost the bid and were awarded the patent they then turned around and sued the Police Department for violating it. So were patents intended as a means to wrangle government contracts and punish those who don't hire you?

Al D'Amato: Online Freedom Fighter 63

Posted by Hemos on Monday March 05, 2007 @09:48AM from the like-adam-eterneum dept.

netbuzz writes "Former New York Sen. Al D'Amato is giving lobbying a good name by providing an insider's political savvy to a fledgling group called the Poker Players Alliance, which is attempting to overturn the federal prohibition against online poker. The New York Times has the details, including an enlightening look at D'Amato's passion for the game. As with all forms of gambling, online poker should be legal, regulated and taxed. Go, Al. "

Submission + - Why the RIAA is Bad - In a Nutshell

Submitted by

JeremyDuffy

on Monday March 05, 2007 @08:02AM

JeremyDuffy writes: "This is probably the best summary of who the RIAA is and what they stand for that I've ever heard:

The RIAA is like the Prohibitionists of old. In their view, the law cannot allow for something completely reasonable such as legal circumvention because it could be abused. Millions of people are thereby punished. Yet this is not how a civil society typically functions. Life is full of potentially dangerous products, services, and ideas. It's up to individuals to take responsibility for their actions, because we all know that catering to the lowest common denominator does not give birth to a free society, let alone an intelligent one. Yet the RIAA will stop at nothing to make sure that you and I never have the chance to make such decisions for ourselves.
By "legal circumvention", he refers to the the practice of circumventing Data Rights Management (DRM) for legal purposes such as making personal backup copies, educational uses, and other Fair Use practices. The RIAA is against it because they know that all it takes is one user with a DRM-free copy to post a song online for it to be shared everywhere in the world."

USPTO Peer Review Process To Begin Soon 116

Posted by Zonk on Monday March 05, 2007 @07:22AM from the it's-like-every-einstein's-dream-come-true dept.

An anonymous reader writes "As we've discussed several times before on Slashdot, the US patent office is looking to employ a Wiki-like process for reviewing patents. It's nowhere near as open as Wikipedia, but there are still numerous comparisons drawn to the well-known project in this Washington Post story. Patent office officials site the huge workload their case officers must deal with in order to handle the modern cycle of product development. Last year some 332,000 applications were handled by only 4,000 employees. 'The tremendous workload has often left examiners with little time to conduct thorough reviews, according to sympathetic critics. Under the pilot project, some companies submitting patent applications will agree to have them reviewed via the Internet. The list of volunteers already contains some of the most prominent names in computing, including Microsoft, Intel, Hewlett-Packard and Oracle, as well as IBM, though other applicants are welcome.'"

Submission + - Google Searching

Submitted by

Anonymous Coward

on Monday March 05, 2007 @03:16AM

Anonymous Coward writes: "It appears that Google has taken steps to make smaller blogs harder to search. First, when you do a general search, it does not include a 'More results from X' (in other words, a site search) option unless the site is large enough. This is different to how it used to be because my blog used to get this function, which was great for searching for stuff within it quickly. Next, you can try to do a specific 'site search' on your blog. Then what Google does is it finds the post, but the associated link directs you back to the front page of the blog. I don't know why it would do this except to suppress the contribution from obscure voices???"

Submission + - Mine industry uses copyright laws to close website

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 04, 2007 @10:51PM

An anonymous reader writes: The Sydeny Morning Herald reports that the NSW Minerals Council has had an anti-coal group website closed by using copyright laws. Even when the group changed the website, a second complaint was lodged. The action group, Rising Tide ( http://www.risingtide.org.au/ ) has now 10 days to respond.
Article here : http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/industry-close s-anticoal-website/2007/03/04/1172943275688.html

The Pentagon Wants a 'TiVo' to Watch You 256

Posted by Zonk on Sunday March 04, 2007 @09:57PM from the i-think-the-shulmans-are-particularly-funny-this-week dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Danger Room, a Wired blog, today cites a study of future electronic snooping technologies from Reuters, written by the Pentagon's Defense Science Board. More than anything, it seems these outside advisers want a surveillance system that would put Big Brother to shame, and they're looking at the commercial sector to provide it. 'The ability to record terabyte and larger databases will provide an omnipresent knowledge of the present and the past that can be used to rewind battle space observations in TiVo-like fashion and to run recorded time backwards to help identify and locate even low-level enemy forces. For example, after a car bomb detonates, one would have the ability to play high-resolution data backward in time to follows the vehicle back to the source, and then use that knowledge to focus collection and gain additional information by organizing and searching through archived data.'"

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