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Education

Submission + - A Meeting with Jim Stone, DMCA Enforcer

Submitted by
EverStoned
EverStoned writes: "After receiving some copyright violation warnings from various notifying agencies, forwarded to me by Boston University, my school account was shut down. To get it back, I had to have a talk with Jim Stone, self-proclaimed "DMCA Enforcer." I think I might have been the first person to ever disagree with him.
It was interesting to me to see what he, a cop and a lawyer, thought of various copyright issues. He seems completely oblivious to the importance of the issue in relation to free human society, and cares only about it from a financial aspect. He claims that there are people like him in every school, so have any slashdotters in other universities ever dealt with these so called "DMCA Enforcers"?"
Music

Submission + - Judge: Pattis Santangelo Has Right to Day in Court

Submitted by
NewYorkCountryLawyer
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: "Judge Colleen McMahon in Elektra v. Santangelo, in White Plains, NY, federal court has rejected the RIAA's attempt to dismiss "without prejudice", ruling instead that she is "entitled to have her legal status resolved one way or the other." (pdf). The judge ordered the RIAA to dismiss with prejudice by April 1st, or be ready to go ahead with a plan for the trial on April 13th. The judge rejected the RIAA's claim that Ms. Santangelo had defrauded the court, ruling that "Nothing in any papers filed by plaintiffs suggests IN THE SLIGHTEST that Mrs. Santangelo has ever perpetrated any fraud on this court." (capitals in the original)."
Music

How to Turn A Music Lover to Piracy 521

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the self-defeating-drm dept.
dugn writes to tell us The Consumerist is running a story about how a run of the mill (read non-tech-savvy) music lover was pushed to become a pirate. "I've devoted a not-inconsequential chunk of my life to collecting music; to tracking down obscure records, cassettes, 8-Tracks and CD's of all genres and styles. And now apparently that is all but over. Music has somehow evolved from tangible things into amorphous collections of 1's and 0's guarded over by interested parties as if they were gold bullion. How so very sad."
America Online

Submission + - AOL: The biggest Wi-Fi privacy invader ever?

Submitted by
PetManimal
PetManimal writes: "Preston Gralla points to a project being carried out by Skyhook Wireless, an AOL business partner, to build a private database of 16 million Wi-Fi routers throughout the U.S. and Canada, including network name and precise location. Skyhook has been gathering the data by driving trucks with Wi-Fi and GPS gear up and down streets in 2,500 cities and towns in North America. The data is apparently being gathered to support the AIM "Near Me" plugin which will show potential instant messaging buddies in your vicinity, but Gralla sees a more sinister side of the Skyhook project:

... Who's to say that they're only gathering basic information about your router? Will they also gather whether it uses encryption or not? Will they grab other information as well? One thing is very clear: Skyhook Wireless isn't spending all this money just so it can support an AOL plug-in. Its ultimate goal, it says on its Web site, "is to expand the market for Location-Based Services (LBS) by making precise location information accessible to users and application providers." In other words, the data will be made available to the highest bidder.
"
Music

Submission + - RIAA Adds More Colleges to Hit List

Submitted by
NewYorkCountryLawyer
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."
Patents

Submission + - Small Developer Feels Pinch of Software Patents

Submitted by Penguinisto
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?
Education

Internet Curfew for College Students? 342

Posted by ScuttleMonkey 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.'"
Censorship

Yes Virginia, ISPs Have Silently Blocked Web Sites 204

Posted by CmdrTaco 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.
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft attacks Google on Copyright

Submitted by
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".
Censorship

Submission + - Blogger Jailed for 4 Years in Egypt

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
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
Movies

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

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
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.
Censorship

Copyright Law Used to Shut Down Site 206

Posted by Hemos 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?"
Patents

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

Submitted by Synistar
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?
The Internet

Al D'Amato: Online Freedom Fighter 63

Posted by Hemos 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. "
Media

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

Submitted by
JeremyDuffy
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."

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