Become a fan of Slashdot on Facebook

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
The Courts

Judge Rejects RIAA 'Making Available' Theory 353

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the need-a-new-revenue-strategy dept.
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "A federal judge in Connecticut has rejected the RIAA's 'making available' theory, which is the basis of all of the RIAA's peer to peer file sharing cases. In Atlantic v. Brennan, in a 9-page opinion [PDF], Judge Janet Bond Arterton held that the RIAA needs to prove 'actual distribution of copies', and cannot rely — as it was permitted to do in Capitol v. Thomas — upon the mere fact that there are song files on the defendant's computer and that they were 'available'. This is the same issue that has been the subject of extensive briefing in two contested cases in New York, Elektra v. Barker and Warner v. Cassin. Judge Arterton also held that the defendant had other possible defenses, such as the unconstitutionality of the RIAA's damages theory and possible copyright misuse flowing from the record companies' anticompetitive behavior."
Science

Researchers Develop Self-Cleaning Clothes 220

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the your-washing-machine-is-pissed dept.
Ponca City, We Love You writes "Researchers at Monash University, in Australia, have found a process to coat natural fibers such as wool, silk, and hemp that will automatically remove food, grime, and even red-wine stains by coating their fibers with titanium dioxide nanocrystals, which break down food and dirt in sunlight. Titanium dioxide is a strong photocatalyst and in the presence of ultraviolet light and water vapor, it forms hydroxyl radicals, which oxidize, or decompose, organic matter. "These nanocrystals cannot decompose wool and are harmless to skin," says organic chemist and nanomaterials researcher Walid Daoud. Titanium dioxide can also destroy pathogens such as bacteria in the presence of sunlight by breaking down the cell walls of the microorganisms making self-cleaning fabrics especially useful in hospitals and other medical settings."
Privacy

An Epidemic of Snooping 163

Posted by kdawson from the audit-and-audit-again dept.
Travoltus writes "Privacy advocates are frequently confronted with the rhetorical question, 'If you don't have anything to hide, you don't have a good reason to worry about losing your privacy, right?' This AP story uncovers a vast, distributed, decentralized epidemic of snooping into databases of personal information by workers at major utilities, the IRS, and other large organizations. In a number of cases these incidents have led to real harm. One striking example involves now ex-Mayor of Milwaukee Marvin Pratt, who had a pattern of being late paying his heating bills. This fact was leaked to the media by a utility worker and may have led to Pratt's losing a bid for re-election. As one can imagine, the harm becomes much greater when this same snooping is done by Government officials to deal with political enemies, or by corporations to uncover whistleblowers."
Technology

Should Addictive Tech Come With a Health Warning? 329

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the nanny-state dept.
holy_calamity writes "Academics researching how technology addiction affects businesses and employees say 'habit-forming' gadgets like Blackberries should be dispensed along with warnings about the effect they can have on your life. 'We don't want to be in a situation in a few years similar to that with fast food or tobacco today. We need to pay attention to how people react to potentially habit-forming technologies.'"
Space

Milky Way Is Twice the Size We Thought 301

Posted by kdawson from the everything-you-know-is-wrong dept.
Peter writes to tell us about a research group at the University of Sydney in Australia, who in the middle of some calculation wanted to check the numbers everybody uses for the thickness of our galaxy at the core. Using data available freely on the Internet and analyzing it in a spreadsheet, they discovered in a matter of hours that the Milky Way is 12,000 light years thick, vs. the 6,000 that had been the consensus number for some time.
Google

'Porn King' Says Google Should Block Porn Access 424

Posted by Zonk from the i-guess-he's-thinking-of-the-children dept.
mikesd81 writes "The Register has a story saying that one of the world's biggest porn producers wants Google and other search sites to put up barriers between kids and adult entertainment. 'Steven Hirsch, the co-chairman and co-founder of Vivid Entertainment, is to deliver this message on Saturday in New Haven, Connecticut as he addresses an army of Yale University MBA candidates. "Responsible companies in the adult industry such as ours have done a great deal to deter minors from accessing adult material," Hirsch proclaims from inside a Vivid press release. "None of the search engines and portals, but particularly Yahoo and Google, has taken any significant steps in this direction.'"
Privacy

US Set to Use Spy Satellites on US Citizens 513

Posted by samzenpus from the eye-in-the-sky dept.
duerra writes "A plan to use U.S. spy satellites for domestic security and law-enforcement missions is moving forward after being delayed for months because of privacy and civil liberties concerns. The plan is in the final stage of completion, according to a department official who requested anonymity because the official was not authorized to speak publicly about it. While some internal agencies have had access to spy satellite imagery for purposes such as assisting after a natural disaster, this would be the first time law-enforcement would be able to obtain a warrant and request access to satellite imagery."
Businesses

Submission + - Most People Have No Idea What Copyright Is For (google.com) 1

Submitted by
Panaqqa
Panaqqa writes: "Question Copyright has posted an interesting video of ordinary people explaining why they think copyright exists. It is pretty clear that most people have no clue why, thinking instead that it has something to do with protecting content or preventing plagiarism. This is not a good thing considering the current attempts to vastly expand and lengthen copyright protections. But our recent copyright turmoil is not new. Far from it according to a recent dissertation concerning copyright in the 19th century. From the dissertation: "This era was rife with copyright-related controversy and excitement, including international squabbling, celebrity grandstanding, new technology, corporate exploitation, and ferocious arguments about piracy, reprinting, and the effects of copyright law". Some engaging reading for those with an interest in the topic."
Government

British Village Requests Removal From GPS Maps 539

Posted by kdawson from the can't-be-seen dept.
longacre writes "The tiny village of Barrow Gurney, England, has asked GPS map publisher Tele Atlas to remove them from the company's maps. The reason: truck drivers using GPS navigation devices are being directed to drive through the town despite the roads being too narrow for sidewalks, which has led to numerous accidents. At the root of the problem lies the fact that the navigation maps used by trucks are the same as those used by passenger cars, and they don't contain data on road width or no-truck zones. Tele Atlas says they will release truck-appropriate databases at some point, but until then they advise local governments to make use of a technology dating back to the Romans: road signs."
Google

Submission + - Google turns over IP of anonymous blogger 1

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: An Israeli court instructed Google on sunday to turn over the IP of an anonymous blogger, who commented on Blogger.com about the (alleged) corruption of his town's city council. According to the hearings' records (in hebrew), Google complied with the court's order and supplied the requested information. Originally reported here (in hebrew) and here
Censorship

Submission + - Halo 3: The 'Third Wave' of Destroying the U.S.

Submitted by greedyturtle
greedyturtle writes: In an article which will be heralded as the first to point out the stepping stones for the unleashing of a New Dark Age. With begginnings from the influence of such satanic and perverted characters, as the British Round Tables' late Lord Bertrand Russell and H.G. Wells, the author of the article has created graphical data showing vicious attack on the human mind by this cybernetics cult, by has produced such games as Counterstrike, World of Warcraft, Entropia Universe, EVE-Online and Halo 3 has arrested the development of the youth, today, is preventing any consistent intellectual and political motion to change the world.

An investigation by the current LaRouche Youth Movement counter-intelligence team is ongoing, to look at the deeper implications of this "Brave New Cyberworld." Two things come up that are prevalent with the creation of these games. One, is the mental psychosis of the vulnerable adolescent or young adult, who are gullible to these fictions. The second is the fostering of specific types of "virtual world" games — supposedly designed for mere entertainment, such as the hedonistic Second Life, or Halo 3. Either way, the dehumanization process occurs in any instance, by the first-person shooter games' precision to kill another object, or by the adoption of an arbitrary set of anti-scientific, anti-principled rules, like that of Second Life, or even the great Ministry of Truth — Wikipedia.
Bonus intellectual motion given to those who apply the universal principles in the Classical science, art and philosopy of Logic to the article.
GNU is Not Unix

Submission + - Is SCO dead yet? Q&A with Pamela Jones of Grok (itpro.co.uk)

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: The SCO Group's current fate can be neatly summarised by the title of Pamela Jones' very first article on the case, back in May 2003 — "SCO Falls Downstairs, Hitting its Head on Every Step." In the intervening years PJ and Groklaw can be credited with unearthing and exposing many of the flaws in SCO's case, most notably, obtaining and publishing the 1994 settlement in the USL vs BSDi case, which had been hidden from public view and played a significant role in undermining SCO's claims to the ownership of Unix. Earlier this year PJ memorably compared SCO's persistence in the face of the facts to the black knight in the Monty Python film who claimed "It's only a flesh wound". This article asks PJ about SCO, the impact of Groklaw and future of free software and the law.
Biotech

Submission + - Vaccine rights for sharing flu samples (newscientist.com)

Submitted by TheLink
TheLink writes: Indonesia will not share bird flu virus samples unless richer countries agree to give developing nations control over their use and access to cheap vaccines, a spokeswoman from the nation's health ministry said on Monday (from: New Scientist http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn12961-indonesia-fights-for-rights-to-bird-flu-samples.html ).
The Internet

AT&T Invests in Filtered Networking 152

Posted by CowboyNeal from the dark-futures dept.
Filtered Coward writes "Last summer, AT&T announced its intention to begin filtering copyrighted content at some point. The telecom has now bought a chunk of Vobile, whose core product is VideoDNA. "Like other systems of its kind, VideoDNA develops a unique signature from every frame of video. The signature is meant to be robust enough to survive various transformations and edits, and it can then be used to run matches against incoming content.' Vobile claims that VideoDNA is good enough to be used on video when transmitted over a network. 'Based on the complexity of the problem, we suspect that anything initially deployed by AT&T will fall far short of a robust P2P video filter. But should AT&T truly have its eyes on just such a prize, the company would be in a powerful position to impose its own policies on the entire US, since it owns major parts of the Internet backbone.'"
Censorship

Submission + - Bloggers who risked all to reveal Junta in Burma 2

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Internet geeks share a common style, and Ko Latt and his four friends would not be out of place in cyber cafés across the world. They have the skinny arms and the long hair, the dark T-shirts and the jokey nicknames. But few such figures have ever taken the risks that they have in the past few weeks, or achieved so much in a noble and dangerous cause. Since last month Ko Latt, 28, his friends Arca, Eye, Sun and Superman, and scores of others like them have been the third pillar of Burma's Saffron Revolution. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article2563937.ece

Slashdot Top Deals

You knew the job was dangerous when you took it, Fred. -- Superchicken

Close