Submission + - Supreme Court Takes Up Scholars' Rights (chronicle.com)
schwit1 writes: For 10 years, Lawrence Golan has been quietly waging a legal campaign to overturn the statute, which makes it impossibly expensive for smaller orchestras to play certain pieces of music.
Now the case is heading to the U.S. Supreme Court. The high-stakes copyright showdown affects far more than sheet music. The outcome will touch a broad swath of academe for years to come, dictating what materials scholars can use in books and courses without jumping through legal hoops. The law Mr. Golan is trying to overturn has also hobbled libraries' efforts to digitize and share books, films, and music.
The conductor's fight centers on the concept of the public domain, which scholars depend on for teaching and research. When a work enters the public domain, anyone can quote from it, copy it, share it, or republish it without seeking permission or paying royalties.
The dispute that led to Golan v. Holder dates to 1994, when Congress passed a law that moved vast amounts of material from the public domain back behind the firewall of copyright protection.
The Supreme Court is expected to decide the case during the term that begins in October.
Now the case is heading to the U.S. Supreme Court. The high-stakes copyright showdown affects far more than sheet music. The outcome will touch a broad swath of academe for years to come, dictating what materials scholars can use in books and courses without jumping through legal hoops. The law Mr. Golan is trying to overturn has also hobbled libraries' efforts to digitize and share books, films, and music.
The conductor's fight centers on the concept of the public domain, which scholars depend on for teaching and research. When a work enters the public domain, anyone can quote from it, copy it, share it, or republish it without seeking permission or paying royalties.
The dispute that led to Golan v. Holder dates to 1994, when Congress passed a law that moved vast amounts of material from the public domain back behind the firewall of copyright protection.
The Supreme Court is expected to decide the case during the term that begins in October.
Submission + - Boy sells kidney to buy an IPad2 (cnn.com)
assertation writes: According to Thursday's Shanghai Daily, a 17-year-old student in Huaishan City, China, gave up his right kidney to get money to buy an Apple iPad2
Submission + - Internet Explorer use below 55% (infoworld.com)
rfc1394 writes: "Infoworld reports in this article "Internet Explorer's market share continues to drop like a rock. Net Applications published its numbers for May, and Internet Explorer's total share declined yet again, from 55.11 percent in April (see note at bottom) to 54.27 percent in May, a drop of 0.84 basis point in one month. Contrast that with Google's Chrome, which rose from 11.94 percent in April to 12.52 percent in May, an increase of 0.58 basis point. In the past year, IE's share of browser usage has dipped from 60.32 percent to 54.27 percent." So the article asks the question, "How long before IE usage drops below 50%?""
Submission + - Anonymous hacks Iran's Ministry of Foreign Affairs
An anonymous reader writes: Anonymous has publicly announced today that OpIran has hacked into the Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and published thousands of raw emails sent to and from the Iranian Government agency. The emails can be downloaded via a password protected .rar file. The password which was released today is fittingly, opiranopiran.
Submission + - Skype protocol reverse engineered, source availabl (blogspot.com)
jrade writes: A freelance researcher wants to make skype open source:
"My aim is to make skype open source. And find friends who can spend many hours for completely reverse it.
Now, most of hard things already done(for 1.x/3.x/4.x versions of skype). Including rc4 and arithmetic compression."
"My aim is to make skype open source. And find friends who can spend many hours for completely reverse it.
Now, most of hard things already done(for 1.x/3.x/4.x versions of skype). Including rc4 and arithmetic compression."
Submission + - One-Way Sound Walls Proven Possible (discovery.com)
disco_tracy writes: Imagine a room where a band is playing. Neighbors can't hear the music, but if someone outside the room is talking, the musicians can hear it. The concept — a kind of one-way mirror for sound — seems imaginary, but two Italian scientists recently pushed this kind of sound manipulating technology closer to reality.
Submission + - Smithsonian Unveils "Art of Games" Voting Results (examiner.com)
AndrewGOO9 writes: The Smithsonian American Art Museum, in recognizing that electronic games are a part of our artistic history has today unveiled the 80 games out of a proposed pool of 240 that will be included in The Art of Video Games exhibit running from March 16, 2012 to September 30, 2012. While the winning games, as voted by gamers and art enthusiasts alike, are all stand-out titles, it goes without saying that this a huge step in the recognition of video games as artisitic masterpieces. Chris Melissinos, the curator of the exhibition, will also be giving a webcast today at 1PM (EST) to discuss the winning games.
Submission + - Star Wars MMO: EA's Big Bet to Cost $100M (industrygamers.com) 1
donniebaseball23 writes: EA's BioWare is developing its first-ever MMORPG in Star Wars: The Old Republic, and the publisher is betting big that the project will be a huge success. Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter says development alone cost an estimated $80 million, with marketing and distribution adding in another $20 million. The good news is it shouldn't take much to break even. ""We estimate that EA will cover its direct operating costs and break even at 500,000 subscribers (this is exceedingly conservative, and the actual figure is probably closer to 350,000), meaning that with 1.5 million paying subscribers, EA will have 1 million profitable subs," Pachter noted.
Submission + - Mind-Controlling Parasites (makeahistory.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Mind control by parasite sounds like the stuff of science fiction, but not only have scientists revealed that it is real across a range of animals — including perhaps humans — they now even have fossil evidence suggesting it has taken place for millions of years. An unnerving variety of parasites have evolved the ability to control the brains of victims to help the parasites spread. Controlling the minds of other living creatures is simply the stuff of science fiction right? Well for some creatures becoming a real live zombie is a daily hazard. Here are some examples of real parasitic behavior modifications
Submission + - DHS Wants Mozilla To Disable Mafiaafire Plugin (wordpress.com)
Davis Freeberg writes: "The Department of Homeland Security is hard at work again, protecting the industry from websites that the big studios don't want you to see. This time they're targeting the Mafiaafire plugin by asking Mozilla to disable the addon at the root level. Instead of blindly complying with the government's request, Mozilla has decieded to ask some tough questions instead. Unsurprisingly, when faced with legitimate concerns about the legality of their domain seizure program, the DHS has decided to clam up."
Submission + - Artiste hires ex-Pentagon agent after song stolen (blogtechnical.com)
An anonymous reader writes: David Guetta has hired an ex-Pentagon agent to investigate the theft of a his new single entitled “Where The Girls At”. The song was released earlier this week via the interwebs and it seems to be “a big worry” for him and his record label.
Comment Re:Supposed Apple Quality (Score 1) 329
To counter your anecdotal evidence, in my professional life over the past 3 years I've worked with colleagues who have owned a total of 17 Apple laptops and desktops. There was 1 hard disk failure, one logic board failure (out of warranty) and one theft. Those are the only problems those people experienced with their Apples.
Even though it's anecdotal with a small sample size, 1/17 is a really bad failure rate, none the less.
Submission + - Multiplatform Java Botnet Spotted in the Wild (net-security.org)
Orome1 writes: Cross-platform malware is still a rare occurrence, so when it's detected, it usually attracts more attention than the malware engineered to affect only one particular platform. A recent one, detected by McAfee and "named" IncognitoRAT attacks both Windows and Mac OS users. IncognitoRAT is one example of a Java-based Trojan discovered in the wild that is being downloaded and installed by another component. This malware behaves like other Windows botnets but uses source code and libraries that can operate on other platforms.
Submission + - Court: Novell Can Sue Microsoft Over WordPerfect (redmondmag.com)
An anonymous reader writes: 15 years after Novell sold the software to Corel, a court has given Novell the right to sue Microsoft over WordPerfect, which had a 50 percent market share in the early '90s.
