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The Courts

Submission + - Superman Rights Returned to Creator's Family (nytimes.com) 2

Submitted by
NMerriam
NMerriam writes: "In a stunning legal ruling this week, the family of Jerome Siegel, one of the creators of Superman, has regained some rights to the character from DC Comics and Time-Warner.

We often hear on Slashdot about the impact of Mickey Mouse on the development of modern copyright law, but less well-known outside of the creative community is the almost equally significant impact, often in the opposite direction, that the character Superman has had. Soon after Jerome Siegel and Joseph Shuster sold their Superman character to Detective Comics for $130 it became one of the most popular and profitable characters in America, and they were recognized as having made one of the most spectacularly bad deals since the sale of Manhattan island.

Outcry in the creative community over the issue finally shamed DC Comics into providing a token annuity to both creators in the 1970s, but it also directly influenced changes to copyright law in 1976 to allow creators to regain ownership of works that had been previously sold. Equally important, the era produced a strong and lasting creators' rights movement in which certain moral rights, such as the right to be recognized as the creator of a character regardless of ownership, were more firmly established.

The financial impact of the ruling is very unclear, since it only applies to work created after the Siegels moved to have their rights restored under that same 1976 law, and will only apply to properties directly related to the Superman character. One significant question that will be keeping DC Comics/Time-Warner and Marvel executives up at night is whether a flood of artists and writers will suddenly move to regain their copyrights, and what impact that would have on the numerous big-budget comic book movies currently in production. Given that tremendous financial uncertainty, it's almost a foregone conclusion that this will be appealed and closely watched by everyone in the entertainment industry."
Privacy

Submission + - Man Arrested for Refusing to Show Receipt at Circu (michaelrighi.com)

Submitted by
NMerriam
NMerriam writes: "Michael Righi was arrested in Ohio over the weekend for refusing to show his receipt when leaving Circuit City. When the manger and "loss prevention" employee physically prevented the vehicle he was a passenger in from leaving the parking lot, he called the police, who arrived, searched his bag and found he hadn't stolen anything. The officer then asked for Michael's driver's license, which he declined to provide since he wasn't operating a motor vehicle. The officer then arrested him, and upon finding out Michael was legally right about not having to provide a license, went ahead and charged him with "obstructing official business" anyways."
Hardware Hacking

Submission + - Iraqi insurgent engineers designing better IEDs (time.com)

Submitted by nbauman
nbauman writes: Saif Abdallah says his inventions have helped kill or maim scores, possibly hundreds, of Americans. For more than four years, he has been developing remote-control devices that Sunni insurgents use to detonate improvised explosive devices (IEDs), the roadside bombs that are the No. 1 killer of U.S. soldiers in Iraq. The only time he ever felt a pang of regret was in the spring of 2006, when he heard that the Pentagon, in a bid to fight the growing IED menace, had roped in a team of scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Abdallah, an electronics engineer by training, once dreamed of studying for a Ph.D. there. "I thought to myself, If my life had gone differently, who knows? I might have been on that team," he says, his eyes widening as he imagines that now impossible scenario. Then he shrugs. "God decided I should be on the other side," he says. Abdallah, 28, "fits every geek stereotype," according to Time http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1632 805,00.html, with thick glasses, acne and a flash drive on his key chain. His bedroom workbench in Baghdad has soldering irons, old printed circuit boards, discarded TV remotes, etc. that he uses to build remote control detonators.

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