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Submission + - Is The Goncourt Prize Winner A CC BY-SA Work ? (observer.com)

Submitted by frenchbedroom
frenchbedroom writes: A Frenchman called Florent Gallaire has published the entirety of French writer Michel Houellebecq's latest novel on the internet, claiming on his blog (if you don't understand French, please don't slashdot it) that it should be considered a Creative Commons work. Gallaire, a Master of Computer Science and Law, argues that Houellebecq lifted content from Wikipedia articles without citing the source in his Goncourt-awarded novel, "La carte et le territoire" (The Map and the Territory), a practice that the author himself has defended as a "patchwork". Houellebecq's ex-lawyer, Emmanuel Pierrat, has voiced his rebuttal of Gallaire's claims on French news site Rue89 (in French again), saying that Gallaire "quotes from a rule that applies only to contributors of [Wikipedia]. When one takes part in this collective work, one's speech is free. But this doesn't apply at all to the personal work of an individual inspired by the encyclopedia's articles."
Crime

Submission + - Diplomatic Cables Reveal Aurora Attack Instigator (net-security.org)

Submitted by Orome1
Orome1 writes: As Wikileaks was preparing to release part of the 250,000 diplomatic documents on Sunday, its operators alerted the public via their Twitter account that the whistleblowing website was being targeted by a mass Distributed Denial of Service attack. Among the various interesting things that the leaked cables revealed is that, following the January discovery of the Aurora attacks on various U.S. companies, a Chinese contact shared with the American Embassy in Beijing that the hacking of Google was just a part of a larger sabotage campaign.
Australia

Submission + - Wikileaks removed from Aussie blacklist (zdnet.com.au)

Submitted by joshgnosis
joshgnosis writes: Certain Wikileaks pages were placed on the blacklist in 2009 for linking to websites contained on the Danish blacklist. The Australian Communications and Media Authority at the time threatened Australian-hosted websites with an $11,000 fine for linking to the Wikileaks pages on the blacklist. If the government's planned mandatory internet filter went ahead, the pages would also be blocked from view in Australia. The Authority has confirmed today, however, that the whistle-blowing website is no longer on the blacklist, despite two investigations since April this year.

Submission + - US lawmakers demand WikiLeaks be shutdown (linksgutter.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Cutting across party lines, US lawmakersexpressed their outrage at what they called "illegal" publication of classified American documents by WikiLeaks, and asked the Obama Administration to use all legal means to shut down this whistleblower website.

Comment Re:Encrypte Everything (Score 5, Informative) 286

by dotKuro (#33966388) Attached to: UK To Track All Browsing, Email, and Phone Calls
Encryption of your files is worthless when you can be arrested for failing to give up passwords as per the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000. (Which would be more accurately named the Irregulation of Investigatory Powers Act, as it pretty much declares open season on those under suspicion.)

Comment Ah. (Score 1) 286

by dotKuro (#33966334) Attached to: UK To Track All Browsing, Email, and Phone Calls
Now I see why the Brits constantly write Orwellian-dystopia-type fiction. They have every reason to be scared of their government. And there I was thinking that Labour had been overly surveilling at times. That said, I'm fairly certain that I read that BT logged calls anyway, so this simply pushes it out of legal liminality.
Government

Submission + - IG: FBI's Sentinel program still off-track, over b (thehill.com)

Submitted by GovTechGuy
GovTechGuy writes: The FBI's new system for managing case files is $100 million over budget and two years behind schedule, according to a new inspector general's report. Sentinel is the successor to the FBI's troubled Virtual Case File system, which was canceled in 2005 after the agency invested $170 million into its development. Lawmakers blasted the news, while an independent estimate by The Mitre Corp. predicted that completing Sentinel using the FBI's current approach would cost an additional $351 million and take six more years.
Television

Submission + - FCC's Copps: Fox threatened net neutrality (thehill.com)

Submitted by GovTechGuy
GovTechGuy writes: FCC Commissioner Michael Copps said Wednesday that Fox Networks threatened the openness of the Internet when the company reportedly blocked Cablevision subscribers from accessing websites, including Hulu. com, that it partially owns.

Submission + - Wikileaks Under Attack (twitter.com)

Submitted by bilotrace
bilotrace writes: Wikileaks seems to be under attack! Someone in its tweeter posted,
"WikiLeaks communications infrastructure is currently under attack. Project BO move to coms channel S. Activate Reston5."
Did they just post some pass phrase?
Movies

Submission + - The Movie Industry Is Dying, The 1950s Version (techdirt.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: With all the claims from the entertainment industry about how the movie industry is dying due to the internet, it's worth pointing out that they seem to claim this with every new advancement. Many people know about Jack Valenti's famous "Boston Strangler" comment in reference to the VCR, but even before that, there was always some new technology that was the enemy. In a 1959 interview, Mary Pickford, one of the original Hollywood starlets (dubbed "America's Sweetheart") who also founded United Artists and the Motion Picture Academy, announced that the movie industry was dead because of television. No one would want to leave their house for an expensive movie, she insisted, and promised it would become much worse once the dreaded "pay TV" became common. This was 1959. It seems worth mentioning that, fifty years later, in 2009, Hollywood had its best year ever at the box office.
Technology

Submission + - Digital Cloning & Social Networking as a Cylon (networkworld.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Have you ever wished to once again be able to talk with a loved one who has died? Despite claims that our brain will never live in a matrix and that teams are trying to create purely evil AI, as of today you can be in two places at once and live forever. Somewhere between epically cool and downright creepy, you can create a digital clone that looks like you, talks like you, sounds like you and takes on your personality, so that future generations can find out all about you after your death. Intellitar, or intelligent avatar, could be you, a virtual assistant or a famous professor meant to interact, social network and live forever. Who knows what privacy rights AI might have or what laws might apply in case the avatar is hacked, turns evil, has an e-affair, or switches to a virtual life of crime. The potential to be in two places at once, and to virtually live forever, is both exciting and frightening. How did the Cylons get started?

Comment It's certainly a step up from JPEG, but... (Score 2, Informative) 378

by dotKuro (#33758086) Attached to: Google Releases New Image Format Called WebP
The main problem with new file formats is adoption. JPEGs have been the main image type online ever since the world realized that GIF sucked. Boards that allow image posting allow JPEG, social networks etc. which allow profile pictures allow JPEG, image search engines catalogue primarily JPEGs, almost every site's design utilises JPEGs. Offline it's the same; every OS which allows background images uses JPEG. Every image viewer and editor works with JPEGs. JPEGs have been an integral part of the internet for so long that I heavily doubt that any new format, superior or otherwise, will supersede them for a long time.
Iphone

Submission + - 68% of iPhone Apps Collect Unique Device ID (www.pskl.us)

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: It looks like iPhone users are not immune to the types of data leaks recently discovered on the Android platform. Researchers looked at the top free applications available from the App Store and discovered that "68% of these applications were transmitting UDIDs to servers under the application vendor’s control each time the application is launched." The iPhone's Unique Device ID, or UDID, cannot be changed, nor can it's transmission be disabled by the user. The full paper is here.

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