22694444
submission
NewtonsLaw writes:
A UK appeals court has upheld a previous decision that news headlines are a "literary work" and therefore are protected by copyright — enabling online publishers to demand payment for their use or sue for unlawful use. This particularly affects aggregators but has the potential to affect bloggers as well.
Aardvark Daily asks the question: if a two or three-word headline now carries copyright protection, what's the point in trademarking a catch-phrase or product name?
And what about Fair Use? If a short headline is a complete literary work, will critics, reviewers and comedians be allowed to use it in its entirety for the purposes of plying their trade?
16394410
submission
NewtonsLaw writes:
Today's Aardvark Daily rediscovers an article from an old edition of Popular Mechanics magazine which features a device seemingly capable of defeating the laws of Newtonian physics and even levitating solid objects by defeating gravity.
How could a venerable magazine like PM be duped by this story?
Or were they really duped? After all, there is a picture of the levitating device and diagrams that allegedly describe exactly how it works, using simple mechanical components and principles.
Could it be that the future of anti-gravity drives, the long-awaited flying-car, and space travel has been lurking in the archives of Popular Mechanics for 50 years all along? (Yeah, right).
Sometimes it's fun to look at the science/technology follies of half a century ago.
10163262
submission
NewtonsLaw writes:
Asmiov's first law of robotics is "A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm."
So how come the most advanced robots on the face of the planet today (military UAVs) regularly bring death to insurgents (and sometimes innocent civilians) with impunity?
What ever happened to Asmiov's principles? Have they been ignored out of expediency?
Are they yet another casualty in "the war against terror?"
Is (as the article suggests) Asimov spinning in his grave right now?
9636248
submission
NewtonsLaw writes:
I've got a pretty successful "all original content" YouTube channel (my vids viewed over 6 million times, most subscribed NZ channel in sports, 19th most viewed NZ Channel) but it doesn't earn me a bean.
What I'd like to do is create a new channel (covering a completely different topic) with premium content that I can make available to people who want to pay a *small* monthly or annual subscription. I see this as a far more viable way of earning money from this kind of video content than Google's lame overlaid ads and the accompanying (lack of) revenue share.
I did suggest to Google/YouTube that they offer a turnkey pay-channel setup for people like myself, using the YouTube infrastructure.
Content creators could just upload their content, set a monthly/annual subscription rate and leave the rest to Google. Google would sign up the subscribers and take a clip on each sub to earn their share of the profit and provide the access control and subscription management back-end. The balance of each sub paid would be forwarded to the channel-operator by Google, as they do with AdSense payments (each month that the minimum payment threshold is reached).
For Google/Youtube — $profit$
For the channel operator — $profit$
For everyone else — a chance to get access to premium content for a small stipend.
Unfortunately, despite the ongoing losses being racked up by YouTube, Google don't seem to be interested in exploiting this opportunity.
So I'm left looking for a service that *can* deliver what I'm after.
And before anyone suggests I just host the stuff myself — I don't want to build a subscription management system, payment processing or other elements and I don't want to have to organize enough bandwidth to serve up all that video content — I just want a turnkey solution I can use for a share of the subscription fees.
Any ideas folks?