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Businesses

Submission + - How corruption is strangling US Innovation (hbr.org) 1

Submitted by
hype7
hype7 writes: "The Harvard Business Review is running a very interesting piece on how money in politics is having a deleterious effect on US innovation. From the article:

if you were in any doubt how deep inside the political system the system of contributions have allowed incumbents to insert their hands, take a look at what happened when the Republican Study Committee released a paper pointing out some of the problems with current copyright regime. The debate was stifled within 24 hours. And just for good measure, Rep Marsha Blackburn, whose district abuts Nashville and who received more money from the music industry than any other Republican congressional candidate, apparently had the author of the study, Derek Khanna, fired. Sure, debate around policy is important, but it's clearly not as important as raising campaign funds.

"
Input Devices

Submission + - Razer Mouse Crippled Without Online Activation

Submitted by jones_supa
jones_supa writes: At Overclock.net forums, nickname channelx99 tells a story about a frustrating obstacle when he begun to use a Razer Naga mouse. A software is required to enable the full functionality of the mouse. The user was greeted by a login screen which couldn't be bypassed, and even worse, the account creation didn't work at the time. It turned out that the Razor activation server was down. As result, channelx99 was left out in the cold, and he wraps up 'Nowhere on the box does it say anything about needing an internet connection to "activate" a mouse. If the servers go down in the future, anyone who buys this mouse is out of luck.'
DRM

Submission + - Outlawed by Amazon DRM (bekkelund.net)

Submitted by Pelekophori
Pelekophori writes: From the article:

"A couple of days a go, my friend Linn sent me an e-mail, being very frustrated: Amazon just closed her account and wiped her Kindle. Without notice. Without explanation."
Piracy

Submission + - Heavy metal band does not support label's decision to prosecute pirates (icedearth.com)

Submitted by
hessian
hessian writes: "“It has come to my attention that Century Media is suing fans over illegal downloads of (among others) our latest album ‘Dystopia’. I felt it was important to clarify that we had no knowledge of this motion and were, sadly, not asked permission.

  We all know the music industry is changing. We have been adapting to this model by embracing legal streaming services such as Spotify and by bringing our music to places we have never played before by touring our proverbial asses off.

  As much as we respect that the labels are having a harder time selling music, we feel this is a misguided effort and want to make sure our fans know we would have not given our consent would we have been asked.”"
Censorship

Submission + - BT Blocks Disabled Rights Site? (techweekeurope.co.uk) 2

Submitted by
judgecorp
judgecorp writes: "BT has blocked access to the Black Triangle disabled rights website according to activists. BT has confirmed there is a problem, but won't give any details on why it is not available to any BT subscribers. Black Triangle is campaigning against Atos Healthcare which is applying government rules on entitlement to disability benefits — and which has previously shut down critical websites and forums."

Comment Re:refreshing! (Score 1) 115

by Pelekophori (#39604529) Attached to: Bogus Takedown Notice Lands $150k Settlement In Australian Court

Actually what's more refreshing is that for a change, a foreign court was granted jurisdiction in America, rather than the other way around. And no-one got to be deported in the process!

i dunno, throwing in a few deportees in the other direction might help bring about a sense of proportion about the merits of copyright law uber alles.
DRM

Submission + - Ubisoft Games Won't Work Next Week (itproportal.com) 2

Submitted by hypnosec
hypnosec writes: Several of Ubisoft's biggest titles won't be playable as of next week thanks to a server move by the publisher and the restrictive DRM that was used in their development. This isn't just multiplayer either. Because Ubisoft thought it would be a smart plan to use always on DRM for even the single player portion of games like Assassin's Creed, even the single player portion of that title won't be playable during the server move. Some of the other games affected by this move will be Tom Clancy's HAWX 2, Might & Magic: Heroes 6 and The Settlers 7. The Mac games that will be broken during this period are Assassin's Creed, Splinter Cell Conviction and The Settlers. This move was announced this week as part of a community letter, with Ubisoft describing how the data servers for many of the publisher's online services would be migrated from third party facilities to a new location starting on the 7th February. The publisher didn't reveal how long the transfer would take.

Submission + - Gizmodo author faces huge criticism over article (gizmodo.com.au) 2

Submitted by RichM
RichM writes: A Gizmodo post by Alyssa Bereznak humiliating a world champion "Magic: The Gathering" player, who has earned $300k from his hobby, has seen a large amount of criticism across the net; including on Twitter and even other Gawker sites.
The ethical concerns over this post are also quite clear.

The Streisand Effect demonstrated, yet again.

Submission + - Is copyright stifling Hollywood? 2

Submitted by freddienumber13
freddienumber13 writes: An article about Hollywood continually using 19th century texts for movies on The Guardian's website finishes with a comment about how all of these books and stories being used time and again for movies are out of copyright. Is this something that the Hollywood mafia has overlooked? In their quest for elongating their franchise over old works, are they in fact condemning new work to being ignored because the prospect of using someone else's copyright is too expensive?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2011/may/30/filming-the-classic-novels
Censorship

Submission + - Tableau Software Getting Bad Reax Over Wikileaks (tableausoftware.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Although it's been linked elsewhere on Slashdot, it's worth taking a look at Tableau Software's page on its decision to remove an analysis of Wikileaks directly because of the request of Joe Lieberman that companies have no truck with Wikileaks. The negative response from its users is overwhelming. Tableau has apparently even deleted a prior blog entry which had praised the very same Wikileaks analysis it's now taken down. This would clearly seem to be one of those unanticipated "snowball" responses which will bring massive bad publicity in ensuing days. But so far, company representatives are adamant that they have committed no offense against free speech.

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