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Submission + - Games Workshop Evil Recap (boingboing.net)

Submitted by
mark.leaman
mark.leaman writes: "BoingBoing has a recent post regarding Games Workshop's aggressive posturing against fan sites featuring derivative work of their game products. "Game publisher and miniature manufacturer Games Workshop just sent a cease and desist letter to boardgamegeek.com, telling them to remove all fan-made players' aids. This includes scenarios, rules summaries, inventory manifests, scans to help replace worn pieces — many of these created for long out of print, well-loved games..." As a life long hobby gamer, of table, board, card and miniature games I view this as pure heresy. And made me reject the idea of buying any Games Workshop (read Warhammer) products for my son this Christmas. Their fate was sealed, in terms of my wallet, after I Googled their shenanigans. Here's the a recap...Games Workshop Forbids Warhammer Fan Films, Games Workshop Shuts Down Vassal Modules, Games Workshop Order Boardgamegeek.com File Purge, Games Workshop Shuts Down Internet Retailing for retailers that use their IP to solicit purchases. What gives GW? What ever happened to fair use?"
Privacy

Submission + - E-mail Not Protected by 4th Amendment (volokh.com) 3

Submitted by DustyShadow
DustyShadow writes: In the case In re United States, Judge Mosman ruled that there is no constitutional requirement of notice to the account holder because the Fourth Amendment does not apply to e-mails under the third-party doctrine. "When a person uses the Internet, the user’s actions are no longer in his or her physical home; in fact he or she is not truly acting in private space at all. The user is generally accessing the Internet with a network account and computer storage owned by an ISP like Comcast or NetZero. All materials stored online, whether they are e-mails or remotely stored documents, are physically stored on servers owned by an ISP. When we send an e-mail or instant message from the comfort of our own homes to a friend across town the message travels from our computer to computers owned by a third party, the ISP, before being delivered to the intended recipient. Thus, “private” information is actually being held by third-party private companies."
Privacy

Demo of EU's Planned "INDECT" Hints At Massive Data Mining, Little Privacy 122

Posted by timothy from the greater-good-strikes-back dept.
Ronald Dumsfeld writes "Wikinews puts together some of the details around the EU's five-year-plan called Project INDECT, and brings attention to a leaked 'sales-pitch' video: 'An unreleased promotional video for INDECT located on YouTube is shown to the right. The simplified example of the system in operation shows a file of documents with a visible INDECT-titled cover stolen from an office and exchanged in a car park. How the police are alerted to the document theft is unclear in the video; as a "threat," it would be the INDECT system's job to predict it. Throughout the video use of CCTV equipment, facial recognition, number plate reading, and aerial surveillance give friend-or-foe information with an overlaid map to authorities. The police proactively use this information to coordinate locating, pursing, and capturing the document recipient. The file of documents is retrieved, and the recipient roughly detained.'"
Privacy

EU Funding "Orwellian" Artificial Intelligence Snooping System 181

Posted by timothy from the why-does-this-bother-you? dept.
leonbenjamin writes "Britain's Telegraph reports on a five-year research programme, called Project Indect, which aims to develop computer programmes which act as 'agents' to monitor and process information from web sites, discussion forums, file servers, peer-to-peer networks and even individual computers. Its main objectives include the 'automatic detection of threats and abnormal behaviour or violence.' Shami Chakrabarti, head of the UK's Liberty human-rights NGO, said: 'Profiling whole populations instead of monitoring individual suspects is a sinister step in any society. ... It's dangerous enough at national level, but on a Europe-wide scale the idea becomes positively chilling.'"

Submission + - FCC To Introduce Net Neutrality Rule

Submitted by
wiredog
wiredog writes: "From The Washington Post comes the news that thee FCC is preparing to propose net neutrality rules.

the proposal will be for an additional guideline that network operators can't discriminate, or act as gatekeepers, of Web content. That proposal will be reviewed across platforms, including wireless networks which have come under scrutiny for allegations of blocking competing voice services offered by carriers.

"
Government

Congress Mulls Research Into a Vehicle Mileage Tax 792

Posted by kdawson from the just-get-on-the-bike dept.
BJ_Covert_Action writes to let us know that an Oregon congressman has filed legislation to spend $154.5M for a research project into tracking per-vehicle mileage in the US, and asks: "Do we really want the government to track our movement and driving habits on a regular basis?" "US Representative Earl Blumenauer (D-Oregon) introduced H.R. 3311 earlier this year to appropriate $154,500,000 for research and study into the transition to a per-mile vehicle tax system... Oregon has successfully tested a Vehicle Miles Traveled fee... the [Oregon] report urged a mandate for all drivers to install GPS tracking devices that would report driving habits to roadside RFID scanning devices." Here is the bill (PDF). The article notes that the congressman's major corporate donors would likely benefit with contracts if such a program were begun.
Hardware

Submission + - Congress Considers Funding for Vehicle Mileage Tra (thetruthaboutcars.com) 3

Submitted by BJ_Covert_Action
BJ_Covert_Action writes: According to thetruthaboutcars website, the House of Representatives is looking into legislation to divert $154,500,000 in tax dollars for a research project that involves tracking per vehicle mileage in the U.S. From the article:

US Representative Earl Blumenauer (D-Oregon) introduced H.R. 3311 earlier this year to appropriate $154,500,000 for research and study into the transition to a per-mile vehicle tax system

The article goes on to describe how Oregon already has done some research and testing of of such a tracking system. Tracking the mileage per vehicle in the United States via a GPS-RFID reader technology combination would allow the federal government to accurately tax motorists based on how far they actually drive. Currently, motorist taxes are levied at the gas pump. The bill being discussed would invest nearly $155 million in developing a system that tracks vehicles based on a unique GPS unit installed in each car. The GPS unit would communicate the data it gathers to RFID readers placed along roadsides at a particular interval. The U.S. Treasury Department would be in charge of the research program and would, thus, receive the appropriated tax money for research.

Like all fun government surveillance legislation, this funding and, if implemented, the program itself raises more questions about American's right to privacy. Do we really want the government, or any other agency for that matter, to track our movement and driving habits on a regular basis?

There is a pdf of the bill available for download on the article page.

Submission + - SPAM: IEEE stamps "approved" on 802.11n Wi-Fi standard

Submitted by
alphadogg
alphadogg writes: "The IEEE has finally approved the 802.11n high-throughput wireless LAN standard. Bruce Kraemer, the long-time chairman of the 802.11n Task Group (part of the 802.11 Working Group, which oversees the WLAN standards), has sent out a notification [spam URL stripped] to a listserv for task group members, which includes a wide range of Wi-Fi chip makers, software developers, and equipment vendors."
Link to Original Source
The Internet

Submission + - Geist on Copyright As Canada Consult Nears End

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Canadian law professor Michael Geist, who has been leading the charge on the national copyright consultation with his SpeakOutOnCopyright.ca site, has posted his submission to the consultation. Geist focuses on issues such as fair use and warns against a Canadian DMCA, copyright term extension, and three strikes and you're out. There are only three days left for Canadians to send in their submissions.
Privacy

Submission + - Would you trust an insurance company's "drive- (teensafedriver.com)

Submitted by ramen99
ramen99 writes: Our new car insurance company offered us discounts for our teenage driver if we agree to install a "drive-cam" that records driving habits and wirelessly transmits video footage to a "neutral driving coach" for evaluation and comment. While this might be great to monitor a new teen driver, it will also monitor other adult drivers. The insurance company claims that they would NEVER use any information obtained to consider changes in insurance rates, but that really sounds unbelievable. Would you give up your privacy to save some dough? Installation is free, and the camera mounts just under the rear-view mirror, but something seems fishy about this...

Comment Extralegal IP enforcement? (Score 1) 174

by carrus85 (#23829055) Attached to: UCITA By the Back Door
It makes one wonder all of the potential abuses of this law. Since Patents are considered "Intellectual Property", would it be much of a stretch to assume that this law would grant "self help" to those looking to squash patent violators? Microsoft, for example, could probably argue that they can "help" themselves squash patent violators by attacking users of Linux, or OpenOffice (Not that I know of any specific violations in either of these two, but that's the danger of extralegal enforcement; it's shoot first, ask questions later. Only if they are caught are there any problems.), or any number of other technologies. Makes me wonder if the RIAA/MPAA would try to get anything under the radar in this bill. (By trying to argue that extralegal attacks on various networks are legal because they stunt "other illegal activities" performed by software.)

Feed Techdirt: Viacom: Wrong On Almost Every Thing (techdirt.com)

From feed by techdirtfeed
It's no secret that we think Viacom has made some really bad strategic moves recently (while sister company, CBS seems to be making the right moves). However, it's still impressive to see Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman lay out so many wrongheaded strategic positions in a single speech. Clearly, Viacom's strategic sickness comes from the top -- and it's going to strangle the company as others, who actually pay attention to basic economics and trends, run rings around Viacom over time. Let's take a look at all the issues that Dauman is wrong on.
  • DRM and watermarking: Dauman says the way to defeat piracy is for companies to "unite against piracy by installing more safeguards." How's that been working so far? Right, it's only made the problem worse and pissed off a bunch of folks by treating them as criminals. Limiting what people can do and treating them like criminals diminishes value, rather than increases it. As more and more companies are learning this, it's simply going to push people away from stragglers like Viacom.
  • Spurring creative output: Dauman insists that copy protection and watermarking are necessary to "usher in an unprecedented period of creative output across the globe." Apparently he hasn't been paying attention. We're already in an unprecedented period of creative output across the globe -- and it isn't because of copy protection and watermarking, but because of increasingly simple tools for content creation, promotion and distribution -- all of which are held back by things like DRM and watermarking.
  • Easy copying and distribution seen as a problem: Dauman apparently complained about how awful it is that "all manner of intellectual property" can now be reproduced more easily than ever "at the click of the mouse." Only in the world of someone who doesn't understand basic economics would that person lament the fact that the tools of creation and distribution are getting cheaper. For most people who recognize that they're selling benefits, not products, having the cost of production and distribution drop to virtually zero would be seen as an opportunity, not a problem. Unfortunately for Viacom, there are plenty of companies that do view the easy reproduction of content as an opportunity rather than a threat, and that's going to hurt Viacom if it continues its current policies.
  • Supporting ISP plans to filter traffic: Dauman apparently applauded ATT's efforts to filter copyrighted content. It's not hard to see why he would support this, but it seems like a model designed to simply waste ATT's money. There's no clear way for ATT to profit from this -- and, if anything, it will just annoy users of ATT who will look to go elsewhere. At the same time, given the high number of false positives in takedown notices (including those from Viacom), it's only a matter of time until this filtering effort starts blocking perfectly legitimate content. It's also not clear how ATT determines what is and what is not infringing content. Especially as media companies start to recognize the promotional qualities of otherwise infringing content, this will only get messier.
  • Against net neutrality: While there's a good argument against net neutrality regulations, Dauman's reason for being anti-net neutrality is the false belief that if net neutrality was mandatory it would hamper anti-piracy efforts. This one is just wrong, as it appears Dauman doesn't understand net neutrality at all. And, of course, that doesn't even start to get into all the reasons why the entirety of Viacom's anti-piracy campaign is misguided (parts of which we've discussed above).
  • US pressuring foreign countries to fight copyright battles for Viacom: Funny how Dauman is against gov't intervention when it comes to net neutrality, but when it comes to having the US gov't act as Viacom's personal police in international disputes over copyright law, he's all for it. Copyright is about incentives, not protection, and different countries have learned that there are many ways to create good incentives for content creation, that don't require excessive protection. Dauman's push to have US diplomats force other countries to follow the US model threatens all kinds of interesting new business models over what is, essentially, a private commercial dispute concerning an obsolete business model.
  • The Pirate Bay: Dauman slams The Pirate Bay for making movies available, suggesting again that he's confused about how technology works. The Pirate Bay isn't making the content available, but acting as a search engine for content. It's like blaming Google for all the content on the web.
  • Speaking of Google... Dauman then goes on to defend Viacom's $1 billion lawsuit against Google for infringing content on YouTube. He may be right here that it will be a defining landmark case, but he's still on the wrong side of it for a bunch of reasons we've discussed here repeatedly. Given how many (non-Viacom) companies are recognizing the benefits of having people share their content on YouTube, asking Google to automatically block all shared content is ridiculous. It would harm all of those who are happy to have their content shared, just to protect an obsolete business model.
  • Google's reliance on intellectual property: Finally, Dauman notes that he can't understand Google's position in the YouTube suit, "given Google's own reliance on its software intellectual property." Again, this suggests Dauman doesn't actually understand either technology or intellectual property economics. Google doesn't rely on its intellectual property. Yes, it has many patents -- but that's not the basis of Google's success. The company relies on its ongoing ability to produce useful services that people want to use -- and then has built a business model that supports that (and supports it fantastically well, I might add). Studies have suggested that other sites have better technology than Google, but it's no longer the technology that keeps people coming back to Google -- but the overall experience. The clean interface, the better usability and the simple fact that many people feel that Google is trying to provide them with a useful service, rather than trying to figure out how to limit what they can do. That's not relying on intellectual property -- it's about creating a business model that supports what people want.
And there we go. All that in one speech. Almost all of it very, very wrong. It's hard to craft a forward looking strategy for a rapidly changing market when your boss seems to have nearly all of his assumptions wrong.

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