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Government

The Economist Weighs In For Shorter Copyright Terms 386

Posted by timothy from the and-that-guy-ought-to-know dept.
lxmota writes "The Economist says that long copyright terms are hindering creativity, and that shortening them is the way to go: 'Largely thanks to the entertainment industry's lawyers and lobbyists, copyright's scope and duration have vastly increased. In America, copyright holders get 95 years' protection as a result of an extension granted in 1998, derided by critics as the "Mickey Mouse Protection Act." They are now calling for even greater protection, and there have been efforts to introduce similar terms in Europe. Such arguments should be resisted: it is time to tip the balance back.'"

Comment Re:And what's the problem here? (Score 2, Insightful) 826

by danhm (#31591446) Attached to: US Lawmakers Eyeing National ID Card

Furthermore, just like any other required documentation it will turn into another useless nightmare for citizens. Before going you will need to scrounge up 100 documents and pictures, etc. Then you will need to make an appointment. Then you will have to pay some ludicrous processing fee. Then take a day off work to stand in line for a day and deal with some fat government slob, etc. Then wait an entire month to get the stupid thing (which means you won't be able to travel/get a job/drive/etc while you wait for a stinking month for them to make a laminated card.) And then God knows how many months it will take for those clowns to process a change of address/etc. The PITA of a driver's license and a social security card should be enough to scare the living crap out of anyone with half a brain from wanting a national id card.

What sort of hell do you live in, friend? Here in Massachusetts the process to get a driver's license is painless: bring a few documents you already have and should keep well-filed (a paystub or bank statement, a passport or other state ID, that sort of stuff) to your local Registry of Motor Vehicles office, hit a few buttons on the automated kiosk, wait a few minutes in the chairs the provide and fill out the form if you haven't done so already, go up when they call your number, hand your stuff over, get a temporary ID. You'll get your real one in about week. I did this in November of last year; it took a total of 15 minutes. You can travel and get a job with your pre-existing documents and the temporary ID you get is for driving. What's the problem? If my state can figure out how a deli works, why can't others?
Piracy

P2P and P2P Links Ruled Legal In Spain 265

Posted by samzenpus from the pirate-friendly dept.
Nieriko writes After three years of arduous litigation, Jesus Guerra Calderon, owner of both a small bar and the P2P link webpage 'elrincondejesus.com' has beaten the SGAE (something like the Spanish version of the RIAA). The historic ruling states not only the legality of link webpages, but also the legality of P2P file-sharing networks. Quoting the judge: 'P2P Networks as mere data transmision networks between individual internet users, do not breach any rights protected by the Intellectual Property Law.' Downloading a file (from a P2P network) for private use is perfectly legal as long as there is no lucrative or collective use of the downloaded copy."
Communications

Making It Hard For Extraterrestrials To Hear Us 374

Posted by timothy from the sounds-like-a-fine-idea-to-me dept.
quaith writes "US astronomer Frank Drake has told scientists at a special SETI meeting in London that earthlings are making it less likely that we will be heard in space. In the past, we used huge ground stations to broadcast radio and television signals which could be picked up relatively easily — according to astronomers' calculations anyway. Now we use satellites that transmit at 75 watts and point toward Earth instead of into space. In addition, we've switched to digital which makes the transmissions even fainter. Drake has concluded that very soon, in space no one will hear us at all. I guess we'd better keep listening."
Censorship

Iran Slows Internet Access Before Student Protests 289

Posted by timothy from the oh-y'know-the-usual dept.
RiffRafff writes "Iran is at it again, pre-emptively slowing or cutting Internet access before anticipated student protests." From the article: "Seeking to deny the protesters a chance to reassert their voice, authorities slowed Internet connections to a crawl in the capital, Tehran. For some periods on Sunday, Web access was completely shut down — a tactic that was also used before last month's demonstration. The government has not publicly acknowledged it is behind the outages, but Iran's Internet service providers say the problem is not on their end and is not a technical glitch."

Comment Re:Cheap Hosting (Score 1) 286

by danhm (#28205255) Attached to: What Do You Do With a Personal Domain?
NFS really is the best host out there for smaller sites. I use them to host a small message board (about a hundred members, maybe a dozen of which are active at any given time) and the cost is only $5-$10 a month, with much more reliable service than any random $4.99/month webhost. I'm not sure how well it scales up, but bugmenot.com is hosted by them.
Sun Microsystems

What If Oracle Bought Sun Microsystems? 237

Posted by timothy from the ask-the-oracle dept.
snydeq writes "Fatal Exception's Neil McAllister believes Oracle is next in line to make a play for Sun now that IBM has withdrawn its offer. Dismissing server market arguments in favor of Cisco or Dell as suitors, McAllister suggests that MySQL, ZFS, DTrace, and Java make Sun an even better asset to Oracle than to IBM. MySQL as a complement to Oracle's existing database business would make sense, given Oracle's 2005 purchase of Innobase, and with 'the long history of Oracle databases on Solaris servers, it might actually see owning Solaris as an asset,' McAllister writes. But the 'crown jewel' of the deal would be Java. 'It's almost impossible to overestimate the importance of Java to Oracle. Java has become the backbone of Oracle's middleware strategy,' McAllister contends."

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