- House Bill Seeks to Exempt Backups from DMCA Violation
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act dramatically tilted the copyright balance toward complete copyright protection at the expense of the public’s right to fair use,” reads a prepared statement from Rep. Boucher’s office today. With a seasoned lawmaker’s skill at creating acronyms, the statement continues, “The FAIR USE Act [Freedom And Innovation Revitalizing U.S. Entrepreneurship Act of 2007] will assure that consumers who purchase digital media can enjoy a broad range of uses of the media for their own convenience in a way which does not infringe the copyright in the work.”
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More likely than Boucher’s staffers may be aware, the FAIR USE Act is more likely to re-introduce language from another bill which stalled in the 109th Congress, introduced in December 2005 by Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D - CA) - a co-sponsor of the new bill. That previous legislation would have amended US Code Section 1201 with this language:
“It is not an infringement of copyright for a person who lawfully obtains a copy or phonorecord of a digital work, or who lawfully receives a transmission of a digital work, to reproduce, store, adapt, or access the digital work: (1) for archival purposes, if all such archival copies are destroyed or rendered permanently inaccessible in the event that continued possession of the work should cease to be rightful; and (2) in order to perform or display the work, or an adaptation of the work, on a digital media device, if the work is not so performed or displayed publicly.”
I’m so glad that copyrights are finally getting a good look, and that lawmakers are realising that some of these laws are really heavy-handed. Let’s just hope this trend continues!
- NASA’s Mission to the Moon: How We’ll Go Back — and Stay This Time
Popular Mechanics has an interesting and informative article about the Orion programme. It actually makes me kind of excited about the technology going into it, despite the fact that it’s basically, as they put it, “Apollo on steroids.”
- The Effect of File Sharing on Record Sales: An Empirical Analysis
From the abstract for a paper by Felix Oberholzer-Gee and Koleman Strumpf, published in The University of Chicago’s Journal of Political Economy:
We match an extensive sample of downloads to U.S. sales data for a large number of albums. To establish causality, we instrument for downloads using data on international school holidays. Downloads have an effect on sales that is statistically indistinguishable from zero. Our estimates are inconsistent with claims that file sharing is the primary reason for the decline in music sales during our study period.
(Hat tip: Gruber)
- Steve Jobs v. Underwear Gnomes
It’s about time record execs pull their heads out of their asses, and, after the giant ’schloORK’ sound is done ringing in their ears, they start treating valued customers like they are valued and/or customers, instead of like a seething criminal class. Yes, there will always be people who steal music. So either offer the rest of us a compelling alternative to being one of them, or die the dinosaur’s death that you so richly deserve.
- Steve Jobs essay on DRM
Imagine a world where every online store sells DRM-free music encoded in open licensable formats. In such a world, any player can play music purchased from any store, and any store can sell music which is playable on all players. This is clearly the best alternative for consumers, and Apple would embrace it in a heartbeat. If the big four music companies would license Apple their music without the requirement that it be protected with a DRM, we would switch to selling only DRM-free music on our iTunes store. Every iPod ever made will play this DRM-free music.
It’s worth the read, especially if you’re one of those people who love to bitch about the iTunes Store’s DRM.
- Frozen tidal wave
Too cool for school.
- New pants mean you can fart with confidence
To prevent gases escaping without passing through it, the underpants are made from air-tight fabric and completely sealed with elastic around the waistband and legs.
You know, I just don’t want to buy a garment specifically to fart on. Something about that just doesn’t seem right.
- Questionable Conviction of Connecticut Teacher in Pop-up Porn Case
When lax cybersecurity meets anti-porn hysteria, an innocent computer infection can land you in jail. Just ask Julie Amero, a 40-year old substitute teacher who maintains she’s a victim of a malicious software infestation that caused her computer to spawn porn uncontrollably.
- Bill Gates on Vista and Apple’s “lying” ads
Bill Gates in an interview in Newsweek:
Nowadays, security guys break the Mac every single day. Every single day, they come out with a total exploit, your machine can be taken over totally. I dare anybody to do that once a month on the Windows machine.
I think he’s talking about the Month of Apple Bugs project, for which no exploits exist “in the wild.” But Apple plugs those holes pretty quickly. And, in fact, that’s the way is should be, even according to Bill elsewhere in the interview:
This is exactly the way it should work. When somebody comes to us [after discovering a vulnerability] we’ve got [a fix] before there is any exploit.
He goes on to address allegations that many of Vista’s features have already been in Mac OS X for years:
So, yes, it took us longer, and they had what we were doing, user interface-wise. Let’s be realistic, who came up with [the] file, edit, view, help [menu bar]? Do you want to go back to the original Mac and think about where those interface concepts came from?
Not really, but we can. They came from Apple engineer Bill Atkinson, not XEROX’s Smalltalk, as Gates is implying. (It’s a pretty common tactic to claim that Apple lifted the Mac GUI whole-cloth from XEROX PARC, which is simply untrue.)
But wait, it gets better:
If you’re interested, [Vista development chief] Jim Allchin will be glad to educate you feature by feature what the truth is.
Oh, you mean this Jim Allchin?
I’m not sure how the company lost sight of what matters to our customers, both business and home, the most, but in my view we lost our way. I think our teams lost sight of what bug-free means, what resilience means, what full scenarios mean, what security means, what performance means, how important current applications are, and really understanding what the most important problems our customers face are. I see lots of random features and some great vision, but that does not translate into great products… I would buy a Mac today if I was not working at Microsoft.
Yes, Bill, please: let him educate us.
- The loser’s guide to getting lucky
Why do some people get all the luck while others never get the breaks they deserve? A psychologist says he has discovered the answer.
You know, I’ve actually observed this in my own life. Keeping a positive attitude towards setbacks really does have an impact on your success, while people who complain all the time about how they never get a break tend to have all the behavioural traits talked about in the article. Interesting stuff, really.
- Ottawa moves to help Canadians regain citizenship
Citizenship and Immigration Canada on Friday added a new option to its hotline, 1-888-242-2100, specifically for people who wish to regain their Canadian citizenship in a hurry.
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If people call the hotline, then press option six, they will be able to talk to an agent who will take their information and verify that they need direct help to regain Canadian citizenship.
Within 24 hours, Borsu said, another agent from the federal department will phone back to process their application to restore citizenship.
A very interesting development. I’m quite curious to see if it would help me with my situation. I think I’m going to get my papers in order and give them a call. They’d be already familiar with people getting shafted out of their citizenship because of the change in law in 1977, so perhaps they’d be able to do something.
My dad might have moved back to BC if he’d known that he would have had a chance to register for citizenship after the new law came into effect. But he was told that you lose your Canadian citizenship when you register to vote in the US, and believed it, and so he’s lived in the US ever since. I, on the other hand, was operating under the assumption that I’m Canadian, and have been actively trying to get my citizenship sorted out and move up there. I already have a place to live with relatives, and I’ve gone though all the proper channels like getting birth certificates and paying for record searches and whatnot. I’m basically in the situation I’m in because my dad believed the anti-dual-citizenship propaganda that was prevalent at the time so never fought to get his citizenship and move back up there. Now he’s in his 50s, has a house and wife and is getting ready for retirement. From his perspective, there’s no need to change anything. But should I not have the same opportunity that he had, especially since I don’t plan on squandering it?
Wish me luck!
- 100 best typefaces of all time
The site is in German, but it’s still a pretty good read. I agree with most of their choices.
- 10 Most Bizarre People on Earth
Shoichi Yokoi was a soldier, conscripted into the Imperial Japanese Army in 1941 and sent to Guam shortly thereafter. In 1944, as American forces reconquered the island, Yokoi went into hiding.
On January 24, 1972, Yokoi was discovered in a remote section of Guam by two of the island’s inhabitants. For 28 years he had been hiding in an underground jungle cave, fearing to come out of hiding even after finding leaflets declaring that World War II had ended. “It is with much embarrassment that I have returned alive,” he said upon his return to Japan, carrying his rusted rifle at his side.