Contents

• GNU/Linux
• Leftovers
• Clip of the Day

GNU/Linux

• Librarian of Congress Still Clueless About Linux

  So. They tell us to buy another operating system. Thou shalt use proprietary software. Is that the government’s role? If we want to use Netflix, we have to have two operating systems, one just for that? I wonder if a different legal argument were made if it might be successful, namely that the government should not be in the position of forcing citizens to spend money to have two operating systems just to be legal. Nor should a government aid certain vendors to make money by such compelling of citizens to buy their products. Nor should the government endorse products or enable certain companies to make competing products less desirable in the market.

  I mean, to think about how silly this is, turn it around. Let’s say the US Copyright Office said you could only view movies and DVDs on Linux. Imagine if they told protesters using Microsoft and Apple that Linux is free, so they can just download it and dual boot, so there’s no problem? Can you imagine the uproar? From Microsoft, for starters. They fight like pit bulls when any government suggests using Linux too, and when they say they will only use Linux, what does Microsoft do? Well, legally they argue it’s prejudicial. Why isn’t this similarly prejudicial?

  Of course, Netflix and Hollywood could do the right thing and solve this in the marketplace by making their works available to Linux users. Hollywood seriously needs to think about its use of Linux while making it impossible for Linux users to enjoy the resulting works. They use Linux because it’s the best tool they can find. So do we.

• K Desktop Environment (KDE SC)

  • Henri Bergius on Akademy, MidGard, Open Collaboration Services and GeoClue

    At Akademy, we ran in to many interesting people, including “random motorcycle adventurer” Henri Bergius, who is also a board member for Akademy co-organizers COSS among his many other free software related activities. Read on for the full conversation.

Leftovers

• This isn’t the first time Seed has sacrificed editorial independence

  Journalist Gaia Vince recalls how Seed magazine, owner of ScienceBlogs, spiked one of her articles because it was critical of a potential advertiser

  While the science community reacted with indignation and shock this week over ScienceBlogs’ decision to publish a blog on nutrition written by food giant PepsiCo, I was unsurprised. I’ve been here before with Seed magazine, owners of the ScienceBlogs network.

• Judge Says Constitution Protects Right to Lie About Purple Heart

  A federal judge has declared unconstitutional a little-known law making it a crime to falsely claim to have been awarded a military medal.

• Internet will soon be running on IPv4 address fumes

• Science

  • Sikorsky Will Fly Electric Helicopter This Year

    Sikorsky Aircraft says it will build a full-size, piloted electric helicopter this year to explore the benefits of an electrically powered helicopter. The company announced Project Firefly at the Farnborough Airshow outside London and says the electric helicopter will be unveiled at EAA Airventure in Oshkosh next week.

  • Boeing shows off commercial spacecraft

• Environment

  • 27,000 abandoned oil and gas wells in Gulf of Mexico ignored by government, industry

    More than 27,000 abandoned oil and gas wells lurk in the hard rock beneath the Gulf of Mexico, an environmental minefield that has been ignored for decades. No one — not industry, not government — is checking to see if they are leaking, an Associated Press investigation shows.

  • Photographer detained by police, BP employee near refinery

    A photographer taking pictures of a BP refinery in Texas was detained by a BP security official, local police and a man who said he was from the Department of Homeland Security, according to ProPublica, a non-profit news organization in the U.S.

  • Africa’s national parks failing to conserve large mammals, study shows

  • BP whistleblower: oil clean-up effort is in disarray

    Former BP contractor Adam Dillon went public last Friday, telling a local news station in New Orleans that he was fed up with BP’s handling of the spill response, not least of all its information clampdown. In an interview with Mother Jones this week, Dillon, who claims he was fired for raising concerns about the cleanup with his bosses, elaborated on his experiences in the Gulf and vented his frustrations with BP.

  • Gulf Oil Spill Mapping

    We’re helping citizens to use balloons, kites, and other simple and inexpensive tools to produce their own aerial imagery of the spill… documentation that will be essential for environmental and legal use in coming years.

  • 10 ways vegetarianism can help save the planet

    The average British carnivore eats more than 11,000 animals in their lifetime, each requiring vast amounts of land, fuel and water to reach the plate. It’s time to think of waste as well as taste

• Finance

  • Deficits of Mass Destruction

    If you’ve been paying attention this past decade, it won’t surprise you to learn that the country’s policy elites are in the midst of a destructive, well-nigh unhinged discussion about the future of the nation. But even by the degraded standards of the Washington establishment, the growing panic over government debt is shocking.

  • IMF warns against budget cuts

    International Monetary Fund says only western countries in the most severe difficulty should try to reduce their deficits, appearing to back former Labour government’s policy

    [...]

    By contrast, the IMF reckoned the world economy was recovering faster than expected, although it warned that Europe’s debt troubles posed a big risk.

  • Keiser Declares Goldman Sachs “An Undeclared National Enemy”

    I have often maintained that any action by any company, individual or group of individuals, that has a mass negative affect on the people should be considered an enemy of the state. In fact, some actions taken by these individuals may even be considered treasonous. I believe that some high ranking government officials have commited treason but their actions, by virtue of who they are, are not dealt with as they would if it were you or I doing the same things.

  • Helping homeowners – or the banks?

    Through May, the treasury department reported that 340,000 of the 1.5 million homeowners who been offered trial modifications had received permanent modifications. Almost as many, 300,000 homeowners, never even started on the trial after it was offered. Roughly the same number of homeowners had their trial modifications cancelled before being offered a permanent modification.

    [...]

    Unfortunately, almost no one in Washington talks about this route either. They are concerned about interfering with the Fed’s independence. After all, Greenspan and Bernanke have done such great things for the economy how can anyone suggest changes?

    For now at least, we can only talk about helping homeowners if most of the money goes to the banks. Since we aren’t actually helping homeowners with current policy, maybe we should just end the discussion and make the banks work for their money instead of relying on taxpayer handouts.

• Health

  • Cancer panel warns of synthetic chemicals

    A recent, dramatic warning about synthetic chemicals causing cancer came from an unlikely source — the normally staid President’s Cancer Panel. In the past, the federal panel’s annual reports have explored maximizing the nation’s investment in cancer research or promoting healthful living, or they simply assessed the nation’s progress in fighting cancer.

  • Greenpeace finds evidence of GM rice contamination in China’s emergency grain stores

    China’s ban on GM rice questioned as environmental activists discover unapproved transgenic products at two grain sources

• Censorship/Privacy/Civil Rights

  • Dozens of blogs shut in China

    Dozens of blogs by some of China’s most outspoken users have been abruptly shut down in an apparent crackdown.

  • Iceland’s legal protection scheme for journalists is audacious

    Country will need to regulate and supervise foreign media who take advantage of its legal protection

  • NSA to Spy on Critical Infrastructure, Says WSJ

  • Singapore arrests British author of death penalty book

    A veteran British journalist and author promoting his book on the death penalty in Singapore was arrested in the country today for alleged criminal defamation and other offences.

  • Congressman introduces resolution to protect citizens who videotape cops

    A U.S. Congressman has introduced a resolution that would protect citizens who videotape cops in public from getting arrested on state wiretapping charges.

• Internet/Net Neutrality/DRM

  • Net neutrality will die in the US

    INTERNET DEMOCRACY is set to be crushed and hopes for an Internet that is fair and open to all look doomed as Republican senators push legislation that will force antitrust like laws on the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

• Intellectual Monopolies

  • Facebook & WNY man square off in Buffalo court

    Facebook will try to get a New York man’s claim for majority ownership of the website thrown out of court, attorneys for the social networking site said Tuesday.

    A complaint by Paul Ceglia of Wellsville claims that a 7-year-old contract he signed with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg for software development entitles him to 84 percent of the company.

  • Copyrights

    • Chaplin song silences U.K. charity girl

      Silence isn’t always golden after all — at least not for Bethany Hare.

      The 10-year-old budding actress’ effort to raise money for a U.K. children’s hospice through a homemade video has been dealt a setback by a copyright dispute with a New York-based publishing company that owns the rights to a song from a Charlie Chaplin movie.

    • While We’re Ranting, It’s Time For the “Bamboo Fly Rod Builder vs Corporate Legal Department” Show

      While we’re on the subject of rants (a real rarity here at the Underground), we’d like to point out it’s not exactly been a great decade for the PR departments of most corporations (the financial industry recently brought the world economy to its knees, and if you haven’t looked to the Southeast USA lately, you’ve missed the specter of BP work crews burning oil-covered sea turtles alive).

    • Canadian Court Lets Perfect 10 Case Against Google Move Forward

      Over the years, we’ve written many, many, many times about Perfect 10, the former publisher of a porn magazine who has spent the last decade making ridiculously laughable arguments about how every search engine on the planet is infringing on its copyrights for pointing people to images that people had scanned from Perfect 10′s magazines and put online. For the most part, these lawsuits have gone nowhere, but Perfect 10 is incredibly persistent. Last month, we wrote about a countersuit by Rapidshare, which detailed how Perfect 10 is now a “copyright troll,” that (according to Rapidshare’s claims) purposely tries to spread its works online in order to have more companies to sue. Obviously, a key target of Perfect 10 has been Google, though Perfect 10 keeps losing (and then continues to come up with ridiculous reasons to keep the lawsuit alive).

    • More Porn Companies Filing Mass Lawsuits Against File Sharers

      The complaint reads like most of the other, similar complaints we’ve seen, explaining the basics of BitTorrent to establish the claim that these “Does” infringed on the copyright. Once again, it seems like an open question as to whether or not it’s actually legal to include all of these defendants in a single lawsuit. It’s also not clear if the goal here is to send similar pre-settlement letters, but that sure seems likely.

    • IP czar targets overseas pirate sites

      U.S. President Barack Obama isn’t the only government official who wants to smack down copyright infringement and counterfeiting.

    • Court reverses Rapidshare filesharing verdict

      WEB HOST Rapidshare has won an appeal against film distributor Capelight Pictures that absolves it of blame for the dissemination of a film through its network.

      Capelight Pictures, known for peddling such motion picture marvels as Cherrybomb, Dood Eind and Fanboy, had accused Rapidshare of not undertaking “all reasonable measures” to stop the spread of a title through its network. Capelight had initially won an injunction against Rapidshare, however the Higher Regional Court of Düsseldorf has reversed that decision.

    • Copycats: A Tale of Two Jackets

    • Pissing Off A Movie Critic By Claiming Copyright Over A Video Review… Probably Not Smart

      On that first one. Just saying it’s a “review” doesn’t automatically give you fair use rights. And there’s no fair use for “satire,” only parody — and it’s not clear that the review is actually a parody (or, for that matter, satire). Going through the four factors for fair use… you could make an argument either way as to whether or not it currently is fair use. It would really depend on the judge, and I’d actually guess that the sheer amount of the movie that is used would probably tilt the scales against fair use.

    • What is a £1m record deal?

      News of an act being given a £1m record contract by a major label conjures up images of a big cheque and instant riches. But what does a £1m record contract actually mean?

    • Digital Economy (UK)

      • UK regulator turns over Internet policing standards to movie and record industries

        When the last UK Parliament rushed the Digital Economy Act into law without debate, hours before it dissolved for the election, it appointed Ofcom, the telcoms regulator, to work out the details. Specifically, it charged Ofcom with sorting out some high standards for what evidence a rightsholder would have to produce in order to finger an online infringer (the DEA gives these rightsholders the power to eventually disconnect entire families from the internet on the strength of these accusations).

        Now Ofcom has abrogated its duty to the public and announced that the record and film industry can “self-regulate” their evidence-gathering procedures; in other words, anything that the MPA or BPI say counts as proof that you’ve violated copyright goes. Since these are the same companies that have mistakenly accused dead people, inanimate objects (laser printers), and people who don’t own computers of file-sharing, this doesn’t bode well.

Contents

• GNU/Linux
  • Distributions
• Free Software/Open Source
• Leftovers

GNU/Linux

• Kernel Space

  • Interview with Linux Foundation executive director Jim Zemlin

    1) What one big opportunity, outside of technology, has the best chance of being solved the open source way? (i.e., collaboration, transparency, meritocracy, rapid prototyping, community)

    Better government. I think most people would find the attributes of open source–collaboration, transparency, meritocracy, etc.–would be a breath of fresh air in government. The Sunlight Foundation is working on this. I am on the board of Open Source for America, and there are many other organizations working on this.

• GNOME Desktop

  • GNOME Foundation and LiMo Foundation announce partnership

    Under the terms of the partnership, the LiMo Foundation will join the GNOME Foundation’s Advisory Board and the GNOME Foundation will become an Industry Liaison Partner for the LiMo Foundation. Morgan Gillis, Executive Director of the LiMo Foundation, said, “This close alignment between LiMo and GNOME provides important support for this commitment and will take in an expanding ecosystem of products and services developed by GNOME developers in conjunction with the members of LiMo Foundation.”

• Distributions

  • Embracing the Web

    This is a huge head start toward a free web. I think what’s missing is a client platform which catalyzes the development and use of FLOSS web applications.

Free Software/Open Source

• CMS

  • Using WordPress as an Enterprise Alerts Database

  • Drupal Can And Should Become Friendlier For Users

    There are many trends driving its momentum, including adoption by publishers seeking more cost-effective content platforms, and the fast-growing sophistication of the platform.

• Open Data

  • Mapping points and postcodes to areas

    I’m very pleased to announce that mySociety’s upgraded point and postcode lookup service, MaPit, is public and available to all. It can tell you about administrative areas, such as councils, Welsh Assembly constituencies, or civil parishes, by various different lookups including name, point, or postcode.

• Open Access/Content

  • Royal Society Endorses Immediate Green Open Access Self-Archiving By Its Authors

Leftovers

• Big Game Studio Mocks Indie Developer For Saying He Wants To Connect With Fans

  The first, found via Karl Bode, is a story about how Mark Rein, a VP from Epic Games, the large video game developer behind Gears of War among other games, audibly scoffs at Cliff Harris of the one-man shop Positech Games (whom we’ve written about before, concerning his plans to “compete with pirates.”) Harris was on stage discussing how indie developers, like himself, had an easier time “forming personal relationships with gamers.” Apparently, Rein loudly announced that forming a personal relationship with “a small number of gamers” was a “waste of time.” Harris shot back on his blog, pointing out that (a) whatever he’s doing is working for him, because he’s been happily making games (and a living) for 13 years and seems to have a devoted fanbase and (b) Mark Rein is a jerk for acting the way he did.

• Judge Throws Out $4,000 Fine For Picking Up Free Air-Conditioner

• In Politics, Sometimes The Facts Don’t Matter

  New research suggests that misinformed people rarely change their minds when presented with the facts — and often become even more attached to their beliefs. The finding raises questions about a key principle of a strong democracy: that a well-informed electorate is best.

• Science

  • SpaceShipTwo Makes First Flight With Crew Aboard

    SpaceShipTwo staged a dress rehearsal for its glide flight and flew with a crew for the first time.

    Anticipation mounted yesterday as word spread that SpaceShipTwo, attached to its mother ship Eve, departed the Mojave Air and Space Port. Many, including us, were anxious to hear whether the first glide flight of the spacecraft also known as VSS Enterprise would happen, especially since we knew a chase plane followed SpaceShipTwo into the sky.

• Security/Aggression

  • Millions of routers vulnerable to new version of old attack

  • Top Secret America: 2-year investigation by Washington Post into huge, post-9/11 security buildup

  • To Find Needles In Haystacks, US Gov’t Has Built Hundreds Of New Haystacks

    Lots of folks are submitting the big interactive investigative report put out by the Washington Post, detailing the massive bureaucratic mess that has become the US’s anti-terrorism operations. Basically, since September 11, 2001, when the government (reasonably) agreed to devote more resources to the counter-terrorism, it’s been an opportunity for both government employees and the private sector to build up giant, well-funded bureaucratic entities that have little to no oversight, and quite frequently seem to overlap with what others are doing…

  • Britons to be spied on by foreign police

    Britons face being spied on and pursued by foreign police officers even for the most minor offences in an European agreement the Home Office will sign up to tomorrow.

  • Fox legal analyst: Bush should have been indicted

    Fox News’ senior judicial analyst made some surprising remarks Saturday that may go against the grain at his conservative network.

    In a interview with Ralph Nader on C-SPAN’s Book TV to promote his book Lies the Government Told You, Judge Andrew Napolitano said that President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney should have been indicted for “torturing, for spying, for arresting without warrant.”

  • NSA Executive Leaked After Official Reporting Process Failed Him

  • China Cyber-army Talk Pulled from Black Hat

    A presentation on the “Chinese Cyber-army” that delved into China’s cyberspace activities between 2001 and 2010 has been yanked off the agenda of the upcoming Black Hat security conference. The talk was canceled by Armorize Technologies after concerns were raised by the Taiwanese government over its content.

  • A Radical Proposal for Airline Security

    But there is a better option that would eliminate this problem, as well as others: Get rid of the no-fly list entirely. For that matter, get rid of the requirement that passengers provide government-approved identification just to go from one place to another.

  • Court Explores Constitutionality Of DNA Sampling On Anyone Arrested On Felony Charges

• Environment

  • Natural environment: an invitation to shape the nature of England

    Our natural environment underpins our economic prosperity, our health and our wellbeing. As a result, protecting the environment and enhancing biodiversity is one of Defra’s top 3 priorities, as outlined in the Department’s Structural Reform Plan.

  • BP buys up Gulf scientists for legal defense, roiling academic community

    For the last few weeks, BP has been offering signing bonuses and lucrative pay to prominent scientists from public universities around the Gulf Coast to aid its defense against spill litigation.

    BP PLC attempted to hire the entire marine sciences department at one Alabama university, according to scientists involved in discussions with the company’s lawyers. The university declined because of confidentiality restrictions that the company sought on any research.

• Finance

  • Training crucial to labor market

    This recession has caused a generational restructuring of America’s labor market.

    Many job skills in high demand 20 years ago just aren’t today, and some of the fastest-growing careers now weren’t even conceivable then. That’s why this administration is refocusing job-training efforts to give workers the skills they’ll need to compete successfully in a 21st century labor market.

  • Industries Find Surging Profits in Deeper Cuts

    But despite that drought, Harley’s profits are rising — soaring, in fact. Last week, Harley reported a $71 million profit in the second quarter, more than triple what it earned a year ago.

    This seeming contradiction — falling sales and rising profits — is one reason the mood on Wall Street is so much more buoyant than in households, where pessimism runs deep and joblessness shows few signs of easing.

    Many companies are focusing on cost-cutting to keep profits growing, but the benefits are mostly going to shareholders instead of the broader economy, as management conserves cash rather than bolstering hiring and production. Harley, for example, has announced plans to cut 1,400 to 1,600 more jobs by the end of next year. That is on top of 2,000 job cuts last year — more than a fifth of its work force.

  • Credit Score Is the Tyrant in Lending

    The other day, a mortgage broker named Deb Killian called me, more or less out of the blue. Ms. Killian has been in the business since 1994. She and her husband run Charter Oak Lending Group, a small firm based in Danbury, Conn., that they founded in 1996. She is a member of the board of the National Association of Mortgage Brokers. By her estimate, she has closed more than 3,500 loans during her career.

  • Netroots Nation 2010: LIVE Streaming Video, Full Conference Schedule

  • Some Thoughts on the Bush Tax “Cuts” Expiration

    I am winging my way home from Canada, flying over Minnesota into Wisconsin. I am catching up with some reading, but I had to comment on all the Sturm und Drang about the expiration of the Bush Tax “cuts.”

  • Financial regulatory overhaul’s winners and losers

  • Warren’s Candidacy Raises a Partisan Debate

    Instead, Ms. Warren’s supporters want President Obama to nominate her as the first head of a new consumer financial protection bureau created by the legislation he signed into law last week. They say that Ms. Warren, who conceived the idea and helped shepherd its passage into law, is the only acceptable choice to finish the project.

  • Spending Can Be Cut

    When times are hard financially, families frequently let their credit card balance expand. But they also slash expenses to meet their new financial situation. They stop going out for dinner, for instance, or take their vacation locally instead of abroad. They might even downsize their house.

• Censorship/Privacy/Civil Rights

  • New bill renews Internet privacy fight

    American businesses weren’t very happy about a privacy bill that Rep. Rick Boucher announced in May. The Interactive Advertising Bureau, for instance, said the Virginia Democrat’s draft legislation would have “major” effects on legitimate business practices.

  • New Wikileaks to Old Channels

    What is most interesting is why Wikileaks – a Web 2.0 User Generated Content site if there ever was one – chose Mainstream media as its organ of publication and dissemination rather than just getting it out there on the Web. If there is one thing this proves, it is that the role of the Olde Media is far from redundant. The deep throating may now be very 2.0, but the reporting is an interesting combination of Old Hacks drinking from New bottles.

    [...]

    As to the actual incidents themselves, there will no doubt be a lot of hand wringing from the self-declared sensitive types, but the more prosaic truth about these facts is that this sort of thing was ever thus (Allied exploits in WW2 do not make them out as angels at all, and just ask the average British tankie about US “friendly fire” in the Gulf Wars), its just its all come out in the open this time (A process that started in the Crimea, by the way).

  • What if there are no secrets?

    Is no secret safe?

    That’s the moral to the Wikileaks war log story: you never know what might be leaked. Of course, that itself is nothing new: Whenever we reveal information to even one person, we risk it being spread. The ethic of confidentiality (and privacy) rests with the recipient of that information.

    So what’s new now? There are more means to get information since it is pooled and digital. There are more means to share information; Daniel Ellsberg had to go through media to spread his Pentagon Papers while Wikileak chose to go through media so they could add value (perspective and attention) but didn’t have to. And there are new means to stay anonymous in the process.

  • Performance Rights Group Takes Down YouTube Video Of Auschwitz Survivor Dancing To ‘I Will Survive’ At Aushwitz

• Internet/Net Neutrality/DRM

  • Ruling on DMCA could allow breaking DRM for fair use

    A new court ruling on Friday could set a legal precedent that allows bypassing digital rights management (DRM) for fair use purposes. New Orleans circuit Judge Emilio Garza found that GE hadn’t violated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act by using hacked security dongles to repair uninterruptible power supplies from MGE UPS Systems as the goal itself was legal. While a jury fined GE $4.6 million for breaking copyright and misusing trade secrets, Judge Garza determined the DMCA hadn’t been broken, as using hacked items by itself didn’t constitute violating protection at the same time.

  • FCC Takes Beating Over Closed Door Net Neutrality Meeting

    The FCC, which proudly and repeatedly proclaims they embrace “transparency,” is taking considerable heat this week for meeting behind closed doors with the largest carriers to hash out a deal on network neutrality.

• Intellectual Monopolies

  • WIPO Sees First Real Progress In 10 Years On Text For Protection Of Folklore

    A group of experts mandated by the WIPO Intergovernmental Committee on on Intellectual Property and Genetic Resources, Traditional Knowledge and Folklore (IGC) met from 19-23 July to discuss possible text for an eventual international legal instrument on the protection of traditional cultural expressions and expressions of folklore.

  • Trademark And Domain Names… Two Very Different Rulings From One Judge

  • Human Rights Groups to Challenge Special 301

    On Tuesday July 20, a group of public interest organizations, represented by Sean Flynn, Associate Director of PIJIP, will file a complaint alleging that U.S. trade policy in the Obama Administration reduces access to medicines in low and middle income nations, and therefore violates international human rights obligations. The complaint will be filed with the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Health, Anand Grover. A press conference announcing the complaint will be held at the International AIDS Conference in Vienna.

  • Copyrights

    • File Sharing Is Not Pollution, And You Don’t Need An ISP ‘Tax’ To Deal With It

    • BitTorrent Admins Charged in $1.25bn Movie Piracy Case

      Following the country’s first ever raid on a BitTorrent site in 2009, Russian authorities have now begun a criminal investigation into the operators of Interfilm.ru. Run by a married couple, the site is now at the center of copyright infringement claim which runs to a staggering $1.25 billion. Reports suggest that the investigation has also traced some of the site’s top users.

    • Tell-All Author Riffs on Music Industry in Crisis; Part 1

      In the end, the former Rolling Stone senior editor chose Bronfman over Jobs for Fortune’s Fool: Edgar Bronfman Jr., Warner Music and an Industry in Crisis, in no small part due to the intense motivation exhibited by the heir to the multibillion dollar Seagram throne to transform his family’s liquor-derived empire into an entertainment company.

      Why, when he could have spent his life playing tennis, did Bronfman persevere? And why does he continue to believe in the value of recorded music, despite having shown the poor timing to invest in the major-label system not long before Napster introduced the world to file sharing, causing the financial worth of recorded music to decline?

    • Guns N’ Roses Uploader Laughs Last

      The convicted Guns N’ Roses uploader, Kevin Cogill, isn’t the anti-piracy pitchman the Recording Industry Association of America was hoping for.

      A year ago Wednesday, the 29-year-old Los Angeles man was sentenced to two months’ home confinement and a year of probation for uploading nine unreleased tracks of Guns N’ Roses’ Chinese Democracy to his music site. Federal prosecutors initially sought six months of prison, but Cogill got no time after agreeing to do an RIAA public service announcement that would scare future file sharers straight.

    • Nintendo Doesn’t Want To Criminalize Obsessed Fans

    • Music chief: preventing file-sharing is a “waste of time”

      A leading music industry figure has labelled attempts to thwart internet file-sharing as a “waste of time”.

    • Publisher Sued For Reposting Article Based On His Own Research

      Copyright enforcement outfit Righthaven has filed some questionable lawsuits in the past, but really outdid itself in a case against Anthony Curtis, publisher of the Las Vegas Advisor.

    • Westminster eForum: Peter Jenner on digital content consumers

      Next up at the Westminster eForum is Peter Jenner, emeritus president of the IMMF – a manager and “recovering economist”. He says he’s going to look at copyright more from an economist’s point of view, too, getting away from the law.

    • Contemplating Copyright

      UN1TE Dance Company‘s choreographers feel free to use whatever music they like in their classes. Unfortunately, it’s not so easy when you put videos from those classes online.

    • Boy oh (Tommy)Boy – 80% of you make music that is “crap”?

    • Attention movie pirates: New round of lawsuits coming

    • Willy Wizard takes Harry Potter copyright fight to America

      The estate filed a similar lawsuit last year in England against Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, the UK publisher of the Harry Potter franchise. Now in a statement, Jacobs estate trustee Paul Allen says the estate is contemplating legal action in key territories worldwide and the “USA being the world’s largest market for Potter books means that our first overseas action is brought here in America.”

  • ACTA

    • Pirate Party storms out of uber-secret ACTA negotiations

      The level of secrecy shrouding the EU’s ACTA negotiations reached new heights earlier this week, with the news that Pirate Party MEP Christian Engstrom felt compelled to abandon a meeting with ACTA negotiators in the European Parliament after he was forbidden from sharing information with the public.

    • If Negotiators Still Don’t Want To Release ACTA, It’ll Still Get Leaked

      So, we now know for certain that the ACTA negotiators’ promise of “transparency” over negotiations was an outright lie. They fought it every step of the way, falsely claiming that if the draft were public, some members would leave the table. It was only after a pretty massive smack down from the EU Parliament and the fact that the draft was already leaked that negotiators finally agreed to release a draft that left out lots of pertinent information.

    • Could Bolivia Opt-Out Of Berne And WIPO And Forge A New Path On Copyright?

      They don’t allow countries to experiment with different types of copyright law to see if they work better. That, of course, is one reason why ACTA is so troubling. However, before ACTA there were other such international agreements, such as WIPO and, most famously, the Berne Convention.

    • ACTA Coming Down to Fight Between U.S. and Europe

      With yesterday’s leak of the full ACTA text (updated to include the recent round of talks in Lucerne) the simmering fight between the U.S. and the E.U. on ACTA is now being played out in the open. During the first two years of negotations, both sides were at pains to indicate that there was no consensus on transparency and the treaty would not change their domestic rules. Over the past four months, the dynamic on both transparency and substance has changed.