On this episode of This Week in Linux, we’ve got a lot of great news to get to. We’ll first check out some Hardware News as Pre-Orders are now available for the Framework Modular Laptop and System76’s new Keyboard. KDE announced the Beta release for Plasma 5.22 and I personally have given it a test run already and can easily say I am very excited about this release. Then we’ll jump to the Linux Mobile market to check out the latest release for Ubuntu Touch with OTA-17 and we’ve got some updates for the JingPad A1 Linux tablet. Later in the show, we’ve got an update for the Audacity Telemetry topic we discussed last week and we’ll check out some Wi-Fi Security Flaws that were revealed this week. All that and much more on Your Weekly Source for Linux GNews!
I recently made a video about Nitrux, a Debian-based Linux distribution that does some rather unique things. Well, in that video I mistakenly said Nitrux was based on both Debian and Ubuntu, because that is what DistroWatch claims. People in the video comments corrected me on this though. As it turns out, Nitrux and DistroWatch have been arguing about this for some time.
You don't have to be a "technical person" to use Linux.
Tantacrul just explained exactly what happened and how they plan to address the community's concerns
Our reaction to System76's Launch keyboard, Google's new Fuchsia contributor that's a big name, and the repairable Linux Laptop with a few new tricks.
The KDE 4 desktop was starting to become mature and stable at the time, so I've decided to scratch my itch rewriting the old and abandoned KMid application, adding my favorite features from vanBasco. This was already told on this blog a few times. KMid2 was a total rewrite almost from scratch, with the additional goal to make it multiplatform. Indeed, it was possible to build and run it on Linux, macOS and Windows, but there wasn't an easy way to deploy KDE programs on macOS and Windows at the time, so the only viable target was Linux. On the other hand, because the chosen architecture, it was difficult to maintain and port the program to other platforms. Then, several Linux distributions boycotted this application, with the total indifference of the KDE community. Good riddance.
Fast forward to the roaring twenties. Nothing changed for Linux. The vanBasco player is still the king in the Windows world. In spite of most Windows 10 users running a 64 bit Operating System, vanBasco is rotting its 32 bits. The only alternative fulfilling the four mentioned features is Falcosoft MIDI player. I don't know about native macOS alternatives, either. Of course there are players for macOS, and WinAmp for Windows, and even VLC plays MIDI files, but that is not what I'm talking about...
I prefer to avoid hard use cases. Someone asked me once about my VMPK program: how it would be classified? Is it a Game? No, it is not a game, it is a toy! A game has a set of rules that the player must follow to reach the final goal: to win the game. On the other hand, a toy has no written rules. The player can explore, learn, and have fun on its own. No winners, no losers. Sometimes a good game may be repurposed by the users, like Wolfenstein 3D, but it is uncommon. It is in the definition of free software: the freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose.
Anyway, here is an usage example for this program: there is a choir, with a conductor or composer that arranges or edits pieces using some MIDI software like Rosegarden, MuseScore, Frescobaldi, or similar. He prints the scores (or exports PDF files for electronic distribution) for the singers. He also exports the pieces as MIDI files, that can be loaded by dmidiplayer, and used by the singers to learn and practice the lyrics and music of each voice. The examples in dmidiplayer include some choral music, edited in Rosegarden and directly exported as MIDI files.
Memo on using a KVM switch with my Debian desktop and ChromeBox. KVM these days mean Kernel virtualization things but before it used to mean KVM switch; where PS/2 and DSUB15 pin was a popular interface. These days it's USB + HDMI; USB-C with dP alt mode would make connections simpler including power supply, but that doesn't exist as much. This ends up 3 cables each for PC and display, with 2 USB cables and 1 HDMI cable per endpoint. I bought a cheap manual switcher.
You may want to make use of icons or symbols which are bundled with Ubuntu but do not know how to get them. There are so many of them, for example, Firefox logo, even hardware symbols you can include in your designs or articles like you might saw often in Ubuntu Buzz. Then, this is where and how to extract them.
How if somebody tells you with proof he found out your passwords? You should immediately change your passwords with better ones then. Below I share with you my experience and several examples & suggestions you can do.
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For example, to create a password that is strong, we can press Password Generator button in KeePassXC and try to make our own password and program will automatically measure how secure your password is. Alternatively, simply believe password generator creating a new password and use it.
DNS, also known as name server, is a service on the Internet that provides mapping between IP addresses and domain names and vice versa. DNS maintains a database of names and related IP addresses. When an application queries with a domain name, DNS responds with a mapped IP address. Applications can also ask for a domain name by providing an IP address.
DNS is quite a big topic, and an entire chapter can be written just on the DNS setup. This recipe assumes some basic understanding of the working of the DNS protocol. We will cover the installation of BIND, installation of DNS server application, configuration of BIND as a caching DNS, and setup of Primary Master and Secondary Master. We will also cover some best practices to secure your DNS server.
The ps command in Linux, as you might already know, is one of the most frequently used command-line tools. For the uninitiated, the utility basically reports a snapshot of the current processes on the system.
The ps command provides a plethora of options, and as you might agree, it's not possible to know about or practice each and every feature that it offers. So, in this article, we will quickly discuss three ps-related tips/tricks that advanced users may find useful.
Before we move ahead, it's worth mentioning that all the commands and instructions present in this tutorial have been tested on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS.
In this article, we will install and configure the squid proxy and caching server. The term proxy is generally combined with two different terms: one is forward proxy and the other is reverse proxy.
When we say proxy, it generally refers to forward proxy. A forward proxy acts as a gateway between a client’s browser and the Internet, requesting the content on behalf of the client. This protects intranet clients by exposing the proxy as the only requester. A proxy can also be used as a filtering agent, imposing organizational policies. As all Internet requests go through the proxy server, the proxy can cache the response and return cached content when a similar request is found, thus saving bandwidth and time.
A reverse proxy is the exact opposite of a forward proxy. It protects internal servers from the outside world. A reverse proxy accepts requests from external clients and routes them to servers behind the proxy. External clients can see a single entity serving requests, but internally, it can be multiple servers working behind the proxy and sharing the load.
In this article, we will discuss how to install a squid server. Squid is a well-known application in the forward proxy world and works well as a caching proxy. It supports HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, and other popular network protocols.
Mostly, we have only a single display connected to computer systems. However, you can have multiple displays connected to a system.
While working with more than one display, sometimes you might find yourself in a situation where-in you need to perform a display-specific task. For example, taking a screenshot. In these scenarios, you need to know the ID of the display you want to perform the action on.
In this tutorial, we will learn how you can find the ID corresponding to a particular display. Please note that all the commands and instructions mentioned in this article have been tested on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS.
In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Mahara on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, Mahara is a free and open-source electronic portfolio management system written in PHP. Mahara is designed to provide users with the tools to create a personal and professional learning and development environment.
This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you through the step-by-step installation of Mahara on Ubuntu 20.04 (Focal Fossa). You can follow the same instructions for Ubuntu 18.04, 16.04, and any other Debian-based distribution like Linux Mint.
Typically, we apply firmware updates to fix a security issue and enhance SATA/PCIe/NVMe solid-state (SSD) drive performance. Failing to install available updates may lead to vulnerable SSD. This quick guide explains how to update Samsung SSD firmware on Linux without using Windows operating system.
Linux comes with firmware update manager client utility called fwupdmgr. It makes updating firmware on Linux automatic, safe and reliable. The same command can update Samsung SSD. The fwupd service runs on Linux and BSD, which is part of LVFS. It allows firmware to update device firmware on the local machine. GNOME maintainer Richard Hughes develops it. LVFS is an acronym for The Linux Vendor Firmware Service, a secure portal for hardware vendors to upload firmware updates.
Network Time Protocol (NTP) is a TCP/IP protocol for synchronizing time over a network. Although Ubuntu has a built-in clock that is helpful for keeping track of local events, it may create issues when the server is connected over a network and provides time-critical services to the clients. This problem can be solved with the help of NTP time synchronization. NTP works by synchronizing time across all servers on the Internet.
NTP uses hierarchies of servers with top-level servers synchronizing time with atomic clocks. This hierarchy levels are known as stratum, and the level can range between 1 and 15, both inclusive. The highest stratum level is 1 and is determined by the accuracy of the clock the server synchronizes with. If a server synchronizes with other NTP server with stratum level 3, then the stratum level for this server is automatically set to 4.
VLC is the ultimate open source media player. It will play any video format you throw at it, and it’s widely available for Windows, macOS, and Linux. If you use VLC a lot and are interested in becoming more proficient with the tool, you should check out these VLC keyboard shortcuts.
One of the great things about VLC is that most of the keyboard shortcuts are single keys. There may be some that are a combo, but many of the most critical ones are just one key. If you ever forget these, you can find them in the “Hotkeys” section of your preferences menu in VLC.
Cron is the task scheduler for Linux, and it’s one of the most useful tools for system administrators.
It helps you automate the repeating tasks at ease.
These tasks or commands that are pre-scheduled are called Cron Jobs.
TV is just “another input” channel… another source of information… simply stupidly zapping through channels is…. stupid.
the idea is a smart and intelligent handling of the massive amounts of “TV content” by programming a power efficient device, to record and archive only what might be interesting to the user to watch at the time the user want’s to.
Germany spends more money (!?) than ANY OTHER COUNTRY on this planet on public TV and Radio funding?
Germany: 8.1 BILLION(Mrd) € per YEAR!
An online service can help you making a slideshow in your blog post. Need example? Click here, it is our gallery of slideshows of Ubuntu high resolution screenshots. Slideshow is multiple pictures / photos in one frame with sliders -- the benefit is it saves you a lot of spaces. We will use the free (no cost) Imgur slideshow service here and explained it in only three steps. Let's try it!
Bluetooth is one of the most effective ways of connecting multiple hardware devices to your computer wirelessly. Knowing how to manage Bluetooth devices is vital as more wireless gadgets are gaining recognition among users.
Bluetoothctl is an interactive and easy-to-use tool for controlling Bluetooth devices. It is the main utility for managing Bluetooth on Linux-based operating systems. This guide will show you how to easily set up Bluetooth devices and connections on your Linux PC using bluetoothctl.
MariaDB, a fork of open source MySQL can be easily installed on a Docker container to create Database for various web applications such as WordPress, OwnCoud, etc. The benefit of using MariaDB on Docker container is you will not need a dedicated server to separate your Database server from the rest of the applications.
However, learning curves will be there to manage containers. And here we will help you understand the basic steps to install the MariaDB container and how to run and access it remotely to manage databases.
Linux is a free and open-source UNIX-like operating system. It is currently the world's largest free operating system. Linux strictly refers to the kernel of the operating system, but nowadays Linux is often used to refer to a complete operating system based on Linux.
Because Linux is open-source, many people would like to develop it and therefore Linux has many distributions. Popular Linux distros include Debian (as well as its derivative versions Ubuntu, Linux Mint, etc.), Fedora (as well as its related versions Red Hat Enterprise Linux, CentOS, etc.), openSUSE, etc.
These are the options I needed. the -o says where to put the file, and the –prefix (with the / at the end) puts it in a subdir.
Every now and then, you find yourself in a situation where you expect better performance from your data storage drives. Either they once performed very well and one day just stopped, or they came straight out of the box underperforming. I explore a few of the reasons why this might happen.
Sometimes, the easiest and quickest way to determine the root cause of a slow drive is to check its local logging data. The method by which this log data is stored will differ by the drive type, but in the end, the results are generally the same. For instance, a SCSI-based drive such as a serial attached SCSI (SAS) drive collects drive log data and general metrics in something called the SCSI log pages (plural because each page separates the collected data into its respective category). The easiest way to access this data is by using the sg3_utils package available for Linux. To find out what categories the drive supports, execute the sg_logs binary with the SAS drive or SCSI generic identifier in which you are interested (Listing 1).
Remember when operating systems had style? If you're running a Linux device with the Xfce window manager, you can bring that style back with Chicago95. This theming system will automatically configure your desktop to appear nearly identical to the beloved Windows 95 operating system.
What Is Chicago95?
Customization is one of the great joys of using Linux because you're free to make essentially any change you want. If you feel at home in the Windows 10 environment, for example, you can convert your Linux desktop to look nearly identical.
But what if you want to go back to Microsoft's golden days?
Chicago95 is a theme for Linux that supplies a host of icons, backgrounds, sounds, and other relics from the Windows 95 operating system. It applies them to your Xfce desktop automatically, transporting you right back to the days of playing SimCity 2000 and connecting to dial-up to visit your favorite chatroom.
MariaDB, a fork of open source MySQL can be easily installed on a Docker container to create Database for various web applications such as WordPress, OwnCoud, etc. The benefit of using MariaDB on Docker container is you will not need a dedicated server to separate your Database server from the rest of the applications.
However, learning curves will be there to manage containers. And here we will help you understand the basic steps to install the MariaDB container and how to run and access it remotely to manage databases.
KDE Plasma 5.22 Beta has been released, as the KDE camp continue to advance their flashy flagship Linux desktop environment. The aim of this release is to further "stability and usability" fixing up bugs, solving annoying paper-cuts and there's a number of big improvements for Wayland support again too which is quite exciting to see! 2021 looks truly set to be the Year of Wayland on the Linux desktop.
Today let’s talk a bit about the importance of using the right tool for the job. There’s a bit about this in my post about KHamburgerMenu, about how it was not designed to be a universal thing for every app but rather the ones where it can makes sense. No need to shoe-horn everything into an identical paradigm.
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Now, KDE apps typically do not use client-side decorations for their header areas like GNOME apps do. Instead, we generally hew to the traditional arrangement of a titlebar, menubar, and toolbar. The titlebar is “server-side” because it’s drawn by KWin, our window manager. Everything below the titlebar–such as the window’s menubar, toolbar, and content view–are drawn by the window itself; the window being a “client” of the window manager. Hence, “client-side”.
With word this week that KDE's Dolphin file manager has adopted a hamburger menu that has re-ignited the discussion once more over client versus server-side decorations for the KDE desktop.
KDE developers still seem to be overall against the notion of client-side decorations for all windows in having the clients be responsible for the rendering of their windows in full. KDE developers still prefer the notion of server-side rendering, but they are sort of embracing Dynamic Window Decorations (DWD) as a partial hybrid of CSD in specific areas where it makes sense.
Latte v0.9.11 is the last published stable version for v0.9.x branch but it is not updated or maintained any more. It has not beed updated for more than a year and unfortunately the next stable branch v0.10.x is not ready yet. I will probably need three or four months from now to complete its implementation.
The bad news is that v0.9.11 is not compatible with Plasma 5.22 . All users using v0.9.11 when they update to Plasma 5.22 will observe a broken Latte Tasks plasmoid.
Gnome Tweaks, one of the must have apps for configuring Ubuntu, removes GNOME Shell Extensions support by releasing version 40.
Which means in next Ubuntu release which will ship with Gnome 40+, you have to use another tool to manage Gnome Shell Extensions.
If you have tried out Fedora 34, you should already see the prompt at first launch of Gnome Tweaks: “Extensions management has been moved to GNOME Extensions”.
I have made a new version of ExTiX – The Ultimate Linux System. I call it ExTiX 21.5 LXQt Live DVD. (The previous LXQt version was 20.8 from 200804). The best thing with ExTiX 21.5 is that while running the system live (from DVD/USB) or from hard drive you can use Refracta Snapshot (pre-installed) to create your own live installable Ubuntu system. So easy that a ten year child can do it! One other very good thing with this version of ExTiX is that it is quite light. The ISO file is of only 1360 MB, which means that you can run the system super fast from RAM. When the boot process is ready you can eject the DVD or USB stick. Use Boot alternative 3 or Advanced options… >> load to RAM.
For those interested in the story of PipeWire for handling Linux audio/video needs not only for the Linux desktop itself but coming to cars / infotainment systems and more, there is an interesting Red Hat interview going over the history and other topics pertaining to PipeWire.
It was with the recent release of Fedora Workstation 34 that PipeWire is now being used by default in place of PulseAudio. As the year progresses we'll likely see other Linux distributions beginning to make use of PipeWire for consumer and pro audio needs on Linux. Christian Schaller as the Senior Manager for the Desktop team at Red Hat published an interview with Wim Taymans. Wim, the lead developer of PipeWire and prior to that the co-founder of GStreamer, has been spending the past half decade working on PipeWire at Red Hat.
A Fedora 35 change proposal submitted this week that is ruffling some feathers is over removing the "allow SSH root login with password" option from Fedora's Anaconda installer.
The past several years there has been a Fedora installer option to "allow SSH root login with password" to enable password-based logins over SSH. This hasn't been enabled by default but simply offered as an option for those wanting a password based login.
With Fedora 35 this autumn the change proposal wants to eliminate this option from the installer. The basis is that the option was planned to only be temporary and security benefits in just dropping the option to encourage users to rely on SSH keys, etc.
Red Hat, Inc., the world's leading provider of open source solutions, today announced its intent to deliver a functional-safety certified, evolving Linux operating system for the automotive industry. Built from the trusted components of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, the world’s leading enterprise Linux platform, and in collaboration with exida, a leader in functional safety across multiple industries, this operating system will be designed for continuous updates throughout its lifecycle while still retaining crucial functional safety certifications. This brings greater flexibility to the automotive software ecosystem, enabling vehicle manufacturers and their partners to focus on innovative driving experiences with confidence in the behavior of the underlying foundation, which will be developed and maintained by Red Hat and continuously certified by exida.
We take a look at "Accessible-Coconut" - a friendly Linux for Visually Impaired Users. We covered the features, utilities, download details, and a brief review of this distro.
Zheng also understood the current implementation, improved it and made ‘bug fixes.’ To construct the contest platform, he worked with cloud platforms, like AWS Lightsail, MySQL database, Python WebSocket and Ubuntu operating system.
After you’ve gone through the process of building Chia Coin plots on a PC (see how to farm Chia Coin), there’s no need to waste the electricity and tie up expensive computer hardware keeping those plots connected to the Internet. Instead, it’s best to take an external drive or drive(s) with the plots on them and hook them up to a Raspberry Pi where they can stay online, without gulping down too much juice.
In this tutorial, we will create a custom Raspberry Pi Chia farming device powered by the latest Ubuntu 64-bit release for the Raspberry Pi. The unit is designed to be hidden away, farming Chia Coin silently while we go about our lives. As such we chose to house the Raspberry Pi 4 inside of a passively cooled case. Our choice this time was the Akasa Gem Pro which has great cooling for the SoC, PMIC and PCIe chip and a rather tasteful, if unusual design.
The JingPad A1 is an 11 inch tablet with an 11 inch tablet with an octa-core processor, 6GB of RAM, 128GB of storage, and touchscreen-friendly Linux distribution called JingOS.
First unveiled in April, the makers of the tablet have now announced that it will be available for pre-order for $549 starting June 15th through an Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign. The tablet will begin shipping to backers September 27th.
That’s only part of the announcement though – there’s also a JingPad A1 beta program that will let 100 people save $99 and and get a tablet two months early.
When you buy a game console, smartphone, dryer, vacuum cleaner, or any number of other complicated electronics, there’s usually a sticker or a piece of paperwork telling you that trying to repair the device yourself will void your warranty. That’s illegal under the federal Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act. Companies offering a warranty on their goods aren’t allowed to void that warranty if the user attempts to repair it themself, but that doesn’t stop the company from scaring customers into thinking it’s true.
It’s such a huge problem that US PIRG—a non-profit that uses grassroots methods to advocate for political change—found that 90 percent of manufacturers it contacted claimed that a third party repair would void its warranty. PIRG researched the warranty information of 50 companies in the Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers (AHAM)—an industry group of notorious for lobbying to protect is repair monopolies—and found that 45 of them claimed independent repair would void their warranty.
The Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act (MMWA) “generally prohibits warrantors from conditioning warranties on the consumer’s use of a replacement product or repair service identified brand or name.” In other words, a manufacturer cannot require that a consumer use brand-specified parts or services to keep their warranty intact, with a few exceptions outlined in our report.
Nonetheless, during a 2018 study conducted by the U.S. PIRG Education Fund, 45 out of the 50 surveyed appliance manufacturers voided warranties if product owners used independent or self-repair. Our report came just a few months after the FTC issued its warning to six companies for placing “void if removed” stickers on their products.
“The Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act specifically precludes tying a warranty to use of specific or authorized parts and service. The FTC staff in 2018 gave specific guidance to companies and said ‘unless you meet one of the exceptions in the Magnuson-Moss Act, do not condition warranty coverage on consumers’ use of parts or service from you or someone you authorized,’” said Blake Reid, director of the Samuelson-Glushko Technology Law & Policy Clinic during a Colorado House committee bill hearing. Reid’s testimony attempted to rebut manufacturer claims that Right to Repair rules run afoul of federal warranty law.
Scrum is a popular Agile framework. It basically focuses on software development, intending to deliver innovative, functional, and useful software to consumers as quickly as possible. Versatile fields have been blessed with the power of Scrum. From sales and marketing to advanced research and technology – Scrum has its use. Like many other frameworks, Scrum also needs some tools to work with. Due to the high popularity of Scrum, several Scrum tools are available in the market.
However, you have to choose a specific tool according to your need. The choice of a suitable tool is very significant for enhanced production. So, today, we’ll assist you in selecting a suitable tool for your project.
Web development? Everything is built or run directly on OSS.
Almost everything we do in web development exists as a thin layer over open-source software.
Servers, build tools, databases, ORMs, auth, client-side JS, web browser: we are all building on a vast ocean of OSS labour without paying back a fraction of the value we generate. It isn’t just big, direct dependencies like Babel that are suffering. The stuff your stuff is using—the infrastructure code everything needs—is surviving on sheer inertia as well.
That’s value extraction. Strip-mining if you want to hammer home the unsustainability. Looting if you want to emphasise the moral dimension.
A shell (like Bash) provides built-in commands and scripting features to easily solve and automate various tasks. External commands like grep, sed, Awk, sort, find, or parallel can be combined to work with each other. Sometimes you can use Perl either as a single replacement or a complement to them for specific use cases.
Perl is the most robust portable option for text processing needs. Perl has a feature rich regular expression engine, built-in functions, an extensive ecosystem, and is quite portable. However, Perl may have slower performance compared to specialized tools and can be more verbose.
One of my favorite logic puzzles is the self-descriptive Hardest Logic Puzzle Ever. Among other things, it talks about three gods who are called A, B, and C. Their identities are True, False, and Random, in some order. You can ask them questions, but they only answer in the god language, where "da" and "ja" mean "yes" and "no," but you do not know which is which.
If you decide to use Python to solve the puzzle, how would you represent the gods' names and identities and the words in the god language? The traditional answer has been to use strings. However, strings can be misspelled with disastrous consequences.
If, in a critical part of your solution, you compare to the string jaa instead of ja, you will have an incorrect solution. While the puzzle does not specify what the stakes are, that's probably best avoided.
The meeting will focus on things that could either offer insights that might affect the work you’re doing, or where the presenter would like to pose questions to the Rust teams and get feedback.
I announced the meeting some time back to all@rust-lang.org, but I wanted to make a broader announcement as well. This meeting is open for anyone to come and observe. This is by design. Even though the meeting is primarily meant as a forum for the members of the Rust teams, it can be hard to define the borders of a community like ours. I’m hoping we’ll get people who work on major Rust libraries in the ecosystem, for example, or who work on the various Rust teams that have come into being.
The first meeting is scheduled for 2021-05-17 at 15:00 Eastern and you will find the agenda on the CTCFT website, along with links to the slides (still a work-in-progress as of this writing!). There is also a twitter account @RustCTCFT and a Google calendar that you can subscribe to.
The U.S. is in the midst of the largest and fastest expansion of legal gambling in the nation’s history.
Sports betting surged after a 2018 Supreme Court decision paved the way for its legalization in states beyond Nevada. Legal sports betting became available in five states and Washington, D.C., in 2020 — bringing the total number of sports betting states to 21 — at the same time as the Covid-19 pandemic sparked a sharp rise in online gambling of all forms as casinos closed and Americans hunkered down in their homes.
Despite the proliferation of online gambling, in which large sums of money can be lost with a few clicks on a smartphone, federal and state governments still devote few resources to tracking and treating people with gambling problems, experts say.
CloudLinux is a commercially supported operating system optimised for hosting service providers and data centres, with their own multi-tenanted clients. The company has now announced TuxCare, bringing together its enterprise support into a broader and more cohesive family of services.
CloudLinux is Linux for those who manage significant quantities of shared hosting accounts or sell servers to enterprises and businesses. The product builds on Linux to deliver increased server stability, higher density, advanced resource management, and other security and performance optimisations specifically targeted to a multi-tenant hosting environment.
The High Court ruled today, that the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) had the right to open a second "own volition" investigation against Facebook. Facebook's attempt to stop this second investigation failed. The judge held: "I refuse all of the reliefs sought by [Facebook Ireland] and dismiss the claims made by it in the proceedings."
The DPC now has two open procedures to implement the so-called "Schrems II" judgment, in which the European Court of Justice (CJEU) clarified that Facebook may not transfer personal data from the EU to the US. Under a separate settlement reached between Mr Schrems and the DPC (first published today) the DPC must now also investigate an original 2013 complaint that lead to the CJEU decision. The original complaints procedure will run in parallel with the new "own volition" investigation.
Twitter has previously confirmed that it’s exploring a paid subscription model for some features, and app researcher Jane Manchun Wong tweeted Saturday that she’s discovered how much it will cost and what it will be called. Twitter Blue, Wong says, will cost $2.99 per month, and will include an Undo Tweets feature and bookmark collections. Wong says it appears Twitter is working on a tiered subscription model, which she posits could mean a less-cluttered, premium experience for the highest-paying subscribers.
Privacy just as Security is a never ending story.
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but it does not end with advertisements… Google is making a massive push into BigHealthData.
While it makes sense to monitor the environment for hazardous chemicals and one’s vital signs for any problems… (e.g. too less Fitness, says the Fitness Tracker) it shall done with very transparent Open Source systems only, so the user is in complete control over the user’s data (and can share it with a doc if user wants to… via an usb stick or Mail-Attachment.encrypted)… but not via the Google Cloud (as Google plans to).
The sailing ship is a textbook example of sustainability. For at least 4,000 years, sailing ships have transported passengers and cargo across the world’s seas and oceans without using a single drop of fossil fuels. If we want to keep travelling and trading globally in a low carbon society, sailing ships are the obvious alternative to container ships, bulk carriers, and airplanes.
However, by definition, the sailing ship is not a carbon neutral technology. For most of history, sailing ships were built from wood, but back then whole forests were felled for ships, and those trees often did not grow back. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, sailing ships were increasingly made from steel, which also has a significant carbon footprint.
The carbon neutrality of sailing in the 21st century is even more elusive. That’s because we have changed profoundly since the Age of Sail. Compared to our forebears, we have higher demands in terms of safety, comfort, convenience, and cleanliness. These higher standards are difficult to achieve unless the ship also has a diesel engine and generator on-board.
While smartphones, smart homes and even smart wearables are growing ever more advanced, they're still limited by power. The battery hasn't advanced in decades. But we're on the verge of a power revolution.
Big technology and car companies are all too aware of the limitations of lithium-ion batteries. While chips and operating systems are becoming more efficient to save power we're still only looking at a day or two of use on a smartphone before having to recharge.
While it may be some time before we get a week's life out of our phones, development is progressing well. We've collected all the best battery discoveries that could be with us soon, from over the air charging to super-fast 30-second re-charging. Hopefully, you'll be seeing this tech in your gadgets soon.
These are not just one-off tragedies. Some experts warn that complex home-based medical care is on a collision course with climate change, as severe weather events become more frequent nationwide.
The framing of climate change, in particular, as something that wouldn’t be an issue if “we” had all just made better consumer choices has been persistent and effective. Every Earth Day, we’re bombarded with tips about how to minimize our personal carbon footprints; meanwhile, it’s 2021 and the GOP is still suggesting tree-planting as climate policy.
A new paper from Harvard science historians Naomi Oreskes and Geoffrey Supran shows that this sort of framing is no accident, it was by design. Oreskes was the co-author of the landmark 2010 book The Merchants of Doubt, which exposed that some of the same scientists who had spun and downplayed the health risks of smoking for tobacco companies had pushed climate denial for oil companies. The new paper, published this week in One Earth, focuses on the subtle rhetorical techniques of ExxonMobil, which is currently a defendant in more than two dozen lawsuits over its role in concealing and confusing the issue of climate change since the 1980s.
In the past two weeks two global superpowers have had to face an unsettling reality - census results in the US and in China indicate that both countries are likely to start shrinking in population much sooner than they thought.
In the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic, the editorial board of the Financial Times € (4/20/20), perhaps the most important newspaper of capital in the English-speaking world, fretted about how the pandemic could upend labor relations. After the Black Death of the 1300s, the paper noted, the population decline meant surviving peasants had the leverage to demand higher pay. The editors assured their readers that nothing so radical was coming due to Covid-19: “A thankfully much lower mortality rate means such a transformation is unlikely,” the editors said.
In 1989, several urgent counter-initiatives were launched: Exxon formulated an internal plan for how to drive home "the uncertainty in scientific conclusions regarding the potential enhanced Greenhouse effect" and ran its first advertorial on the subject. A suite of companies set up the Global Climate Coalition to contest the science. The key conservative think tank known as the George C. Marshall Institute published its first report attacking it. When more than a hundred heads of state gathered in Rio de Janeiro in the summer of 1992 and adopted the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), with its call to prevent "dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system," further alarm was stoked. Socialism appeared to be passing out of history, but at the very same moment, fossil capital had to gear up for a war to safeguard its freedom.
The AA isn’t the only group that’s found itself unable to communicate through Facebook. There are apparently many ethnic armed organizations (EAOs) active in the country, some of which have banded together as a resistance to the coup government, which has been violently cracking down on pro-democracy protestors. Many of their Facebook pages were also restricted back in 2019, under orders of the democratically elected government, which has since been overthrown.
According to Rest of World, the ban of EAOs was controversial before the coup as well: some argue that it prevented the spread of information about human rights violations, like the genocide against the Rohingya Muslims carried out by the Tatmadaw. Now, EAOs and journalists in the country argue that Facebook’s bans prevent them from showing what’s happening in the struggle against the current military government. The director of a human rights organization told Rest of World that the bans are “like trying to close the people’s eyes and ears.”
On Tuesday, a noted Palestinian-American journalist reporting live from protests near Jerusalem was suddenly and mysteriously silenced on Twitter — with every single tweet replaced by the message “@MariamBarghouti’s account is temporarily unavailable because it violates the Twitter Media Policy.” It was a mistake, the company quickly admitted, and her tweets were quickly restored.
President Biden on Friday revoked several of former President Trump’s executive orders, including one that would have changed legal protections for social media sites and other online platforms.
Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act limits how much online platforms can be held liable for content users share on their platforms. The Trump order, titled “preventing online censorship,” would have allowed federal authorities to hold companies like Twitter, Google, and Facebook responsible if they were found to be infringing on users’ speech by deleting or otherwise modifying users’ posts.
Israel destroyed a high-rise building in Gaza City that housed offices of The Associated Press, Al-Jazeera and other media outlets on Saturday, the latest step by Israel to silence reporting.
The US has never been an honest broker in this conflict.
Ethiopia has revoked the press credentials of a foreign journalist working for the New York Times, according to the newspaper and an Ethiopian official.
The Times said in an article on Thursday that Simon Marks, an Irish national who reports for it and other publications, had his credentials revoked by the Ethiopian Broadcasting Authority in early March, after returning to Addis Ababa from the Tigray region, where he had interviewed civilian war survivors.
One hundred and fifty years ago, in the bloody wake of the Civil War, the abolitionist Julia Ward Howe issued a “Mother’s Day Proclamation.” The world, she wrote, could no longer bear such terrible violence and death. She called on women across the country to “rise up through the ashes and devastation” and come together in the cause of peace. Forty years later, her daughter Anna Jarvis created Mother’s Day.
A borderless world is what can lie in the aftermath of a global pandemic.
The failures of the food system€ during the pandemic showed us that€ the€ corporate-consolidated mode of farming inflexible and wasteful.
Security guards at Amazon’s Bessemer, Ala., facility had keys to a mailbox that the company recommended workers use to vote in the unionization election earlier this year, a worker at the facility alleged during a National Labor Relations Board hearing Friday.
Kevin Jackson said during the sixth day of hearings over the union’s challenge to the results that he had seen two guards use keys to open one of the thirteen slots on the mailbox.
The Verge’s Infrastructure Week focused partly on how dire the broadband problem currently is for Americans. On Monday, we showed you a map of the worst counties for broadband in the US — and on Friday, we closed the week by showing how satellite services like Starlink aren’t enough to close that gap.
But even for the people who do have high-speed internet access, many of them have done desperate things to secure access to it. Our team resides all around the US, and they’ve shared some personal tales below about their experiences getting (or failing to get) high-speed internet.
But we also want to know what lengths you’ve gone to for internet access. Did you have to plead with an unwilling internet service provider to branch out its high-speed service to your area? Did you resort to using a device in an unintended way to get internet access? Did you use any clever workarounds to improve your internet (or piggy-back on a neighbor’s)? Share your story in the comments below.
Companies such as Apple and John Deere have fought vehemently against such legislation in several states, but the letters, sent to bill sponsor David Harris and six other lawmakers and obtained by Motherboard, show that other companies are fighting against right to repair as well.
“Initially inspired by a workshop in 2019,” the Examiner continues, “the FTC spent two years delving into the specific data points and complaints that consumers, companies, and advocates all had about the state of repairability among consumer devices. Over that period, the FTC found several intentional design choices that limited the ability to repair a device. These included making parts inaccessible, imposing software locks, enforcing patents, and requiring users to use company-certified repair services.”
After concluding that there is “scant evidence” to support manufacturers' justifications for repair restrictions, the FTC report encouraged state and federal legislators to consider “right-to-repair” bills which would compel companies to make their designs easier to repair.
From a libertarian perspective, is this a type of bodily/personal autonomy "property" right?
Americas editor Patrick Wingrove sat down with counsel at Kasowitz to talk about Apple v Fintiv, the challenges and opportunities of remote litigation, choosing a jury in Alan Albright’s court and diversity and inclusion.
He was joined by Silicon Valley partners Jonathan Waldrop, Darcy Jones and Marcus Barber.
Moeller IP will be offering a webinar entitled "Patent Extensions in Brazil & Mexico" on May 18, 2021 at 11:00 am (ET). The webinar will address the Brazilian Supreme Court's final ruling on the current suspension of Article 40 of the Industrial Property Law (Law 9.279 / 1996) setting forth a minimum period of patent validity of 10 years, and the Mexican Supreme Court's decision from October 2020, which extended the period of validity of Mexican Patent No. 238942.
We believe Friday's ITC ruling against IQOS, in the U.S. patent lawsuit brought by British American Tobacco, has limited impact.
We believe patent claims against IQOS have no merit; Philip Morris has already successfully invalidated several in other courts globally.
The European Patent Office (EPO) recently announced the finalists for the 2021 edition of the European Inventor Award.
Indian-American Sumita Mitra, who invented the first dental filling material to include nanoparticles is one of the 15 inventor and inventor teams shortlisted from 400 nominations from across the world.
Prudent businesses have insurance to protect against damages and losses from fire, natural disasters, theft and even cybercrimes. And prudent businesses also take steps to secure their intangible assets — the ideas, brands, inventions and other forms of intellectual property that distinguish them from their competitors and make them profitable.
A key mechanism in patent litigation and specifically for generics is the concept of “launch at risk”. In short the concept means that a product is launched prior to the expiry of a patent despite the risk that the patent proprietor in such case could initiate infringement proceedings which often includes requests for a preliminary injunction. The products are nevertheless launched since it is assumed that the patents will be revoked. If an interim injunction is laid down and the patent later on proves to be invalid, then the preliminary injunction has been laid down in error. In such case the patent holder is strictly liable (at least in Sweden) for any damage suffered by the injuncted party. According Article 9(7) of Directive 2004/48/EC (in short the Enforcement Directive) the member states shall ensure that judicial authorities have the authority, given certain circumstances, to provide the defendant appropriate compensation for any injury caused by provisional measures.
This concept was not considered too problematic up until article 9(7) was interpreted by the CJEU in C-688/17 (the Bayer judgment). Ever since the Hungarian court submitted their questions to the CJEU it has again been a matter of discussion, worry or anticipation. Even after the judgment that has not changed very much although the debate on how to interpret the judgment in C-688/17 has continued.
The focal point in the debate was if the the judgment in C-688/17 suggested a change of the launch at risk concept – especially for the concept of indemnification. A change to this concept would most certainly dramatically alter the competitive landscape on the pharmaceutical market.
Regarding intellectual property rights, we were recently granted a patent in India, adding to previously granted patents in all 38 member states of the European Patent Office (EPO), the U.S., Canada, Japan, China, the Republic of Korea and eight other countries. We also added a number of approvals to our trademark portfolio during the quarter. Our branding strategy includes securing global trademark and domain protection for five separate trademark families. The trademarks are required for registration application in various countries, but we also see opportunities for our own trademark in certain markets to complement our partners’ established trademarks in other regions or markets.
On March 9, 2021, the Company received a Notice of Allowance from the European Patent Office for a new patent application covering Adva-27a. The newly issued patent contains new subject matter and extends the proprietary protection of Adva-27a in Europe until 2033. The equivalent patent in the United States was issued in 2019 (US Patent Number 10,272,065).
Unified Patents has asked the Patent Trial and Appeal Board's precedent-setting panel to clarify the degree to which patent challengers can rely on statements in a patent's written description to challenge validity — and it's getting help from a former acting director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
Joseph Matal of Haynes & Boone, who served as the interim USPTO director in 2017, filed a request with the board on May 4 for Unified Patents to file an amicus brief in a case that upheld an SMA Solar Technology AG patent challenged by Solaredge Technologies Ltd.
Price. Some amount of obfuscation will be familiar to patent attorneys today across various fields. Although not illegal, most patents avoid detailing the core invention — what really is the improvement over the prior art. Likewise, some patent attorneys will have walked the tight-line between the patentability disclosure requirement and client-interest in keeping certain trade secrets. Some patent attorneys are hard at work attempting to beat the PTO’s AI system that routes patent applications to the various art units (some of which are seen as more favorable than others). Many are also trying to figure out ways to patent inventions that are close to the abstract-idea line without sending the case back to the inventors for more inventing. Perhaps all of this goes along with traditional core roles of attorneys — advocating and keeping secrets.
That’s according to the European Patent Office (EPO) and the International Energy Agency (IEA), who have issued their second report into the growth of the technologies needed to support the transition to greener types of energy. Called Patents and the energy transition: Global trends in clean energy technology innovation, the report examines the link between patented developments and support for greener energy use. The shift to LCE can only be achieved through an acceleration in energy-sector innovation, the report’s authors state.
In a pair of CBM decisions, the PTAB found New Vision’s patent claims ineligible under Section 101. New Vision had proposed alternative claims, but those were also found to be invalid. On appeal, the Federal Circuit did not review the merits, but instead vacated and remanded on Arthrex grounds.
The Federal Circuit on Monday considered for the second time whether Patent Trial and Appeal Board judges are financially motivated to institute patent challenges, and while the panel majority again seemed unpersuaded, Judge Pauline Newman voiced serious concern over the patent judges' bonus structure.
The court's longest-serving judge said Article III judges like herself aren't given bonuses based on how many cases they decide and questioned why administrative patent judges should be financially rewarded for their productivity.
“Ruling the world” (April 24th) made the point that British lawyers have lost the right to practise in Europe, potentially undermining the reach of British courts and practitioners. One important area where the links remain is patents. The European Patent Convention (and its associated European Patent Office) is an international treaty organisation independent of the eu, and so British-based patent attorneys can still prosecute European patent filings in Munich and The Hague. Britain is a member of its board.
British patent courts are often used to clear the way for new innovators faced by threats of injunctions or costly licences. That’s an important service the British legal system can still provide to the world.
This application was refused by the INPI (i.e. French Patent and Trademark Office) on August 1, 2019 pursuant to Article 3(a) of Regulation (EC) No. 469/2009. The Office decided that while the claims of the basic patent did implicitly and necessarily relate to osimertinib, they did not specifically relate to it, since osimertinib was neither mentioned in the specification of the patent nor identifiable as such. Although the evidence produced by the applicant (subsequent patents relating to osimertinib, scientific publications) demonstrates that the basic patent undoubtedly contributed to the state of the art and enabled research into an EGFR receptor inhibitor to progress, it does not in any way make it possible to establish that the active principle osimertinib, which led to the medicine that gave rise to the marketing authorization, was not the result of an autonomous inventive step within the meaning of the Royalty Pharma jurisprudence. Moreover, several years of research were needed to precisely and specifically identify osimertinib as an active product, since osimertinib was only claimed in a patent on July 25, 2012 by Astrazeneca, which confirms that upon reading all the information contained in the basic patent in the light of its knowledge, this product was unknown to the person skilled in the art at the filing date in 2006. The skilled person could not directly and unequivocally infer osimertinib from said patent, its discovery being the result of several years of complex research.
The COVID-19 pandemic and the associated travel restrictions have prevented, and continue to prevent, many parties and representatives from attending oral proceedings in person. To ensure timely access to justice, the Boards of Appeal introduced the option of conducting oral proceedings by videoconference in May 2020.
A Markush claim is a particular kind of patent claim that lists alternative species or elements in a patent claim, which is commonly used in chemical and pharmaceutical patents. However, each patent office has different interpretation on the definition of the Markush claims, as well as the legality of deleting several alternative elements in the Markush group in a post-grant amendment.
In Beijing Winsunny Harmony Science & Technology Co., Ltd. v. Daiichi Sankyo Co., Ltd., the Patent Reexamination Board (“PRB”), the Beijing First Intermediate People’s Court (“BFIPC”), the Beijing High People’s Court (“BHPC”) and the Supreme People’s Court (“SPC”) each held different opinions on the construction of Markush claims and the allowability of the post-grant amendment. The SPC finally overturned the second-instance judgement. The article aims to introduce the current practical interpretation of Markush claims in China built by the SPC judgement 1.
Sending a warning letter is not a pre-condition to enforce patent rights as per Turkish Law. However, considering it is a cost-effective and fast way to solve disputes, patent owners may choose to send warning letters to perceived infringers.
In 2014, a global pharmaceutical company filed a patent infringement action against a Gx company asking the IP Court to request and examine the related evidence; namely, the marketing authorisation dossier of the Gx drug filed before the Ministry of Health (“MoH”), and to stop and prevent the infringement if so determined. Before filing the action, the patent owner requested the Gx company to provide the relevant characteristics of the Gx product to assess patent infringement. The Gx company did not comply with the request, and the patent owner requested the IP Court to examine the MA dossiers of the Gx product and assess the possible infringement. The patent infringement action against the Gx Company was rejected after the court expert panel examined the MA dossiers and concluded that the patent was not infringed upon.
On 11 May 2021, 80 representatives of 40 national offices (in 38 EPO member states and two future member states) and the EUIPO met online for the 15th annual meeting on co-operation. Among the delegates were 26 heads of IP Offices.
In his opening address, Vice-President Legal and International Affairs Christoph Ernst highlighted the need to "keep delivering on our co-operation efforts and continue to build a stronger IP system that supports inventors. So IP and innovation can play their part in powering recovery.'' The disruption caused by the pandemic also presented opportunities as the EPO and member states work towards a new normal, said Mr Ernst. He thanked EPO member states for contributing to the public consultation process on the EPO's initial proposals for a new normal ahead of the submission of an orientation document for approval by the Administrative Council.
Further, Mr Ernst stressed the importance of maintaining the momentum gained in European co-operation, and of meeting the broader public's need for transparency: "IP cannot be a discussion that takes place behind closed doors. We ourselves have to provide a platform which allows us to continually evaluate the innovation sector and the patent system in dialogue with other stakeholders. To let the light in. So I think now is precisely the time to push forward with plans for the patent observatory."
While pressure is building up on TRIPS Council for the suspension of certain obligations under the TRIPS Agreement during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Brazilian Senate approved on 29 April 2021 a bill facilitating the compulsory licensing of COVID-19 vaccines’ patents. The bill will be voted by the Brazilian House of Representatives and, if approved, it will be submitted to the Brazilian President for approval and publication. If the House of Representatives amends the bill, the bill will be remitted to the Senate before it is submitted to the Brazilian President. The Brazilian President may veto the whole bill or part of it, but the veto can be defeated by the majority of the two houses of the Brazilian Congress.
The bill approved by the Brazilian Senate amends the provisions of the Brazilian Industrial Property Act 1996 on compulsory licensing of patents in cases of national emergency or public interest. In its current version, Article 71 of the Brazilian Industrial Property Act 1996 allows the temporary and non-exclusive compulsory licensing of patents where the patent proprietor is unable to meet national emergency and public interest’s needs. According to the regulation of Article 71 adopted in the Presidential Decree 3.201 of 1999, cases of public interest include matters related to public health, environmental protection, food security as well as matters concerning Brazil’s technological and socio-economic development. In addition to stating that the COVID-19 pandemic is a case of national emergency, the bill approved by the Brazilian Senate amends the wording of Article 71, introducing new rules on the compulsory licensing of patents.
Senator Lindsey Graham expressed concerns over the Avanci 5G patent pool in a letter to the Department of Justice shortly after the platform was launched in July 2020, it emerged this week as part of a freedom of information request made by Managing IP last year.
According to a letter sent to now-former attorney general William Barr and then-antitrust head Makan Delrahim, the now-ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee (and former committee chair) Graham said he was also concerned that the antitrust division’s actions “were unnecessary”.
The United States (US) marked a new stage in re-opening its economy this week, allowing vaccinated citizens to remove masks in a number of situations and opening vaccinations up to adolescents as young as 12. Meanwhile, the Biden Administration’s support for negotiating a TRIPS Agreement waiver for COVID-19 related vaccines at the World Trade Organization (WTO) continues to cause debate in the United States and European Union (EU).
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US support for negotiating a TRIPS waiver has created a lot of debate in the EU. European Commission Executive Vice President and Trade Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis reiterated the EU is open to discuss the US proposal, but Executive Director of the European Medicines Agency Emer Cooke appeared more skeptical of the “equitable access” of vaccines. Some Members of the European Parliament are currently pushing the leaders of various political parties to table a resolution that, if adopted, would urge the European Commission to support the US proposal. Meanwhile, the European Commission approved a contract of an additional 1.8 billion doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech coronavirus vaccines through 2023.
The Master Class rounded out with a panel on the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, which discussed topics such as damages, the difficulties and advantages of remote arguments, the move to streaming arguments on YouTube, and the steps implemented meant to encourage young lawyers to argue cases before the panel. Among the speakers was Judge Kimberly Moore, the court’s incoming Chief Judge.
Prost became chief judge at a tumultuous time seven years ago. Under her watch the court's dissent rate has been down, the number of en banc opinions fewer, and the Supreme Court's review more sparing.
Sharon Prost took the helm of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit seven years ago in stormy seas.
Some members of the court were openly battling with the Supreme Court about patent eligibility and other intellectual property issues, leading to increasing scrutiny from the justices. The Federal Circuit’s own attempt to forge a consensus on eligibility led to a nightmare of six concurring, dissenting and reflecting opinions from the denial of en banc review in a 2013 case. Over the next 12 months, then-Chief Judge Randall Rader would publicly criticize “patent trolls” in the New York Times, compare U.S. Patent and Trademark Office administrative judges to a “death squad” for patent rights, and then leave the court suddenly under an ethical cloud.
EUIPO notes that the domain name system is indispensable to the functioning of the internet, with the number of domain names now exceeding 375 million globally. Domain names also play a central role in a number of IP-infringing online business models that have damaging effects on consumers, IP owners and the entire domain name ecosystem.
According to the report, in 2020 Amazon prevented over six million attempts to create new dubious selling accounts and blocked more than 10 billion suspected bad listings. It also seized and destroyed more than two million products that were detected as counterfeit before they were sent to customers.
The number of brands using Amazon’s intellectual property protection programmes also grew. Users of Amazon’s Brand Registry – which gives brand owners access to enhanced reporting tools – increased from 10,000 to 15,000, and those using Project Zero – a service that allows IP owners to remove listings themselves – rose from 10,000 to 18,000.
On paper, these numbers may appear impressive, and show the sheer scale of counterfeiting that brand owners are up against. Clearly, Amazon is trying to engage with rights owners and move away from any notion that it merely provides a platform on which counterfeiters can thrive.
The calculation of damages for copyright infringement is something that this Kat finds to be curious, sometimes sending her into a fuurrry, and other times she's left wondering why the parties wasted their time over such a small recovery. She'll let readers decide for themselves where this case falls...
In 2019, IPKat reported that Funky Bass Team Productions successfully sued Let Them Eat Vinyl Distribution for copyright infringement for creating vinyl copies of Eminem's first album, Infinite. Although neither of the defendants were liable for secondary infringement (importing, offering for sale and selling copies of the Infinite album) as there was found to be no knowledge. In this latest hearing, parties disputed the damages for the primary infringement.
The applicant, PRS, is a performing rights collecting society, whose members are writers, composers and publishers of musical works. Their rights in these works include public performance and communication to the public in the UK, as well as performing rights for all countries in the world.
The defendant, Qatar Airways (QA), is the national passenger airline for Qatar, with 206 commercial passenger aircrafts which fly to 160 destinations in 80 countries. QA offers an inflight entertainment system "Oryx One". PRS said that passengers can access audio and audio-visual content via individual onboard screens and headphones, or via an app called Oryx One Play, downloadable on a laptop, mobile or tablet. The app, PRS claimed, allows passengers to create playlists of content prior to boarding that can be accessed by the passenger before, during and after a flight. QA said that the app is only available on aircrafts that do not have the Oryx One onboard screen system and that it cannot be used on laptops. They said that Oryx One does not stream audio/audio-visual content except for some trailers and scheduled content which can only be transferred from the app to the onboard entertainment screen if the aircraft is fitted with near field communication. They also said that the system is only provided during flight, not before or after.
Earlier this year, the US Supreme Court decided this case in favor of Google’s fair use argument and rejecting the Federal Circuit’s opposite conclusion. On remand, the Federal Circuit has now issued a short order in the case sending it back down to the District Court.
In its order, the Federal Circuit recalled its mandate in the case “solely with respect to fair use.” That means that its judgment favoring Oracle on the question of copyrightability still stands. Finally, the “district court’s final judgment in favor of Google is affirmed.” Neither party had filed additional briefs in the appeal following the Supreme Court’s decision.
This review is brought to you by Dr Paula Westenberger, Lecturer in Intellectual Property Law, Brunel University London. Her research interests cover the intersection between copyright law, human rights and culture, with particular focus on topics including limitations and exceptions to copyright, the use of digital technology by cultural heritage institutions, and the relationship between artistic freedom and copyright law. She is currently researching the interface between cultural heritage, artificial intelligence and copyright law.
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Lucas Lixinski, in Chapter 1 “Regional and international treaties on intangible cultural heritage: between tradition and contemporary culture”, analyses the difficult relationship, in terms of definition, between cultural heritage and the present, particularly in the broader context of international heritage law, where there is a strong “pull to focus on the past” (page 33). Lixinski notes, however, the promising turn towards safeguarding and social processes in the context of the 2003 UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage (“2003 UNESCO Convention”) and of the Council of Europe’s 2005 Faro Convention on the Value of Cultural Heritage for Society (“2005 Faro Convention”). Lixinski concludes that, rather than relying on definitions, embracing safeguarding practices may allow the “contemporary” into ICH, even if indirectly. Lixinski also discusses the tensions between universal and regional heritage protection approaches, but suggests a possible interpretation of the 2003 UNESCO Convention in light of the 2005 Faro Convention, alerting however to the selectivity of regional heritage law.
Fiona Macmillan, in Chapter 2 “Contemporary ICH: between community and market”, discusses the concept of the authorised heritage discourse, and the difficulties of state-based international law in recognizing communities. Macmillan acknowledges, however, some signs in more recent international cultural heritage law towards “recognizing that the central function of cultural heritage law should be to provide community with the means to express its identity and the collective claims that flow from that identity” (page 52). Macmillan discusses the protection of ICH through a process of listing, and also notes the possible overlap between ICH as a contemporary phenomenon and the type of cultural practices protected by intellectual property. Macmillan argues that “unconstrained by any legally imposed attempt at balance or restraint, the transcendence of total market thinking in the neo-liberal period has prioritized private property rights and their market exploitation over the demands of the contemporary cultural heritage community” (page 53). Macmillan thus concludes that the 2003 UNESCO Convention should be offering protection against such private appropriations of cultural heritage.
Yvonne Donders, in Chapter 3 “Protection and promot
Before being shut down by law enforcement, Jetflicks and iStreamitAll were said to be two of the largest pirate streaming services in the United States. Darryl Julius Polo, who founded iStreamitAll and programmed for Jetflicks, has now been sentenced to 57-months in prison and will forfeit $1 million. But that's just the beginning.
