Contents

• GNU/Linux
  • Distributions
  • Devices/Embedded
• Free Software/Open Source
• Leftovers
• Clip of the Day

GNU/Linux

• Desktop

  • Can you think of a better way to spread the use of Linux?

    Camfed International, UK, contracted 1ViLLAGE to set up 48 seats of Ubuntu Linux desktops in four districts in the Northern Region of Ghana. They also provided user training for the project. I reproduce here some photos of the computers as posted by @opentechgirl. The question I’d like you to help me answer is, can you think of a better way to bring Linux to Africa?

• Kernel Space

  • Huge page handling and CFS with tickless kernel highlights of RHEL 6 beta

    Last week, Red Hat released the beta version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 to the public, moving the next major release of their popular server operating system into the testing and hardening phase.

    I spoke with Tim Burke, Vice President of Linux Engineering at Red Hat, and he filled me in on some of the details. Red Hat also has posted a blog with extensive product specs for RHEL 6 on their website.

• Applications

  • Leafpad: Yet another Linux text editor

    In my most recent series of articles I have been highlighting different Linux text editors. Why? Because a lot of users hate using text based editors. Although a big fan of the text-based editor (I like the simplicity and the speed), I can see where a solid GUI tool would be far more appealing to many users than the text-based editor.

  • Discrete Geometry Viewer—Image Analysis and Manipulation

    Developed by Australian PhD student Shekhar Chandra at Monash University, Discrete Geometry Viewer (DGV) is an intriguing piece of software. As a general package, DGV, along with its various extensions, is a quantum mechanical toolkit and 3-D viewer for C++. It allows data visualisation via images, surface and volume plots using OpenGL, as well as rapidly developed Quantum Mechanical Simulations. It uses the Blitz++, VTK visualisation and open-source Qt libraries.

  • Instructionals

    • The Perfect Server – OEL 5.4 [ISPConfig 3]

    • Useful cd command tips

    • Google Chrome and /dev/shm

    • Amahi 5.3: Storage pooling & replication, UI improvements, … April 27

    • How to enable Wi-Fi in Asus Eee 1201N and 1201T [Ubuntu 10.04 Linux]

    • HOWTO: Install e17 from SVN/source on Ubuntu

    • How to fix Firefox slow problem in ubuntu 10.04(Lucid)

    • Restore Failure

    • Implementing a shared cache: Part 2

    • Ubuntu for Facebook Users

    • Howto Show Home/MyComputer in Ubuntu Desktop Permanently

    • How to Fix the Big and Ugly Plymouth Logo in Ubuntu 10.04

    • Don’t let updatedb take your Linux down

    • Improving your resolv.conf file

    • Blender 2.49 Scripting: Shape Keys, IPOs, and Poses

    • Recover Data Like a Forensics Expert Using an Ubuntu Live CD

    • Make a multi-boot Live USB with MultiBoot

    • Building a Fedora 13 Beta Remix
      

      I am building from within a Fedora 13 Beta KVM virtual machine. I composed the first build yesterday and installed it on my netbook last night. I have noticed a few glitches in my initial package selection. For example I installed sugar* and that brought all of the sugar packages including sugar-logos which is a boot-time Plymouth animation. As a result, booting my netbook for the first time after install showed the Sugar animation which I wasn’t expecting at all. Also the number of packages I had was right on the edge of 2GB and I wanted to insure that it would continue to fit on a 2GB USB thumbdrive… so I decided to update the package set. I decided to remove sugar completely because that would free up some room and get rid of unwanted boot animation.

    • Set up Ubuntu 10.04 Server PV DomU at Xen 4.0 Dom0 (pvops 2.6.32.12 kernel) Dom0 on top of Ubuntu 10.04 Server

    • Datacenter Barometer: Xen Unconcerned About Getting the RHEL 6 Boot

    • Facebook’s impending fight with D.C. (FAQ)

      You probably have a Facebook account–well over 400 million people do. You’ve probably noticed that the look and feel of your profile have recently changed (again).

      And you’ve probably heard a lot recently about Facebook changing its privacy policies (again). Maybe you’ve even seen something about a rumor that Facebook employees say offhand that CEO Mark Zuckerberg “doesn’t believe in” privacy–and how some people very high up in Washington are starting to take notice. Will government intervention in Facebook be saving you from unwanted snooping or just interfering in your Mafia Wars games? A lot’s still unanswered, but here’s what you need to know now.

    • Why some compilers suck more than others

  • Games

    • Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup 0.6.0

      What’s probably my favorite Linux game from the past year, Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup, is now at version 0.6.0! It’s a roguelike game that comes in graphical and console flavors (don’t eat it), and is fairly easy to get the hang of. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still a roguelike and you’ll probably die a thousand painful deaths (I was killed by bee stings once), but there’s a tutorial and many, many character combinations to suit different play styles.

    • Here’s The First Screenshot Of The Linux Steam Client

      Less than two weeks ago we reported on the Mac OS X Steam client confirming the existence of a Linux client and then found more Linux references too. We then found the unreleased Steam Linux binaries that were under active development. Some still didn’t believe the existence of a Steam client for Linux with Source Engine support, but it’s something we have said for nearly two years based upon our sources and then the emergence of these binaries.

      These Linux binaries didn’t successfully run, but now some independent users managed to get the first Steam client window to appear. Below is the first screenshot of the Steam Linux client provided to us by a Phoronix reader known as Kame.

    • 24 Extra Hot Free Linux Games (Part 1 of 3)

      If Linux is going to make significant strides in increasing market desktop share, it needs to be able to compete with Windows in all areas. The average computer user typically just wants a single operating system to use for their work, to surf the net, to keep in contact with family and friends, and to have some fun. Having to reboot between operating systems is frankly too inconvenient for many users, as well as being perceived as too difficult. Whilst you can run many Windows software from Linux (e.g. by using virtualisation software, or Wine), again this simply appears to add to the complexity of using the PC. Furthermore, whilst Wine does allow some of the hottest Windows games to run under Linux, it is inevitable there will always be some incompatibility issues.

    • PlayOnLinux 3.7.5 is available

    • q4wine 0.118 has been released

      It is time for new q4wine release tagged by 0.118 version.

      I would like to introduce everyone to our new Wine AppDB browser engine, new helper which allows to trace wine app status, and more.

• Desktop Environments

  • K Desktop Environment (KDE SC)

    • KDevelop 4.0 Stable Released into the Wild

      The KDevelop Hackers are proud and happy to announce that KDevelop 4.0 is finally available as a stable release. Released together is the first version of KDevelop PHP plugins, which make KDevelop a very interesting option for PHP developers.

    • Plasmoids in windows

      Since forever (where we define the start of time to be when I started working on Plasma) it has been possible to run Plasmoids, or any widget that Plasma can display, in a window on its own using plasmoidviewer. It isn’t completely satisfactory for running widgets in a window, though, because at its heart plasmoidviewer is a development tool meant for testing and debugging Plasmoids.

  • GNOME Desktop

    • Nautilus file conflict bug Fixed after 8 years

• Distributions

  • New Releases

    • Yoper 2010 – Codename Dresden available

      After an extended RC1 period and a few hiccups with our main server we’re finally happy to announce the immediate availability of Yoper Linux 2010. The RC2 feedback was a big thumps up from all sides.

    • Clonezilla 1.2.5-6

    • CDlinux 0.9.6.1

    • Ekaaty 4u1

    • pQui 3.0

  • Fedora

    • Expected features in Fedora 13 Goddard

      boot.fedoraproject.org (BFO) is one of the unique features in Fedora. This effort by Fedora community hopes to completely remove DVD installations in long term. It allows users to download a single, tiny image and install current and future versions of Fedora without having to download additional images.
      This method is similar to Pxeboot, can also be considered as a Fedora branded version ofboot.kernel.org.

  • Ubuntu

    • Much Awaited And Fully Loaded Ubuntu 10.04 LTS “Lucid Lynx” Released!

    • Ubuntu 10.04 – Perfect

    • Ubuntu 10.04 Screenshots

    • Put Windows to the Most Appropriate Use: Create a Bootable USB Stick with Ubuntu 10.04

      The following steps provide two methods of putting the fresh new release of Ubuntu 10.04 LTS (Lucid Lynx) on a USB stick. The first method will create a bootable USB stick with a live version and the second process will create a live version with persistence. Both methods are an excellent way to always have your favorite Ubuntu system and software with you at all times and it makes for one of the simplest ways to conduct an install to a hard drive.

    • Ubuntu Lucid Lynx 10.04 Post Installation Guide

    • (X)ubuntu 10.04

      On a final note, I will say that performance has improved drastically with the 10.04 release. Some of the issues I encountered in the previous kernel version have also been resolved. The boot time is only a fraction of what it was in 9.10, and with 10.04 being a LTS release, I am very confident that I will be more than satisfied with the *buntu family of operating systems for quite some time. The speed, security, simplicity, and stability are definitely unmatched by previous releases, and compete well with many of the other systems currently available.

    • Next Ubuntu netbook edition will have global menu

      Incidentally, the Netbook Edition of Canonical’s Ubuntu 10.04, which will be officially released tomorrow, features the “industry-leading interface for these smaller screens,” the company claims.

    • Variants

      • What’s New In Kubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx

        The Kubuntu Netboot Remix is now officially available with Kubuntu 10.04. It uses KDE SC 4.4 plamsa-netbook interface.

      • The Coding Studio OS Screenshots

      • Ubuntu Rescue Remix – Version 10.04

        Version 10.04 (Lucid Lynx) of the very best Free-Libre Open-Source data recovery software toolkit based on Ubuntu is out.

      • Ultimate Edition 2.6

        Ultimate Edition 2.6 is golden.

    • Mint

      • News update

        This is just a brief news update about what is going on at the moment:

        * Release date: The latest ISO is passing all my tests and I’m approving it for an RC release. It still needs to go through Exploder’s testing and it requires his approval before it can go out publicly.
        * Windows installer: Mint4Win is back and it’s fully functional. The version that comes with the CD installs what’s on the CD. We’re also considering to maintain a standalone version which would be able to download and install editions of Linux Mint as we release them.

• Devices/Embedded

  • Phones

    • Mobile is the New Desktop: The HP/Palm Q&A

      Q: But why now?
      A: Because for all of the penetration of the iPhone and Android class devices, this market is just getting started. Look at any hardware vendor’s roadmap and you’re likely to see not only a smartphone play, but all manner of MID/tablet/smartbook devices as well – largely ARM driven. Because that’s a compelling market. The hardware, of course, is only one part of the equation. And, arguably, not the hardest part.

    • Nokia Qt SDK beta has adorable mobile simulators

      Nokia is developing a new Qt SDK that will simplify the development of cross-platform mobile applications. A beta release, which was made available this week, includes the Qt Creator integrated development environment (IDE), comprehensive Qt reference documentation, and mobile simulators that make it possible to see how a Qt application will look and feel on MeeGo or Symbian.

    • Android

      • Mobile phone sales rise as Andoid online usage soars

      • Google reportedly preparing to intro TV software next month

        Google’s TV plans have yet to be officially confirmed, though they have been rumored for at least a month now. Consistent with the company’s strategy in other areas, Google isn’t expected to be involved in manufacturing set-top boxes; rather, the company is supposedly developing a version of Android that would be especially conducive to the big screen. Third-party developers would then be able to write their own apps for the devices, giving more openness and flexibility to people’s TV watching habits.

  • Sub-notebooks

    • Proposal from OLPC Paraguay on how to manage Sugar or other educational software

      The project to deliver One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) for educational purpose in developing countries is doing great in Paraguay. According to developer Bernie Innocenti, this success comes from a way to manage the development of the Sugar educational software that other countries (or any other similar projects, see for example the Teachermate or the italian JumpPC) could and should imitate.

Free Software/Open Source

• The Magic Black Box Paradox of Freedom

  Freedom is the ability to do what one wants. Some restrictions to freedom are understandable and necessary. No sane individual would argue for the freedom to kill, or the freedom to steal. In modern society, restriction on an individual’s freedom are most acceptable if said restrictions protect the freedom of others. The freedom to kill takes away the freedom to live from the killed. The freedom to steal takes away the rights of property from the robbed. However, an argument against hate speech, because it hurts others’ freedom to feel safe, is much more controversial. A line must be drawn somewhere that establishes the maximum possible freedom for all individuals.

• A quick one on Being Free

  Just finished editing a dot story on Choqok (will go live sometime next week). Some of you might have noticed the initiative by its main developer Mehrdad Momeny to speed up development by soliciting monetary input. This will allow him to spend more time on making Choqok rock, but also give users a tangible way of influencing development priorities. This can increase commitment from the users, developers and the community – while bringing real benefits (in terms of code).

• The Bizarre Cathedral – 71

• Open-Xchange Simplifies SaaS Pricing, Targets Exchange

  Open-Xchange, the open source Microsoft Exchange competitor and collaboration platform that’s been turning heads in the hosted application market, has announced a simplified SaaS partner pricing structure that comes in two flavors: guaranteed revenue and flat rate. Here’s the scoop on what could be a sign of things to come for the cloud market and the IT channel.

  If Open-Xchange’s press release is to be believed, Open-Xchange only cares about two things from its partners: how big your customer base is, and how you plan to pay for the groupware subscriptions. They call it “OXrate” pricing, and they have five tiered partner levels from less than 1,000 to more than 250,000 customers. No matter what tier you fall on, though, they’re still offering both aforementioned pricing schemes.

• How to help large organizations to contribute open source project ?

  During the 2010 thinktank in Napa, one of the participant asked the audience the following question “How could we help organizations to contribute to Open Source software”.

  The problem is the following : most of the large organizations rely on open source software one way or another. There is not necessarily an official policy about FLOSS usage but system engineers and IT administrators & developers tends to use and deploy Open Source software.

• The USING Series: More than Just a Book

  I previously posted here in my blog that my eBook Using GIMP was going to be released within a few months. What I probably didn’t spell out, is that it’s part of a newly launched book series called Using under the imprint of the aforementioned QUE Publishing. But why should you care?

• Open source communities must protect their interests

  When Oracle bought Sun the first reaction in the mySQL open source community was to fork it.

  Now PGP may need a fork following Symantec’s purchase of PGP Corp., and speculation it may favor Guardian Edge instead.

• A Bushel of Free FOSS Tutorials

  You can’t knock a good FOSS tutorial. While documentation, including tutorials, is often a weakness with open source applications–even very established ones–the good news is that there are some outstanding free tutorials on the web. They’re available for many projects and platforms. Sometimes these are delivered by the community behind particular projects, and sometimes they are from enthusiasts and other third parties. In this post, you’ll find many of them.

• Interview with Mercurial’s Matt Mackall

  Recently, Mercurial author Matt Mackall has decided to try to devote his full time to working on the distributed source control tool. He’s doing this by seeking funding from companies that use Mercurial or sell Mercurial-based products.

  [...]

  OStatic: Do you have any plans for promoting Mercurial in addition to the development work to try to boost adoption & contributions?

  Frankly, no. I’m not much interested in evangelizing. Mercurial is successful enough that I just don’t have time for it, let alone motivation. As for contributions, there are already more than I can manage in my available time, and so a large part of this efforts is to free up more of my time for that.

• Can’t Program, won’t Program? Then Mash the Web with Mozilla’s Ubiquity

  Mozilla’s Firefox browser has been downloaded more that one billion times and its success is reflected in the millions of downloads of one of its killer features: addons (or extensions, as we geriatrics called them).

• Events

  • Italian Free Software Conference

    The fourth Italian Free Software Conference will take place in Cagliari (Sardinia, Italy) on June 11-12th. The main language of the conference is Italian.

  • UMass/Amherst – The Politics of Open Source – May 6 – 7, 2010

    The Politics of Open Source is the Journal of Information Technology and Politics’ 2nd annual thematic conference. The conference examines Free/Libre and Open Source Software, the movement surrounding it, and the political issues associated with it. Information about previous JITP conferences is available at www.umass.edu/jitp.

  • Penguicon, Here I Come!

    Tomorrow (Friday) starts my annual trek down state to the Detroit area for Penguicon! It’s possible the combination of Linux and Science Fiction wouldn’t appeal to most people, but it absolutely appeals to me. I think perhaps adding a vintage video game track and calling it “Super Penguicon” would make it the trifecta of awesome. The conference chairs probably realize that would be too awesome, however, and the participants would be blinded by sheer awesomeness.

  • Last Day For LinuxCon Early Birds

    Getting in early on conference registrations has a number of benefits, not the least of which is knowing from the start that your spot is secure. Many offer an additional perk — and an attractive one at that — in the form of an “Early Bird” discount that can often save you quite a bit of cash.

  • Upcoming Open Source Conferences (April-July 2010)

  • Upcoming Open Source Webinars: SAP Open Source Strategy, OSS Discovery

  • Open Source Webinars: Nuxeo, OpenLogic, System76

• Oracle

  • New: OOo-DEV 3.2.1 Developer Snapshot (build OOO320m16) available

  • Cloud-based Java offers risks and rewards

    Specifics of Oracle’s future plans remain scant. For anyone seeking insight into how other Sun product lines will fare under Oracle’s aegis, however, the ongoing attrition of former Sun execs can’t be encouraging. The “father of Java” himself, James Gosling resigned in early April, saying he felt “pretty burned out and trashed” and that the future of Java had “become complicated.”

• BSD/UNIX

  • The customer is (almost) always right

    We had produced a version of Unix called Ultrix for our PDP-11 line of computers, and several releases of this had already been shipped, proving itself to be a solid implementation of Unix.

    At the event we had a reception, with finger food, beer and wine and I was standing there, munching some chicken wings and drinking a beer when a customer walked up to me and said:

    “I think your Ultrix system really stinks.”

    He actually used another word than “stinks”, also beginning with an “s” and ending with a “k”, but this is a family-oriented blog and we don’t want to put anything bad here.

Leftovers

• Sony to stop selling floppy disks from 2011

  Sony has signalled what could be the final end of the venerable floppy disk.

  The electronics giant has said it will stop selling the 30-year-old storage media in Japan from March 2011.

• Kicking Outlook

  Tired of Microsoft Outlook for managing your email? Here are some alternatives.

  Mention email and most Windows users immediately think of Outlook. The Outlook email client from Microsoft has become so entrenched in the Windows desktop that most users don’t even know there are alternatives.

  We look at five alternative email clients that run on Windows, and in most cases, other operating systems such as Mac OS X and Linux.

• Science

  • US boffin builds ultra-dense nanodot memory

    A US scientist has developed a way to store binary data on dots 6nm in size – possibly leading to a one-square-inch chip holding 2TB of data.

  • The Grandfather Paradox

    There you go, a mind-boggling speculation that explains everything oh so well. Time travel, if possible, is definitely not something to partake in lightly. At most, you may want to experiment with individual particles. Shipping off entire humans across the barriers of Time seems a little far-fetched. Then, you may also destroy the Universe by playing with matter and anti-matter, not an everyday task.

  • NASA’s Ambitious New Space Telescope Passes Critical Test

    NASA’s hotly-anticipated new space observatory has passed its most significant mission milestone yet – a critical design review that sets the stage for a planned 2014 launch.

• Security/Aggression

  • Google personal suggest bug exposed user web history

    The company also points out that it has been much quicker to add SSL encryption to its online services than competitors – which is true. In July 2008, the company added an HTTPS-only option to Gmail, and in mid-January, hours after announcing that alleged Chinese had pilfered intellectual property from its internal systems, it turned the encryption on by default. It also offers SSL as an option on its Calendar, Docs, and Sites services.

    Yahoo Mail and Microsoft Live mail still have not offered such protection.

  • How Many More Are Innocent?

    Scalia wrote that an exoneration “demonstrates not the failure of the system but its success.” But these 250 DNA tests aren’t proof that the system is working. They’re a wake-up call telling us that it isn’t. Instead of falling back on groups like the Innocence Project to serve as unofficial checks against wrongful convictions, cops, prosecutors, judges, and lawmakers should be thinking about why there’s so much work for these organizations to do.

  • Kindly Endorse: Citizens against UID / Aadhaar

    We, representatives of people’ movements, mass organizations, institutions and concerned individuals including all the undersigned strongly oppose the potential tracking and profiling based techno-governance tools such as the Unique Identification number (UID) by the Government of India and the manner in which legitimate democratic processes have been undermined through this.

• Environment

  • Deepwater Horizon oil spill to be set on fire to save US coast

    The US coastguard is to set fire to oil leaking into the Gulf of Mexico to prevent the slick from reaching shore after last week’s explosion on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig.

    Robot submarines have so far failed to shut off the flow more than 1,500 metres below where the Deepwater Horizon was wrecked. Eleven workers are missing, presumed dead, and the cause of the explosion 50 miles off Louisiana has not been determined.

• Finance

  • Goldman Sachs explained

  • Justice Department Investigation Into Goldman Sachs Goes Beyond SEC Cases

    But since it’s all a giant shell game anyway, and it’s likely that the other Wall Street firms are using the exact same practices, why are the stock prices dropping? It’s almost as if investors need to believe this was an aberration, and they’re clutching the idea like a security blanket. Bad Goldman Sachs!

  • What Drives Motivation in the Modern Workplace?

    PAUL SOLMAN: You’re describing a world that sounds like a marketplace, but it just doesn’t have any money in it.

    JOHN YODSNUKIS, Open-Sourcer: You know, you need adequate compensation. You have to live. You have to survive, OK? But, if you ask an artist why they became an artist, a lot of them will say, I can’t do anything else. I have to do this.

    It’s the same thing here, you know? It’s the fulfillment, the love of doing it is reason enough.

  • Open Source vs. Wall Street Bonuses

• PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

  • Fox News Calls Mr. Rogers An Evil Man

    Little did I know, Mr. Rogers was an evil man. By telling children they’re special just for being who they are, he helped create this generation of worthless, lazy socialists who think they’re entitled to health care… at least according to Fox News.

  • Climate Scientist, Heated Up Over Satirical Video, Threatens Lawsuit

    The Penn State climate professor who has silently endured investigations, hostile questioning, legislative probes and attacks by colleagues has finally spoken out. He says he’ll sue the makers of a satirical video that’s a hit on You Tube.

  • Why are Tea Party Supporters So Angry?

    Tea Party supporters repeatedly assert that they are not racists and that their strong dislike of President Obama is not racially motivated. The Tea Party is clearly not a hate group like the Ku Klux Klan or the various militia movements on the fringes that openly advocate hate, hostility or violence toward those they do not like. Their income, education and political influence place the vast majority of Tea Party supporters much closer to the establishment than to any such fringe groups. And in 21st century America you cannot be a well respected member of the establishment and openly advocate racist positions.

  • Even After Law Aimed At Banning It, RNC Still Sending Misleading ‘Census’ Mailer

    The Republican National Committee is continuing to send out a misleading fundraising mailer labeled “Census Document,” just weeks after Congress passed a law aimed at banning such mailers.

• Censorship/Privacy/Civil Rights

  • NJ Principal Asks Parents To Ban Social Networking

    A controversial proposal has students horrified at a Bergen County middle school on Wednesday. The principal is asking parents to join a voluntary ban on social networking.

  • Senators Ask Facebook for Privacy Fixes

  • Google convictions in Italy based on legal error, says expert

    Three Google executives were sentenced under Italy’s privacy laws over the posting on Google Video of a clip showing a child with autism being bullied by other children.

• Internet/Net Neutrality/DRM

  • EZTakes: 5,000+ strong DRM-free online video store

  • AT&T (And Friends) Still Hard At Work Making Up Net Neutrality Job Loss Figures

    As the FCC gets closer to crafting network neutrality rules (assuming they even have the authority to do so), AT&T lobbyists have worked overtime to push the idea that creating such rules would automatically result in job losses. To help nudge this scary meme into the press, they hired their old friend Bret Swanson, formerly employed at the Discovery Institute — a think tank that created both the “Exaflood” (debunked here countless times) and “Intelligent Design”. Back in February Swanson, like most AT&T hired policy wonks, used completely bogus “science” to insist that network neutrality rules would result in 1.5 million job losses. He came to that number simply by adding up all of the people employed by companies that submitted comments to the FCC opposing network neutrality (seriously).

• Copyrights

  • Interview With Will Page, Music Industry Economist

    [E]conomic analysis can only tell us so much and it’s at this point when the baton must be passed on to folks from other disciplines or backgrounds who can bring new insights to the table to work out what that actually means in terms of this intriguing thing called ‘culture’ — which also means this is a good point to conclude this interview.

  • White House Releases Public Comments On IP Enforcement

    I’m not really sure how helpful those letters really were on either side, as they didn’t add too much to the conversation. The folks responding to the call from the Copyright Alliance didn’t really answer any of the questions from Espinel. They often just said “my business is in trouble, you must help me!” which isn’t very convincing. At times, they went to extreme lengths, like this guy, who tried to convince Espinel that having his photographs copied was the same thing as if he had stolen her car. Very convincing.

  • Chile Gets New Copyright Law: Some Good, Some Bad

    The “bad” is the second one. Increasing penalties makes little sense when penalties for violating copyright law are already way out of line with the “harm” done. The “neutral” one is the last one, concerning liability for service providers. Creating good safe harbors for service providers, so they’re not blamed for the actions of their users, is definitely a good thing. But the devil is very much in the details — and what the requirements are for a service provider to qualify for those safe harbors. While the report says “the ISP must meet certain requirements in order to be exempted from liability,” it does not detail what those “certain requirements” are.

  • File-Sharers Have Little But Not Zero Privacy

  • Court OKs Unmasking Identities of Copyright Scofflaws

  • Music Industry Execs Debate Brokep From The Pirate Bay

    Finally, he also knocks BPI and others in the industry for still thinking that DRM is a reasonable solution — pointing out that it’s totally anti-consumer:

    “The problem is, nobody really asked the consumer,” he says, about attempts to put DRM on CDs. “They absolutely hated it. You put the CD into the computer and it wouldn’t play… In the future, we’ve got to bring the consumers into the business model. In fact, they already are part of the business model.”

    Geoff Taylor, the head of BPI (basically the UK’s RIAA) comes off as about what you’d expect. He trashes The Pirate Bay repeatedly, claims that it’s “destroying national cultures” (with no proof, of course) and says that there needs to be “disincentives” to dealing with unauthorized file sharing.

  • RIAA Gets AFL-CIO To Support Performance Tax: Payments In Perpetuity For A Small Amount Of Work

    The RIAA has been touting this for a little while already, but the AFL-CIO has officially signed on to support the RIAA’s highly questionable performance tax. This is a bogus attempt to boost RIAA revenue by taxing radio stations for promoting their music. The RIAA has been going around claiming that radio promoting its music is a “kind of piracy”, while at the same time claiming it’s somehow illegal for radio stations not to play RIAA music. Yeah. Logic is not the RIAA’s strong suit. Even worse, of course, is that the RIAA has blatantly demonstrated that it knows there’s tremendous value in getting its music on the air. It’s been involved in payola scams for decades. To basically get the government to mandate reverse payola is the height of obnoxiousness.

  • Irish music blogs under attack over royalties

    The Irish Music Rights Organisation (IMRO) has moved against several of the country’s MP3 blogs, demanding licences that threaten to shut down some of Ireland’s most-respected music sites. Sites including Nialler9 and the Torture Garden have been asked to pay hundreds of pounds annually to continue sharing songs – most of which are sent to them by the artists and labels themselves.

  • USTR Announces What Countries Have Been Naughty When It Comes To Intellectual Property

    The USTR has released the list again (pdf) and it’s basically the same deal as in previous years. No methodology. No real interest in hearing concerns of consumers or about the rights of individual countries to make their own laws. About the only thing that the public consultation did was allow the USTR to say in the report that it “enhanced its public engagement activities.” It notes that there were 571 comments from interested parties, which is a lot more than in the past. But there doesn’t seem to be much in the actual report that reflects the concerns raised by myself and many others.

  • Google Wins ‘Thumbnail’ Images Ruling in German Court

    Google Inc., operator of the world’s most-used Internet search engine, won dismissal of a lawsuit in Germany’s top civil court aimed at stopping the company’s use of “thumbnail” preview images.

    Google isn’t violating the copyright of an artist who had posted photographs of her works on her Web site, the Federal Court of Justice said in an e-mailed statement today.

  • Washington Post Fails To Ask NBC’s Rick Cotton Any Tough Questions

    Cotton, of course, is one of our favorite quote machines. He’s the guy who famously claimed that movie downloading was hurting corn farmers of America, because people wouldn’t buy popcorn at movies any more (a factually ridiculous statement, considering that (1) box office sales keep going up (2) corn is one of the most heavily subsidized markets and continues to grow and (3) people watching movies at home still eat popcorn). He also considered it a victory, that his efforts made it more difficult for legitimate viewers to watch the Olympics.