Judge: MP3 site, ISP breached copyright [via CoCo]
Stephen Cooper, operator of the mp3s4free Web site, was found guilty of copyright infringement by Federal Court Justice Brian Tamberlin.
Although Cooper didn’t host pirated recordings per se, the court found he breached the law by creating hyperlinks to sites that had infringing sound recordings.
This is the first such judgement against hyperlinking in Australia.
Missed this July 4th news: Man convicted for chipping Xbox
The Cambridge graduate was sentenced at Caerphilly Magistrates’ Court to 140 hours of community service.
The man had been selling modified Xbox consoles which he fitted with a big hard drive containing 80 games.
“This case sets a major precedent which marks a milestone in the fight against piracy,” said games industry spokesman Michael Rawlinson.
[William S.] Burroughs was then as radical a literary man as the world had to offer, and in my opinion, he still holds the title. Nothing, in all my experience of literature since, has ever been quite as remarkable for me, and nothing has ever had as strong an effect on my sense of the sheer possibilities of writing.
Later, attempting to understand this impact, I discovered that Burroughs had incorporated snippets of other writers’ texts into his work, an action I knew my teachers would have called plagiarism. Some of these borrowings had been lifted from American science fiction of the ’40s and ’50s, adding a secondary shock of recognition for me.
By then I knew that this “cut-up method,” as Burroughs called it, was central to whatever it was he thought he was doing, and that he quite literally believed it to be akin to magic. When he wrote about his process, the hairs on my neck stood up, so palpable was the excitement. Experiments with audiotape inspired him in a similar vein: “God’s little toy,” his friend Brion Gysin called their reel-to-reel machine.
Sampling. Burroughs was interrogating the universe with scissors and a paste pot, and the least imitative of authors was no plagiarist at all.
[...] Our culture no longer bothers to use words like appropriation or borrowing to describe those very activities. Today’s audience isn’t listening at all - it’s participating. Indeed, audience is as antique a term as record, the one archaically passive, the other archaically physical. The record, not the remix, is the anomaly today. The remix is the very nature of the digital.
[...] “Who owns the words?” asked a disembodied but very persistent voice throughout much of Burroughs’ work. Who does own them now? Who owns the music and the rest of our culture? We do. All of us.
Though not all of us know it - yet.
And, maybe it’s a very clever one. I recall this argument from the days of the UPC barcode rollout, but I never expected to find it associated with CASPIAN — a real position, or a sly way to undermine an activist who has troubled the RFID industry? RFID Foes Find Righteous Ally
As director of the consumer privacy group Caspian, [Katherine] Albrecht is a darling of the mainstream news media too. In hundreds of interviews, in a list of publications that includes Business Week and Times of London, she has warned of privacy risks posed by RFID tags, the radio devices that retailers plan to use as a replacement for bar-code labels.
Albrecht fears that retailers will match the data emitted by the tags with their customers’ information, turning each tag into a potential tracking beacon. She also suspects the government will want access to the retailers’ RFID databases.
But one aspect of Albrecht’s anti-RFID crusade has been attracting a lot of attention from other privacy groups: her religious beliefs.
Albrecht does not often discuss her religious views with reporters. But she believes that RFID technology may be part of the fulfillment of the Mark of the Beast prophesied in the Book of Revelation.
[...] “The Mark of the Beast, 666: a prophesy from 2000 years ago,” says Albrecht, at the beginning of her video, On the Brink of the Mark, produced two years ago. “How many people (know that) technological developments of the last 10 to 20 years could be combining to make the Mark of the Beast a reality, and possibly even in our lifetimes?”
[...] The RFID industry must pay attention to the concerns of those who believe RFID may become the Mark of the Beast, said Peter de Jager, an expert on the adoption of new technologies.
“You have to take the social context into account when implementing a technology,” said de Jager.
[...] But retailers may not have much to fear, as long as Christians don’t have to pay more for their goods, said Tim Miller, professor of religious studies at the University of Kansas and chairman of the editorial board of the Religious Movements Homepage at the University of Virginia.
“There may be lots and lots of preaching,” said Miller, speaking of potential religious opposition to RFID tags. “But as long as the bargains are there, any boycott will not likely have much adverse effect.”
What better way to stifle CASPIAN than associating it with the tinfoil hatters?
For Surfers, a Roving Hot Spot That Shares
With a device called the Junxion Box, the ["Sopranos"] production company can set up a mobile multiuser Internet connection anywhere it gets cellphone service. The box, about the size of a shoebox cover, uses a cellular modem card from a wireless phone carrier to create a Wi-Fi hot spot that lets dozens of people connect to the Internet.
[...] Junxion Boxes have also been spotted on Google’s commuter buses for employees and along Willie Nelson’s latest tour. But what may be a boon for wandering Web surfers could quickly become a threat to wireless providers.
“The premise is one person buys an air card and one person uses the service, not an entire neighborhood,” said Jeffrey Nelson, executive director for corporate communications at Verizon Wireless. “Giving things away for free doesn’t work anymore. It never did.”
Unlimited service on cellular modem cards for PC’s costs about $80 a month. The carriers are clearly worried about a technology that could destroy that business, but they have not formed a united front against Junxion.
Compare with this tech, and imagine trying to convince an artist to help promote it 3 years ago - MP3 Watch From 50 Cent (the Price Is a Bit Higher)
But will establishing oneself as a female Joe Lieberman [pdf] profit anyone except the opposition? Clinton Urges Inquiry Into Hidden Sex in Grand Theft Auto Game (earlier posting)
In a letter she is sending Thursday to the Federal Trade Commission, Mrs. Clinton expressed concern over reports that anyone who used a free code downloaded over the Internet could unlock sexually graphic images hidden inside the game, called Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.
Mrs. Clinton asked the commission to determine “the source of this content,” especially since the game can fall into the hands of young people. The game industry’s self-policing unit, the Entertainment Software Rating Board, is investigating whether the maker of the game violated the industry rule requiring “full disclosure of pertinent content.”
Mrs. Clinton also asked the commission to look into whether the industry erred in giving the game a rating of M, or mature, for players 17 years and older. National electronics store chains sell M-rated games but tend to avoid adult-only titles.
She asked the commission to determine whether retailers were adequately enforcing the ratings. Citing statistics released by the National Institute on Media and the Family, she said that 50 percent of boys between 7 and 14 were able to buy M-rated video games.
RockStar Games’ position: Hackers Modify PC Game; also CNet’s GTA publisher blames sex mod on hackers. The Register’s take: Hillary Clinton demands GTA smut enquiry
Two news wire stories:
The second contains the following quote:
Mike Muldoon, Sylum’s stepfather, said they had decided to return the book because it was “the right thing.
“We don’t want to ruin it for other kids and take away from the experience of everyone reading it together,” the Poughkeepsie Journal quoted him as saying.
And, for those of you who haven’t seen the updates I added to my original post on the subject (regarding the Canadian “leak,” and including a link to the cited Poughkeepsie Journal article), I want to draw your attention to the last comment in this thread (“I have the book in possesion”) from the Slashdot discussion:
Re:I have the book in possesion (Score:1)
by raincoastbooks (899369) on Tuesday July 12, @09:17PM (#13049531)
(http://www.raincoast.com/)
Please be aware that the Supreme Court of British Columbia made an Order protecting the contents of the book. The terms of the Court Order mean that if you have obtained a copy of the book early you must not disclose or reveal any information about its contents or give any copies that you may have to anyone else. The Court Order also requires anyone who has a copy or copies of the book to return them to Raincoast immediately. Anyone who has purchased or otherwise obtained a copy of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince before the publication date of July 16th should contact Raincoast immediately at 1-800-663-5714 or 604-323-7100. After hours please contact 604-968-0027 or 604-841-9206 or info@raincoast.com
Michael Geist’s thoughts — The Harry Potter Injunction and The Potter Injunction - It Could Have Been Worse (including links to a marked up injunction as well as the posted text)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
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