Rowling wins book copyright claim

Author JK Rowling has won her legal battle in a New York court to get an unofficial Harry Potter encyclopaedia banned from publication.

Judge Robert Patterson said in a ruling Ms Rowling, 43, had proven Steven Vander Arks Harry Potter Lexicon would cause her irreparable harm as a writer.

[...] Making his ruling, Judge Patterson said reference materials could help readers, but Vander Ark had gone too far in this case.

He said: “While the Lexicon, in its current state, is not a fair use of the Harry Potter works, reference works that share the Lexicon’s purpose of aiding readers of literature generally should be encouraged rather than stifled.”

He said he had made his decision because: “Lexicon appropriates too much of Rowling’s creative work for its purposes as a reference guide”.

Later: Rowling Wins Lawsuit Against Potter Lexicon

I mean, seriously — who’s ever suggested that a military weapon has ended up being misused by those who developed it in the first place? Pentagon debates development of offensive cyberspace capabilities (pdf)

Igniting a provocative new debate, senior military officials are pushing the Pentagon to go on the offensive in cyberspace by developing the ability to attack other nations’ computer systems, rather than concentrating on defending America’s electronic security.

Under the most sweeping proposals, military experts would acquire the know-how to commandeer the unmanned aerial drones of adversaries, disable enemy warplanes in mid-flight and cut off electricity at precise moments to strategic locations, such as military installations, while sparing humanitarian facilities, such as hospitals.

An expansion of offensive capabilities in cyberspace would represent an important change for the military. For years, U.S. officials have been reluctant to militarize what is widely seen as a medium for commerce and communication — much like space.

But a new National Military Strategy for Cyberspace Operations, declassified earlier this year, fueled the Pentagon debate and gave the military a green light to push for expanded capabilities.

Jersey - Still Strumming and Rocking After All These Years

It’s a powerful dream that has lured many, but eluded most: to earn your keep in life with nothing but your guitar. It’s what brought Mr. Hector south from his hometown of Orange in 1977, when he joined the Shots, the house band at the Stone Pony; what drove him through the string of other bands in the 1980s and ’90s that almost, but never quite, broke out of the local club scene; and what sustains him still, 14 albums and more than 7,000 gigs later.

“I need to play music — it’s that simple,” said Mr. Hector, whose last regular paycheck was as an equipment tester at a guitar factory in Neptune Township in the early ’80s. “It’s like a calling. My life really hasn’t changed since I was 24. It’s the same goal.”

What has changed, though, is the music business. Record companies, their sales declining, have been paring their rosters, not adding to them, leading more musicians to the conclusion that Mr. Hector reached long ago: that sometimes it’s better to put out your own recordings, and sell them yourself to loyal fans, 3,000 of whom are on his mailing list.

Related: Singing The Blues At Record Stores (pdf)

According to Almighty Music Marketing, approximately 1,400 independent record stores have closed since 2003, leaving 2,300 open nationwide and 25 open in the Washington region. In 2003, 16 independent record stores were open for business in the District; only nine remain.

Thirty-year-old Orpheus Music in Arlington is next on the chopping block. When the store’s lease expired last March, the building broke with Richard Carlisle, Orpheus’s owner, so that a higher-bidding bar could move in. “My business was doing all right until this whole lease thing happened,” Carlisle said. But, he added, “You’ve got to be a niche store to survive anymore. It’s got to be totally indie, or vinyl, or have some clothes.”

Carlisle didn’t leverage the Internet to bolster sales. Conversely, Bill Daly, owner of Crooked Beat in Adams Morgan, realized early on that he needed an Internet operation to maintain a lucrative business. Daly has been doing mail-order sales online since 1998. “Everything in the store is in the process of being listed,” he said. “I have people hired who just come in and do stuff on eBay.”

While the store has already eliminated two CD racks and plans to lose a third, Daly says he sometimes earns three times the market value for items he posts online. The Internet has also expanded his customer base. He has sold vinyl records through eBay to customers in Sweden, France, Canada, the Netherlands, Australia, California and Nevada.

And the issues surrounding their business models — from an article on a new product to be released by PLatic Logic today: New E-Newspaper Reader Echoes Look of the Paper

With electronic readers, publishers would also learn more about its readers. With paper copy subscriptions, newspapers know what address has received a copy and not much else. About those customers picking up a copy on the newsstand, they know nothing.

As an electronic device, newspapers can determine who is reading their paper, and even which articles are being read. Advertisers would be able to understand their audience and direct advertising to its likeliest customers.

While this raises privacy concerns, “these are future possibilities which we will explore,” said Hans Brons, chief executive of iRex Technologies in Eindhoven, the Netherlands.

Google, etc. has trained the advertising market to want these “eyeball” metrics, and print is suffering because it can’t really deliver them. So, the technologies will be shaped around delivering these metrics, and we’ll avoid deciding whether they are worth anything — and particularly whether they are worth sacrificing privacy for.

An instant reply system that, in fact, is only something like one — technological alienation/mediation enters yet another domain: Hawk-Eye Replay System a Hit at the U.S. Open

Overseeing it all is Paul Hawkins, the thin, sandy-haired, 30-something Englishman who had the crazy idea a few years ago to do for tennis what no other professional sport seems to have managed: create an instant-replay system that works.

“I have a technology background,” said Hawkins, who holds a doctorate in artificial intelligence. “I love sports. So I kind of had an opportunity to combine my two passions.”

The result was Hawk-Eye, probably the most successful instant-replay system in sports. Since its introduction at the United States Open three years ago, Hawk-Eye has won over fans, players and even officials.

[...] The big breakthrough, Hawkins said, was not relying on optical devices to determine where a given shot lands — a surprisingly difficult spot to measure accurately. Hawk-Eye uses a system of 10 cameras to track the speed and trajectory of a ball in flight, but that is only part of the magic. The rest is done exclusively through computer modeling.

Because no tennis court is exactly flat and no line precisely straight, before the tournament. Hawkins’s team takes thousands of precise measurements of the dimensions and contours of each court, which are then converted into a three-dimensional computer model. Hawk-Eye’s virtual world takes into account other real-world factors that can affect accuracy, like the amount a ball compresses when it hits the court and even the temperature of the court.

“During warm days, the court actually changes size as it heats up or cools down,” Hawkins said.

When the ball flight data is fed into the computer model, the result is a system that is so precise it’s difficult to measure.

With or without copyright protection, it’s evolve or die. Here’s another way: Designers of High Fashion Enter the Age of High Tech

After dragging their stilettos for years, fashion designers are starting to embrace online tools. Fashion cycles are faster, and designers want help scoping out competitors’ designs, discovering trends, experimenting with colors and fabrics and mocking up designs. Trend forecasting publications, which designers have relied on for four decades to scout new trends, are trying to bolster their own businesses by offering Web sites with real-time video and photos, downloadable sketches and prints, and collaboration and design tools.

RealNetworks to Introduce a DVD Copier

Since the DVD format was introduced more than a decade ago, Hollywood has unremittingly sought to protect the DVD from the fate that befell the CD, which has no mechanism to prevent copying.

[...] To stave off this outcome and protect what is now $16 billion in annual DVD sales, studios and consumer electronics companies have enveloped their discs with encryption that is intended to prevent copying.

They also regularly go to court to fight any company that offers software to break the encryption. More than five years ago, several studios and the Motion Picture Association of America sued 321 Studios, a company in St. Louis, that had sold the popular program DVD X Copy. A judge ruled that the software violated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and the company closed in 2004.

[...] Now RealNetworks believes that the industry’s legal stranglehold on DVD copying has begun to weaken. In March 2007, the DVD Copy Control Association, an alliance that licenses the encryption for DVDs, lost a lawsuit against Kaleidescape, a Silicon Valley start-up company that sells a $10,000 computer server that makes and stores digital copies of up to 500 films.

The DVD association has appealed the ruling. But Mr. Glaser thinks the decision has created the framework for a legal DVD copying product with built-in restrictions to prevent piracy.

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