David Cogswell has an interesting article at Online Journal following the dodgy policies of BushCo’s anything goes attitude to holding absolute power and ponders that they are not above assassinating political rivals when smear tactics and legal battles fail
Warp Records, an independent label for electronic music (featuring artists such as Aphex Twin, Autechre, and Boards of Canada), has made their entire back catalog available thru Bleep, a new digital download service. To quote from the FAQ: We are at present the only store to offer very high quality MP3 files
and Bleep music has no DRM or copy protection built in. We believe that most people like to be treated as customers and not potential criminals
Comedienne Margaret Cho was recently speaking at a MoveOn event. Matt Drudge subsequently posted excerpts from her speech, and she was inundated with hate-mail for being overweight, Chinese, gay and a Democrat. Cho’s publicist then posted all of this hate mail, complete with names and email addresses, on her web site — via Darren Barefoot
The estate of JRR Tolkien won a cybersquatting case against Alberta Hot Rods, a Canadian-based operator which registered jrrtolkien.com and linked it to its commercial celebrity Web site. The group — which has already lost domain name cases brought by actors Pierce Brosnan and Pamela Anderson, and author Michael Crichton — was found to have no legitimate rights
In an important victory for Italian consumer rights, an Italian court has rejected the seizure of Sony Playstation game consoles that use modified chips to permit unauthorised uses of the game systems. The case is one of the first to be brought in Italy under the new European Union Copyright Directive, which is modeled on the controversial US Digital Millennium Copyright Act — via The Importance Of
A federal judge rejects a company’s legal attempt to assail BadBusinessBureau.com, which features negative reviews from consumers who claim to have been ripped off by retailers
Photoshop rips heavy cultural symbols out of artists’ phrasebook
Photoshop CS Adds Banknote Image Detection, Blocking?
Photoshop BS
Yep, the latest version of Photoshop, (Photoshop CS), now automatically detects US currency and prevents you from manipulating, copying and pasting it.
Paint Shop Pro 8 has also followed suit.
This handy site contains links and facts about using bank note images for countries around the world. And if I’ve read the US guidelines correctly, you can use illustrations of US currency provided you follow these guidelines.
So why is Adobe restricting law abiding Photoshop users?
The US Treasury Department plans to publish nearly 10,000 e-mail addresses on the web, violating its privacy promise to Americans who used e-mail to comment on a government proceeding
The so-called Patriot Act II was discovered last year and the public outcry that ensued was enough to get the bill tossed out the window. One of the goals of that act, however, has made it into law under the radar of the community at large. The retarded monkey boy has Intelligence Authorisation Act for Fiscal Year 2004 (the relevant section is 374) into law, which among other things, grants the FBI the power to obtain financial information without a court order from a judge. It also expands the definition of financial information
to include business such as car dealerships, jewellery stores and insurance companies. The law prevents the business that hands over the information to the FBI from telling their customer about the request
A federal judge in Philadelphia is hearing a challenge to a controversial state law that has led to more than 1 million innocuous web sites being accidentally blocked
The UK tabloid The Daily Star stole a story from RetroCrush entitled The Worst Sex Scenes Ever: A Look At The Most Unsexy Sex Scenes, then passed it off as their own. It was picked up by at least 30 other media outlets and The Daily Star was credited with the story. When pressed on the issue, the News Editor was quoted as saying: Well, if it’s on the internet it’s up for grabs. You can’t copyright anything on the Internet.
Webmaster and writer of the article Robert Berry is calling for legal assistance
James Glassman and TCS have given birth to something quite new in Washington: journo-lobbying. It’s an innovation driven primarily by the influence industry. Lobbying firms that once specialized in gaining person-to-person access to key decision-makers have branched out. The new game is to dominate the entire intellectual environment in which officials make policy decisions, which means funding everything from think tanks to issue ads to phony grassroots pressure groups
Test-Aankoop, a European consumer watchdog body, is suing the world’s largest music companies for selling copy protected compact discs that won’t play in car stereos and on computers — via Die Puny Humans
It seems that farmers have gone to the top of the hit list of potential terrorist suspects because they carry almanacs and buy lots of fertiliser. Which pretty much includes that nice little old lady next door — via Making Light
The FBI is warning police nationwide to be alert for people carrying almanacs, cautioning that the popular reference books covering everything from abbreviations to weather trends could be used for terrorist planning.
In a bulletin sent Christmas Eve to about 18,000 police organizations, the FBI said terrorists may use almanacs
to assist with target selection and pre-operational planning.
It urged officers to watch during searches, traffic stops and other investigations for anyone carrying almanacs, especially if the books are annotated in suspicious ways.
Franck Le Calvez, a French children’s author, has sued Walt Disney Pictures and Pixar Animation Studios, claiming the cartoon fish they catapulted to fame in the worldwide blockbuster Finding Nemo was plagiarised from his 1995 creation Pierrot Le Poisson Clown
Disney has revised its online privacy policy to allow the sharing of user information to third parties, the company confirmed on Tuesday. New registrants who accept Disney’s privacy policy during registration also accept all marketing options by default. They have to manually turn them off later if they want to opt out. A Disney representative said the changes were made to help customer service operate more effectively between its offline and online businesses
In this case Toys ‘R’ Us advertises using a giraffe mascot named Geoffrey. But Toys ‘R’ Us does not own the rights to that mascot, instead Geoffrey, Inc — a Toys ‘R’ Us subsidiary — owns them. So the toy store ‘licenses’ the trademark from Geoffrey, Inc, at a hefty rate, then calls that a business expense and deducts from its pre-tax income. Since Geoffrey, Inc isn’t a Louisiana company, Toys ‘R’ Us argued that it doesn’t need to pay Louisiana taxes on it’s income. The judge disagreed
Maids in Hong Kong can draw a higher salary if they’re computer-literate enough to defrag hard-drives, reinstall operating systems, and do other sysadminly chores. But some have rebelled against the shift to computer-literate cleaners
An appeals court upheld a verdict to clear Jon Johansen, a 20-year-old Norwegian, of DVD piracy charges on Monday, dismaying Hollywood studios who cluelessly claimed that the decision would encourage hackers
The recording industry can’t force Internet providers to identify music downloaders, a federal appeals court said Friday in a major decision shielding online privacy while undercutting the industry’s anti-piracy campaign
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