Lawyer Marisa Kakoulas has written an interesting article on copyright and tattoos
The Canadian Copyright Board has ruled that Canadians can legally download peer-to-peer music files, although uploading them is still illegal. So long as music is being recorded purely for personal use, and not being sold, rented, or otherwise disseminated to other people, its use is legal. It does not matter whether the source of the recording is a pre-owned track, a borrowed CD, or a track downloaded from the Internet, the board said. The combination of the latter two rules means that recording a CD for a friend is illegal, but handing the CD to the same friend and letting them make a copy for their own use is legal
Li Zhi, a former government worker in southwest China, was jailed for eight years for posting essays and comments online criticising official corruption
Virginia Attorney General Jerry Kilgore announced that his office had made its first felony indictment under the state’s antispam law. The charges were filed against North Carolina resident Jeremy Jaynes, also known under the pseudonym Gaven Stubberfield, for allegedly using fraudulent means to transmit unsolicited bulk e-mail
This is a story of weapons of mass destruction. Chemical weapons. Domestic Terrorism. Forged Identifications. And media double standards. In the Texan town of Tyler law enforcement officials found what hundreds of investigators in Iraq have been looking for months. A Tyler man named William Krar with ties to white supremacists had built a sodium cyanide bomb. In the words of the Justice Department, the man had developed his own chemical weapons — via Die Puny Humans
The ALP and Government combined in the last hours of parliamentary sitting for the year to ram through legislation to put ASIO above the public interest by giving it secret police powers. The legislation will make it an offence to discuss ASIO’s questioning of people, whether they are innocent or not, for two years after the interrogation occurs
David Pogue takes up arms against miscellaneous
charges on phone and banking bills, and against innocent
mistakes where customers are repeatedly, routinely overcharged
The controversial plan is set for the next session of Parliament, introducing the possibility of mandatory identity cards containing biometric information and tied to a central database
I’ve just had a client asking me for some source files from some mini flash quizzes I created some months back. I was silly and didn’t make it clear as to who owns the source files. I thought they just wanted the swf files, the final output for the web site, not the source files so they can just take my work and do whatever the hell they want with it, such as bastardise my stuff. The client doesn’t really know what a source file is or does. This took a bit of time explaining, but I think I got there.
This client asked for these about 4 months ago, and told me they only wanted them so they could change background colour. I said that will only take me an hour anyway. Client was fine with that and said they’d get back to me with the new colour and never did.
Any how, the client and I are not tearing strips off each other which is nice, and it should be all resolved in a couple of hours when they meet with the new company they are now taking their business over to. If they can recreate what I did for cheaper, then fine. If they want to use my source files, they pay.
I particularly found this article, When you’re asked for artwork files, quite useful in helping me sort my head out so that I could call back the client in a calm and coherent manner.
Yes, before I do any more freelance work I shall be looking at addressing this in the beginning like I should’ve.
Silly.
Federal intervention has failed to stop the ACT passing landmark legislation creating the new offence of industrial manslaughter. Negligent employers face penalties of up to 25 years jail. The offence is designed to target negligent and reckless behaviour which results in the death of an employee. Individuals found guilty face lengthy prison terms, while corporations can be fined up to $5 million
Paramilitaries, embedded journalists and illegal protests. Think this is Iraq? It’s Miami, with uber-Nazi Timoney leading a armed military assault on the democratic right to peaceful protest
New laws allowing Singapore to launch pre-emptive strikes against computer hackers have raised fears that internet controls are being tightened and privacy compromised in the name of fighting terrorism
A Toronto man is the first to be charged with theft of communications for downloading child pornography using someone else’s residential wireless network. The War Driver was caught naked from the waist down driving the wrong way down a one-way street, with a laptop in hand
A cheque sent by Israel’s ambassador to compensate the family of a student shot in the head by the country’s defence force has bounced
Cunningham MP Michael Organ has claimed that the Howard government’s mealy-mouthed subservience to the United States has been exposed by British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s persistence. ‘While our government washes its hands of Australians David Hicks and Mamdouh Habib, Mr Blair has apparently won agreement from US President George Bush that nine British nationals detained in Camp X-Ray at Cuba’s Guantanamo Bay can be returned to the UK for trial’
Home Secretary David Blunkett has refused to grant diplomatic immunity to armed American special agents and snipers travelling to Britain as part of President Bush’s entourage this week. In the case of the accidental shooting of a protester, the Americans in Bush’s protection squad will face justice in a British court as would any other visitor, the Home Office has confirmed
marry, and it gave the state legislature 180 days to make same-sex marriages possible. The Pagan Prattle has an amusing counter to the fundie mantra of biblical marriage
Federal Democrat spokesperson for IT, Senator Brian Greig, has accused the federal government of using its proposed anti-spam legislation to favour groups with conservative agendas, allowing religious and political organisations to flood e-mail in-boxes with spam and deny other groups the right to respond
In 1909, residents of Wilmington, Delaware, were able to subscribe to an online music service that piped phonograph recordings over their telephone lines and through loudspeakers. This was one year after the sheet music publishers were told to get bent by Congress: see, they’d grown alarmed at the prevalence of unauthorized piano rolls and had asked the Congress for a Broadcast-Flag-like regime that would let them veto any new music technology that would endanger their business — like online music delivery — making it illegal. Congress told them to get lost. Good thing we rescued those idiots from themselves back in 1908 — can you imagine a music industry where the most lucrative product in the market was sheet music?
It’s a pattern: the Vaudeville artists sued Marconi over the radio — which made them rich. The movie studios boycotted TV until Disney sold out to get the funds for Disneyland — and TV rights made the studios rich. Jack Valenti told Congress that the VCR was the Boston Strangler of the film industry, and then it doubled his income through pre-recorded tape sales and rentals.
Now, of course, Congress has given up on saving the entertainment industry — and us — from itself. With the Broadcast Flag, new technologies will only come into the market if they don’t disrupt the industries built on the old ones. And with the WIPO Broadcast Treaty in the works, it’s fruitless to pray for some technology safe-haven where we’ll be able to develop our gear in peace, far from the short-sighted, greedy lunacy of the entertainment companies. The FCC should be ashamed of itself.
When plugged up to a phonograph the subscriber’s line is automatically made busy on the automatic switches with which the Wilmington exchange is equipped. Several lines can be connected to the same machine at the same time, if more than one happens to call for the same selection.
Each musical subscriber is supplied with a special directory giving names and numbers of records, and the call number of the music department. When it is desired to entertain a party of friends, the user calls the music department and requests that a certain number be played. He releases and proceeds to fix the megaphone in position. At the same time the music operator plugs up a free phonograph to his line, slips on the record and starts the machine. At the conclusion of the piece the connection is pulled down, unless more performances have been requested.
Caterpillar faced protests this week against its sales of bulldozers to Israel. A dozen protestors marched outside its head office in Iowa, USA. They included Cheryl Brodersen, the aunt of Rachel Corrie, the 24-year old peace protestor who was killed by an Israeli bulldozer in March 2003
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