Posts Tagged ‘copyright’

Missing funny bone leads to DMCA for Awkward Stock Photos

// February 4th, 2010 // No Comments » // Tech News

One of the most recent Internet meme trends has been to launch a site of ridiculous, funny, or awkward photos of things and people that are otherwise found in everyday life. You’re probably familiar with some of them: People of Walmart , LATFH , Awkward Family Photos , Regretsy , and so on. Usually these sites become so virally popular that they end up getting book deals, but that’s not the case for one such site. Awkward Stock Photos , a site that featured some of the more questionable pictures found in stock photo databases, received a DMCA notice for the contents of its entire site, despite the fact that it removed no watermarks, linked back to the original stock photo page, and made no money off the venture. Awkward Stock Photos (ASP) was originally born on Facebook as a give-and-take between Mark Hauge and his friends, who encouraged him to start a blog. Once he finally bit the bullet and signed up with Tumblr, ASP became an immediate hit, and Hauge started receiving hundreds of submissions from readers. An Ars reader and graphic designer himself, Hauge was familiar with how finicky some companies can be, so he made sure to try and cover his bases. Or so he thought: “I made sure to only use watermarked photos that I downloaded and re-uploaded to Tumblr (so I wasn’t hotlinking) and then linked them back to their original source,” he told Ars.

Will your big-screen Super Bowl party violate copyright law?

// January 31st, 2010 // No Comments » // Tech News

An offhand comment the other day by a friend caught my attention—”Did you know that you can’t watch the Super Bowl on a TV screen larger than 55 inches? Yeah, it’s right there in the law.” With the Colts and Saints set to do battle in Super Bowl XLIV, this seemed worth looking into as a public service. Could it be that some of those giant flat panel TV sets now finding their way into US living rooms are actually violating copyright law?

Student-developed games show bright future for industry

// January 31st, 2010 // No Comments » // Tech News

One of the more interesting aspects of the annual Game Developers Conference is the Independent Games Festival, a showcase for some of the best and brightest people and ideas in the industry. Hidden among the next big indie games is the Student Showcase. Here, 10 student-developed games compete for the top prize and $2,500, and past Showcase winners have gone on to create games like Portal , Flower , and de Blob . This year featured a record 190 entries, and the chosen 10 showcase a bright future for the video game industry. Let’s take a look at what students are bringing to the world of gaming; the breadth of ideas is impressive.

Apple internally acknowledges more 27" iMac screen issues

// January 31st, 2010 // No Comments » // Tech News

The monstrous screen on the 27″ iMac, while a beautiful sight to behold, can be equally unsightly when some flaw is discovered. Issues such as flickering video and cracked glass have been problematic for some users, possibly causing shipping delays for recent orders. Now, an issue of yellowish areas appearing on some screens may be causing further shipping delays. While Apple hasn’t publicly acknowledged the problem, an internal tech support document reveals it is aware of the problem. The problem appears in a number of ways, including vertical or horizontal stripes that appear more yellow than surrounding areas. It can also manifest as a yellowish tint that becomes more obvious in one corner of the screen. Obviously it’s not something you want to see when you’ve just spent $1,700 or more on a new computer. According to one Gizmodo reader who attempted to fix the problem on his own, the problem is related to a layer of material behind the LCD used the scatter the LED backlight. He suspects this material may become misaligned during shipping, causing some areas of the backlight to have an uneven color temperature. Whatever the cause, information on the issue appears to be in Apple’s internal support system. Apple support technicians are told to tell customers complaining about the issue that slight variations are normal. If the customer complains further, the tech is supposed to get contact information so the customer can be contacted about having the display panel replaced “in approximately three weeks.” Those asking for “immediate resolution” should be offered a refund and not a replacement. While the problem also seems to

Baidu cleared in copyright infringement case brought by IFPI

// January 26th, 2010 // No Comments » // Tech News

Deep linking MP3s—legal or not—does not violate copyright law in China, a court has found. The Beijing No. 1 Intermediate People’s Court has cleared popular search engine Baidu of copyright charges brought by the music industry, saying that merely providing search results doesn’t qualify as infringement. Although China has never been known for its respect for intellectual property, the decision in this case seems to mirror others being made around the world. The case was brought by the international sibling of the RIAA, the IFPI, back in February 2008 when it accused Baidu and a handful of other Chinese companies of supporting piracy. The charge was that Baidu’s results provided links to file sharing sites and, in many cases, direct links to illegally shared MP3s on various servers around the world. The IFPI said it unsuccessfully attempted to negotiate a resolution with Baidu, leaving it with no other choice but to sue over the deep linking practice. The labels being represented by the IFPI were seeking maximum damages totaling up to at least US$9 million, but could have gone into the billions if more songs were discovered.

CompTIA backs down; past certs remain valid for life

// January 26th, 2010 // No Comments » // Tech News

Chalk up a victory for nerd rage. Less than a month after retroactively declaring that its A+, Network+, and Security+ certifications would expire three years after the testing date, industry group CompTIA has reversed its position. All current holders of A+, Network+, and Security+ certs will remain certified for life, as they were promised when they took the exams. In addition, anyone who takes those exams during 2010 will remain certified for life. Starting in 2011, however, new certs will expire after three years. Holders who wish to maintain their certification will then have to pay an annual fee to CompTIA of $25 or $49 and will need to rack up sufficient continuing education credits to renew their certs. The initial decision to retroactively invalidate certifications generated considerable anger among cert holders, which we described in today’s story on the fiasco . An hour after our original report went live, CompTIA contacted us with news about the change. CompTIA president Todd Thibodeaux, announcing the policy change, said, “We do not wish to disenfranchise any of the individuals who have supported our certification program. The right thing to do is honor our past commitment to those certified under our original ‘certified for life’ policy.” Under the new plan, CompTIA can still maintain its own ANSI/ISO accreditation (both groups require that industry certifications have some mechanisms for ongoing training). “Our ISO accreditation is extremely important to us because of the global credibility it carries,” added Thibideaux. The news does not yet appear on CompTIA’s website , but we’re told that all the details of the revamped program will soon be available online.

P2P cutoff "reserve powers" get reconsideration in UK

// January 13th, 2010 // No Comments » // Tech News

UK lawmakers behind the controversial Digital Economy bill have agreed to “refine” provisions that would allow the Secretary of State to modify sanctions against P2P users at any time without Parliamentary approval. Though the Department for Business insists that it’s not backing off from the provision, it is considering ways to narrow the scope of power. The Digital Economy bill was introduced late last year and is meant to modernize the UK’s approach to everything from copyrights to broadband, video game ratings, and domain names. The bill itself doesn’t explicitly discuss sanctions for suspected file-sharers, but one section (Section 17) introduces “reserve powers.” In effect, whenever the Secretary of State decides that speed throttling or Internet disconnections are a good idea, he can implement them with a simple order. The government insisted at the time that such power will be introduced only against the “most serious infringers” and only “in the event the initial obligations do not prove as effective as expected.” Unsurprisingly, these proposed powers generated an uproar of criticism, not only from users, but Internet companies and other lawmakers as well. Companies like Google, Yahoo, Facebook, and eBay sent an open letter saying that such a bill would stifle innovation, while some House of Lords members have threatened to vote against it. As a result, the government is conceding—a little —by saying that it may make it more difficult to make changes except under “significant” threats, or without Parliamentary review. This doesn’t mean section 17 is going away, though. “The Government remains squarely behind the aims of clause 17,” a spokesperson for the Department of Business told the BBC . “We have tabled a series of amendments which aim to clarify the breadth and scope of the clause and further reinforce the transparency of the process and the scrutiny of Parliament.” Indeed, it’s clear that no one has reversed course here, but the reconsideration means that there’s still some sanity left when defining the scope of this bill.

Judge: RealNetworks caused its own legal problems

// January 11th, 2010 // No Comments » // Tech News

RealNetworks has suffered yet another a legal blow in its battle to bring its DVD ripping software to market, and according to the judge, it’s the company’s own fault.  On Friday, Judge Marilyn Patel dismissed Real’s antitrust claims against the movie industry, saying that the the studios had every right to band together to prevent the sale of RealDVD. Real didn’t suffer any damages at the hands of the studios, either—according to Patel, Real brought the situation on itself by attempting to sell illegal software in the first place. “Help, help, I’m being repressed!” The legal fallout from RealDVD has been showering down since September 2008—before the program was even released to the public. Real claimed that it was able to rip DVDs while still preserving the discs’ copy protection mechanisms . At that time, the company was confident that RealDVD operated well within the DMCA because the software didn’t break CSS encryption—it merely copied data straight to a hard drive, keeping the encryption intact.  Real even added a new layer of DRM to each file to lock it to the user and PC that created the file, which the company thought would keep it on the movie studios’ good side.

Logs don’t lie: Which tech execs have the White House’s ear?

// January 11th, 2010 // No Comments » // Tech News

Who has the ear of the White House when it comes to tech issues? Judging from the White House visitor logs, President Obama and his team have a soft spot for FCC Chair Julius Genachowski, who visited 48 times between June and September. Not that it was all business; Genachowski checked in to use the White House bowling alley and to attend a poetry reading. But when it comes to tech executives from the private sector, Google and Microsoft have both done well at getting into the White House. Former Microsoft boss Bill Gates even snared an intimate audience with President Obama back in March 2009 when only three other people were present. Steve Ballmer made three visits over two days to members of the Obama technology team. And Microsoft exec Craig Mundie put in an appearance.

12 hour battery life in a high-end laptop? Asus says yes

// January 11th, 2010 // No Comments » // Tech News

An ASUS laptop quietly on display at CES packed two GPUs, a high-end NVIDIA GeForce 310, and a humble Intel GMA… and intelligently switched, second-by-second, between them. The UL80JT can also re-clock its Intel Core i7 CPU on a second-by-second basis. The result of all this micromanagement: miraculous 12-hour battery life in a high-end laptop, available later this year for just over $1,000. Laptop design is at least partially a tradeoff between components and battery life; laptops jammed with high-end components last an hour or two, while power-sipping netbooks can last all day. ASUS is trying to close the gap by allowing its laptops to decide how much power is needed and spend their power budgets more intelligently. Apple’s solution for dual GPUs on the Macbook Pro requires the user to change settings under “Energy Saver,” which is counterintuitive and makes you log out in order to switch. It wouldn’t surprise us if owners never use this feature.  ASUS’s solution is different because it’s user-transparent; even a novice user will get the fullest possible benefit because the laptop itself is deciding when to switch. The same principle applies to the dynamic CPU clocking. ASUS includes a desktop widget to track CPU clock speed. While using the UL80JT, I could see it moving up and down with what I did—up with program openings and CPU-intensive processes, and way down at idle. Between the GPU switching, dynamic clocking, and ASUS’s other power management features, the UL80JT manages to consume less than half as much power as the unibody Macbook while browsing. When it needs to, though, the UL80JT can call on all the resources of a dual-core i7 and NVIDIA’s latest GPU, holding its own with similarly-specced laptops achieving a fraction of its battery life in casual use. For ASUS, the optimizations involved in battery life planning have really paid off, liberating the user from the choice between performance and battery life in the laptop purchasing decision.

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