Glenn Beck Not Allowed To Rape And Murder An Internet Meme

,----[ Quote ]
| Back in September, we wrote about Glenn
| Beck's misguided attempt to gain control
| over the domain name used as part of an
| internet meme that is critical of Glenn
| Beck,
| GlennBeckRapedAndMurderedAYoungGirlIn1990.com
| (it's a dead site now, keep reading). If
| you're unfamiliar with the meme, it's
| mocking a favorite tactic of various cable
| news talk show hosts, to "ask questions"
| that are accusatory in nature, whether or
| not there's any substance to back them up.
| Glenn Beck didn't accuse the site of
| defamation or anything, but filed a domain
| name complaint, saying that it violated his
| trademark.
`----

http://techdirt.com/articles/20091106/1353106839.shtml

Google Dashboard: Convenient? Yes. Transparency, Choice and Control? Not so much.

,----[ Quote ]
| Google describes Dashboard as a simple way
| to view “the data associated with your
| account”, and that it will provide users
| “greater transparency and control over
| their own data.” Elsewhere, Dashboard has
| been described as a “big concession to
| users’ privacy rights“, as the answer to
| the question: “What does Google know about
| me?”, and as a place providing users “more
| control over the personal information
| stored in Google’s databases“.
`----

http://michaelzimmer.org/2009/11/05/google-dashboard-convenient-yes-t...

Europe Gives Up on 'Right to Internet'

,----[ Quote ]
| A sweeping telecom reform package finally
| cleared the European Parliament, but
| members abandoned a bid to declare Internet
| access a fundamental right
|
| [...]
|
| Rather than requiring that a judge alone be
| the authority to order a severing of the
| internet connection, the compromise text
| reads that only a "prior fair and impartial
| procedure" is necessary, a phrasing that is
| sufficiently ambiguous that has allowed
| both sides to claim a win.
`----

http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/nov2009/gb2009116_71042...

Photography after the Incidents: We’re Not Afraid!

,----[ Quote ]
| Leading British newspapers further evoked
| the sensational terror of the incidents
| through the captioning of horrific images
| of destruction. It contextualised them
| within the realm of fascination and fear
| with headlines such as “London’s Day of
| Terror” from the Guardian, “Terror Comes to
| London” from the Independent and “Al-Qa’eda
| Brings Terror to the Heart of London” from
| the Daily Telegraph (“What the Papers
| Say”). Roland Barthes notes that “even from
| the perspective of a purely immanent
| analysis, the structure of the photograph
| is not an isolated structure; it is in
| communication with at least one other
| structure, namely the text – title, caption
| or article – accompanying every press
| photograph” (16). He suggested that, with
| the rise to prominence of ‘the press
| photograph’ as a mode of visual
| communication, the traditional relationship
| between image and text was inverted: “it is
| not the image which comes to elucidate or
| ‘realize’ the text, but the latter which
| comes to sublimate, patheticize or
| rationalize the image” (25).
`----

http://journal.media-culture.org.au/index.php/mcjournal/article/viewA...

Recent:

Perfect Pitch Accused Of DMCA Abuse To Censor Criticism

,----[ Quote ]
| Michael Scott points us to yet another
| (yes, another) case of copyfraud, where
| someone sends a DMCA takedown notice to
| stop criticism, rather than actual
| infringement. In this case, the party
| accused of misusing the DMCA in this manner
| (which is illegal) is whoever is behind the
| website PerfectPitch.com, who offers a fee-
| based training program that is supposed to
| help people learn to have (surprise,
| surprise) perfect pitch.
`----

http://techdirt.com/articles/20091103/1839446788.shtml

Auditor General Wields Crown Copyright To Demand Takedown

,----[ Quote ]
| Crown copyright concerns were raised
| repeatedly during this summer's copyright
| consultation as many groups expressed the
| view that government works should be
| treated as public domain.  The issue
| generated some surprise from Industry
| Minister Tony Clement, who asked for
| examples about why crown copyright was a
| problem.
`----

http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/4514/125/

Warner Brothers to FCC: When We Say SOC Is Necessary, We Mean Not Necessary

,----[ Quote ]
| As the Selectable Output Control (SOC)
| battle continues here in Washington, Public
| Knowledge just sent a letter to the FCC
| pointing out that movie studios are doing
| some of the best work to show why SOC just
| doesn’t make sense.
`----

http://www.publicknowledge.org/node/2750

FCC Poised To Let Hollywood Break Your TV And DVR

,----[ Quote ]
| Want to know why the MPAA got 60 Minutes to
| run its propaganda piece on movie piracy
| this week? Because it knew this fight was
| close to a deciding point, and a little
| moral panic might help tip it over the edge
| into Hollywood's favor.
|
| For a while, the FCC has pushed back and
| refused to grant the movie studios an
| exemption in order to break your TV, but
| word is coming down that, despite promises
| to make decisions based on "evidence," the
| FCC is ready to give in and let the MPAA
| break your TV and DVR in order to stop you
| from recording the movies it releases. Why?
| There's no good reason at all, other than
| the administration's cozy relationship with
| Hollywood these days. The industry's own
| actions show that this will do nothing to
| make it easier for it to release movies
| earlier. The industry's own claims show
| that it will do nothing to decrease piracy.
`----

http://techdirt.com/articles/20091105/1051206806.shtml

EU Breaks Deadlock in Debate Over Right to Internet Access

,----[ Quote ]
| After months of often bitter debate,
| European Union lawmakers reached agreement
| on how to preserve citizen's rights to
| Internet access in a meeting that ended in
| the early hours of Thursday morning.
`----

http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/181472/eu_breaks_deadlo...

EFF Warns Texas Instruments to Stop Harassing Calculator Hobbyists

,----[ Quote ]
| The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) warned
| Texas Instruments (TI) today not to pursue its
| baseless legal threats against calculator
| hobbyists who blogged about potential
| modifications to the company's programmable
| graphing calculators.
|
| TI's calculators perform a "signature check"
| that allows only approved operating systems to
| be loaded onto the hardware. But researchers
| were able to reverse-engineer signing keys,
| allowing tinkers to install custom operating
| systems and unlock new functionality in the
| calculators' hardware. In response to this
| discovery, TI unleashed a torrent of demand
| letters claiming that the anti-circumvention
| provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright
| Act (DMCA) required the hobbyists to take down
| commentary about and links to the keys. EFF
| represents three men who received such letters.
`----

http://www.eff.org/press/archives/2009/10/13

Ralph Lauren And Its Lawyers Discover The Streisand Effect On Bogus DMCA Takedown

,----[ Quote ]
| Boing Boing put up a post about it, along with the tag
| line "Dude, her head's bigger than her pelvis." While
| some have questioned whether the ad is even real, one
| thing is clear: Ralph Lauren was not pleased. The
| company's lawyers at Greenberg Traurig sent DMCA takedown
| notices concerning both posts. Despite Blogger's new DMCA
| policy, Google still quickly took down the post at
| Photoshop Disasters, causing the site to ask whether or
| not Ralph Lauren or its lawyers have ever heard of the
| Streisand Effect (yay). BoingBoing's host, however,
| doesn't automatically take content down and passed along
| the info to BoingBoing, who quickly pointed out that this
| was clearly fair use (commentary, criticism, etc.) and
| the DMCA takedown wasn't being used to stop infringing
| content, but to stifle speech.
`----

http://techdirt.com/articles/20091006/2245076436.shtml

EFF: Chamber of Commerce Takes Aim at Yes Men

,----[ Quote ]
| Attorneys for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce
| have issued a takedown notice in an attempt
| to silence a parody website that was posted
| in support of the Yes Men's embarrassing
| prank poking fun at the Chamber's stance on
| climate change legislation.
|
| In a letter sent to the Chamber's attorneys
| today, the Electronic Frontier Foundation
| (EFF) demands that the baseless claims be
| withdrawn immediately.
`----

http://www.eff.org/press/archives/2009/10/22

Chamber Of Commerce Sues Yes Men; Someone Just Gave Protestors A Lot More Attention

,----[ Quote ]
| While we weren't sure that the EFF was
| correct in suggesting the Yes Men's fake
| U.S. Chamber of Commerce website was a
| parody, we did think that it was rather
| short-sighted of the CoC to try to takedown
| the site, since it would only serve to give
| the Yes Men and their anti-CoC campaign more
| attention.
`----

http://vannevar.blogspot.com/2009/10/windows-7-trust-me.html

Latest Bogus DMCA Takedown Sent By NPR?

,----[ Quote ]
| This is quite similar to when CBS tried to
| stop the McCain campaign from using a
| snippet of a broadcast in an ad. In both
| cases it seems that the use is a clear
| situation of fair use, with the content not
| being used for commercial reasons (yes, we'd
| like to believe that politics still isn't
| commercial) and only a snippet was being
| used.
`----

http://techdirt.com/articles/20091026/0353226673.shtml
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