brainwagon

Over at BoingBoing, David Pescowitz noted that taking pictures of the Eiffel Tower at night is now illegal, as the gents who installed the new stylish lighting system copyrighted the design, and will charge a license fee for any image of it taken after dark. I think to myself, “that can’t be true”, but sure […]

Bill Gates apparently think that those who seek to reform copyright terms are communists. The silliness of that claim has spawned a number of cool T-shirts at least, including this incredibly reasonably priced one from Giant Robot Printing. Great stuff!

Those clever people at BoingBoing give a link to a story about a little girl who was asked to stop sketching famous paintings hanging in an art museum because the paintings were copyrighted. Sigh. The story had a happier ending though: Actually, the museum guard was mistaken. There was no copyright issue, and the museum […]

CNN is reporting that BSA is lobbying for copyright changes. They wish to require that ISPs be required to reveal the identities of individuals who may be distributing copyrighted software on the net using P2P technologies. The courts have so far resisted this interpretation of existing laws, instead requiring that lawsuits need to be filed […]

Slashdot has some followup on the weekend’s BitTorrent shutdowns. Apparently there were some arrests over the weekend, and many threats of arrest. Haven’t had time to go over them in any detail (off to Christmas shop) but check ’em out.

Slashdot is reporting that TorrentBits.org and SuprNova.org have gone dark. There seems to be little really solid news as to the reason, but widespread speculation is some kind of crackdown on illegal copying. When more details are available, I will likely have more to say about it, but for now I merely point out that […]

Sometimes, you just have to shake your head at the stupidity of people. Today’s installment comes from the editorial pages of the New York Times, where we find the following (registration required): To the Editor: Re “Google Is Adding Major Libraries to Its Database” (front page, Dec. 14): While having online access to some great […]

Not to be outdone, Matthew Skala one-upped Ed by creating MoleSter – a tiny file-sharing application. I wonder if it works… 🙂 Addendum: As my wife points out, it’s not a very attractive name. What’s really amazing is that I didn’t pick up on it.

Ed Felton of freedom-to-tinker has released a tiny 15 line Python program called TinyP2P which allows you to create a simple (if not secure or scaleable) file sharing network. Get the code here. It’s cute, and might not be bad for tiny bits of file sharing. Addendum: Actually trying to run it, I got localhost […]

Ever wonder how they hope to digitize millions of books? Try looking at this film showing a book scanning robot working for archive.org. You can get more real information from the manufacturer’s website, albeit in the form of a bit of a sales pitch.

Google is embarking on a pilot project to digitize and make available a large number of the 15 million books currently at the Harvard University Library. The goal is to make all of the public domain texts available. Wow. That’s awesome.

Fred von Lohmann of the EFF writes an interesting piece about Marvel’s complaint filed against NCSoft Corporation and Cryptic Studios, makers of the enormously popular City of Heros online role playing game. What’s got Marvel’s panties in a bunch is the fact that using the in-game editors, you can easily recreate characters which are properties […]

Boing Boing reports that sixteen year old student Steve Geluso was given an F on his exit exam for trying to draw a distinction between theft and piracy. You can read scans of his essay here. While young Steve’s essay could use some work and I would argue that elements of it are naive or […]

Doc Searle had a link to the Chilling Effects Clearinghouse, an excellent site dealing with many issues related to the chilling effects that laws and practices have on freedom of Speech. I found their treatment of issues surrounding fan fiction to be particularly interesting, but they are also trying to document Cease and Desist letters […]

Cory Doctorow posted a link to Ed Felten’s Princeton President’s lecture: “Rip, Mix, Burn, Sue”, which helps explain some of the ideas behind the current clashes over copyright issues, and why they are important. It is available in both Real and Windows Media formats.