The National Science Foundation puts in $74 million for research centers focused on energy transmission, neural engineering, solar and water infrastructure.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/%7Er/Earthtechling/%7E3/b-ngfNbHZO4/

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Bioware shows off 10 minutes of high-level gameplay in what may be the next big massively multiplayer online role-playing game.

Source: http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-20099345-1/a-look-at-star-wars-the-old-republics-end-game/?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20

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The folks at Attrition.org have been tracking a guy named Gregory Evans who runs LIGATT Security for a while now. Evans apparently hypes himself up as a fantastic hacker, though Attrition suggests he's not all that skilled in reality. Still he's been able to get himself a fair amount of press over the years, though Attrition obviously thinks he doesn't deserve it. One thing that Attrition has spent a lot of time on is showing that Evans has a history of plagiarizing content in his "books." However, the folks at Attrition contacted us, a few months ago, to let us know that Evans was using a Techdirt article in one of his books. The "book" is what Evans calls a "scrapbook," supposedly of a bunch of articles about computer security, including at least one of ours. Evans claimed that he got permission to reprint every article in his book, and Attrition decided to see if that was true.

As we told them at the time, we were unaware of any request for permission from Evans, but in our case, that didn't matter. As we've stated repeatedly, our content is free for people to use, and we consider it to be in the public domain. With that, I figured we were done with it, but Attrition has now put out their article on the results of their research (including our response), and they couldn't find anyone who said they had, in fact, given Evans explicit permission to use their work (it's not clear if anyone even received a request).

In our case, we stand by the fact that we (perhaps alone of all the sources he copied from) don't mind the fact that he decided to reprint our stuff. That's cool. Anyone can do that. But what struck me as interesting, was this bit:

It is also worth noting that Evans tries to establish a copyright on the book, despite the fact that every article he used is already copyrighted:

"No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form, or by any means; -- electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without permission from the original author."

This disclaimer is laughable, as Evans himself did not obtain permission to use all of the articles contained in the book. Worse, in using the articles without permission while charging $39.95 for the book, he is profiting off these copyright infringements.

While we're fine with him re-using our works, one thing that we're not at all okay with is him then claiming copyright over it or otherwise trying to then limit the reuse of our works by others. That's copyfraud. As for the others in the book, I would imagine they're even less pleased, since it appears that most, if not all, of the others whose works were used do consider their works their own copyrighted material, and did not sell that copyright to Evans.

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Source: http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110828/22065915716/you-can-copy-our-articles-all-you-want-please-dont-claim-copyright-belongs-to-you.shtml

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Since February, we've been waiting for our turn with the Galaxy S II. With the handset floating around Europe and Asia, it's been hard to remain patient. But today is the day: the U.S. versions of the Samsung Galaxy S II are here and we're ready to get up close and personal at Samsung's media event in NYC. Just how different are the U.S. versions from the international? Has resolution been forfeited for size on that Super AMOLED Plus display? Does it feel as good as it looks? What about that new and improved TouchWiz UI? Is it actually any better? No worries. We're here to answer all those questions and more.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/%7Er/Techcrunch/%7E3/GvgSlkfnVDI/

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Yow! Numbers double to, er, 16 in a year

The number of online defamation cases brought to English and Welsh courts has more than doubled in the past year, a new report has said.?

Source: http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2011/08/30/online_defamation_court_cases_on_rise_say_researchers/

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Two years ago we wrote about a troubling case coming out of Wisconsin, in which the Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association (WIAA) claimed that it could allow a single exclusive broadcaster for high school sporting events in the state. The Gannett newspapers challenged this by streaming four different events online, eventually leading to this lawsuit. There were other highly questionable limitations on news media, including a claim that they could not even report play-by-play data. That part is the most ridiculous, as that seems like a clear violation on free speech rights, and also goes against previous caselaw that has allowed the reporting of factual game information. But, stunningly, last year, a district court judge ruled that commerce trumps the First Amendment, and since the WIAA needs to make money, such deals are just fine. This didn't make much sense to us, and we hoped that it would be overturned on appeal.

No such luck.

Ima Fish alerts us to the appeals court ruling which upheld the lower court and seems to endorse the creation of a wholly made up new form of intellectual property right that has no basis in the law. The court clearly says that this is not a copyright case, so copyright law doesn't apply. So what right exactly is WIAA granting to its broadcasting partner? That's not clear at all from the ruling. If it's not copyright, it appears to be something entirely made up by the appeals court, which might be loosely defined as "the right to make up restrictions if it makes money." I'm not joking. The court repeatedly focuses in on the idea that the WIAA needs to make money, and that somehow makes it okay to grant a single company an exclusive license.

I don't see how this makes much sense. I could see that they should be allowed to grant a license to an "official" broadcaster, and even give them additional access, but I don't see how they can stop someone else from recording the material and broadcasting it as well -- especially when they admit that it's not a copyright issue.

And since this new exclusive made up imaginary right has no basis in law, we don't know what any exceptions are. Is there a fair use exception like in copyright? The contract says other agencies can show two minutes of streaming video from events, but it doesn't need to say that, and fair use shouldn't be determined by a contract anyway. The whole thing seems bizarre and troubling, in that it seems to suggest that public entities can create a special kind of exclusive broadcast intellectual property right if they use it to make money.

Separately, one small part of the case struck me as interesting in relation to a different case we talked about recently. In the Zediva case, we thought it was ridiculous that the court declared a paid video broadcast to your home as a public performance because the Zediva service was offered to "the public." Yet, in this case, the court insists that sporting events at public schools (which are open to the public) are, in fact, "nonpublic forums." I don't think either description makes sense. A private home is a private place. A public sporting event is a public event.

Finally, the court seems to totally overstate the situation in the ruling here and suggests a clear misunderstanding of the public domain:

The logical implications of Gannett’s argument are breathtaking. Suppose a high-school orchestra were to perform one of Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos or the drama club put together a rendition of Othello (both of which are in the public domain). Gannett’s argument would require the conclusion that the students have no right to engage in the common practice of packaging their performance and selling it to raise money for school trips.

While some of Gannett's arguments may have risen to that level (it did suggest that public institutions shouldn't be able to make money this way), the court also seems to suggest that just because you can't have exclusivity, you can't make money. That's silly, and wrong.

Gannett is still considering its options, but it can ask for an en banc (full court) review or it can appeal to the Supreme Court. I'm hoping it will fight this, because the ruling seems totally nonsensical.

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Source: http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110826/15450015708/federal-court-invents-new-intellectual-property-right-money-makes-it-so-exclusive-right-to-record.shtml

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Rolls own PostgreSQL

VMworld Server virtualization juggernaut and cloud puffer VMware is getting into the database business. But it's not selling database the way Oracle or IBM sell databases. It's selling them more like the Microsoft sells database services on its Azure cloud.?

Source: http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2011/08/29/vmware_vfabric_data_director_postgres/

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Smart smackback at Apple, Googorola

Samsung may be mulling over the purchase of webOS ? recently orphaned by HP ? in a move to protect itself from an increasingly unfriendly Apple and the threat of Google and its new toy, Motorola Mobility.?

Source: http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2011/08/29/amsung_thinking_of_webos_acquisition/

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In the parlance of military planning, the U.S. wields what one would call a ?two-MRC force.? That is to say, as structured, the armed forces should be able to fight two ?major regional conflicts? (Iraq-sized wars), simultaneously. The logic behind this sizing is simple: should the U.S. choose to fight in one region (say, the Korean peninsula), it doesn?t want to find itself without a free hand in dealing with other regions (say, the Persian gulf). Two MRC?s worth of military might gives the U.S. the strength to conduct big stick diplomacy with troublemakers even while taking action against another rogue state.

Source: http://tech.mit.edu/V131/N32/yost.html

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$5,000 'for one really good report'

A new Facebook program that pays cash rewards to people who report security bugs on the social networking site doled out more than $40,000 in its first three weeks.?

Source: http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2011/08/30/facebook_bug_bounty_progress/

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