Boing Boing deXenifier

Pub fined £8K after user infringes copyright with its WiFi

Sat, 28 Nov 2009 09:07:00 -0800

A British pub has been fined £8,000 because someone using the WiFi there allegedly committed a copyright infringement. Even though British law exempts people who provide Internet access from liability for their users' copyright infringements, the pub was still fined (the details of this are confused). Graham Cove told ZDNet UK on Friday he believes the case to be the first of its kind in the UK. However, he would not identify the pub concerned, because its owner -- a pubco that is a client of The Cloud's -- had not yet given their permission for the case to be publicised... According to internet law professor Lilian Edwards, of Sheffield Law School, where a business operates an open Wi-Fi spot to give customers or visitors internet access, they would be "not be responsible in theory" for users' unlawful downloads, under "existing substantive copyright law". Pub 'fined £8k' for Wi-Fi copyright infringement (Thanks, Zoran)...

DRM versus innovation

Sat, 28 Nov 2009 09:02:58 -0800

Here's a superb essay on the other DRM problem -- DRM isn't only bad for fair use, it's also a disaster for innovation, because it forecloses on the possibility of disruptive new technologies (you can only build on DRM with permission from the DRM maker; no DRM maker is going to authorize a disruptive innovation that could hurt his bottom line). The paper is by Wendy "Chilling Effects" Seltzer, and will be published in the Jan 25 edition of the Berkeley Technology Law Journal. First I briefly review the history and existing academic debates around DRM to consider why they have so overlooked the user-innovation impacts. The next sections examine the law and technology of digital rights management, particularly the interaction of statutory law, technological measures, and the contractual conditions generally attached to them. I focus particularly on the "robustness rules" in licenses at at this inter- section. I then introduce the rich literature on disruptive technology and user innovation, to argue that these copyright-driven constraints significantly harm cultural and technological development and user autonomy. I conclude that the mode-of-development tax is too high a price to pay for imperfect copyright protection. The Imperfect is the Enemy of the Good: Anticircumvention Versus Open Innovation (via JoHo) Previously:Boing Boing: French DRM law gets ugly - protest May 7/2PM Place de ... BBC wants to put DRM on the TV Brits are forced to pay for - Boing ... BBC wants to put DRM on the TV Brits are forced to pay for - Boing ... Hollywood wants to infect all next-gen video with DRM - Boing Boing EFF asks the FTC to protect the public from Digital Rights ... Asimov's magazine on DRM, copyright and Creative Commons - Boing Boing Boing Boing: US Justice Dept to Europe: Apple's DRM is off-limits Boing Boing: Responding to Nikon DRM flap, photogs create OpenRAW ......

Boing Boing Gift Guide 2009: nonfiction! (part 4/6)

Sat, 28 Nov 2009 08:24:30 -0800

Mark and I have rounded up some of our favorite items from our 2009 Boing Boing reviews for the second-annual Boing Boing gift guide. We'll do one a day for the next six days, covering media (music/games/DVDs), gadgets and stuff, kids' books, novels, nonfiction, and comics/graphic novels/art books. Today, it's nonfiction! If Your Kid Eats This Book, Everything Will Still Be Okay: How to Know if Your Child's Injury or Illness Is Really an Emergency (Lara Zibners): Apart from a terrific title, the book has plenty going for it. Basically, Even if Your Kid Eats This Book is a detailed guide to everything you don't have to worry about. It has an orifice-by-orifice guide to detecting and removing Lego! A list of things under the sink that won't poison your kid! Sensible advice about how to get rid of dry skin! (Hot bath, then anything greasy from Crisco to Vaseline, then time). Full review | Purchase Reset: How This Crisis Can Restore Our Values and Renew America In 96 pages, Kirk Anderson describes the United States' previous boom and bust cycles and explains why the bust cycles are essential for innovation and improvement of living standards for everyone. Times of crisis, he says, open new opportunities for making positive changes. Full review | Purchase...

Saturday Morning Science Experiment: Gravity Is For Suckers

Sat, 28 Nov 2009 07:26:37 -0800

Astronaut Don Pettit--inventor of the Zero-G Coffee Cup--plays with free-floating, head-sized water bubbles on the International Space Station. Make sure you stick around for the third experiment, where Pettit sticks an antacid tablet into one of the bubbles. Thumbnail image courtesy Flickr user delicate genius, via CC....

Canadian border guards want to be sure that foreign journalists don't criticise Vancouver Olympics

Fri, 27 Nov 2009 23:46:22 -0800

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's As It Happens radio show covers the story of Amy Goodman's recent' border crossing into Canada. Goodman -- host of the US public radio show Democracy Now! -- was coming to Canada to give a speech at a library, and Canadian border guards questioned her intensely about the subject of her talk, even reading her notes for her speech. They were fishing for something, but Goodman couldn't figure out what, until the guards asked her outright whether she was planning on talking about the upcoming Canadian Olympic Games. When she assured them that she hadn't been, they eventually released her (it had been a 75 minute detention) but stamped a control-order in her passport giving her only 24 hours' stay in Canada. AMY GOODMAN -- As It Happens WMV link (Thanks, Bill!) Previously:Vancouver Olympics will own words like "winter," "2010" and ... Vancouver Olympics to feature US-style "free speech zones" - Boing ... Free speech lawsuit against Vancouver Olympic rules - Boing Boing Olympic Commitee claims that photographing exterior of venues ... Vancouver 2010 Olympic mascots include a Sasquatch - Boing Boing Vancouver cops affirm your right to take pictures - Boing Boing...

Stylophone synthesizer at Restoration Hardware

Fri, 27 Nov 2009 21:45:35 -0800

Invented in 1967, the Dübreq Stylophone is a small synthesizer played by touching a built-in stylus to the metal keyboard. It was famously used on David Bowie's "Space Oddity" and Kraftwerk's "Pocket Calculator." I just spotted it in Restoration Hardware's catalog for $29. I was slightly surprised to see it there, but not too much as Restoration usually has terrific gadgets and toys for sale along with their classic (and costly) American home furnishings. For more Stylophone fun, check out the below video of Brett Domino performing a "1980s Hits Medley" on the device. (UPDATE: They're only $20 at ThinkGeek!) Previously:Stylophone Reborn Stylophone reborn (again) on iPhone Kraftwek goes iPhone with a little help from the Korg DS-10 and a ......

Dr. John's weird New Orleans psych music

Fri, 27 Nov 2009 15:42:36 -0800

Years ago, I got turned on to the psychedelic New Orleans "voodoo" vibe of Dr. John (aka Mac Rebennack, Jr.). His 1968 debut Gris-Gris is a fantastically weird amalgam of R&B, dark psych rock, and NOLA culture. I'd never seen footage of the Night Tripper, as Dr. John is also known, until today. Quite a spectacle. From music critic Richie Unterberger's liner notes for a reissue of Gris-Gris: Gris-Gris was the first record credited to Dr. John, and to most listeners he seemed to have dropped out of nowhere with his mystical R&B psychedelia and Mardi Gras Indian costumes. The album, however, was actually the culmination of about 15 years of professional experience, during which Dr. John -- born Mac Rebennack in New Orleans -- had absorbed the wealth of musical influences for which the Crescent City is famed. Gris-Gris's roots reach back well beyond the dawn of the twentieth century, even as the album took in cutting-edge influences such as 1960s progressive jazz, and pushed into territory that no popular musician had ever explored in quite the same fashion. "Gris-Gris" itself is a New Orleans term for voodoo, and the name Dr. John taken from a New Orleans root doctor of the 1840s and 1850s. Also known as John Montaigne and Bayou John, he was busted in the 1840s for practicing voodoo with Pauline Rebennack, who may or may not have been a distant relative of our man Mac. One of Mac's grandfathers sang in a minstrel show, and the latter-day Dr. John adapted one of grandpa's favorite tunes, "Jump Sturdy," into the track on Gris-Gris of the same name. His onstage costumes and feathered headdresses, the source of shock and delight to audiences since the late 1960s, are similarly adapted from those worn by Mardi Gras Indians in New Orleans, famed for the infectious tribal percussive rhythms and chants they perform in local parades. "Gris-Gris" by Dr. John, The Night Tripper (Amazon)...

Roomba: 1, Deadly Snake: 0

Fri, 27 Nov 2009 13:25:16 -0800

What's that Roomba, you say Timmy is stuck in a well? A Roomba vacuuming robot did more than clean the floor for one family in Israel, killing a venomous Vipera palaestinae by, apparently, running over the snake and wrapping the creature around one of its rotating brushes. The family credits the robot for sparing their children and pets from possible snakebite. Good boy. (Via Engadget)...

Laser cut Poe in stainless steel

Fri, 27 Nov 2009 11:43:10 -0800

Cheap laser-cutting has come to the world's crafters, and Etsy is awash in lovely, precision-cut tchotchkes of all description. Case in point: Edgar Allan Poe in black stainless steel, $26 from FableAndFury. Edgar A. Poe Memento cameo necklace in black stainless steel (via Wonderland) Previously:Poe archive from UT Austin goes online - Boing Boing Gaiman on Poe: read him aloud! - Boing Boing Poe's "The Raven," translated into 50s hipster argot - Boing Boing Poe paper toy - Boing Boing Free Poe audiobook from Telltale Weekly -- today only! - Boing Boing Poe/Seuss mashup - Boing Boing Poe's stranger - Boing Boing Mysterious birthday ritual at Poe's graveside disrupted by ......

Man hires movers to rob home

Fri, 27 Nov 2009 11:41:20 -0800

A burglar hired a moving company to clean out a three-story home in Nottingham, UK, and arranged for the contents to be sold at a public auction. Police went to the sale and nabbed the perp, who had no prior record according to the article in ThisIsNottingham....

Are Fake Academic Conferences the New Nigerian Prince Scam?

Fri, 27 Nov 2009 11:21:50 -0800

Tired of snaring your Grandma with sob stories about deposed princes and their locked bank accounts, email scammers are branching out. Their new target: Academia. Researchers get invitations to a hot, new scientific conference and are asked to send their personal information in order to register. But when The Scientist checked up on the conferences, the location hadn't been booked, the named speakers didn't know anything about it and the organizer asking for info fell strangely silent. (Full story is free, but you may need to log in.)...

National Day of Listening: A Better Use of a Friday

Fri, 27 Nov 2009 14:26:28 -0800

Whether the reasons are ideological, demophobia-based, or a little bit of both, many of us would rather avoid today's mass shopping chaos. As an alternative to Black Friday, Story Corps is promoting today as the National Day of Listening--an opportunity to sit down for an hour with family members and other people you care about, ask them about their lives and preserve their stories for future generations. At the National Day of Listening site, you'll find helpful How To's for recording and preserving family stories and a question generator, to help you get over that "what the heck do I ask Grandma?" hump. Your family stories can also become part of the oral history archives at the American Folklife Center in the Library of Congress. To do that, though, you'll have to get hooked up with a Story Corps professional recording session. They've got semi-permanent booths in New York, San Francisco and Atlanta, and they're traveling the country with a portable system all year. Image courtesy Flickr user Adam Selwood, via CC....

Epoch time: Herschel reveals VY Canis Majoris death throes

Fri, 27 Nov 2009 10:23:51 -0800

"It is colossal. If it was sited at the centre of our Solar System, it would extend beyond the orbit of Saturn." And it is ready to go supernova....

Concordia University has a spy-squad that snooped on novelist for "bilingual interests"

Fri, 27 Nov 2009 14:19:58 -0800

Rob sez, "Documents recently obtained through access to information legislation show that author David Bernans was being spied upon by investigators at Concordia University in Montreal. "In this first-person narrative, Bernans chronicles his experience dealing with Concordia's security apparatus, and questions the motivations of a university that spies on and censors its students." Christ, a university with its own private eye squad made up of failed Fed cops? What's next, a no-fly list for the campus shuttle-bus? Lookit these Keystone Kop bumblers, chasing people around because they're "interested in bilingualism." Hey, Concordia grads, is this how you want your alumni donations being spent?...

"Inequitable, unconscionable, vexatious and opprobrious"

Fri, 27 Nov 2009 07:56:42 -0800

A judge in New York has wiped out a $525k mortgage after OneWest bankers misled the court while trying to secure foreclosure....

Boing Boing Gift Guide 2009: gadgets! (part 3/6)

Sat, 28 Nov 2009 08:26:30 -0800

A girl at the 1978 comic-con

Fri, 27 Nov 2009 07:43:50 -0800

Comic fandom's rarely held to be a welcoming place for girls. But one correspondent remembers fondly her trip to the 1978 San Diego Comic-Con, when she was a wee 8-year old. Other females, however, were few and far between.

Vote early, vote often

Thu, 26 Nov 2009 22:07:15 -0800

Attention, readers! If you don't vote for Boing Boing in Adweek's "blog of the decade" poll, Perez Hilton may win. Do your duty....

WWI images from Library and Archives Canada

Thu, 26 Nov 2009 23:32:00 -0800

Library and Archives Canada has released a whole ton of WWI images to Flickr, including some stunning color paintings of Vimy Ridge and related places. LAC / BAC's photostream (via Resource Shelf) (Image: Anti-conscription parade at Victoria Square / Défilé anti-conscription au Square Victoria) Previously:Radiohead Song in memory of Harry Patch, WWI survivor and pacifist ... Satirical WWI maps - Boing Boing War Vegetable Gardening book from WWI - Boing Boing Draft cards of famous people from WWI - Boing Boing Boing Boing: Razzle-Dazzle: WWI cubist paint-jobs for battleships Boing Boing: Project Facade: Post WWI surgical facial reconstruction Fantastic gallery of WWI/WWII propaganda - Boing Boing...

JC Hutchins's sf novel 7TH SON serial, Part 6

Fri, 27 Nov 2009 03:06:41 -0800

Welcome to the sixth serialized installment of J.C. Hutchins' human cloning thriller 7th Son: Descent. If this is your first exposure to our free serialization of 7th Son, you can easily catch up by experiencing part one, part two, part three, part four and part five. You can also dive in right away, thanks to... THE STORY SO FAR: John, Kilroy2.0, Father Thomas and four other unwitting human clones have been assembled by the U.S. government to track their villianous progenitor, a psychopath responsible for the murder of the president. His plans of terror are just beginning. In the last episode, the clones continued to decipher John Alpha's Morse code clue. Meanwhile at a military base in the Russian wilderness, a former CIA agent named Doug Devlin reminisces about his past -- and his current alliance with Alpha. A much larger conspiracy is unveiled. Check out this week's installment below. If you're enjoying this serialized experience, support the book by purchasing a copy at Amazon, Barnes & Noble or Borders, or printing this PDF order form and presenting it at your favorite bookstore. You can learn more about the book at J.C.'s site. Seventh Son, Part 6 Previously:JC Hutchins invents new audiovisual podcasting fanfic for Seventh ... JC Hutchins's sf novel 7TH SON -- first 10 chapters PDF - Boing Boing...

Game-themed Tetris cake

Thu, 26 Nov 2009 23:17:20 -0800

Clever Cake Studios made this smashing game-themed, Tetrisoid cake for the opening of a local Play'N'Trade store -- the little faces are caricatures of store employees. Clever Cake Studio (via The Boing Boing Flickr Pool)...

Search engines are teachers

Thu, 26 Nov 2009 22:42:34 -0800

Penn State researchers have conducted a study into the use of search engines and conclude that we don't just search to find out facts, but rather, to learn: The researchers sought to discover the cognitive processes underlying searching. They examined the search habits of 72 participants while conducting a total of 426 searching tasks. They found that search engines are primarily used for fact checking users' own internal knowledge, meaning that they are part of the learning process rather than simply a source for information. They also found that people's learning styles can affect how they use search engines. "Our results suggest the view of Web searchers having simple information needs may be incorrect," said Jim Jansen, associate professor of information sciences and technology. "Instead, we discovered that users applied simple searching expressions to support their higher-level information needs." Search Engines Are Source of Learning Previously:Digital Youth Project: If you care about kids and want to understand how they use technology and why, this is a must-read...

Camels terrorize Australian outback town

Fri, 27 Nov 2009 14:26:34 -0800

Nat sez, "Six thousand marauding camels have rampaged though a small Australian outback town. Apparently there are over a million in the outback, doubling their numbers every nine years, and despoiling the ecosystems, water supplies, and Aboriginal resources. Wikipedia knows all. One proposed solution involves an export-licensed, halal-certified abattoir to produce camel meat for export. Just goes to show that there's no tasty meat source so invasive and pestilential that it doesn't have an industry and lobby group." They have smashed water mains, damaged homes, buildings and the local airstrip - threatening emergency medical evacuations - and scared local residents from venturing outside. "The community of Docker River is under siege," said the Northern Territory's Local Government Minister, Rob Knight. "This is a dire situation which requires immediate action ...Central Australian Camel Industry executive officer, Peter Seidel, said camel meat was low in fat and cholesterol and tasted like beef. "There is substantial demand worldwide (for camel meat). An investor from Oman is already interested," Mr Seidel said. Feral camels ruling the roost in Outback (Thanks, Nat!) (Image: Deve (Camel), a Creative Commons Attribution photo from Veyis Polat's Flickr stream)...

McKinnon another step closer to extradition

Thu, 26 Nov 2009 21:54:24 -0800

British hacker Gary McKinnon, tinkerer in U.S. military systems, has all but lost his legal battle to avoid extradition. What's worse? That his real crime was to reveal his supposed victims' criminal incompetence and expose a lopsided extradition treaty, or that the British press will bullshit relentlessly about his likely sentence--and portray Aspergers sufferers as mental and moral infants--just to hype his story? And then there are his laywers, ready with the ultimate moral blackmail: He'll kill himself if forced to face American justice....

Cancer drug may treat diabetes

Thu, 26 Nov 2009 16:18:27 -0800

I've posted before about my brother Mark Pescovitz's fine art photography. In his spare time, Mark is a transplant surgeon and medical research scientist. Today, he and his colleagues published a paper in the New England Journal of Medicine about a new way to slow and possibly even stop the progression of type 1 diabetes, also known as juvenile-onset diabetes. The approach uses the drug Rituxan, normally indicated to treat non-hodgkins lymphoma and rheumatoid arthritis. Is it nepotism for me to post about my brother's accomplishment? Nah, just nachas. Keep up the great work, Mark! From Reuters: "What this study does is open the door to a whole new way to approaching type 1 diabetes," Dr. Mark Pescovitz of Indiana University, who led the study, said in a telephone interview. Rituxan, known generically as rituximab, is made by Genentech, a unit of Roche Holding AG and Biogen Idec Inc. It was designed to wipe out immune cells known as B lymphocytes, which proliferate out of control in lymphoma. The same cells are also involved in the autoimmune destruction of healthy cells and tissue seen in rheumatoid arthritis and, in theory, in juvenile diabetes. Usually, by the time diabetes symptoms appear, 80 to 90 percent of those insulin-producing cells have been destroyed. The Pescovitz team gave Rituxan hoping to save the remaining cells. The treatment worked at first and the body produced more insulin. But over time, the effects faded, and insulin production began to decline at the same rate as among people who received placebo. Pescovitz said he was not disappointed. Further tests will show if repeated treatments with Rituxan or newer drugs that also eliminate B lymphocytes will keep insulin production up. "Cancer drug preserves insulin cells in diabetes" (Reuters) "Rituximab, B-Lymphocyte Depletion, and Preservation of Beta-Cell Function" (New England Journal of Medicine) Previously:Mark Pescovitz photo show in Indianapolis - Boing Boing Boston: photo show featuring Mark Pescovitz - Boing Boing Mark Pescovitz photo - Boing Boing...

Stop, or I'll shout stop again!

Thu, 26 Nov 2009 14:39:58 -0800

British legislators have created new crimes at a rate of one a day since 1997....

How Britain's Pirate Finder General is trying to save the Analog Economy at the Digital Economy's expense

Thu, 26 Nov 2009 11:45:56 -0800

My latest Guardian column looks at Peter Mandelson's new "Digital Economy Bill," a sweeping piece of proposed British legislation that would give Mandelson broad powers to act as the Pirate-Finder General, with the implausible aim of reducing UK file-sharing by 70 percent in one year. Mandelson argues that Britain's Digital Economy will be based on the contrafactual premise of a steady decrease in computer speed, drive capacity, technical competence, network versatility and network ubiquity. Of course, the real digital economy is in those British companies that figure out how to thrive whether or not copying occurs - companies that use networks to reduce their costs, reach larger customer bases, and provide services whose demand and profitability grow with network use, companies such as Last.fm or Moo.com. These companies' businesses are inconceivable without the net, but they also risk being collateral damage in Mandelson's war on the British internet. Just increasing the liability for copyright infringement (and creating a duty to police user-submitted files for infringement) could bankrupt either company overnight. How would Moo sell business cards with your personal photos on them if they could be sued into oblivion should those photos turn out to infringe copyright? Mandelson is standing up for the Analogue Economy, the economy premised on the no-longer-technically-true idea that copying is hard. Companies based on the outdated notion of inherent difficulty of copying must change or they will die. Because copying isn't hard. Copying isn't going to get harder. This moment, right now, 2009, this is as hard as copying will be for the rest of recorded history. Next year, copying will be easier. And the year after that. And the year after that. Why does Mandelson favour the Analogue Economy over the Digital? Previously:BREAKING: Leaked UK government plan to create "Pirate Finder ... Brits: send a message to Mandelson and fight "three strikes ... Brit business secretary promises to punish accused file-sharers ... Britain's new Internet law -- as bad as everyone's been saying ... Britain's new Internet law -- as bad as everyone's been saying ......

Musician's open letter, sung to Peter Mandelson, Britain's Pirate-Finder General

Thu, 26 Nov 2009 11:37:05 -0800

Dan Bull (he of the musical open letter to Lily Allen about copyright) has recorded another open letter to Peter Mandelson, the UK Business Secretary who's set himself up to be Pirate-Finder General, with nearly unlimited powers to enforce copyright. Dan Bull - Dear Mandy [an open letter to Lord Mandelson] (Thanks, Toby!) Previously:Musician's open letter, sung to Lily Allen - Boing Boing Brits: send a message to Mandelson and fight "three strikes ... Britain's new Internet law -- as bad as everyone's been saying ... Brits: sign petition to kill three-strikes law - Boing Boing Dirty ISPs can sabotage the nation's digital future - Boing Boing BREAKING: Leaked UK government plan to create "Pirate Finder ......