US gov't to apply DRM to public, non-copyrighted info that you already paid for

By Cory Doctorow at 10:10 pm Monday, Mar 14 • Comments • Share

Jim sez, "'Public' non-copyrighted information is going to be subjected to controls and restrictions we usually associate with RIAA and MPAA.

"A rather obscure U.S. government agency, the Government Printing Office, is proposing a new set of policies that will drastically reduce free access to government information. Three librarians from the University of California San Diego have written an article about the details." Link (Thanks, Jim!)

Ray Caeser solo show March 19

By Mark Frauenfelder at 8:46 pm Monday, Mar 14 • Comments • Share

Extraordinary artist Ray Caeser is having the first solo exhibit of his haunting work at Jonathan LeVine Gallery in NYC, March 19 thru April 16. Ray does all his work digitally.
Link

Why Canada's Crown Copyright needs to go

By Cory Doctorow at 8:24 pm Monday, Mar 14 • Comments • Share

Copyfightin' Canadian lawyer Michael Geist has a great column in today's Toronto Star about Canada's Crown Copyright -- the copyright that accrues to every work created by the government, and why we need to get rid of it.

Dating back to the 1700s, crown copyright reflects a centuries-old perspective that the government ought to control the public's ability to use official documents.  Today crown copyright extends for fifty years from creation and it requires anyone who wants to use or republish a government report, parliamentary hearing, or other work to first seek permission.  While permission is often granted, it is not automatic. 

The Canadian approach stands in sharp contrast to the situation in the U.S. where the federal government does not hold copyright over work created by an officer or employee as part of that person's official duties.  Accordingly, government reports, court cases, and Congressional transcripts can be freely used and published. 

Link (Thanks, Michael!)

Neil Gaiman naming auction benefits Comic Book Legal Defense Fund

By Cory Doctorow at 7:24 pm Monday, Mar 14 • Comments • Share

Neil Gaiman is auction off naming rights for a ship in his upcoming novel as a fundraiser for the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund.

Neil Gaiman writes: "I've got to name a currently unnamed cruise ship in Anansi Boys. I have no idea what to call it, and, a couple of days ago, realised that my utter lack of inspiration could do good things for the CBLDF. If you wish, you can bid to have the ship named after you, your loved one, your dog, or even your favourite word."

All proceeds from this auction will benefit the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, a 501(c)3 not-for-profit organization that specializes in the defense of First Amendment related cases on behalf of comics authors and retailers.

Link (via /.!)

Daily Show clips re-indexed with direct, no-ad links

By Cory Doctorow at 7:10 pm Monday, Mar 14 • Comments • Share

A reader writes, "This script I've been working on (now stable, just not particularly efficient on the server end) parses the Daily Show clip listing on the Comedy Central site and renders it in a faster-loading multipage format, providing links to open each clip, without ads, in the user's choice of external, resizable media player window. It also keeps track of the number of clips currently up, right now a whopping 648." Link

Butler rewrites Google pages and adds functionality

By Cory Doctorow at 5:29 pm Monday, Mar 14 • Comments • Share

Mark Pilgrim has released an amazing browser enhancer called "Butler" (requires Firefox and Greasemonkey) that adds loads of functionality to Google:

* removes ads on most Google pages
* fixes fonts on most Google pages
* Google web search:
	  o adds links to other search sites ("Try your search on...")
	  o in news results, adds links to other news sites
	  o in movie results, adds links to other movie sites
	  o in weather results, adds links to other weather sites
	  o in product results, adds links to other product sites
* Google image search:
	  o adds links to other image/photo/art sites
* Google News:
	  o adds links to other news sites
* Froogle:
	  o adds links to other product sites
* Google Print:
	  o Removes image copying restrictions
	  o adds links to other book sites
* Google Toolbar Firefox page:
	  o adds links to other Firefox-friendly toolbars

Link (Thanks, Dan!)

How DRM will harm the developing world

By Cory Doctorow at 5:23 pm Monday, Mar 14 • Comments • Share

I've just written a paper on how DRM will affect the developing world. It's called "Digital Rights Management: A failure in the developed world, a danger to the developing world," and it was written for an International Telecommunications Union report on DRM that is aimed at telecoms regulators in national governments around the world who are trying to figure out which DRM to adopt. A number of distinguished Non-Governmental Organizations have signed onto the paper -- if your organization is interested in singing on, please email me.

The "DRM hypothesis" is that the public is dishonest, and will do dishonest things with cultural material if given the chance. DRM is deployed in order to force dishonest customers to behave honestly and buy media and to limit their activities to those that are authorized by rightsholders.

For this to work, it must be impossible for a potential customer for media to locate a non-DRM copy of their chosen movies, books, games or music. If a dishonest customer for an ebook can download an un-restricted version of a book that is otherwise available in a restricted DRM format, she surely will.

But DRM is simply not very good at doing this job. Because DRM is based on "security through obscurity" -- that is, in hiding from a user the way that it works -- it is inevitably broken in short order and the materials that it covers are put on the Internet where anyone can download them.

Indeed, there has never been a single piece of DRM-restricted media that can't be downloaded from the Internet today. In more than a decade of extensive use, DRM has never once accomplished its goal.

Link

Obsessive gamer Storm Troopers get a Vader-visit

By Cory Doctorow at 5:18 pm Monday, Mar 14 • Comments • Share

The 203rd Desert Expeditionary Legion (A Company) are a group of Star Wars Galaxies gamers who are really into being Storm Troopers. They drill, patrol, take shifts and work military discipline among themselves. After doing this for some time, the game-masters in SWG decided to reward them for their diligence: so they dispatched a virtual Darth Vader to go to their camp and give them a pep-talk:

"For too long, the Rebellion has survived in our midst," said Vader, "but no longer will such an affront be tolerated. Order must be restored.

"Effective immediately, all known Rebels and Jedi will be shot on sight by Imperial troops."

Before leaving, Vader told the troops he was pleased with their discipline, maintained even at the edge of the Outer Rim.

"The Emperor has been told of your loyalty," Vader said. "And he will be watching."

Link (via Wonderland)

How can we reinvent games?

By Cory Doctorow at 5:10 pm Monday, Mar 14 • Comments • Share

Greg Costikyan -- the award-winning game-developer -- recently brought down the house at the Game Developers' Conference in San Francisco with a speech calling for games to be created outside the burgeoning, strangling "studio system" that's cropping up in gameland. Now he's posted a request-for-proposals on this -- a public discussion aimed at mining the web to see what comes up:

Virtually every independent developer sells their game from their own website, as well as through whatever other channel they can find--and everyone I've talked to says they sell only tiny numbers that way. Volumes through other channels--whether that's the portals like Yahoo Games! and such, or via Digital River, or whatever--are always larger, usually by a factor of ten or more. The fact is that you can distribute readily through the Internet, but it's awfully hard to market through the Internet. A box on a shelf serves as a billboard for a product. Conventional retail release ensures review attention. Gamers still assume that a game that doesn't have a conventional release must inherently be inferior--and gamers have yet to develop an aesthetic that says "Gameplay is what matters, and I'll accept lower production quality for superior gameplay." There are, in other words, a confluence of problems that need to be solved: a change in gamer culture, a path to market, a source of finance, and a means of marketing.

Link (via Wonderland)

Todd Lappin's 707 jet panel lighting fixture

By Mark Frauenfelder at 3:05 pm Monday, Mar 14 • Comments • Share

Todd Lappin's house remodel is coming along nicely, as evidenced in his photos here.
Link

More on Ratula

By Mark Frauenfelder at 3:01 pm Monday, Mar 14 • Comments • Share

It turns out that the Ratula hotrod David and I saw on the Ventura Freeway yesterday was designed and built by Brett Barris, the son of the famous kustomizer George Barris, who built the Batmobile and countless other far out cars of the '60s. Above, a photograph of George Barris' DRAG-U-LA, which Grandpa Munster drove.
Link (Thanks, Joel!)

What not to do at McDonalds in Japan

By Mark Frauenfelder at 2:36 pm Monday, Mar 14 • Comments • Share

Winkie.org learns that sit-ins are discouraged at the Roppongi Higashi McDonalds.
Link

By Mark Frauenfelder at 2:34 pm Monday, Mar 14 • Comments • Share

Chris Ware on French TV

By Mark Frauenfelder at 2:10 pm Monday, Mar 14 • Comments • Share

Chris Ware is one of the best cartoonists around, and a French TV channel has produced a documentary about him. You can get a torrent to download a 100MB file of the documentary from Kempa.
Link (via Drawn!)

Mr. Machine toy robot TV commercial

By Mark Frauenfelder at 1:54 pm Monday, Mar 14 • Comments • Share

We've written about tyrannical toy inventor Marvin Glass before. Here's a clip of a TV commercial of one of his toys, a little robot toy called Mr Machine.

Marvin Glass was a workaholic toy inventor. So much so, that he often did not spend enough time with his wife. During an argument over Marvin's work habits, Mrs. Glass shouted "You are always working, inventing! You are Mr. Machine!". And so a great toy name and toy was invented by Marvin Glass.

Link

ETECH: Em3rg1ng l0ft BOF and Cocktails

By Cory Doctorow at 1:33 pm Monday, Mar 14 • Comments • Share

Danny O'Brien sez, "We're running a little shanty town on the edge on the Emerging Tech conference in San Diego this week. No mid-con party this year (too many cool O'Reilly evening activities), but we're sneaking in a free cocktail hour this evening for those who arrived early.

"BB readers at Etech are welcome to join us at the l0ft BOF below at 7:00. We'll have a few lightning summaries of cool stuff people are working on, then an enforced march at 7:30 to the l0ft, five blocks away for free drinks, intense discussion, and wanton checking of email, until 10pm." Link (Thanks, Danny!)

Hypnosis as pain killer

By David Pescovitz at 12:34 pm Monday, Mar 14 • Comments • Share

In a new study, anesthesiologists used functional magnetic resonance imaging to observe how hypnosis might reduce pain by altering brain activity. The researchers subjected patients to a painful burning stimuli while their brains were scanned. The fMRIs of the patients under hypnosis for pain suppression showed "reduced activity in areas of the pain network and increased activity in other ares of the brain," according to University of Iowa professor of anesthetsia Sebastian Schulz-Stubner.

Hypnosis was successful in reducing pain perception for all 12 participants. Hypnotized volunteers reported either no pain or significantly reduced pain (less than 3 on the 0-10 pain scale) in response to the painful heat....

"...For clinical use, (the study) helps to dispel prejudice about hypnosis as a technique to manage pain because we can show an objective, measurable change in brain activity linked to a reduced perception of pain," (Schulz-Stubner) added.

Link

Turn any string into ransom-note type based on found images

By Cory Doctorow at 12:20 pm Monday, Mar 14 • Comments • Share

Wil Wheaton sez, "When I was a kid, I loved cutting up magazines and newspapers to make fake ransom notes. Via Waxy, I just discovered The Web of Letters. You can enter any text you like, and using the Yahoo API and its image search capabilities the text will be recreated using random image search results. It's very cool." Link (Thanks, Wil!)

Update: Andreas points us to a Flickr version

Audio warfare on tax evaders

By David Pescovitz at 12:19 pm Monday, Mar 14 • Comments • Share

Tax officials in India's Andhra Pradesh state hired drum corps to play outside the homes of tax evaders. From Reuters:

"They put up a spectacle outside the houses of defaulters, draw them out and explain their dues to them and the need to clear it at the earliest," said T.S.R. Anjaneyulu, municipal commissioner of Rajahmundry city. "They don't stop until people agree to clear the dues."

Link

Aussie actors' guild forbids members to use Creative Commons

By Cory Doctorow at 12:16 pm Monday, Mar 14 • Comments • Share

Brian sez, "The Australian equivalent of the Screen Actors Guild has apparently refused to allow its members to participate in a film project--because the project would be licensed under a Creative Commons license:"

The MEAA Board decided that it could grant none of the dispensations sought by MOD Films, on the grounds that these would be "inappropriate”. The production had asked for dispensations and support for its world-first plans to employ professional actors in a film with only "Some Rights Reserved” by the production company. The company intends to permit non-commercial use and re-voicing of the film by the audience. The MEAA also rejected the option of any further negotiations with MOD Films.

MOD Films had sought a dispensation, since early January, to allow professional Australian actors to participate in the short (15 minute) film and had worked with actors agents to communicate the extent of the project before auditions. The cast chosen for Sanctuary had been offered 110% on top of the MEAA award rate to take part in the experiment.

MOD Films is using the Creative Commons licensing scheme that expressly permits more audience freedom than All Rights Reserved. The Creative Commons was first devised in 2002 and Australian-specific licenses were released in February. Mash-up and re-mix potential is an intrinsic part of the Sanctuary project – empowering the audience to exercise greater control over purchased film content and treating re-use as an opportunity as opposed to a threat. Audience re-use is already prevalent in the computer games industry, often referred to as MOD'ing, and certain bestselling games have started out as MODs (e.g. Counter Strike). MOD Films is exploring how this may work creatively and commercially with films.

Link (Thanks, Brian!)

Thanks, Bloggies! BB wins best group blog, and blog of the year!

By Xeni Jardin at 11:18 am Monday, Mar 14 • Comments • Share

Boing Boing pal Scott Beale informs us that our blog just won Group Weblog of the Year at the Bloggies. OMG! What a huge honor! Thank you, Bloggies. We honestly didn't expect this, and we are deeply moved and grateful. There were many other deserving blogs up for awards, backed by talented folks who work very hard, and we raise our collective pirate-eye-patches in their honor: check 'em all out. On behalf of my blog-mates Cory Doctorow, Mark Frauenfelder, and David Pescovitz; our wise "band manager" John Battelle; our sysadmin par excellence Ken Snider; and the rest of the team and extended family that makes Boing Boing possible -- a humble thank you. But most of all, we are grateful to you, our readers, for wasting otherwise productive time on our collective scrapbook of "wonderful things," and for pointing us to even more of those wonderful and undiscovered things each day. We're really sorry that we couldn't make it to SXSW in person to accept the award, but we hope you'll join us in celebrating in person tomorrow at ETCON (all five of us will be in the same place for the first time). Boing Boing sprouted online a little over five years ago, from paper zine roots planted by Mark Frauenfelder and Carla Sinclair. It is a privilege to blog for you. With you, we look forward to another adventurous year of link-discuss to come. Link

Update: Holy crap! Reader Nathaneal Heasley sez, "Not only did BB win best group ‘blog, it won “blog of the year/best weblog overall” – congratulations!" For those keeping track, this is the second year in a row Boing Boing has received these two awards: Link to 2004, Link to 2005. Man. We're speechless, and overwhelmed by your generosity.

Baltimore Bookthing needs help

By Cory Doctorow at 7:14 am Monday, Mar 14 • Comments • Share

Baltimore's remarkable charity Bookthing is on the verge of rescuing itself from a years-long problem with its landlords, but it needs your help.

There's a little place in Baltimore called the Bookthing. They take your old books and give them away to other people. It's not any more complicated than that. I go in and drop off my old English Literature from 1800-1950 textbook, they hang on to it until someone else comes in a takes it home. It's all free...

To bring everyone up to speed: the building that houses our current location was sold in September 2004. The new owner is looking to renovate our space into an office or apartment. Our rent was $235 and he has now raised it to $525. The growth of The Book Thing has been strangled by our current location; no handicap accessibility, no heat, no bathroom, and lack of room limit the time that people can stay to volunteer or shop, and that limits the amount of books we can display and give away.

With the purchase of this building, 3001 Vineyard Lane in Waverly, we will have a permanent location in Baltimore so our existence is no longer at the whim of landlords. Our monthly mortgage payments will be less than we would have to pay in rent for a similar space. This new building will also have luxury items such as bathrooms and heat.

We have secured a mortgage for $210,00 from a private individual, amortized over 30 years but due in three years. Now all we need is the remaining $50,000 of the purchase price and $10,000 for closing costs. I have contacted some foundations and corporations. They have expressed interest, but that will take time. So we are coming to you, our supporters, for help.

Link (Thanks, Mark!)

AOL weasels about its Terms of Service

By Cory Doctorow at 6:51 am Monday, Mar 14 • Comments • Share

Last night, I blogged about AOL's terms-of-service for its services, in which you waive your privacy right. AOL has done some interviews objecting to this, saying that the terms are only intended to reach to message-board postings.

I don't buy it for a second. If AOL meant "you waive privacy in your message board postings and not your AIM messages" they could say so.

And if they won't say so, why should we believe them? Link

Update: J sez, "Apple's .Mac service lets you use the AIM network without clicking through AOL's TOS at all (you get to use your username@mac.com as your AIM name), and the .Mac TOS says nothing at all about AIM or AOL, and neither does Apple's privacy statement, which you agree to when agreeing to the .Mac TOS."

Update 2: CK sez, "iChat still uses AOL's servers, so technically all iChat chat sessions fall under the "using AOL services" aspect of AIM's TOS. The good news for Mac users is that the new version of iChat, due to be released with Tiger, supports Jabber."

State of the Blogosphere: it's big and it's growing

By Cory Doctorow at 6:42 am Monday, Mar 14 • Comments • Share

Dave Sifry has posted his latest "State of the Blogosphere," in which he reveals the amazing stats about blog-growth he's derived from Technorati's relentless and exhaustive indexing of every blog on the net.

We are currently seeing about 30,000 - 40,000 new weblogs being created each day, depending on the day. Compared to the past, this is well over double the rate of change in October, when there were about 15,000 new weblogs created each day. The remarkable growth over the past 3 months can be attributed to the increase in new, mainstream services such as MSN Spaces, and in increases of use of services like Blogger, AOL Journals, and LiveJournal. In addition, services outside the United States have been taking off, including a number of media sites promoting blogging, such as Le Monde in France.

There is a dark underbelly to these numbers, however: Part of the growth of new weblogs created each day is due to an increase in spam blogs - fake blogs that are created by robots in order to foster link farms, attempted search engine optimization, or drive traffic through to advertising or affiliate sites.

Link