The CRAFT magazine launch party, held at Machine Project in Los Angeles, was a big success. Mark Allen of Machine Project was very kind of opening his great gallery to us, Jenny Ryan of Sew Darn Cute did a fabulous job producing the event, and I enjoyed meeting all the MAKE, CRAFT, and Boing Boing readers who stopped by to say hello. For those of you who couldn't make it, you missed out on some awesome cupcakes with toppers made by Cathy of California.
Mark's Flickr photos | Jenny Ryan's photos

UPDATE, 10-30-06: "Federal police backed by armored vehicles and water cannons tore down barricades and stormed embattled Oaxaca on Sunday, seizing control of the city center from protesters who had held it for five months. A 15-year-old boy manning one barricade was killed by a tear gas canister...Some demonstrators used syringes to pierce their arms and legs, then paint signs in their own blood decrying the police." Link (thanks Richie).

--------------------

BoingBoing reader Jenny Smith says,

My dear friend Brad Will was killed in Oaxaca yesterday. Brad was a journalist, and he was an activist. He was always, always giving everything he had to work for justice and make the world a better place. We are all so much poorer now that he is gone. I can only hope that his death can serve to bring some attention to what is happening in Oaxaca. I am sure that Brad would have wanted that.

Here is the last post Will filed from Oaxaca, at indymedia: "death in oaxaca: another murder in the months long struggle in oaxaca." More posts there related to his death: Link.

Snip from Houston Chronicle account of Will's death:

An American photojournalist and another man were killed and at least five other people were injured Friday as protesters and pro-government gunmen clashed in the southern state capital of Oaxaca.

The journalist, whom colleagues identified as documentary filmmaker and photographer Brad Will, was shot in a confrontation in a community on the edge of Oaxaca City, capital of the state of the same name. The city center has been besieged for nearly five months as activists press for the removal of the state's governor.

(photo: NYC Indymedia).

UPDATE: The Village Voice has a detailed item on Will's death, which includes photographs of the plainclothes gunmen who shot him (via the Mexican news daily El Universal): Link to Voice item. (WARNING: url includes graphic image of Will with exposed gunshot wound, before his death)

Eliot adds,

Brad Will was a videographer for Indymedia. He was a well-known and respected figure in the New York activist community and the US global justice movement. He had travelled and reported extensively throughout the Americas.

There is ongoing coverage as more information emerges from NYC Indymedia, global Indymedia. The most comprehensive source in Spanish is from the Centro de Medias Libres.

Brad's friends in New York are calling for emergency actions this weekend to demand that the US State Department press the Mexican government investigate Brad's murder and expressing solidarity for the social movement that Brad gave his life to document. In New York, a protest has been called for today, Saturday, October 28, at 3 p.m., outside the Mexican consulate general in New York at 27 East 39th Street.

Please come out if you can, and if you're in other cities please check your local Indymedia for information on local actions, or organize your own. The situation in Oaxaca is extremely urgent and while this awful tragedy hits very close to home for us, it is only one part of the ongoing repression against a vibrant and powerful grassroots movement for justice in Mexico.

Link to a Flickr photo search for "teacher" + "Oaxaca," which yields many photos documenting the ongoing teachers' strike. Image shown here: Teachers protesting, shot by "machoroboraza." (thanks, Michael, Margaret, Genie Ogden, and others)

Reader comment: TourPro says,

I've been following the story for a few months now on my blog: Link.

A friend of Brad says,

This is Brad Will's final footage from Oaxaca, Mexico: Link. It has been released under a Creative Commons liscense. Just over 16 minutes long it shows several interviews and ends with Brad's death. Also available as a torrent, here: Link.

Christopher Soghoian's stated intent with the "Boarding Pass Generator" website was to illustrate a well-documented airline security weakness that airlines and government failed to address -- not to commit fraud or help terrorists. IANAL, but people who are lawyers are no doubt examining the laws that may apply to his case, now that he has been visited by FBI agents bearing a search warrant, his computer and other belongings seized.

A number of legal areas may be at issue. Here's one. If I'm reading the current Homeland Security Code of Federal Regulations accurately, it would appear that even scrawling the words "boarding pass" on a cocktail napkin in lipstick and calling it a boarding pass could be cause for an unsolicited late-night visit, though intent is key. This section of federal law addresses the forging of airline tickets or boarding documents -- DHS Code Title 49, Volume 8; October 1, 2004 rev. [Page 302]:

TITLE 49--TRANSPORTATION

CHAPTER XII--TRANSPORTATION SECURITY ADMINISTRATION, DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY

PART 1540_CIVIL AVIATION SECURITY: GENERAL RULES--Table of Contents

Subpart B_Responsibilities of Passengers and Other Individuals and Persons

Sec. 1540.103 Fraud and intentional falsification of records.

No person may make, or cause to be made, any of the following:
(a) Any fraudulent or intentionally false statement in any application for any security program, access medium, or identification medium, or any amendment thereto, under this subchapter.
(b) Any fraudulent or intentionally false entry in any record or report that is kept, made, or used to show compliance with this subchapter, or exercise any privileges under this subchapter.
(c) Any reproduction or alteration, for fraudulent purpose, of any report, record, security program, access medium, or identification medium issued under this subchapter.

Link.

BACKGROUND POSTS ON BOINGBOING:
* FBI returns to "Fake Boarding Pass" guy's home, seizes computers (10-28-06)
* Fake boarding pass guy reports he was visited by FBI (10-27-06)
* Congressman wants fake boarding pass guy arrested (10-27-06)
* Website generates fake boarding passes (10-26-06)
* Slate's Andy Bowers on airline security loopholes (02-07-05)

(Thanks, 53(uri7y r3534r(|-|3r!)

Reader comments: Wil Wheaton says,

Doesn't it seem like the FBI is coming down on this guy with all the power of a fully-operational space station to make an example of him, and thereby silence anyone else who may get some crazy ideas like speaking freely about how ineffective the Department of Homeland Security is?

I wish the government spent 1/10 the effort tracking down really bad guys as they spend going after American citizens who use their constitutional rights.

This shit (and the martial law thing) are the scariest things I've read this Halloween season.

Nicholas Weaver says,

The boarding pass requirement at screening is primarily just to reduce the load on the security screeners: it keep others (such as friends/relatives waiting at the gate) from taking up the time of security screening.

The one problem is that the boarding passes are ALSO used to say "This person should have secondary screening". That the vulnerability, just reprint without the "SSSS", has been widely known since 2001, just suggests how little those in the TSA really believe secondary screening matters, especially since those who would get the secondary screening KNOW IN ADVANCE they will be screened.

The secondary screening is security theater, not real security anyway, so an easy way to bypass it isn't a real security risk!

Chris Warth says,

Hmm, maybe the FBI will start playing whack-a-mole with all these sites. You can print a Delta boarding pass at this site: Link.

(Story background here). Christopher Soghoian today blogs that the FBI returned to his home last night in his absence with a search warrant, and seized computers and other belongings. The 24-year old computer science student is the creator of a website that generated fake airline boarding passes to illustrate a security flaw which has been documented on the 'net since (at least) 2003. I reached Soghoian by email today, and he declined comment on advice from attorneys.

Snip from his most recent blog entry:

I didn't sleep at home last night. It's fair to say I was rather shaken up.

I came back today, to find the glass on the front door smashed.

Inside, is a rather ransacked home, a search warrant taped to my kitchen table, a total absence of computers - and various other important things. I have no idea what time they actually performed the search, but the warrant was approved at 2AM.

Link to full text of post. Search warrant scans: page 1 (BB mirror), page 2 (BB mirror). (thanks, Jan Pederson, David Molnar, Craig, Catspaw, John Hudgens, and others.)

BACKGROUND POSTS ON BOINGBOING:
* Fake boarding pass guy reports he was visited by FBI
* Congressman wants fake boarding pass guy arrested
* Website generates fake boarding passes
* Slate's Andy Bowers on airline security loopholes

PREVIOUSLY AROUND THE WEB:
A number of people before Soghoian have pointed out the airline security vulnerability his "Fake Boarding Pass Generator" website illustrated. Among them:
* Bruce Schneier (2003): Link
* Sen. Charles Schumer (2005): Link
* Andy Bowers, Slate.com (2005): Link
* Jacob Appelbaum (2005): Link

Reader comment: Kevin says,

I'm pretty sure that you can bank on the fact that the FBI will be going through the IP logs to see everyone that visited that site.

Steve Peterson says,

Here's an article from Twin Cities newspaper with reaction from NWA (Ed. note: this one, not the one from Compton) to the Northwest Airlines Fake Boarding Pass Generator story: Link

UPDATE:
* Fake Boarding Pass Generator guy and FBI: what about the law? (10-28-06)

Watchismo, a stupendous vintage watch blog, has a drool-inducing feature on the history of calculator watches. (I would have blogged this post about the amazing, domed Rolex diving watch, but at $250,000 a throw, they're more heartbreaking than wonderful.)

Playboy magazine, June 1975...A gift-giving advertisement with ideas for dads & grads included this guy hidden in the back. The Calcron LED Wrist Calculator. Likely the first public offering of it's kind.

Link

Esty seller PlushBot crafts these amazing, hand-sewn felt monster robots that have the same eomotional affect of a sock monkey crossed with a Dalek. Link (via Wonderland)

UPDATED BELOW.

Christopher Soghoian, who created the Fake Boarding Pass Generator website, claims to have been visited by FBI agents this afternoon at his home in Bloomington, Indiana, according to a security researcher with whom he was instant-messaging at the time.

This news comes just hours after Rep. Edward Markey (D-MA) called for Soghoian's arrest, and for the takedown of his website, which generates phony Northwest Airlines boarding passes to illustrate an airline security weakness documented on the 'net since 2003.

Calls and emails I made to the 24-year-old computer science student after learning of the reported FBI visit were not returned. An iChat transcript provided to BoingBoing shows Soghoian claimed the FBI was at his door between 345 and 350pm PST. He stopped responding to incoming IM messages at that time, and has not responded to other incoming messages since.

FBI special agent Wendy Osborne declined to confirm whether Soghoian had been visited or if an investigation was taking place, citing FBI policy, but said "We will confirm that he has not been arrested."

Soghoian's Fake Boarding Pass Generator website was taken offline today, but other content on the same domain is still accessible.

Soghoian's personal web page states that he is a PhD student at Indiana University's School of Informatics in Bloomington. According to an online copy of his resume, he has interned for Google since June, 2006, and in 2004 served for a semester as a teaching aide to Avi Rubin, a computer science professor at Johns Hopkins who exposed security vulnerabilities in Diebold's electronic voting machines. Reached by phone this evening, Avi Rubin confirmed to BB that Soghoian served as his teaching assistant for one Spring, 2004 semester in a "Security and Privacy in Computing" class at Johns Hopkins University.

UPDATE: Ryan Singel at Wired News has been following this story, also, and has a report here: FBI Says No Arrest of Boarding Pass Hacker. Snip:

While the boarding pass generator, which was intended to point out flaws in airport security, is gone, other portions of Soghoian's website, dubfire.net, are still live. Soghoian's computer still registers as being online according to Google chat, indicating that the feds have not probably not confiscated his computer.

See also this earlier Wired News story by Singel, Boarding Pass Hacker Under Fire. Snip:

"I want Congress to see how stupid the (Transportation Security Administration)'s watch lists are," he said. "Now even the most technically incompetent user can click and generate a boarding pass. By doing this, I'm hoping (Congress) will see how silly the security rules are. I don't want bad guys to board airplanes but I don't think the system we have right now works and I think it is giving us a false sense of security."

BACKGROUND -- Previous posts on BoingBoing:
* Congressman wants fake boarding pass guy arrested
* Website generates fake boarding passes

UPDATE, 840pm PT: The "Slight Paranoia" blog credited to Chris Soghoian now contains two posts which reference an FBI visit:

3:54pm PT
FBI at the Door
The FBI are at the door. Off to chat.

7:12PM
Post FBI Visit
The FBI visited. They handed me with a written order to remove the boarding pass generator. By the time we were somewhere with internet access, the website had already been taken down. I am now safe (and no longer with the FBI). Still trying to find a lawyer.....

If you want to help, a good start would be to email Congressman Markey - who initially called for my arrest.

Soghoian's Blogger profile indicates that he is also credited as a co-author of this blog, where the Fake Boarding Pass Generator was announced in this post. Soghoian details the security vulnerabilities that inspired him to write the php Generator here on "Slight Paranoia:" Link.

He is hardly the first or only person to have pointed out this flaw. Over a year ago, in February 2005, my NPR "Day to Day" colleague Andy Bowers wrote a piece for Slate.com titled "A Dangerous Loophole in Airport Security," which was also blogged here on BoingBoing. In the Slate essay, Bowers described the same security loophole which Soghoian's "Generator" demonstrates in code.

And two years before that, security expert Bruce Schneier outlined the problem in an issue of Crypto-Gram Newsletter item titled "Flying on Someone Else's Airplane Ticket," dated August 15, 2003.

Assuming that Schneier was the first to publish an outline of the security vulnerability -- that's more than three years during which the problem has been publicly known, but not resolved by either the airlines or government.

"The only way for these kind of problems to get fixed, are through through public full disclosure," Soghoian wrote when releasing the Fake Boarding Pass Generator. "TSA/DHS cannot be expected to fix anything unless they are publicly shamed into doing so."

MORE BB UPDATES:
* FBI returns to "Fake Boarding Pass" guy's home, seizes computers (10-28-06)
* Fake Boarding Pass Generator guy and FBI: what about the law? (10-28-06)

BoingBoing reader Jeff says,

I received a couple of emails from YouTube this afternoon notifying me that a third party (probably attorneys for Comedy Central) had made a DMCA request to take down Colbert Report and Daily Show clips. If you visit YouTube, all Daily Show, Colbert Report and South Park clips now show “This video has been removed due to terms of use violation.”

For a long time, Comedy Central has passively allowed the sharing of online clips of its shows—because let’s face it, it’s helped them generate the kind of water cooler talk that has made them a ton of money. In this Wired Interview , Jon Stewart and Daily Show Executive Producer even encouraged viewers to watch the show on the Internet:

Karlin: If people want to take the show in various forms, I’d say go. But when you’re a part of something successful and meaningful, the rule book says don’t try to analyze it too much or dissect it. You shouldn’t say: “I really want to know what fans think. I really want to understand how people are digesting our show.” Because that is one of those things that you truly have no control over. The one thing that you have control over is the content of the show. But how people are reacting to it, how it’s being shared, how it’s being discussed, all that other stuff, is absolutely beyond your ability to control.

Stewart: I’m surprised people don’t have cables coming out of their asses, because that’s going to be a new thing. You’re just going to get it directly fed into you. I look at systems like the Internet as a convenience. I look at it as the same as cable or anything else. Everything is geared toward more individualized consumption. Getting it off the Internet is no different than getting it off TV.

But apparently, all good things come to an end when there is money and attorneys involved. I assume the only online clips that will remain will have to qualify under fair use – probably short clips, with social or political importance.

Link.

Reader comment: skott says,

This post (on a fairly well-known comedy message board occasionally frequented by comedians some of whom have even had shows on Comedy Central) indicates that the network's YouTube nastiness doesn't just stop with clips they "own," but clips involving their big stars.

[Another BB reader named] Jeff came up with a funny and spot-on list of practical reasons why comedycentral.com's video-viewing UI sucks way more ass than YouTube. "Comedy Central, you’re on notice!," he says, "they are stupid to ask YouTube to remove their videos." Link. Here are the top five reasons Comedy Central should laissez the hell faire:

# You have tiny pathetic little videos that can’t be resized. It’s like watching the TV in the next room through the keyhole of a closed door.

# You use javascript to launch a popup window. Therefore, I can’t send a link to my friends or put a link on my blog to direct someone to the video I want them to see.

# Your popup window can’t be opened in a tab or resized. Give me control of my browser back.

# Your popup window has an obnoxious background that I’m afraid is going to give me a seizure.

# Next to your video, there’s an ad that’s bigger than the video (Firefox blocks it, but I’m still annoyed by the gaping hole that remains).

MAKE contributing editor William Gurstelle, author of the fantastic DIY book Backyard Ballistics: Build Potato Cannons, Paper Match Rockets, Cincinnati Fire Kites, Tennis Ball Mortars, and More Dynamite Devices, will be on the History Channel's "Man, Moment, Machine" show on October 31.

Shown here: William's catapult, which he calls "Ludgar, the Warwolf," hurling two gasoline soaked softballs across a parking lot.

The show is about Alexander the Great and his pioneering use of catapults in warfare. Link

Jeff Diehl says: "I found this amazing article in the NY Times on new developments with rogue elephants — they rape and kill rhinoceroses; attack villages with intelligent measures like blocking escape routes and pinning down humans before goring them to death; and display psychological traits previously only observed in people." Link

Tina the three-legged tortoise has been retrofitted with an air-filled tire and shock absorber to help her get around. Link

It seems that if you want to be photographed pretending to eat your cat's head, one rule is that you have to open your eyes very wide and look up. Link (Via Eye of the Goof)

Trippy 12-minute 1960s film by Toshio Matsumoto, whose work influenced Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange. Link

My 9-year-old daughter's favorite TV show is Hannah Montana (starring Miley Cyrus). Sometimes I sit on the couch with her and half-watch it while I read a comic book. From what I've picked up, it's about a middle-school girl who is a rock star, but nobody at the school knows. A Clark Kent / Superman deal. This is fertile agar for all sorts of screwball plots. My guilty pleasure is that I enjoy the infectious bubblegum music she performs.

But I don't feel as guilty now that I've learned that one of my cultural heroes, Irwin Chusid, also likes her music, and approves of the Hannah Montana Soundtrack.

As a 55-year-old AARP card-carrying male with a Seussian distance from kids ("You have 'em, I'll entertain 'em") and 30+ years airtime here at the hotbed of broadcast anarchy, I'm not Radio Disney's target demo. (On my 49th birthday, I sighed, "Advertisers no longer care about me"—then realized: When did they?) Hannah's lyrics evoke the hopes, dreams, and rockstar fantasies of prepubescent girls, but the music is captivating to these admittedly jaded ears. It's everything catchy pop should be: frothy, harmonic, propulsive, memorable—that is, it's formulaic. And irresistible. She's The Monkees in a pleated mini.

Link

Congressman Edward Markey (D-Mass.) is alarmed by the Northwest Airline Boarding Pass Generator mentioned yesterday. He issued a statement demanding that security researcher Christopher Soghoian be arrested.

"The Bush Administration must immediately act to investigate, apprehend those responsible, shut down the website, and warn airlines and aviation security officials to be on the look-out for fraudsters or terrorists trying to use fake boarding passes in an attempt to cheat their way through security and onto a plane," Markey said in a statement. "There are enough loopholes at the backdoor of our passenger airplanes from not scanning cargo for bombs; we should not tolerate any new loopholes making it easier for terrorists to get into the front door of a plane."

Instead of calling for his head, Rep. Markey should be thanking Soghoian for pointing out just how easy it is to fake a boarding pass. How lame.

On his blog, Soghoain writes:

In addition to calling for my arrest, the congressman may want to call for the arrest of Senator Schumer (D-NY). In April of this year, he posted rather detailed instructions for the exact same attack. See: here. Sure, he didn't produce a php script that'd do it for you, but he provided detailed enough instructions that a terrorist or evil-doer with basic computer skills could do it.

Perhaps he'll be my cell-mate.

Link

Snip from a Planetary Society announcement:

When New Horizons arrives at Pluto in nine years, Earth will be a different place than the world the spacecraft left behind.

To mark that passage of time, The Planetary Society, in conjunction with the New Horizons mission, sponsored a contest for children and adults to send a message to future Earth - a New Horizons Digital Time Capsule of photographs of the world today to the inhabitants of 2015, who will witness the spacecraft's arrival at Pluto. Time is almost up to submit a photo, however, since November 1, 2006 is the deadline.

Participants whose photos are selected for the time capsule will be eligible to win a grand prize trip to New Horizons mission control at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland to witness the Jupiter flyby in February 2007.

What will Earth be like in 2015? How will life on our planet have changed in those intervening years? More than a billion people will be born, and a billion die; new technologies could revolutionize daily life; the rapid pace of change will have transformed not only our own lives but also that of cities and entire countries. The New Horizons Digital Time Capsule will consist of photographs of things in 2006 that people expect will be transformed by 2015.

Link

Make magazine's Bre Pettis has a marvelous video about making and using spud guns (aka potato cannons). If you've never seen a spud gun in action, you are in for a treat. (This spud gun, which uses a stun gun as the igniter, was featured in Make Vol 3) Link

My NPR News colleague Melody Joy Kramer points to this online feature and explains, "We asked all of the Project Runway designers for DIY Halloween costume ideas and they all created original sketches and instructions. Some of the costumes are high-tech." At left, my favorite -- not high-tech, and not from the TV stars, but Melody herself as a child. She and her brother are bags of jellybeans. The photo's so cute, it's givin' me cavities. (thanks, David Banks)

Photographer and Louisiana native Clayton James Cubitt tells BoingBoing,

Winter is bearing down on the Gulf Coast, and volunteers for relief are increasingly scarce, while vast need remains. There's a tiny little village called Pearlington, Mississippi, that's now all but forgotten, especially relative to New Orleans.

Pearlington rests eight miles inland. It's nine feet above sea level, but that didn't protect it from the 20-30 foot storm surge that roared up the Pearl River and washed almost every home away.

I've been documenting the residents and volunteers in Pearlington as they struggle with survival. The volunteer housing efforts there could really use some much-needed attention right now, as it looks like the (in)famous FEMA trailer program will be ending for most citizens as soon as February. What then?

One House At A Time is one of the organizations working in Pearlington to answer that question.

Link to a post on Clayton's blog with more about the aid project.

The neutricidal maniacs at the National Cable and Telecommunications Association have fielded this embarrassing anti-Net-Neutrality advertisement. Net Neutrality is the idea that your ISP should just send you the data you ask for, instead of charging each Internet service for "guaranteed delivery" to your computer.

As Craig "craigslist" Newmark put it, imagine if you tried to order a pizza and the phone company said, "AT&T's preferred pizza vendor is Domino's. Press one to connect to Domino's now. If you would still like to order from your neighborhood pizzeria, please hold for three minutes while Domino's guaranteed orders are placed."

The cable operators' PSA is a dishonest, steaming pile of FUD about neutrality, calling it corporate welfare for dot-com billionaires who want you to pay more for their services. There's no rebutting this, it's just a lie.

Net neutrality is about whether telcos get to charge you for your DSL, Internet services for their DSL, and then each carrier gets to shake down each of those already-paying services for even more money for "guaranteed delivery." Talk about corporate welfare! These greedheads already get the priceless government-granted rights-of-way into our homes (imagine if every time a wire crossed a property line, the telco had to negotiate with the owner). If they can't make enough profits with that enormous gift from the public coffers, let someone else take over their wires.

Link (Thanks, Daniel!)

A group of British mathematicians have hit on some kind of secret formula for playing the lotto and are raking in millions: See update, below.

Syndicate leader Barry Waterhouse, 41, who works at the design and printing section of the university, explained that the syndicate had been doing the National Lottery for eight years without conspicuous success after it started in 1994 with each member picking his or her own line.

"We just weren't winning with the numbers being picked that way, so we thought of a different method which would mean all 49 numbers would be used,' Mr Waterhouse said.

The syndicate then set up a computer program to check the numbers every week.

It took four years and a total outlay of $8700, but on Saturday, the formula succeeded.

Matching the winning numbers and the bonus ball, they hit the jackpot.

"We just thought that if all the numbers are in use, we must have a good chance of winning and it has proved so, though you never really think it will happen to you, "Mr Waterhouse said.

Link (via Futurismic)

Update: These guys aren't math geeks, just some guys who came up with a "system" and got lucky. Thanks, Joel!

m&m's dark chocolate
halloween safety tips
devil's tramping ground
camp blood
unsettling house
pepperoni food art
cannibal dinner
pumpkin stencils
spooky stuff
spelling with zombies
kiss meets the phantom of the park

Web Zen Home, Store (Thanks Frank!)

Image above: Link, by Vera Brosgol, via DieselSweeties. (Thanks, R. Stevens!)

Trogdor, an awesome heavy-metal song from the net-toon Homestar Runner, has been included in the video game Guitar Hero II, where you score points for thrashing a guitar-shaped controller in time with the music. Link (Thanks, Dan!)

This 1984 video of an actor trying out for a part in Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket is a hoot. He's so arrogant that he's almost endearing.

His name is Brian Atene and he does not appear on the Internet Movie Database, so I guess he decided the movie industry didn't deserve his talents. He hardly shows up on Google either. This 7th grade class photo does look like him, though. Link

The UK Open Rights Group is throwing an all-evening symposium-with-DJs night on November 13th to explore the question of copyright term extensions in the UK. This is the white-hot copyright issue of the day in Britain, since this year marks the year that a ton of still-popular music (early Elvis recordings, for one) will enter the British public domain. The British record companies are urging the UK government to add another 45 years to all the old music copyrights, even though practically every 50-year-old recording is out of print, languishing in obscurity because its "owners" don't care enough about it to bring it back.

The US has led the world is brainless copyright extensions that doom nearly all creativity to be forgotten by history in order to preserve a few marginally profitable works. Will the UK let the US drag it along in another folly, or will it stand up for the right to learn from America's mistakes and go a better way?

The evening features a presentation from copyright scholar Jonathan Zittrain, Chair in Internet Governance and Regulation at Oxford University; a panel moderated by John Howkins of the RSA and Adelphi Charter, and a DJ set mixed from public domain, pre-1955 music.

Should the term of copyright protection on sound recordings stay at 50 years or be extended?

This question has been hanging in the air for the last couple of years, with the music industry lobbying government for an extension on the grounds that the royalties they earn from old recordings are essential to bringing new acts to the stage and supporting ageing musicians. They believe that copyright term on sound recordings should be the same length as the copyright in the composition, which currently stands at life plus 70 years.

On the other hand, copyright reformers argue that term should remain the same in order to protect the public domain and to free the huge number of old recordings which are no longer commercially viable and therefore not being released by the record labels. They also argue that there is a greater economic benefit to allowing works to pass into the public domain after 50 years so that new works can be made from them and new businesses that specialise in niche markets can flourish.

Date Nov 13, 2006

Time 6:00 pm - 10:00 pm

Location
Conway Hall
25 Red Lion Square
London, WC1
United Kingdom

Link (Disclosure: I am a co-founder and proud advisory-board member for the Open Rights Group)

The MyScienceProject people carved a bunch of Jack O'Lanterns and tried to preserve them by various means, from vaseline to a commercial pumpkin-preserving spray ("Pumpkin Fresh!") to bleach solution.

The next day, however, we could no longer deny that the bleach pumpkin had a serious problem. It was listing to the side and fluid was oozing from underneath, and the bottom of the interior was slime covered. We tossed it and turned our attention to the last two survivors. The control pumpkin had several moldy areas inside that didn’t seem to be spreading very fast. The Pumpkin Fresh pumpkin, while it had little mold growing on the interior, had developed a soft slimy spot on the bottom, similar to the one that had just eaten its way through the bleach pumpkin. This was going to be interesting. Who would hold out the longest?

Link

The Monster Club has posted 100 amazing horror radio-plays from the golden age of radio drama, including "The Phantom of the Opera," "Sorry, Wrong Number," "The Day the Earth Stood Still," "The Dummy," "Buried Alive," "Donovan's Brain," "Frankenstein," and "Jack Benny Throws a Hallowe'en Party" (!).

Here, we present 100 of our favorite horror theme stories, from shows like Witch's Tale, Lights Out, Innersanctum, Quiet Please, The Haunted Hour and others. These are the very stories that inspired favorite Horror Comics and shows like Twilight Zone and Thriller! In fact, old time radio horror show, "Witch's Tale" is reported to have served as direct inspiration for EC Comics.

Link (Thanks, IZ Reloaded!)

Veni sez, "The Bulgarian Foreign Minister Ivailo Kalfin started a blog after meeting with Joi Ito (iCommons chairman) and Paul Twomey (ICANN's President). But he did something more - opened the content of the www.mfa.government.bg site under Creative Commons License Attribution 2.5."

ICANN’s President gave high remarks on the policy Bulgaria has for Internet access and usage. He informed Minister Kalfin about the multiple business-oriented applications, and the effect of using IT in different branches of the economy.

Joichi Ito, one of the Internet pioneers in the development of blogs, spoke about the new culture and new opportunities, noting that the blogs are one of the most democratic tools for access to information.

Another topic covered was the improvement of the services about registration of domains in the .bg top level domain.

Minister Kalfin started his own blog, to be found at www.kalfin.eu, where he will be discussion issues about Bulgarian foreign policy, EU membership, etc. The blog is based on open source software - Wordpress, and is the first such an initiative by a Bulgarian minister. Mr. Kalfin invited Joichi Ito to become an author at his blog - an invitation that was accepted by the famous Japanese IT-investor and blogger.”

Link (Thanks, Veni!)

This Japanese store sells $3 miniature cellphone charms that look...just like cellphones! Now you can hang a miniature, detailed copy of your phone from your phone! Link (via Tokyo Mango)

Update: Cat sez, "If the readers want to get a few of those Japanese cell phone-cell phone charms from an English site, here ya go."

We love unicorns here at Boing Boing. In fact, we have seven of them living in the forest surrounding our corporate headquarters. That's why I was delighted to discover the Unicorn Power T-Shirt from The Perry Bible Fellowship (home of brilliantly funny cartoonist Nicholas Gurewitch). Link (Via beachlevel)

My old job, European Affairs Coordinator of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, is up for grabs! It's hard and rewarding work, with a lot of travel and the chance to make a real difference. If you or someone you know is the kind of person who'd fit in as a copyright and digital liberties wonk in Brussels, see the job posting for application details.

The position is jointly funded by Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth and George Soros's Open Society Initiative.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is looking for a European staffer to head up our new Brussels office and round out our international team. This is a new position focused on European Community level intellectual property and civil liberties policy initiatives that impact the digital environment. The position will be part policy analyst, part activist and part educator.

We are looking for a motivated and dynamic European with:

* excellent written and spoken English language skills, and fluency in another relevant language (preferably French or German or another major European language);

* well-developed public speaking and social skills, who can talk with a wide range of audiences including European MEPs and Commission staff, consumer rights and public interest groups, computer programmers and media;

* familiarity with current European Community IP and civil liberties legislative and policy developments;

* a solid understanding of the European Community's structure, main fora, decision-making processes and key personnel and committees that work in the IP and civil liberties arenas;

* strong policy analysis skills;

* a good strategic sense;

* maturity of judgment;

* demonstrated ability to meet deadlines and work with others remotely; and

* the ability to travel throughout Europe, and to the United States.

Link (Thanks, Gwen!)

Torrentfreak reports that "23 year old Grant Stanley has been sentenced to five months in prison, followed by five months of home detention, and a $3000 fine for the work he put in the private BitTorrent tracker Elitetorrents." Link (Thanks, Tony)

Chennai-based tech journalist Scott Carney has a piece in Wired Magazine this month about an Indian space program satellite launch last July. The rocket launch vehicle exploded a couple seconds after it left the pad. Whups.

Denied access to the inner sanctum, I take an 8-mile detour to the nearest village, Ataganathippa, and claim a spot along the road with a clear view of the launchpad, amid an audience of ordinary people – farmers, fishermen, day laborers, and my rocket-engineer acquaintance, who has brought along his family. Jeans-clad engineering students from the local community college chat excitedly about how the new satellite could reduce the price of cable television. Suddenly a bright flash erupts in the distance. Huge plumes of smoke boil up from the ground, and a loud rumble rolls across the water. In a matter of seconds the rocket rises above the horizon and a group of young boys shouts, "Jai Hind! Jai Hind!" (Victory to India!) Climbing steadily, the rocket disappears behind a bank of clouds. The crowd is motionless, anticipating the engine's fading rumble.

But it doesn't fade. There's a thunderlike crack. Then chunks of flaming debris begin a slow, tumbling descent, tracing red trails back to Earth.

"That's not supposed to happen," says the engineer, his voice tense with disbelief.

Link. Previous BoingBoing posts about Scott's work: Link.