By Cory Doctorow at 7:43 am Friday, May 25
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Dish Networks, the satellite TV provider, is being sued by Fox over its "AutoHop" feature, which automatically skips commercials. Fox alleges copyright infringement, which is a repeat of the claims over ReplayTV, which was bankrupted in similar lawsuits in the last decade. The networks claimed then that the whole program, including the commercials, were a single copyrighted work, and that by automatically enabling the skipping of certain sections, the device manufacturers were making derivative works. It's a really dumb theory of copyright and it's hard to imagine that it would hold up in court -- and if it did, it would mean that, for example, allowing screen-in-screen, or changing aspect ratios, or even custom color balances or audio mixes were also copyright violations, and that these violations took place when the feature was enabled by the manufacturer (who would therefore be liable) and not when the customer turned them on.
A more likely claim from Fox is breach of contract -- it's easy to believe that Fox put a "no skipping the commercials" line in their deal with Dish (and if they didn't, you can bet they will). Moreover, the DRM used in satellite receivers is controlled by the big rightsholders, and the license agreement for that DRM (much of which is a secret) allows them to demand arbitrary control over features in devices that can decode it.
Here's more from the LA Times and Meg James and Joe Flint:
Fox filed its copyright violation and breach-of-contract suit against Dish on Thursday in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles. Dish filed its suit in U.S. District Court in New York.
"The suit asks for a declaratory judgment that the AutoHop feature does not infringe any copyrights that could be claimed by the major networks, and that Dish, while providing the AutoHop feature, remains in compliance with its agreements with the networks," the Englewood, Colo., company said in a statement.
While consumers with digital video recorders can fast-forward through commercials of recorded shows, Dish's AutoHop takes it a step further. The screen goes black when a commercial break appears. A few seconds later, the program returns. The service can't be used on live programming, such as a sporting event, even after it has been recorded.
With more than 14 million subscribers, Dish Network Corp.'s new technology may threaten the networks' ability to continue to charge premiums for their commercial time.
Fox sues Dish over ad-blocking feature; Dish fires back
(via /.)
By Cory Doctorow at 6:42 am Friday, May 25
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Tor.com reports on Pulitzer Winning novelist Jennifer Egan's latest project: a tweeted science fiction story in the New Yorker's fiction feed:
This is part of the launch of the forthcoming first-ever science fiction issue of The New Yorker. The installment will appear starting tonight between 8pm-9pm EST, and will last for ten nights. The entirety of “Black Box” will appear in the next issue of The New Yorker, which will release this coming Monday. The story involves a character from A Visit from the Goon Squad and will be a kind of spy narrative.
Twitter Story to Launch The New Yorker’s Science Fiction Issue
By Cory Doctorow at 6:00 am Friday, May 25
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Richard Katz, a NYC lawyer, has lost his breach-of-contract lawsuit against a pricey healthclub that changed its breakfast menu. Katz was a member of The Setai Wall Street Club and Spa, and he was upset when the yogurt and cereal normally provided by the club was discontinued. He sent a series of upset emails to the club's manager, who cancelled his membership. Katz sued, citing damages in excess of $100,000, and an additional $5,000 in damages for an alleged libel from the manager, who wrote an email in response and is alleged to have shown it to a third party. Lowering the Bar has more:
To me, the great thing about this email is not that a lawyer got furious over somebody failing to dish up the yogurt and cereal. It's that even in the grip of this fury, he still wrote "two (2) weeks." Why do people do this? Maybe it made sense when things were written in longhand, but now that we have email and printers and whatnot there is generally not much controversy over what "two" is supposed to mean. If you haven't picked up this habit yet, don't...
Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Ellen Coin dismissed the case this week, according to the New York Daily News. While there seems to have been no written opinion, according to the manager's attorney the judge told Katz at the hearing that "he should be ashamed of himself" for filing the suit. That's hearsay, but the judge did order Katz to pay $440 in costs, which suggests what she thought of the case. The manager's attorney praised the decision for throwing out a case that was "embarrassing to the profession."
Lawyer's Defective-Breakfast Suit Dismissed
(Image: Yogurt freak, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from dan4th's photostream)
By Cory Doctorow at 8:00 pm Thursday, May 24
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If you've got a major-brand camera with a built-in GPS, don't plan on taking any geotagged photos in China. Chinese law prohibits mapmaking without a license, and most of the large camera manufacturers have complied with this regulation by quietly slipping a censorship function into the GPS -- when you take a picture, the camera checks to see if it's presently in China, and if it is, it throws away its GPS data, rather than embedding it in the photo's metadata. On Ogle Earth, Stefan Geens looks at how several different manufacturers handle this weirdness -- how they phrase it in their manuals, and what their cameras do when they run up against this limitation. It's a fascinating look at the interface between consumer electronics, user interface, and the edicts of totalitarian regimes. In some Nikon cameras, for example, the GPS does work, but all its measurements are shifted about 500m to the west (!).
Why does all this matter? Wherever local laws prohibit the sale or use of a personal electronics device able to perform a certain function, manufacturers have traditionally chosen not to sell the offending device in that particular jurisdiction, or — if the market is tempting enough — to sell a crippled model made especially for that jurisdiction.
For example, Nokia chose not to sell the N95 phone in Egypt when the sale of GPS-enabled devices there was illegal before 2009, whereas Apple opted to make and sell a special GPS-less iPhone 3G for that market. Early models of the Chinese iPhone 3GS lacked wifi, while the Chinese iPhone 4/4S has firmware restrictions on its Google Maps app.
The risk to consumers in freer countries is that personal electronics brands might be tempted to simplify their manufacturing processes by building just one device for the global market, catering to the lowest common denominator of freedom — especially if the more restrictive legal jurisdictions contain some of the most attractive markets, such as mainland China.
Still, in the absence of more information from Panasonic, Leica, FujiFilm, Nikon and Samsung, I can’t decisively say whether this is the business logic behind their decision to cripple the GPS in their cameras. And yet uncrippled GPS cameras from Sony and others are freely available for sale in China, for example on Taobao, China’s eBay...
Why do Panasonic, Leica, FujiFilm, Samsung and Nikon censor their GPS cameras?
(Thanks, Jeffrey!)
By Cory Doctorow at 6:00 pm Thursday, May 24
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Anniina ("Scholar, Writer, Mother, Dreamer. Editor of Luminarium, an online library for English Literature of the Middle Ages and Renaissance") produced these delicious-looking and awfully lovely illuminated initial cookies:
I wanted to share with you some Medieval manuscript cookies I made for my friend and colleague, Risa Bear, creator of Renascence Editions. I chose historiated initials from several manuscripts, printed them on edible paper with edible ink, attached them to square cookies and gave them gold edges. Who says love of literature and art can't fill a belly?!
Medieval Illuminated Initial Cookies
(via Making Light)
By Cory Doctorow at 3:38 pm Thursday, May 24
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The other day I noticed that on the back of the one dollar bill, there is a phrase:
The Great Seal of the United States.
It is split into two circles.
When you fold the dollar so that the two half circles meet exactly, a new phrase is revealed.
The Great Seal of the United States
(Thanks, Terry!)
By Cory Doctorow at 2:54 pm Thursday, May 24
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James Losey from the New America Foundation writes, "I wanted to share New America Foundation's president Steve Coll's reasoning as to why he is leaving the Facebook. He analyzes a range of concerns including privacy concerns, a chaotic IPO, questionable corporate-governance system, mixed with a lack of user rights. "
I established a Facebook account in 2008. My motivation was ignoble: I wanted to distribute my journalism more widely. I have acquired since then just over four thousand 'friends'--in Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, the Middle East, and of course, closer to home. I have discovered the appeal of Facebook's community--for example, the extraordinary emotional support that swells in virtual space when people come together online around a friend's illness or life celebrations.
Through its bedrock appeals to friendship, community, public identity, and activism--and its commercial exploitation of these values--Facebook is an unprecedented synthesis of corporate and public spaces. The corporation's social contract with users is ambitious, yet neither its governance system nor its young ruler seem trustworthy. Then came this month's initial public offering of stock--a chaotic and revealing event--which promises to put the whole enterprise under even greater pressure.
I quit FB a few years back. I felt like it took a lot more from me than it gave me.
Leaving Facebookistan
(Thanks, James!)
By Cory Doctorow at 1:00 pm Thursday, May 24
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Sculptor Jim Rosenau's "Reading Chair" is a 6" high piece made from volumes from an old Funk & Wagnall's and some blunt pencils. It's the perfect chair for a bookish gnome. I've featured Jim's work here before.
Reading Chair
(via Bookshelf)
By Cory Doctorow at 12:16 pm Thursday, May 24
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Nachos NY -- a site celebrating the nacho in all its glory -- has produced three temporary nacho-related tattoos for your delectation.
Nacho Tattoos
(via Craft)
By Cory Doctorow at 11:23 am Thursday, May 24
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In the Globe and Mail a Canadian Press report by Nelson Wyatt on the mass-kettling and arrest of protesters in Montreal last night. A long-running and hard-fought student strike over tuition hikes led to the passage of a shameful law that limits the rights of protesters. Quebeckers are out in force to protest this law, and often in sympathy with the students' demands. The police have responded with "kettling," the tactic of cordoning off a large area and declaring the resulting space to be a civil-rights-free zone, such that anyone caught inside is arbitrarily detained without access to shelter, food, health services, or toilets. (Above, a photo of Montreal police pepper-spraying demonstrators at a march last week).
Riot officers stood impassively around the corralled demonstrators, feet planted and batons clutched in gloved hands. On a nearby street, a Quebec provincial police officer was seen snapping a rod topped with the flag of the hardcore anti-capitalist Black Bloc and tossing it between two parked cars.
Police on horseback also provided reinforcement as officers sorted out the crowd.
Emmanuel Hessler, an independent filmmaker who had been following the march for a few blocks, said in a telephone interview with The Canadian Press from inside the police encirclement that he was surprised by the action, saying, “Suddenly, there were police all around us.”
While the crowd waited to be led away one by one to be handcuffed and sent for processing at a police operational centre – a procedure expected to take several hours – a man started reading poetry and the crowd hushed to listen. Someone else sang a folk song. At one point a woman called out the phone number of a lawyer which the mob took up as a chant.
Mr. Hessler, 30, was able to tweet to friends, “We are about to get cuffed and off in a bus. Don’t know what happens after. Wish me luck.”
Some demonstrators who had escaped the police cordon continued to march elsewhere while others milled about beyond the police lines and cheered as buses took the detainees away.
400 arrested as Montreal police kettle demonstrators
(Thanks, Mom!)
(Image: IMG_6450, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from 79393030@N04's photostream)
By Cory Doctorow at 10:00 am Thursday, May 24
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A 20-year-old photo spread from pioneering cyberculture zine Mondo 2000 asks the musical question: "R U a cyberpunk?" Bruce Sterling, who was, in fact, a cyberpunk, answers: "Since 20 years have passed, contemporary people will fail to realize that this was a comical self-parody."
ru cyberpunk
(Thanks, Fipi Lele!)
By Cory Doctorow at 8:48 am Thursday, May 24
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Henry Farrell (George Washington University) and Cosma Rohilla Shalizi (Carnegie-Mellon/The Santa Fe Institute) have just posted a paper, "Cognitive Democracy," to Crooked Timber. Farrell and Shalizi argue that neither the "libertarian paternalist" idea of "nudging" people to good choices, nor the market-based approach of letting price signals steer our decisions produce the best possible outcome for all. They see, in the Internet, a means by which knowledge about the world can be shared widely and usefully, to help democracies function as systems for producing good outcomes for everyone.
Yet at first glance, this interchange of perspectives looks ugly: it is partisan, rancorous and vexatious, and people seem to never change their minds. This leads some on the left to argue that we need to replace traditional democratic forms with ones that involve genuine deliberation, where people will strive to be open-minded, and to transcend their interests. These aspirations are hopelessly utopian. Such impartiality can only be achieved fleetingly at best, and clashes of interest and perception are intrinsic to democratic politics.
Here, we concur with Jack Knight and Jim Johnson’s important recent book (2011), which argues that politics is a response to the problem of diversity. Actors with differing—- indeed conflicting—- interests and perceptions find that their fates are bound together, and that they must make the best of this. Yet, Knight and Johnson argue, politics is also a matter of seeking to harness diversity so as to generate useful knowledge. They specifically do not argue that democracy requires impartial deliberation. Instead, they claim that partial and self-interested debate can have epistemological benefits. As they describe it, “democratic decision processes make better use of the distributed knowledge that exists in a society than do their rivals” such as market coordination or judicial decision making (p. 151). Knight and Johnson suggest that approaches based on diversity, such as those of Scott Page and Elizabeth Anderson, provide a better foundation for thinking about the epistemic benefits of democracy than the arguments of Condorcet and his intellectual heirs.
We agree. Unlike Hayek’s account of markets, and Thaler and Sunstein’s account of hierarchy, this argument suggests that democracy can both foster communication among individuals with highly diverse viewpoints. This is an argument for cognitive democracy, for democratic arrangements that take best advantage of the cognitive diversity of their population. Like us, Knight and Johnson stress the pragmatic benefits of equality. Harnessing the benefits of diversity means ensuring that actors with a very wide range of viewpoints have the opportunity to express their views and to influence collective choice. Unequal societies will select only over a much smaller range of viewpoints—- those of powerful people. Yet Knight and Johnson do not really talk about the mechanisms through which clashes between different actors with different viewpoints result in better decision making. Without such a theory, it could be that conflict between perspectives results in worse rather than better problem solving. To make a good case for democracy, we not only need to bring diverse points of view to the table, but show that the specific ways in which they are exposed to each other have beneficial consequences for problem solving.
Cognitive Democracy
(via 3 Quarks Daily)
By Cory Doctorow at 8:19 am Thursday, May 24
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Ted Kaczynski updated his own entry in the Harvard alumni directory, just in time for his class's 50th reunion:
While many of his classmates sent in lengthy updates on their lives for the 2 ½-inch-thick “red book,” the entry for “Theodore John Kaczynski” only contains nine lines.
The listing says his occupation is “Prisoner,” and his home address is “No. 04475-046, US Penitentiary—Max, P.O. Box 8500, Florence, CO 8126-8500.”
Under the awards section, the listing says, “Eight life sentences, issued by the United States District Court for the Eastern District of California, 1998.”
Unabomber Ted Kaczynski lists self as ‘prisoner’ in Harvard alumni directory
(Thanks, Fipi Lele!)
By Cory Doctorow at 7:00 am Thursday, May 24
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The Space Hijackers' Twitter account for their Official Protesters of the London 2012 Games has been suspended, following a complaint from the London Olympic committee:
Twitter. That harbour of free speech, undaunted by various Arab dictators. However, it seems that a quick word from LOCOG, the unelected body in charge of the 2012 Olympic Games, is enough to encourage Twitter to suspend our account. Apparently there's a danger people might think we're part of the Olympic delivery team. We're sorry if you were enjoying our tweets, we hope to be back up and running again, as soon as Twitter gets the joke. In the meantime, you might want to look at this website to get some background...
Twitter actually has a pretty clear policy on this: parody and protest accounts just have to have some indicator that they aren't the official item (e.g. "FakeCoke" or "CokeSucks" but not "OfficialCoke"). My guess is that Twitter's suspension of the account was on that basis. If so, it should be pretty straightforward to get it back up and running.
Oi! You Can't Protest Here!
(Thanks, LDNBikeSwarm!)
By Cory Doctorow at 6:08 am Thursday, May 24
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Artist (and Boing Boing favorite) Molly Crabapple is just as clever with crowdfunding as she is with a Sharpie. For her 28th birthday, she Kickstartered the budget for a week locked in a NYC hotel suite whose every surface was covered with drawing paper. She spent the resulting "week in hell" drawing over every inch of that paper. The art she produced is documented in Week in Hell, a lovely slim volume from IDW, which features spiffy photos of Crabapple's work, some notes on the production, and a hell of an introduction by Mr Warren Ellis. It's a great look inside an utterly gonzo project.
Art of Molly Crabapple Volume 1: Week in Hell
Read the rest
