NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "Is collusion by the record companies a defense to an RIAA case? We're about to find out, because the RIAA has made a motion to strike the affirmative defense of Marie Lindor, who alleged that "the plaintiffs, who are competitors, are a cartel acting collusively in violation of the antitrust laws and of public policy, by tying their copyrights to each other, collusively litigating and settling all cases together, and by entering into an unlawful agreement among themselves to prosecute and to dispose of all cases in accordance with a uniform agreement, and through common lawyers, thus overreaching the bounds and scope of whatever copyrights they might have" in UMG v. Lindor."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Nikon's COOLPIX L14 is an entry-level compact digital camera with the claim to fame of being the 3x zoom compact with the longest battery life (as of 30th August 2007). Nikon claim one can squeeze out over 1000 shots from a pair of Lithium AAs. It's also got 7.1 megapixels, a 2.4" LCD and a 38-114 (equiv.) lens. Priced at £129.99, the COOLPIX L14 should be in UK shops from Sept 2007.

Compared to the L14 the COOLPIX L15 adds VR and an 8.0 megapixel sensor. Its lens equates to a 35-105mm zoom range and it has a larger 2.8" 230,000 dot LCD (so more of the same, a subtly different price and another piece of shelf space owned). The camera will be in UK shops from Sept 2007 priced at £129.99

Nikon has a pair of updates to its S-series of wave-like internal zoom compact digital cameras. The COOLPIX S51c and its non-identical twin the S51 share 7.99 megapixel sensors and VR-stabilized 38-114mm equivalent optics along with a 3.0" anti-reflective screen. The S51c incorporates Wi-Fi connectivity for wireless image transfer. The COOLPIX S51c and COOLPIX S51 will be priced at £229.99 and £199.99 respectively from Sept 2007.

The Nikon COOLPIX S510 is claimed to be the world's smallest digital camera with optical image-stabilization, as well as the most responsive (among 8MP optically-stabilized compacts). There's also Nikon's new EXPEED image processor to deal with images from the 8.1 megapixel sensor. The lens is equivalent to 35-105mm and the camera will cost £199.99 from Sept 2007.

The second metal bodied compact Nikon with an image stabilized lens is the S700. Get ready to be a little bit afraid because this camera packs twelve megapixels behind its three times optical zoom lens (F2.8 - F5.4). Naturally like all the cameras today the S700 gets 'EXPEED', lets hope it has an effective noise reduction algorithm. The S700 will cost £279.99 and will be available from 'Autumn 2007'.

The COOLPIX P50 is an 8.1 megapixel compact digital camera aimed at photographers after a bit more control. The body is modeled after the P5100 with a nice big hand-grip. A 3.6x 28-102mm equiv. lens, Electronic VR (software-stabilization) and ISO 2000 capability help in lower light. The COOLPIX P50 will be available in the UK from Sept 2007 priced at £199.99.

Nikon today announced its new flagship compact digital camera - the COOLPIX P5100. This update from the P5000 uses a variant of Nikon's new EXPEED image processor along with a slightly larger 12.1 megapixel sensor. The lens is unchanged - 3.5x zoom optically-stabilized with Nikon's VR technology. However the sensor change has widened the field of view to 35-123mm equiv. The P5100 also has in-camera distortion correction which works in real time to correct the live preview as well as stored images.

Many of you might remember the previous story about LiveJournal erroneously deleting hundreds of users as suspected paedophiles, spurred on by pressure from the group, Warriors for innocence. Since then, they've been taking action against users hosting material on their servers that they believe to be illegal. Today, LiveJournal management have demonstrated a serious lack of understanding in how the internet works, declaring that users are responsible for the content of the webpages that they link to in their blog entries. A user points out the obvious flaw: "I get ToS'd because the link's been redirected to a page full o' porn, even though context clearly shows that when I originally put up the link that it didn't actually land on a page of porn?" One wonders how such a long-established blogging company can be so ignorant about the nature of the world wide web.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

I am told that this video is a recent and wildly popular thing in Japan. Here's an English subtitled YouTube of "the butt biting bug song," Oshiri kajiri mushi. Video Link. It gives me acid flashbacks. "Tight asses and hard asses and beaten asses and shriveled asses." In what universe do these constitute appropriate lyrics for children's music?

With Allofmp3.com announcing that it plans to reopen the site now that (once again) the site has been found to be legal under Russian laws, it didn't take long for the RIAA... er... U.S. government to make its unhappiness clear. A spokesman for the U.S. Trade Representative has announced that if Allofmp3.com reopens, then Russia has kissed away its chance to join the WTO. This isn't all that surprising, given that the U.S. (at the urging of the RIAA) threatened Russia that it would keep the nation out of the WTO unless it shut down Allofmp3.com. Of course, it doesn't make much sense either. This is a private dispute between private entities. It doesn't seem reasonable for the US gov't to be getting involved. Secondly, as should now be quite clear, Allofmp3.com is operating legally under Russian laws. So it hasn't done anything wrong either. Just because some companies in the US don't like the fact that Allofmp3 has come up with a business model that customers actually like, it doesn't mean that the US gov't should ban Russia from the WTO. And, of course, this doesn't even begin to get into how ridiculous it is that the business model of a single small company should be the key factor in whether or not an entire country is allowed into the WTO. In the meantime, given how often the US has been ignoring the WTO over the Antigua online gambling case, perhaps the WTO should simply ignore the US on this one.

Two years ago today, Hurricane Katrina destroyed thousands of homes, business, and lives in America.

Photographer Clayton James Cubitt has personal ties to the Gulf Coast, and his portraits of Katrina survivors are featured in this month's issue of Eyemazing, the international journal of contemporary photography, along with an interview. Snip:

CM: Where were they taken? All of them except for three seem to be taken in a studio-like setting. Why did you choose that rather than shooting the subjects in the context of their surroundings at the time?

CJC: The studio portraits were taken in a former school gymnasium that had been cleared out and cleaned, and was serving as a distribution point for aid in the small Gulf Coast town of Pearlington, Mississippi, which was ground zero for Hurricane Katrina. The whole town was under 30 feet of storm surge, and had to fend for itself with no outside help for almost ten days.

I wanted to shoot many portraits in a studio context in order to separate these images from the flood of photojournalistic images that came out of New Orleans. I think people have become so jaded as visual consumers that when they see a photograph that's obviously reportage, they immediately shove it into a safe little compartment called "other." This happens in Haiti, or Africa, or Pakistan, not America, and all the images look the same, with the victims of the tragedy filling the same role, that of making Americans feel relieved that they live in America. Well, this is America.

I wanted to short-circuit that automatic filing. I wanted to present these people with the same care and respect I would use when on assignment shooting a portrait of a celebrity or a politician. I think it allows for a lingering appreciation of what they've been through, in small doses, rather than in an overwhelming image of total disaster, which is very hard to really absorb in the two seconds most viewers allot a photograph.

But mostly, I wanted to treat them with the respect they deserve, but never get.

Link.

A few of my favorites posts at gadgets.boingboing.net:

Why are hideously expensive gadgets so hideous looking? Link

Nokia is adding "Web 2.0 services like MySpace, Flickr, YouTube, and Facebook" to its series 60 OS. Link

Scan of 1960s brochures advertising "personal 'massage instruments' clearly intended for use in a woman's nethers." Link

Crayola makes a talking ruler "that audibly speaks the distance it has travelled, in quarter-inch increments, while leaving a trail of disappearing ink." Link

Regarding the ongoing internet fun-poking at Miss Teen South Carolina and her love of maps, Jason Schultz says,

In response to the recent call to action by Miss Teen South Carolina, Maps For Us started a blog of important maps: Link. My favorite is the map of Sparta: Link.

In BoingBoing's comment section, reader Tim Howland shared this revelation:

I think that everyone has missed something important here; she's actually been pioneering a new art form- a combination of Hindi Ghazal poetry and blank verse. Look at the transcription:

I personally believe that us americans
are unable to do so because osama.

People out there
in our nation
don't have that,

And I believe that our education
like such as south africa and
such as the Iraq.

everywhere "such as".

And I believe our education
should help the US
should help the south africa
and the iraq
and the asian countries
so we can build up
our future.

The themes are clear; she's worried about the way we are reacting to the war on terror, the way Osama Bin Laden still is free, and the way that we are being "educated". The irony is simply dripping from the last stanza. She was able to deliver this call to revolution absolutely deadpan, cunningly pulling the wool over America's eyes- and people here have the temerity to mock her intellectual accomplishments? She is the latter-day heir to Rosa Luxemborg- only, without the boathook.

Previously on BoingBoing:

Tube Map for Miss SC: The Iraqs and Everywhere, Like, Such As.

Miss South Carolina says we need more maps (video)

Wired Threat Level contributor Ryan Singel says,

The FBI has quietly built a sophisticated, point-and-click surveillance system that performs instant wiretaps on almost any communications device, according to nearly a thousand pages of restricted documents newly released under the Freedom of Information Act.

The surveillance system, called DCSNet, for Digital Collection System Network, connects FBI wiretapping rooms to switches controlled by traditional land-line operators, internet-telephony providers and cellular companies. It is far more intricately woven into the nation's telecom infrastructure than observers suspected.

DCSNet combines software with nicknames like Red Hook and Digital Storm, telecommunication switches with legislated backdoors and a private, encrypted nationwide backbone tying spying rooms across the nation together.

Link to Singel's extensive report, which features a slideshow of scans from those FOIA'd documents.

A couple of weeks ago, I posted some photos of figeater beetles eating my figs. Similarly, Alek has posted some beautiful photos of peach wasps eating his fine Colorado peaches.

(Alek was featured here and here in Boing Boing in 2005 for his excellent online Christmas lights prank.) Link

Realist publisher and Yippies founder Paul Krassner writes a weekly column, called "Assholes of the Week." This recent edition, no. 7, targets Senator Larry Craig, Mitt Romney, John Kerry, and Wesley Clark. Why Clark? Because he knew the war on Iraq was bogus in 2001 and didn't say anything about it until recently:

General Wesley Clark, for waiting until recently to reveal to Amy Goodman on “Democracy Now” the following: “About ten days after 9/11, I went through the Pentagon and I saw Secretary Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz. I went downstairs just to say hello to some of the people on the Joint Staff who used to work for me, and one of the generals called me in. He said, ‘Sir, you’ve got to come in and talk to me a second.’ I said, ‘Well, you’re too busy.’ He said, ‘No, no.’ He says, ‘We’ve made the decision we’re going to war with Iraq.’ This was on or about the 20th of September. I said, ‘We’re going to war with Iraq? Why?’ He said, ‘I don’t know.’ He said, ‘I guess they don’t know what else to do.’ So I said, ‘Well, did they find some information connecting Saddam to al Qaeda?’ He said, ‘No, no.’ He says, ‘There’s nothing new that way. They just made the decision to go to war with Iraq.’ He said, ‘I guess it’s like we don’t know what to do about terrorists, but we’ve got a good military and we can take down governments.’ And he said, ‘I guess if the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem has to look like a nail.’ So I came back to see him a few weeks later, and by that time we were bombing in Afghanistan. I said, ‘Are we still going to war with Iraq?’ And he said, ‘Oh, it’s worse than that.’ He reached over on his desk. He picked up a piece of paper. And he said, ‘I just got this from upstairs’--meaning the Secretary of Defense’s office--“today.” And he said, ‘This is a memo that describes how we’re going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran.’ I said, ‘Is it classified?’ He said, ‘Yes, sir.’ I said, ‘Well, don’t show it to me.’ And I saw him a year or so ago, and I said, ‘You remember that?’ He said, ‘Sir, I didn’t show you that memo! I didn’t show it to you!’”

Link

Previously on Boing Boing:
• Paul Krassner profiled
• Paul Krassner on Supremes' "Bong hits 4 Jesus ruling"
• Boing Boing interviews Paul Krassner
• The Sopranos Meet The Hippies by Paul Krassner
• Paul Krassner on RU Sirius Show
• Paul Krassner on Secret Bullshit
• Paul Krassner on the parts they left out of the Abbie Hoffman movie
• Realist archive project