There's an interesting discussion going on over at William Patry's blog, questioning whether or not a photograph should be considered a "derivative work" of the object or objects in the photo. The courts appear to be somewhat split on this. The importance of this concerns whether or not the photograph itself can be covered by copyright -- and also whether or not the photograph can be considered infringement itself. If the photo is considered an unauthorized derivative work, then it's entirely possible that whoever holds the copyright on the object in the photo could claim that the photo itself is infringing. Remember, in the past there's been some concern about the legality of photographing copyrighted sculptures. A derivative work is supposed to be for something that "recast, transformed, or adapted" the original work, and is normally used for something like a translation of copyrighted material. However, does a photograph really recast, transform or adapt the object? Or is it an entirely separate work?

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I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Five UK students who were charged under the UK's 2000 Terrorism Act for possession of jihadist materials were acquitted after the jury found that, while they had downloaded the materials, there was no evidence that they were planning any sort of crime. The Lord Chief Justice was quoted as saying, 'Difficult questions of interpretation have been raised in this case by the attempt by the prosecution to use [this law] for a purpose for which it was not intended.'"

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Back when the national "Do Not Call" list was first put in place, the politicians writing the law made sure to exempt themselves from it. Political calls were not covered by the Do Not Call list, and politicians could call people who were on the list as much as they wanted. And, in fact, it appears that's what some politicians are doing. Even worse, they're using automated dialers that keep calling and calling and calling and calling. Just as with political spam, it appears that a few politicians are finally willing to recognize that inundating people with unwanted communications isn't helping their campaigns. Some Senators have proposed some new rules that would limit those political robocalls. Note that it won't stop them or make them subject to the Do Not Call list. Instead, it would merely limit them: only 2 calls per day, no calls before 8am or after 9pm and no hiding the caller ID info. Of course, can someone explain why you would need to hear a recording of a politician calling you even twice a day? It's nice that some are recognizing what a nuisance these calls are, but it doesn't seem like these limits are likely to lessen the annoyance factor by very much.

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jcgam69 writes "Saturn's orange moon Titan has hundreds of times more liquid hydrocarbons than all the known oil and natural gas reserves on Earth, according to new Cassini data. The hydrocarbons rain from the sky, collecting in vast deposits that form lakes and dunes."

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Link. Previously on Boing Boing:

TSA apologizes to "blogesphere" for arbitrary gadget screenings

Arbitrary TSA requirement: all electronics out of your bag (cables, too)

US Customs confiscating laptops

The TSA has a blog

TSA's new forbidden item: >2 gm lithium batteries

Moment of TSA surrealist zen @ LAX: Xeni

This Meg Fowler post should be part of the Twitter FAQ.

"I even love the people that unfollow me because I won't shut up. I support your efficiency and realization of my inherent freakiness."

That pretty much sums up the mutual laissez-faire-ness of the culture that forms around a tool with the feature set of Twitter.

duerra writes "A plan to use U.S. spy satellites for domestic security and law-enforcement missions is moving forward after being delayed for months because of privacy and civil liberties concerns. The plan is in the final stage of completion, according to a department official who requested anonymity because the official was not authorized to speak publicly about it. While some internal agencies have had access to spy satellite imagery for purposes such as assisting after a natural disaster, this would be the first time law-enforcement would be able to obtain a warrant and request access to satellite imagery."

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Online prediction markets like Intrade have started to make a name for themselves in this year's exciting political arena. By trading futures on political outcomes like the Democratic and Republican presidential nominations, the idea is that the efficiency of the market will ultimately serve as a better predictor of outcome than traditional methods like exit polls. However, as some traders are starting to find, prediction markets still have many inefficiencies in their current state, allowing shrewed traders to make tidy profits as a result. In the Intrade market, a political future is worth $10 if the political outcome occurs, and $0 if it does not occur. Therefore, a $5 market price on a particular future is supposed to correlate with a 50% prediction of that future to occur. However, in practice, certain factors push these prices out of the range of their realistic probability. For example, contracts for Ron Paul's predicted as high as a 9% chance of him being selected as the Republican nominee, when in reality, his chances were probably closer to nil. Perhaps driven by a small cadre of Paul supporters, the Intrade market was able to be swayed by a small number of trades. Even today, Intrade shows Paul at a 1.2% -- which is a great opportunity for someone to make money on taking the short side of that contract. On the Democratic side, Al Gore supporters have put a 1% chance on his head, who never even appeared on the ballot -- wishful thinking indeed. That said, the limited amount of volume on these contracts precludes anyone from actually making a crazy amount of money on them, but it does remind us of an important fact about markets -- while they do tend to come up with the right answer in the long term, in the short term, they are incredibly susceptible to very human factors like optimism and group think.

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Dotnaught writes "Backed by a study that says teens show more respect for copyrights when told of possible jail time for infringement, Microsoft is launching a new intellectual property curriculum to educate kids about IP law. To support its teachings, Microsoft has launched MyBytes, a Web site where students can create custom ringtones, share content — "their own content," as Microsoft makes clear — and learn more about intellectual property rights."

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As I've made clear in the past, while I believe that a neutral internet is important to encourage growth and innovation, I worry that any legislation passed to require net neutrality will backfire. It will be gamed by lobbyists and there will be loopholes and unintended consequences that will cause a lot more problems than expected. Also, getting Congress into the business of regulating the internet is quite dangerous. So, with that in mind, I should probably be more supportive of Rep. Markey's newly introduced net neutrality legislation because it's barely regulatory at all. There's no mandate and no punishment. It simply states that neutrality is an important principle, and empowers the FCC to look into allegations of anyone violating this principle. However, if that's the case, why bother at all? After all, the FCC already looks into these allegations. Effectively, the only thing this really does is force the FCC to move back to former chair Michael Powell's principles concerning the internet, rather than Kevin Martin's more telco-friendly policies. While I agree that Powell's principles were more reasonable, it's difficult to see why Congress needs to get involved at all at this point -- especially to put up legislation that doesn't do anything other than say what it hopes internet providers will do.

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I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Reps Ed Markey (D-MA) and Chip Pickering (R-MS) introduced the 'Internet Freedom Preservation Act of 2008' (HR 5353) this week. The proposed legislation [PDF] would not legislate what is and is not 'neutral'. Instead, it would add a section to the 'Broadband Policy' section of the Communications Act which spells out principles the FCC is expected to uphold, in addition to having them hold summits which would 'assess competition, consumer protection, and consumer choice issues related to broadband Internet access services' and make it easy for citizens to submit comments or complaints online."

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All of us here at Boing Boing idolize David Byrne -- so reading this post today on his blog is, for us, like a rainbow unicorn delivering a giant vanilla cupcake with a million sprinkles of awesome on top.

Mr. Byrne wrote:

There’s free Wi-Fi at the Denver airport, which is a nice, sensible touch. But to my surprise, one of my habitual surfing sites has been blocked. I’m not totally shocked that alleged nudity might be blocked (if there is nudity on the Boing Boing site it’s pretty rare and likely to be arty or ironic), but I’m perplexed by the implication that all blogs and wiki sites are suspect!

Back in NYC however, Danielle explains that not all blogs and wikis are blocked, just those filtered by Secure Computing’s web censorware product called SmartFilter. According to Boing Boing co-editor Xeni Jardin,

“[…]SmartFilter isn't very smart. Secure Computing classifies any site with any nudity — even Michaelangelo's David appearing on a single page out of thousands — as a ‘nudity’ site, which means that customers who block ‘nudity’ can't get through." (see blog post here)

Turns out, Secure Computing and other similar companies have sold their products to government-controlled monopoly Internet providers in places like Kuwait, Oman, and Sudan to name a few, effectively blocking access to filtered sites — like Boing Boing — for entire countries. Xeni wrote an op-ed in the NY Times on the issue, which you can find here.

Link. (thanks, Danielle Spencer)

Stanislav_J writes "It happens to the best of us: you drop off your laptop at the local branch of some Super Mega Electronics McStore, go to pick it up, and they can't find it. Lost, gone, kaput — probably sucked into a black hole and now breeding with lost airline luggage. It would make any of us mad, but Raelyn Campbell of Washington, D.C. isn't just mad — she's $54 million mad. That's how much she is asking from Best Buy in a lawsuit that seeks 'fair compensation for replacement of the $1,100 computer and extended warranty, plus expenses related to identity theft protection.' Best Buy claims that Ms. Campbell was offered and collected $1,110.35 as well as a $500 gift card for her inconvenience. (I guess that extra 35 cents wasn't enough to sway her.) Her blog claims that Geek Squad employees spent three months telling her different stories about where her laptop might be before finally acknowledging that it had been lost. For those who follow economic trends, this means that a laptop's worth is roughly equivalent to that of a pair of pants."

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Today, Seesmic, the company founded by Loic Lemeur, announced their initial $6 million funding. Several people noticed that my name isn't on the list of investors.

I'll probably end up kicking myself when Seesmic becomes the next Google or YouTube. I remain a fan of the company and Loic and his team and will be rooting for them.

Why did I get cold feet? It has nothing to do with the product or the company, both of which appear to be outstanding. It's the stock market. I had to make the final Seesmic decision as I was getting out of stock, at a significant loss. The only stock I hold now is AAPL, and sadly, it's way under the price I paid for it a few months ago.

Like a lot of other investors, right now stocks give me the willies. I will likely get back in, slowly, a little bit every week to average out the price, hoping the market has found a bottom.

Following the FCC's decision to investigate Comcast's traffic shaping efforts, the company has now responded in great detail to the investigation, but has done so in very questionable ways. While the company finally admits that its doing some traffic shaping (no, the minor change to its terms of service doesn't count), it's clearly gearing up to fight any allegation that it was wrong in its actions. As Broadband Reports notes, the company uses the word "reasonable" over 40 times. That's no surprise, since the FCC has said that it would allow "reasonable" network practices. It also uses some questionable metaphors for its actions suggesting that forging packets (oops, sorry, "resets") are perfectly normal activity, comparing it to a fax machine getting a busy signal. Of course, the difference there is that the fax machine at the other end is actually busy whereas in this situation Comcast gets to arbitrarily (and without any explanation or notice) tell you that the machine on the other end is busy, just because it says so. Even worse, unlike with the "busy signal" you're not actually informed. You just notice that things don't work.

Comcast also claims that it's not "blocking" anything and that the situation is no different than a traffic jam for a car trying to get on a highway, where "one would not claim that the car is 'blocked' or 'prevented' from entering the freeway. Rather, it is briefly delayed, then permitted onto the freeway in its turn while all other traffic is kept moving as expeditiously as possible." That sounds good, but again, is simply not related to reality. If you're waiting to get on the highway, you know what the situation is. You know how far you are from the highway and you can see how much traffic there is in front of you and how fast it's actually moving. In Comcast's case, you'd be driving towards the highway on a perfectly open road, and then suddenly, without reason or explanation, Comcast would have your car stop moving and pretend like nothing was wrong. That's a bit different.

Finally, there's this beautiful section where the company claims that the FCC shouldn't take any action because the blogs will keep it honest. Seriously. "The self-policing marketplace and blogosphere, combined with vigilant scrutiny from policymakers, provides an ample check on the reasonableness of such [network management] judgments." Uh huh. This would be the same blogosphere that was screaming about this for months, and which Comcast has totally ignored, denying and stonewalling its way through every attempt at getting some reasonable response.

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eweekhickins writes to share an article in eWeek highlighting the forgotten risks that a multifunction printer could possibly offer. Brendan O'Connor first called attention to the vulnerabilities of these new devices at a Black Hat talk in '06 and warns that these are no longer "dumb" machine sitting in the corner and should be treated with their own respective security strategy. "During his Black Hat presentation in 2006, O'Connor picked apart the security model of a Xerox WorkCentre MFP, showing how the device operated more like a low-end server or workstation than a copier or printer--complete with an AMD processor, 256MB of SDRAM and an 80GB hard drive and running Linux, Apache and PostGreSQL. He showed how the authentication on the device's Web interface can be easily bypassed to launch commands to completely hijack a new Xerox WorkCentre machine."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

WFMU has a third post (part one, part two) about bands that made songs that sounded like (or attempted to sound like) The Beatles. This time it's The Manchesters versus The Beatle Buddies. Even though these songs are much worse than anything The Beatles did, I still enjoy listening to them.

We have a second skirmish prepared, in which, once again, you can listen and choose between two related Fab Four deception records tooled to cash in on that whole British Invasion "fad," this time released on the cheapjack Diplomat label. (You may be familiar with what these rip-off albums look like: The cover either sports four — or sometimes three or five [!] — disenscalped wigs, or else a similar number of guys imitating the iconic Robert Freeman Meet the Beatles! half-shadow cover pic.)

This second Fake Fabs Fight, unlike the preceding one, draws its combatants exclusively from the human species, yet with a Battle of the Sexes twist: The featured clash is between the Manchesters and the Beatle Buddies; in other words, Fake Beatles vs. Fake Lady Beatles!

Link

An anonymous reader writes "TrustBearer Labs has announced a new service that lets you use various hardware based security tokens like smartcards and biometric devices with OpenID. A hardware based connection to OpenID allows higher levels of security and makes it easier for the end-user to control their credentials. OpenID is a decentralized cross-site authentication system that has been gaining momentum for quite a while now with major supporters like AOL, Google and Microsoft already announced."

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