Google Kills Tricorder Android App After CBS Sends A DMCA Takedown?

from the beam-me-up dept

This is pretty ridiculous. Brig C. McCoy alerts us to the news, via Slashdot, that CBS sent a DMCA takedown notice to Google because of the silly, but quite popular, Android tricorder app, which made your Android device look like a Star Trek tricorder.

Sorry Tricorder fans, Tricorder has been deleted from the Android Market by Google, at the demand of CBS's legal weasels. This all happened without any discussion or warning -- I was simply notified after the fact.

Since I don't have legal weasels of my own, or the time to deal with this, that's it for Tricorder.

It's apparently the graphical design that's at issue, not the name. According to Wikipedia, "Gene Roddenberry's contract included a clause allowing any company able to create functioning technology to use the name". Now that GR is dead, I guess CBS believes they own swoopy curves.

I do wonder if there's a real copyright issue here at all, though I understand why the developer doesn't feel like fighting it. Still, it's a real shame that CBS feels the need to attack Star Trek fans for no good reason. Of course, given similar anti-fan statements from Eugene Roddenberry, it makes you wonder if the trail from CBS leads back further.

Filed Under: dmca, star trek, takedown, tricorder
Companies: cbs, google

DailyDirt: Challenges For Fun And (Non-)Profit

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Solving really tough problems is a more collaborative process than it used to be. Luckily, it's getting easier for a wide variety of people to come together and work on these difficult challenges. Here are a few prizes looking for creative people to produce some really cool solutions.

• The Buckminster Fuller Challenge is looking for folks working on humanity's most pressing problems. Fuller had a pretty lofty goal "to make the world work for 100% of humanity, in the shortest possible time, through spontaneous cooperation without ecological offense or disadvantage of anyone." [url]
• There's a $10 million prize for the Tricorder X PRIZE -- which is looking for a mobile medical device that can diagnose patients better than or equal to a panel of board certified physicians. It also needs to make a cool "whoo whoo" sound when it wave it over people. [url]
• NASA has several Centennial Challenges that are still active -- looking for solutions to various problems like green aviation, super-strong tethers, interplanetary robots to return samples and more. Space elevators, FTW. [url]
• To find some other online challenges and games, check out what StumbleUpon has found to play. [url]  

By the way, StumbleUpon can also recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

Filed Under: buckminster fuller, challenge, contest, open innovation, problems, solutions, tricorder
Companies: nasa, x prize