... a treaty rather than a softer non-blinding recommendation ...
Personally I would be very much against a blinding recommendation, although I can't really imagine what a recommendation that actually triggers loss of eyesight would look like.
Someone must have lost out, although we don't know who that was. If most of the money to pay the musicians came from the video budget maybe they're paying for fewer camera operators, or they'll be do less work in post-production so the result might be less polished. I'm not trying to find out the full details, but to imply that nobody has lost out because of the change is obviously incorrect.
<rant>
Mike, why can't you publish PDF files like this directly on the TD website? By all means use other services as well so people can view such files directly in their browsers if that's what they want to do, but my laptop has a much nicer PDF file viewer than any of the browser-based services, and I refuse to give out my email address just to read a document (they almost all require a sign-up nowadays before they'll let you download the original file).
</rant>
It has always struck me that the term Anonymous Coward is a bit of an insult, although I realize that it's a traditional term used across the Internet (I suspect it started at SlashDot, but I'm no historian). As Mike has always maintained there are a number of good reasons why people comment anonymously, and most are unrelated to cowardice. Maybe I'm just a bit thin-skinned, but "everyone uses that term" isn't a good reason to be derogatory towards people that you want to encourage. To take the lead in respecting anonymity maybe Techdirt should change the name that appears against unsigned comments on the site to something else, such as Anonymous Commenter (rather boring I know, but it still matches the acronym AC).
Since these licenses are to play recorded music I would think the price increase would encourage the hiring of cheap live musicians instead. That would obviously be to the advantage of those musicians, but bad for those members of PPL who charge higher fees or don't play live at all...
the purpose of copyright law is to incent the creation of new works
Unfortunately only the US constitution says that. I don't believe many (any?) EU countries have constitutions that limit what their legislative bodies can do in quite the same way as the US does, so they can make the purpose of their copyright laws be whatever they want them to be.
At my (non-US) high school creating the timetable for the whole school was a highly complicated process. Teachers and students all moved between different class-rooms for different subjects at different times each day, so I may have had Maths at 9.15 on Monday mornings, but on Tuesdays it was at 3.30, and the other year-groups (and even the other classes in my year-group) took Maths at completely different times. As a 3rd-year it wouldn't have been possible for me to take 5th-year physics because the 3rd-year physics lesson times didn't all match up with the 5th-year times.
I'm not sure how you get round that kind of problem — Hermione Granger managed it using the time-turner that let her go backwards in time, but they're rather hard to find IRL.
Apart from the more complicated vote couting, if you disenfranchise the older (retired) members of the population they aren't going to be as interested in running the polling stations. The election judges at many US polling stations are retired people who get paid very little for the very long hours they have to work on a election day. This idea would reduce their willingness to give back to society in that particular way, thus the cost of elections will go up as it would probably become necessary to increase the pay to attract enough judges.
So has Techdirt improved in the search rankings since the Google change? I do remember Mike talking about how there were other sites copying content from here that Google ranked higher, has this now stopped?
It's not teaching these students journalism at all. It's teaching them about a paranoid administration that wants to hide from the truth.
On the other hand though, isn't that teaching them about the real world? The students do seem to be getting round some of the road-blocks — if they hadn't, this story wouldn't be here at all...
Could still be dangerous if the steganography is detectable
If a regime decides to continue to allow Flickr despite this, it sounds like they could use Collage themselves to detect and decode the hidden material. Once they know which pictures contain censored information they log any downloads of those images against the user's IP address and use that as information about who in their own population is reading it. I would want the program to need the right key to even be able to detect that there is hidden material present before I used something like this.
There has to be a connection with atmospheric pressure, the professor is not completely right. A siphon cannot work if the hump is significantly larger than the equivalent height of the atmospheric pressure for the liquid, i.e. about 34 feet for water at 1 atm, 30 inches for mercury. It is the pressure of the atmosphere that is pushing the water up the pipe, although gravity does pull it down the lower side causing the liquid to flow. If you try to make the hump any bigger than that height, you'll get a void (vacuum) forming at the top of the hump and the flow will stop.
The Wikipedia entry for Atmospheric Pressure says "This is also the maximum height to which a column of water can be drawn up by suction" which is exactly what a siphon does, it uses gravity to generate suction that pulls the liquid over the hump. Surface tension might have some effect on the maximum height of the hump, but it couldn't be very big and would depend on the diameter of the pipe.
Do any of the mobile browsers support a View Source option? I'm guessing not, as that would only be needed by people wanting to use the devices for creative purposes; the functionality is irrelevant for consumptive users. This supports Tim Wu's concerns to a small extent.
The FTC really didn't think this through when they set up the site in the first place; if they has used a .gov address instead it would have made it much easier for people to recognize when they're using the right address.
If it was Homeland Security who claimed that the screener would be at a remote location, that promise can only apply to machines installed at US airports; the TSA have no jurisdiction over Heathrow Airport. The British have their own rules, which include that they can't use the scanners on children since the resulting images would then be classified as child pornography.
I'm no lawyer and wouldn't know how to start searching for such things, but I suspect the legal status of works made by owned animals might be similar to that of works created by owned people, meaning by slaves. Of course there may never have been any such cases, but if there were they might give some guidance...
If remastering means to going back to the original studio multi-track recordings (digitizing as necessary) and re-mixing them, I could see that as being a different kind of thing (and somewhat more worthy of a new copyright for a record company which actually does that) than just re-encoding the digital audio data which is what it sounds like Bluebeat were trying to do. As a result I'm highly skeptical that a court would see these two issues as the same (but IANAL so what do I know).
On the post: US Steadfast In Its Stand For Publishers Against The Disabled
Medusa?
Personally I would be very much against a blinding recommendation, although I can't really imagine what a recommendation that actually triggers loss of eyesight would look like.
On the post: Amanda Palmer Destroys/Saves Musicians; Chances Of 'Hitting It Big' As An Artist Remain Unchanged
Works out for everybody?
On the post: We Ask The Supreme Court To Clarify If It's Legal For Virginia To Bar Techdirt From Filing Freedom Of Information Requests
I hate sites like docstoc
Mike, why can't you publish PDF files like this directly on the TD website? By all means use other services as well so people can view such files directly in their browsers if that's what they want to do, but my laptop has a much nicer PDF file viewer than any of the browser-based services, and I refuse to give out my email address just to read a document (they almost all require a sign-up nowadays before they'll let you download the original file).
</rant>
On the post: First Word, Last Word And Letting Our Biggest Fans Help Shape The Conversation In Our Comments
Rename "Anonymous Coward"?
On the post: Massive Hike In Fees For Venues Playing Music In The UK
PPL = Phonographic Performance Licenses
On the post: Trolls Don't Need To Be Anonymous, And Not All Anonymous People Are Trolls
Similar thread
On the post: EU Officially Seizes The Public Domain, Retroactively Extends Copyright
The EU is not subject to the US constitution
Unfortunately only the US constitution says that. I don't believe many (any?) EU countries have constitutions that limit what their legislative bodies can do in quite the same way as the US does, so they can make the purpose of their copyright laws be whatever they want them to be.
On the post: When Innovation Meets the Old Guard
Timetabling clashes?
I'm not sure how you get round that kind of problem — Hermione Granger managed it using the time-turner that let her go backwards in time, but they're rather hard to find IRL.
On the post: Photographer David Slater Claims That Because He Thought Monkeys Might Take Pictures, Copyright Is His
Re: Taking Pictures in a Zoo.
On the post: Get Accused Of Copyright Infringement Under New Five Strikes Plan? It'll Cost You To Challenge
5 or 6?
On the post: Should Young People Have Their Votes Count More?
It will cost more
On the post: As Expected, Google's Changes Are Bleeding Demand Media & Other Content Farms
Effect on Techdirt?
On the post: University Newspaper Figures Out How To Get Around Administration's Censorship Orders
Real Life?
On the other hand though, isn't that teaching them about the real world? The students do seem to be getting round some of the road-blocks — if they hadn't, this story wouldn't be here at all...
On the post: New Program Makes It Even Easier To Hide & Access Information In Flickr Photos
Could still be dangerous if the steganography is detectable
On the post: Century-Old Dictionary Error Shows That 'Professionally' Edited Reference Books Make Errors Too
Re: Vacuum
There has to be a connection with atmospheric pressure, the professor is not completely right. A siphon cannot work if the hump is significantly larger than the equivalent height of the atmospheric pressure for the liquid, i.e. about 34 feet for water at 1 atm, 30 inches for mercury. It is the pressure of the atmosphere that is pushing the water up the pipe, although gravity does pull it down the lower side causing the liquid to flow. If you try to make the hump any bigger than that height, you'll get a void (vacuum) forming at the top of the hump and the flow will stop.
The Wikipedia entry for Atmospheric Pressure says "This is also the maximum height to which a column of water can be drawn up by suction" which is exactly what a siphon does, it uses gravity to generate suction that pulls the liquid over the hump. Surface tension might have some effect on the maximum height of the hump, but it couldn't be very big and would depend on the diameter of the pipe.
On the post: Why We Need Better Metrics For Measuring User-Generated Content
View Page Source?
On the post: FTC Finally Forces FreeCreditReport.com To Be Honest In Its Advertising
Why wasn't it a .gov address?
On the post: Movie Star Claims Heathrow Airport Staff Printed Out, Circulated, His Naked Body Images
US vs. UK?
On the post: If A Video Is Filmed By Chimps... Who Owns The Copyright?
There might be related precedent ...
On the post: Are The Record Labels Using Bluebeat's Bogus Copyright Defense To Avoid Having To Give Copyrights Back To Artists?
What does "remastering" actually mean?
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