Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Puritans and Lady Godiva: why two justices voted to uphold California&;#39;s video game law

Yet more fantastic articles from ars. Nice point from the courts about narrow definitions for laws.
They do make a good point about the difference between obscenity and violence too.



------ from Ars Technica - The PC Enthusiast's Resource, via Google Reader







Justice Samuel Alito doesn't have a whole lot of love for the video game industry.



In some of these games, the violence is astounding. Victims by the dozens are killed with every imaginable implement, including machine guns, shotguns, clubs, hammers, axes, swords, and chainsaws. Victims are dismembered, decapitated, disemboweled, set on fire, and chopped into little pieces. They cry out in agony and beg for mercy. Blood gushes, splatters, and pools. Severed body parts and gobs of human remains are graphically shown. In some games, points are awarded based not only on the number of victims killed, but on the killing technique employed. It also appears that there is no antisocial theme too base for some in the video-game industry to exploit.


Read the rest of this article...






Read the comments on this post



Monday, June 27, 2011

'Hot News' doctrine gets a body-blow

Wonder what the equivalent law is here?



------ from Boing Boing, via Google Reader
Electronic Frontier Foundation copyright attorney Corynne McSherry has news about Barclays v FlyOnTheWall.com, a case that asked the Second Circuit Court of Appeals to rule on whether the "Hot News" doctrine could be applied in the digital era. "Hot News" is an obscure corner of law that lets newsagencies treat publicly available facts as property and prevent others from reporting on them for a set time.


In Fly, the court heard argument that FlyOnTheWall.com was endangering the business-models of several financial recommendation services that provided stock-tips by reporting on those tips as soon as they were published. The court's decision is instructive:


The adoption of a new technology that injures or destroys present business models is commonplace. Whether fair or not, that cannot, without more, be prevented by application of the misappropriation tort... The Firms are making news; Fly, despite the Firms' understandable desire to protect their business model, is breaking it.


The court found in Fly's favor, and ruled that the "Hot News" doctrine is even narrower than previously thought, and can only be applied in true "free riding" cases where one news-entity is copying a competitor verbatim -- Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, and Lehman Brothers and the other plaintiffs aren't news agencies, they're news. Their stock tips are newsworthy. When Fly reported on them and undermined their profitability, it was tough noogies (an incredibly underused legal concept, IME).


EFF was amicus on the case, and filed comments with Citizen Media Law Project and Public Citizen asking the court to find as it did. Other amici who took the defendant's side included Google and Twitter.


The "Hot News" Doctrine After Fly On the Wall: Surviving, But On Life Support






&;quot;Hot News&;quot; doctrine gets a body-blow

Wonder what the equivalent law is here?



------ from Google Reader
Electronic Frontier Foundation copyright attorney Corynne McSherry has news about Barclays v FlyOnTheWall.com, a case that asked the Second Circuit Court of Appeals to rule on whether the "Hot News" doctrine could be applied in the digital era. "Hot News" is an obscure corner of law that lets newsagencies treat publicly available facts as property and prevent others from reporting on them for a set time.


In Fly, the court heard argument that FlyOnTheWall.com was endangering the business-models of several financial recommendation services that provided stock-tips by reporting on those tips as soon as they were published. The court's decision is instructive:


The adoption of a new technology that injures or destroys present business models is commonplace. Whether fair or not, that cannot, without more, be prevented by application of the misappropriation tort... The Firms are making news; Fly, despite the Firms' understandable desire to protect their business model, is breaking it.


The court found in Fly's favor, and ruled that the "Hot News" doctrine is even narrower than previously thought, and can only be applied in true "free riding" cases where one news-entity is copying a competitor verbatim -- Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, and Lehman Brothers and the other plaintiffs aren't news agencies, they're news. Their stock tips are newsworthy. When Fly reported on them and undermined their profitability, it was tough noogies (an incredibly underused legal concept, IME).


EFF was amicus on the case, and filed comments with Citizen Media Law Project and Public Citizen asking the court to find as it did. Other amici who took the defendant's side included Google and Twitter.


The "Hot News" Doctrine After Fly On the Wall: Surviving, But On Life Support






Monday, June 20, 2011

Unbelievably racist ad via South Africa.

Wow



------ from Google Reader
(click ad, via) An ad for matches, for chrissake. This appears to be a real ad, part of a new campaign by Y&;amp;R Johannesburg. From the agency press note: &;quot;As the layers of attempted conversation starters are rejected they are literally struck from the page, leaving the same mark as a struck match would. We incorporated the same style into the linear illustrations to make them appear that they had been drawn by a match.&;quot;
OK, but that doesn't explain why the black man in this ad isn't beating the living shit out of cartoonishly-insensitive white boy. Playing angel's advocate, I guess you could argue that this ad is trying (horribly) to "strike" a blow against racism. But I don't think a match company should be taking up that cause in its advertising. Previous racist South African ad: Apartheid humor used to sell bronzer.

Saturday, June 18, 2011

AOL Hell: An AOL Content Slave Speaks Out « News

Think I need to get hold of this aol document



------ from thefastertimes.com, via Google Reader
Think I need to get hold of this aol documeneed to get hold of this aol document

------ from thefastertimes.com, via Google Reader
Think I need to get hold of this aol document

Wednesday, June 15, 2011

LOCOG Censures Use Of ‘2012’

Hmmm - good old lawyers!



------ from Londonist, via Google Reader

Or should that be 20**? The Great Exhibition Company have been told by Games organisers that using the year formerly known as 2012 in their forthcoming Great Exhibition could result in legal action.


LOCOG cite the London Olympic Games and Paralympic Games Act 2006 which is supposed to prevent any unauthorised association between the 2012 Olympics and other people or businesses. Stratford’s CafĂ© Olympic fell foul of the same regulations earlier this year. In the case of The Great Exhibition Company, LOCOG claims that ‘2012’ is now synonymous with the Olympics.


Fortunately, the cinematic catastrophe-fest starring John Cusack has escaped LOCOG’s attention. As have the 42,451 books listed on Amazon with the-year-after-2011-but-before-2013 in the title.


Photo by suburbanslice

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Visualizing Progress in the Canadian Grand Prix

Look suspiciously like the rowing bumps race maps...



------ from Data Mining: Text Mining, Visualization and Social Media, via Google Reader

The official F1 site provides this visualization of the position of the drivers on a lap by lap basis through the race.


F1

With a little more work (or a little eye strain on your part) you should be able to see the progress of Mr. Button.



Tuesday, June 07, 2011

Updated: iCloud: Just A Lot Of Hot Air When It Comes To Streaming?

Think that the limits of the cloud will actually be quite good for Spotify. Once people get used to the idea of no longer physically owning media products, streaming will become a little more popular.
Especially once it includes video content too.



------ from Google Reader



iTunes in the Cloud




In the stream of announcements made today at the WWDC, Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) may have dismantled more than one business model in its wake. “Sh*t” was the one-word response from Marco Arment, founder of the reading app Instapaper, when the curtain came up on Reading List from Safari. He later wrote he did that partly for comedic effect, and even posted a longer response claiming he was “tentatively optimistic” about what Apple’s free service would mean for his business. One other area that may not have been impacted quite as much as people thought it would be? Music.

Specifically, today we heard that the iCloud music service, iTunes in the Cloud, will let users do more with their iTunes digital music than they have been able to do before—synching and accessing it across devices, uploading all your music (not just those tracks bought from iTunes) quickly through a digital matching service, and making it all work wirelessly anywhere, rather than by docking to a central hub in the home.



But one thing that users will not be able to do—yet—is to stream that iTunes music. From Apple’s description it appears that the primary aim of iTunes in the Cloud is storage: music will be stored locally rather than delivered from a remote location. And the basic service—as it appears now—focuses on a users’ existing music library, rather than around subscriptions to services that deliver music over the airwaves, the basic paid business model behind the streaming services.



On one hand, this spells good news for the Rhapsody/Rdio/Thumbplay/Spotifies of the world: Apple will not be competing directly against them, it seems.



And how do these streaming companies view the new service? One company in Daniel Ek, founder and CEO of Spotify, told mocoNews in a written response: “To download all your purchased music for free to multiple devices? About time! Especially as my computer crashed last week.” (And yes, it was a Mac.)



Asked whether he thought a play-anywhere model would mean fewer people opting for streaming services, Ek was also unequivocal: “We believe music should be connected. People want to discover more music. Not just [listen to the] same music.”



But looked at a different way, Apple’s new iTunes in the Cloud service could also spell bad news for these same companies: many of the streaming companies have so far failed to attain a critical mass of subscribers. Some, like Thumbplay, have even gone to the wall for it.



If Apple launching a streaming service would have been a vote of confidence in that business model, then does Apple deciding not to launch one mean a vote of no confidence?



Part of the backstory, as told by bloggers citing sources close to negotiations, was that Apple had just about secured deals with all four major record labels to launch a streaming service. That no streaming service materialized today could have meant those streaming deals didn’t get secured after all. Or that Apple never intended for them to.



The sheer growth of the iOS and iTunes platforms—today Apple said that there are 225 million iTunes accounts worldwide, 200 million iOS devices, and 15 billion music downloads, making it the world’s largest digital music retailer—means that Apple’s new iTunes service, even without a streaming element, will change the game for how other companies will make digital music accessible by consumers.



But that absence of music (and video) streaming also gives existing streaming players—as well as Google (NSDQ: GOOG) and Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN)—the chance to live to compete another day.


Related







Thursday, June 02, 2011

Which credit card companies will let you buy marijuana?

Can imagine some good ads for this!



------ from Google Reader
Christopher Maag of credit.com reports on the credit card companies that let you get stoned now and pay later.

"The issue of purchasing medical marijuana is an emerging issue, and we're continuing to look into it," says Jim Issokson, a spokesman for MasterCard.

Visa and Discover also allow people to purchase medical marijuana in states where it's legal. Citing the fact that marijuana-medical or not-is still illegal according to federal law, American Express does not allow its customers to use its cards for pot purchases of any kind.

"It is our policy to adhere to the federal law in such matters," Bradley R. Manor, an AmEx spokesman, told Smartmoney.com.



Want to Charge Weed? What Credit Card are You Carrying?





What Are the Most Impressive Views Astronauts See In Orbit? [Video]

If you want your kid to be an astronaut, start showing them this film repeatedly!



------ from Google Reader

This high definition short is a fascinating document. Narrated by NASA's Dr. Justin Wilkinson, it shows a tour of planet Earth as seen by astronauts, explaining what are the places that they first focus on while in orbit. More »









Wednesday, June 01, 2011

Google Offers is the business plan behind Google Wallet, and it’s live tomorrow

Nice idea



------ from Google Reader

google-walletWhile demonstrating their new mobile payment product Google Wallet today, Google executives offered some insight into how it will make money.


Google executive chairman and former CEO Eric Schmidt gave the demonstration with Google vice president Stephanie Tilenius at the D9 conference in Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif. Users should be able to tap their phones against compatible point-of-sale devices and use the app to make payments. They should be able to use the Wallet app to redeem offers from Google’s upcoming deals product, Google Offers. Schmidt and Tilenius said the Offers will be the real moneymaker for Wallet — in fact, Google doesn’t plan to charge a fee for the app or for transactions.


They also emphasized that they see Google Wallet as something that isn’t limited to Google’s Android phones (although that’s where it works for now). Wallet is an app that should hypothetically work on other smartphones, Schmidt said: “There’s no intent to favor any one platform.” Does that mean we’ll see Wallet on iPhones, Windows Phones, and BlackBerrys anytime soon? We’ll see.


As for Google Offers, Tilenius also announced that the first deals will go live tomorrow. As previously announced, the program is starting in Portland, and it will expand to San Francisco and New York later this summer.


We’ll be exploring the most disruptive mobile trends at our fourth annual MobileBeat 2011 conference, on July 12-13 at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco. It will focus on the rise of 4G and how it delivers the promise of true mobile computing. We’re also accepting entries for our mobile startup competition at the show. MobileBeat is co-located with our GamesBeat 2011 conference this year. To register, click on this link. Sponsors can message us at sponsors@venturebeat.com.


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