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UK Copyright Extension Alert

Published 09:57, 21 February 08

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• Even though the Gowers Review comprehensively trashed the idea of extending copyright for sound recordings, zombie-like it's back as a Private Member's Bill. The indispensable Open Rights Group has more and tells you what do about it. Hint: it...

Even though the Gowers Review comprehensively trashed the idea of extending copyright for sound recordings, zombie-like it's back as a Private Member's Bill. The indispensable Open Rights Group has more and tells you what do about it. Hint: it involves writing to your MP:

What can you say to persuade your MP to show up to the Commons on a Friday? Perhaps you might point out that all the economic evidence points against term extension. Or that every other UK citizen is expected to contribute to their pension out of income earned in their working life. Or that retrospectively extending copyright term won’t encourage Elvis Presley to record any more new tracks. Or that if governments continue to draft intellectual property legislation on behalf of special interest groups, it will only further erode the respect that ordinary citizens have for the letter of the law.

Posted by Glyn Moody at 3:05 PM

Why Intellectual Property Does Not Exist, Part 3502

A nice point from Mike Masnick:

Those who insist that copyright is the same as real property break their own rule by also insisting that they retain perpetual rights to the good, even after it's been sold. If copyright were like real property, after the creator sold it, the buyer could do whatever they want with it, including giving it out for free.

A hit, a very palpable hit.

Posted by Glyn Moody at 2:18 PM

The Inq Has the Dirt on the One

More details on the Elonex £100 ultraportable:

Elonex claims the whole caboodle is optimised for the Linux software it runs. The Linux is Debian flavoured and the little office suite that is bundled with it is all branded ONE. ONEInternet, ONEMail, ONEWord, etc.

As we surmised, storage comes in a 1Gb flash flavour. There's 128Mb of DDR-II memory, a seven-inch 800 by 480 LCD screen with stereo two-channel audio, built-in speakers, a microphone and audio Jack. Wibbling comes courtesy of a Lan/WLAN 10/100M Ethernet with WLAN 802.11g Antenna.

Update: And someone else has spotted that it seems to be this machine, rebadged.

Posted by Glyn Moody at 2:13 PM

Hip-hip-Hadoop!

Just one more reason why the Microsoft-Yahoo merger, if it happens, will be hell:

Yahoo is following in Google’s footsteps again in search. Today, it is shifting a crucial part of its search engine to Hadoop, software that handles large-scale distributed computing tasks particularly well. Hadoop is an open-source implementation of Google’s MapReduce software and file system.

Yahoo is replacing its own software with Hadoop and running it on a Linux server cluster with 10,000 core processors.

Go that? 10,000 core processors running GNU/Linux at the heart of Yahoo. Microsoft is damned if they do (rip and replace) and damned if they don't. Go on, make our day, Steve....

Posted by Glyn Moody at 1:53 PM

Document Freedom Day a Month Too Late?

It all sounds jolly japes:

On 26 March 2008, the Document Freedom Day will provide a global rallying point for Document Liberation and Open Standards. It will literally give teams around the world the chance to "hoist the flag": A 'DFD Starter Pack' containing a flag, t-shirt, leaflets and stickers is in preparation and is planned to be sent out in the first weeks of March to the first 100 teams that sign up. Sixteen teams already signed up during the preparation phase of the DFD prior to this release. Sign your team up now!

Hurry, hurry, hurry.

But I can't help feeling that they have missed a trick here. Surely the obvious time to try to raise awareness of open documents and open standards was just before the meeting beginning on February 25 in Geneva to decide the fate of Microsoft's soi-disant Open Office XML format?

Posted by Glyn Moody at 11:52 AM

Welcome to ... The Spittoon

Last night I had the pleasure - and privilege - of attempting to hack the minds of a roomful of young scientists. It was my usual Digital Code of Life riff, and in the course of preparing my thoughts I wandered over to the 23AndMe site. This, you will recall, is:

a web-based service that helps you read and understand your DNA. After providing a saliva sample using an at-home kit, you can use our interactive tools to shed new light on your distant ancestors, your close family and most of all, yourself.

It is also the company set up by the wife of one of the Google founders - you can join the dots yourself.

But one thing I'd not come across before was the company's blog - called, rather charmingly, The Spittoon...
Posted by Glyn Moody at 11:07 AM

Adobe Flash - Now with Added Evil

Another reason to hate Flash:

Now Adobe, which controls Flash and Flash Video, is trying to change that with the introduction of DRM restrictions in version 9 of its Flash Player and version 3 of its Flash Media Server software. Instead of an ordinary web download, these programs can use a proprietary, secret Adobe protocol to talk to each other, encrypting the communication and locking out non-Adobe software players and video tools. We imagine that Adobe has no illusions that this will stop copyright infringement -- any more than dozens of other DRM systems have done so -- but the introduction of encryption does give Adobe and its customers a powerful new legal weapon against competitors and ordinary users through the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

(Via Tehcdirt.)

Posted by Glyn Moody at

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