By Soulskill from
Slashdot's when-it-makes-somebody-mad department:
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes
"Jon Healey writes in the LA Times that a new lawsuit against the Gawker Media site Defamer for linking to an infringing copy of an unreleased screenplay should send chills down the spines of every reporter who writes about copyright issues. Tarantino had kept the script for his ensemble western The Hateful Eight unpublished, but someone obtained a copy and posted it online. In its piece, Defamer quoted only a brief excerpt and a short summary published earlier that day by the Wrap. But it also included two links to the leaked screenplay on a file-sharing site called AnonFiles. In a complaint filed in federal court in Los Angeles, Tarantino's lawyers say they repeatedly asked Gawker Media to remove the links, to no avail. John Cook, Gawker's editor, responded with a post that rebuts the complaint's most damaging allegations, saying Defamer had no involvement whatsoever in the leak or the script's posting online. Cook also quotes Tarantino's comments last week to Deadline Hollywood, in which the filmmaker said he likes having his work online for people to read and review. 'Reporters often assume that providing links to items of public interest is perfectly aboveboard, even if the items themselves aren't. If this case goes to trial, it could help clarify what links simply can't be published legally, regardless of the news value,' writes Healey. 'I'm not arguing that what Gawker did was legal — that's a judge's decision. I'm just saying that there's a journalistic reason for Gawker to do what it did, and those of us who write about copyrights struggle often with the question of how to report what seems newsworthy without crossing a line that's drawn case by case.'"Read Replies (0)
By Soulskill from
Slashdot's most-interesting-game-you-don't-want-to-play department:
Space MMO
EVE Online has been providing stories of corporate espionage and massive space battles for years. A battle began yesterday that's
the biggest one in the game's 10-year history. The
main battle itself involved over 2,200 players in a single star system (
screenshot,
animated picture). The groups on each side of the fight tried to restrict the numbers somewhat in order to maintain server stability, so the battle ended up sprawling across multiple other systems as well. Now,
EVE allows players to buy a month of subscription time as an in-game item, which players can then use or trade. This allows a direct conversion from in-game currency to real money, and provides a benchmark for estimating the real-world value of in-game losses. Over 70 of the game's biggest and most expensive ships, the Titans,
were destroyed. Individual Titans can be worth upwards of 200 billion ISK, which is worth around $5,000. Losses for the Titans alone for this massive battle are
estimated at $200,000 - $300,000. Hundreds upon hundreds of other ships were destroyed as well. How did the battle start?
Somebody didn't pay rent and lost control of their system.
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By Roblimo from
Slashdot's we-remember-the-cat-laser-pointer-toy-patent-all-too-well department:
The Public Patent Foundations Fights for Patent Freedom (Video)
The
PUBPAT website's
About page says, "The Public Patent Foundation at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law ('PUBPAT') is a not-for-profit legal services organization whose mission is to protect freedom in the patent system." Today's interviewee,
Daniel B. Ravicher, is the group's Executive Director and founder. Eben Moglen is on the Board of Directors, and PUBPAT's goals have been aligned with the
FSF since PUBPAT started. The most publicized PUBPAT success so far was, in conjunction with the ACLU,
getting patents on naturally-occurring genes overturned. Go, PUBPAT!
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By Soulskill from
Slashdot's stand-on-one-foot-and-beg-really-loud department:
As the NSA metadata collection scandal has developed, a number of technology and communications companies have
fought to increase the transparency of the data collection process by publishing reports on how much data government agencies are asking them for. These
transparency reports have been limited, however, because most government requests are entwined with a gag order. In a speech two weeks back, President Obama said this would change, and now the Dept. of Justice has
announced new, slightly relaxed rules about what information companies can share. According to
an email from the U.S. Deputy Attorney General (PDF) to the General Counsel of Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, Microsoft, and Yahoo, the companies can publish: how many Criminal Process requests they received, how many National Security Letters they received, how many accounts were affected by NSLs, how many Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act orders were received (both for communications content and 'non-content'), and how many customers were targeted by FISA requests.
The companies still aren't allowed to give specific numbers, but they can report them in bands of 1,000 — for example, 0-999, 1,000-1,999, etc. Information requests for old services cannot be disclosed for at least six months.
The first information requests for a new service cannot be disclosed for two years. The companies also have the option of lumping all the NSL and FISA requests together — if they do that, they can report in bands of 250 instead of 1,000.
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By Roblimo from
Slashdot's we-remember-the-cat-laser-pointer-toy-patent-all-too-well department:
The Public Patent Foundations Fights for Patent Freedom (Video)
The
PUBPAT website's
About page says, "The Public Patent Foundation at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law ('PUBPAT') is a not-for-profit legal services organization whose mission is to protect freedom in the patent system." Today's interviewee,
Daniel B. Ravicher, is the group's Executive Director and founder. Eben Moglen is on the Board of Directors, and PUBPAT's goals have been aligned with the
FSF since PUBPAT started. The most publicized PUBPAT success so far was, in conjugation with the ACLU,
getting patents on naturally-occurring genes overturned. Go, PUBPAT!
Read Replies (0)
By timothy from
Slashdot's children-is-a-weird-plural department:
First time accepted submitter geminidomino writes
"A research project involving eight schools in Dunedin and Auckland report that loosening rules on the playground may lead to fewer incidents of bullying, vandalism, and injury. One principal opines 'The kids were motivated, busy and engaged. In my experience, the time children get into trouble is when they are not busy, motivated and engaged. It's during that time they bully other kids, graffiti or wreck things around the school.' As one might expect, the article states that there was a lot of resistance to the project, and I'm kind of surprised they got as many administrators to sign on as they did. The story may be premature, as the article states that 'the results of the study will be collated this year,' but it may be interesting to see how the numbers shake out."Read Replies (0)