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It is not the status quo. This fact is critical for context.

Read the discussion on boingboing, where you'll find a conversation with both Cory Doctorow and the author. This negotiation is a departure from the norm, and it is precisely due to the trouble that people like Doctorow caused the last time around, afaict.

Full text is here and here.

Here's the text, with my comments but without the email headers or personal information:

MUVICO'S OFFICIAL RESPONSE TO CAMCORDING"
INCIDENT AT MUVICO ROSEMONT 18"

The unauthorized video recording of a motion picture while it is
being exhibited in a movie theater is illegal under federal law and
under the laws of more than forty states, including the State of
Illinois. According to a study commissioned by the Motion Picture
Association of America, illegal film piracy costs the movie industry
billions of dollars each year, and illegal camcording in movie theaters
is the source of over 90% of all illegally copied movies in their
initial release form.

Ok, fine, this justifies a firm stance when the illegal camcording is intentional or will likely be used as a substitute for going to see the movie, buy the DVD, or watch it on TV. It also may justify a crackdown if it dilutes the movie's value in the marketplace. The incident here was likely not intentional and extremely unlikely to be used by anyone as a substitute for any of the above. Since we are talking snippets here I don't think dilution is a problem.

Furthermore, just because something is illegal doesn't mean every violation needs to be prosecuted. Where police or victims have discretion, they need to exercise common sense. Where they don't, the prosecutor needs to exercise common sense. Where nobody has discretion, the pardoning authority, usually the Governor, needs to step in and pardon the person in advance of any prosecution in the interests of justice.

In order to combat the increasing theft of copyrighted films,
the motion picture industry has encouraged theater owners to adopt a
"zero-tolerance" policy prohibiting the video or audio recording of any
portion of a movie.

We've seen zero tolerance be a miserable failure in the drug war and the war on weapons on school campuses. Zero tolerance makes the enforcers look like idiots in cases like this.

There is a big difference between "zero tolerance" and "almost zero tolerance." In the latter, the person's motives and other extenuating circumstances are considered. That was lacking here.

Specifically, theater managers are instructed to
alert law enforcement authorities whenever they suspect illegal
activity. Theater managers have neither the expertise nor the authority
to decide whether a crime has been committed. Law enforcement
professionals determine what laws may have been broken and what
enforcement action should be taken. It is then up to prosecutorial
discretion to determine the seriousness of any charges that might be
leveled.

OK, *alerting* law enforcement is fine, but they should've also made a *point* of telling law enforcement that it was not in the theater's best business interest to prosecute this case, and ask them to consider not arresting her in exchange for her surrendering or erasing the infringing video. If she refused and they arrested her, then she looks like the bad guy, not the theater. If the theater owner begs the cops not to prosecute and they do, then the cops or prosecutor look like the bad guy, not the theater.

In our continuing effort to educate our guests about the
illegality of film piracy, Muvico prominently places a number of posters
and signs within its theaters alerting moviegoers of its
"zero-tolerance" policy with respect to the camcording of films in its
auditoriums.

Ok, this is reasonable.

Muvico Entertainment LLC
3101 N. Federal Highway, 6th Floor
Fort Lauderdale, FL 33306

I'm leaving out the name, possibly-direct-line phone number, and email address. I don't want to be accused of inviting harrassing email or phone calls. If you have something to say to Muvico, the post office delivers.

Is this plane the cause of all the sonic booms that were heard out west a couple years back?
http://farshores.org/n06boom6.htm
or more recent ones:
http://boingboing.net/2009/03/06/mystery-sonic-boom-i.html

What the heck is "cyberstalking?" Doesn't wholesale wiretapping of both voice and data include this cyberstalking notion? EFF already sued over the patriot act and Obama's administration has made it even worse than before. Not even Bush kept email lists of their political enemies (as far as we know), so the question is moot.

Nothing bogs down a site like Flash.

Case in point: Boing Boing.

Several months ago, Boing Boing got a new layout. The old layout worked fine, was easy to read, easy to scroll. The new Boing Boing stutters when scrolled ... it's annoyingly easy to lose your place and scroll way down or way up by mistake. Grrr ....

Pirates. Not a down-trodden minority.

Some of the pirates were fisherman, until rich nations dumped toxic waste in the area and killed all the fish.

If someone came along and destroyed your food and livelihood, then drove past you every day, would you be tempted to extract a toll from them?

Two wrongs don't make a right, but it's not like they're all bloodthirsty monsters - some are just trying to survive.

If you look at Simon Edhouse's account on boinboing you find a different version of the story: http://dynamic.boingboing.net/cgi-bin/mt/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=1&id=109603

I guess I'm not sure what you want to talk to my printer about. Maybe you're alluding to some story I haven't haerd

If I may, I believe this is about some of the DMCA takedown notices received by University of Washington from the MPAA in the summer of 2008. A few of them were directed at laser printers because researchers at the university pulled some tricks with IP addresses in an attempt to prove that, no, they really don't tell you about identity and, no, the MPAA doesn't care.

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/05/the-inexact-science-behind-dmca-takedown-notices/
http://www.boingboing.net/2008/06/05/entertainment-indust-1.html

I don't know if any changes have been made in response to the embarrassment, nor whether the embarrassment has even been acknowledged as such.

How the hell did he get the boot off his car? Does he have some super [...] lock picking skillz or just a set of bolt cutters?

I'm guessing that's where "possession of stolen property" comes from. They're supposed to come and remove the boot after your payment has gone through the proper channels. It strikes me as pleasantly smart-assy to remove the boot for them and include it with payment. Physical locks usually only serve to keep honest people honest anyway. Arresting someone over this procedural irregularity is downright stupid.

My first thought was, "What is this, Boston ?" With the hyperlinks and everything. But no, the student hails from nearby Andover.

TFA doesn't call it a "hoax bomb" this time (i.e., we thought it was a bomb, and it turned out not to be, so rather than admit the false positive and send you on your way, we're charging you for confusing us, kthx) but "terroristic mischief", especially in the obvious absence of any such intent, is at least as bad. We might as well accuse him of being a witch.

The real story here is that AOL, Comcast, Microsoft, Goldman Sachs, and Murdoch will form a company called Evil Holdings.

Okay, maybe not. But I was just carrying things to their obvious conclusion. And Boing-Boing seems to agree. Look at the photo of Ballmer and Murdoch and see the evil. The photo file is named Balldock and Mumer. (Should have been Balldoch and Murmer.)

Secretary of State Peter Mandelson is planning to introduce changes to the Digital Economy Bill now under debate in Parliament.

So that's what you consider secret? I mean, it sounds bad but I probably wouldn't flip out until it's actually introduced and added to the bill. I guess I'm not an expert on UK law ... by saying "planning to introduce" do you mean it's already law? If not, I would expect parliament to be highly suspect of the introduction of something designed to give the Secretary of State such power ... when it's introduced by the Secretary of State.

This is as bad as I've ever seen, folks.

So, it's worse than ACTA (which affects the entire world)?

It's a declaration of war by the entertainment industry and their captured regulators against the principles of free speech, privacy, freedom of assembly, the presumption of innocence, and competition.

Are you aware what "declaration of war" and "captured" mean? How about swapping that out with "threat of control" and "purchased"? I mean, if it's a declaration of war then the populace should just capture their parliament as prisoners of war, right?

This proposal creates the office of Pirate-Finder General, with unlimited power to appoint militias who are above the law, who can pry into every corner of your life, who can disconnect you from your family, job, education and government, who can fine you or put you in jail.

That's it. You had a really informative post going there but that last part is a level of fear mongering I haven't seen since the United States invaded Iraq.

I heavily suspect you are being played as an unwitting rube by the party opposite of those planning to introduce this. If you had kept your post informative I'd have gobbled it up but at this point I'm dubious that another propaganda tool isn't at work somewhere along this channel.

I think that a part of the point being made was that no good can come to you if you are always watched. Something that you do could be incriminating at some point, now or in the future. This is in-line with the "do not talk to police" recommendations from law professors and police (link here). Basically, it won't be used for you, only against you. You mentioned that it would be great to be able to go to police to have them track down the folks who break into your house. I have a strange feeling that there are a handful of ways to get past security cameras - people robbing banks, convenience stores, etc have all used "masking technology" for quite some time. Furthermore, depending on quality of the resolution of the images, it gets much easier to make a rudimentary disguise that would incriminate someone else. I won't touch on any of the other topics brought up by other posters about arguments on "average citizens" and disadvantages that might crop up, for I feel those points have been well-addressed.

Nitpicking aside, font IP law can be a little tricky. In the US, anyway, you can't copyright typefaces, that is, the actual representation of the font on the page. You can't even copyright bitmapped fonts, which are nothing but representations of typefaces. You can however, copyright scalable fonts such as TrueType fonts which are basically instructions (programs) on how to draw a font. In other countries the law tends to be more in favor of the creator, but even so, it's not unreasonable that MS could've reverse engineered a font clone without violating IP laws. So Zhongyi might've needed time to gather compelling evidence before pressing its case. There's also the fact that this lawsuit was commenced back in April 2007, and possibly there was an attempt to negotiate before the case started. And possibly Zhongyi was deterred by the knowledge that heretofore, as ifwm says, China didn't "give a shit about IP" rights. So I think the delay in prosecution was likely reasonable.

http://www.boingboing.net/2009/11/04/love-of-shopping-is.html

And I agree with a previous comment that he should have gotten an INCREASED sentence, since clearly we can't allow someone who has no control over themselves loose in public.

Parent refers to this

Three years ago, boing boing reported that solar-powered WiFi networking was bringing Internet access to Tibet, where I understand there are some mountains higher than Timms Hill (elevation 595 m), and the wind and snow may be as bad as in Wisconsin.

It seems to me you could create your own community WiFi network and make an arrangement with a friendly neighbor in the next town where there is access to provide broadband for all at a very low monthly rate, and fairly low start-up costs.

... a group of Spanish high-schoolers, back in March. And a canadian a couple of years ago. And whatnot...

So, yeah. Not pretty much impressive (or a novelty) by now. Seems that verifying the roundness of Earth is routine.

Go to all this trouble and yet not even set your camera right. What sort of grade would that get at MIT?

I suppose then that MIT students don't make mistakes?

Four years ago, it wasn't just in power supplies either - we had to return 70 machines to Hewlett-Packard under warranty after the capacitors on the motherboard began failing after 3 months of use.

Sounds like you got some motherboards fitted with capacitors filled with faulty electrolyte manufactured by a company that stole the recipe (but got it wrong) in a case of bungled corporate espionage in 2003.

"According to the source, a scientist stole the formula for an electrolyte from his employer in Japan and began using it himself at the Chinese branch of a Taiwanese electrolyte manufacturer. He or his colleagues then sold the formula to an electrolyte maker in Taiwan, which began producing it for Taiwanese and possibly other capacitor firms. Unfortunately, the formula as sold was incomplete."

http://www.boingboing.net/2003/05/27/bungled-espionage-bl.html

I also wonder how many times you'll be able to download a book you have purchased.
Some Kindle books have secret caps on the number of times you can download them.
Kindle’s DRM.

If these stories are true then the Kindle is, in my eyes, nothing but a rip-off.

You know, I for one have always welcomed our water bear bringer of life to earth from space overlords. They probably even brought the water with them, being water bears and all. Coolest creatures on earth, without a doubt.

If worse comes to worse, Boing Boing can just unpublish the whole thing, and it will all just magically go away, like it never even happened.

If worse comes to worse, Boing Boing can just unpublish the whole thing, and it will all just magically go away, like it never even happened.

Here's the link to that particular thread.

More up-to-date, BB has posted that Ralph Loren has admitted a "my bad," and that they promise to be more diligent about it in the future. Scroll to just above the comments.

The criticism that Ralph Lauren doesn't want you to see!
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/10/06/the-criticism-that-r.html

Harper appointed a creationist as science minister.

http://www.boingboing.net/2009/03/17/canadas-science-mini.html

Harper and gang are moronic G W Bush wannabees.

The Conservatives think it's ok to sue a teenager for $20,000.00 per song for "illegally" torrenting a song that costs 99 cents on itunes,
so that the big media broadcasters can stay rich. Anyone actually vote for that issue? No? Gee, I wonder why the politicians think Canadian parents who voted for them might like this in place?

http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/3025/125/

Just because it hasn't stopped you from doing anything doesn't mean that it hasn't affected other people. DRM is simply saying "fuck you" to the consumer, telling them that they have less of a right to do things on their computer than the media companies do.

That has nothing to do with philanthropy. If you want to use a anonymity proxy, you're free to do so. And that would give you better protection than Scroogle, which only hides your IP from Google. If you're not bothered by other web servers logging your IP, then why would you be concerned with Google? Of all the online megacorporations out there to fear having your privacy invaded by, you're worried about Google?

If you don't want to be tracked by your credit card purchases, then pay for your purchases with cash. It would be unreasonable (and unwise) to ask that banks and credit firms store no digital records of your financial activities. Likewise, in age of information and with the ubiquity of the world wide web, you can't expect there to be no trace of your online activities anywhere (unless you live completely off the grid). You can't go frolicking through the snow and then get mad at the snow for preserving your footprints. Now, you can take care to conceal your tracks, or even create misleading tracks to fool anyone who might be following you. But the only way to ensure there's no trace of your presence is to not tread on the snowy ground.

So, instead of expecting search providers to keep no server logs, store no cookies, and store no session data (things that all modern websites do), perhaps it'd make more sense to focus on other areas of privacy protection that actually matter. For instance:

• Use secure connections when sending & receiving sensitive and/or confidential data.
• Take care to keep your computer free of spyware, trojans, keyloggers, and other types of malware, and just being security conscious in general.
• When you see a luxury car sitting in the lobby of a movie theater with a kiosk next to it asking you to fill out your personal info to be entered into the sweepstakes, DO NOT ENTER INTO THE SWEEPSTAKES. This also applies to online freebies, like free magazine subscriptions, iPods, thumbdrives, etc., that require you to submit your personal info. That's how you end up on the "prospects" lists used by spammers and telemarketers.
• Make sure your ISP, cellphone provider and any other businesses you may have a contract with, are respecting your privacy and not selling your info to 3rd parties as many of them do.
• Lastly, choose your online services (e.g. e-mail, personal blog, search engine, photo sharing service, etc.) carefully. Read the privacy policy of websites you give your personal info to. Don't sign up for an account at or give your email address to shady websites that don't have a reasonable privacy policy available for reading.

IMO, it's much more important to choose a search provider you can trust than to try to obtain perfect anonymity (which is simply unrealistic). The reason people like Google is because they provide the best search results as well as many innovative/useful auxiliary services. Now, if they couldn't collect search data, then they wouldn't be able to analyze them to identify search trends, usage patterns, etc. that have helped them to optimize their search algorithm over the years. Likewise, it's only by collecting this type of anonymized search data that they're able to offer many of their useful derivative services or user-friendly features incorporated into Google search or Gmail.

Google has shown that they can be trusted with user data (at least with regards to Google Search. Orkut and YouTube may be a different matter.) by being the only major search provider to outright refuse to hand over search records to the DoJ. They have also expended considerable resources lobbying for intellectual property reform, green technology, net neutrality, open w

You forgot the obligatory link.

yea, was thinking the same thing...
According to a news post in boing boing and according to the manufacturer's website, it's for 50$

In this case, yes. But they did try to claim they were copyrighted last year. And that's where this all started. http://www.boingboing.net/2008/04/15/oregon-our-laws-are.html

Pfffttt... Snail based networking is the way to go... But yeah, the latency characteristics are even worse.

After getting modded -1, Troll, I'm going to repost this again and keep reposting until you guys notice it.

An authentication chip is indeed present in the ipod headphones. It's not a troll. It's not an attempt to smear apple by claiming it's DRM... Although since only headphones with the chip can work with the new ipod shuffle because it has inline controls, it sure looks and smells like DRM. Well, have at it fanboys. I've got karma to burn.

About the time Steve Jobs left: http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2008/09/09/apple-discontinues-1.html

Something that should be included if you're bringing up that case. http://boingboing.net/2008/09/22/star-simpson-one-yea.html

The author offers no support for this claim whatsoever and is clearly speculating.

And Cory's support comes from where? His head? Remember that some of BoingBoing's income comes from Amazon links, so they may be more inclined to give 'em the benefit of the doubt. Linky to a moderator in the comments saying they get money from Amazon.

His link is to the EFF, which doesn't mention any copyright notice. They link to the Times, which mentions no notice. I'll stick with the Times, which has a bit of a better rep for accuracy than BB, leaving the burden of proof on Amazon.

In short: Copy of the notice or it didn't happen.

That was the first version of the story. Amazon later stated what the GP said

Your link backs me up: Cory implied that the seller didn't have rights to the book, but his source article, from the EFF, says explicitly that the publisher had the rights to sell it then changed its mind. Amazon makes no statement saying otherwise in your link or Cory's source link.

The EFF article, in turn, links to the same Times article I did.

"A publisher specializing in bringing public domain books into print put its whole catalog on Amazon, who then got a copyright notice from the people who control the Orwell literary estate. Amazon decided to resolve the dispute by taking the Orwellian step of un-selling the books from its customers' devices, sending them down the memory hole."

Alphabetical keyboards pop up from time to time. Incidentally, the French use Azerty keyboards. A keyboard that lacks accented keys is rather difficult to use in some countries.

They have them in Baltimore. There is usually 2 per block positioned so you don't have to walk more than 1/4 of a block (assuming they're not busted which happens occasionally but not frequently). There are no sensors in the parking spaces. A valid receipt on your dash is all you need and I've seen people offer their receipt to others when they are about to leave to "use up" the time.

They're not a perfect solution, but I'm much more likely to have a credit card on me than a bunch of quarters so they can be convenient. So long as parking is way too cheap they're not too bad.

example

http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/gadgets/~3/gVkJkrhvZCI/carrier-cant-stop-ha.html

The Boingboing discussion of "Geek Atlas: 128 nerdy must-sees and an education in science, technology and geek history" describes a good reference.

I can recommend the The American Museum of Radio and Electricity in Bellingham, Washington. My daughter and I dropped by for an hour and found ourselves staying until closing time.

They don't unplug you, they keep the system powered. http://www.boingboing.net/2008/02/22/hotplug-transport-a.html

How the Canadian copyright lobby uses fakes, fronts, and circular references to subvert the debate on copyright. Interesting article from BoingBoing.Net, back on June 24th.

There are other experiments that contradict this and show chimps that are smarter than children out there: boing link The children are a bit older than 2 years.

Just wait until someone creates a small RFID reader and hooks it up to an iPhone in their pocket (a combo that would be virtually undetectable) and starts walking through the subway collecting info.

Phht, think that's a risk?! Just wait until a US Postal Worker modifies the BlueTooth Rifle and starts taking chips down in crowded plaza's!

That would be because they Keep losing them.

Seriously, they do have guns, they bring them along quite often for miner things like when they think they will encounter a bunch of people "dancing all night long".

But yes, they don't always wear guns. That's probably because most of the UK citizens are refused the right to use a weapon in their own defense and guns are pretty much locked away from the unprivileged classes of people in the UK. So in a conversation about being shot or shooting them first, is bringing up UK police really relevant? I don't really think so. You also have the CC cameras on every street corner and cops in the UK travel in packs with several not more then a few moments away.

You'd have to wait until you see what is attacked and the consequences of the attack are. Finding out who had the most to gain will typically show you who the culprit is.

My guess is Jay Rockefeller and his minions. He recently said that the internet is the country's #1 national hazard and it should have never been given to the people.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8PCmLPPVnA

He has introduced a few bills into congress which would give federal control over the entire Internet infrastructure in the United States.

Lawrence Lessig was told there would be an i-9/11 and an i-patriot act was already written for such an occasion.

http://www.boingboing.net/2008/08/05/lawrence-lessig-on-t.html

Author Ursula K. Le Guin cares. Author Justine Larbalestier cares.