Slashback: Archives, Leak, Fanfilm

Slashback tonight brings some corrections, clarifications and updates to previous Slashdot stories, including word from the worlds of corporate patent lawsuits, secretive publishers vs. inquisitive readers in Canada, and the pitiful teachers versus the splendid kids in Pennsylvania. Read on for the details. Sir, this sentence mangling machine is Pl88^74djliivc33mq again! I posted a story earlier this week which scrambled in its summary the facts of the matter. My post, as reader Raymond Fingas points out, said that the "Internet archive ... has been sued by the firm Harding Earley Follmer & Frailey." Fingas was one of several readers (thanks to all!) to correct me on this, writing "According to the linked article that isn't the case; instead they are being sued by Healthcare Advocates, represented by the firm McCarter & English. Further, the article says that Harding Earley Follmer & Frailey is actually being sued along with the Internet Archive.."

Alacritech settles litigation with MSFT and BRCM An anonymous reader writes "Alacritech, Microsoft Corporation and Broadcom Corporation today announced that they have entered into agreements that settle all outstanding disputes between Alacritech and Microsoft, as well as provide Microsoft and Broadcom access to Alacritech's patent portfolio relating to scalable networking. (Previously mentioned on Slashdot here and here.)"

Sir, you have no right to read about your rights. Hobart writes "Richard Stallman has just posted on his personal website a request for his readers to 'Don't Buy Harry Potter Books,' and offered to leak the plot - in protest of the Canadian Supreme Court ruling forbidding the purchasers from reading the books they paid for. A memorable quote in the Times article says '...There is no human right to read.'"

Don'tcha think felony is a bit strong for a few button presses? ZombyHero writes "In a follow-up to a previous story, the 13 high school students from Kutztown, PA charged with felony computer trespassing for violating district usage policy are fighting back. They've hired lawyers have begun talking with the Assistant DA. As a former student of the school, I know that the district is used to getting its way. Hopefully this will knock them down a few notches."

Starship Exeter flies again! An anonymous reader writes "There's a new episode of Starship Exeter, a fan-made feature set in the original series Star Trek universe. The new episode, The Tressaurian Intersection, follows on from The Savage Empire, which was featured on Slashdot before. This time it's better than ever... better than the original series, in fact! You can watch the entire episode online."

Treasure hunts, commence. We've posted quite a few interesting applications for Google's mapping service; now phauly writes "I created an Animated Google Map (with some gnus and mozillas attacking Microsoft office) using Google Maps API. I think it would be easy to create real playable Games on Google Maps. For sharing ideas (and implementations!) I created the Games on Google Maps wiki page. For now some ideas are: risk, freeciv, freecraft, car races on real maps! Feel free to edit the page suggesting/revising/implementing ideas."

Comments

Exeter

[gbulmash]

This is interesting as a business model (if Paramount doesn't shut them down). Much like PBS they're operating off mostly donations from viewers (who get a behind the scenes DVD as a premium). But if they can get the funding they need to continue profitably and on a reasonable schedule, it shows that the networks/studios can continue shows with large enough fan bases, moving the revenue over to a 'made for DVD' model rather than a broadcast sponsorship model.

They're not there yet in terms of funding, it seems. But if unfettered fanfic productions could compete, it begs the question of whether the competition would weed out the weak and determine the best as the winner or if it would fracture the support of the fan base so much that no project could obtain sufficient funding.

Re:Exeter

[Anonymous Coward]

To make a quick correction to the Slashback, you can't yet watch the whole 2nd Starship Exeter film online; they are releasing it one act a week starting with the teaser two weeks ago, and both last weeks and this weeks this weekend (due to some lost footage).

Anways, judging from the teaser, Exeter has improved by leaps and bounds from episode one. Being frank, the it takes great effort for me sit through episode one of Starship Exeter (or the first episode of New Voyages for that matter). However, this episode is written by Dennis Bailey, who wrote an episode of The Next Generation (Tin Man, with Gumtu the space snail), and has actual CG effects (as opposed to an AMT model and horrendously bad play-dough dinosaur, not to mention the acting greatly improving.

And I guess I'll throw in a plug for my other favourite TOS fan film. The next Star Trek: New Voyages episodes will be written by two Deep Space Nine writers (Jack Trevino and Ethan Calk), and the one after that by D.C. Fontana, who wrote 11 original series episodes, six Next Generations, not to mention a load of other great TV show episodes. The fourth episode will also guest star Walter Koenig, whose name is very familier to anybody who has read this far.

I predict the next few years will see a load of flood of fan films on the net, with some of them possibly even being good.

-Clinton

Taking over the world...One ZIP Code at a time!

[MindNumbingOblivion]

I have yet to RTFL, but using the Google Map API to write Risk or Civ style games sounds like a wonderful (and just a little scary) application for megalomaniacs like myself.

Imagine the complexity one could introduce to the game...Maybe not use individual troops, but use something similar to Axis and Allies, where each piece represents approximately one division/squadron/task force (maybe ships only represent one ship... has been awhile). Lay siege to your hometown, and animate peasants running through the streets.

Then again, maybe we can adapt Trogdor to play out against SCO's offices...

Re:Taking over the world...One ZIP Code at a time!

[HTH NE1]

Not just creating games, but one could plot out reenactments of actual battles. It is said the United States has always collected as much detailed information as possible about every battle they've ever engaged in. This could help history classes to get kids interested in past events.

And then plotitng the settings of books that used real locations as their settings. Simulate the Martian attack from Woking to London, or from Grover's Mill to New York City, and sync it up with multimedia.

When someone puts up a website...

[John Seminal]

That is their property. Nobody has a right to take a snapshot of it, store it, or recreate it.

Or do we need patents on website content? Copywrites? Or can we trust people to not steal?

For example, say there is a college kid who really likes beer and porn. He likes it so much, he sets up a website that becomes popular, it lists different beers, and reviews porn. One drunken night, this college kid uses his cell phone to take a couple low resolution pictures of himself having sex, and he puts it up.

A few years pass, somehow he graduates and starts looking for work. Someone tells him that his website comes up when googled, and that might not be the best thing when it comes for finding work.

So the guy pulls the plug. beerandporn dot com dies. Or did it? It seems others liked his hobby as well, and downloaded all the content, and started hosting it. Problem is, google now links to these new sites, with his face and work for the world to see.

Should this guy have a right to erase his past creations?

I'll give one more example. A woman who is 26 years old has 2 kids, and no skills. She got knocked up by a bum. Now she is working in a grocery store, as a check out clerk for $7 an hour, not enough to feed and cloth her family.

She starts up a website where she gets naked. She is making good money, and she manages to make enough to get a nicer place to live, feed her kids, and go to college. A couple years later, she takes down the website. She has a good job. But someone decides to put the content back up. Her kids are now 13 years old. Her employeer also knows how to use google. Should people judge her based on who she used to be, what she did to survive within a specific context of existance?

If someone wants to put up a website, they have that right. But it appears that people don't have a right to remove their content from circulation. That is the problem.

The great thing about life is people can change, they can move away to a new community, they can start over. The internet in some ways is making that impossible. It is like jobs that do credit checks, to work as a secretary they want to know how much money you owe, and if you paid it off on time.

Re:When someone puts up a website...

[Mac Degger]

"But it appears that people don't have a right to remove their content from circulation"

Sure they do; the problem is one of theory and practice. In practice, it's like Linus once said: "real men don't backup; they upload the contents of their RAID array to an ftp server and let the whole world mirror their data!" (yeah, I know I mangled the quote :)). Online data has a habit of sticking around.

I think what you have highlighted is one more problem which technology brings, alongside of the benefits. But that's life. For the web to work like everyone wants it to, mirroring of data/websites is incredibly usefull. What should have sufficed in this case was aa simple e-mail to google asking for the data to be deleted, followed by google asking for a passport picture or some other form of verification followed by the removal of the data.
How this got to a lawsuit is beyond me...I wouldn't be surprised if it's due to the litigious atmosphere and a direct lack of gentlemanlyness on the part of the claimant, coupled by money-grubbingness of same.

But back to the underlying issue: if you want a fast and filled internet, data mirroring is what you'll have to accept; 'deleting' data has in this case been neccesstated into an opt-out affair. Which is fine by me, in this case.

And as an extra: you should always be aware of the consequences of your action, which is why I've never been in porn :P

Re:When someone puts up a website...

[mc_barron]

Here's the fundamental problem to all of your anecdotes: they involve someone who regrets a past decision. The results of their decision was willingly made publically available. Now they regret their actiona. Two words: tough shit. Everyone has a history, everything must be viewed in context.

Here's an example: presidential candidate was a member of the KKK in his early years, but has since disassociated himself from the klan. Now he wants to make it illegal for the newspaper to publish his old rantings on race.

I don't know about you, but I sure as HELL want the REAL history of people I know/employ/vote for, not some crazy hazy version that they molded themselves. The ability to change history is the ability to lie...and people don't have the right to lie.

it's very simple

[ChipMonk]

If you don't want something to come back and bite you in the ass, don't do it.

If you don't want all the world to see your life on the Internet, don't expose it.

Should this guy have a right to erase his past creations? Only if he feels like enforcing the copyright on public record.

Should people judge her based on who she used to be? Only if she's less than honest about it, in which case she has already judged herself.

And before you try to tell me I don't know what it's like: Yes, I do. I have a website, and I take care not to put personally identifiable stuff on it. I have no sympathy for Jenni Ringley and her ilk.

The War Between the Pitiful Teachers...

[Cheviot]

The War Between the Pitiful Teachers and the Splendid Kids

Best Book EVER.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0380 578026/102-5071418-2785734?v=glance

No human right to read

[Chris Burke]

Remember that phrase, you're going to hear it a lot.

The crime that was committed was unauthorized distribution by the store selling the books. Copyright owners do not have any authority over you reading a book, only copying it. But they want that authority. And "no right to read" is the phrase they will use to get it.

I think I liked the old universe better. You know, the one where Richard Stallman seemed like a nut with crazy predictions of the future?

Re:No human right to read

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, slaveowners made reading illegal for slaves.

Deja vu, anybody?

private property!

[fermion]

There is no right to read. If I write something, there is no body in the universe that should force me to publish the writing. However, if I have a contract to write something and supply it to a certain entity, I then have the obligation to supply that writing in accordance to the contract.

In the end This is not realy abut the right to read, but property rights. If I legally buy a product, that is legally available(and by that I mean that is in not on a government list of contraband), then I should be able to use it any way unless it was stipulated prior to the purchase that such use was forbidden.

Certainly all that is idealized, and it is often necessary to put restrictions on certain property after the fact, but what we are talking about in this case it a book. I do not know of any law that says it is illegal to buy a book before the official release data. I know of no law that says it is illegal to talk about a book before the release date. There are contract terms that prevent these things, but i doubt the purchasers of this book signed any of those contracts. It is really the fault of the retail outlets that sold the books, and any consequences are theirs

If I cared about this lame corporate utterances, and had a copy of the book, i would have read it and posted a review. I am happy that the kids have something to read, and that they are reading, but at the end of the day this just proves that absolute power leads absolutely to evil.

RMS doesn't understand the meaning of free speech

[geekee]

from RMS's website:
" Here's the text of a complaint that I am sending to the TSA for misleading treatment at Logan Airport.

When I continued to verbally criticize the conduct of the agents, and didn't sit down and shut up, they called the State Police, and one Officer Gillespie told me that "Unless you shut up I will throw you out." I asked if that meant he would arrest me for speaking, and he said, "No, for making a scene." (Different words for the same act.) I told him that was bullying and abuse of power, and refused to shut up. "

Stallman doesn't seem to understand that the right to free speech doesn't also mean the right to a platform for free speech. Airlines rent space at airports, and if they don't want you there because your a belligerent ass, then they have the right to call the cops to kick you out. You don't have the right to make people listen to you, RMS.