This week, the Free Software Foundation issued its latest draft of the GNU-3 open source license.    The prior draft, released in January of 2006 was widely criticized, including major objections by Linux founder Linus Torvalds over digital rights management ("DRM").  The second version attempted to soften the license's effect on DRM but continued to require developers to provide encryption or authorization keys to those wanting use modified versions of the code. The new version appears to have soothed some of these concerns, and has also softened contentious language addressing patented software that relates to open source distributions.  The new version does

Click to read more ...

Viacom and others have filed a Complaint against YouTube and Google alleging vast copyright infringement and seeking more than $1 billion in damages and injunctive relief.  The Complaint contends that Viacom has identified at least 160,000 clips of its its programming on YouTube that it alleges have been viewed an astounding 1.5 billion times.  Viacom released this statement pertaining to the Complaint:

YouTube is a significant, for-profit organization that has built a lucrative business out of exploiting the devotion of fans to others’ creative works in order to enrich itself and its corporate parent Google.  Their business model, which is based on building traffic and selling advertising off of unlicensed content, is clearly illegal and is in obvious conflict with copyright laws.  In fact, YouTube’s strategy has been to avoid taking proactive steps to curtail the infringement on its site, thus generating significant traffic and revenues for itself while shifting the entire burden – and high cost – of monitoring YouTube onto the victims of its infringement.

Viacom is clearly making its case that Google's actions constitute infringement per the Supreme Court's 2005 Decision in MGM v Grokster, which held that "one who distributes a device with the object of promoting its use to infringe copyright, as shown by clear expression or other affirmative steps taken to foster infringement, is liable for the resulting acts of infringement by third parties."  Key to the Grokster case was the fact that Grokster was profiting handsomely from the rampant infringement it was facilitating.  Sound like Viacom's press release?  Although not as blatant as Grokster (you can actually find lots of non-infringing material on YouTube), the economic benefits to Google from this widespread infringement are seemingly undeniable. 

(That is a mouthful of P's).  Seems the Patent and Trademark Office is about to launch its test project whereby certain inventors can elect to have their patent applications available for review over the Internet, where anyone can comment on them, primarily for the purposes of identifying relevant prior art.  Of course, that leads to the potential problem of the credibility of those making the comments.  To solve that credibility issue, the USPTO will use a reputation rating system similar to the public feedback systems used by Slashdot to rate it's commentators, and Amazon to rate its reviewers.  Ultimately the "Top Ten" comments will be passed on to the Patent Examiner for consideration.  The hope is that this will be wildly successful and lead to long term patent reform, and it has the backing of some technology industry heavyweights.    From the Community Patent Review Project website:

The patent system needs our help. The United States Patent Office is actively seeking ways to bring greater expertise to bear on the review of patent applications and ensure that only worthwhile inventions receive the patent monopoly. Currently, underpaid and overwhelmed examiners struggle under the backlog of applications. Under pressure to expedite review,

Click to read more ...

Now that you have been saved (check out the  DST Survival Kit), you might be interested to know that all of this fuss over DST in general, and particularly this year where we are moving it up a few weeks, is not likely to save even a few precious barrels of oil.  Instead, it is more likely that people will spend additional daylight time driving around, shopping, being entertained, and engaging in all kinds of activities that retailers and big oil like to see, but all of which tends to increase, rather than decrease, energy consumption.  Any surprise that lobbies for these groups were big supporters of the Energy Policy Act of 2005, the legislation that extends DST by four weeks?

Michael Downing, in his book Spring Forward, the Annual Madness of Daylight Savings unravels the history of the "uncanny idea of falsifying clocks to delay the apparent time of sunset".  In so doing, he sifts through a century of congressional hearings and newspaper reports to offer a peek at the politics behind DST, revealing a disturbing mix of

Click to read more ...

Will you survive the Daylight Savings Bug?  No doubt you've read about it.  Just like Y2K, it is important to prepare your survival kit.  To be safe, your kit should include the following: water and non-perishable food items - enough for you and your family to survive for at least 30 days; waterproof matches; an emergency blanket; and the following DST Compliance Warranty:

Daylight Savings Compliant" means that the Licensed Software will perform in accordance with the Specifications prior to, during, and after each daylight savings time adjustment following the Effective Date of this Agreement, without material error relating to

Click to read more ...