● 03.28.10

● Links 28/3/2010: Sabayon 5.2 and GIMP Fun

Posted in News Roundup at 6:32 pm by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

• Sorry, guys, we’ve had that for years. Another marketing guys ploy got in the way of migration to “7″ so they took away the requirement to use virtualization. .

• Wake up! M$ is jerking your change. Chroot has been around in the ‘NIX world since 1982. They tried to get you to buy new hardware to run “7″ and XP by virtualization but you realized your present hardware was adequate. Don’t migrate to “7″, just because M$ wants more money.

Virus

• Most of us have experienced the need to disinfect a virus-laden system — though a near-total immunity is one of the many benefits of being a Linux user. If public health officials in northern England are to be believed, though, the term “computer virus” may be in for a new meaning.

Desktop

• Chuck is my average user desktop Linux success story. He has been so for about six years now. Chuck does not want to go back to Microsoft operating systems as he sees no benefit to that. He does see some negatives to going back though. He would have to go back to buying and installing anti-malware software and keeping that up to date. He would have to go back to worrying about malware infections through e-mail or cracked web sites. Certainly if Chuck were using a Microsoft operating system I would do all I could to secure his PC for him. But I could not guarantee Chuck would never get malware “owning” his PC in that case. I am not there to watch over Chuck every time he opens an e-mail or browses web sites. With desktop Linux Chuck and I both know that he does not have to worry about those problems. Chuck is happy to use Linux as an average PC user.

• But a couple of things happened recently that convinced me Linux has finally, truly, really, no-kidding gone beyond being a contender against Windows for the average desktop user. It has become clearly superior to Windows for the average desktop user.

• I was at MicroCenter in Cambridge, Massachusetts yesterday. I was helping one of my students find a new laptop that would work well with Ubuntu.

• Among the three major operating systems, you may know that Linux has the lowest market share on the desktop but is leading the server market. However, Linux on the desktop is slowly but surely going mainstream that’s enough to scare the crap out of Microsoft.

• One thing holds true: the longer I use Ubuntu, the happier I become with the system. When Windows 7 came out, I moved almost completely away from Windows and I haven’t looked back. With the extra control I have to customize my computer to suit my needs, the extra money that I have from not paying for expensive programs and the extra time I have as a result of being able to quickly solve any problems that arise, I’m free to dabble in the endless possibilities of a Linux-based computer.

• Company ZaReason introduced 10-inch netbook called Teo. The model possesses quite standard for devices of its class characteristics. It is equipped with 10-inch screen with a resolution of 1024×600 pixels and is based on Intel Atom N450 processor with a clock speed of 1.66 GHz. Also “on board” ZaReason Teo – Integrated Intel GMA 3150 graphics, 2 GB of RAM and hard disk 160 GB (it is worth noting that the amount of memory larger than normal for netbooks 1 GB). Communication possibilities Teo presented 10/100 Ethernet and Wi-Fi 802.11 b / g / n.

Server

• Nearly three-quarters of the respondents (72%) said they see Ubuntu as ready for their mission-critical deployments. Mission critical applications in the respondents view included backup, file server, scientific applications, email and security tasks.

Dell

• Dell has announced that it will be adding Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud (UEC) to its infrastructure solutions. The company plans to offer “blueprints” for optimising deployments of UEC of Dell hardware such as the PowerEdge C-Series. UEC joins the ranks of the proprietary solutions from VMWare and Microsoft, for which Dell already offers blueprints for deployment.

• Today is a very important day for Joyent, and for software development.

• Joyent recognized early on that Web development was unlocking transformative new capabilities for software developers. We were founded with the idea of building applications to make business more productive, and we knew that Joyent needed infrastructure that could scale quickly to satisfy user demands, that could provide a persistent, stable platform for applications, and that could meet the day-to-day performance requirements needed to run a business.

• On Wednesday Dell announced a comprehensive overview of its enterprise strategy. Significant in its announcement, was the addition of Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud (UEC) as an infrastructure solution, joining the proprietary offerings from VMWare and Microsoft. This is the first major offering of a true open source Cloud solution backed by a major corporate vendor.

Graphics Stack

• The VESA driver does not provide much besides user mode-setting for most all VESA-compatible graphics cards and its acceleration is limited to ShadowFB (a shadow frame-buffer on the CPU). It is really not a solution for anything besides being useful when recovering from a bad X configuration or other problems. Fortunately, for the end-user, this will not be the case with most distributions. The real reason NVIDIA is likely canning their xf86-video-nv mess is since the Nouveau driver is reaching a point where its entering the limelight with its mainline DRM, kernel mode-setting support, and emerging Gallium3D support for providing OpenGL acceleration in free software. The Nouveau kernel code entered the Linux 2.6.33 kernel a few months back. As of last December though, Andy Ritger told us that at that point they were not going to change their nv driver support strategy based on Nouveau.

Applications

• Chances are you sometimes come across an MP3 file that won’t play properly or does something quirky in your favorite music player. You can try ripping or downloading the file again, or you can fix the problem yourself with MP3 Diags. This utility has two main goals: See what’s inside MP3 files and identify errors and potential issues, and change MP3 files to conform to standards and contain all the useful information they are supposed to contain.

• Prey is licensed under the GPLv3 license and available for free download from the project’s Web site.

Proprietary

• Opera 10.51 (and 10.52) for Linux has been completely rewritten from scratch, with the hope of resolving long time outstanding issues says Ruari, one of Opera’s developers in this blog post.

Instructionals

Games

• Metal Beetle has released a new development preview version of Space Exploration: Serpens Sector, a role-playing game based on classics like Starflight and Star Control.

Desktop Environments

K Desktop Environment (KDE SC)

• Looking for an Evernote replacement on Linux? Take a look at BasKet! The BasKet Note Pads project is moving full steam ahead once again. The project has just released the first beta for BasKet 2.0, which is the long-awaited port to the KDE 4 platform using Qt4 and KDE 4 platform technologies like Akonadi and Nepomuk.

• Last weeks I’ve been looking (again) whether or not it was possible to create a working sqlite back end for Akonadi. The last time I tried was around august last year and by then sqlite just wasn’t able to meet the multi-threading requirements that Akonadi has for its database back ends. A couple of sqlite releases later things seem to have changed. I managed to clean up some problematic code paths in Akonadi server and voila, we’ve a sqlite back end that is on par (unit test wise) with the mysql back end.

• While looking for some applications similar to Google Earth I bumped into this KDE educational project Marble. Its a 3D Atlas and Virtual Globe application that aims to help students, teachers or anyone, in learing more about Earth, Mars, Moon and Venus. It provides a whole lot of features other than just the Atlas, with an interface similar to Google Earth.

• Finally, this new version of Film Grain tool will be available for digiKam 1.2.0, which will be released in few days. I hope that you will enjoy this tool…

• Clementine is basically a port of Amarok 1.4 to Qt4. Techie Buzz author, Sathya Bhat, has already covered Clementine when it was at a very early stage of development.

• Michał (the lead K3b developer) is busy preparing K3b 2.0 for release. However we have some rough plans how to proceed after that release. I’d like to share them with you.

• KDE developers have always put big efforts on this department, and this version continues to deliver. This is obviously very subjective, but I am liking what I am seeing. I have to admit I was hoping for a bigger step forward, but it is a nice progression over KDE 4.3.x. Some new menus have been added, some features have been rearranged and a few seem to have been removed.

GNOME Desktop

• Leaving your coworkers a nice message is easy and can brighten up their dull afternoon. We’re pretty sure that this method can only be used for good and not evil, but if you have any other suggestions of messages to leave, let us know in the comments!

• The first stable release of GNOME Media Player – formally GNOME VLC – is now available.

• This release sees the fresh-faced newcomer gain support for 3 engines (VLC, Xine and GStreamer) for playing media, with the option to easily switch ad-hoc between them.

Distributions

Sabayon

• The Sabayon 5.2 release features Xorg 7.5, GNOME 2.28, KDE 4.4.1, XBMC 9.11 and much more. Sabayon is know for offering cutting edge features, great application selection and out-of-the-box experience that is unmatched by any. The Sabayon 5.2 release also comes with a uniquely blue theme that I found to be quite attractive, check it out.

• The 5.2 release of the Gentoo based Linux distribution, Sabayon Linux was released yesterday. For those unfamiliar with Sabayon, it is based on a binary distribution of Gentoo Linux.

• The download ISO files approximately 1.6 gigabytes (for the Gnome edition) and can be downloaded from the Sabayon Linux website.

New Releases (Not Just GNU/Linux)

• We’re proud to announce that Cloudera’s Distribution for Hadoop Version 2 (CDH2) is officially released.

• Sabayon Linux 5.2 is here for Linux enthusiasts who want the latest packages and the best performance, but don’t want to spend days getting things working properly. True to its mission statement, Sabayon 5.2 comes with pretty much cutting-edge software for both its GNOME and KDE flavors. The latest kernel, the newest GNOME and KDE software and eye candy for the most demanding users, they’re all here.

Red Hat Family

• Red Hat’s exceptionally strong fourth quarter and 2010 year-ending financial report released earlier this week shows that the company continues to defy the recession with its strategy of building a far-ranging services, middleware, and cloud business on top of its server-oriented open source Linux distribution. In its fiscal 2010 fourth quarter Red Hat earned $195.9 million in revenue, an increase of 18 percent from 4Q 2009, one year ago, and the company saw a 46 percent increase in 4Q profits, says Red Hat.

• The internal email “chatter” list went crazy. Responses ranged from the rule followers–and a few sore losers–who cried, “Isn’t this a violation of your employment contract?” to the hard core open source crowd who said, “Hey, Red Hat should publish everyone’s salary.” But there was one passing statement that intrigued me: an employee from Norway mentioned that he didn’t see what all the fuss was about; his country made everyone’s salary public information.

Fedora

• This all would not be possible if it was not for the Fedora Community, so we thank everyone that is, has been and will be involved with Fedora. Let us all rocket to better places with the new and upcoming Fedora 13.

Ubuntu

• “It takes a long time to build traction in the enterprise market, but I now see that traction,” Shuttleworth said. “Our growth is something to be proud of.”

• As ever, he’s optimistic that the business will bear fruit. Revenue is growing, he said.

• Ubuntu’s future 10.10 operating system is going to make a small, but contentious change to how file sizes are represented. Like most other operating systems using binary prefixes, Ubuntu currently represents 1 kB (kilobyte) as 1024 bytes (base-2). But starting with 10.10, a switch to SI prefixes (base-10) will denote 1 kB as 1000 bytes, 1 MB as 1000 kB, 1 GB as 1000 MB, and so on.

• Finally, Mr. Gooey-Aubergine seemed to be the most excited about the possibility of adding an Ubuntu Menu. “Think of all the things we could do with that!” he exclaimed. “We could be the first Linux distribution bundled with a one-click “Upgrade to Debian” feature! Although,” he admitted, “we haven’t passed that one by Mark yet.” Nor, as it turned out, had he asked Mr. Shuttleworth about the “uninstall” option.

• Mark Shuttleworth posted a suggestion he got from Pablo Quirós for the free space on the top right window corner (now that the button(s) will be placed on the left side of the Metacity), on the Ayatana mailing list.

• Ubuntu Artwork Pool in Flickr is now officially closed for further submissions and the shortlisting process is already underway. More than 1000 odd submissions were made and that itself speaks volumes about the resounding success of this novel idea of engaging with the community. After 15 Awesome Wallpaper Collection from Ubuntu Artwork Pool, we proudly present to you, 15 more wallpapers from the official Ubuntu Artwork Pool.

• This month: * Command and Conquer. * How-To : Program in Python – Part 9, Digitally Retouching a Photo in GIMP – Part 2, and Installing Google SketchUp using Wine. * Review – Motorola Milestone/Droid. * MOTU Interview – Pedro Fragoso. * Top 5 – Android Applications. * Ubuntu Women, Ubuntu Games, My Opinion, My Story, and all the usual goodness!

• The end of March is near, and in about a month, we will be seeing Lucid Lynx, or Ubuntu version 10.04.

• [...]

• I also began thinking about Ubuntu’s quick release cycle. Do they need to release new versions every six months, or should they give themselves more time in between versions to try and release something more refined say once every year?

• If you haven’t already downloaded a copy of 10.04, it’s probably time. At Beta 1, it’s probably stable enough for those who consider themselves only ‘mildly adventurous’ to give it a try. It certainly looks different. Gone is the staid brown (or orange) of old, replaced by a playful, somewhat seductive purple. The new colors frankly made me wonder what Ubuntu was promising with 10.04 LTS. Given that this is a long term support release, I have to think it’s meant to be less of a fling and more of a long term relationship. You see, Lucid Lynx could also be called 10.04 SNR; the Social Networking Release. I’ll cover that topic and some social networking dangers and pitfalls in my next post when I tell you why being too social can be a bad idea.

• Until next time . . .

• A new version of Ubuntu is released every six months, but Ubuntu 10.04 will be a little special. That’s because it is marked as Long Term Support (LTS). Most versions of Ubuntu get 18 months of security updates, but this will be supported for 3 years. So if you do not like upgrading this is the version for you.

• Before we go any further, we should point out that this is a beta version of Ubuntu 10.04, not an official release. It has worked without any major problems on our test machine but it should not be used on an important computer. That said, if you have a spare computer, it is worth giving a go.

Devices/Embedded

• Qi Hardware was founded in 2009 by several former developers and engineers from the Openmoko project, which initially set out to build a completely-free Linux-based mobile phone, but has since turned its attention to other projects. Qi’s business model and product roadmap is decidedly more incremental than Openmoko’s, perhaps reflecting lessons learned from the previous company. Qi is self-funded; the plan is to use proceeds of Ben sales to fund the development on the next NanoNote revision as well as other projects.

Android

• I won’t continue on as this is not so much a review but more of my thoughts on a subject which Ive had strong opinions on in the past (Mobile phone computing) Whilst my Winmob experience probably prevented me from getting excited about it in the past, Android and the HTC has changed all that. I can now be productive on a mobile and whilst the touch screen is not the best keyboard in the world for me, I’m getting used to it and am certainly productive if Im on the train or wanting to keep up my online presence whilst on the move.

• Out of all of these the one that appears to have the most traction is Android. Google is actively developing the OS, developers are building apps for the platform and you have a choice of manufacturers.

Sub-notebooks

• Guess what? After using just the first beta for a day on my Lenovo S10 with a gigabyte of RAM and the first generation Atom, I’m not eyeing up Windows 7 anymore. Not only is this free, but it feels just as fast (if not faster) than Windows 7. This is seat-of-the-pants only, but let’s just say that it’s a significant upgrade from XP Home.

• IBM, Canonical and Simmtronics today announced they will market a low-cost, Intel Atom-based Simmtronics netbook in emerging markets. The Simmbook will be preloaded with the IBM Client for Smart Work Linux distro, based on Ubuntu Netbook Remix, and will first be made available in Africa for just $190, says IBM.

• Canonical and Simmtronics on Thursday announced that the Simmtronics netbook, the Simmbook, is now available to emerging markets for just $190

• The Skylight runs over a Linux-based OS, also called Skylight.

• If you are a netbook user and have not yet checked out the Jolicloud OS, you may want to give it a quick look or two. Just to offer a quick explanation about what Jolicloud is, it is a Linux based operating system that is built on Ubuntu. It favors web apps, takes full advantage of the ‘cloud’ and is also excellent in being a relatively simple OS to install. Other perks of Jolicoud include quick boot times and support for a wide variety of netbooks.

Tablets

• Windows tablets, Google Android tablets, the iPad. We’ve heard a lot of talk about tablets over the last few months. Here’s one that’s a little different. The Ekoore ET10TA looks like a typical Windows tablet, complete with a 10 inch, 1024 x 600 pixel display and a 1.6GHz Intel Atom N270 processor. But it ships with a choice of Windows or Ubuntu Linux.

Free Software/Open Source

• IntraHealth and the Senegalese Ministry of Health are using a simple mobile information system based on FrontlineSMS:Medic, a free, open-source software platform that enables large-scale, two-way text messaging. The software was customized for the project in partnership with RAES, the African Network for Health Education. Providers send health data via cell phones to a centrally supported automated response server in Dakar, where it is analyzed by Ministry of Health staff.

• Open source needs an app store.

• No, I am not crazy. Well, not about this, anyway. I know that apps for Linux, and open source apps in general, are free and easy to download and install. They are also numerous. Very. To the point where it has become increasingly difficult to keep track of which apps are available to do which tasks. And that’s me talking–someone who is supposed to know what’s what in the community.

• My county lives and dies by volunteer labor. If we didn’t have so many generous, far-sighted volunteers filling key positions we’d be in sorry shape. The fire departments are all volunteer, and they are required to have the same training and skills as big-city paid departments. Search and rescue, sheriff’s reserves, home health care and hospice, and on and on and on…all of these jobs that are ordinarily paid positions are capably filled by skilled, committed unpaid volunteers.

• Sound familiar? It is true that a lot of FOSS development is paid, but a sizable amount is still done by unpaid volunteers. The value of diverse, open development and distribution should speak for itself, given its long and successful history, and yet one of the biggest unanswered questions is how can a person make a living from FOSS? Those folks who are quickest with answers like “give away the code, sell service and support” are people who have jobs with paychecks, and have never tried it.

• This is my quick take on these three computing cultures in an already too long blog posting. In summary, I think that Apple culture is going the way of mobile gadgets, windows culture is as hard and mouldy as two week old stale bread and the open source culture is undergoing a renaissance and bringing computing back to an even keel. I also believe that a very important factor is that the younger generation are much more technologically savvy than my generation of fat balding greybearded eldergeeks They realise the intrinsic value and it is their thoughts and opinions which are influencing the change in the current cultures. What do you think? How are the current computing cultures evolving and how will they evolve in the future?

GIMP

• Suddenly the graphics world is all atwitter about this miraculous new feature they’re previewing in Photoslop. A Photoslop team guy has a video up with a “sneak preview” of what they’re calling “Content-Aware Fill.” As soon as I saw it, I remembered some plug-in that I’d tried in Gimp long ago, but couldn’t remember what it was.

• I mention two podcasts worth to follow. Jeff Curto’s “The History of Photography” and The World’s “Technology Podcast“. And then there is the Haus der Photographie in the Deichtorhallen, which has good exhibitions and a good bookstore. The map in the bbegin was provided by the Open Street Map Project.

• They can rest assured – it is possible and it has been around for years, e.g. in the GIMP plugin by Paul Harrison called Resynthesizer.

• GIMP 2.7 seems to always start in multi-window mode, even if the user closes GIMP in single-window mode. Although this may have just been a misconfiguration with our GIMP, proper configuration won’t be completely implemented until GIMP 2.8′s release.

• There is another thing. If you maximize the window and then switch tabs it unmaximizes, bringing the window back to the size it was before maximizing.

• With minor GEGL improvements, the current development version of GIMP 2.7 doesn’t appear to have that many new features. We’ll review GIMP again in a while. Until next time…

Mozilla

• One of the coolest things about Firefox is its extensibility. Everyone has their collection of favorite Firefox add-ons and I thought I would share mine. Some provide improved organization, some have a certain “WOW!” factor, and others just look pretty.

• For many users of Mozilla’s open source Firefox Web browser, Firefox is simply a tool for looking at Web content. For others, Firefox is an enabling tool to actually help develop content and code for the Web.

• This week, Mozilla released the results of a developer survey it conducted in November 2009. The survey received responses from 5,054 developers spread across 119 countries and provides some insights into how developers work with Firefox — and what about Firefox makes it so critical as a tool for developing.

Oracle

Business

• It included a partial explanation of my theory that those strategies do not exist in isolation, but are steps on an evolutionary process, and also introduced our model for visualizing the core elements of an open source-related business strategy.

• Reductive Labs, the home of Puppet, the open source leader in data center automation, has announced that it has changed its name to Puppet Labs. This name better represents the focus of the company on guiding development of Puppet, supporting the large and growing Puppet community and delivering premium tools and services to enable broader deployments of Puppet in large enterprises.

• OrangeHRM, Inc. is pleased to announce that it released the latest version of OrangeHRM, its open-source HRM software today. Release 2.6 incorporates a Performance Module, a new feature designed to help small- and medium-sized enterprises conduct formal employee performance reviews.

• Mickos is a smart guy. He has deep institutional knowledge of the industry. For Eucalyptus to be wildly successful, it’s going to have to be bigger than just open source, as The VAR Guy points out, i.e., bigger than just an open license attached to otherwise ordinary software. Customers pay for value, and that value, as Mickos thinks, sits at the nexus of cloud, open-source, and collective computing.

• Mickos also said that part of the reason MySQL kicked off so much open source code for community use was that revenues from it were constant.

• More and more organizations are relying on open source software to build, test, deploy, and run mission critical IT applications. From small start-ups to Fortune 500 companies, organizations worldwide are continuing to find open source as a cost effective means to deliver quality business applications. With a wealth of commercial and open source software options widely available, how does an organization know if an open source product is right for them?

• Open Source or Enterprise License

• The company provides its cloud management product as an open source Community Edition and as a commercial Enterprise Edition. The former is offered via the GNU Lesser General Public License Version 3. Abiquo 1.5 will be available within 45 days.

FSF/FSFE/GNU

Standards/Consortia

• But developing standards and open source software are not the only areas where people and companies would like to launch collaborative activities among nationally and internationally distributed participants. The question is, will they know how to go about doing so?

• The third in a series of plugfests, aimed at lead developers of commercial and open source ODF implementations, experts from local and regional governments, members of the OASIS TC’s and other stakeholders.

Leftovers

Finance

• The Financial Services Roundtable, which lobbies on behalf of around 100 of the country’s top banks, credit card companies and insurance firms, will undertake a professionally-organized public relations campaign to try to improve the tarnished image of the financial industry.

• One of Wall Street’s main lobbying groups is starting an image-improvement campaign aimed at showing the financial industry as trustworthy and a positive force after more than a year of being chastised in Washington.

PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

• The NAIC, which comprises the insurance commissioners from all 50 states, the District of Columbia and the U.S. territories, is having its spring meeting today through Sunday in Denver. The fact that more than 1,700 insurance industry executives are also at the meeting should give you an idea of how important the NAIC is to insurers. Just as members of Congress are far out-numbered by lobbyists on any given day in Washington, the commissioners are far, far outnumbered by insurance company executives who come to NAIC’s conferences to try to influence everything the commissioners do.

• I have been transfixed by the long health care reform debates in the US, which finally culminated with the House of Representatives passage of the health care reform bill on March 21, and which President Obama signed into law two days later. The House also passed the reconciliation bill which the Senate subsequently approved on March 25. The health care reform bill is now the law of the land.

DRM

• However, now it appears that it’s even pissing off EA employees. Slashdot points out that the editor of EA.com got really frustrated over the game kicking him out because his DSL was flakey:

Intellectual Monopolies/Copyrights

• So what’s Hollywood doing? They’re just making it more expensive. Yes, they’re jacking up the prices on 3D movies, in a typical short-term strategy. Rather than recognize how this might just drive more people to more seriously consider getting a 3D setup at home, Hollywood’s simplistic business modeling seems to be “let’s see how much we can squeeze out of people as quickly as possible.”

• Toymaking giant LEGO is suing a small Minneapolis nonprofit, saying it benefits from the high-profile name.

• Mardi Gras Indians have been around for more than a century — more than two, some say — and are generally thought to have originated as a way to pay homage to the American Indians who harbored runaway slaves and started families with them.

• Back in January, we noted that Chris Morrison, the manager of Damon Albarn’s bands, Blur and Gorillaz, stated at a conference that “piracy can be stopped,” while also suggesting he wanted to personally beat up anyone who shared Albarn’s music (oddly, this was right after he had admitted how much wonderful free publicity Albarn had gotten from a leak of the Gorillaz album). Now it looks like Morrison and a former partner of his are involved in a silly and amusing new propaganda campaign, funded by Universal Music, to try to equate file sharing to drunk driving in some cases and racism in other cases. Seriously.

• Sony Entertainment has shut down Beyonce’s official YouTube site. Congrats to Sony Entertainment for wisely spending its legal dollars and working on behalf of its artists.

• The Times and Sunday Times newspapers will start charging to access their websites in June, owner News International (NI) has announced.

• Unfortunately, the details look like the rumor was wrong, or the plans changed entirely, because now it looks like both publications are going with your standard everyday super expensive paywall. Starting in June, both publications will begin charging a whopping £1 per day or £2 per week for access — which is actually pretty steep, especially in a market where there’s an awful lot of competition. On a yearly basis, it’s only a bit less than what Newsday is charging for its website — which has been a colossal failure.

• We are at a crossroads with respect to the under-developed equitable defense of copyright misuse. The defense may go the way of its sibling, antitrust-based patent misuse, which seems to be in a state of inevitable decline. Or – if judges accept the proposal of this Article – courts could reinvigorate the copyright misuse defense to better protect First Amendment speech that is guaranteed by statute, but that is often chilled by copyright holders misusing their copyrights to control other’s speech.

• One fight stems from the secretive negotiations over the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, which began under President George W. Bush. Copyright holders have pressed for provisions that could force Internet Service Providers to do more to combat online piracy, such as cutting off broadband accounts that are used repeatedly for infringement. Such three-strikes provisions are anathema to tech advocacy groups, which also fear that the agreement would make it harder for them to bring some fair-use balance to the anticircumvention provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

• The RIAA, MPAA and the Screen Actors Guild teamed up to submit their own filing, and as the LA Times noted “it’s a doozy.” Consider it a wishlist of protectionist, anti-consumer, anti-innovation policies, basically demanding that the White House prop up their own businesses, because of their unwillingness to adapt:

• Every year italian families must spend hundreds of Euros in textbooks for every child, while the cost limits set by the government are regularly violated in spite of denounces and warnings from consumer associations. In order to solve this problem, Education Minister Mariastella Gelmini proposed to deduce cost (and weight!) of textbooks by encouraging schools to adopt digital textbooks starting from 2011.

ACTA

• I’ve been remiss, as the VC’s (sort-of) copyright/Internet law guy, in not commenting previously about a truly outrageous bit of executive branch over-reaching on Hollywood’s behalf. I am referring to the ongoing negotiations about ACTA, the multilateral “Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement.” [See Jonathan Adler’s posting earlier today about ACTA here] The US Trade Representative’s office has been conducting these negotiations entirely in secret (on some ridiculous trumped-up ‘national security’ rationale) for several years now on this Agreement; a current draft was recently leaked to the press, and it confirms many peoples’ worst fears. Here’s my attempt at a summary of what’s going on — if you’re interested in more details (and I hope you are), I’ve listed at the end of this posting some excellent sources of further information.

• In short, ACTA is geared up to do almost exactly what I predicted in a “Recent Development” in YJIL last year (The Origins and Potential Impact of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), 34 Yale J. Int’l L. 261 (2009)). It amps up IP protection and criminal sanctions, without respecting existing international institutional process and involving the interests of developing countries.

• Michael Geist points us to a rather thorough review, by Margot Kaminski, of some of the more troubling aspects of the leaked ACTA draft. Kaminski highlights 24 different points, but we’ll just pick out a few key ones. For example, she notes that ACTA would create an express lane for intellectual property cases in the courts, and questions: “Why should copyright take precedent over other cases and have such a fast turnaround?” There are a few concerning things about border searches. While ACTA negotiators and defenders keep insisting that ACTA won’t mean border searches for individuals, the draft highlights a few things that are troubling. For example, the US, Canada and New Zealand want to change the exemption criteria for border searches from the current “small quantities of goods of a non-commercial nature” to the much lower standard of “reasonably attributable to personal use of the traveler.” In other words, this does, in fact, grant more powers to customs and border patrol to search laptops and iPods and the like, if there’s any indication of more information that is “reasonably attributable to personal use,” — though, that standard seems quite vague and subjective.

• Secondly, Devigne denied the second item in the answer to Hammerstein, who asked about the Commission’s name and shame list. It seems riddiculous to deny such an approach and plan given the “Global Europe” strategy contents, also given earlier statements from the directorate. They would no do that, indicated Devigne. How pathetic!

• Oh, and let’s not mention the desasterous performance of Devigne regarding admitting that they won’t respect the parliament’s resolution on limit to counterfeiting. There he stressed being in line with the acquis again.

Digital Tipping Point: Clip of the DaySean Shah, software developer at Eye.fi (2009)Digital Tipping Point is a Free software-like project where the raw videos are code. You can assist by participating. Share in other sites/networks: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. Permalink  Send this to a friend

----------

➮ Sharing is caring. Content is available under CC-BY-SA.