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MPAA engages in piracy of Kirby Dick film
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MPAA:
Manufacturing, selling, distributing or making copies of motion pictures without the consent of the copyright owners is illegal. Movie pirates are thieves, plain and simple. ALL forms of piracy are illegal and carry serious legal consequences.
The Motion Picture Assn. of America, the leader in the global fight against movie piracy, is being accused of unlawfully making a bootleg copy of a documentary that takes a critical look at the MPAA’s film ratings system.
The MPAA admitted Monday that it had duplicated “This Film Is Not Yet Rated” without the filmmaker’s permission after director Kirby Dick submitted his movie in November for an MPAA rating. The Hollywood trade organization said that it did not break copyright law, insisting that the dispute is part of a Dick-orchestrated “publicity stunt” to boost the film’s profile.
Yes, it’s a publicity stunt. But the MPAA did copy a movie without authorization. One fact doesn’t negate the other.
The MPAA puts on publicity stunts all the time as part of its anti-piracy efforts. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t movie pirates out there.
The MPAA needs to explain how an act they consider a great moral crime under any circumstances is not a great moral crime when they do it:
Anyone who sells, acquires, copies or distributes copyrighted materials without permission is called a pirate.
MPAA Kills Anti-Pretexting Bill
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A tough California bill that would have prohibited companies and individuals from using deceptive “pretexting” ruses to steal private information about consumers was killed after determined lobbying by the motion picture industry, Wired News has learned.
The bill, SB1666, was written by state Sen. Debra Bowen, and would have barred investigators from making “false, fictitious or fraudulent” statements or representations to obtain private information about an individual, including telephone calling records, Social Security numbers and financial information. Victims would have had the right to sue for damages.
The bill won approval in three committees and sailed through the state Senate with a 30-0 vote. Then, according to Lenny Goldberg, a lobbyist for the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, the measure encountered unexpected, last-minute resistance from the Motion Picture Association of America.
“The MPAA has a tremendous amount of clout and they told legislators, ‘We need to pose as someone other than who we are to stop illegal downloading,’” Goldberg said.
Michael Crook
A while ago I posted this picture:
With this link about Michael Crook sending out bogus DMCA notices.
Today I found a DMCA notice from Michael in my inbox telling me to remove the image.
Here is the entire message I emailed Michael back:
Je doet er verstandig aan de relavante Nederlandse wetgeving er op na te slaan:
http://wetten.overheid.nl/cgi-bin/deeplink/law1/title=Auteurswet%201912
Kind gedood op basisschool
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Op basisschool Klim-Op aan de Matthias Wolffstraat in Hoogerheide is vrijdag rond 11.00 uur een kind om het leven gebracht. Een gemaskerde man zou de keel van een jongetje uit groep vier hebben doorgesneden. Om 16.00 uur is er in het gemeentehuis een persconferentie.
De politie heeft rond 14.00 uur een verdachte aangehouden. Dat heeft een woordvoerder laten weten. Over zijn leeftijd en de toedracht doet de politie nog geen mededelingen.
Een jochie van acht… ik heb even geen woorden…
Republicans to lose their Bible-study room in the Capitol
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If studying the Bible is what led Republican Christianists to not be able to pass a budget (leaving Democrats to clean up the mess), not rein in Bush’s illegal and unconstitutional warrantless wiretapping program (leaving Democrats to clean up the mess), and not be able to do one damn thing about the Iraq Clusterfuck (leaving Democrats to clean up the mess), then less Bible study, please, say I. The Hill:
Rep. Sam Johnson (R-Texas) expressed astonishment during a recent meeting of conservative lawmakers that Republicans would soon lose the room where members hold their regular Bible study, an aide present said.
All together now:
A-w-w-w-w-w-w-w!
NOTE Silly Democrats! Don’t they realize that Republicans are entitled?
Test adds to mystery
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Florida elections officials now have two mysteries to solve.
Before figuring out what, if anything, went wrong in Sarasota County’s Nov. 7 congressional election, state officials must determine what happened in a test conducted Tuesday.
That test, a simulated election using state elections employees acting as voters, was supposed to help uncover any glitches with the county’s electronic touch-screen voting machines.
Instead, the Florida Division of Elections spent Wednesday studying the test results — with limited success. Officials blamed human error for two of the 10 discrepancies in the tallies from the simulated election. But they couldn’t explain the others, including five involving the disputed 13th Congressional District race, where Republican Vern Buchanan was certified the winner over Democrat Christine Jennings by fewer than 400 votes.
They hope to resolve those issues over the next two days by reviewing video of the simulated election. By Friday, officials plan to hold a second simulated election.
Though the evaluation of Tuesday’s election audit is incomplete, the Division of Elections again asserted that human error, not computer malfunction, was the likely cause of the discrepancies.
“We feel confident it’s not machine error,” said Jenny Nash, spokeswoman for the state elections office, echoing a statement she made a day earlier.
I feel confident these machines are utter crap.
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Brooks Challenges the Way Airport Handles Remains
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A woman’s account of a scene at the Greater Rochester International Airport has touched off a call for the Pentagon to change some policies.
The woman, from Dansville, said she saw a soldier’s casket come down a luggage belt, where it was loaded into a cart with other baggage.
Monroe County Executive Maggie Brooks has asked the federal Department of Defense to change the way the caskets of fallen soldiers are handled.
“It was treated like a suitcase and we think that’s unacceptable. We don’t think any member of the military should be treated in that fashion, especially not in our community where we value the service of our veterans,? she said.
Welcome back, guys!
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The gunmen came at night to drag Mohammed Halim away from his home, in front of his crying children and his wife begging for mercy.
The 46-year-old schoolteacher tried to reassure his family that he would return safely. But his life was over, he was part-disembowelled and then torn apart with his arms and legs tied to motorbikes, the remains put on display as a warning to others against defying Taliban orders to stop educating girls.
Can the RIAA call your boss?
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Ray Beckerman points out that the RIAA’s attorney has admitted to calling the employer of Marie Lindor’s adult son in reference to the pending litigation between Ms. Lindor and Universal Music Group. While this isn’t technically “wrong”, it is a bit of a heavy-handed tactic for a giant corporation’s legal team to call your boss in reference to litigation pending against your relatives. It begs the question of what, if anything, could have been germane to the RIAA’s case about a discussion with Mr. Lindor’s employer and, why a highly-paid and deftly-skilled legal team needs to stoop to the level of a mentally imbalanced ex-girlfriend.
Beckerman writes, “You have a multi-billion dollar cartel suing unemployed people, disabled people, housewives, single mothers, home healthcare aids, all kinds of people who have no resources whatsoever to withstand these litigations. And due to the adversary system of justice the RIAA will be successful in rewriting copyright law, if the world at large, and the technological community in particular, don’t fight back and help these people fighting these fights.“
I think we should all call Universal CEO Doug Morris’ wife. Don’t you? At the very least, if you’d like a list of labels and imprints that fall under the Universal umbrella — just so you know what not to buy your favorite music fan this holiday season — Wikipedia can help you out.
So long, and thanks for all the fish
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Another first for China? The yangtze dolphin may be the first cetacean to be made extinct by man. Mentioned by Douglas Adams and Mark Cawardine in ‘Last Chance to See‘ in 1989 when there were still sightings, the mammal may now be extinct. Two weeks into an international expedition to locate the last dolphins there have been no sightings. Fresh water porpoises seem to be incompatible with modern China’s economic boom and accompanying environmental destruction. Attempts at conservation seem to be coming a bit late for this 20 million year old species.
But dammit, whatever happened to the concept of accountability for catastrophic failure?
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Really? How about all the warnings?
That’s a separate question. And it’s almost too easy to say, “I would have heeded the warnings.? In fact, I think I would have, I know I would have. We had several instances when the CIA’s alarm bells went off, and what we did when that happened was, we had emergency meetings and called everybody together and made sure that all systems were go and every agency was hitting on all cylinders, and we made them bring more information, and go into the second and third and fourth level of detail. And made suggestions on how we could respond in a more coordinated, more effective way. It is inconceivable to me that Bush would read a warning as stark and as clear [voice angry now] as the one he received on August 6th of 2001, and, according to some of the new histories, he turned to the briefer and said, “Well, you’ve covered your ass.? And never called a follow up meeting. Never made an inquiry. Never asked a single question. To this day, I don’t understand it. And, I think it’s fair to say that he personally does in fact bear a measure of blame for not doing his job at a time when we really needed him to do his job. And now the Woodward book has this episode that has been confirmed by the record that George Tenet, who was much abused by this administration, went over to the White House for the purpose of calling an emergency meeting and warning as clearly as possible about the extremely dangerous situation with Osama bin Laden, and was brushed off! And I don’t know why—honestly—I mean, I understand how horrible this Congressman Foley situation with the instant messaging is, okay? I understand that. But, why didn’t these kinds of things produce a similar outrage? And you know, I’m even reluctant to talk about it in these terms because it’s so easy for people to hear this or read this as sort of cheap political game-playing. I understand how it could sound that way. [Practically screaming now] But dammit, whatever happened to the concept of accountability for catastrophic failure? This administration has been by far the most incompetent, inept, and with more moral cowardice, and obsequiousness to their wealthy contributors, and obliviousness to the public interest of any administration in modern history, and probably in the entire history of the country!
But how do you really feel?
(cracks up)[..]
Do you know if President Bush has seen the movie yet?
Well, he claimed that would not see it. That’s why I wrote the book. He’s a reader.
It is a measure of the sheer hideous zombification of the conservative movement of today that, compared to them, Al Gore seems like a lively, cultured, interesting person.
Military Weaponry for Kids
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Pages from a coloring book/drawing book/character practice book for Chinese kids.画童学画(武器装备)
北京少年儿童出版社
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Each page basically does three things: (1) teaches the kid how to draw something across the top, (2) using pinyin, teaches the kid how to say the name of the object in the middle, and (3) gives the kid practice writing the character at the bottom.
Vista
Windows Vista is now officially “released to manufacturing”, or just “released” if you like.
I could say a lot about it, I won’t - just look at all these individual faces for a while:
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Ancient tsunami devastated Mediterranean
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A volcano avalanche in Sicily 8,000 years ago triggered a devastating tsunami taller than a 10-story building that spread across the entire Mediterranean Sea, slamming into the shores of three continents in only a few hours.
A new computer simulation of the ancient event reveals for the first time the enormity of the catastrophe and its far-reaching effects.
[..]
Their recreation suggests the tsunami’s waves reached heights of up to 130 feet and maximum speeds of up to 450 mph, making it more powerful than the Indonesian tsunami that killed more than 180,000 people in 2004.
Abstinence message goes beyond teens
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The federal government’s “no sex without marriage” message isn’t just for kids anymore.
Now the government is targeting unmarried adults up to age 29 as part of its abstinence-only programs, which include millions of dollars in federal money that will be available to the states under revised federal grant guidelines for 2007.
The government says the change is a clarification. But critics say it’s a clear signal of a more directed policy targeting the sexual behavior of adults.
“They’ve stepped over the line of common sense,” said James Wagoner, president of Advocates for Youth, a Washington, D.C.-based non-profit that supports sex education. “To be preaching abstinence when 90% of people are having sex is in essence to lose touch with reality. It’s an ideological campaign. It has nothing to do with public health.”
Time for another quote from a great piece of literature:
“The aim of the Party was not merely to prevent men and women from forming loyalties which it might not be able to control. Its real, undeclared purpose was to remove all pleasure from the sexual act. Not love so much as eroticism was the enemy, inside marriage as well as outside it…
“The Party was trying to kill the sex instinct, or, if it could not be killed, then to distort it and dirty it.”
– 1984, George Orwell
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Klaasfeest
Feds rate travelers for terrorism
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Without notifying the public, federal agents for the past four years have assigned millions of international travelers, including Americans, computer-generated scores rating the risk they pose of being terrorists or criminals.
The travelers are not allowed to see or directly challenge these risk assessments, which the government intends to keep on file for 40 years.
The scores are assigned to people entering and leaving the United States after computers assess their travel records, including where they are from, how they paid for tickets, their motor vehicle records, past one-way travel, seating preference and what kind of meal they ordered.
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Government officials could not say whether ATS has apprehended any terrorists. Customs and Border Protection spokesman Bill Anthony said agents refuse entry to about 45 foreign criminals every day based on all the information they have. He could not say how many were spotted by ATS.
I really don’t get that last bit. Are they criminals? Based on what? If the answer is “criminal records” then ATS isn’t needed. It sure sounds like people are branded as criminals based on their seating preference.
And the real problem: with the appalling lack of oversight in this program, we’ll never know.
Do you feel safer yet?
Is ‘GNU/Solaris’ emerging from Microsoft-Novell deal?
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“It’s just a fucking kernel, and it’s time that ass in Portland realized that,” he told us.
The ass in question, being a well known Finnish software developer, and the trademark owner of the kernel in question, Linux™.
Boys, boys.
Haha! John…I’m voting for you in 2008.
This person is a full time, three dimensional, living example of a Troll.