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The UK’s Performing Right Society has won a court case over its Dutch equivalent, Buma, preventing the issuing of a Europe-wide licence for online rights.

On 19 July 2008, Buma announced that it had issued such a licence to US online music provider Beatport and claimed that it was for worldwide repertoire, including that controlled by PRS. In 2006 Buma had issued a similar license to American online company eMusic.

However, Buma wasn’t authorised to include PRS repertoire in any multi-territory licence, anywhere outside the Netherlands. PRS sought an urgent injunction to prevent Buma from continuing to breach the contract.

Good. Let them sue each other into oblivion.

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BUMA bepleitte voor de rechtbank dat de oude afspraken over gebiedsbeperking tussen verschillende rechtenorganisaties, onderdeel van de Contract of Reciprocal Representation (CRR) uit 1973, niet van toepassing is op licenties voor online muziekgebruik. Het CRR zou voor online muziekgebruik een ‘betekenisloos en zinledig’ contract zijn. Online muziekgebruik is immers per definitie grensoverschrijdend, betoogde BUMA, en dat was in 1973 niet voorzien.

Wacht – wacht, deze weet ik! Even kijken of het me lukt…

De muziek-downloader bepleitte voor de rechtbank dat de oude afspraken over vermenigvuldigen, onderdeel van de Auteurswet uit 1912, niet van toepassing is op licenties voor online muziekgebruik. De auteurswet zou voor online muziekgebruik een ‘betekenisloos en zinledig’ contract zijn. Online muziekgebruik is immers per definitie grensoverschrijdend, betoogde de muziek-downloader, en dat was in 1912 niet voorzien.

Wat denk je, zou dat werken?

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The internet and computing has changed our lives so much so that many of us now spend hours and hours on our computers. We often forget what it is like outside. So why not get a window that looks just like Microsoft Windows, the operating system that most of us use?

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For example, Detroit, whose mayor has been indicted on felony charges, hasn’t elected a Republican mayor since 1961. Buffalo has been even more stubborn. It started putting a Democrat in office back in 1954, and it hasn’t stopped since.

Unfortunately, those two cities may be alone at the top of the poverty rate list, but they’re not alone in their love for Democrats. Cincinnati, Ohio (third on the poverty rate list), hasn’t had a Republican mayor since 1984. Cleveland, Ohio (fourth on the list), has been led by a Democrat since 1989. St. Louis, Missouri (sixth), hasn’t had a Republican since 1949, Milwaukee, Wisconsin (eighth), since 1908, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (ninth), since 1952 and Newark, New Jersey (10th), since 1907.

The only two cities in the top 10 that I didn’t mention (Miami, Florida, and El Paso, Texas) haven’t had Republicans in office either — just Democrats, independents or nonpartisans.

[..]

I consider myself a conservative, but I consider myself an American and a human being first. When people whom I normally agree with screw things up, I call them on it. Yet the people in these cities apparently don’t. Newark keeps drinking the Kool-Aid, electing the same people with the same ideas, slipping down the poverty list (along with the “Places Never to Visit Unless it’s the Airport” list) and wondering why.

We’ve talked a lot about “change” in this country recently, but there’s a much more important catchphrase that we’ve neglected: “All politics is local.” Maybe instead of focusing so much on who we put in charge of our country, we should focus more on who we put in charge of our cities.

Take a look at Forbes‘ 2005 list of the ten U.S. cities with the highest median incomes, and then checked out the political affiliation of the mayor of each:

1. San Jose, Calif. – Chuck Reed (D)

2. Anchorage, Alaska – Mark Begich (D)

3. San Francisco, Calif. – Gavin Newsom (D)

4. Virginia Beach, Va. – Meyera E. Oberndorf (a quick search didn’t reveal her affiliation, but she donated to the Virginia Democratic Party)

5. San Diego, Calif. – Jerry Sanders (R)

6. Anaheim, Calif. – Curt Pringle (R)

7. Raleigh, N.C. – Charles Meeker (D)

8. Seattle, Wash. – Greg Nickels (D)

9. Washington, D.C. – Adrian Fenty (D)

10. Honolulu, Hawaii – Mufi Hannemann (D)

So Democrats are mayors of the poorest cities. And the richest cities. I guess Glenn Beck is just a douche-bag, then.

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Does the world really need another port of Myst? Maybe not, but get ready to play it on the iPhone sometime soon.

Cyan — the developer behind the puzzle-based series — has covertly announced on its forums that a small team is working on bringing the game over to the touch-friendly device. How small? Three members strong.

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A voting system used in 34 states contains a critical programming error that can cause votes to be dropped while being electronically transferred from memory cards to a central tallying point, the manufacturer acknowledges.

The problem was identified after complaints from Ohio elections officials following the March primary there, but the logic error that is the root of the problem has been part of the software for 10 years, said Chris Riggall, a spokesman for Premier Election Solutions, formerly known as Diebold.

The flawed software is on both touch screen and optical scan voting machines made by Premier and the problem with vote counts is most likely to affect larger jurisdictions that feed many memory cards to a central counting database rapidly.

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The one thing that old dialog had going for it, and I’m afraid that I never gave it its due credit,
is that when you hit the Search button, it would actually, you know, search your hard drive for files.

Well, that’s all gone with the new & improved Search dialog. Now, you get a bunch of even stupider questions to look at, but when you hit the Search button it immediately comes up with this:

Nothing found for query “manage.py” because the folder F:\ is not indexed.

Roughly translated: “I didn’t find anything because I didn’t actually look.”

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The McCain campaign is road-testing a new argument in responding to Obama’s criticism of his number-of-houses gaffe, an approach the McCain camp has never tried before: The houses gaffe doesn’t matter because … he was a POW!

“This is a guy who lived in one house for five and a half years — in prison,” spokesman Brian Rogers told the Washington Post.

They must have taken a hint from the Rudy “9/11″ Giuliani playbook. Let’s try this:

McCain Accused Of Taking Bribes From Abramoff
: “This is a guy who didn’t touch hard currency for five and a half years — in prison,” spokesman Brian Rogers told the Washington Post.

2003 McCain Arrest for DWI Uncovered: “This is a guy who didn’t have a sip of booze for five and a half years — in prison,” spokesman Brian Rogers told the Washington Post.

McCain Caught Cheating With 22 Year-Old ASU Intern: “This is a guy who didn’t get laid at all for five and a half years — in prison,” spokesman Brian Rogers told the Washington Post.

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But he took more questions, including a pointed one on his immigration plan.

McCain responded by saying immigrants were taking jobs nobody else wanted. He offered anybody in the crowd $50 an hour to pick lettuce in Arizona.

Shouts of protest rose from the crowd, with some accepting McCain’s job offer.

“I’ll take it!” one man shouted.

McCain insisted none of them would do such menial labor for a complete season. “You can’t do it, my friends.”

Some in the crowd said they didn’t appreciate McCain questioning their work ethic.

$400 a day x 20 days in a month = $8,000 a month. Call it three months of work in a summer, that’s $24,000 for three months work.

A lot of college students would LOVE to be paid $24,000 each summer since that would be enough to pay their college costs each year. What a great idea! Is McCain going to fund the program personally?

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This is so simple you’ll puke.

1. Get yourself a key ring and 7 or 10 old housekeys.

2. Go to the nearest John McCain event.

3. Hold them up and jingle them. Loud. Extra points if you can do this when the man himself is speaking.

4. When somebody asks you what you’re doing, tell them you’re just helping Johnny Boy remember how many houses he and his super-fantabulously wealthy wife own.

And for bonus points:

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McCain has himself described having an adverse reaction to the sound of jangling keys, which reminds him of his Vietnam jailers.

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Two Republicans close to the situation say McCain has apparently settled on Mitt Romney as his running mate.

Two additional GOP sources say McCain had not offered the slot to anyone as of Thursday night, and that he could still change his mind.

If McCain did decide on Multiple-Choice Mitt, himself a millionaire and owner of a bunch of homes, you can understand more clearly why they are now completely freaking out over the first real punch Obama has thrown at them despite their having been running attack ads for months. This hurts.

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In this Raw Intel we find some Turkish journalists caught in a war zone while on the job. One reporter was shot in the head but somehow has returned to stable condition. The Turkish team was in between the town of Gori and breakaway South Ossetia where Georgian and Russian forces have collided.

The Frequency of Body Parts in Songs, by genre.

Heat maps of where people liked touch/be touched.
Locations by size where people like to touch/be touched.

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