Zizibaluba

You are in the company lunchroom and overhear a conversation about the development of your company’s website. Seize the moment and ask about setting up a copyright resource section on the website. Offer to help ensure the legal use of copyright protected materials on this new website. Below are other ways you can provide copyright training in the moment.

The Teachable Copyright Training Moment

1.   Survey colleagues to find out how they use copyright protected materials or what types of information or questions they have about copyright. Perhaps even put a poll or survey on your intranet. Share the results so that communication about copyright is on-going.

2.   Develop a contest for staff or the public to research, and provide answers to, a variety of copyright questions. Provide prizes for the most correct answers.

3.   Arrange for the showing of the 2013 Best Documentary Academy Award winning film Looking for Sugar Man. Discuss the copyright and royalty issues relating to musicians that are raised in the film.

WIPO World Intellectual Property Day

4.   Be part of a worldwide celebration of intellectual property. Plan and organize a celebration of copyright on 26 April 2013 for World Intellectual Property Day. Provide attendees with copyright bookmarks, posters or other takeaways so they have ongoing reminders about copyright law.

5.   If your company has a social committee, offer to assist with musical licensing arrangements for the next event.

Be the Copyright Know Person; Not the No Person

Are you responsible for spreading the word about copyright in your library or organization? Do people come to you looking for answers about copyright law and licensing issues? Do people see you as a barrier to using content or as a gateway to obtaining access to that content? Change the copyright perception in your organization from no to know! Below are some ideas to try.

1.   Actively engage your colleagues in a copyright conversation. Find out their ultimate goal in using copyright-protected content . This can lead to a variety of options not previously thought of – such as linking to a website rather than copying an image, or summarizing an article rather than reproducing it.

2.   Offer to help a colleague who seems overwhelmed about how copyright law applies to their situation. For example, how is fair use interpreted? Explain the factors set out in the Copyright Act. Sometimes understanding how the law works or the policy behind it, makes it clearer and less frustrating to a person. Let them know that fair use is frustrating to many people and that they are not alone.

3.   Develop a copyright website that includes information on how to legally use copyright-protected materials, FAQs on fair use/dealing, how digital licenses work, and a click-through link to contact your in-house copyright guru (you?!) with a form to ask their specific questions about copyright law.

Make Copyright Law Personal!

4.   Don’t be faceless – make it personal! Get out there and meet with people. Putting a face to the copyright concept is a great way to inform people about it. The more they see that you are trying to help them, the faster the change of perception can occur. If you have a blog or Facebook page on copyright, put your photo on the blog and Facebook page. If you are tweeting copyright tips, post your photo on your Twitter homepage.

5.   Share positive news about copyright. Have some new materials entered the public domain? Has there been a recent court case that allows you greater use of content? Is there is an exciting new website or really great article or post on copyright that you can share?

You know you need to spread the copyright message with your colleagues but keeping the copyright message relevant to the day-to-day activities of your organization is challenging. Equally challenging is communicating your message. Key is to present the message in a manner that invites participation and cooperation. Below are some suggested copyright education opportunities.

5 Copyright Education Ideas

1.   Develop a scavenger hunt on copyright. Have it incorporate several scenarios that are likely to occur in your organization. Ask staff to identify as many copyright issues as they can. Provide a number of sources of information staff can use to answer the questions (e.g., your country’s copyright office, WIPO, organizational policies).

2.   Ask people in your organization to write and produce short (3 minute) vignettes on the use of copyright-protected materials. Getting others involved in copyright education will make them more interested in it. Make it fun; have them record the videos on their smart phones.

3.   Ask your colleagues to create a brief copyright information statement to include in organizational print and electronic newsletters. Make it a contest to see who can create the best or perhaps shortest copyright statement.

4.   Develop a copyright handbook. Engage your colleagues and ask for their ideas about what information to include in it. Better yet, ask them to help write the handbook as a collaborative effort. Distribute the handbook electronically so it can easily be updated to coincide with changes in the law and new technologies.

5.   Hold an informal brown-bag Lunch & Learn session so your colleagues can bring their copyright questions and eat lunch at the same time. If possible, provide a free lunch as a way to entice your audience to attend the session.

Chief animation director Kyoji Asano posts ad for Wit Studio

NiitenGomu! mobile phone straps come with "faint breast scent"

Kyubey, Madoka, & company adorn stamps that make documents legally binding

The whole point about adopting Creative Commons licenses is to make it easier for people to share and use works released under them. Sometimes, though, you get the impression that certain organizations adopting these licenses would rather that didn't happen, as in the following case from Australia, reported by IT News:

The Australian Bureau of Statistics has released the latest census data for free under a Creative Commons license but appears to be steering people towards a $250 mailed out DVD rather than making it easy to download the information directly over the internet.

Programmer and freelance journalist Grahame Bowland who first noticed it, said the government agency is going to great lengths to discourage people from downloading the files directly by dint of a convoluted site layout and Javascript functions that obfuscate file paths.

The post then goes on to describe in detail some of the attempts to make it difficult to download all of the census data, including a hard-to-find registration page, a complex matrix of download options, and Javascript code that does stuff like this:

// Function: guidGenerator
// Description:returns a pseudo-random GUID
//This is appended to a url for 2 reasons
//1. to make the URL unique, so that the browser always gets it and doesn't use a cached version
//2. to make a URL look like its got a unique key, in a naive attempt to fool a not-so-wily hacker
//into thinking they can't download a datapack directly if they know the URL pattern, because they
//need a unique key.

Notice how anyone who might want to download datapacks directly is branded a hacker. That's a worrying attitude, since it seems to equate people who want to take advantage of the CC license to explore the census without jumping through the site's hoops as shady subversives (I doubt the comment used the term "hacker" in its more positive sense).

As the IT News story suggests, the motivation for this obfuscation seems to be to encourage people to pay AU $250 (about US $257) for the DVD version instead. To save others from having to deal with the unhelpful Web site, Bowland generously stumped up the $250 himself, and made the full census database freely available as a torrent, as is perfectly legal under the CC-BY license. This shows perfectly why it is pointless trying to make it hard for people to download content that is CC licensed: once anyone has obtained a copy, they can then make it available in a more convenient form, neatly by-passing forlorn attempts to control something that has been set free forever.

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A supposedly “Japanese” celebration of the recent horrific events in Boston has outraged many Japanese – most of whom see good evidence it is a Korean crazy posing as a Japanese in a crude attempt to make Americans hate one the defilers of Dokdo.

Google’s love of free speech being what it is, the original video itself appears to have been taken down by a fake copyright claim, although in its brief life it succeeded in enraging millions of Japanese, probably far outnumbering any Americans unfortunate enough to ever become aware of it:

There was immediate suspicion amongst Japanese that this was “another” crude attempt by a deranged Korean nationalist to tar their image online, and their efforts to uncover his real identity soon lead to plenty of less than subtle indications that he is an ethnic Korean resident of Japan:

Aside from his English language posing, his knowledge of Japanese, support for various ethnic Korean hobby-horses and hatred of all things Japanese have been generally taken as confirming this (although true conspiracy theory lovers may prefer the possibility that he is a Japanese right-winger trying to make the Koreans look bad by posing as a Korean trying to make the Japanese look bad by posing as a Japanese).

Other than revealing just how much spam and racism it is possible to spew onto YouTube without getting banned, his general racism and tasteless appropriation of the Boston bombing for political ends have incensed Japan’s online rabble (many of whom are, it has to be said, at least as crazed with hatred for Korea and China as their new playmate is for Japan):

“Amazing. Amazingly retarded…”

“Classic ‘I’m Japanese’ syndrome from the Korean there.”

“Anyone could spot this as an ethnic Korean a mile off.”

“Pretty sure there are no Japanese who actually start everything by saying ‘I am a Japanese’.”

“This is about the only trick those dirty Koreans know.”

“The yin-yang avatar is a bit of a give-away.”

“Giving Internet access to a filthy Korean is like giving edged weapons to the mentally ill.”

“Koreans just seem obsessed with making other countries miserable.”

“Some of them were certainly pleased by 3/11…”

“Nice to see North and South agreeing on their hatred of America, at least.”

“I think it could be a Japanese nut, though one at least as crazy as the Koreans.”

“This is unbelievably tasteless… why are they like this?”

“Honestly, could you make it any more obvious that you are not Japanese than by saying you are every other sentence?”

A few years back, a patent attorney made a simple suggestion to me, asking that, whenever I write about patent lawsuits, that I include the US patent number on the patent within the text of the article. He explained that for those sued, one of the most useful things is to find other lawsuits regarding that patent, and it's actually not that easy, so having stories list the patent numbers becomes a big deal. In many cases, when companies are sued, their lawyer does a general search to see if the patent has been used in litigation before -- and it's that general Google Search, which is why the request was made to me to include patent numbers. However, for companies or individuals sued by patent holders, having a lawyer sit there and do a Google search can cost you an extra $500 to $700 per hour of lawyers' fees. Many lawyers have argued that the system needs to be much better.

Thankfully, the folks over at Patexia have recently launched a new feature on their site that makes it much easier to look up such things. For example, here are the Patexia results for lawsuits involving US Patent 6,857,067 which is held by Uniloc, who recently used it to sue X-Plane, Mojang and others. While, in that case, you can see all the recent lawsuits come from Uniloc (who could be searched via Pacer), it may not be as complex. But when patents get passed around a lot, following the trail isn't always so easy. No matter what, this seems like it could be a useful tool, especially for those sued by patent trolls.

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Harvard

Liquid water is one of the essential ingredients of life on Earth and it has properties conducive to life in general, so researchers have defined the concept of a habitable zone with water as its focus. For astronomers, the habitable zone is the area far enough from a host star that a planet would be cool enough to support liquid water, but not so far that the water would be frozen. Although there are many caveats to this definition—everything from the presence of greenhouse gasses to clouds will shift a planet's average surface temperature—the concept helps drive the search for a planet capable of supporting life.

The caveats, however, have led to a number of arguments over whether a given exoplanet is likely able to host liquid water, with some candidates shifting in and out of the habitable zone more than once. Still, it's pretty clear that given the large number of reported candidate exoplanets, the odds suggest we've already spotted one. Today, scientists are announcing an exosolar system that has two planets that are both likely to be within the habitable zone, along with three others that are closer to the host star.

The findings come from the Kepler mission, which is dealing with a backlog of roughly 2,000 planet candidates to sort through and confirm. Normally, confirmation requires observing changes in the light emitted by the host star, which gets dragged closer to and further from the Earth as the planets circle it. However, this method requires that the planets either be large or orbiting close to the star so that their gravitational influence is big enough to shift it.

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On the heels of the Boy Scouts introducing a merit badge for game design, the Girl Scouts are going one better by developing a badge program to bring girls into the world of video game development. The effort is a collaboration between Girl Scouts of Greater Los Angeles and Women in Games International.

According to a report by Girl Gamer, the two organizations are developing an education program designed specifically for the Girl Scouts that meets the organization's requirements for skills badges. "Creating this badge will get young girls excited in technology and science and let them know that they, too, can have a career in the video game industry," WIGI Vice President Amy Allison told Girl Gamer.

Currently, the Girl Scouts of the USA offers four official badges in the area of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education—"Science of Happiness" and "Science of Style" badges being the only ones for older scouts. The Boy Scouts introduced a Game Design merit badge in March, but its description doesn't specifically call for actual game software development. The WIGI-GSLA effort will use Gamestar Mechanic, an educational development tool from E-Line Media, to allow scouts to develop and create their own video games.

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Composite game illustration by Aurich Lawson

One of the best things about travelling to shows like PAX East and the Game Developers Conference is the chance to check out titles from off-the-beaten-path, independent developers. While shows like E3 are overwhelmed by the presence of multi-million dollar booths from huge publishers, the early-in-the-year shows make a point of highlighting some of the most original and promising game ideas from game makers without big contracts or salaried positions behind them. Freed from the financial responsibilities of the major AAA publishers, these are the titles that are most likely to truly break new ground in gameplay, aesthetics, and subject matter.

Here, we've collected 25 of the most entertaining indie titles we got our hands on recently. Some of these were being shown for the first time, others have been around the trade show circuit a few times now. Some are even already available for purchase or download. Regardless, all of these should at least be on the radar for anyone seeking new and entertaining gameplay experiences.

140

Developer: Jeppe Carlsen
Platforms: Windows, Mac
Available: 2013
Website

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It would appear that Rep. Mike Rogers, the main person in Congress pushing for CISPA, has kept rather quiet about a very direct conflict of interest that calls into serious question the entire bill. It would appear that Rogers' wife stands to benefit quite a lot from the passage of CISPA, and has helped in the push to get the bill passed. It's somewhat amazing that no one has really covered this part of the story, but it highlights, yet again, the kind of activities by folks in Congress that make the public trust Congress less and less.

It has seemed quite strange to see how strongly Rogers has been fighting for CISPA, refusing to even acknowledge the seriousness of the privacy concerns. At other times, he can't even keep his own story straight about whether or not CISPA is about giving information to the NSA (hint: it is). And then there was the recent ridiculousness with him insisting that the only opposition to CISPA came from 14-year-old kids in their basement. Wrong and insulting.

Of course, as we've noted all along, all attempts at cybersecurity legislation have always been about money. Mainly, money to big defense contractors aiming to provide the government with lots of very expensive "solutions" to the cybersecurity "problem" -- a problem that still has not been adequately defined beyond fake scare stories. Just last month, Rogers accidentally tweeted (and then deleted) a story about how CISPA supporters, like himself, had received 15 times more money from pro-CISPA group that the opposition had received from anti-CISPA groups.

So it seems rather interesting to note that Rogers' wife, Kristi Clemens Rogers, was, until recently, the president and CEO of Aegis LLC a "security" defense contractor company, whom she helped to secure a $10 billion (with a b) contract with the State Department. The company describes itself as "a leading private security company, provides government and corporate clients with a full spectrum of intelligence-led, culturally-sensitive security solutions to operational and development challenges around the world."

Hmm. Sounds like a company like that would benefit greatly to seeing a big ramp up in cybersecurity FUD around the globe, and, with it, big budgets by various government agencies to spend on such things. Indeed, just a few months ago, Rogers penned an article for Washington Life Magazine all about evil hackers trying to "steal information." In it, there's a line that might sound a wee-bit familiar, referring to the impression of hackers as being "the teenager in his or her parent's basement with bunny slippers and a Mountain Dew." Apparently, both of the Rogers really have a thing about teens in basements. The article is typical FUD, making statements with no proof, including repeating the NSA's ridiculous allegation that hackers have led to the "greatest transfer of wealth in American history." It's such a good line, except that it's completely untrue. The top US companies have recently admitted to absolutely no damage from such attacks. The article also lumps in "hacktivists" like Anonymous, as if they're a part of this grand conspiracy that needs new laws.

Tellingly, in the print version of Washington Life that this article appeared in, which you can see embedded below, you'll note that there's a side bar right next to her article about the importance of passing cybersecurity legislation in Congress. Guess what's not mentioned anywhere at all? The fact that Kristi Rogers, author of the fear-mongering article, happens to be married to Rep. Mike Rogers, the guy in charge of pushing through cybersecurity legislation. That sure seems like a rather key point, and a major conflict of interest that neither seemed interested in disclosing. Oh, and Kristi Rogers recently changed jobs as well, such that she's now the "managing director of federal government affairs and public policies" at Manatt a big lobbying firm, where (surprise, surprise) she's apparently focused on "executive-level problem solving in the defense and homeland security sectors." I'm sure having CISPA in place will suddenly create plenty of demand for such problem solving.

A few months ago, on one of his FUD-filled talks about why we need cybersecurity, Rogers claimed that it was all so scary that he literally couldn't sleep at night until CISPA was passed due to an "unusual source" threatening us. The whole statement seemed odd, until you realize that his statement came out at basically the same time as his wife's fear-mongering article about cybersecurity. I guess when your pillow talk is made up boogeyman stories about threats that don't actually exist, it might make it difficult to fall asleep.

Either way, even if we assume that everything here was done aboveboard -- and we're not suggesting it wasn't -- this is exactly the kind of situation that Larry Lessig has referred to as soft corruption. It's not bags of money shifting hands, but it appears highly questionable to the public, leading the public to trust Congress a lot less. At the very least, in discussing all of this stuff, when Mrs. Rogers is writing articles that help the push for CISPA, it seems only fair to disclose that she's married to the guy pushing for the bill. And when Mr. Rogers is pushing for the bill, it seems only right to disclose that his wife almost certainly would benefit from the bill passing. And yet, that doesn't seem to have happened... anywhere.

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Toshiba's Kirabook. Toshiba

If you're a Windows user who has been stealing jealous glances at the high-resolution screens of the Retina MacBook Pro and the Chromebook Pixel, Toshiba's just-announced Kirabook may be of interest to you. The laptop's banner feature is its 13.3-inch, 2560×1440 display—just slightly lower than the smaller Retina MacBook's 2560×1600, but still considerably higher than most Ultrabooks.

Like the other high-resolution laptops we've seen so far, you'll pay a premium to get the Kirabook—pricing starts at $1,599, which includes an Ivy Bridge Core i5 CPU, a 256GB SSD, 8GB of RAM, and a backlit keyboard. A $1,999 model will also add a touchscreen and a Core i7 processor.

Toshiba's since-pulled press release, currently posted on Engadget, says that the laptop is 0.7 inches thick and weighs 2.6 pounds. This puts it in between the Pixel (0.64 inches) and the Retina MacBook Pro (0.75 inches) in thickness, though it's considerably lighter than either of the two (the Pixel is 3.35 pounds and the MacBook weighs 3.57). The laptop will be available for pre-order beginning on May 3rd and will begin shipping on May 12.

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