spriteleigh

So, apparently, some people think the snow that fell on Atlanta wasn't actually snow, but some kind of synthetic material dumped on the town by the government in order to cause chaos. The proof: The Atlanta snow won't melt and it turns black when you hold a lighter to it.

Except, that, well, the same stuff will happen to snow when you hold a lighter to it anywhere. In this video, Phil Plait demonstrates the effect in Colorado and explains what's actually going on. The key is that the snow really is melting, you just can't see it. Snow absorbs liquid. Plait has a really good analogy here with snowcones. You pour the syrup on, and the shaved ice absorbs it. Same thing with the snow that's turning to water in the heated snowball. Up to a certain point, the rest of the snow will absorb that water. Heat the ball long enough, though, and you will, eventually, get a puddle. The conspiracy videos just stop well short of that point.

And the burn marks? That's just soot from imperfectly burned butane from the flame itself.

Video Link

Mc Cool hooked up a MIDI-capable piano to the control inputs of classic fighting game Tekken, thereby synchronizing the on-screen action and musical performance. Then he recorded video of him doing online battle. He won!

This is the final product of my project for interaction design. Took the whole semester, to get this to work but it was worth it. How it works: The piano sends a Midi-Signal, which is transferred to an arduino. According to the signals, the arduino triggers transistors, which then trigger inputs on a paewang PCB (This is the PCB of an arcadestick). The paewang is connected to an Xbox360 (you can also use it on PS3).

The TekkenPiano [Vimeo]

Naomi Novik isn't just a talented author (she won the John W Campbell Award for best new writer in 2007 on the strength of her fabulous Temeraire novels, which retell the Napoleonic wars with dragons providing air-support!), she's also a profound thinker on the questions of reuse, remixing, intellectual freedom and copyright.

Last week she gave testimony (PDF) to the House Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property and the Internet that described the way that creators rely on their ability to remix in order to create new and original works.

One thing I love about Novik is her intellectual honesty and her willingness to cut through the self-serving, romantic mythology of the wholly original creator, and to both acknowledge and celebrate the fact that her originality comes about by taking the works that others created before her and adapting them through her own artistic process, "Original work, work that stands alone, doesn't just pop up out of nowhere. It is at the end of a natural spectrum of transformation."

I also appreciated her strong arguments as licensing as a substitute for robust fair use: "On the purely practical level, the vast majority of remix artists doing non-commercial work simply don't have any of the resources to get a license — not money, not time, not access."

Novik's testimony is admirably summarized by Dr Matthew Rimmer in this Techdirt post. Rimmer is a global expert in fair use and copyright, and he highlights many of the most salient features of Novik's testimony.

I would like to publicly express my gratitude on behalf of writers everywhere to Naomi Novik for standing up for a fair deal for creators and audiences in Congress.

In 1994, while I was still in college, I first came across the online remix community. Over the next decade, before I wrote one word of my first novel, I wrote fanfiction, built online computer games, wrote open­source archiving software, and created remix videos. I met hundreds of other artists creating their own work, and found an enthusiastic audience who gave feedback and advice and help. I had no money for licenses or lawyers. Neither did my fellow artists. No one would have sold us one anyway. We weren't trying to make money off our work. We were gathering around a campfire to sing and tell stories with our friends. The campfire was just a bigger one, and instead of telling new stories about Robin Hood, we told new stories about Captain Picard, because that was who we saw on television every week. Fair use gave us the right to do that...

Vincent van Gogh deliberately copied Japanese woodcuts so that he could find his own style. Shakespeare borrowed heavily from earlier sources. No one could deny that he transformed them. But imagine if the laws of his time had barred him from doing so. We wouldn't have Hamlet, we wouldn't have King Lear, we wouldn't have Romeo and Juliet. And if Leonard Bernstein hadn't borrowed from Romeo and Juliet, we wouldn't have West Side Story. Now if we prevent the next generation from borrowing from West Side Story, we cap the flow of creativity, we dam the river of innovation...

I would ask Congress to make it easier for developing artists, who are often at a significant disadvantage currently, to exercise their fair use right. I have never received a cease­and­desist letter. But some of my fellow remix artists have, despite the fact that their work was completely noncommercial and highly transformative. It drove several of them completely out of the community and caused them to stop sharing their work, or it stopped them creating it at all. Virtually every remix video artist I know (including myself) has had their videos taken down from multiple platforms by automated systems that look for even minute fragments of copyrighted work. In order to restore them, if that's even possible, they have had to file counter­complaints in the face of terrifying automated warnings telling them that they could be fined enormous amounts of money, and making them feel like criminals.

Our country is the world leader in innovation because here we ask those what if questions, and we are free to imagine what the answers look like. We're encouraged to look around us at the things that exist and imagine how we could make them better, how we could take them to the next level, how we could transform them.

That is the spirit behind fair use. Fair use invites us to tinker and transform, and it frees us to explore ideas and share them with one another. It gives new artists and creators more tools to play with early in their careers and facilitates the evolution of genres and new forms. Any narrowing of fair use is inimical to this spirit.

Testimony of Naomi Novik before the U.S. Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property and the Internet [PDF, judiciary.house.gov]

Naomi Novik at House Judiciary Hearing [Organization for Transformative Works]

(via Techdirt)

Video game developers have been adding colorful visual elements and amusing details to engage gamers and make the world feel more complete since the dawn of gaming.

Chief among these added details are the virtual paintings found in video game locales such as haunted houses, castles, dungeons and temples, just to name a few. Sometimes paintings were just there to add color, other times they were like easter eggs for gamers to find, inside jokes which delighted detail oriented gamers.

Recently a Tumblr site called Video Game Art Archive launched, and it’s dedicated to paintings found in video games, and though their collection is far from exhaustive at this point there are some real gems in the collection that truly deserve recognition as standalone works of pixel art.

Via DesignTAXI

(vimeo link)

Nelson Carvajal put together a few clips of every movie that won an Academy Award for Best Visual Effects from 1977 to 2012, plus each of the nominees for this year’s award. No doubt they will bring back memories. I was struck by the realization that I saw every one of these in the theater until I became a mother in 1998. After that, I was lucky to catch a movie when it finally got to TV. The only one after 1997 that I saw in a theater was Gravity, which is a 2013 nominee. -via Daily Picks and Flicks

Here's this week's unidentified bit of net.clever seeking reidentification: a photoshopped Gilligan's Island image with Justin Beiber as Gilligan and Toronto's crack-smoking, Bieber-defending mayor Rob Ford as the Skipper -- found in Steve Silberman's Twitter stream. Do you know who made it? Weigh in in the comments and I'll add attribution to the post.

Martin Vargic has produced a gorgeous mashup of XKCD's Map of Online Communities and the classic National Geographic Maps, producing a work of art that is a wonder to behold. It's for sale on Zazzle, as a $37, 34"x22" poster.

I was originally inspired by map of the internet created by xkcd, showing most popular social networks as countries and regions, back in 2010. It was not my original idea, but I extended it to such a scale for the first time. I used photoshop for the majority of drawing.

The base style of the map was inspired by the National Geographic Maps, I also used Winkel Tripel Projection and similar border coloring fashion. I created the map in quite a short time, three weeks to be exact. I often worked early in the morning, and I can say I really enjoyed it. I got the data about website sizes mainly from Alexa and similar online services.

Currently, I am working on the next versions of the map, which will be even more ridiculously detailed than the previous one, and will encompass all major websites without any significant exceptions, it will be coming in mid-february.

The map is divided into 2 distinctive parts; the eastern continent, "the old world" showcases software companies, gaming companies and some of the more real-life oriented websites.

Western part, "the new world" is composed from two major continent, northern one showcasing social networks, search websites, video websites, blogs, forums and art websites.

All major adult-oriented websites, in addition to varioius warez and torrent sites, are located on the southwestern continent of the map. In the very south of the map, there is located "Great Southern Land" of obsolete websites and online services.

Outside the main map, there are also 4 minimaps showing NSA monitoring by country, most used browser, most used social network, and internet penetration by country.

Map of the Internet 1.0. (via IO9)

(YouTube link)

Now, if Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon were a little less honorable and C-3PO was a little more homicidal, and maybe if the magic trash can had a sense of humor... At this point, there’s nothing more we can do with The Phantom Menace than to just make a party out of it. Really, it’s the only thing that will make the movie watchable. This was accomplished by the Auralnauts. I can’t wait to see what they do with Attack of the Clones. -via b3ta

Do you think you know your way around the internet pretty well? UsVsTh3m has a quiz that will test your internet savvy, netiquette, and all-around web coolness. Having spent the majority of my waking hours on the internet for the past decade, I thought I might do pretty well on this quiz. Here’s my result.

I would have been totally embarrassed if I had scored any lower. Take the Internet Proficiency Test and let us know how you scored. Then send it to your less-proficient friends and relatives. -via b3ta

When Kansas lawmakers introduced a bill outlawing municipal broadband network, there was no sponsor's name on it: rumor has it that's because it was written by a lobbyist called John Federico, who is president of Kansas Cable Telecommunications Association. The bill masquerades as a pro-competition measure (pro-competition initiatives from the cable industry! Pull the other one), but it effective prohibits measures like the wildly successful Google Fiber project in Kansas City. Given that the big carriers and cable companies have shown no interest in providing fiber or even reasonably priced, reasonably provisioned broadband in most markets, this means that most people in Kansas can kiss any hope of a read broadband life goodbye.

While the bill lets cities and towns offer service in "unserved areas," it defines such areas as those where at least 90 percent of households lack access to any broadband service, whether it be "fixed or mobile, or satellite broadband service" at the minimum broadband speed defined by the Federal Communications Commission, which is 4Mbps down and 1Mbps up.

Since satellite can be used pretty much anywhere at broadband speeds (but with annoying latency), it would be hard to identify any "unserved areas" as defined by this legislation. The bill does allow networks "for internal government purposes," but not for any users outside the government.

The bill has unsurprisingly drawn outrage. "The language in this bill prohibits not only networks that directly offer services but even public-private partnerships and open access approaches," wrote Christopher Mitchell of Community Broadband Networks. "This is the kind of language one would expect to see if the goal is to protect politically powerful cable and telephone company monopolies rather than just limiting local authority to deliver services."

The city of Chanute, which "has established its own fiber optic network for government use and as a service to local businesses," condemned the legislation, according to the Chanute Tribune. 

Who wants competition? Big cable tries outlawing municipal broadband in Kansas

Illustration: Laris Karklis/Washington Post

Ukraine is sharply divided between Ukranian and Russian populations, an ethnic barrier mirrored almost exactly in election results. Max Fisher has answers to the questions "you were too embarrassed to ask."

Personal Audio is a patent troll that claims to own the process of sending audio around because they bought a patent from a guy who read Scientific American articles onto cassette tapes and sent them through the mail (seriously!). The Electronic Frontier Foundation is seeking to invalidate this patent -- which Personal Audio is using to shake down all kinds of indie podcasters for protection money -- using a new, cheaper, streamlined process.

Personal Audio is fighting dirty. They've filed an expensive lawsuit outside of the patent proceeding, and subpoenaed the names and personal details of everyone who donated to the campaign against their patent, purely to raise the price of adjudicating their patent and to intimidate podcasters who gave to the litigation fund rather than paying off Personal Audio.

EFF is fighting back. At stake is the process that is supposed to fix one tiny corner of the patent quagmire -- if Personal Audio's tactic succeeds, it will kill Congress's patent-fix dead.

The Juelsgaard Intellectual Property and Innovation Clinic at Stanford Law School has offered free counsel to anyone who's worried about the subpoena.

We believe that Personal Audio’s subpoena to EFF is improper for a number of reasons that are laid out in detail in our motion. Above all, we are outraged that Personal Audio is seeking to invade the privacy and associational rights of hundreds of our donors. EFF takes the privacy of its members and supporters extremely seriously—and so does the Constitution. As we explain in our motion, the First Amendment protects our donors’ right to privacy, and Personal Audio’s supposed need for the information does not trump those rights.

Personal Audio’s tactic is also improper for several other reasons. For example, it is appears to be primarily intended to avoid the well-defined limits of the PTO discovery process. The petition we filed follows a new, streamlined and therefore relatively inexpensive process. Rather than respond to that petition following the rules of that process, Personal Audio is trying to use entirely separate litigation as an excuse to raise the stakes on EFF – something Congress never intended. If Personal Audio succeeds, we fear it will send a message that this new process can be made invasive, cumbersome and expensive after all, which will in turn discourage others from using it to challenge low quality patents. That would be a shame for all of us.

See also:

* EFF challenges patent troll's "podcasting patents"

* RiYL podcast 025: Julie Samuels vs. Patent Trolls

EFF Fights Patent Troll Demand For Save Podcasting Campaign Donor Information [Daniel Nazer/EFF]

(Video Link)

You’ve probably heard all the gossip about the 2014 Grammys by now- Pharrell’s ridiculous Arby's looking hat, the godawful outfit worn by Madonna, Trent Reznor’s middle finger to the whole award show, and the Grammys in general, and of course the hilarious way Taylor Swift reacted to losing the Album of the Year.

But Taylor’s "react like I just won then clap awkwardly when I realize I didn’t actually win" moment was overshadowed by her piano rocking performance, which was totally hardcore thanks to a little help from Street Fighter’s Ryu. Watch as he kicks the young singer into action, keeping the beat with the bottom of his feet!

Via Gamma Squad

Phineas Narco sends us The Scientology Remix Project , "Broadcast on KFJC, May 9th 2013, mixed live with JC Clone and Phineas Narco on The Mr. Pumpkinhead Show on KFJC in Los Altos Hills, CA. This was a show remixing samples having to do with, and deconstructing, the controversy of Scientology/Dianetics. Originally a four hour program presented here on bandcamp (newly today) in post-produced, synthesized, 3-hour 'Narco Edit' digest form. Available on a name-your-own-price basis."

The Scientology Remix Project

Mario is such a universally recognized character that it’s surprising he doesn’t appear in more video game crossovers, but that probably all comes down to licensing and money.

However, fans of that super powered plumber and his string bean of a brother would simply adore the addition of the Bros. in games from all genres, but until that happens in real life we’ll just have to settle for staring at these amazing illustrations by Sebastian von Buchwald.

They feature one angry Mario, acting as anti-hero in games like Bioshock, Final Fantasy VII, Tomb Raider and Dragon’s Lair. Somehow seeing Mario acting like a bad little plumber just makes him look like Wario in disguise, maybe Mario should stick to being a good guy.

Head over to Kotaku to see more pics of Mario going on a gaming rampage

Fishfinger? Turtle Recall? I'd catch them ... on "net"flix of course!

With a name like that, creative agency Fishfinger is morally obligated to create 62 fish-inspired movie posters. A few examples:

Turtle Recall and Dude Where's My Carp?

The Last Salmonrai

James and the Giant Perch and The Codfather

Prawn of the Dead and Eel.T.

Bassablanca and American Pike

The Haketrix and White Bait Can't Jump

Minnow What You Did Last Summer and Monty Python and the Coley Grail

View the rest over at Fishfinger - Thanks David!

Yesterday marked the expiry of US Patent 5597589, "Apparatus for producing parts by selective sintering." This is one of the core patents in the 3D printing world -- the patent that allows 3D printer companies to charge more for fine nylon powder than Michelin-starred restaurants charge for filet mignon. The high cost of consumables in 3D printing has been a major barrier to innovation in the field -- selective laser sintering produces a fine finish that the patent-free fused deposition modeling technique used in Reprap-style printers can't match -- and now the brakes are coming off.

However, there are still lots of patents (including some genuinely terrible ones) in the 3D printing world, so the expiry of 5597589 doesn't necessarily mean that we'll see a flood of cheap printers and cheaper feedstock -- given the murkiness of the overlapping patent claims and the expense of litigating each one of them, radical new entrants into the field are still facing a lot of risk that has nothing to do with making great products at a fair price.

In a good piece on 3D Print, Eddie Krassenstein speculates about the scary supplementary laser-sintering patents lurking in the wings, pointing out that Stratasys (the major competitor of 3D Systems, who owned 5597589) didn't design their entry-lever printers to use SLS, even though they knew that the patent would be expiring in early 2014. Krassenstein suggests that this means that Stratasys knows about some other gnarly and deadly patent that would torpedo them if they went SLS.

But I'm a lot less convinced than Krassenstein is about the potential of a competitor taking the risky step of making a SLS printer that sticks to the claims in 5597589. Virtually every technical idea is covered by a stupid, overbroad patent, and yet people start businesses every day that open them to legal liability from a troll or an entrenched incumbent. If the potential for a patent suit was, in itself, a sufficient deterrent to raising capital and starting a business, we wouldn't see any startups. And a company that sticks to the claims in 5597589 has a powerful weapon in any patent suit: the USPTO granted 5597589 20 years ago, and so if they granted overlapping patents since, they were manifestly in error, a matter that is relatively (in patent terms, anyway) easy to prove.

The main thing people expect to happen, with the expiration of this patent, including many experts in the field, is a significant increase in the production of SLS 3D printers, follow by a large decrease in the price. Some are led to believe that Chinese manufacturing firms will quickly be spitting out cheaply made SLS printers at a small fraction of the cost of current printers. However, others argue that there are still too many barriers for entry. The expiring patent is an old one, and while it is probably the most important in selective laser sintering printing, it isn’t the only one. There are literally dozen of other patents that are still valid that center around SLS. This means that any company that wishes to enter into the selective laser sintering market, must make sure that they are not breaking any of the more modern patents. This can be shaky ground, that many entrepreneurs and corporation wish to avoid.

With the possibility of a lawsuit, if a firm believes that their patents have been infringed upon, will certainly scare off a lot of possible competitors. At the same time though, most of the large 3D printing companies have known for years now, that this patent would be coming to an end today. Certainly they have already taken liberty to investigate all of the other laser sintering patents out there, to prepare themselves for the moment this occurred. It is unlikely that many Chinese companies that are used to making cheap merchandise will venture into possible patent wars. However companies like Stratasys, and their subsidiary Makerbot will surely try and find a way around the newer, still active patents.

Laser Sintering 3D Printing May Now Take Off with a Very Important Patent Expiring Today [Eddie Krassenstein/3D Print]

(via O'Reilly Radar)

Lolcats have so much praise, admiration and geek love lavished upon them via the interwebs that it’s starting to go to their heads, and now they’re embracing the limelight and loving every minute of their superstar status.

Okay, so maybe our favorite feline internet stars don’t really understand the whole fame thing, but the fabulous kittehs in this photo book entitled Lolchats, by Barrere & Simon, are channeling their inner celebrities and pretending to be net famous like their feline idols.

Lolchats pokes fun at the world’s obsession with online cat videos and memes, while celebrating the fact that famous cats are now globally recognized and more famous than many humans on the net.

Via Beautiful/Decay

Two politicians in Norway nominated NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden for a Nobel Peace Prize. Brian Fung for the Washington Post:

In their nomination letter, Baard Vegar Solhjell and Snorre Valen, who hail from the Socialist Left party, said Snowden's revelations "contributed to a more stable and peaceful world order." Nominations — which are generally secret but sometimes announced by those submitting the paperwork — must be filed by Feb. 1. Snowden likely has dozens of competitors, so there's no guarantee he'll get anywhere. Still, it'd be ironic if Snowden and Obama each wound up winning the same honor just a handful of years apart.

Canada's Conservative government, led by Prime Minister Stephen Harper, has led a brutal attack on government libraries: literally burning the country's environmental records and doing such damage to the Health Canada libraries that scientists have set up clandestine libraries in the basements of their offices. But that was just for starters. In all, the Harper government has demolished the library collections of twelve ministries, including:

The Canada Revenue Agency, Citizenship and Immigration, Employment and Social Development Canada, Environment Canada, Foreign Affairs and International Trade, Natural Resources Canada, Parks Canada, the Public Service Commission, Public Works and Government Services, and Transport Canada.

However, Health Canada and the DFO are not the only government bodies to lose access to vital archival material in the past two years. Postmedia reports more than twelve departments losing libraries due to the Harper government’s budget cuts, including the Canada Revenue Agency, Citizenship and Immigration, Employment and Social Development Canada, Environment Canada, Foreign Affairs and International Trade, Natural Resources Canada, Parks Canada, the Public Service Commission, Public Works and Government Services, and Transport Canada.

Many of these departments lost multiple libraries, with historical records and books disappearing from shelves, scattered across private collections or tossed in dumpsters. In 2013 even the country's main home for historic documents, Library and Archives Canada, faced major cuts to service, including hours, interlibrary loans and staffing.

This unprecedented process has triggered concerns about the loss of physical documents and imperfections in the digitization process. A recent report from the Canadian Libaries Association (CLA) expresses these fears in no uncertain terms.

“Currently in Canada the vast majority of research data is at risk of being lost because it is not being systematically managed and preserved. While certain disciplines and research projects have institutional, national, or international support for data management, this support is available for a minority of researchers only. A coordinated and national approach to managing research data in Canada is required in order to derive greater and longer term benefits, both socially and economically, from the extensive public investments that are made in research.”

Loss of Librarians Devastating to Science and Knowledge in Canada [Erika Thorkelson/Desmog]

(Image: OLA Poster: Federal Library Closures of 2012: A Rescue Effort

(vimeo link)

Eclectic Method gets down to the history of music sampling, from the Beatles’ use of the Mellotron in the ‘60s to the latest songs. It also makes a decent background mix, in case you are doing something else at the same time. -Thanks, Jonny!

Eclectic Method offers a brief journey through the history of sampling, from the Mellotron to whatever happened last year beginning with the letter "M".

The Application Developers Alliance is trying to nail Lodsys, the notorious troll that uses a bogus patent from Intellectual Ventures to extort money from app developers. Lodsys is shrouded in mystery, uses global banks to avoid tax, and uses its patent claims to try to bankrupt companies that publicly call it out for trolling. The ADA is asking for developers who've been threatened by Lodsys to fill in a survey that will establish the evidentiary basis for fighting back against the Lodsys racket and maybe put an end to it. (via Techdirt)

Naoki Hiroshima had a rare and valuable Twitter handle, @N. It was extorted from him, he claims, by a scammer who figured out that PayPal reveals part of one's credit card number during security verification—and that GoDaddy accepts the same part of the number during security verification.

I asked the attacker how my GoDaddy account was compromised and received this response:

From: SOCIAL MEDIA KING
To: Naoki Hiroshima
Date: Mon, 20 Jan 2014 19:53:52 -0800
Subject: RE: …hello
- I called paypal and used some very simple engineering tactics to obtain the last four of your card (avoid this by calling paypal and asking the agent to add a note to your account to not release any details via phone)
- I called godaddy and told them I had lost the card but I remembered the last four, the agent then allowed me to try a range of numbers (00-09 in your case) I have not found a way to heighten godaddy account security, however if you’d like me to recommend a more secure registrar i recommend: NameCheap or eNom (not network solutions but enom.com)

GoDaddy outright refused to help him at first, too. It's shocking how weak account security is there, and at PayPal: "Don’t let companies such as PayPal and GoDaddy store your credit card information," Hiroshima writes.

Evan from Fight for the Future writes, "Want to help save democracy? The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is a super-secretive trade agreement that threatens everything you care about. It's been negotiated behind closed doors with ample input from over 600 corporate lobbyists -- but no access for journalists or the public. Sound bad? It gets worse. The corporate interest groups pushing for the TPP are the same folks that brought us SOPA, ACTA, and NAFTA."

No one knows exactly what's in the TPP, since it's shrouded in so much secrecy, but from leaked texts, we know that the it would lead to a more censored, policed, and expensive Internet -- and it would undermine important protections for workers rights, public health, and the environment. Over 80 organizations oppose Fast Track for the TPP. You can read why -- in their own words -- at StopFastTrack.com

Ready for the good news? The U.S. government needs Congress to pass a bill called "Fast Track" or that gives the President the ability to ratify trade agreements without meaningful debate or amendments from Congress. Without Fast Track, other countries won't be willing to agree to the extremist Internet-killing copyright policies that the U.S. is pushing, since they know that Congress could just amend any agreement they come to. If Fast Track fails, experts are saying that the whole TPP could likely fall apart, and that the worst pieces of it will almost certainly be off the table.

It's that simple. If we stop Fast Track, we stop the TPP. We need to melt phones, fill up inboxes, and raise our voices high to defend democracy and save the Internet. Here's the link, you know what to do.

The Writers Guild of America submitted an exemplary set of comments to the U.S. Government's Internet Policy Task Force green paper on the future of American copyright. The WGA calls for balance in copyright law, and stresses that censorship, surveillance and chilling of critical speech have no place in copyright policy. It's amazing to see artists' groups taking a stand for free expression when it comes to copyright -- far too often, arts groups are staunch free speech defenders except when it comes to unproven accusations of copyright infringement, which they hold to be sufficient grounds for arbitrary censorship.

But artists who think the issue through know that communications policies like copyright can't do their job if they compromise free expression. Artists have a wide variety of business-models and commercial opportunities, but if you're making art in a way that requires total surveillance and arbitrary censorship, you're doing art wrong.

Torrentfreak summarizes the best of the WGA submission. It's an important read: it shows that the entertainment industry's regulatory agenda doesn't serve the creators they employ (and exploit).

The writers don’t agree with the Hollywood studios, who argue that high damages are needed as a deterrent. Instead, they warn that the current legislation stifles innovation as people may be hesitant to start innovating businesses, fearing that copyright holders may come after them.

“Rather, the threat of such large damages and the cost of litigation may deter further investment in web sites that serve as venues for independent production and allow users to upload content without gatekeeper permission for fear of liability.”

The same “chilling effect” applies to a proposal which would make streaming of copyrighted videos a felony. This could introduce jail sentences for people who watch or stream copyrighted material on YouTube, and prevent people from showing off their talent online.

“A broad interpretation of such a law could chill innovation through the use of copyrighted works in remixes, cover versions of songs and fair use. For example, artists like Justin Bieber have used YouTube videos of themselves singing covers as a way to gain exposure,” WGAW writes.

“Allowing felony charges for such activities could have a chilling effect on artists who use such independent forums and may harm sites that allow streaming of user-generated content by driving away contributors,” the writers add.

With regard to the DMCA the labor union suggests that the Government could setup a common template for takedown notices, making them easier for smaller copyright holders to issue and for websites to process. At the same time, DMCA abuse and mistakes should be prevented where possible.

Finally, the writers warn against the voluntary anti-piracy agreements that have emerged recently, including the six-strikes Copyright Alert System. WGAW fears that these initiatives are not always in the best interests of consumers.

Hollywood Writers Warn Against Draconian Anti-Piracy Measures [Ernesto/Torrentfreak]

(YouTube link)

On the off chance you’ve forgotten how violent and gory the 1987 movie Robocop was, this Honest Movie Trailer will remind you. I’d also forgotten how much it relied on defenestration. There’s no way the remake, which is rated PG-13, could ever live up to the original, except that it will be legal for teenagers to see it. Thanks, Screen Junkies, for making the new movie something we might just avoid. This trailer contains blood, gore, and NSFW language, just like the movie. -via Tastefully Offensive

The Robocop remake is scheduled to open in the United States on February 12th.

Susan writes, "Over 22K game developers from all over the world (72 countries) came together this past weekend (January 24-26) at the annual Global Game Jam (GGJ). This year's event was record breaking, having churned out over 4K games with the theme 'We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are.' The yearly event focusing on collaboration, experimentation and innovation in games challenges developers of all skill levels. The jam is about creating community as well as creating games, all jams are physical jams where you have a chance to grow your skills and your network. Add to that the event prides itself on being hardware and software agnostic -- open to digital and analog games that are open source adhering to a Creative Common's license.

"As if making a game from start to finish with your new found friends at one of the 400+ local jams isn't hard enough, the GGJ offers diversifiers help challenge developers just a bit more. This year GGJ decided to honor the memory of the late Aaron Swartz by creating a diversifier that asks the developer of the game to only use materials found in the public domain. The Global Game Jam is a volunteer based 501c3 looking to share the universal language of games around the world while generating a buzz of creativity for everyone to feed from."

Global Game Jam (Thanks, Susan!)

An incredibly detailed reconstruction of Middle Earth is being made in Outerra, a 3D terrain program designed to model entire worlds.

"The scale model is called the Middle-Earth Project, and it is so epic in scope that you can see the Eye of Sauron from space, yet so finely detailed that you could zoom from space right into Bilbo's Hobbit hole. It's all accomplished with Outerra, a middleware graphics engine that specializes in letting programmers model terrain, flora, and water using relatively sparse data sets through the use of fractals."

Nicko from the Sunlight Foundation writes, "Tomorrow night, President Barack Obama will give the annual State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress and today the Sunlight Foundation unveiled the State of the Union Machine. It allows you to generate your own random speech modeled on the language from different presidents' previous addresses.

The project uses natural language processing on the corpus of nine previous presidents to generate random text based on the sliders that adjust the weight given to each president. The speeches are a mix of eloquent presidential prose and uncomfortable executive dissonance."

The Senate and House of Representatives of the United States: Under the fatal fever which in the documents communicated. N'T be here tonight have had our differences over the next decade and will not see your taxes shouldn't have this problem on to our children with the tax deduction for doing it on the largest investment, their home.

To provide for the useful purposes of the United States has evinced that the increase of numbers during the year, the necessary funds will be so shortly. Not by a proportionate diminution of their dispositions are generally favorable and friendly; and to such a termination- by special orders, to whom, on the judiciary organization it will be enabled to judge whether the existing laws enable us efficaciously to maintain this course with our Indian neighbors in the Mediterranean fund instead thereof for a nation placed as we shall not call for. To increase jobs and growth is not acceptable.

Introducing the State of the Union Machine