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A sculpture depicting a gorilla wearing a Freddy Mercury-style jacket was removed from Norwich City Center following a legal threat from the Mercury Phoenix Trust. The trust claims copyright on the outfit's design, so the company in charge of Norwich's gorilla statue program is repainting it: "That's being sorted. To save any bother we will change it." [Daily Mail]

[Video Link]. The rap artist and actor formerly known as Mos Def agreed to participate in a video demonstrating and explaining the procedure of force-feeding as it is applied to Guantanamo detainees. The video for Human Rights organization Reprieve is directed by BAFTA award-winner Asif Kapadia, a British filmmaker of Indian descent.

The Muslim holy month of Ramadan begins this week, and over 100 hunger-strikers at Guantánamo Bay are continuing to hunger strike in protest of their indefinite detention without trial. More than 40 of them are now being force-fed. During the Muslim holy month, the US military will time their force-feeding in a manner that violates the religious practice of fasting during the day.

"Many people compare Edward Snowden to me unfavorably for leaving the country and seeking asylum, rather than facing trial as I did. I don’t agree. The country I stayed in was a different America, a long time ago." —Daniel Ellsberg in a Washington Post op-ed.

"Lost in Translation," my latest Publishers Weekly column, looks at SiDiM, a new DRM scheme developed by the German Booksellers Association and the Fraunhofer Institute (with funding from the German government). The idea is to produce random variations in the text of ebooks so that each customer's ebook can be uniquely identified.

As I point out, this is an old and long-discarded idea, trivial to break (just compare two copies of the book); but more importantly, it rests on the silly idea that finding "my" copy of an ebook being shared illegally will somehow be bad for me:

The idea that copyright owners might convince a judge, or, worse, a jury that because they found a copy of an e-book on the Pirate Bay originally sold to me they can then hold me responsible or civilly liable is almost certainly wrong, as a matter of law. At the very least, it’s a long shot and a stupid legal bet. After all, it’s not illegal to lose your computer. It’s not illegal to have it stolen or hacked. It’s not illegal to throw away your computer or your hard drive. In many places, it’s not illegal to give away your e-books, or to loan them. In some places, it’s not illegal to sell your e-books.

So at best, this new “breakthrough” DRM scheme will be ineffective. But worse, what makes anyone think this kind of implicit fear of reprisal embedded within one’s digital library is acceptable, or, for that matter, preferable to old-school DRM?

Lost in Translation

Windows: If you need to buckle down and avoid any distractions on your PC, Seriousd is a powerful time tracking application that can actively lock you out of specified websites and apps.

Read more...

Jill sez, "Exciting study samples new books for sale by Amazon and asks: Why are there three times more books initially published in the 1850's than books from the 1950's? The chart on page 15 is eye-popping, showing graphically decade-by-decade how many more new books initially published before 1923 are currently available than those published after 1923 [the magic public domain date]. The music and YouTube data are also compelling!"

How Copyright Makes Books and Music Disappear (and How Secondary Liability Rules Help Resurrect Old Songs)

My latest Guardian column is a one-act historical drama about metadata, starring Winston Churchill, Alan Turing and UK Home Secretary Theresa May:

May: Mr Turing and his colleagues have laboured hard with every hour that God has sent, but try as they might, they can extract nothing of use from the Enigma cipher.

Churchill: (roaring) Nothing? All these years, all this work, and you have nothing?

May: Well, not precisely nothing, prime minister. The lads have got far enough that they are able to extract "meta-data," but I stress again that this is of no strategic import and would in no way help us to compromise the foe.

Churchill: Meta-data? Tell me more of this meta-data? Is it a Greek word?

(May turns to Turing, who wipes his palms on his trousers)

Metadata – a wartime drama

Chrome: We've probably all made a regrettable, impulsive buy before. What if there was an app that automatically put such purchases into perspective? There is, and it's called the Dictionary of Numbers.

Read more...

Take one letter away from a classic book title and change its entire meaning. That simple concept is funny on its own, but send it to Twitter member redpandarth™ (who loves a good pun) and he will photoshop it into a illustrated cover. Some of the best are gathered at Buzzfeed. Link

(video link)

Just when you thought SyFy movies couldn't get any more ridiculous (remember Sharkopus?), here comes Sharknado! Mash up a scary natural disaster with a scary predator and you get a tornado that sucks up sharks from the ocean and rains them over the landscape. Really.

Up in the sky. It’s a bird. It’s a plane. No, it’s a … shark! A supersized storm sucks sharks from the ocean and hurls them onto land in the new Syfy Original Movie Sharknado, premiering Thursday, July 11 at 9PM (ET/PT).

I can't wait. Link

Raphael Brion: "the website Vegan Sellout List ... is a refined mix of unchecked self-righteousness and threats of actual physical violence." [Eater]

Another reason to switch to DuckDuckGo (the other being DuckDuckGo has a cute duck logo).

How Google is Killing Organic Search (Via Nat Torkington)

Click to enlarge.

Based on this classic movie poster. Photoshopped by Rob Beschizza. Read coverage of NSA leaker Edward Snowden in Boing Boing's archives.

Video Link. "It's gross when cats puke up hairballs but its cool when they do it to some techno music." (thanks, Joe Sabia)

"Thomas Paine, the voice of the American Revolution, trumpeted that a patriot saves his country from his government. What you have done and are doing has awakened congressional oversight of the intelligence community from deep slumber; and, has already provoked the introduction of remedial legislation in Congress to curtail spying abuses under section 215 of the Patriot Act and section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. You have forced onto the national agenda the question of whether the American people prefer the right to be left alone from government snooping." Read the full letter published by Edward Snowden's dad, addressed to his son. [www.guardian.co.uk]

Visa and PayPal are still blocking payments, but this seems like reasonably big news. What matters isn't just whether or not Wikileaks supporters can donate to Wikileaks, but the precedent such a blockade creates: can the US compel financial service providers to deny service when the recipient is a pro-transparency entity they don't like? (thanks, Micah Lee)

Twitter announced today that it will now allow advertisers to tailor ads for you based on your activities off of Twitter (for instance, browsing third-party websites), and will also use personal information like email addresses to target the ads you see.

"Users won’t see more ads on Twitter, but they may see better ones," says Twitter, touting the change as a way to make the service "more useful" to users. Privacy-minded folks won't be too happy.

Advertising Age has more. As Twitter's official announcement explains, you can opt out by checking off these boxes, or enabling Do Not Track (DNT) in compatible browsers.

Here's how to opt out, if you are so inclined:

1) Log in to your Twitter account.
2) Under "Settings," uncheck the boxes shown above.
3) Enable "Do Not Track" in your browser (FF, Chrome, IE are all compatible).
4) Follow @boingboing. Hah, I made that part up. But you should.

View all Zombie Wars Posters by Matt Busch

These are the Star Wars zombie posters you've been looking for! Matt Busch, the "Rock Star of Illustration," has created a nifty series of zombified versions of iconic Star Wars posters.

Best of all, they're currently on sale over at the NeatoShop! Save up to 40% off regular price while supplies last: Link

Zombie Wars - A New Epidemic	Zombie Wars - Episode II: Attack of the Undead	Zombie Wars - Return from the Grave	Zombie Wars - The Corpse War

View all zombie posters by Matt Busch | Sale Items on the NeatoShop

Just in time for the Fourth of July, punster-in-chief Hanksy (Instagram) set up four panels in the streets of New York City featuring America's most iconic "bald beauties." Thanks Benjamin!

Yes, Sir Patrick Stewart technically isn't American, but Hanksy said that since he's Captain Picard, he gets a free pass.

[Video Link] I'm looking forward to the arrest and prosecution of these jackasses.

One of the men loudly threatened to rape a gay man, and another physically assaulted the woman filming. Concerned bystanders repeatedly ask her if she’s OK. One man gets in between the youth and the other assailant and asks him to calm down, but he points at the woman filming and continues his tirade.

YouTube footage of LGBT hate crime goes viral

A nightmarish vision straight out of The Space Merchants: a gadget that purportedly vibrates train windows at the right frequency to beam advertisements straight into your head by means of bone-conduction, should you tire and rest your head against them.

All the references to this point to one video posted by someone with no other videos in her or his account, and there's not much other detail (Adweek attributes it to BBDO Dusseldorf). I'm betting hoax and/or grad project-cum-design fiction, but in this topsy-turvy world, anything is possible. The comments on the YouTube video are even more internetrage than usual, and may be the most interesting thing about it.

The talking window

This interactive web toy by Rafaël Rozendaal might be appreciated by those who are suffering from the heat wave. You can see that it's raining. You control how hard it rains and wind direction by moving your mouse, from a light summer sprinkle to a dark, scary thunderstorm. Even if you don't have time to play with the rain, there are some nice sound effects you can enjoy as a background for your websurfing. Link -via Metafilter

Herein lies the Immortal Bard's classic tale of hope, love, courage and villainy. Ian Doescher discovered and published this play, long missing from the Shakespeare corpus--and coming soon to the Globe on Tatooine.

I understand that there are six plays in this series, although the first three in the sequence were probably written by Edward de Vere.

Link -via Blame It on the Voices

Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware

Just over a year ago, I wrote about a new French law that, under the guise of dealing with the pressing issue of orphan works, implements a truly massive rights transfer.

The law empowers the Bibliothèque Nationale de France to create an online database of works published in France before 2001 that are currently out of print (this includes not just works by French writers, but foreign works translated into French). Once a work has been listed in the database for more than six months, the right to digitize it transfers to a collective management organization, which thereafter has near-unlimited power to exploit that right--including granting it to publishers without the author's permission. The collective management organization will also be responsible for distributing (an unspecified portion of) the proceeds from such grants to rightsholders.

There's a six-month waiting period between a book's appearance in the database and the transfer of rights to the collective management organization. To be removed from the database, rightsholders--who are not currently being notified if their works are included--must opt out in writing before the six-month waiting period expires. If they miss that deadline, they lose control of the digital display and sale of their work, and can only demand removal by proving that that they are the sole holder of digital rights.

The database, known as ReLIRE, is now online,with an initial list of 60,000 books. According to a comprehensive post on the program by writer Gillian Spraggs, numerous problems have been noted, including data errors, inclusion of books published after the 2001 cutoff date, and inclusion of books still in print or already available in digital form. Also included are many translated works by foreign authors that are clearly not orphans.

Digital-hungry publishers are already taking advantage of the database. Spraggs writes,

It appears that 10,000 (one in six) of the books in the database have been opted in by the publishers. The ReLIRE website FAQ outlines what a publisher will get out of the arrangement:

‘You will have the possibility of having an exclusive publishing licence for 10 years, implicitly renewable, to exploit the book in digital form, without having to sign a contract with the author or the author’s successors in title for the digital rights.

Sofia [the collecting society] will contact the authors or the successors in title to pay them, in accordance with the terms set out in the publishing contracts’...

Two points that the FAQ discreetly avoids spelling out are:

1. The legislation specifically charges the collecting society with developing contractual relationships that will ensure the greatest possible availability of the works...This puts prospective publishers in a very strong negotiating position and more or less guarantees that the contracts agreed will be bargain-basement deals with very low royalty rates, regardless of the market value of the work.

2. Certain administration costs that in a normal publishing arrangement would be borne by the publisher will instead be borne by the collecting society, which will take them out of royalties (so all or part of them will be taken from the authors’ share of any income). These include the cost of contacting authors and estates.

For authors, Spraggs says, it is "a ripoff deal."

Writers' groups in the US are taking notice of this threat to copyright. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America  has sent the letter below (reproduced with permission) to members, a number of whom have already found their works included in ReLIRE.

Dear SFWA Members,

As many of you already know, the ReLire program currently underway in France has scanned many books it considers to be "orphan works" in order to make them available through a public database. This database has already been found to contain many titles that are clearly not orphan works or in the public domain, including a number by prominent SF and fantasy authors. A more detailed explanation of the program is available here.

As this is a program of the Bibliotheque Nationale Francaise (French National Library), the Board is currently discussing options for applying pressure to the French government to prevent further works by SFWA members from being scanned and made available through this program, and we invite any members who have connections with the United States Trade Representative or any relevant branch of the U.S. Government to contact us. For the moment, however, we are informing all members of the issue and making them aware of the process involved in finding out whether a work is included and how to request that it be removed from the database.

All parts of the ReLire website and database are available only in  French. The Society of Authors has produced translations of four key pages:

- The ReLire home page
- The Your Rights page
- The Search page
- The FAQ

Here is a direct link to the advanced search page. The search fields are Titre( Title), Auteur (Author), Editeur (Editor) and Date d'edition (Publication date). If you are aware of any works of yours that have ever been published in French, you are strongly advised to search under all of the first three fields, as the entries in the database have been found to have many typos. Please notify SFWA of any of your works that are found in the database, as that will be valuable information in our efforts to protest the program.

If you do find any novels, stories or any other works belonging to you in the database you may request to have them removed. Please note that at this time it appears as though you will need either a French identification card (only available to residents of France) or a valid passport to make the application. We are awaiting clarification on the question of whether any other forms of identification will be accepted.

Thanks to Aliette de Bodard, Lawrence Schimel, Michael Capobianco and Jim Fiscus for their help in researching and co-ordinating SFWA's response.

If any of your works have been published in French, and you find them included in ReLIRE, see this step-by-step manual for applying to have the work removed. For many other helpful resources and links, as well as some of the writing/publishing community's reaction to ReLIRE, see Gillian Spraggs's blog post, French Copyright Grab: the Machine Creaks into Action.

Spraggs writes that a group of French authors are planning to challenge the new law on constitutional grounds. She concludes by urging all writers to protest ReLIRE:

Whether or not you find that any of the books on the list are by you, or contain works by you, make a complaint to your government about the ReLIRE project, and talk to any author societies to which you belong.

The Berne Convention says: ‘Authors of literary and artistic works protected by this Convention shall have the exclusive right of authorizing the reproduction of these works, in any manner or form.’ (9.1) This can only be overriden ‘in certain special cases’ and ‘provided that such reproduction does not conflict with a normal exploitation of the work and does not unreasonably prejudice the legitimate interests of the author’. (9.2) The Convention says of all the rights that are guaranteed under it: ‘The enjoyment and the exercise of these rights shall not be subject to any formality‘. (5.2)

By compelling foreign authors, in order to prevent their works’ being co-opted into collective management, to search for them on a database and request their removal, the French government has imposed an illegal formality on their exclusive exercise of the right of reproduction.

The ReLIRE scheme is in no sense a ‘special case’ within the meaning of Article 9.2. By intervening in such an outrageous manner in the fast-developing market for digital rights it interferes with the normal exploitation of the works and most unreasonably prejudices the legitimate interests of the authors.

The idea that companies exist solely to produce shareholder value can be traced to a 1970 editorial by Milton Friedman. Writing in Forbes, Steve Denning calls this The World's Dumbest Idea, and gives pretty comprehensive evidence to support that notion: "As often happens with bad ideas that make some people a lot of money, shareholder value caught on and became the conventional wisdom."

(YouTube link)

Bloggers know as well as TV producers that you need visuals to effectively tell a story. When you can't get the visuals, you have to use your imagination. A couple of years ago, a TV station in New Zealand broadcast a story about a dog who attacked the tires on police cars. Having no actual footage of the attacks, they did the best they could with an existing graphics library. The result made it a memorable report! -via Daily Picks and Flicks