When it comes to film marketing, we’re used to seeing the same footage and images recycled in posters, trailers, commercials and more. But Fox is doing something different with Deadpool and really playing with people. In fact their latest billboard is one of the best ever.
We’ve had plenty of sequels, remakes, and found footage—but for my money, the most thrilling new horror films are the ones with their own distinct sense of style. That’s why I’m pumped for The Witch, which is set in New England 30 years before the Salem trials and looks both terrifying and gorgeous.
Sabrina the Teenage Witch dominated the TGIF lineup when it premiered in 1996. It aired Friday nights on ABC, alongside Boy Meets World, Family Matters, and Two of a Kind. And it was much, much weirder than any of those. And weirder than even just a regular show about a teenage witch might have been.
New Year’s Evil is a 1980 slasher film from B-movie gods Golan-Globus; it stars Roz Kelly—a.k.a. Fonzie’s girlfriend, Pinky Tuscadero, on Happy Days—as Blaze, “the first lady of rock.” It’s about a prank-calling killer who menaces Blaze as she hosts a live music show (which has an on-stage phone bank) for NYE.
“Valse à quatre mains” (“Waltz with four hands”) is a short animated film by a group from Supamonks Studio, which is gorgeous in its music and imagery. The attention to detail is amazing—just look at the cracks in the hair of the violinist!
We all use dystopian movies and books to make sense of our world. Whether it’s Brave New World, 1984, or The Hunger Games, dystopian fiction serves as a common touchpoint to talk about our fears. But what happens when companies knowingly embrace the dark side of futurism and start naming products after the things we were supposed to find scary?
Earlier this week, SPARC submitted comments regarding the U.S. Department of Education’s (ED) Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on a new open licensing requirement for educational materials and other copyrightable works created through direct grant programs.
ReCreate Logo
Earlier this year, ALA became a founding member of a new copyright coalition called Re:Create. As Congress contemplates legislative change, the U.S. Copyright Office solicits public comments on software embedded in products and the 1201 rulemaking (soon), and as the federal government negotiates trade deals, Re:Create and its members engage with the message that copyright law should reflect how the public uses information and creates in the digital environment. We want a law that makes sense to people, and that supports fair use, free expression and an open Internet. We recently produced a video. Check it out. I like the man with the guitar.
The post Re:Create video available appeared first on District Dispatch.
Richard Schmidt, Digital Initiatives & Services, published a book this year called Giallo Meltdown: A Moviethon Diary. This print-on-demand book is the culmination of 8 years of movie watching. Richard evaluated 215 films from the genre by binge-watching them in weekend long marathons, sometimes sitting through over 20 films in the space of 2 or 3 days. The structure of Giallo Meltdown is that of a diary, documenting not only the reviews of each film but the state of mind of the author as he was determined to be consumed by an excess of films through its 13 chapters.
San Francisco - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) launched new online tracker-testing in its Panopticlick tool today, helping you analyze the privacy protections in your Web browser.
When you visit a website, online trackers and the site itself may be able to identify you, and the records of your online activity can then be distributed among a vast network of advertising exchanges, data brokers, and tracking companies. Many people install ad- or tracker-blockers to try to protect themselves, but it can be hard to know how effective they are. Panopticlick will check your browser and your add-ons and assess the privacy protections users have in place. It can also suggest remedies for under-protected browsers.
But even if you have strong tracker blocking installed on your computer, you could still be identified by what’s called a “browser fingerprint.” That’s the combination of factors such as your operating system, your browser, and plug-ins. Panopticlick also analyzes the uniqueness of your browser to see if you are still at risk from this kind of data-gathering, even if you have privacy-protective software installed.
“Have you ever felt like ads you see online have an uncanny knowledge of your browsing habits? It’s creepy, and a sign you are being tracked,” said EFF Chief Computer Scientist Peter Eckersley. “When you visit Panopticlick and click on the ‘test me’ button, the site simulates the loading of various tracking technologies. Then you get a report to help you understand what protections you have in place, and what’s missing. Panopticlick is a great way to boost your privacy as you read, shop, and interact with websites throughout your day.”
Fighting for user privacy on the Web can feel like an uphill battle, with advertisers and marketers changing their tactics and technologies at a lightning pace. Panopticlick will also do double-duty as a research project for EFF, collecting anonymous data for technologists to analyze so they can improve privacy tools like EFF’s Privacy Badger and develop others down the road.
“Online data-gatherers use tactics that are complex, subtle, and ever-evolving,” said EFF Software Engineer Bill Budington. “Panopticlick is a way for you to help protect yourself, as well as help contribute to our understanding of online tracking more generally.”
For Panopticlick:
https://panopticlick.eff.org/
If you thought the US government’s ability to spy on its citizens had languished of late, think again.
Calling all aspiring spooks. Robert Hannigan, director of Britain’s security and intelligence organisation GCHQ, has included a rather tantalising puzzle with his Christmas card this year. He hopes that it will exercise your grey cells over the holiday period.
If you can solve the puzzle, along with the others that it will lead to, you can email the solution to GCHQ (the Government communications headquarters) before January 31. A winner will be drawn from all the correct answers – and doubtless be named to much fanfare.
So what do you need to do to be in with a chance?
The puzzle requires that you shade in squares on the 25x25 grid shown above. But which ones? Well, a few of the “black” squares have been completed for you, but most you will have to do yourself. By way of a clue, each row and cell has a sequence of numbers attached to it. The numbers represent a sequence of shaded cells, that need to separated from each other by at least one blank cell. For example, the row marked “7 3 1 1 7” should contain a sequence of seven shaded cells, followed by at least one blank cell, then three shaded cells, followed by at least one blank cell – and so on. The problem is made trickier because each horizontal row intersects a vertical column, each with its own sequence code.
So how do you reach the solution? One way of cracking it is to resort to old-fashioned paper and pen. Just sit down, put on your thinking cap and try to reason it out.
It is not that difficult to get started. In fact, it is already started, and it is easy to fill in a few more squares. Take a look at row 22 on the horizontal axis – the one that has the sequence “1 3 1 3 10 2”. These numbers add up to 20 and as there are six blocks, you need at least five blank squares to separate them. As we only have 25 squares in the row, this pattern can only fit in one way – the first square in the row has to be shaded, and the rest just follow, with only one blank square between each run of shaded squares.
Are there any others like this? Column seven (“7 1 1 1 1 1 7”) sums up to 19. As we have seven numbers we need at six least separators. This also adds up to 25, so this row is easy to complete, too. The figure below shows the grid once we have filled in row 22 and column seven (the blank squares are marked in yellow).
Any others where the row or column is also easy to complete? Yes, but I’ll leave it to you to find them.
Once you have completed the “easy” rows/columns, you then need to start looking for other ways of completing the remaining rows and columns, or even reasoning about individual cells. In many ways, it is like completing a Sudoku puzzle. You should find that you never have to guess, but perhaps using a pencil and having a rubber to hand might be a good idea.
One more hint, colour in the blank squares, too – just use a different shade. This might sound obvious but leaving a square blank, once you have determined that it “must” be blank, might mean that it gets mistakenly shaded later. You can see in the figure above that I’ve have coloured the blank squares yellow, so we know that we should not make them black later.
If you don’t want to exercise the brain, you can get a computer to do it for you.
Jean Francois Puget presents one such – SPOILER ALERT: the next link reveals the solution – methodology, which is based on mixed integer programming.
You define the problem using variables, zeroes for white cells and ones for black cells. You next define constraints. For example, each row/column has to have the correct sequence of blacks cells in each row/column, separated by at least one white cell. You also need to define an objective function. This is usually something you are trying to minimise (for example, waste) or maximise (for example, profit). In the case of this puzzle, there is nothing to minimise or maximise, as once we have a valid solution we cannot improve on it.
Once we have defined the variables, constraints and objection function, we can hand it over to one of the many solvers that are available online and it will return the solution.
The downside of mathematical approaches to complex problems is that there may be a solution, but it could take millions of years to find it. Fortunately, this puzzle can be solved quickly.
If you don’t fancy either of the above two approaches, there are many other options. In a previous article we discussed how ants could be used to solve chess puzzles. So if ants can play chess, they could certainly solve the GCHQ puzzle.
Whether it is worth the effort to develop the computer model required, however, is open to debate. The same could also be argued for the many other meta-heuristic approaches. Almost any of them could solve this puzzle, but is it worth the development effort?
The puzzle has generated a lot of media interest and many people are trying to solve it. As we have shown above, there are already solutions on the internet and there is even more information about the subsequent puzzles on Reddit. That does seem to go against the spirit of the puzzle, however, and the spirit of the season. Why not just print the grid, get out a pen and exercise the grey matter sometime over the festive period? You may even win the honest way.
Graham Kendall does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.
Cryptography is the science of keeping secrets, with encryption algorithms and methods such as public key encryption the gold standard. Despite widespread usage and heavy scrutiny, these ciphers remain unbroken. But while encryption can keep messages secret, it cannot protect the identities of the sender and receiver.
Details such as the IP addresses of computers communicating on the internet and other metadata can reveal more than just the identities of those communicating. Companies use metadata to infer sexual orientation, approximate age, gender and interests for targeted advertising, while intelligence and law enforcement agencies collect and analyse it for their own uses. As a former director of the NSA puts it pithily: “We kill people based on metadata.”
So anonymity is required as well as secrecy, for which the most polished tool is Tor. Tor allows users to browse the web anonymously, but has come under sustained attack – and cracks have begun to show. Is it time for a replacement? Vuvuzela, a prototype anonymising software designed by MIT researchers, is one attempt.
Tor achieves anonymity by partially encrypting as much metadata as possible, revealing only small amounts and only as late on in the communication as possible. It sends messages via the encrypted Tor network, where it’s difficult for attackers that snoop on network traffic to detect where a message comes from and where it is going. That an NSA presentation leaked by Edward Snowden included the statement “Tor Stinks” suggests that even the NSA found it difficult to crack.
Yet when the FBI shut down the Silk Road and Silk Road 2.0 illegal online marketplaces, their prosecutions seemingly relied on evidence collected despite Tor’s privacy measures. Tor has well-known security weaknesses which are explicitly stated by the developers. One is that Tor cannot withstand traffic analysis by an attacker who can monitor global internet traffic in real time: whenever user A sends a message to Tor and almost immediately afterwards Tor sends a message to website B, then it is likely that A uses Tor to browse B. This attack is out of reach for individuals, but some nation states have the capacity to do so.
As MIT associate professor Nickolai Zeldovich, whose group created Vuvuzela, said: “Tor operates under the assumption that there’s not a global adversary that’s paying attention to every single link in the world. Maybe these days this is not a good assumption.”
To overcome Tor’s shortcomings, other anonymising software approaches have been proposed, such as Riposte from Stanford University and Dissent from Yale. While they fix Tor’s flaws, they are not able to support the sort of usage and number of concurrent users that Tor can, which limits their usefulness.
Vuvuzela is both immune to traffic analysis and other forms of attack, and can support a large number of simultaneous active users. Like Tor, Vuvuzela works by encrypting as much metadata as possible, but (like its namesake) it also adds a lot of noise – fake messages with which to confuse attackers. As they are indistinguishable from genuine messages, this drowns out patterns of genuine communication that might otherwise compromise a user’s anonymity.
Unlike Tor, Vuvuzela sends its communication in fixed rounds. Clients cannot send and receive messages at any time, instead on each round a user can only send and receive one message. This obscures the precise timing of messages between sender and receiver, keeping this detail from attackers.
Another difference is how the messages travel. Tor messages pass from sender to receiver in a sequence of hops, while Vuvuzela uses a dead-drop system, where the sender leaves the message at a randomly chosen memory location on one of the Vuvuzela servers, and during a later round the recipient picks up the message.
All messages sent by Vuvuzela messages are the same size, achieved by splitting messages that are too large and padding messages that are too small. This prevents attackers from using message size to compromise anonymity by giving away clues as to what sort of communication is being sent.
As a result, Vuvuzela is the first anonymising privacy system that is resistant to large-scale network traffic analysis attacks, and which can also sustain millions of active users sending tens of thousands of messages per second.
MIT’s software is brand new and still experimental, and cannot yet be considered as a replacement for Tor. It hasn’t yet undergone extensive testing through attacks aimed at its theoretical design, and implementation. Crucially, unlike Tor Vuvuzela cannot yet be used for convenient web browsing, nor is it suitable for real-time chat as it is currently quite slow. However, it holds a lot of promise, and may evolve into a viable Tor successor in the future.
Martin Berger receives funding from EPSRC and the European Union.
In 1885, an author named James B. Ward published a pamphlet telling of a long-lost treasure available to anyone clever enough to solve the puzzle associated with it. Ward reported that around 1817, a man named Thomas Jefferson Beale had been the leader of an expedition to the American Southwest primarily concerned with hunting buffalo and/or bears. Beale’s group had instead stumbled upon gold and silver deposits in what is now Colorado. Agreeing to keep it all a secret, Beale’s team had spent the better part of two years quietly mining, then had taken the metals to Virginia by wagon and buried them in a vault underground between 1819 and 1821. Beale had written three notes explaining where the treasure was and who had legal rights to shares in it, encrypting each of these using a different text. However, Beale had vanished after leaving the notes with a friend. Eventually, the second of the three texts was deciphered using a slightly altered version of the Declaration of Independence. It specified which county in Virginia the treasure was hidden in, and referred the reader to the first of the notes for details.
But the first—and the third—notes remained stubbornly undeciphered. Neither the Declaration of Independence nor any other ciphertext source produced a readable message out of the first note. Beale had done far too good a job of encrypting his texts.
Or had he? Even as the field of cryptography advanced, and modern computers were invented and directed at the ciphers, the content remained frustratingly out of reach. The tantalizing mystery of where in Virginia there might be an enormous cache of treasure has turned into a broader question: Did Thomas J. Beale even exist, or was James B. Ward playing an enormous practical joke? The problem with the second interpretation is that Ward was not known to be a prankster. Could his pamphlet have been motivated by something stranger still?
Rick Anderson has a piece on “Open Access and Academic Freedom” at Inside Higher Ed arguing the open access policies being put into place by many research funders and some universities that require authors to make their work available under open licenses (most commonly Creative Commons’ CC-BY) are a violation of academic freedom and should be viewed with skepticism.
Here is the basic crux of his argument:
The meaningful right that the law provides the copyright holder is the exclusive (though limited) right to say how, whether, and by whom these things may be done with his work by others.
So the question is not whether I can, for example, republish or sell copies of my work under CC BY — of course I can. The question is whether I have any say in whether someone else republishes or sells copies of my work — and under CC BY, I don’t.
This is where it becomes clear that requiring authors to adopt CC BY has a bearing on academic freedom, if we assume that academic freedom includes the right to have some say as to how, where, whether, and by whom one’s work is published. This right is precisely what is lost under CC BY. To respond to the question “should authors be compelled to choose CC BY?” with the answer “authors have nothing to fear from CC BY” or “authors benefit from CC BY” is to avoid answering it. The question is not about whether CC BY does good things; the question is whether authors ought to have the right to choose something other than CC BY.
Although for reasons I outline below I disagree with Anderson’s conclusion that concerns about academic freedom should trump the push for greater access, the point bears some consideration, especially because he is far from the only one raising it.
But what actually is this “academic freedom” we are talking about? I will admit that, even though I am a long-time academic, and have a general sense of what academic freedom is, when I first started hearing this complaint about open access mandates, I didn’t really understand what the term “academic freedom” actually means. And part of the problem is that there isn’t really a thing called “academic freedom”.
The Wikipedia definition pretty much captures the concept:
Academic freedom is the belief that the freedom of inquiry by faculty members is essential to the mission of the academy as well as the principles of academia, and that scholars should have freedom to teach or communicate ideas or facts (including those that are inconvenient to external political groups or to authorities) without being targeted for repression, job loss, or imprisonment.
But this broad concept lacks a unified concrete reality. Anderson cites as his evidence that CC-BY mandates violate academic freedom the following passage from the widely-cited “1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure” from the American Association of University Professors:
Teachers are entitled to full freedom in research and in the publication of the results, subject to the adequate performance of their other academic duties; but research for pecuniary return should be based upon an understanding with the authorities of the institution.
Note that while this document provides a definition of academic freedom that has been fairly widely accepted, it is not in any way legally binding nor, more importantly, does it reflect a universal consensus about what academic freedom is. Nonetheless, it’s hard not to get behind the general principle that academics should have the “freedom to publish”. However, it is by no means clear what this actually entails.
Virtually everything I have ever read about academic freedom starts with the importance of giving academics the freedom to express the results of their scholarship irrespective of their specific conclusions. We grant them tenure in large part to protect this freedom, and I know of no academic who would sanction their employer telling them that they can not publish something they wish to publish.
But imposing a requirement that academics employ a CC-BY license does not impose a restriction on the content of their publication, but rather imposes a limit on venues available for publication (and it’s important for open access supporters to acknowledge this – there exist journals today that would not accept papers that were available online elsewhere, with or without a CC-BY license). But I’m not sure this constitutes a limit on academic freedom?
Clearly some restrictions on venues would have the effect of restricting authors’ ability to communicate their work. If a university told its academics that they could only publish in venues that appeared exclusively in print, they would unambiguously limit their ability to communicate and we would not sanction it. But what if they required that all works be available online to facilitate assessment and access for students? This would also impose some limits on where they could publish, but, in the current online-heavy universe, this would not be a meaningful limit on the authors’ ability to communicate.
So it seems to me that we have to make a choice. Approach 1 would be to evaluate such conditions on a case by case basis to determine if the limitations placed on authors actually limit academic freedom. Approach 2 would be to enshrine the principle that any conditions placed on how or where academics publish by universities and funders are unacceptable.
If we take the case-by-case approach, we have to ask if the specific requirement that authors make their work available under a CC-BY license constitutes an infringement of their freedom to communicate their work. It certainly imposes some limits on where they can publish, but, given the wide diversity of journals that don’t prohibit pre-prints, it’s hard to describe this as a significant infringement.
The second issue raised by Anderson, that by requiring CC-BY and thereby granting others the right to reuse and republish a work without author permission you are depriving authors of the right to control how their work is used. I am a bit sympathetic to this point of view. But in reality authors have actually already lost an element of this control, as the fair use component of copyright law grants others the right to use published works in certain ways without author permission (to write reviews of the work, for example), so it’s hard to see this as a major intrusion.
Which brings me to one of my main points. Anderson argues that the principle of “freedom to publish” should be sacrosanct. But it clearly is not. While scholars my have the theoretical ability to publish their work wherever they want to, in reality the hiring, promotion, tenure and funding policies of universities and funding agencies impose a major constraint on how and where academics publish. Scientists are expected to publish in certain journals, other academics are expected to publish books with certain publishers. Large parts of the academic enterprise are currently premised on restricting the freedom of academics to publish where and how they want. In comparison to these restrictions – which manifest themselves on a daily basis – the added imposition of requiring a CC-BY license seems insignificant.
Furthermore, one has to view the push for CC-BY licenses in a broader context in which they are part of an effort to alter the ecology of scholarly publishing so that authors are not judged by their publication in a narrow group of journals or with a narrow group of university presses. Thus I would argue that, viewed practically, the shift to CC-BY would actually promote academic freedom and the freedom of authors to publish how and where they want.
One could reasonably respond that it’s not my place to decide on behalf of other scholars what does and does not constitute an imposition of their academic freedom. Which brings us to approach 2, enshrining the principle that any conditions placed on how or where academics publish by universities and funders are unacceptable. If you hold this position then you will clearly view a mandatory CC-BY policy as an unacceptable imposition of academic freedom. But you would then also have to see the hiring, promotion, tenure and funding policies that push authors to certain venues as an even bigger betrayal of academic freedom. I am happy to completely embrace this point of view.
In the end, I didn’t find Anderson’s article as repugnant as many of my open access friends did. Academic freedom is important, and it should be defended. And the points he raised are interesting and important to consider. But I take exception with Anderson’s focus on the supposed negative effects of the use of a CC-BY license on academic freedom, when, if we are serious about defending academic freedom we should instead be looking at how the entire system of scholarly publishing limits it. Indeed, I have now been inspired by Anderson’s article to make academic freedom a major lynchpin of my future arguments in favor of fundamental reform of scholarly publishing.
Circuit Court Deliberates Manual Recount Problems with Touchscreen Voting Machines
Florida - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and a coalition of national groups concerned with voting integrity filed a friend-of-the-court brief in a seminal e-voting case brought by Florida Congressman Robert Wexler and others. Florida law requires manual recounts in close races. Rep. Wexler's case argues that when Florida election officials purchased touchscreen voting machines that do not leave a paper trail, they prevented true manual recounts and violated this law. The Congressman also argues that the touchscreen voting machines violate federal constitutional law.
Wexler lost at the district court level and now appeals to the 11th Circuit Court. In its brief, EFF lists 17 examples in which touchscreen voting machine models used in Florida experienced significant problems -- including throwing election results into doubt -- because they were not designed to allow manual recounts. EFF also noted that a number of currently available technologies preserve the ability to conduct manual recounts, meaning that Florida election officials are simply choosing to use machines that flout state law. "While touchscreen voting machines offer some promising advances, critical shortcomings still exist in both design and implementation, not the least of which is a failure to allow for meaningful recounts," said EFF Staff Attorney Matt Zimmerman. "With better solutions available for Florida voters, systems that can't be audited simply have to go."
"In the aftermath of the 2004 election, we saw county after county engage in phony 'recounts' on touchscreen machines that lacked paper trails. If the 11th Circuit Court recognizes that true manual recounts are not possible on these machines, it will not only help Florida voters, it could help encourage election officials across the country to choose voting technologies that increase, rather than decrease, voter confidence," added EFF Legal Director Cindy Cohn.
Joining EFF on the brief are Common Cause, People for the American Way Foundation, VerifiedVoting.org, Center for Constitutional Rights, Computer Scientists for Social Responsibility, and Voters Unite.
For more information about e-voting, visit EFF's website.
Contacts:
Cindy Cohn
Legal Director
Electronic Frontier Foundation
cindy@eff.org
Matt Zimmerman
Staff Attorney
Electronic Frontier Foundation
mattz@eff.org
A previously discredited evolutionary theory, called Lamarckism, is being revived thanks to a new understanding of heredity called “epigenetic inheritance”.
In 1809, the French evolutionist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck put forward the theory that acquired traits could be transmitted to the next generation. His theory implies that our health is determined by the chosen lifestyle of our ancestors, long before our own existence. And our latest research adds to the credibility of this long-neglected theory.
Since Lamarck proposed his theory, the transmission of acquired traits has been demonstrated in plants and insects. The phenomenon was thought to be restricted to these species but in 2005, a study of inhabitants from a remote village in northern Sweden provided evidence that the theory could be extended to humans.
The study showed that inhabitants were less prone to developing cardiometabolic diseases, such as type 2 diabetes, if their respective grandparent of the same sex (that is, grandfathers for men and grandmothers for women) was relatively undernourished in his or her early life.
The study implied that the eating pattern of parents, long before conception, may affect the developmental message contained in their gametes (sperm or egg) and influence the health of the following generations.
In our study, we wanted to know whether nutritional status could change the heritable information contained in gametes.
We focused on sperm rather than eggs because it is easier to collect. We collected sperm from 13 lean and ten obese Danish men and compared their epigenetic imprint (chemical tags to the genome that change the expression of genes without changing the DNA code itself).
We found that numerous epigenetic marks were changed in the sperm of obese men and, most strikingly, they were close to the genes crucial for brain development and the regulation of appetite.
In a second group of six obese men undergoing bariatric surgery (surgery to reduce the size of the stomach), we compared sperm from patients before, one week after and one year after the surgery. At the one-year follow-up visit, the men had lost 30kg, on average, and their metabolic profile had dramatically improved.
When we analysed their sperm, we found that the distribution of the epigenetic tags on genes controlling the regulation of appetite was dramatically remodelled. In other words, weight loss did not change the person’s DNA but it did redistribute the epigenetic marks in the genome specialised in “appetite control”.
Notably, this remodelling of the epigenetic fingerprint occurred on the gene encoding the melanocortin receptor, which senses a key hormone in the regulation of hunger and satiety. So we concluded that sperm from obese men contain specific, and potentially heritable, epigenetic information that could change eating behaviour in offspring.
These findings reinforce the idea that environmental factors change epigenetic information contained in our gametes and could affect the eating behaviour and obesity risk of our children. Although the sample size was small, the statistical significance was strong.
A personal note related to this: the day after my son was born, as I was holding him in my arms, I could not help myself from thinking about his biological inheritance. Almost a hundred years ago, in February 1916, his great-grandfather was lunging, starving, in the hell of the battlefield of Verdun in the north-east of France.
My son’s ancestor experienced famines during the world wars. And, unlike hundreds of thousand of other young soldiers, he survived the war, returned to his small village in the south of France and eventually established his bloodline.
Did the various famines of the past century have an effect on his biology? Also, had the increase in food abundance of the past 60 years had an effect on his health? This thought triggered a sudden burst of anxiety.
However, while staring into my newborn son’s eyes that could barely open in the crude light of the maternity ward, I reassured myself. Thanks to the progress of science, my son will belong to the first generation of people who will be fully aware of the power they hold on the biological fate of their children. Compared with his predecessors, he will live more free to govern, if not his own destiny, then at least the destiny of his offspring.
Romain Barrès receives funding from the Novo Nordisk Foundation - Endocrinology Research. The Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Basic Metabolic Research is an independent Research Center at the University of Copenhagen partially funded by an unrestricted donation from the Novo Nordisk Foundation (www.metabol.ku.dk).
At the top of some children’s Christmas present wish list this year will be the new Hello Barbie doll.
Mattel’s latest doll connects to the internet via Wi-Fi and uses interactive voice response (IVR) to effectively converse with children. When the doll’s belt button is pushed, conversations are recorded and uploaded to servers operated by Mattel’s partner, ToyTalk.
Hello Barbie tries to engage with children in intelligible and free-flowing conversation by asking and responding to questions, as well as being able to learn about its users over time.
As Mattel’s website says:
Just like a real friend, Hello Barbie doll listens and adapts to the user’s likes and dislikes.
Some might welcome Hello Barbie and similar talking dolls, such as My Friend Cayla, as a fun and novel development in smart toys that will keep children occupied. Others have expressed concerns, such as the #HellNoBarbie from the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood.
As one reporter found, Hello Barbie prompts those conversing with her to divulge information about themselves, but when the focus is on her she quickly changes the subject to invariably gender-normative subjects and fashion.
Hello Barbie: Let’s get serious and talk about something really important: fashion.
She mines children for personal details but gives little in return, other than vacuous compliments and fashion advice. Her friend credentials come further into question as she routinely discloses all the information gathered to ToyTalk who operate the speech processing services for Hello Barbie.
As with many products, the detail that really matters is in the fine print; in this instance ToyTalk’s Hello Barbie privacy statement, so there are a few important points to consider before wrapping her up and putting her under the Christmas tree.
ToyTalk outlines that it may:
[…] use, store, process, convert, transcribe, analyze or review Recordings in order to provide, maintain, analyze and improve the functioning of the Services, to develop, test or improve speech recognition technology and artificial intelligence algorithms, or for other research and development and data analysis purposes.
Essentially it can use the information gathered from the child, or anyone who converses with Hello Barbie, for any purpose that it chooses under the vague wording “data analysis purposes”.
ToyTalk will also share recordings with unknown “vendors, consultants, and other service providers” as well as “responding to lawful subpoenas, warrants, or court orders”.
Has Hello Barbie become a sophisticated surveillance device masquerading as an innocuous child’s toy?
In England, the draft Investigatory Powers Bill introduces “equipment interference”, which allows security and intelligence agencies to interfere with electronic equipment in order to obtain data, such as communications, from a device. This would mean that government agencies could lawfully take over children’s toys and use them to monitor suspects.
These data collection practices are significant, as they reach much deeper than marketing practices that collect information about children’s likes and preferences. In conversing with toys, such as Hello Barbie, children reveal their innermost thoughts and private play conversations, details of which are intended for no one else to hear.
Once a child has developed a friendship with Hello Barbie, it might not be so easy to take her away.
ToyTalk does recognise that “no security measures are perfect” and that no method of data transmission can ever be “guaranteed against any interception or other type of misuse”.
Just last month the toy maker VTech reported 11.6 million accounts were compromised in a cyberattack, including those of 6.3 million children. Photos of children and parents, audio files, chat logs and the name, gender and birth date of children were accessed by the hackers.
It’s not just toys that are at risk. There are ongoing reports of baby monitors being hacked so that outsiders can view live footage of children (and family), talk to the infant and even control the camera remotely.
Smart toys are going to be tempting propositions for hackers, with some already proving that they could make My Friend Cayla swear, to more usual targets such as hacking credit card details.
Barbie has also been in hot water before. The Barbie Video Girl has a camera lens embedded in the doll’s chest disguised as a pendant which prompted the FBI to issue a warning that it could be used to make child pornography.
The Internet of Things provides direct access to children and their spaces through an increasing array of products and gizmos. Such security breaches not only act as a stark reminder of the vulnerability of children’s high-tech toys, but also lead us to reflect on other risks the trend in so-called smart toys might be introducing into children’s lives.
But Hello Barbie doesn’t just reveal a child’s private conversations to large corporations, and potentially law enforcement agencies. She also tells tales much closer to home: to parents.
A smartphone app enables parents to listen to the conversations between their child and their Hello Barbie. They can also receive alerts when new recordings become available, and can access and review the audio files.
Anyone with access to the parent account can also choose to share recordings and other content via Facebook, Twitter or YouTube. While some may see this as a novel feature, it is important to consider the potential loss of privacy to the child.
Play is an important part of the way children learn about the world. A key part of this is the opportunity for private spaces to engage in creative play without concerns about adults intruding.
It looks like Hello Barbie’s dream to be a fashion-setter might just come true as she pioneers a new trend for smart and connected toys. In turn, the child loses out on both a trusted toy and on the spaces where they can lose themselves in other worlds without worrying about who’s listening in.
Katina Michael receives funding from the Australian Research Council (ARC). She is affiliated with the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and the Australian Privacy Foundation (APF).
Emmeline Taylor does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.
It’s been just four years since we last visited J.K. Rowling’s magical world on the big screen, but it feels like much longer. And while this trailer for the prequel series Fantastic Beasts doesn’t have much to it, it’s a first glimpse at what it’s going to be like being back in this world—just with more American accents.
Music legend Dolly Parton turns 70 next month. And to celebrate she’s creating a time capsule to be opened on her 100th birthday. The capsule will contain plenty of unique pieces, but the most interesting item is a new song–a song we won’t be able to hear until the year 2046.
Gun violence has been a problem for a long time, but the recent shootings in Paris and San Bernardino have focused new attention on the issue.
Americans no longer just worry about someone shooting up a school or workplace for personal reasons. The threat of terrorism has added an alarming new dimension to the problem.
Coming up with effective and realistic solutions is not easy. Guns pose a tricky dilemma, because they can be used to do good or bad things. They can be used to commit heinous crimes, but they can be used to protect lives as well.
The challenge for lawmakers is to come up with ways to reduce the risk of criminal misuse of guns while preserving and even promoting the likelihood of guns being used in beneficial ways.
Ensuring that every firearm manufacturer and dealer operates as safely and responsibly as possible should be one piece of the puzzle.
A key way to ensure that gun companies have the right incentives would be to repeal the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act.
Enacted in 2005, this federal law gave gun sellers a special immunity from legal responsibilities that is not enjoyed by any other industry.
This law was enacted because a wave of lawsuits had put unprecedented pressure on the gun industry. In 1998, New Orleans became the first city to file a lawsuit against gun manufacturers. More than 30 other major American cities and counties soon followed. Other cases brought by individual victims of shootings began working their way through the courts as well.
As one of the lawyers at the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence helping to bring these cases, I saw very clearly the impact that they had. The lawsuits generated evidence of severe problems with distribution of guns, including undercover sting operations revealing how gun dealers knowingly allow people to make “straw purchases” on behalf of convicted felons who cannot pass a background check.
The lawsuits also changed perceptions about the issue. Rather than seeing gun violence simply as a crime issue, the press and public began focusing for the first time on specific ways in which the gun industry’s practices contribute to the danger.
Journalists wrote a flood of stories about topics like how gun companies boosted the lethality of their products to boost sales, how new technologies could make guns “personalized” to prevent unauthorized use and what government data showed about the illegal market for guns.
The lawsuits put enormous pressure on the gun industry to either reform its practices or face serious potential liability. From the industry’s perspective, that meant the lawsuits were a major threat. Rather than doing the right thing and cleaning up its act, the industry turned to Congress for relief. The Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act knocked out almost all of the litigation pending against gunmakers at the time.
If Congress decided to do away with this law, it would not be the first legislature that came to regret bestowing special immunity on gunmakers. California enacted a gun industry immunity law in 1983. Ten years later, a deranged gunman killed eight people and wounded six others in a shooting rampage at the office of a San Francisco law firm.
The killer used a pair of TEC-9 assault pistols, weapons with a notorious reputation for being designed and marketed in ways that appealed to criminals.
Survivors of the shooting and families of the victims brought a lawsuit against the manufacturer of the TEC-9s. They had compelling evidence of negligence but never got their day in court in front of a jury because judges ruled that the manufacturer was immune from liability under California’s statute.
Legislators in California were appalled and soon repealed the law, replacing it with a measure simply stating that those who design, distribute and market firearms have no special exemption from the normal legal duty to exercise ordinary care. California’s decision unfortunately became a moot point a few years later when Congress gave sweeping immunity to the gun industry on a nationwide basis.
The federal measure effectively bars almost any lawsuit against a gun manufacturer or wholesale distributor for failing to take reasonable steps to reduce the risk of criminal misuse of its products, such as exercising greater oversight of the retail dealers through which guns are sold.
It also bars a wide range of claims against retail sellers of firearms, leaving only a few narrow exceptions such as for certain types of claims based on statutory violations. For example, a gun dealer can be sued for knowingly selling a gun to a convicted felon or other legally disqualified purchaser. But if a dealer takes an “I know nothing” attitude and recklessly disregards circumstances that ought to raise reasonable suspicions or concerns about selling the gun, the dealer can invoke the federal immunity statute to avoid liability.
A case currently before the Supreme Court of Missouri provides a disturbing example of the federal law’s consequences.
Colby Sue Weathers had a long history of severe mental illness and substance abuse. She heard voices in her head and believed she was being monitored by a computer chip implanted inside her nose. She walked into a gun shop in May 2012, and, despite her debilitated mental condition, she managed to purchase a pistol.
She planned to shoot herself with it, but changed her mind and surrendered the gun to her parents. A few weeks later, Colby’s mother called the gun shop, told them about Colby’s mental problems and begged them not to sell another gun to Colby. She specifically warned the store that Colby would soon be receiving a Social Security check and was likely to use the money to buy another gun.
The shop could have simply declined to sell a gun to Colby, but it refused to use its discretion to refrain from making the sale. Two days later, Colby walked into the shop, purchased a pistol and then went home and used the gun to kill her father.
Colby’s mother sued the gun shop for negligently selling the gun to her daughter despite being specifically warned of the danger.
The case is compelling, for even many gun rights advocates would be troubled to hear that a gun store would ignore such a highly specific warning about a particular customer, particularly a desperate plea from a mother worried about her child.
But for the case to have any chance of succeeding, lawyers bringing it had to try to squeeze it into one of the narrow categories of claims that the federal law allows against gun dealers. So far at least, they have failed, as the case was thrown out on the ground that all of the legal theories asserted in the case are either barred by the federal statute or not recognized under Missouri law.
The Supreme Court of Missouri will hear arguments in the case on December 9. It is likely to take a few months to announce its decision, but when it does so, it can save the day by declaring that Colby’s mother has a claim that is viable under Missouri law and not precluded by the federal statute.
But bringing the lawsuit would not be such a convoluted, uphill battle if Congress had not bestowed special legal immunity on the gun shop and every other company in the gun business.
At the same time, I would argue that gun manufacturers and dealers should not be subject to any extraordinary forms of liability that do not apply to other products.
They should not be liable, for example, merely because a firearm is a weapon that is capable of being used to do harm. But if a gun manufacturer or dealer fails to take basic, reasonable precautions in distributing products, it should be held accountable under the law just as an irresponsible company in any other business would be.
Think about what the threat of liability for defective cars like the Ford Pinto has done for auto safety, or how the risk of liability for a dangerous product like the Dalkon Shield contraceptive device gives good incentives to the manufacturers of pharmaceuticals and other medical products. Why should the makers of firearms be any different?
With the risks of firearms in the wrong hands becoming ever more apparent, Congress should reconsider its regrettable decision to give the gun industry special immunity from legal responsibility.
Allen Rostron is an associate dean and professor at the University of Missouri - Kansas City School of Law. He was a senior staff attorney at the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence prior to becoming a law professor in 2003. The Brady Center represents plaintiffs in the cases discussed in this article.
The Internet is a diverse ecosystem of private and public stakeholders. By excluding a large sector of communities—like security researchers, artists, libraries, and user rights groups—trade negotiators skewed the priorities of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) towards major tech companies and copyright industries that have a strong interest in maintaining and expanding their monopolies of digital services and content. Negotiated in secret for several years with overwhelming influence from powerful multinational corporate interests, it's no wonder that its provisions do little to nothing to protect our rights online or our autonomy over our own devices. For example, everything in the TPP that increases corporate rights and interests is binding, whereas every provision that is meant to protect the public interest is non-binding and is susceptible to get bulldozed by efforts to protect corporations.
Below is a list of communities who were excluded from the TPP deliberation process, and some of the main ways that the TPP's copyright and digital policy provisions will negatively impact them. Almost all of these threats already exist in the United States and in many cases have already impacted users there, because the TPP reflects the worst aspects of the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). The TPP threatens to lock down those policies so these harmful consequences will be more difficult to remedy in future copyright reform efforts in the U.S. and the other eleven TPP countries. The impacts could also be more severe in those other countries because most of them lack the protections of U.S. law such as the First Amendment and the doctrine of fair use.
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If you're in the United States, urge your lawmakers to call a hearing on the contents of the TPP that will impact your digital rights, and more importantly, to vote this deal down when it comes to them for ratification:
It has been obvious for decades that copyright law is ill-matched for the opportunities and challenges created by the Internet. It's been equally obvious, however, that sensible copyright policies face huge practical barriers, in large part because few are willing to challenge the default assumption of copyright law that every time a copy is made the rightsholder's permission is required. That assumption makes no sense in the digital age, but it's hugely difficult to dislodge, especially at the international stage.
Take the 1996 Internet Treaties of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). WIPO recognized the copyright mismatch back when the commercial Internet was still in its infancy, and acting with uncharacteristically lightning speed, moved to address it through a Copyright Treaty and Performances and Phonograms Treaty. But for the most part the changes introduced by those treaties only made things worse. That's because the measures they introduced—such as legal protection for Digital Rights Management (DRM)— merely papered over the real problem; namely the disconnect between a legal regime that enforces a monopoly on the right to copy, and a global network in which copying is a routine and integral feature.
Now fast forward to 2015. This week, another biennial meeting of the WIPO Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR) is being held in Geneva, where delegates continue to address the mismatch between copyright law and the online and digital environment. Most of the measures being considered are less ambitious than those undertaken in 1996, such as possible resolutions on copyright limitations and exceptions for libraries, archives and educational uses, though there's discussion of a future treaty for broadcasters and cablecasters (about which we'll be writing more later in the week) that would mark a more significant shift.
Against this background of inchmeal progress on these long established lines, it was almost startling to see some genuinely big ideas. Last week, the Group of Latin American and Caribbean Countries (GRULAC) introduced a new Proposal for Analysis of Copyright Related to the Digital Environment. The proposal builds on previous work done at WIPO, including a landmark report from 2003 on Copyright Limitations and Exceptions in the Digital Environment that fed into a separate proposal on limitations and exceptions that four of the same GRULAC countries made in 2008.
The difference between the earlier proposal and this new one lies in its breadth. Rather than looking only at limitations and exceptions, or bolting on new legal frameworks onto copyright law such as protection for DRM or a broadcasters right, GRULAC proposes a broader study of how copyright could be made to work in the online and digital environment.
Much of the GRULAC document deals with copyrights in music, an area that probably most clearly exemplifies the deficiencies of copyright law for users and creators in the digital age. With respect to the much-contested question of streaming rights and revenues, for example, it suggests that online businesses and the music industry should be more transparent in their licensing and revenue sharing practices, and that the share of revenue received by music labels is disproportionately high compared with what composers and performers receive.
But the really more interesting parts of the paper address the larger false assumptions behind copyright law. For example, the report notes the unsuitability of the concept of “reproduction” in the digital environment, given that often “reproduction is only an accessory act inherent to the technological process used to make the work accessible to users.” It also identifies the first sale doctrine as a concept that doesn't translate cleanly into the digital environment, given that a digital “sale” actually results in a new copy being created, rather than in the transfer of an original object.
The “solution” that we too often hear to this mismatch between copyright law and the reality of the online and digital environment is simply “more enforcement,” such as criminalization of infringement, seizures and blocking of websites, and policing of users by their ISPs. Such measures don't work to stop infringement, but instead hurt ordinary users and reduce their respect for copyright law, while leaving its underlying deficiencies unaddressed.
The GRULAC paper, thankfully, doesn't make that same error, but makes a more intriguing suggestion—one that we have rarely heard in this debate, and never from rightsholders. It is suggested that rather than requiring rightsholders to give their permission for copyright works to be made available online, anyone wishing to put works online could do so under a compulsory license, provided that they paid equitable remuneration to the creators. This is essentially the way that terrestrial radio works today; radio stations benefit from a compulsory license that gives them access to a vast musical repertoire, and in return songwriters and publishers (and, in other countries, also performers) receive a royalty for airplay of their songs at a regulated rate.
To be clear, we don't endorse the proposal in this form. It would require many changes to national laws and collecting arrangements. New deals would have to be struck, and the balance of power between rightsholders, creators and users would shift in ways that might not benefit everyone. Many musicians don't love collecting societies that currently exist, and will have legitimate concerns about extending their reach. And so on.
That said, it's refreshing that the proposal was made at all. Indeed, for many years, EFF itself advocated for a licensing scheme for P2P music sharing, albeit one that was voluntary rather than compulsory. A consensus license for online content could eliminate many of the barriers that have made online streaming services so fragmented and inefficient. By preventing many innovative firms from creating global legal content offerings, these same barriers have also stoked the causes of widespread copyright infringement, so some kind of licensing arrangement could be a win-win for users and creators alike. It would be quite a game changer if WIPO could turn this proposal into real reform.
But it almost certainly can't. Many of WIPO's most powerful members have already signed away their ability to make such significant changes to copyright law, in other agreements outside of WIPO. In particular, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) locks the United States, Canada, Mexico, Japan and eight other countries into an outdated copyright law template that requires the authorization of authors (Article 18.59), producers and performers (Article 18.62), before making their works available online. So that's that.
The GRULAC proposal is not the last word on this topic. There's a lot we don't agree with in the document (in particular, it takes a much too desultory view of the prospect of extending copyright limitations and exceptions that allow for bypassing of DRM), but it does correctly state that “a more embracing analysis” of the shortcomings of copyright law in the digital age is needed. This ought to involve the freedom to think about big picture changes such as the idea of new compulsory licenses for the use of content online. The fact that such discussions may have been precluded by the TPP is a further serious indictment of that trade agreement's anti-democratic, captured, and backwards-looking process.
Whether we follow the EU’s lead will be debated at ALA 2016 Midwinter session
The Right to be forgotten issue raises a fundamental tension between the rights of individuals and society (Image: Wikimedia)
In the European Union, a user has the right to have links to certain personal information removed from the results of web searches involving his or her name. This “right to be forgotten”(RTBF) has stimulated robust debate about the appropriateness of such a regime in other countries. ALA’s Office for Information Technology Policy (OITP) will delve into the pros and cons about its possible adoption here in the U.S. during a Breakout session on Saturday, January 9, at 10:30-11:30 a.m. at ALA’s Midwinter Conference at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center.
Expert speakers include Gail Slater, vice president, legal and regulatory policy, Internet Association, which represents the leading Internet companies, and James G. Neal, university librarian emeritus, Columbia University, member of the board of trustees, Freedom to Read Foundation, and a member of ALA’s executive board. The session will be moderated by Alan S. Inouye, director of ALA’s OITP.
The “right to be forgotten” refers to an individual’s right to compel a search engine service to have a process for removing links to certain personal information from search results involving his or her name. Personal blogs, arrest records, explicit photos and business critiques are now typically published forever. Should individuals have the right to have links to certain personal information removed from web search results? Under most current applications of RTBF, information is not removed or destroyed at its source. Rather, a search engine or web page owner prevents links from appearing in the search results list that is produced following a name search. The originally published information generally remains available and could potentially be located by using a different search engine or by trying different search terms. However, in some applications of RTBF, the underlying published information may, in fact, be removed.
Dan Lee, chair of the OITP Advisory Committee and director of the Office of Copyright Management and Scholarly Communication at the University of Arizona, explains that:
“Libraries and librarians preserve and provide access to information. Since RTBF obscures information or essentially hides it from those searching on the Internet, it effectively removes access to information. This poses a challenge to a librarian’s social responsibility to help users find the information they need, and is especially harmful when there is a clear public interest in having access to it. On the other hand, people should have control over the visibility of their own information. Sometimes, there are compelling reasons for why access to certain information should be eliminated or minimized. Thus, there is a fundamental tension between the rights of individuals and society. This should be a very interesting panel.”
The post Where does the U.S. stand on “right to be forgotten” policy? appeared first on District Dispatch.
Street in Montigo Bay, Jamaica
This week, the Re:create Coalition of which ALA is a founding member held two events: One highlighting academic research in copyright held at Howard University School of Law; and a half day of panel discussions on “Modernizing Copyright Law for Today’s Reality.”
The program on academic research hosted by the Institute for Intellectual Property and Social Justice at Howard University School of Law was a treat because not one sound bite was uttered. One gets so much of the sound bite thing working and living in DC that is gets tiresome. You can imagine. At the IP social justice event, discussion centered on progressive ways to think about copyright in today’s global, digital information society. One speaker was Larisa Kingston Mann who discussed her research in the music and dance world of Jamaicans. Jamaicans living in poverty are creators that operate in a totally unregulated environment, not guided by western copyright law. This is not a big surprise when you reflect on the colonial history of Jamaica. Why would Jamaicans follow laws established by their oppressors meant to assimilate them in western ways?
Jamaicans produce mass street dances where individuals can become celebrities by dancing or singing with no expectation of compensation. Their version of royalties is being mentioned in a song. They openly use copyrighted music and record their own versions over instrumental tracks. Creating an original work as we conceive of it in the dominant copyright paradigm is meaningless because harkening back to works that have already been created and that link to their culture is the value they embrace. Mann’s presentation was fascinating and pointed out that (once again) official policy is far removed from behavior on the ground.
This reminded me of academic authors who want to share their research and do not expect monetary compensation. Instead it is the opinion of their peers that matters. Like the Jamaican creators, their royalties consist of being mentioned in another person’s work in the form of citations. Official copyright policy tends to think of authors only in the commercial context, again far removed from behavior on the ground.
Of course, many academic authors are paid for a living – a circumstance that commercial authors are quick to note. But they are missing the point. “One size fits all” copyright policy is just like the clothing. One size rarely fits all. Copyright law does not recognize the majority of the creators in the world. It favors a specific kind of author unduly focusing on the incentive aspect of copyright rather than on the true purpose—to advance learning.
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With the concealed carry on campus bill moving steadily through the Florida Legislature, the issue of gun violence has been hotly debated, as well as underage access to such weapons as the result of an insurgence of gun owners.
The Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office reported over 200 gun-related cases involving juveniles in 2013 and nearly 500 in 2014. There have been as many cases this year.
According to the Tampa Bay Times, Hillsborough County has seen an increase in the number of juveniles facing adult-level charges, with data from the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice showing an increase from 101 to 124 in the last fiscal year.
The ability to make this shift, according to the Times, lies in discretion given to Florida prosecutors to charge juveniles as adults in a process known as direct filing, which is increasingly likely if a gun is involved.
“Typically, when you’re dealing with gun crimes, the bar is starting pretty high right away,” Michael Sinacore, Hillsborough County chief assistant state attorney, told the Times.
“This is the new phenomenon,” Ralph C. Stoddard, a Hillsborough County circuit judge, told the Times. “It used to be that when we’d do juvenile detention hearings, we rarely saw gun cases … and now, every time we do detentions, I see at least one gun case.”
This increase has raised concerns, with the recent debate about concealed carry on campus raging in classrooms.
One organization, Students for Gun Free Schools (SGFS) cited several reasons against the concealed weapons in an essay entitled “Why Our Campuses are Safer Without Concealed Handguns.” These reasons include “the prevalence of drugs and alcohol … the risk of suicide and mental health issues … the likelihood of gun thefts … (and) an increased risk of accidental shootings.”
According to a 2001 study by U.S. Department of Education, “the overall homicide rate at postsecondary education institutions was 0.07 per 100,000 of enrollment in 1999 … the criminal homicide rate in the United States was 5.7 per 100,000 persons overall in 1999, and 14.1 per 100,000 for persons ages 17 to 29.”
“This research demonstrates conclusively that students on the campuses of postsecondary institutions are significantly safer than both their off-campus counterparts and the nation as a whole,” SGFS argued in its essay.
Not all homicides involve guns — however, they were involved in 68 percent of all homicides in the U.S. in 2010, according to the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence. And while not all juvenile gun cases are homicides — some are robberies, some are simply charges of possession — statistics show they are increasing in number.
With an increase in the number of juveniles being given adult charges, the consequences could become greater since adult charges are often harsher than those for juveniles.
According to the Times, Hillsborough was not the only county to see an increase in juveniles being charged as adults, but it isn’t a state-wide trend, as other counties either stayed level or dropped.
The Share-a-Bull bike program at USF is facing a harsh and disappointing reality: College students cannot be trusted with nice things.
This semester, USF Outdoor Recreation introduced a new program to allow students and faculty to rent the bicycles and ride them across the university, free of charge. The bikes can be taken anywhere on campus, and they make the trek to class a breeze.
When the bikes were first introduced, students seemed to be excited and grateful for the easy and efficient transportation to which they would now have access.
That enthusiasm, however, failed to carry over to the upkeep and use of these bikes. Students have raced the bicycles, ridden them down stairwells, loaded them up with multiple riders, taken them off campus, refused to secure them to designated racks and attempted to steal them by breaking the internal computers.
This utter lack of respect for USF and the free program has led to damage to the bikes that, this semester alone, has cost over $4,000 in parts. Currently, 30 of the 100 bikes are undergoing repairs. While those repairs are covered in the two-year operating budget originally approved as part of the Green Energy Fund grant for the program, they do not bode well for the future of the project.
Francis Morgan, assistant director of Outdoor Recreation said they are already considering what to do when the repair funds run out. If users continue to abuse the bikes, they will have to pay to use them.
We were gifted an amazing and completely free program that makes commuting on campus a cinch. How did we repay this kindness? By utterly ruining it in a matter of months. Students, we are not entitled to any of the amenities offered to us on campus. Grow up, and show some respect, or those services will be taken away from us.
It is obvious the program is something students adore. There are about 3,400 active users on the Social Bicycle app used to access bikes, with approximately 40 new members joining every day. Each bike is ridden around 20 times during the week and the demand has led the university to consider increasing to 200 bikes by the end of spring semester.
As of now, students and faculty can quickly and effortlessly rent a bike and travel across the entire Tampa campus, which spans 1,700 acres, for free. Thanks, however, to the foolishness of our peers, that will more than likely not be the case for much longer.
To those who can’t seem to understand what appropriate behavior looks like, here are a few pointers: Open the app on your phone and rent a bike; Walk over to said bike and unlock it for your journey; Climb on and begin to make your way to class.
But here is where it becomes tricky: As tempting as that stairwell may look, stick to the sidewalks; Once you get to class, lock it up and go get your education; If Suzy asks for a ride back to MSC, don’t put her on the back of the bike — Tell her to rent her own, it’s free.
And most importantly, don’t try to steal the bike you are already allowed to use whenever you want.
The fact that we have been able to utilize this program for free has been wonderful. But no one would criticize USF for removing this program after the insolent behavior demonstrated by students.
Breanne Williams is a junior majoring in mass communications.
Harry Potter enthusiasts dress as Hogwarts students (image from Wikimedia).
An archive of the CopyTalk webinar on fan fiction and copyright issues originally broadcast on Thursday, November 5, 2015 is available.
Fan-created works are in general broadly available to people at the click of a link. Fan fiction hasn’t been the subject of any litigation, but it plays an increasing role in literacy as its creation and consumption has skyrocketed. Practice on the ground can matter as much as court cases and the explosion of noncommercial creativity is a big part of the fair use ecosystem. This presentation touched on many of the ways in which creativity has impacted recent judicial rulings on fair use, from Google books , to putting a mayor’s face on a T-shirt, to copying a competitor’s ad for a competing ad. Legal scholar and counsel to the Organization for Transformative Works, Rebecca Tushnet enlightened us.
This was a really interesting webinar. Do check it out!
Rebecca Tushnet clerked for Chief Judge Edward R. Becker of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia and Associate Justice David H. Souter of the United States Supreme Court and spent two years as an associate at Debevoise & Plimpton in Washington, DC, specializing in intellectual property. After two years at the NYU School of Law, she moved to Georgetown, where she now teaches intellectual property, advertising law, and First Amendment law.
Her work currently focuses on the relationship between the First Amendment and false advertising law. She has advised and represented several fan fiction websites in disputes with copyright and trademark owners. She serves as a member of the legal team of the Organization for Transformative Works, a nonprofit dedicated to supporting and promoting fanworks, and is also an expert on the law of engagement rings.
Our next CopyTalk is December 3rd at 2pm Eastern/11am Pacific. Our topic will be the 1201 rulemaking and this year’s exemptions. Get ready for absurdity!
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