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Nerdcore rapper Dan Bull earns a good living from his Youtube videos, but he is constantly being dragged away from the studio to fight fraudulent copyright claims from major labels, who are able to censor his work with impunity. The video for his 2010 song I'm Not Pissed has been removed ten times by automated, fraudulent claims from the likes of BMG Rights Management and PRS, who face no consequences for lying about their involvement with his work.

In a new song called Fuck Content ID, Bull slams Google's automated Content ID takedown system, documenting his woes at the hands of Big Content, and with Google, who collaborate in a system of copyfraud that neither one seems to care about.

For his 2010 [NSFW] song “I’m not pissed”, he reveals a screen-grab showing 18 separate claims that have been made against it. While some of them were released after being disputed, two of them, BMG Rights Management and PRS, rejected the dispute and stand by their initial claim.

“It is up to me to prove myself innocent by asking eighteen different publishing companies through an automated system to revoke the automated claims. Each publisher has a month to reply, with no obligation to even do so. If even one of the eighteen publishers says ‘nope’ then it’s back to square one,” Bull explains.

“Any financial loss or restrictions on my channel are entirely on me, and will not be compensated for once the claim is lifted. This has been going on since last year with no end in sight,” he adds.

Why YouTube’s Automated Copyright Takedown System Hurts Artists [Ben Jones/Torrentfreak]

Prior to Whatsapp's $19B acquisition by Facebook, the company sent a large number of spurious takedowns against projects on Github. In a DMCA notice served by Whatsapp's General Counsel to Github, a number of projects are targeted for removal on the basis that they are "content that infringes on WhatsApp Inc.'s copyrights and trademarks."

This is grossly improper. DMCA takedown notices never apply to alleged trademark violations (it's called the "Digital Millennium Copyright Act" and not the "Digital Millennium Trademark Act"). Using DMCA notices to pursue trademark infringements isn't protecting your interests -- it's using barratry-like tactics to scare and bully third parties into participating in illegitimate censorship.

The letter goes on to demand takedown of these Github projects on the basis that they constitute "unauthorized use of WhatsApp APIs, software, and/or services" -- again, this is not a copyright issue, and it is improper to ask Github to police the code its hosts on this basis. It is certainly not the sort of activity that the DMCA's takedown procedure exists to police.

So what about copyright infringement? In the related Hacker News thread, a number of the projects' authors weigh in on the censorship, making persuasive cases that they software did not infringe on any of Whatsapp's copyrights -- rather, these were tools that made use of the Whatsapp API, were proof-of-concept security tools for Whatsapp, or, in one case, merely contained the string "whatsapp" in its sourcecode.

There may well have been some legitimately infringing material on Github, but it's clear that Whatsapp's General Counsel did not actually limit her or his request to this material. Instead, the company deliberately overreached the bounds of the DMCA, with total indifference to the rights of other copyright holders -- the creators of the software they improperly had removed.

Unfortunately, there are no real penalties for this sort of abuse. Which is a shame, because Whatsapp has $19B in the bank that a smart lawyer who wanted to represent the aggrieved parties could certainly take a chunk out of.

(via Hacker News)

legorobo:waka shares this awesome armored train carrying a squad of tough looking mecha. The train’s brutal lines and tank turrets evoke a dieselpunk style, with just the right amount of detail mixed in alongside the solid slab-like surfaces.

Sony Pictures has teamed up with UK-based anti-piracy group Industry Trust, adding to the group's "Moments Worth Paying For" campaign.

The upcoming 'Amazing Spider-Man 2' will launch with an exclusive anti-piracy trailer aimed at keeping young people away from film piracy. Spider-Man, played by Andrew Garfield, will be in the footage, ensuring that the character pushes consumers to stick to legal content.

Industry Trust research suggests that 16-34 year-old males that see any of the "Moments Worth Paying For" trailers are then "twice as likely to pay for content."

Liz Bales, director general at Industry Trust for IP Awareness added: "With each trailer execution delivering more traction and success for the campaign, it's key that this momentum continues. We're delighted to have partnered for the first time with Sony Pictures Releasing U.K. on one of the tent pole releases for 2014."

The movie's director, Marc Webb, also added: "The 'Moments Worth Paying For' campaign -- which we're very happy to be partnering with -- is a fantastic way that we can enlighten film lovers, by helping them to experience the levels of work and creativity that go into bringing them the movies they love."

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IT World: Archive film showcases the promotion of operating system by Bell Labs.

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An airline passenger with a medical condition requiring small amounts of food at regular intervals was stymied when the LHA TSA declared his peanut butter to be a "liquid." But he cleverly spread the peanut butter onto some saltines, whereupon it was no longer a liquid and was allowed on the flight. USA USA USA. (Thanks, Alice!)

Klemens Torggler's designed a thoroughly wonderful and mind-melting door system based on rotating, interlocking squares. There are several variations on the theme on his site, but the one above is the most elegant and polished of the lot.

Klemens Torggler`s doors and paintings (via JWZ)

Dmitry Kozak, Russia's Olympian deputy prime minister warned a Wall Street Journal reporter that he would release hidden-camera footage of journalists in their hotel bathrooms if they continued to complain about the substandard hotels in Sochi.

Just a reminder for anyone thinking of travelling to Sochi after the Olympics for a spot of tourism: according to Russia's deputy prime-minister, the hotel bathrooms have surveillance cameras that watch you in the shower.

“We have surveillance video from the hotels that shows people turn on the shower, direct the nozzle at the wall and then leave the room for the whole day,” he said. An aide then pulled a reporter away before Mr. Kozak could be questioned further on surveillance in hotel rooms. “We’re doing a tour of the media center,” the aide said.

Russian Official To Hotel Critics: We Have Surveillance Videos Of You In The Bathroom [Mary Beth Quirk/Consumerist]

"This is an animated gif of a chicken wearing a prosthetic tail to counterbalance its weight and make it walk like a dinosaur."

From preparing the bomb to dropping it—the explosion is a few seconds after 8:40. [Video Link]

This silent film shows the final preparation and loading of the "Fat Man" bomb into "Bockscar," the plane which dropped the bomb on Nagasaki. It then shows the Nagasaki explosion from the window of an observation plane. This footage comes from Los Alamos National Laboratory. I have not edited it in any way from what they gave me except to improve the contrast a little — it is basically "raw." I have annotated it with some notes on the bombing and what you can see — feel free to disable it if you don't want it.

I suggest leaving them on. This is the first time I've ever seen a video benefit from YouTube annotations! [via Nuclear Secrecy and MeFi]

Anyone care to attempt this paint scheme? (Not me, thanks! )

Yesterday, I mentioned the importance of remembering that creationist Ken Ham's theology doesn't actually represent official-everybody-believes-this Christian theology. Or even, necessarily, mainstream Christian theology. And here's more evidence of that: Pat Robertson does not believe the Earth is only 6,000 years old and would like Ken Ham to stop making his side look dumb. Pat Robertson.

The ACLU is representing Scott and Sharon Lane, the parents of a child known in the proceedings as "CC," in a case against the Sabine Parish, Louisiana School Board, where their child was ridiculed for his Buddhist faith, and was forced to endure Christian indoctrination, including forced prayer, in the class. They say that their son's sixth grade curriculum included exam questions like "ISN'T IT AMAZING WHAT THE _____________ HAS MADE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" (the correct answer was "LORD"). The school superintendent told them that they had no business being upset by this, because the school is in the Bible Belt, and he recommended sending the child to a school 25 miles away where there were "more Asians."

The ACLU is calling on supporters of the Lanes and CC to sign a petition to Attorney General Eric Holder, asking for a "an immediate investigation into unlawful religious discrimination in Sabine Parish public schools."

To the right, the charming logo of Negreet High, whose school team is the "Negreet Indians."

Like any parents, we were deeply concerned when our son C.C. began getting sick to his stomach on the way to school each morning.

At first, we thought he had fallen ill. But we soon found out a far more disturbing truth—that our son, a Buddhist of Thai descent, was afraid to go to school because his teacher was chastising him in front of his peers for his Buddhist faith.

As we dug deeper, we discovered that our son’s sixth-grade curriculum at Negreet High included extreme religious indoctrination. The school itself was covered in religious icons. Christian prayer was incorporated into nearly every school event. And our son’s teacher routinely preached her biblical beliefs to students and tested the children on their piety with exam questions such as this one: "ISN'T IT AMAZING WHAT THE _____________ HAS MADE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

When our son failed to answer religious questions like this correctly (the answer was “LORD”), his teacher mocked him for his beliefs.

Religious Discrimination Has No Place in the Classroom (Thanks, Catherine!)

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"Salvador Dalek" is a long-running t-shirt gag (here's another variant, one from Threadless, an old Ebay auction... there's certainly many more!). I like it a lot. (via Wil Wheaton)

Artist Li Hongbo produces gorgeous sculptures made from meticulously cut sheets of fan-folded paper, stacked tightly so that the pieces appear to be made of solid composite or stone. But when Li pulls at them, they stretch and slide most gloriously, turning into slinkoid paper-chains that are pure visual hilarity.

A special report on Arrestedmotion showcases some of the best of Li's work, which is on display at the Klein Sun Gallery in NYC.

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Openings: Li Hongbo – “Tools Of Study” @ Klein Sun Gallery [Sleepboy/Arrestedmotion]

(via Colossal)

Quartz' Roberto A. Ferdman and Ritchie King tallies which countries drink the most hard liquor. Surprises: Russia comes in second place to the very hard-drinking Koreans, and the U.S. comes out comfortably ahead of Europe. [via Gawker]

Bonus surprise: Turkey pips Britain & Ireland to take the #1 tea-drinking crown.

Charlotte, who is seven, wrote this devastating letter to the Lego company over the way that girl characters and boy characters are handled in its increasingly gendered toys: "All the girls did was sit at home, go to the beach, and shop, and they had no jobs but the boys went on adventures, worked, saved people, and had jobs, even swam with sharks."

She calls on Lego "to make more Lego girl people and let them go on adventures and have fun ok!?!"

That's a pretty unassailable request. Thank you, Charlotte, for putting it so well.

7yo Charlotte writes an adorable and strongly worded letter to LEGO regarding the lack of adventures for girls.

In Jason Edward Harrington's Dear America, I Saw You Naked, he reveals that he was the anonymous TSA agent who wrote the Taking Sense Away tell-all/whistleblower blog. Harrington's piece is a shocking and eye-opening look into the world of TSA agents, especially the section dealing with the "IO room" where the nude photos of travellers who used the Rapiscan machines were displayed:

Most of my co-workers found humor in the I.O. room on a cruder level. Just as the long-suffering American public waiting on those security lines suspected, jokes about the passengers ran rampant among my TSA colleagues: Many of the images we gawked at were of overweight people, their every fold and dimple on full awful display. Piercings of every kind were visible. Women who’d had mastectomies were easy to discern—their chests showed up on our screens as dull, pixelated regions. Hernias appeared as bulging, blistery growths in the crotch area. Passengers were often caught off-guard by the X-Ray scan and so materialized on-screen in ridiculous, blurred poses—mouths agape, à la Edvard Munch. One of us in the I.O. room would occasionally identify a passenger as female, only to have the officers out on the checkpoint floor radio back that it was actually a man. All the old, crass stereotypes about race and genitalia size thrived on our secure government radio channels.

There were other types of bad behavior in the I.O. room—I personally witnessed quite a bit of fooling around, in every sense of the phrase. Officers who were dating often conspired to get assigned to the I.O. room at the same time, where they analyzed the nude images with one eye apiece, at best. Every now and then, a passenger would throw up two middle fingers during his or her scan, as though somehow aware of the transgressions going on.

But the only people who hated the body-scanners more than the public were TSA employees themselves. Many of my co-workers felt uncomfortable even standing next to the radiation-emitting machines we were forcing members of the public to stand inside. Several told me they submitted formal requests for dosimeters, to measure their exposure to radiation. The agency’s stance was that dosimeters were not necessary—the radiation doses from the machines were perfectly acceptable, they told us. We would just have to take their word for it. When concerned passengers—usually pregnant women—asked how much radiation the machines emitted and whether they were safe, we were instructed by our superiors to assure them everything was fine.

Dear America, I Saw You Naked [Jason Edward Harrington/Politico]

(via Sean Bonner)

Jason Edward Harrington, the former TSA officer who revealed the uselessness of the Rapiscan body scanners the federal government squandered $40 million on, has written an article for Politico about his time working at the TSA and his run-ins with the apparatchiks and nomenklatura in charge. Included in the article is a list of code words used by TSA officers he's compiled. Here are a few:

Alfalfa: TSA malespeak for an attractive female passenger.

BBC: Bogus Bag Check, or Bullshit Bag Check. What happens when a not-too-bright x-ray operator decides to call a bag search.

Code Red: Officer malespeak. Denotes an attractive female passenger wearing red.

Fanny Pack, Lane 2: Code for an attractive female passenger.

Retaliatory wait time: What happens when a TSA officer doesn’t like your attitude. There are all sorts of ways a TSA officer can subtly make you wait longer to get through security, citing imaginary alarms, going “above the SOP” for “a more thorough screening,” pretending that something in your bag or on your full body image needs to be resolved—the punitive possibilities are endless, and there are many tricks in the screener’s bag.

Xray Xray Xray!: Code for an attractive female passenger, general.

Yellow Alert: Code for an attractive female passenger, yellow clothing.

Ziptop baggie: A magical thing that renders liquids safe for airplanes.

(Cory posted about this article as well, highlighting some other aspects.) Dear America, I Saw You Naked - And yes, we were laughing. Confessions of an ex-TSA agent.

Boing Boing reader RedandJonny shot and shared this photo, "An AT-AT mother feeding her young," in our Boing Boing Flickr Pool. If you would like to submit your images for consideration on Boing Boing, share them in the pool!

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A skirmish over an unpaid bill in CCP Games' spacefaring MMORPG EVE Online escalated to a battle of epic proportions on Monday, costing its participants an estimated $500,000 in real-world cash so far, according to a USA Today report. When a missed ...

It’s tricky to get the timing right. Some people do nothing but update their engine. they have re-factored it so much and re-implemented everything so often that it is a true work of art, worthy of actually putting in books on how to code. These people never ship a game. The other extreme is people who are still using assembly language routines for loading in ini files because they wrote them in 1996. These people have tech support issues galore, and are probably still using Directx3.

In between there somewhere is common sense, if you *are* going to write your own engine and not use someone else’s. I think, from chatting to devs and surfing a lot on developer forums, that people tend to want to redesign their engine after every game. They consider that quite a major compromise compared to their real hidden urge to do it every morning. The thing is, if you are doing that you aren’t really writing an engine, you are just writing a new game from scratch all the time.

I tend to go with a system of marginal improvement. I still have some code from about 5 games ago (non critical stuff like ini file loading, text handling, game timers and some math stuff), but a lot of it is fresher. The graphics stuff, as you would imagine gets a major refresh more often, and my engine only contains some pretty ‘raw’ directx wrapper and vertex buffer / text engine stuff. The actual ‘scene management’ for my games is done in the game itself.

Despite the occasional between-project update and maintenance, occasionally you have to step in and clean things up. The last big update was when I went from Directx7 (Democracy 2, Kudos games…) to Directx9 (GSB,GTB,Democracy 3). This time I’m updating almost everything BUT the directx version.

I recently bought Visual Studio 2013, mostly for the concurrency profiler to enable me to experiment with multi-threading more. This was a good opportunity to take a look at some of the flakier things in my engine. I have a lot of warnings in there for data-conversion and other sloppiness. I also have code I never use (I’m culling it), and the worst and most embarrassing thing is that I can’t decide if I like char* or std::string. I Figure that std::string must be at least a bit better, more robust and safe than char*, so I’m trying to purge all that char* from the engine, and eventually, the game. I’m also planning on re-wiring stuff so that the main game code doesn’t have any FILE* or other old fashioned stuff, but uses my file wrapper more.

Why? Mostly because I can see me heading towards cross platform eventually. maybe not with the next game, but baby-steps and all that… Plus it makes life easier if getting my engine ported is a less messy business. I’m sure after a few days of sorting out this stuff I’ll be climbing the walls and wanting to code some explosions again…

If you've ever dreamed of owning a bank-vault mounded high with shiny coins in which you can bathe like Scrooge McDuck, now is your chance. A Swiss bank-vault filled with 8 million Swiss 5-cent pieces is up for auction. The vault was made in 1913 for the Schweizer Volksbank. The coins -- 15 tons' worth -- were used in a 2013 installation in which they were dumped in a public square, with no security, as an exercise in public trust. The coins and the safe are presently in Basel. You will have to relocate them.

Deposit Safe

- Year of contruction: 1912
- Swiss handmade craftsman piece of work
- Total of 1619 deposit boxes
- All keys available
- Dimensions: total length: 22.3m; height: 2.2m; width: 0.54m
- Containing 5 Elements
- Current room dimensions: 9.38 x 4.87
- Boxes and lockers are a handmade fabrication of steel and brass
- Plinth elements of marble
- Additional middle corpus is already in the Swiss National Museum in Zurich

Coins

- 8 Million pieces of Swiss 5 cent coins ("Rappen")
- 15 tons of "liquid" money
- Dimension of the money: 6m3
- Alloy: Copper 92% / Aluminium 6% / Nickel 2%
- Caliber: 17,15 mm, Weight: 1,80 g, Thickness: 1,25 mm

Original Swiss Bank Deposit Safe - Money Swimming Pool (via JWZ)

There’s a giant soft spot in my heart for Calvin and Hobbes, some of my best childhood laughs came from his snowman antics especially. When I saw this creation by Tyler Sky (Bricksky), I had no choice but to share it here. Tyler has perfectly captured the characters, as well as the hilarious snowman antics. If you live in Vancouver, it sounds like you can even see it in person, at the Oakridge Mall Lego store.

(click to embiggen)

When you log in to a service with Facebook, the company exposes an enormous amount of sensitive personal information to the service's operator -- everything from your political views to your relationship status. What's more, logging into a service with Facebook also exposes your contacts' personal information to the service: their locations, political views, organizations, religion, and more.

...and here's what a brand knows when you login via facebook (via Dan Hon)

Andy Dahl had suffered his share of delays at the hands of the NonLocal HelpDesk, but usually they were simply a matter of insurmountable language barriers or inexplicable delays. Today the threat was somewhat more sinister...

HelpDesk, NonLocal [14:13]: 
regarding your computer slowness issue
share the screen

**SCREEN SHARING INITIATED BY Dahl, Andy** [14:14]

HelpDesk, NonLocal [14:17]: 
give me control 

**SCREEN CONTROL INITIATED BY Dahl, Andy** [14:18] 

Dahl, Andy [14:23]: 
S%Topt
S%TOP
%

**SCREEN CONTROL TERMINATED BY Dahl, Andy** [14:23]

HelpDesk, NonLocal [14:24]: 
do shift+ delete
i am unable to do it form here

Dahl, Andy [14:25]: 
what are you trying to delete?

HelpDesk, NonLocal [14:25]: 
its a temporary files

Dahl, Andy [14:25]: 
You can't delete all those files you selected.
They are not all temp files.

HelpDesk, NonLocal [14:26]: 
they are

Dahl, Andy [14:26]: 
No. They are not all temp files. Just because something has the letters 'temp' in it does NOT mean it is a temp file.
MasterOrderTemplate.xml, CoreTemperatureController.cpp, and UpdateTemporaryJobPostings.SQL are resource that I NEED. They are NOT temp files.

HelpDesk, NonLocal [14:27]: 
while we run this search
(.*temp.*)
we will get only the temp files

Dahl, Andy [14:27]: 
No. You will get every file that has the letters 'temp' in the file name. Not all of those are temp files.

HelpDesk, NonLocal [14:27]: 
No
not like that
what happens is temp files are system generated it should not be the original file that you have on the folders in order to resolve the issue i need to delete it even the next level will do the same

Dahl, Andy [14:30]: 
With all due respect, I'm sorry but I can't allow you to delete those files. Not all of them are temp files.

HelpDesk, NonLocal [14:30]: 
alright
i will assign this ticket to next level

Disaster averted, Andy finally took the bathroom break he had fortunately postponed during the beginning of the screen control session.

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