For the Love of Culture, Google, Copyright and our Future. Astute and moving commentary by Lawrence Lessig, a love letter to the real-space library. Whatever your view of it, notice first just how different this future promises to be. In real libraries, in real space, access is not metered at the level of the page [...]
After Three Months, Only 35 Subscriptions for Newsday's Web Site In late October, Newsday, the Long Island daily that the Dolans bought for $650 million, put its web site, newsday.com, behind a pay wall. The paper was one of the first non-business newspapers to take the plunge by putting up a pay wall, so in [...]
It's been 18 months since O'Reilly, the world's largest publisher of tech books, stopped using DRM on its ebooks. In the intervening time, O'Reilly's ebook sales have increased by 104 percent. Now, when you talk about ebooks and DRM, there's always someone who'll say, “But what about [textbooks|technical books|RPG manuals]? Their target audience is so [...]
In an article published by the Washington Post, former Homeland Security secretary Michael Chertoff warns America of the need to install body-imaging screening machines at airports. He rails against critics of the devices, accusing them of being ideologues setting out to 'alarm the public.' At the foot of the piece, the fig leaf: Chertoff … [...]
Damian Kulash of the band OK Go has published a tremendously informative, frustrating, and important open letter about the reason that the band's videos can't be embedded on sites like this. OK Go rose to prominence on the strength of its viral Internet videos, but now EMI, its label, won't allow embedding for its videos, [...]
Today, the French government followed suit, issuing an advisory suggesting that all versions of Internet Explorer, which is included with Windows, are vulnerable to the attack that was used against Google, Adobe and an estimated 30 other western companies, by hackers originating in China. Google said the attacks were used to steal intellectual property and [...]
The ColorAdd® system was developed by designer Miguel Neiva to allow those who suffer from different types of colorblindness to easily identify colors, and allowing them to interact with certainty in situations where color plays a key role like in navigation, reference and organization. via Color + Design Blog / Color Identifying System For The Color Blind by [...]
When Jack Benny fans discovered that the CBS vaults contained some 25 original Jack Benny TV show episodes previously thought lost, they rejoiced. They approached the network for release of the public-domain footage, even offering to foot the bill for digital transfer and preservation. CBS balked, insisting that the fan club get approval from the [...]
In a statement issued today, the German Federal Office for Security in Information Technology known as BSI recommends that all Internet Explorer users switch to an alternative browser. They may resume using Explorer after a fix is issued by Microsoft for a critical vulnerability that has been implicated in the Chinese cyberattack against Google.If you [...]
Jamie “Public Domain” Boyle sez, “When Ray Bradbury's 1953 classic, Fahrenheit 451 was published, it was scheduled to enter the public domain this month — January 1, 2010. But then we changed the law. And Bradbury's firemen look like pikers compared to the cultural conflagration that ensued. The works may not be physically destroyed — [...]