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Phoenix666 writes:

Cary Sherman, the chairman and CEO of the Recording Industry Association of America, has some choice words about the current state of US copyright law. He says that under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, rightsholders must play a game of whack-a-mole with Internet companies to get them to remove infringing content.

But that "never-ending game" has allowed piracy to run amok and has cheapened the legal demand for music. Sure, many Internet companies remove links under the DMCA's "notice-and-takedown" regime. But the DMCA grants these companies, such as Google, a so-called "safe harbor"—meaning companies only have to remove infringing content upon notice from rightsholders.

Sherman added:

Compounding the harm is that some major online music distributors are taking advantage of this flawed system. Record companies are presented with a Hobson’s choice: Accept below-market deals or play that game of whack-a-mole. The notice and takedown system—intended as a reasonable enforcement mechanism—has instead been subverted into a discount licensing system where copyright owners and artists are paid far less than their creativity is worth.

If the RIAA is tired of playing whack-a-mole, perhaps it's time for them to greet their new mole overlords.

See our previous stories: Why the Record for DMCA Takedown Notices to Google was Smashed Yet Again and Fair-Use Proponents Score Early Win in DMCA Copyright Case.

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward provides this brief summary, following up on the previously reported Volkswagen emissions scandal:

In the US, VW is already facing multiple lawsuits, as well as $18 billion in potential government fines. That's in addition to all their legal troubles in the rest of the world.

The Guardian has an interview with John German, the engineer who discovered that VW diesel cars turn off their pollution-reducing mechanisms when they're not being tested for pollution emissions.

Switzerland has instituted a sales ban on all affected diesels made by Volkswagen and subsidiaries. The ban does not affect cars which are already on the road, and newer cars in the 'Euro 6' emissions category.

The British government is facing allegations that they ignored evidence of the emissions test rigging which they received a year ago, and also that they tried to block EU regulations that would strengthen the testing regimens by requiring surprise checks in real-world conditions.

The US Environmental Protection Agency has announced that they will revamp their test procedures to prevent this kind of cheating in the future. The new additional tests will be "using driving cycles and conditions that may reasonably be expected to be encountered in normal operation and use".

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Australia's Attorney-General's Department hasn't worked out when money to support telcos' and ISPs' data retention efforts will start to flow.

The department, left in the hands of Grand Sysadmin George Brandis in Malcolm Turnbull's cabinet reshuffle, has been criticised by the Communications Alliance for being vague about the funding arrangements.

The industry had asked for government funding to help it adjust to the demands of data retention, which require the collection of user IP addresses, e-mail headers, and similar data. This has to be stored and secured for a minimum of two years, accessible to whichever agencies the government decides to grant access to.

It seems ISPs will have to take the "garden shed" storage option if they haven't the spare cash for data retention, because the government doesn't know when its promised support package will commence.

Alliance CEO John Stanton told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's AM radio program the best advice available from the AGD is that the money – AU$131 million allocated for this financial year – will flow sometime in this financial year.

Original Submission

Kelerei writes:

Lorraine Steyn, owner of a small software development company in Cape Town, has published an opinion piece that may hit too close to home for some: making a case against non-technical managers. She writes about the all too common disconnect between IT staff and the boardroom table and states that "one of the ways to solve this, is to bring managers closer to the coal face. Technical training programmes are critical for your development team to keep apace with change, and investing the time for IT management to do the training too can pay dividends... [if a manager feels he doesn't] have enough time to get that close to the detail of what your department does, think about whether you would appoint a non-financial manager to handle your money".

Original Submission

"gewg_" writes:

Paul Armentano of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) reports via AlterNet:

Scientific discoveries are published almost daily rebuking the federal government's contention that cannabis is a highly dangerous substance lacking therapeutic efficacy. But most of these findings appear primarily in obscure, peer-reviewed journals and often go unnoticed by the major media and the general public. Here are five new [revelations] that warrant mainstream attention.

- Early Onset Pot Use Isn't Associated With Adverse Outcomes in Adulthood

- Providing Medical Cannabis Access Reduces Opioid Abuses

- Pot Is a Frequent Substitute For Alcohol [and] Other Drugs

- Despite Legalization, Teens Aren't Using More Pot (But They Are Consuming Far Less Alcohol and Tobacco)

- Forget "The Munchies" -- Pot Consumers Are Less Likely to Be Obese

[...] Researchers reported that cannabis users possessed an average BMI of 26.8 compared to an index of 28.6 for non-users, after controlling for age, gender, and other factors. Investigators further discovered that pot users possessed fewer diabetic markers than non-users.

[...] While these latest findings run counter to stoner stereotypes, they are hardly novel. Observational trial data published in 2012 in the British Medical Journal reported that marijuana users possessed a lower prevalence of type 2 diabetes and possessed a lower risk of contracting the disease than did those with no history of cannabis consumption, even after researchers adjusted for social variables such as subjects' ethnicity, family history, and levels of physical activity. Additionally, cross-sectional data published in 2011 in the American Journal of Epidemiology similarly reported that the prevalence of obesity in the general population is sharply lower among those who consume the herb compared to those who do not.

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward wrote in with the news that internet service provider Cox Communications has hit back at anti-piracy company Rightscorp. While denying responsibility for the alleged copyright infringements of its subscribers, Cox turns the tables, accusing Rightscorp of sharing thousands of copyrighted works without permission. The ISP highlights an interesting element of Rightscorp's practice. To track down infringers the monitoring outfit has downloaded thousands of files themselves, without permission from all copyright holders:

"Rightscorp either committed massive infringements of the sound recording copyrights or must have relied on the fair use doctrine. If the latter, that fact is an admission that activity over BitTorrent may constitute fair use, but there is no evidence that Rightscorp considered the possibility of fair use in generating millions of notices of claimed infringement," Cox lawyers add.

"[Cox] has now submitted a motion for summary judgment (pdf) in which it explains why the copyright holders don't have a case."

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

According to a report from AdAge, every single network drama that aired on Tuesday night experienced a double-digit decline in ratings. And aside from a decent showing from The Muppets, the report relays that there have been few bright spots to the start of this year's fall TV lineup.

[...] All told, cumulative viewership during "Premiere Week", as it's called, is down 8% compared to the same period a year-ago. More worrisome for TV networks is that viewership from the highly sought-after 18-24 demographic is down 20% year over year, with male viewership within that demographic falling by 24%.

Males in the 18-24 demographic are the most coveted in advertising because that's when studies show brand preferences are formed. 24% is a catastrophic decline for TV.

Original Submission

skullz writes:

An Austin TX, US company Chaotic Moon Studios is developing a drone that can hover above a traffic stop. Covered in the Dallas News as well as Government Technology (same text) the drone is attached to a police cruiser and is launched to record a bird's eye view video:

While an interesting concept, Chaotic Moon Studios hasn't worked with any law enforcement agencies and might be using the drone as a marketing tool and publicity stunt. They have a highly theatrical YouTube video that shows the drone might be controlled remotely through very Hollywood computers. I was hoping it would be able to function as a chase cam for the officer but maybe that isn't in the works yet and police video drones, while providing a different perspective than the body camera, still have the same issues of storage, purchase, training, and maintenance expenses.

Moving from theatrical to practical, AirDog has an auto-follow drone for outdoor sports which hovers over a wrist controller and is available for purchase today. This seems a bit more useful right out of the box.

Would be handy to have one to help find a parking space. -Ed.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has mobilized his resources to bring us a story.

A hack exploits a vulnerability in iOS version 9.0.1 which permits someone with even brief access to an iPhone to access contacts and photos without entering the password. The attack is limited to just these areas — other parts of the phone are inaccessible. There are many reports that the attack works, but many others report it does not; it is not yet clear why this is the case. The hack can be blocked by denying access to Siri from the lock screen.

The story details the steps required to bypass the lock screen and also how to mitigate it. Can any fellow Soylents reproduce this on their iPhone?

Original Submission

"gewg_" writes:

Blogger and Linux advocate Robert Pogson reports via one of his many charts that, according to StatCounter, the usage rate for Linux in Gibraltar has increased dramatically.

What is it about islands[sic] that allow them to plunge into FLOSS unlike most larger countries? Here's another. Gibraltar moved from almost nothing to ~16% GNU/Linux desktops this week. High school resumed last week. Further, FreeBSD is along for the ride.

FreeBSD (0.67%) and Chrome OS GNU/Linux (1.68%) peaked on September 21. GNU/Linux began to ramp up on September 20 and is still rising (16.41%). Even "Unknown" jumped to 0.67% on September 20 and reached 0.96% yesterday. It could be Gibraltar's schools have adopted FLOSS as affordable and robust. Nearby, Malta stood at 5.42% and Reunion stood at 6.71%.

Previous: Interesting Usage Statistics for Desktop Linux in Malta
Big Jump in Bahrain: Linux Now At 16 Percent

[Ed note: Gibraltar is not an island; it "is a British Overseas Territory located on the southern end of the Iberian Peninsula at the entrance of the Mediterranean" with a population of about 30,000 people.]

Original Submission

The Mighty Buzzard writes:

Two bits of news from WineConf 2015 via Phoronix. They're both switching to yearly releases and making Wine-Staging an formal part of the project.

Right now the Wine stable releases are feature-driven rather than committing to shipping on time-based schedules. For example, it was one year from Wine 1.4 to Wine 1.6 while going from Wine 1.2 to Wine 1.4 it was two years. In going from Wine 1.6 to the yet-to-be-released Wine 1.8, it's now over two years. As written about previously, Wine 1.7 Series Turn Two Years Old, No Sign Of Wine 1.8.

Moving forward, Wine developers have agreed to just do a new release every year around this time -- fall/autumn -- regardless of new features. The bi-weekly Wine development releases will continue.

For many months now Wine-Staging has been around and following the bi-weekly Wine development releases with that work plus all sorts of experimental/testing patches added on top, such as the Command-Stream Multi-Threading work. Wine-Staging has a decent following since generally they tend to carry a lot of interesting but experimental features prior to their formal introduction in the Wine code-base.

At WineConf 2015, it was decided that Wine-Staging will now be an official part of WineHQ. The Wine-Staging project will now retire their current bug-tracker in favor of the upstream Wine bug tracker, Wine-Staging will be integrated into the regular development process, and other changes will come.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

A lawsuit against the National Security Agency's dragnet interception of Internet communications had its first day in federal court Friday, with a diverse coalition of organizations asking a judge to rule against the Obama administration's request that their case be dismissed.

U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis didn't rule from the bench or betray a clear leaning during arguments.

The case was filed in March by the Wikimedia Foundation, which operates Wikipedia, along with the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, Amnesty International USA, PEN American Center, Human Rights Watch, The Nation magazine and other human rights and advocacy groups.

The groups are represented by the American Civil Liberties Union and say the NSA's "upstream" collection of Internet communications from the cables, routers and switches that make up the Internet's backbone is unconstitutional.

Original Submission

NotSanguine writes:

Science Daily is reporting on a paper published this week in PeerJ which details that each person has their own unique microbial signature. As is generally known, each of us has at least ten times as many microbial cells (collectively referred to as our microbiome) living in and on us as there are cells that are actually part of us.

Science Daily summarizes:

We each give off millions of bacteria from our human microbiome to the air around us every day, and that cloud of bacteria can be traced back to an individual. New research focused on the personal microbial cloud -- the airborne microbes we emit into the air -- examined the microbial connection we have with the air around us. The findings demonstrate the extent to which humans possess a unique 'microbial cloud signature.'

They go on to say:

To test the individualized nature of the personal microbial cloud, University of Oregon researchers sequenced microbes from the air surrounding 11 different people in a sanitized experimental chamber. The study found that most of the occupants sitting alone in the chamber could be identified within 4 hours just by the unique combinations of bacteria in the surrounding air.

Could recording and analyzing changes in our microbial signatures have medical/diagnostic value? Are there privacy or security considerations? Could microbial signature scanners be the future of biometrics? Is it possible that we could be tracked based on our microbial signatures? What do Soylentils think?

Original Submission

"gewg_" writes:

Josh Aas of The Internet Security Research Group reported on September 14:

Let's Encrypt passed another major milestone by issuing our first certificate. You can see it in action here

Our cross signature is not yet in place, however this certificate is fully functional for clients with the ISRG root in their trust store. When we are cross signed, approximately a month from now, our certificates will work just about anywhere while our root propagates. We submitted initial applications to the root programs for Mozilla, Google, Microsoft, and Apple today.

We're thrilled to finally be a live [certificate authority]. We'll be working towards general availability over the next couple of months by issuing certificates to domains participating in our beta program. You can request that your domain be included in our beta program by clicking here.

If you want to get involved with Let's Encrypt, please visit this page.

See our prior coverage: EFF Offers Free Certificate Authority to Dramatically Increase Encrypted Internet Traffic, The "Let's Encrypt" Project Generates Root and Intermediate Certificates, and "Let's Encrypt" gets a Launch Schedule.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

According to Bloomberg, "FTC officials have met with technology company representatives who say Google gives priority to its own services on the Android platform, while restricting others, added the people, who asked for anonymity because the matter is confidential."

Neither the FTC nor Google immediately responded to Ars' request for comment, and both entities declined to speak with Bloomberg, which noted on Friday that the inquiry was "in its early stages and it could end without a case against the company."

Europe's anti-trust investigation may widen to include other Google services.

Earlier this year, the European Commission announced that it had opened an antitrust investigation into Google's Android offerings: "[It] will focus on whether Google has entered into anti-competitive agreements or abused a possible dominant position in the field of operating systems, applications, and services for smart mobile devices."

According to IDC, an industry analysis firm, Android currently retains 59 percent of the American smartphone operating system market, with iOS at 38 percent and Windows Mobile at 2.35 percent. Worldwide, Android has over 82 percent of the market.

Original Submission