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● 11.25.10

● Links 25/11/2010: LPC, Happypenguin.org Back Online

Posted in News Roundup at 1:51 pm by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

Desktop

=> ↺ Boxee Box Review

• The Boxee has been built with a simple goal in mind. Its creators say that “a lot of your favorite shows and movies are already available on the Internet. Boxee is a device that finds them and puts them on your TV. It’s easy to use and even better, there’s no monthly fee”. That’s the phrase that can be found on Boxee’s homepage. Boxee has been an early player that has generated a lot of buzz in the “Media Center” circle. The project has started as a software platform that can be installed on a PC, Mac or Linux computer. The main downside of that is that this becomes a fairly expensive proposition. The Boxee Box was brought to market to provide a hardware platform capable of running the Boxee software – for $199. Try to beat that by building your own computer. Now the question is: how does it perform, and how can it help you today? Let’s take a look.

Audiocasts/Shows

=> ↺ Episode 151: #150 reloaded!

=> ↺ FLOSS Weekly 143: Ganymede

• The Ganymede project centralizes the source of truth for all the IT information, like the users, hosts and IP addresses of an organization.

Kernel Space

Graphics Stack

=> ↺ LPC: Life after X

• Keith Packard has probably done more work to put the X Window System onto our desks than just about anybody else. With some 25 years of history, X has had a good run, but nothing is forever. Is that run coming to an end, and what might come after? In his Linux Plumbers Conference talk, Keith claimed to have no control over how things might go, but he did have some ideas. Those ideas add up to an interesting vision of our graphical future.

Applications

=> ↺ Introduction to the Fluid Simulator

• In this tutorial you will discover:

• • The basics of fluid simulations * How to create a splash effect * Advanced settings to tweak for better results

=> ↺ FreetuxTV – free GTK2+ Web TV and Web Radio player for Linux

• If you’re looking for a web TV player or a radio player for your Ubuntu Linux, beside Sopcast freetuxTV is a good choice for you to watch television channels from internet.

=> ↺ Back In Time, a Free and Simple Backup Software for Linux

• Back In Time, a Free and Simple Backup Software for Linux: I’ve already tried and tested a good number of backup software for Linux, but I know there are still plenty of excellent backup tools that I missed so I always take time to search for more. Hence, I bumped into Back In Time, a simple backup utility for Linux that is inspired by Flyback and Timevault. One of the main goals of the project is to get and combine the best features of Flyback and Timevault and put them all on Back In Time.

=> ↺ Two more utilites for DansGuardian Users

• I reduced the DansGuardian user account and blacklist maintenance hassles with my previous two utilities but while working on whitelisting I found the need for a few more.

=> ↺ Ailurus – A Post Installation Configuration Tool For Linux

• Linux is one of the more configurable operating systems available. Unfortunately for new members, a great many of these options are buried in configuration files. Instead of being able to simply open up a program and say, “I’d like this option, this option and this other option,” the user needs to either go into the Terminal and type esoteric commands, or else go to the configuration editor, which can at times be just as uncomfortable for the beginner. For new Linux users, there is a fantastic program called Ailurus. It’s directly aimed at “the newcomer to linux, e.g., the people who uses Linux for not more than one month.”

Proprietary

=> ↺ Hands-on: Opera 11 tab stacking vs Firefox Panorama

=> ↺ Nero Linux 4 – Never Knew Nero had a Linux Version!

• This might not be a news at all for most among you, but I was totally surprised when I first came to know about Nero Linux 4, a Linux version of Nero CD burning tool.

=> ↺ Dropbox alternatives: Cloud storage burst

Instructionals/Technical

=> ↺ Is Your Bash Prompt Cramping Your Style?

=> ↺ KDE Look Part 4: Fixing things with a little help from my Friends

=> ↺ 2ClickUpdate Maintains And Clean Up Ubuntu With A Single Click

=> ↺ Ubuntu: Install and use Droid fonts

=> ↺ Improve Flash performance under Linux

=> ↺ Solaris Directory Structure (File System Structure) Explained with Examples

=> ↺ Creating A Mobile Version of Your Drupal Website Part 1

=> ↺ Quickzi: Find files older than 5 days

=> ↺ How to change the terminal colours from command line or console

=> ↺ Installing Drupal 7

=> ↺ Howto Set Up Drupal Multi-site Configuration with Nginx as Reverse Proxy

=> ↺ Troubleshooting Linux Servers

=> ↺ Easily Print to PDF, Postscript And SVG Files From Any Application [Ubuntu]

=> ↺ Using lsof to Find Open Files

=> ↺ Kinect camera visualization and calibration

=> ↺ Password Management

=> ↺ Hadoop Cluster Setup on Debian Lenny

=> ↺ Top Five Linux Deployment Mistakes

=> ↺ Network Monitoring with Nagios

=> ↺ Network Monitoring with Nagios

Games

=> ↺ Happypenguin.org Is Back Online

• I’m happy to let you know that the GNU/Linux news and updates website Happypenguin.org aka The Linux Game Tome is back online. For now this website is a bit outdated (it’s been offline for almost two months), but I have no doubt that it will resume it’s mad amount of updates and become updated as before.

=> ↺ TGatB 1.0.0.18

Desktop Environments

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

=> ↺ KDE Trinity Like Whoa

• Packages are offered for Ubuntu, and as such I decided to grab the Ubuntu Minimal ISO. Booting the CD, I chose to go with a command line installation. The installer finished without fuss. Rebooting into my minimalistic environment, I went ahead and grabbed my favorite editor (ne – the nice editor; apt-get install ne). You need to add the Trinity Ubuntu repositories to your sources.list, which isn’t difficult at all.

=> ↺ KDE Commit-Digest for 24th October 2010

• Migrating the WYSIWYG Editor to WebKit in Blogilo. Twitter Lists support in Choqok. More work on KAccessible. KTorrent gains support for the Magnet protocol. Work in KRFB to allow more than one RFB server run at once. Better Valgrind 3.6.0 compatibility in KCacheGrind. Important progress on the Perl KDE bindings.

GNOME Desktop

=> ↺ Being US-centric does not serve GNOME Foundation well

• The GNOME Foundation has been forced to change the rules for a design contest it is holding after one of its members objected to the exclusion of certain countries.

• The contest, to design a new T-shirt, initially excluded people living in Cuba, Iran, Syria, North Korea, Sudan, and Myanmar (Burma).

• Those living in areas which are restricted by US export controls and sanctions were also not allowed to participate.

• Developer Baptiste Mille-Mathias pointed out the hypocrisy of these rules, stating, “GNOME being based on people and openness, I wonder how a Free Software & Non-profit organisation would comply with such US embargo related laws.

=> ↺ 7like GNoMenu theme: Ambiance meets windows

• Whilst I’m not traditionally a GnoMenu fan even I can’t help but drool over ~Blitz-Bomb‘s 7Like theme for it.

• Fusing elements of Ambiance with well-worn aspects of Windows 7′s start menu the theme has a whole lot to like in it.

=> ↺ Faenza Icon Theme Undergoes Major Upgrade, Tons of New Icons Included

• Beloved Faenza icon theme undergoes a major upgrade. Lots of new icons are included and improved Firefox and Google Chrome icons are absolutely beautiful IMO.

Distributions

Red Hat Family

=> ↺ Watch for Shares of Red Hat (RHT) to Approach Resistance at $43.87

• SmarTrend has detected shares of Red Hat (NYSE: RHT) have bullishly opened above the pivot of $42.50 today and have reached the first resistance level of $43.05.

Fedora

=> ↺ Fuduntu 14.5 – Subtle improvements

• A lot of refinements have been put into place behind the scenes including adding the BFS scheduler, and making the deadline IO scheduler default. I have also added a recent tweak that should improve availability and response time of a Fuduntu computer while users are compiling software, or doing other CPU intensive tasks in terminals.

=> ↺ Xen Dom0 Support May Come Back To Fedora

• Besides the kernel side of things, there’s also work to be done in ensuring Fedora’s virtualization utilities (libvirt, virt-manager, etc) are still in good shape for Xen and that there’s an easy way to enable the Xen kernel support from GRUB without manually editing the boot-loader’s configuration file.

Debian Family

Canonical/Ubuntu

=> ↺ My current “What to do after installing Ubuntu?” script

• This script is obviously a work in progress. I already have some ideas to enhance it, but since it has already saved me significant hassle (and typing!) when installing new Ubuntu instances, I thought I’d share it.

=> ↺ Shuttleworth’s Ubuntu makes like Space Shuttle

• It looks like astronaut and tech magnate Mark Shuttleworth’s investment in the Ubuntu commercial Linux distribution is about to pay off. Ubuntu is taking off like a rocket, and the sale of Novell to Attachmate plus the higher prices Red Hat is charging for its Enterprise Linux 6 are probably going to fuel Ubuntu’s adoption even more in the data centers of the world.

• The third Long Term Support release, Ubuntu 10.04, came out in April and seems to have been a turning point for the Ubuntu distribution. With that release, Canonical demonstrated that it could tame the Debian variant of Linux and put together a polished desktop and server operating system with commercial-grade support options like those available through Red Hat and Novell. On the server front, the server variant of the 10.04 LTS release had all of the new or impending x64 processors from Intel and Advanced Micro Devices baked into it as well as a fully integrated variant of the Eucalyptus cloud framework for creating cloudy infrastructure for applications to romp around.

=> ↺ Ubuntu One — good or bad?

• But ok, I installed all required packages and it connected. Synced Tomboy notes from desktop and Conboy ones from my Nokia N900 so now I have them in sync (without a way to select which one I want where but that’s limit of apps). Then I decided to make use from synchronization of contacts. And here the fun begins… My phone is not supported by Funambol (syncml backend used by Ubuntu One) so sorry — all I can use is one bug on LaunchPad.

=> ↺ Ubuntu sticking to six-month development cycle

• While Google has successfully (so far) moved to a rapid release cycle for its Chrome browser, it’s hard to see this working very well for an entire Linux distribution. It might work for some packages that sit on top of the distro (like Firefox) but it just won’t work for the whole OS. This is especially true in the enterprise market where Canonical is trying to get a foothold. A rolling release cycle would not go over well on the server side. It wouldn’t work too well for OEMs, either. A rolling cycle for development is one thing, but as Canonical tries to capture bigger deals it’s a non-starter for any of the OEMs and ISVs that Canonical works with.

=> ↺ Canonical welcomes new partners following latest Ubuntu 10.10 release

• Canonical, the commercial sponsor of Ubuntu, announced today the signing of several significant partnerships following the release last month of Ubuntu 10.10.

Flavours and Variants

=> ↺ New Linux Mint 10 – Will you be lured into trying it?

• Battling to be classified as the most reliable open source operating system is the Linux Mint team, which apparently has put its plans to action by leveraging its existing and most popular product the Linux Mint and in turn has brought out a new and updated version of the same – Linux Mint 10 a.k.a. “Julia”. Considered the 2nd runner-up in the open source OS industry, Linux Mint 10 follows the lead of Ubuntu and Fedora who have dominated the open source market with products like Ubuntu 10.10 and Fedora Project.

Devices/Embedded

=> ↺ Tiny module includes 1.2GHz CPU, Wi-Fi

• Anders Electronics announced a diminutive COM (computer on module) featuring Marvell’s 1.2GHz Armada 510 CPU. The Linux-ready CM-A510 offers functionality including 1GB of DDR3 memory, up to 512MB of flash storage, a camera interface, dual gigabit Ethernet ports, and onboard Wi-Fi, the company says.

Tablets

=> ↺ Seven- and 10-inch tablets run Android 2.1 on 1GHz chips

• Internet Connectivity and Networking (ICAN) has launched both a seven-inch and a 10-inch tablet running Android 2.1 on a 1GHz processor. The $400 ICAN! 7 and $500 ICAN! 10 ship with 16GB of internal storage, plus SD expansion, Wi-Fi, a 1.3-megapixel webcam, dual USB 2.0 ports, and HDMI ports, says the company.

Free Software/Open Source

Web Browsers

=> ↺ Chrome Toolbox Places Useful Features At Your Fingertips

• Have you ever encountered the situation where you have plenty of tabs open in your browser and one of them is blasting out loud advertisement video? Yes, I know, it is very irritating, especially when you don’t know which tab contains the annoying video and you have to flick through all the tabs to locate (and stop) the ad. With Chrome Toolbox, you can now easily mute all the tabs with a single click.

SaaS

=> ↺ To the Clouds with Linux — But Who Controls It?

• According to my research, Google Docs is considered proprietary software even though saved items are kept on Linux-based storage. This demonstrates that Google is all too happy to utilize Linux for storage, yet it’s also not against using proprietary software when it meets its needs.

• The odd part to this is that Google happens to be a huge supporter of various open source projects, often with no direct benefit for itself. The reasoning can go either way. One possibility is that Google wants to legitimately give back to the open source ecosystem that enabled it to succeed in the first place. The other possibility is that Google simply loves the great PR of being seen as the good guys.

=> ↺ 50 Open Source Apps You Can Use in the Cloud

• The cloud computing boom has brought a surge of opportunity to the open source world. Open source developers and users are taking advantage of these opportunities in three key ways.

• First, many open source applications are now available on a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) basis. For open source project owners, hosting apps in the cloud offers a new revenue stream. And for users, it means access to excellent programs and support without the need to maintain their own hardware or hire additional support personnel.

Databases

=> ↺ French social security now run on PostgreSQL and Red Hat Linux

• According to a report from the Open Source Observatory and Repository for European public administrations (OSOR), France’s social security system, the Caisse Nationale d’Allocations Familiales (CNAF), is now using the open source PostgreSQL database management system (DBMS). The IT firm Bull is assisting CNAF and says that the PostgreSQL system is currently running nearly one billion SQL queries each day on Red Hat Linux servers.

CMS

=> ↺ The 6 Best Social Media Plugins for WordPress

• Social media: love it or hate it, but you can’t ignore it. During the past few years, social media — along with Facebook and Twitter — have grown by leaps and bounds in popularity. If you have a personal or professional blog, you are already part of the social media universe. A great way to increase the popularity of your blog is by using other forms of social media to promote it. WordPress has many plugins to help you with this endeavor.

Business

=> ↺ Open Source Business Intelligence: What Are Your Options?

Government

=> ↺ Norway: All regions and nearly all municipalities now use open source

Leftovers

Health/Nutrition

=> ↺ Doctors’ Orders

• The government’s war on medical “price fixing” squelches speech without helping consumers.

Security

=> ↺ Google Patches Security Flaw Affecting Gmail Users

=> ↺ Why are the feds surveilling and repeatedly detaining computer security researcher Moxie Marlinspike?

=> ↺ Cybersecurity bill gives DHS power to punish tech firms

=> ↺ Hacker Gets 18 Months in U.K. Prison

• A Scottish man was sentenced today to 18 months in prison for spamming out e-mails laced with malware and stealing data.

=> ↺ Apple iOS Jailbreak Follows Security Update

• A jailbreak is available for the latest version of iOS, but for those not interested in jailbreaking, Apple’s update plugs a number of security holes.

Defence/Police/Aggression

=> ↺ View from America: We do not consent

• In new efforts to protect citisens against domestic and international terrorism, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has implemented body scanners at airports nationwide. In addition to metal detectors, these machines capture 3-D images of potential passengers and transmit the photos to agents responsible for analytics. Originally, the TSA claimed the “scanned images cannot be stored or recorded” but this claim has since been debunked.

=> ↺ Strip search with a difference: passenger arrested after stripping to avoid pat down

• Amid the furore over airport security, Sam Wolanyk had a plan to avoid his second intrusive pat down in a week … he stripped off.

• But Mr Wolanyk, who had previously campaigned for the right to openly carry guns, was arrested.

• He stripped to his underwear at San Diego International Airport but refused a body scan and pat-down search because “it was obvious that my underwear left nothing to the imagination.”.

=> ↺ Busybodies down the ages

=> ↺ Your risks and rights with TSA’s ‘enhanced’ screening (FAQ)

=> ↺ Traveller re-enters USA without passing through a pornoscanner or having his genitals touched

• Matt returned from Paris to Cincinnati, where he was given the choice of a pornoscanner or a bit of the old nutsack-fondling from the TSA. Instead, Matt insisted that it was his right as an American with a passport who was n ot suspected of any wrongdoing to enter his country. The TSA told him the airport cops would arrest him if he didn’t comply. The airport cops told him it was up to the TSA and clearly didn’t appreciate being made to do someone else’s dirty work. In the end, he was escorted out of the airport without having to submit to either procedure. He recorded much of the encounter on with his iPhone’s audio recorder, too.

=> ↺ TSA Chief Apologizes to Airline Passenger Soaked in Urine After Pat-Down

• An airline passenger outfitted with a urine bag for medical reasons had to sit through his flight soaked in urine after a TSA agent dislodged his bag during an aggressive security pat-down. Nearly a month later, he finally received an apology from TSA chief John Pistole.

=> ↺ Newspapers Say: Shut Up And Get Scanned And Groped

• Matt Welch has a nice post over at Reason, highlighting numerous editorials from some big time newspapers mocking people who are concerned about the TSA’s naked scans and/or groping procedures, beginning with the LA Times’ perfectly obnoxious shut up and be scanned. Most of the editorials take on the typical apologists’ line that “this is what we need to do to be secure.” This can be summarized by the claim in the Spokesman-Review, entitled “Discomfort a small price for security on airplanes.”

=> ↺ Audit Faults TSA’s Training of Airport Screeners as Rushed, Poorly Supervised

• Flying for Thanksgiving? Whether you plan to submit patriotically to a naked body scan, or opt instead for the full security grope, you can at least rest assured that the 43,000 Transportation Security Officers (TSOs) handling airport screening have benefited from the most rigorous and up-to-date training the U.S. government can provide.

=> ↺ What John Pistole means when he talks about “enhanced” TSA checkpoints

• In this video, YouTube user SpinRemover adds subtitles to TSA boss John Pistole’s now-infamous Anderson Cooper interview, translating bureaucratese into plain English.

=> ↺ Viral ‘pornoscan’ protest challenges TSA

=> ↺ Protect Your Data During U.S. Border Searches

=> ↺ Are Air Travelers Criminal Suspects?

• The growing revolt against invasive TSA practices is encouraging to Americans who are fed up with federal government encroachment in their lives. In the case of air travelers, this encroachment is quite literally physical. But a deep-seated libertarian impulse still exists within the American people, and opposition to the new TSA full body scanner and groping searches is gathering momentum.

• I introduced legislation last week that is based on a very simple principle: federal agents should be subject to the same laws as ordinary citizens. If you would face criminal prosecution or a lawsuit for groping someone, exposing them to unwelcome radiation, causing them emotional distress, or violating indecency laws, then TSA agents should similarly face sanctions for their actions.

=> ↺ Does the TSA Ever Catch Terrorists?

• It’s hard to say. The TSA was unable to provide any comprehensive data covering all nine years of its existence on short notice, but it does publicize incidents on a weekly basis: From Nov. 8 to Nov. 14, for example, agents found six “artfully concealed prohibited items” and 11 firearms at checkpoints, and they arrested six passengers after investigations of suspicious behavior or fraudulent travel documents. (Those figures are close to the weekly average.) It’s not clear, however, whether any of these incidents represent attempted acts of terrorism or whether they were honest accidents. (Whoops, forgot I had that meat cleaver on me! Or, I had no idea flares weren’t allowed!)

=> ↺ Pilot Sues TSA Over Intrusive Searches

=> ↺ Pilot Sues TSA Over Intrusive Searches

• We already discussed Pistole’s testimony and why he’s actually lying. Contrary to what Pistole claims (and Altman bought without checking), the vast majority of people getting on planes in US airports are going through neither full body scans or “an uncomfortably thorough pat-down.” Most people are still just going through traditional metal detectors. Even in the airports that have the backscatter naked image scanners, most passengers still just go through traditional metal detectors. Claiming that all passengers now go through either the backscatter scans or get a thorough pat-down is a lie.

• [...]

• Altman may be right that people are overreacting but he didn’t help by simply repeating the claims of Pistole and a weak poll, when both have already been proven to be misleading at best and downright false at worst. Perhaps instead of rushing to mock “the internet” and its mythical “ephemeral obsessions,” Altman could have taken some time to actually research the issue and to inform people of the details rather than just repeating the misleading claims from the TSA. That’s the kind of thing that would actually build up trust in the press, rather than disdain for the press.

=> ↺ TSA confiscates heavily-armed soldiers’ nail-clippers

=> ↺ Revolt: Orlando airport to drop TSA as security screeners

• The bad news: It’s not Orlando International but the much smaller Orlando Sanford International, which serves such popular destinations as Allentown, Pennsylvania, Youngstown, Ohio, and of course Iceland. So if you’re thinking about taking your next vacation in Reykjavik, rest easy — hopefully there’ll be no junk-touching for you.

=> ↺ California official warns against inappropriate pat-downs

• This comes on the heels of word – as shared in Alan Levin’s story in USA TODAY – that TSA Administrator John Pistole has told a Senate committee in Washington that more invasive pat-downs are necessary. The developments come in the wake of public outcry over the search techniques.

=> ↺ TSA Enhanced Pat Downs : The Screeners Point Of View

=> ↺ ‘It only cost $4,200 and was run by less than six brothers’: Al Qaeda’s gloats at ‘bargain’ printer bomb plane plot

• ‘This branch of Al Qaeda is very lethal and I believe them — in terms of what they say they’re trying to do (to attack the United States),’ Mullen told CNN television’s State of the Union programme.

• The United States already stepped up airline passenger security after a Nigerian man tried to detonate explosives hidden in his underwear on a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit last December. AQAP had also claimed responsibility for that.

Censorship/Privacy/Civil Rights

=> ↺ Police to get greater web censorship powers

• Police will effectively get more powers to censor websites under proposals being developed by Nominet, the company that controls the .uk domain registry.

• Following lobbying by the Serious and Organised Crime Agency (SOCA), Nominet wants to change the terms and conditions under which domain names are owned so that it can revoke them more easily in response to requests from law enforcement agencies.

=> ↺ Why Voting For COICA Is A Vote For Censorship

• While I have no illusion that most of those who made such comments will ever come back and read this, it is important to make this point clearly, for those who are interested. There are many, many serious problems with the way COICA is written, but this post will highlight why it is a bill for censorship, and how it opens the door to wider censorship of speech online.

=> ↺ Why Didn’t Google Or Comcast Protect The Identity Of Anonymous Church Blogger Who Was Outed?

• Paul Levy wanted to know the answer to another question: why did both Google and Comcast cough up this guy’s identifying information without even giving him a chance to quash the subpoenas. He asked both companies and the answer he got is, basically, that they immediately cough up info if it’s a criminal subpoena rather than a civil one…

Internet/Net Neutrality/DRM

=> ↺ FCC boss: net neutrality “will happen”… someday… really

• “I have heard a lot of ‘chatter’ from the communications bar, Wall Street analysts and reporters, just in the past 72 hours,” noted Federal Communications Commissioner Robert M. McDowell during a talk before the Federalist Society on Monday. “This morning, speculation abounds.”

• McDowell was referring to the ample quantity of buzz out in Capitol Hill-land over whether the FCC is actually going to issue net neutrality rules in the near future.

• “Let me say at the outset that, as a commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission, appointed by two presidents and unanimously confirmed by the Senate each time,” he added. “I have absolutely no idea what’s going to happen… or when… or even if.”

Intellectual Monopolies

=> ↺ SAP ordered to pay Oracle $1.3bn

=> ↺ London Underground Told To Cut Back Legal Expenses… So It’s Suing A Restaurant Called The Underground

• Via Annie Mole (actually via IanVisits), we find this fun juxtaposition of two recent stories about the London Underground. Apparently, the organization that runs the famed London subway system has massively increased its legal spending — tripling it in the last five years.

=> ↺ Copycat logos are pitting high schools and colleges in a trademark turf war

• During the 2008 presidential campaign, CNN anchorman Lou Dobbs hosted his evening broadcast from the gymnasium of Freedom-South Riding High in Loudoun County. Painted on the wall was the school’s official logo – a black and gold eagle with wings spread open and flashing its talons.

=> ↺ Gibson Sues Everyone Over Paper Jamz Paper Guitars, Specifically Goes After eBay

• Eric Goldman points us to the news that the (notoriously litigious) Gibson guitar company is suing a whole bunch of companies for selling the new “Paper Jamz” paper multi-touch guitars. If you haven’t seen these things, they’re basically a “paper” (really plastic) guitar with a capacitive multi-touch surface that plays music in response to your touch. Here’s a video demonstrating the thing in action:

=> ↺ The Well-Pilfered Clavier

• This punkish intellectual property scofflaw was Johann Sebastian Bach, master of the baroque style, spiritual father of modern Western music, literal father of a family of musicians, and inspiration to working creators everywhere. He was also —maybe not coincidentally—a serial user of other people’s work. According to one legend, as a child Bach would jailbreak and copy music his family had locked away. Later, he came into his own as a composer in part by taking a large body of work by Antonio Vivaldi and transposing it for the keyboard.

=> ↺ Wyden Threatens To Block Online IP Bill

• Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., Thursday threatened to block legislation aimed at curbing piracy and counterfeiting on foreign Web sites, saying the bill is a heavy-handed solution to the problem.

• “It seems to me the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act as written today, is the wrong medicine,” Wyden, the chairman of the Finance International Trade, Customs, and Global Competitiveness Subcommittee, said during a hearing on international trade and the digital economy. “Deploying this statute to combat online copyright and infringement seems almost like a bunker buster cluster bomb when really what you need is a precision-guided missile.”

• Wyden said that unless changes are made to the bill, introduced by Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., to ensure it “no longer makes the global online marketplace more hazardous to consumers and American Internet companies, I’m going to do everything I can to take the necessary steps to stop it from passing the U.S. Senate.”

=> ↺ United Brands sues Anheuser-Busch for too-similar can design

• United Brands Co., maker of Joose flavored malt beverage and beer products, has filed a lawsuit for trademark infringement, copyright infringement, unfair competition and related claims, against Anheuser-Busch Inc. and its competing flavored malt beverage called Tilt. United Brands has sold Joose since 2006 and is seeking to protect the brand integrity of Dragon Joose, one of its popular versions of Joose.

=> ↺ US Risks Not Getting FIFA World Cup… Because It Won’t Give FIFA Special Copyright Powers

• The US bid committee hasn’t secured a commitment from the US government that it will give FIFA the right to act as its own copyright cops and takeover the legal system so it can do things like criminalize wearing orange clothes. As the full FIFA report (PDF) puts it: “However, as the required guarantees, undertakings and confirmations are not given as part of Government Guarantee No. 6 (Protection and Exploitation of Commercial Rights) and mere reference is made to existing general intellectual property laws in the USA, FIFA’s rights protection programme cannot be ensured.”

Copyrights

=> ↺ EMI Seeks to Bar EFF From Cloud-Music Case

• Billion-dollar record label EMI has asked a New York City federal judge to bar a non-profit legal rights group from filing a friend-of-the-court brief in a closely watched internet copyright case that could have broad implications for the future of cloud computing.

• EMI says the brief filed last week by the Electronic Frontier Foundation and other groups supporting MP3tunes’s argument that it’s not responsible for what music its users store on its servers should be barred because it is “a pure advocacy piece, not a ‘friend of the court.’” Amicus curiae briefs are often filed by interest groups and the government in cases that could set major precedents, in order to illustrate the broader ramifications of the case.

=> ↺ “Copyright owners better off in a regime that allows downloading from illegal sources”

• This striking headline comes from a note received from Vivien Rörsch (De Brauw), on two recent and equally striking Dutch decisions handed down last week by the Court of Appeal of The Hague: in the two separate cases the court ruled that, since downloading from illegal sources for private use was permitted under Dutch law, this was to the copyright owner’s advantage.

=> ↺ Broadcasters take live streaming sites to court

• Major broadcast networks are taking two online video streaming services to court in order to keep them from streaming free over-the-air broadcasts to customers. Both companies, FilmOn and Ivi, contend they should have the right to stream the content under a compulsory license attached to some forms of content in the US Copyright Act. The networks contend that the companies are “unjustly profiting” off of networks’ programming.

• ABC, CBS, Fox, and NBC filed separate suits against FilmOn and Ivi in the US District Court of the Southern District of New York. A judge is considering a temporary restraining order against FilmOn while a similar hearing for a restraining order against Ivi is expected in the next few weeks.

=> ↺ Solicitors face tribunal over internet copyright claims

• Two lawyers who chased people over illegally copied porn films and computer games are to appear before the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal for trying to use their positions of trust to take “unfair advantage of other persons”.

• Davenport Lyons partners David Gore (who has represented Sting and Jonathan Dimbleby) and Brian Millar (who has since left the London firm), allegedly sent more than 6,000 letters to web users threatening legal action in what critics called a “bounty hunter” operation. But the data used by Davenport Lyons showed only who paid the internet bills, not who downloaded the content. On an unsecured Wi-Fi connection, that could be anyone.

=> ↺ Threatened by a copyright lawyer?

• So far the US Copyright Group (USCG) has sued more than 16,000 people this year for sharing movies online. It has sued them anonymously based on their IP addresses, but has not managed to get most of their names and addresses yet.

• However as Ars Technica points out, it has yet to take anyone to court.

• Apparently when an ISP looks up the subscriber name associated with an IP address, USCG doesn’t immediately add their name to a lawsuit. Instead, like other law firms trying the same trick, it sends out a settlement letter, asking the person to pay a few thousand dollars in order not to be sued.

=> ↺ eMusic’s Rift With Indie Labels

• As eMusic prepares to add 250,000 songs from Universal Music Group’s catalogue to its sizeable online music store—and make a major overhaul to its subscription pricing scheme—it appears to be having a falling-out with a large group of independent record labels. Those failed negotiations suggest that the digital-music service may not be able to strike licensing deals that satisfy both large and small music labels.

=> ↺ Lawyer wants “Goliath verdict” against RIAA in abuse trial

• While the RIAA has stopped its mass litigation campaign against file-swappers, cases in progress persist. Tanya Andersen’s is one of the oddest and most intriguing, and it’s set to proceed to trial against the RIAA next year on charges of “abuse of the judicial process.”

=> ↺ Judge In Porn Piracy Case Is Keeping a Big Secret

• Earlier this month, adult entertainment studio West Coast Prods sued 9,729 anonymous individuals for allegedly pirating the porn film Teen Anal Nightmare 2—setting an unofficial record for lumping numerous copyright defendants into a single case.

• In the past year, targeting John Does en masse has become a popular technique in the war against piracy, and we’ll have more insight on the porn industry’s adoption of these mass lawsuits in an upcoming print issue of THR. But the West Coast Prods case is noteworthy for a reason other than its sheer size — those who want to see the legal documents are out of luck.

=> ↺ MPAA Boss Defends Censorships With Blatantly False Claims

• Lovely misleading way to open the piece. In fact, many of the sites the MPAA has declared as “rogue” are nothing more than online forums. Some of them, yes, do involve people pointing each other to where they might obtain unauthorized copies of movies, but it’s overly dramatic (though, hardly Oscar-worthy) to claim that the only purpose they serve is to profit from “the stolen and counterfeited goods and ideas of others.”

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