Over at Wired’s Threat Level blog, Kevin Poulsen reports on a new DMCA overreach: the U.S. Air Force complained (via outside counsel) (PDF) about his posting of their recruiting video. The post, Kevin says, was initially made at the Air Force’s invitation.
If the government created this work, then the DMCA claim is improper. Works of the U.S. government are not copyrightable. But the statute allows the government to receive copyright assignments, so if an independent contractor created the video, still available at the Air Force’s (non .mil) site, the government could meet that technical requisite of the DMCA.
The DMCA also requires that the notifier assert the posting was unauthorized. Poulsen’s article, however, says the Air Force sent Wired the ad and “thanked THREAT LEVEL for agreeing to run it.” That doesn’t quite square with the DMCA-required statement that the notice-sender “ha[s] a good faith belief that none of the materials or activities listed above has been authorized by the U.S. Air Force, its agents, or the law.”
Even if the Air Force’s DMCA claim is truthful, however, it’s still a policy overreach. Wired posted the video in order to report on government recruiting efforts; the video’s dissemination is part of that First-Amendment protected discussion, whether it happens on or off government websites. The DMCA makes it too easy to takedown first, think later.
Cloud computing is much more down to earth than the term might imply. For Google, Amazon, and others, it's about delivering bits to billions of devices--and users.
praps writes "Children are becoming increasingly worried about their parents' Internet habits, according to a report just released in Sweden. Unsurprisingly, dads surfing for pornography is the most common problem, but chatroom addiction also featured in the report — as is a mother who has become obsessed with World of Warcraft. 'This summer she has been sitting up all day and all night and she forgets what's important to me,' wrote the woman's 13-year-old daughter. 'And when she's not at the computer she's like a lost soul. She just looks straight ahead and says nothing.'" There are also a lot of scammers out there who like nothing better than to find retirees who they can sucker into get-rich-quick schemes involving real-estate, stock options, and convincing the neighbors to be part of a "downstream" for MLM marketing ploys.
I’ll be writing about all types of wireless Internet products and services, as the first weblog article describes. Because the articles are designed for reading on cellular phones and other wireless-enabled portable devices, the entries are 200 words max. And, I’ll try to keep the sentences and paragraphs short.
I’ve contracted to write a maximum of three entries per week. But every so often I’ll write shorter articles to supplement the three “longer” entries….because that’s just the sort of guy I am.
If you read the articles, please let me know via e-mail (reiter@wirelessinternet.com) what you’d like to read (or not read).
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