osama film super sized at sundance
from canoe:
As it turns out, finding Osama bin Laden is harder than getting fat eating Big Macs. Who knew? Not Super Size Me director Morgan Spurlock apparently, whose highly anticipated documentary Where in the World is Osama bin Laden? bowed Monday in front of a sell-out crowd. The project, in which the 37-year-old filmmaker treks across the Middle East in search of the 9/11 mastermind, has set the Internet abuzz with speculation he had succeeded at what the U.S. government has so miserably failed at - namely, hunting down the world's most wanted fugitive.court sides with 'borat' over etiquette teacher's humiliation
from click2houston:
Alabama's Supreme Court has sided with British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen in a lawsuit filed by an etiquette teacher who unknowingly appeared in his hit movie "Borat." The justices overruled a lower court, saying Kathie Martin signed an agreement stating that only courts in New York could hear disputes that arose from her appearance. That means she can't sue Cohen and the companies that produced the movie in Alabama.riaa website wiped clean by 'hackers'
from torrentfreak:
It started out on the social news website Reddit, where a link to a really slow SQL query was posted. While the Reddit users were trying to kill the RIAA server, someone allegedly decided to up the ante and wipe the site’s entire database. The comments on Reddit are only speculation so far. Based on the username, which was apparently “webReadOnly”, it might not have been setup correctly, or someone could have found another way to delete the content form the site.hollywood cashes in & makes wars easier to support
from david swanson:
Hollywood may oppose war but it has cashed in handsomely from the 3,000 war-related films it has churned out since 1939, 21 of them Oscar winners for "best picture," a noted economist says. Where "bomb and bullet makers must seize their profits while the fighting is hot," writes David Whitten of Auburn University, Alabama, "movie makers can cash in on a war forever after, and they do. Hollywood, for all its outspokenness against war, created war's popular image."
from computerworld:
Oregon is fast becoming Ground Zero in the contentious battle between the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the tens of thousands of consumers it accuses of illegal music sharing.
The state Attorney General's office this week filed an appeal in U.S. District Court in Oregon calling for an immediate investigation of the evidence presented by the RIAA when it subpoenaed the identities of 17 students at the University of Oregon who allegedly infringed music copyrights. It is the second time in a month that Oregon Attorney General Hardy Myers has resisted attempts by the RIAA to force the university to turn over the names of individuals it says shared music illegally.
Officials at the RIAA could not immediately be reached for comment.
"It is a really huge step when the head law enforcement officer of a state wants to investigate the RIAA's evidence-gathering techniques," said Ray Beckerman, a New York-based lawyer who has been defending individuals in RIAA lawsuits.
from rosforth:
Good Copy Bad Copy is a terrific new documentary about copyright and culture, directed by Andreas Johnsen, Ralf Christensen, and Henrik Moltke. It features interviews with Danger Mouse, Girl Talk, Siva Vaidhyanathan, Lawrence Lessig, and many others with various perspectives on copyright.
riaa uses local cops in oregon raid
from slashdot:
Fake cops employed by the RIAA started acting like real police officers quite a while ago — one of the earliest examples unfolded in Los Angeles in 2004. From a distance, the bust, 'looked like classic LAPD, DEA or FBI work, right down to the black "raid" vests the unit members wore,' said the LA Weekly. That their yellow stenciled lettering read 'RIAA' instead of something from an official law-enforcement agency, 'was lost on 55-year-old parking-lot attendant Ceasar Borrayo.' But it's also SOP for the RIAA to wield genuine officers paid for entirely from citizen taxes as copyright cops. Police were used in an RIAA-inspired raid at two flea markets in Beaverton, Oregon. 'Sgt. Paul Wandell, Beaverton police spokesman, said officers seized more than 50,000 items worth about $758,000,' says The Oregonian. But this is merely the tiny tip of an iceberg of absolutely staggering dimensions, an example of the extent coming in a GrayZone report slugged RIAA Anti-Piracy Seizure Information.at&t teams up with the riaa & mpaa to fight piracy
from zero paid:
It seems AT&T Inc is joining forces with the MPAA and RIAA to keep pirated content off its internet network, making it the first ISP to do so, and perhaps heralding a new age where providers begin to police the content shared on their networks.
Many ISPs have been the frequent subject of criticism for not doing more to crack down on customers who download and shared pirated content illegally. They have, in the past, required court orders to single out customers whose IP addresses have been under scrutiny by the MPAA or the RIAA, never being proactive in this pursuit over fears of angering customers who could easily switch carriers.
For the first time an ISP seems to not care, actually joining forces with the MPAA and the RIAA "...to develop anti-piracy technology that would target the most frequent offenders, said James W. Cicconi, an AT&T senior vice president."
The obvious reason would seem to be that it's attempting to free up bandwidth resources, as P2P and file-sharing programs make up something like 2/3 of network traffic on average but, it seems that the real reason is to actually help defend its fledgling new cable TV service.
It recently launched a new cable TV service called U-verse in a handful of cities and neighborhoods across the country, and apparently has come to the realization that it too is now a content provider and so must take a stand against customers who would try to get content for free using its internet network.
U.S. government supports legal case that would criminalize making any files available on the world wide web
from prison planet:
A landmark legal case on behalf of the Recording Industry Association of America and other global trade organizations seeks to criminalize all Internet file sharing of any kind as copyright infringement, effectively shutting down the world wide web - and their argument is supported by the U.S. government.
Ray Beckerman, a lawyer representing clients in cases against the RIAA, recently took part in a conference call organized by DefectiveByDesign.org, an organization which opposes DRM Technology, content restricting programs embedded into software that blocks users access to music, movies, software and other forms of digital data.
Beckerman describes how Internet users are randomly targeted by the RIAA for simply having a folder of music on their computer, kept in the dark about legal details and intimidated into paying thousands of dollars immediately or facing a federal lawsuit. The RIAA doesn't even attempt to prove copyright infringement with specific examples, dates or times - it simply coerces and threatens the victim until they relent into paying out huge settlement fees...
In one case, UMG vs. Lindor, a cleaner who has never used or owned a computer but simply dusted near one was sued as an online distributor in peer to peer file sharing.
Accusing the RIAA of "conducting a reign of terror" by bringing lawsuits against defenseless people, Beckerman warned that one case in particular, Elektra vs. Barker, has the potential to shut down the Internet completely.
RIAA's argument is that Miss Barker, a poor nursing student who lives in housing projects, should be prosecuted on the basis that "merely making files available on the internet is in and of itself a copyright infringement."
Beckerman calls the complaint "a shocking argument because if it were accepted it would probably shut down the entire internet."
One of the UK's biggest technology news websites, the Inquirer also today highlights the frightening development in an article entitled, RIAA wants the Internet shut down.
The U.S. government has also filed legal briefs supporting the RIAA's argument.
Deep sixing the entire Internet seems a highly unlikely move in that it would probably derail the world economy and put thousands of huge transnational corporations out of business. An outcome more likely to happen if this ruling is accepted is that it would further pave the way for government regulation and tracking of the Internet, namely "Internet 2," a completely controlled, surveilled and autocratic cyber police state similar to the Chinese model, whereby website owners have to obtain government permission to run a blog, be approved by a biometric thumb scan just to turn their computer on, and immediately get their Internet access shut off if they misbehave.
This case is another attack arm of forces in government and the corporate structure that seek to suffocate the last outpost of true freedom of speech and dissent and it must be countered at all costs.
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