There is no Rodney King in Utah. Only second class citizens may have their misconduct recorded.
http://techdirt.com/articles/20080213/225240253.shtml
Utah Law Proposed To Hide Police Misconduct So It Doesn't Get On YouTube
from the blame-the-victim dept
It's really fairly amazing to see how people react when bad activities are brought to light. A few times now, we've seen stories of students who were able to film inappropriate activity from teachers or principals with their mobile phones. Rather than recognizing the activity as whistleblowing, the schools in question responded by banning mobile phones. In other words, rather than fix the problem, the schools chose to cover it up so future problems wouldn't get exposed. It appears something along those lines may be happening on a larger scale in the state of Utah. After a video showing questionable police activity involving a taser showed up on YouTube, state senator Chris Buttars has introduced legislation that would allow police to withhold any reports concerning police misconduct from the public (found via Digg). That's because the whole reason the taser video made it to YouTube was because the victim filed a Freedom of Information Act request for it. So now, rather than deal with stopping police misconduct, it appears supporters of this legislation would simply prefer that no one knows about it. It might be worth noting that this comes at about the same time as new reports of a police officer suspended for inappropriate activity -- which was brought to light via YouTube.
Wow, this is a new definition to me!
http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20080215061448179
Public Health Surveillance in the Twenty-First Century: Achieving Population Health Goals While Protecting Individuals’ Privacy
Friday, February 15 2008 @ 06:14 AM EST
Contributed by: PrivacyNews
News Section: Medical Privacy
Stoto, M.A. Public Health Surveillance in the Twenty-First Century: Achieving Population Health Goals While Protecting Individuals’ Privacy and Confidentiality. Georgetown Law Journal, 2008, 96:2, 703-719.
Surveillance, a core function of public health, is defined as “ongoing, systematic collection, analysis, and interpretation of health data essential to the planning, implementation, and evaluation of public health practice, closely integrated with the timely dissemination of these data to those who need to know.”1 In the context of a session that addresses how data and information can and should inform public health policy and practice, this discussion of surveillance calls attention to the disclosure and use of personal health information. In particular, public health surveillance programs require a careful balance between the development of statistical and epidemiological data and knowledge that are essential to achieving population health goals and the protection of individuals’ privacy and confidentiality rights.
Free full-text article available at Georgetown Law Journal [pdf]
One to watch?
http://techdirt.com/articles/20080207/131317200.shtml
Is Selling A CD You Found In The Trash Copyright Infringement?
from the so-sayeth-the-courts dept
Various courts have held that by putting something in the trash, you are relinquishing your ownership of those goods. However, apparently that might not apply to music. William Patry has the story on an unfortunate decision by our court system, suggesting that if you find a CD in the trash and sell it you may be charged with copyright infringement. The story of the case is as follows: BMG famously offers a CD and DVD "club" that sends out new CDs and DVDs on a regular basis to subscribers. Sometimes those subscribers move and cannot be found or for whatever reason the discs are determined to be "undeliverable." BMG so devalues its own discs that it has told the post office to throw out the undeliverable discs, rather than spend the postage to have them sent back to BMG. The post office dumps the discs in its dumpsters -- at which point a Postal Service employee dumpster dives to rescue them. He then goes and sells those discs to local stores, cashing in to the tune of nearly $80,000. This gets discovered, and he gets charged with mail fraud before settling on charges of copyright infringement.
However, what no one seems to clearly explain is where the infringement is? BMG instructed the CDs to be thrown out. The Post Office threw them out. At that point, the property has been relinquished by BMG and the Post Office, so it would appear that anyone who finds the discs wouldn't be committing any kind of infringement (or, for that matter, fraud) in selling them. A lower court ruling was especially bizarre, in demanding that the guy give up all the money he earned to BMG due to the "lost opportunity" to BMG in selling the music. As we've discussed at length before a "lost opportunity" is not an actual loss and it's not a crime. It's simply a marketing challenge. Otherwise, just about any business could be guilty of creating a "lost opportunity" for any competitor. The pizza shop down the street creates a "lost opportunity" every time I eat there instead of the deli. Hell, just buying one musician's CD rather than another's creates a "lost opportunity." So, it's ridiculous to equate a "lost opportunity" to a crime -- and even worse when that "lost opportunity" was self-created by BMG choosing to throw out the discs.
Luckily, the Appeals Court tossed out the "lost opportunity" part, but as Patry notes, it doesn't appear that anyone questioned how the facts of this case could possibly be considered copyright infringement. Selling used CDs is considered to be perfectly legal and non-infringing. How is selling CDs that have been thrown in the garbage any different?
You can't be serious!
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/02/14/2032206&from=rss
SCO Goes Private With $100 Million Backing
Posted by Zonk on Thursday February 14, @04:34PM from the this-is-just-a-touch-unexpected dept. Unix Businesses Caldera The Almighty Buck
AmIAnAi writes "Just when you thought it was all over, the SCO story takes a new twist. SCO has received $100 million financing from Stephen Norris Capital Partners to get them out of Chapter 11 and go private 'The move gives Stephen Norris, whose namesake founder was a co-founder of private equity giant The Carlyle Group, a controlling interest in SCO, which now has a platform to continue its court battle with Novell Inc. over royalties from the Unix server operating system, SCO's main business ... According to a statement from the company, SNCP already has a business plan for SCO that includes pursuing its legal claims.'"
For my web site students. Innovation is everything!
http://techdirt.com/articles/20080213/131414249.shtml
Catching Real Fish With Your Mobile Phone
from the don't-play-with-your-food dept
Well, here's an amusing one. Some folks in Japan have put together a game for mobile phones that lets you go fishing for virtual fish. That, alone, isn't particularly interesting of course. What makes it worth writing about is that when you catch a virtual fish, you then can get a real fish delivered to your door from a local fish wholesaler. There's a bit of luck involved, as once you've "caught" the fish, you then have to have numbers match up on a virtual slot machine, but it could get people thinking about more creative ways to make ordering any kind of product more fun. We've already seen various crazes for "virtual pets" come and go -- but why not attach them to real life outcomes? Need fish? Catch a fish. Need bread? Manage a virtual farm to successfully grow wheat. Want a dog? Successfully take care of a virtual one first. Obviously, some of these ideas are a bit silly, but you could see some more interesting ideas developed out of them, potentially offering people discounts on the actual products if they partake in some of these games that either have subscription fees or advertising.
...and another for my web site students
Overlay.tv - Adding Glitter and Commerce to Net Videos
New fangled video oriented startups are a dime a dozen, however Overlay.tv has entered the cramped arena offering something actually cool and entertaining. The concept is fairly simple: users can overlay stuff over videos. There are animations, graphics, icons, pointers and text all available so that you can add some shimmer and glitter to the video of your choice. Simply pull in a video from Youtube, Google Video, Myspace, etc., and use the Overlay dashboard to start piecing things together. Besides making for some pretty amusing jokes, Overlay also targets the advertising sector. Items in a video, a shirt, someone’s skirt, a musical instrument, whatever, can be highlighted and put up for sale. Create your own online store based on a video and viewers will be able to purchase directly from the video itself. Of course all that stuff sometimes becomes annoying and tiresome, so Overlay gives you the option to switch it off.
I'd tell my students about this one, but they can't hear me with those things in their ears...
http://the-ipod-hacker.blogspot.com/2008/02/100-ways-to-use-your-ipod-to-learn-and.html
Thursday, February 14, 2008
100 Ways to Use Your iPod to Learn and Study Better
If you think that iPods are used just for listening to music, you obviously haven't been keeping up with the latest technology The Apple-developed music player now features all kinds of accessories to help you study better, and now other companies are in a rush to get their designs in sync with the iPod.
... To find out about the many different ways you can transform your iPod into a learning device, check out our list below.
[One of the items on the list:
Podcasting Legal Guide http://mirrors.creativecommons.org/Podcasting_Legal_Guide.pdf
To say this needs work is an understatement, but there is content there (somewhere)
http://www.killerstartups.com/Web20/OCWFindercom---OpenSource-Education/
OCWFinder.com - OpenSource Education
You paid thousands in dollars worth of textbooks and course packets. They were either never opened, or shoddily leafed through in hopes of retaining something in the brain before the big exam. But in reality, you couldn’t remember it if you had to. This is the problem with a lot of course material these days—it’s expensive, disengaging and expensive. OpenCourseWare wants to change this. OpenCourseWare is a haven for high-quality and free educational materials. It’s a collaborative effort, with material gathered and shared from hundreds of universities around the world. Along with OpenCourseWare’s main site, there’s OpenCourseWare Finder, a search engine site for students who can search all the available courses. The left-hand side contains an alphabetized list of all subjects. The top has a search query box and below that, you have your choice of four languages. So, next time you have to buy a textbook, check OpenCourseWare first.
Dilbert on: Trouble-free programming
http://www.unitedmedia.com/comics/dilbert/archive/images/dilbert2008073345215.gif
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