KHMERBLOOD: 2009-07-12

Friday, July 17, 2009

VOA News

Deadly Twin Bombings Hit Jakarta Hotels
By Katie Hamann Jakarta 17 July 2009

The Indonesia capital Jakarta remains on high alert after suspected bombs tore through two luxury hotels just before 8:00 a.m., killing at least nine people.

Police officers inspect damage after an explosion went off at the Marriott hotel in Jakarta, 17 July 2009

Police and security staff jostled with reporters as the first bodies were removed from the J.W. Marriot Hotel in central Jakarta, located in a circle of buildings, shops and restaurants frequented by foreigners.

At the scene, Security Minister Widodo Adi Sucipto said the blasts were caused by "high explosives", which were detonated just minutes apart. No one has claimed responsibility for the attacks.

The explosions appear to have come from inside the buildings, with both the front and back windows of the Ritz Carlton blown off, spreading glass and debris across the street. Investigators also found another, unexploded bomb, in the Marriott.

One hotel employee says he rushed from the basement of the Marriot hotel to the second floor. There he found injured people whose clothing had been stripped from their bodies. He says some were trying to relieve their burns with water.

Other witnesses say emergency services may have taken up to 30 minutes to reach the scene as they battled through the early morning traffic that chokes the city every day.

Friday's explosions are the first significant attacks in the capital in nearly five years. In September 2004, a powerful car bomb exploded outside the Australian embassy.

The Marriot was hit by a suicide bomber in 2003, a blast that left 12 dead. The Southeast Asian terror network Jemaah Islamiyah was blamed for that attack and the bomb at the Australian embassy.

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

From free trade, via fair trade, to scalar trade?

Michel Bauwens
15th July 2009

Free Trade is based on the assumption that markets will self-correct, but in a world where the rich companies actively block true costs of production showing up on price tags and balance sheets,

the markets are a political construct, as artificial as Second Life or Disneyland.
Free trade is a game rigged so that global corporations can arbitrage over all sorts of cost factors, based on a patchwork quilt of labor and environmental laws, and nearly always choosing what makes the most money.

The Ambivalence blog of Stowe Boyd has a item directed to the union leadership in the U.S. wondering why they remain so tied to the free trade discourse.
He makes some interesting points about the unsustainability of the current system:
“The problem — at its core — is that the premises for free trade, going back to the start of the industrial era, have not yet been adequately pulled apart and debunked. Both political parties and the media have adopted a pro-free trade (pro-globalism) stance, and deemed that anti-globalism is illegitimate.
But the premises of free trade are too diffuse to ever work in practice. Outsourcing steel development to India or other developing countries ‘works’ economically because the steel developers can take advantage of lax regulation in distant lands to pollute and exploit cheap labor, while the US society has to absorb the costs of local steel workers laid off. The steel companies have no ongoing obligation to support those that they fire, here, and in a uniquely American fashion, former steel workers are left to scramble or fall.
Free trade is a game rigged so that global corporations can arbitrage over all sorts of cost factors, based on a patchwork quilt of labor and environmental laws, and nearly always choosing what makes the most money.
Shouldn’t our core principle be doing what causes the least harm?
The ‘fair trade’ term indicates that some have attempted to move in that direction, away from the unbridled excesses of free trade. But the unions should step forward and baldly state that free trade is inherently damaging to the world as a whole, and to local economies everywhere. A different sort of trade is needed, where the world is seen as a closed system, that all the inputs and outputs have to be tallied and associated with the costs of goods and services, and that the presumption should be that local production of goods, foods, and services is inherently better than globalism: less damaging, more open to inspection and safety, and relying on fewer connections in the rickety financial networks we have inherited.
We need a notion of scalar trade, where transportation, work displacement, and ecological costs are all factored in, and not neatly dropped out by corporate accountants. Someone has to do the full reckoning, and today’s businesses — and even our governments — don’t seem ready to do so.

Free Trade is based on the assumption that markets will self-correct, but in a world where the rich companies actively block true costs of production showing up on price tags and balance sheets, the markets are a political construct, as artificial as Second Life or Disneyland.”

Reference :Click Here

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

7 Sites To Get Free Music (Legally!)

I love music, and I love free stuff. Free music? Heavenly. For those of you who think that nothing good comes for free, you’re about to be surprised. Here are some of my favorite sites to get 100% free and 100% legal music.

Amazon.com

Surprised already? Amazon has become a major player in the arena of online music sales, with one of the first stores to sell music files without any digital rights management. If you dig deep enough (or just click the above link), you can find many tracks available for free as album-samplers. At the time of this writing, I’m looking at 768 songs available for $0.00 on Amazon, and many of them are artists you may have actually heard of, like Neko Case, Death Cab for Cutie, or Louisville’s own My Morning Jacket.

South by Southwest Torrents
On this site, you’ll find BitTorrent downloads of music from the SXSW Conference’s Music Showcase, from 2005 to this year. The 2009 collection is 5GB large! Once SXSW 2010 rolls around, music from there will likely be up on this page, too.

The Live Music Archive/Etree

This archive is a collaboration between Internet Archive and etree.org, a live-concert-trading community. The list of available artists is ridiculously long, and includes The Grateful Dead, but unfortunately, not Phish or Widespread Panic, two bands who are traditionally OK with live-concert recording. Additional Etree trading posts include Furthurnet and Etree’s BitTorrent tracker.

OverClocked ReMix

OC ReMix, which offers streaming, direct downloads, and BitTorrent downloads, is “dedicated to the appreciation and promotion of video game music as an art form.” Game music has been, for some time now, far beyond blips and beeps. The amount of music here is staggering (1687 remixes at this writing), and many remixes come from professional-level composers. To give you an idea of the quality, Capcom commissioned OC ReMix members to create the soundtrack for a recent update to Street Fighter II.

ccMixter

CCMixter features remixes licensed under Creative Commons, which allows others to sample, chop up, and rearrange these works. You may browse full remixes, or collect samples, loops, and a-capellas, to create your own masterpiece. The community offers advice on how to edit the sounds together properly.

Free Music Archive

The FMA is assembled from the archives of nine “curators” such as radio stations. The simple design allows you to get to the meat of the site quickly. Songs are can be browsed by genre or curator, and new tracks are added constantly. You may sign up to create mix playlists or full-blown ‘blogs of FMA content.

Legal Torrents

Copyright Warnings: Facts and Fiction

January 17, 2009

Economic effects of file sharing positive on balance

The economic implications of file sharing for the level of welfare in the Netherlands are, on balance, strongly positive in the short and long terms. File sharing provides consumers with access to a broad range of cultural products.

Conversely, the practice is believed to result in a decline in sales of CDs, DVDs and games. This conclusion was drawn on the basis of a study into the economic effects of file sharing on music, films and games.

This study was carried out by a consortium of SEO Economic Research, the Institute for Information Law (IViR) and TNO and commissioned by the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science, the Ministry of Economic Affairs and the Ministry of Justice of the Netherlands. The analysis drew from statistics and recent scientific literature, interviews with heavy file sharers, a representative survey among the population of the Netherlands and a number of informative workshops with people working in the industry.Estimates of the volume of global unauthorised download traffic vary strongly, but all signs are that this involves many billions of files per year, constituting a substantial share of international internet traffic. Around 4.7 million Dutch internet users aged over 15 years have, over the past 12 months, engaged in downloading without paying on one or more occasions. People tend to see music, film and game sharing as a generally acceptable phenomenon, yet they are ill-informed about the techniques used and the relevant legislation.

Legislation unclear

The study found that little is known about what is and what is not permitted when it comes to file sharing. Whereas downloading for one’s own use is permitted by law in the Netherlands in the case of copyrighted music and films, game sharing is unlawful. In the case of peer-to-peer (P2P) networks, content is not only often downloaded by users but also made available again to others, usually automatically. The uploading of files without the prior consent of the right holders is not permitted. Determining the impact of unlicensed downloading on the purchase of paid content is a tricky exercise. File sharing and buying are not mutually exclusive. On average, file sharers buy just as much music, more DVDs and more games than people who never download. Similarly, file sharers visit concerts more often and buy more merchandise.

Welfare gains on balance

In the music industry, one track downloaded does not imply one less track sold. Many music sharers would not buy as many CDs at today’s prices if downloading were no longer possible. At the same time, we see that many people download tracks to get to know new music (sampling) and buy the CD if they like the music.And so whereas file sharing can also have a positive impact on purchasing behaviour, turnover in the entertainment industries is likely to be negatively affected. This applies in particular to CD sales as music downloading is most common. The impact varies depending on the popularity of the artists, with established artists bearing the brunt and lesser known artists benefiting as file sharing raises their profile. On balance, society as a whole reaps welfare gains as the loss in turnover is made good by revenues generated by a large group of file sharers who would never have bought the product if downloading were not possible.

New business models

The music and film industries face the challenge of matching supply to changing consumer demands. New business models are taking the stage. The music industry is making an all-out effort to tap new sources of income (concerts, merchandising and sponsorship) for although there is a place for music recordings, such recordings alone will not be enough to run a profitable business in the future. In the film industry, the markets for cinema visits and DVD sales are still on the rise; DVD rentals have dropped sharply. This could change in the future as faster internet connections become available, and so business models need to be reinvented here too. The games industry is showing exuberant growth, particularly at the console games end and in the related hardware-software-content combination, where the spectre of file sharing looms much less large than in PC games, where turnover is now flat. The specific platform-restricted official game release is so attractive that this industry might well be able to better prevent or sidestep the file sharing that besets the music business.

Reference

File sharing positive for music industry
(Categories: Wzzup)

The Dutch government, in cooperation with the Dutch research institute TNO, has recently conducted a survey into the economic effects of file sharing on the music industry. The results are quite surprising as they’ve concluded that illegally downloading music (which is allowed in Holland) has a positive effect on the music industry. If it would no longer be possible to download music, the sales of CD’s would further decrease. Quite the perspective change, or not?
File sharing driving salesFile sharing, more commonly known as downloading music, is quite a hassle actually if you’ve ever tried it. You can never be sure that you are actually downloading what you wanted to in the first place. That aside, the people who do so, are more likely to BUY music as well. On top of that they visit more concerts, and they buy more merchandise related to the music they buy and download. As a result file sharing has a positive effect on the music industry as a whole. In the survey, it was also asked, what would change if it would no longer be possible to download. As you might have guessed: less CD’s would be sold at the current price point.
I’m not sure if you all would have guessed this dynamic. But, I have always wondered about the ‘truth’ to declining sales of CD’s and the reasons for it. As it appears from the survey, the risen price of CD’s might be to blame much more for it. It seems, that the consumer is no longer willing to pay those prices. Perhaps it is time to reinvent that product, not by putting the blame on the consumer, but by looking at the business itself. THE question should be: how can we attract the people that don’t buy our products anymore, instead of how can we convince the people who don’t buy our products to buy our products anyway. There’s a nuance in that question that is often not considered. It’s not a marketing issue, but a product development issue.
Blurring boundariesThe results of the survey show that the money is shifting from the CD, to other elements of the music industry (even though the people who download music buy more music) as well. That fits the theme of blurring boundaries, where CD sales or retail is blurring with that of live events.
The question then becomes: would this apply to the movie industry as well? And if so, which parts of the movie making industry could blur with other industries related to it?

Reference: Here

CopyRight

Copyright Basics
Why Copyright Matters

Information is everything. It points the way to advances in science and medicine, innovations in business and technology and achievements in education and the arts. The cost of research, writing and editing is substantial and the efforts often Herculean. Some books are the result of years of individual effort; others are the product of ground-breaking collaboration. Either way, without the protections guaranteed by our copyright laws, many of the works we enjoy and rely upon today would never exist.

Duration of Copyright
The term of copyright protection varies with the date of creation. A work created on or after January 1, 1978, is automatically protected from the moment of its creation and is ordinarily given a term enduring for the author's life plus an additional 70 years after the author's death.
For works made for hire, anonymous works and pseudonymous works (unless the author's identity is revealed in Copyright Office records), the duration of copyright will be 95 years from publication or 120 years from creation, whichever is shorter.For works originally created and published or registered before January 1, 1978, or for more detailed information, you may wish to refer to the public domain (link) section or request Circular 15, "Renewal of Copyright;" Circular 15a, "Duration of Copyright;" and Circular 15t, "Extension of Copyright Terms," from the U.S. Copyright office, www.copyright.gov.
Public Domain
The legal concept of the public domain as it applies to copyright law should not be confused with the fact that a work may be publicly available, such as information found in books or periodicals, or on the Internet. The public domain comprises all those works that are either no longer protected by copyright or never were.
Essentially, all works first published in the United States prior to 1923 are considered to be in the public domain in the United States, as are works published between 1923 and 1963 on which copyright registrations were not renewed. Materials created since 1989, other than those created by the U.S. federal government, are presumptively protected by copyright. Therefore, the likelihood that materials of greatest interest are in the public domain is low. In addition, you must also consider other forms of legal protection, such as trademark or patent protection, before reusing third-party content.
Public domain materials generally fall into one of four categories:
Generic information, such as facts, numbers and ideas.
Works whose copyrights have lapsed due to the passage of time or the failure of the copyright holder to renew a registration (a requirement that applies to works created before 1978).
Works created prior to March 1989 that failed to include a proper notice of copyright.
Works created by the U.S. federal government.
Also, in rare instances, works may be "dedicated" (donated) to the public domain.
Fair Use
The concept of fair use can be confusing and difficult to apply to particular uses of copyright protected material. Understanding the concept of fair use and when it applies may help ensure your compliance with copyright law.
Fair use is a uniquely U.S. concept, created by judges and enshrined in the law. Fair use recognizes that certain types of use of other people's copyright protected works do not require the copyright holder's authorization. In these instances, it is presumed the use is minimal enough that it does not interfere with the copyright holder's exclusive rights to reproduce and otherwise reuse the work.
Fair use is primarily designed to allow the use of the copyright protected work for commentary, parody, news reporting, research and education. However, fair use is not an exception to copyright compliance so much as it is a "legal defense." That is, if you use a copyright protected work and the copyright owner claims copyright infringement, you may be able to assert a defense of fair use, which you would then have to prove.
Section 107 of the United States Copyright Act lists four factors to help judges determine, and therefore to help you predict, when content usage may be considered "fair use."
1-The purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit, educational purposes.
If a particular usage is intended to help you or your organization to derive financial or other business-related benefits from the copyright material, then that is probably not fair use.
2-The nature of the copyrighted work.
Use of a purely factual work is more likely to be considered fair use than use of someone's creative work.
3-The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyright protected work as a whole.
There are no set page counts or percentages that define the boundaries of fair use. Courts exercise common-sense judgment about whether what is being used is too much of, or so important to, the original overall work as to be beyond the scope of fair use.
4-The effect of the use on the potential market for or value of the copyright protected work.
This factor looks at whether the nature of the use competes with or diminishes the potential market for the form of use that the copyright holder is already employing, or can reasonably be expected soon to employ, in order to make money for itself through licensing.
At one extreme, simple reproduction of a work (i.e., photocopying) is commonly licensed by copyright holders, and therefore photocopying in a business environment is not likely to be considered fair use.
At the other extreme, true parody is more likely to be considered fair use because it is unlikely that the original copyright holder would create a parody of his or her own work.
While the factors above are helpful guides, they do not clearly identify uses that are or are not fair use. Fair use is not a straightforward concept, therefore the fair use analysis must be conducted on a case-by-case basis.
Understanding the scope of fair use and becoming familiar with those situations where it applies and those where it does not can help protect you and your organization from unauthorized use of copyright materials, however, many individuals do not want this responsibility. Corporate Copyright Policies (link to section) often provide guidelines for determining whether a use may be considered fair use. Frequently, a complete risk analysis is required. Most organizations prefer to follow the motto "when in doubt, obtain permission."
Thousands of cases, and many, many books and articles have attempted to analyze fair use in order to define specific examples.
Examples of Fair Use include:
- Quotation of excerpts in a review or criticism for purposes of illustration or comment.
- Quotation of short passages in a scholarly or technical work for illustration or clarification of the author's observations.
- Reproduction of material for classroom use where the reproduction was unexpected and spontaneous–for example, where an article in the morning's paper is directly relevant to that day's class topic.
- Use in a parody of short portions of the work itself.
- A summary of an address or article, which may include quotations of short passages of the copyrighted work.
The First Sale Doctrine
The physical ownership of an item, such as a book or a CD, is not the same as owning the copyright to the work embodied in that item.
Under the first sale doctrine (section 109 of the Copyright Act), ownership of a physical copy of a copyright-protected work permits lending, reselling, disposing, etc. of the item, but it does not permit reproducing the material, publicly displaying or performing it, or otherwise engaging in any of the acts reserved for the copyright holder, because the transfer of the physical copy does not include transfer of the copyright rights to the work.
Please click here for more information on the First Sale Doctrine.
Infringing Copyright
In utilizing any of the exclusive rights provided to the copyright holder without his permission, you may be violating or infringing on his rights under the Copyright Act. If the copyright holder has registered the infringed work with the U.S. Copyright Office prior to the infringement, the copyright holder may be entitled to compensation for his loss. Compensation may include damages, such as lost profits from the infringing activity, or statutory damages ranging from $250 to $150,000 for each infringing copy or higher if the court feels that the infringement was committed "willfully."
You may also be criminally liable if you willfully copy a work for profit or financial gain, or if the work has a value of more than $1,000. Penalties can include a one year jail sentence plus fines. If the value is more than $2,500, you may be sentenced to five years in jail plus fines. Criminal penalties generally apply to large-scale commercial piracy.
"International" Copyright
There is no such thing as an "international copyright" that automatically protects a work throughout the world although more than 150 countries have ratified a treaty intended to accomplish as many of the benefits of "international copyright" as possible. Generally, if a work is protected in the U.S. it is protected in most countries because the U.S. adheres to the leading copyright convention, the Berne Convention, which is administered by the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO).
Copyright and Academia
The Copyright Act generally applies to the creation, protection and use of literary, cinematic, pictorial and many other forms of creative materials. In addition, there are some specific provisions in the Copyright Act for the use of copyright-protected materials by academic institutions, including:
- Section 107 on fair use, which applies to activities such as using excerpts for illustration or comment, unexpected and spontaneous reproduction of classroom materials, and creation of parodies.
- Section 108 on reproduction by libraries and archives, which applies to such activities as archiving; replacing lost, damaged or obsolete copies; patron requests for entire works; and interlibrary loans.
- Section 109 on first sale, which permits the resale or lending of copies of works, providing the basis for library lending and the sale of used books.
- Section 110 on performance and display in the classroom, which permits certain types of content use in the classroom and in distance education.

http://www.copyright.com/ccc/viewPage.do?pageCode=cr10-n

Comments on Youtube

I think that the companies do lose out on revenue due to copyright infringement. Thing is that it doesn't really matter. It doesn't matter if it is legal or illegal. Due to the vast nature of the internet this material will be posted and only the more popular sites will be adequately monitored. This is why product placement will continue to become more common inside of programming. Companies will estimate the views on the web and charge other companies for the estimated advertisement.

Copyright is not stealing. You take nothing from another individual. There is no loss. Only gain and a weak argument of speculative loss.

Kindle Speech: Must Users be Disabled in order to legally use it? Quick Interview with Fred Von Lohman

By Mary Minow on April 16, 2009 8:49 AM Permalink Comments (0)

Minow: Disability rights groups are protesting the Amazon decision to allow publishers to opt-out of the text-to-speech function for their copyrighted books. Yet the feature remains for works that haven't been opted out. Must users be disabled in order to legally use the feature? Von Lohmann: No, copyright leaves us all free to use our digital devices to "read aloud" to us. Despite the misleading statements of the Author's Guild, you don't violate copyright law when you have your Kindle "read aloud" to you. Copyright law gives copyright owners certain limited rights, including the right to make copies, perform a work publicly (like showing a movie in a theater), or make a derivative work (like writing a screenplay from a novel).When you have a Kindle (or your laptop) "read a book aloud," you are not "publicly performing" it -- if anything, it's a *private* performance. And no additional "copy" of the work is being made (except perhaps in the computer's memory, and recent cases suggest that those kinds of transitory digital copies don't count for copyright purposes). Finally, simply reading the work aloud does not create a "derivative work" -- courts generally require that a derivative work contain original, copyrightable expression, something that should require more than simply reading the text aloud.So I don't think there is anything about your right to have a computer "read aloud" to you that depends on whether or not you are disabled. In my view, there is just no copyright infringement going on here in the first place.Minow: What defines a public performance?Von Lohmann: Where we're talking about a performance in a real place (as opposed to a transmission), the statute defines "public performance" this way: "to perform or display [a copyrighted work] at a place open to the public or at any place where a substantial number of persons outside of a normal circle of a family and its social acquaintances is gathered."I don't imagine many Kindles will be used to "read aloud" to an auditorium, so this shouldn't apply to most Kindle users.The real problem here is that Amazon needs a license in order to make digital copies of books and to transmit them to your Kindle. So the copyright owners can simply force Amazon to limit the "read aloud" feature as part of their license agreements with Amazon. In light of this, it's not surprising that Amazon has decided to let the copyright owner decide whether "read aloud" will be enabled for any particular title.It's worth noting that device makers that are not also in the business of disseminating digital copies would not be as vulnerable to pressure from the book publishers -- and that's why I imagine that the future of "read aloud" functionality for the disabled and non-disabled like will be on laptops and e-book readers other than Kindle.

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Fred von Lohmann is a senior staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, specializing in intellectual property matters. In that role, he has represented programmers, technology innovators, and individuals in a variety of copyright and trademark litigation, including MGM v.Grokster, decided by the Supreme Court in 2005. Fred has an A.B. from Stanford University and a J.D. from Stanford Law School.

http://fairuse.stanford.edu/

New tool for evaluating copyright use by libraries - a quick interview with Michael Brewer

By Mary Minow on January 29, 2009 12:14 PM Permalink Comments (0)

The Stanford Copyright & Fair Use page just added a new tool to its Charts and Tools page, the "Section 108 Spinner."
Minow: Tell us about the new Section 108 spinner. How does it work and what is its purpose?
Brewer: The "Section 108 Spinner" was actually the first tool we created, but because at that time the Section 108 study group had still not released their findings, we held off on releasing this tool and instead developed and released the "Digital Copyright Slider" first. Once it seemed clear that Section 108 was not going to change any time soon, we decided to go ahead and release the Spinner. The Spinner is focused more on educating and serving the needs of librarians, library staff and archivists. Basically it is there to help them determine when a reproduction of a copyrighted work would be covered by Section 108, the Library and Archives exemption in US Copyright Law. We are focused on promoting the online tool, but we do have some copies of the print tool that we're handing out at conferences or other events. If we hear from people that having access to the print tool would be valuable for their institutions (for their staff in ILL, Special Collections, Collection Management, Public Services, etc.), we might consider making the print tool more broadly available as well.
Minow: Do you have anything else up your sleeve?
Brewer: We've got two more tools in development. One is a "Fair Use Evaluator" which will guide users through the process of making fair use evaluations. The tool collects the evidence and reasoning behind the justification provided by the user, and then provides this information back to them in a nicely formatted, time stamped PDF file for their records. Because Section 504(c) of the US Copyright Code affords some legal protection from statutory damages for those who can show that they made a good faith evaluation of their use and had reasonable grounds for believing it was fair, we feel this feature could be especially valuable. The second is an Educational Exemptions tool that will help instructors determine whether or not their use of a copyrighted work falls under Section 110 and 110(2) [the "face to face" teaching exemption and the TEACH Act], which allow for educational uses of copyrighted works without the permission of the copyright holder under certain circumstances. We've found that there is a lot of confusion out there concerning this portion of the law, so we thought an easy to use online tool might help. This tool can also collect and publish, in PDF format, the circumstances of the use provided by the user. We hope to have these two tools out by ALA Annual in July.
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Michael Brewer is Team Leader for Undergraduate Services, University of Arizona Library and a member of the American Library Association Office for Information Technology Policy Copyright Advisory Subcommittee

http://fairuse.stanford.edu/blog/2009/01/new-tool-for-evaluating-copyri.html