This is the smallest camcorder I’ve worked with so far. Big question: are the design compromises implicit in it the right ones? Will report in due course.
Daily Archives: May 27, 2008
Copyright thuggery: the next move?
Woner how reliable this report is…
A TOP-SECRET DEAL being ironed out by G8 nations will give the Music and film industry a state-paid force of copyright cops with the same powers of customs officials.
The copyright police can seize your mp3 player or laptop to see if it contains pirated content and can order ISPs to turn over personal data without the need for proof.
G8 members, at the request of those wonderful examples of humanity at the RIAA, are agreeing to turn tax-payer paid customs officers into boot boys for the record and music business.
The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), will be discussed at the next G8 meeting in Tokyo, in July.
The Ottawa Citizen claims that the moves are part of a package of laws to govern private copying and copyright laws.
When you arrive in the country the copyright police would be given the job of checking laptops, Ipods, phones and other personal devices for content that ‘infringes’ copyright laws.
If you have any ripped CDs or DVDs you could be in deep in poo as the customs officials can define on the spot what they think constitutes copyright infringement.
The Bin Ladens
Interesting review by Christopher Caldwell of Steve Coll’s biography of Osama’s folks.
Is Osama bin Laden a rebel against the Saudi Arabian ruling class or a model member of it? That question lurks behind “The Bin Ladens,” by the Pulitzer Prize-winning New Yorker writer Steve Coll. The world’s most famous terrorist owes his fortune and his standing to a family business that Coll calls “the kingdom’s Halliburton.” Like Halliburton, the Saudi Binladin Group specializes in gigantic infrastructure projects. Government connections are the key to the family’s wealth.
Caldwell gives an excellent summary of the book, culminting in the revelation that the bin Ladens are still doing just fine.
Sept. 11 changed the family in two big ways: it made one of the sons into the hero of the Arab world, and it drove up the price of oil, igniting a construction boom. With oil topping $100 a barrel, the bin Laden group is thriving. It has 35,000 employees and expects to double in size in the coming decade. It is building airports in Egypt and elsewhere. In Mecca and Medina, it oversees vast real estate projects. “To please American audiences, the bin Ladens would have to seek forgiveness and denounce Osama,” Coll writes. “To please audiences in the Arab world, where the family’s financial interests predominantly lay, such a posture would be seen as craven.”
Seven years’ distance reveals a brutal reality. For both his family and his country Osama bin Laden’s attacks turned a profit.
Al Gore’s viewing figures
In papers filed in support of its copyright infringement case against YouTube (prop. Google Inc.) Viacom claims that Gore’s film An Inconvenient Truth (the rights to which are owned by Viacom) had been viewed “an astounding 1.5 billion times”.
Wow! Only the Zapruder film of the JFK assassination comes close. I’d have thought that represented real success for the Viacom brand. But that’s not the way lawyers think.