Virginia, There IS a Fair Use Doctrine After All

Who'da thunk, but the Library of Congress, in its oversight of the Copyright Office, has concluded that Steve Jobs can't be your nanny after all, though apparently he can still be a total jerk -- it's one of those things guaranteed in the Constitution.

In other news, documentary filmmakers and teachers (and presumably others protected by "fair use" doctrine) can legally break DVD copy-protection schemes in order to excerpt permissible snippets of video as long as they fall under "fair use" exceptions. (The article in question, though, focuses entirely on the smack-down against Apple's inane opposition to "jailbreaking" the iPhone.

I have a better idea. Just say no to iPhones until they're open sourced. Or only buy the used and jail-broken.

in reference to:

"The decision to allow the practice commonly known as "jailbreaking" is one of a handful of new exemptions from a 1998 federal law that prohibits people from bypassing technical measures that companies put on their products to prevent unauthorized use of copyright-protected material."
- iPhone 'Jailbreaking' Legal Under New Government Rules (view on Google Sidewiki)

Straight Talk About Climate Change

Melting Lands from Hemmings House Pictures on Vimeo.

If you don't like Johnny Cash, or hate remixes, here's a more sentimental piece focusing on the human costs of ignoring global warming and pretending that climate change is a myth. Enough said.


Not sure whether I linked to this before, but there's an excellent essay on DailyKos about the impacts of Palin's pet project, the TransCanadian pipeline, and why it's not a good solution to our energy problems.