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Doom is Coming, Doom is Coming, Doom is Coming
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By Jeff Foster, Section UnFairUse
Posted on Mon Aug 09, 2004 at 04:10:26 PM PDT
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Doom 3 came out this week, and it turned out to be the second coming of Christ after all. Who woulda thunk it? I give it a 96%. For a fair-use connection, I will point out this thread on Shacknews, in which the poster complains about the awful copy protection included on the CD. Apparently, the game will not play if any virtual drive software is present on the disk. I actually talked about this protection scheme about a year ago, but it being included on such a major release seems like news to me. In the end, it's just an annoyance. The game showed up on p2p networks last Friday (I did not partake, thank you very much. I pre-ordered the game 2 years ago) so who was stopped from pirating the game? I doubt anyone. I don't doubt however, that Doom 3 was a huge factor in the very slow news week that fell upon us. Of course, it could just be that I was playing Doom 3 instead of looking out for fair-use items, so I missed them all. If so, leave a comment below or send me an E-mail at Jeff@malgenic.org
(9 comments, 698 words in story) Full Story
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Used News: Phishing Poll Time as SCO Sinks, JibJab Looks for Land
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By Jeff Foster, Section UnFairUse
Posted on Mon Aug 02, 2004 at 06:35:55 AM PDT
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Yeah, last week's Used News.....uhhhh....Dentist. Vicodin. Pain. Anyway, I'll keep it short, but I still plan to do a fair-use law roundup sometime this week. Also, some of the news will be from last week, as there where some fairly significant happenings. As always, leave a comment below or e-mail me at jeff@malgenic.org if you think I missed something or you think there's something I should be covering (or, as has been the case lately, I made a mistake). Here, read this:
(724 words in story) Full Story
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Violent Games, Broken Trust, and Mistaken Acts
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By Jeff Foster, Section UnFairUse
Posted on Mon Jul 19, 2004 at 01:51:09 PM PDT
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As pointed out by this comment, I appear to have made a mistake in my roundup from 2 weeks ago. The bill I referenced was the Pirate Act, when it was in fact the ART Act. I apologize for the error. To make up for it, I'm going to do a feature sometime this week running-down all the bills that have passed or are in danger of doing so that threaten fair use. I hope you'll enjoy it.
I got a lot of responses both in the comments and in my E-mail about last week’s question on why people use Internet Explorer. A couple folks seem to be perfectly happy with IE, but the majority either didn't know there were any modern alternatives, or more commonly, were forced to use it by their employers. Bosses who subject their employees to the abomination that is IE -- they'll be first against the wall when the Revolution comes. Anyway, this week I'd like to ask a similar question: what E-mail client do you use? I have noticed a high rate of Opera E-mails (I didn't even know they had a client!) coming my way as a result of this column, but I would still imagine that IE rules all. Is it true? Tell me by leaving a comment below or e-mailing me Jeff@malgenic.org. Oh, and to the person who suddenly felt the need this week to send me 10 Mydooms a day, could you please stop? k, thanks!
(9 comments, 763 words in story) Full Story
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Used News: Constitutional Protections, Hooked on Phonics Can't Spell Privacy
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By Jeff Foster, Section UnFairUse
Posted on Mon Jul 12, 2004 at 04:42:59 AM PDT
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Why do people use Internet Explorer? I used it for about an hour this week, and wow, I was shocked. I have been using Firefox (previously Phoenix) exclusively since 0.1, and I had forgotten how truly bad IE is. Why in God's name would anyone use that browser? In addition to the constant security problem, there is no pop-up blocking, no tabs and no extensions. I can't imagine how I browsed the web before Firefox. And yet still, IE dominates the browser market. According to this PC world story, IE market share currently stands at 94%. For the record, our GripeLog readers only run at about 50% IE use, but still, I'm curious. For those of you that still use IE, why do you do it? Leave a comment below or E-mail me at Jeff@malgenic.org
(17 comments, 823 words in story) Full Story
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Used News: Pirates, Patriots, Protection and Beastie Boys
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By Jeff Foster, Section UnFairUse
Posted on Mon Jul 05, 2004 at 04:57:33 AM PDT
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Happy 4th of July! I missed last week's Used News due to some incredibly bad DSL problems. I had no connection at all for four days. Near the end I started twitching. It was pretty bad. Luckily, not all that much took place on the fair use front, but I did miss one big story that needs talking about.
On June 25th, the senate passed the Pirate Act, a bill that would make videotaping a film in a movie theater punishable by three years in prison (no joke!). There is a similar bill in the House that was recently passed out of subcommittee, and is presumably making its way towards a vote. This is one of the most egregious attacks on fair use since the DMCA ... er, I mean the Patriot Act ... no, wait, COPA, no, maybe it's ... look, it's just really, really bad, and it must be stopped.
Is there something you think I missed this week or something I should be covering? Leave a comment below or send me an E-mail at Jeff@malgenic.org. Thanks for all the feedback I've been getting lately!
(6 comments, 1079 words in story) Full Story
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Used News: Privacy, Piracy, Music, TV ... and Kobe
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By Jeff Foster, Section UnFairUse
Posted on Sun Jun 20, 2004 at 11:28:09 PM PDT
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Last week, I took a four-day trip to Texas to visit pseudo relatives (hence no Used News last week). When I got back, I had over 300 spams, and the excellent spam filter Popfile nailed every single one of them. But it did classify one e-mail as spam incorrectly, since it appears to have been from SBC/Yahoo, my broadband provider. Here is the text in full:
Hello xxxxxx@sbcglobal.net,
You are allowed up to -2048.0 MB storage in your Yahoo! Mail account.
You have exceeded your quota by a large amount, as you are currently using 0.0 MB of storage. Your account has been temporarily disabled from receiving new messages. Please delete messages you no longer need, especially large messages, in your Yahoo! Mail account so that you can receive new mail. To delete messages, just go to the Yahoo! Mail website (http://mail.yahoo.com) and sign in to your account.
We recommend that you keep at least 1 MB of free space to receive incoming mail. To reduce the likelihood of reaching or exceeding your storage quota, we suggest that you configure your POP3 client to "Delete messages from the server" when retrieving your Yahoo! Mail. Check the help files for your POP3 client if you need assistance in adjusting your settings.
Sincerely,
The Yahoo! Mail Team
I see. I'm 2 gig over my storage maximum by using 0 MB of storage. I can see why Popfile classified it as spam, as it does indeed look like a phising expedition. However, on further review, it's probably not. SBC and Yahoo are partners, and since I have SBC/Yahoo DSL, the "Yahoo Mail Team" would have a reason for e-mailing me. Plus, there is no phising angle here. The only link in the e-mail was a real link to Yahoo mail. I guess it's just a bug in Yahoo's revamped Webmail system. Still, one would think that I would of received a some sort of mea culpa on the part of Yahoo or SBC. I tried contacting SBC about this, but SBC said it was Yahoo's problem, and they gave me no way of contacting Yahoo itself. In the end, I guess it's just a really weird, but rather funny e-mail, but I wish I could know the whole story.
Did anyone else get this message from SBC/Yahoo? If so, or if you think there's something I missed this week or something I should be covering, leave a comment below or send me an E-mail at Jeff@malgenic.org
(17 comments, 1326 words in story) Full Story
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Used News: Ridiculous Patents, Biometric DRM
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By Jeff Foster, Section UnFairUse
Posted on Sun Jun 06, 2004 at 09:21:12 PM PDT
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I was hired this week to help my mother-in-law's neighbor fix her computer. I had no idea how bad the spyware situation was until I got there. This computer was infested with 47(!) dialers, Gator, and various other awful infestations. Even after running both Spybot and Adaware, I'm not sure that I got rid of it all. Personally, I blame Microsoft. IE won the browser war, and look where it has gotten us. Anyone who isn't technically inclined ends up with a unusable computer full of spyware and viri. Pretty sad.
Is there something I missed this week or something you think I should know about? Let me know by leaving a comment below or emailing me at Jeff@malgenic.org
(4 comments, 533 words in story) Full Story
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Used News: RIAA Conscripts Feds, Microsoft Passes the Buck and Comcast Cleans up their Act
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By Jeff Foster, Section UnFairUse
Posted on Sun May 30, 2004 at 09:10:01 PM PDT
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Well, I don't want to talk about the RIAA in my intro 2 weeks in a row, but, uh, I'm gonna. Specifically, I'm going to try and answer a question Ed had about the Pirate Act (which is detailed below). As a real quick summary, the Pirate Act is a law being considered by Congress which would allow federal prosecutors to sue File sharers in Civil Court. Ed assumed that the MPAA (the Motion Picture Association of America) would be involved as well, as they often have the same interests as the RIAA in terms of piracy. In this case however, they don't, and here is why: The MPAA does not currently sue people for file sharing. The reason is probably because suing people en masse tends to make people rather upset, and is really a desperation strategy. The MPAA is not desperate, therefore, they have no need to get in on a law that could only make people mad at them. That's how I see it anyway. Next week I promise to not talk about any acronym that ends in AA, unless I really, really have to.
Is there something I missed this week or something you think I should know about? Let me know by leaving a comment below or emailing me at Jeff@malgenic.org
(7 comments, 843 words in story) Full Story
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Used News: Guerrilla marketing, Freenet freezing, and Patriot acts
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By Jeff Foster, Section UnFairUse
Posted on Sun May 23, 2004 at 12:47:10 PM PDT
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I have no RIAA story this week, which is too bad, since it's one of my favorite subjects. To make up for it, I'll tell you my theory about the RIAA and why they do what they do.
I don't believe that the RIAA is concerned in the least about the direct financial effects of file sharing. There is no reason to think that file sharing is anything but good for the record industry, at least in the short to medium term. It provides free advertising, allows the industry to see what's popular and what's not with the record buying public, and there is no proof of file sharing affecting record sales (as evidenced by this story from last week). Furthermore, I would theorize that the record industry could come up with a way of making money from file sharing if they really wanted to. So why don't they? Why haven't they even tried? In a word: Distribution. If the RIAA where to allow file sharing, then the recording industry would no longer control what people listened to and what they didn't. The end of the RIAA as we know it would come around soon after. Of course, this idea is obvious, and I'm certainly not the first to say it. The disagreement with this theory seems to come at a more base level, with the RIAA and others arguing that file sharing is stealing, so the above theory is immaterial. To that I would say: uhhh, you're wrong. Agree? Disagree? Or is there something I missed in this weeks roundup? Tell me about it by leaving a comment below or email me at jeff@malgenic.org
(1 comment, 706 words in story) Full Story
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