The tech giant is slapped with a class action suit, which alleges it knowingly sold users iPhone 4 smartphones with power buttons that broke shortly after the 1-year warranty expired. [Read more]
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Lawsuit claims Apple sold iPhone 4 with bad on-off button
A new bill introduced to congress today, called “The Unlocking Technology Act,” seeks to make unlocking, jailbreaking, and otherwise modifying phones, tablets, and other mobile devices completely legal. It’ll legalize DVD ripping as well. For more information, read this and contact your representative and show your support if this is something you want to pass. Read more…
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A new bill introduced to congress today, called “The Unlocking Technology Act,” seeks to make unlock
gannebraemorr writes “The U.S. Department of Justice and the FBI believe they don’t need a search warrant to review Americans’ e-mails, Facebook chats, Twitter direct messages, and other private files, internal documents reveal. Government documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union and provided to CNET show a split over electronic privacy rights within the Obama administration, with Justice Department prosecutors and investigators privately insisting they’re not legally required to obtain search warrants for e-mail.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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US DOJ Say They Don’t Need Warrants For E-Mail, Chats
A Second Circuit Appeals Court judge has handed down a landmark fair use decision in Cariou v. Prince . Prince, a collagist, remixed some of Cariou’s photos and sold them for large sums. Cariou argued that the new works were not fair because Prince did not create his collages as a comment on the original (one of the factors judges can consider in fair use cases is whether the new work is a commentary or parody). The lower court agreed, and ordered destruction of the show catalogs and a ban on hanging the new works. But the appeals court overturned, and held that a use can be fair even when it doesn’t comment on the original. “We conclude that the district court applied the incorrect standard to determine whether Prince’s artworks make fair use of Cariou’s copyrighted photographs,” writes Judge B.D. Parker in the decision, which was released this morning. “We further conclude that all but five of Prince’s works do make fair use of Cariou’s copyrighted photographs. With regard to the remaining five Prince artworks, we remand the case to the district court to consider, in the first instance, whether Prince is entitled to a fair use defense.” “This decision absolutely clarifies that the law does not require that a new work of art comment on any of its source material to qualify as fair use,” attorney Virginia Rutledge told A.i.A. by phone this morning after a preliminary survey of the decision. “This is a major win for Prince on at least two counts,” NYU art law professor Amy Adler told A.i.A. via e-mail. (She consulted on the case but was speaking for herself.) “The court decided that artwork does not need to comment on previous work to qualify as fair use, and that Prince’s testimony is not the dispositive question in determining whether a work is transformative. Rather the issue is how the work may reasonably be perceived. This is the right standard because it takes into account the underlying public purpose of copyright law, which should not be beholden to statements of individual intent but instead consider the value that all of us gain from the creation of new work.” Richard Prince Wins Major Victory in Landmark Copyright Suit [Brian Boucher/Art in America] ( Thanks, Tim ! )
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Fair use decision: remixing is legal even when there is no intent to comment or parody original work
Internal document from the Drug Enforcement Administration complains that messages sent with Apple’s encrypted chat service are “impossible to intercept,” even with a warrant. [Read more]
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Apple’s iMessage encryption trips up feds’ surveillance
More than two million semis travel some 120,000 miles apiece along America’s arterial highways every year at an average efficiency of just 6 MPG. Six. Miles per gallon of diesel—not even Hummers are that wasteful. However, a new “Super Truck” design by Peterbilt has shown it can go the same distance for half the gas. More »
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Peterbilt’s New “Super Truck” Gets 10 MPG—Double the National Big Rig Average
A judge in Ohio says what so many have been thinking, but never expected to hear from a judge. He described them as “nothing more than a high-tech game of 3-card Monty.” [Read more]
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Speed cameras are a scam, Ohio judge rules
An anonymous reader sends this Techdirt report on a welcome ruling from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals: “”Here’s a surprise ruling. For many years we’ve written about how troubling it is that Homeland Security agents are able to search the contents of electronic devices, such as computers and phones at the border, without any reason. The 4th Amendment only allows reasonable searches, usually with a warrant. But the general argument has long been that, when you’re at the border, you’re not in the country and the 4th Amendment doesn’t apply. This rule has been stretched at times, including the ability to take your computer and devices into the country and search it there, while still considering it a “border search,” for which the lower standards apply. Just about a month ago, we noted that Homeland Security saw no reason to change this policy. Well, now they might have to. In a somewhat surprising 9th Circuit ruling (en banc, or in front of the entire set of judges), the court ruled that the 4th Amendment does apply at the border, that agents do need to recognize there’s an expectation of privacy, and cannot do a search without reason. Furthermore, they noted that merely encrypting a file with a password is not enough to trigger suspicion.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Court: 4th Amendment Applies At Border, Password Protected Files Not Suspiscious
Generally, Facebook is making money of you (or at least trying) by collecting all your info and then parceling it all out for ads. But now the tables have turned, maybe kinda sorta. Thanks to an ongoing class action lawsuit, you may be entitled to up to 10 whole dollars from the social networking giant. Take that, Zuck! More »
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Does Facebook Owe You Money?
There’s a bunch of junk orbiting the Earth right now, a bunch of junk that we put there. But not all of the old satellites that are zooming around the planet are totally useless; plenty still have good stuff in them that could be reused and DARPA wants to start mining them . More »
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This Is How DARPA Will Strip Old Satellites for Parts