Boing Boing: A Directory of Wonderful Things suggest a link | rss | archives | store | mark | cory | david | xeni | john Sponsored by: Support Bloggers' Rights! HOWTO: Get a link posted to Boing Boing Boing Boing Mobile powered by Winksite Fark rules! Our Linking Policy This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License . Stats (About our stats) Our first five years' worth of posts in one file Copyright 2005 Happy Mutants LLC. Some rights reserved. Boing Boing is a trademark of Happy Mutants LLC in the United States [and other countries]. Monday, January 9, 2006 DRM keeps Spielberg's Munich out of award-voters' hands Patrick von Sychowski sez, Steven Spielberg will most likely not get any nomination for the BAFTA (British Film Academy) awards for "Munich" because of a massive DRM cock-up. BAFTA's 3,000+ members were sent encrypted 'screener' DVDs that can only be played on special DVD players supplied by Cinea (www.cinea.com - a Dolby subsidiary). First the DVDs were held up by UK customs, thereby missing the first round voting deadline. But when they arrived, they would not play on any machine because they had been mastered for Region 1 (North America). As BAFTA members are cannot vote for films they have not seen and only a handful of preview screenings have been held, the film ought to be disqualified from consideration. I can't imagine Spielberg will be best pleased about this. I find it extraordinary that even members of Britain's film making community are not trusted to play DVDs from any other region than Europe! Warner Bros has earlier committed a similar technical faux-pas when they sent BAFTA members commercial DVDs of "Batman Begins" and "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" that were also Region 1, though at least WB has steered clear of Dolby/Cinea (motto: "Making Piracy History"). Looks like other studios might want to do the same thing, come next year's awards season. On Patrick's advice, I called the BAFTA PR office and heard a recorded message apologizing for the "technical errors" with the Munich screener that "will not play in the UK machines" and a recent BAFTA PR email adds "WHILE YOU SHOULD ALREADY HAVE RECEIVED YOUR DVD OF THE FILM,  DUE TO A LABORATORY ERROR IN THE U.S., THE DVD YOU WERE SENT WILL NOT OPERATE IN UK PLAYERS, AS IT IS FORMATTED FOR REGION 1." posted by Cory Doctorow at 08:07:27 AM permalink | blogs' comments Hollywood's Canadian politician: history of a sellout A legal scholar has investigated the past fundraising of a Canadian politician who was recently outed for taking campaign contributions from the copyright cartel and delivering restrictive copyright laws in return. He concludes that while the Member of Parliament claims that funding doesn't influence her politicking, it wasn't until the campaign contributions began to roll in that she took any interest in copyright law. Sam Bulte is the Canadian Liberal Member of Parliament who takes big campaign contributions from the entertainment cartel and then proposes Draconian, US-style copyright laws. Throughout her first term, she was nearly silent on the subject of copyright. In her second term, however, Bulte received substantial funding from entertainment and pharmaceutical companies and introduced a number of overbroad copyright proposals. Bulte claims that she can't be bought and sold, but the numbers tell another story: Ms. Bulte claims that "Nobody influences me. Nobody can buy me." I'll take her at her word. But I am concerned at Ms. Bulte's recent fascination with copyright law. Ms. Bulte was first elected in 1997. According to Elections Canada's candidate contributions and expense reports, her campaign contributions totaled $67,423. Corporate sponsors aplenty, but no big copyright. And, interestingly, I cannot find reference to Ms. Bulte even uttering the word "copyright" until the dying months of that Parliament, when, as a member of the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage, she asked a few questions in a working sessions on a study of the Canadian book industry. She'd have to have slept pretty hard to avoid talking copyright there. In the November, 2000, election, Ms. Bulte had managed to scoop up over $81,000 in campaign financing. And now some of the big copyright names are there: SOCAN, the Canadian Motion Pictures Distributors Association, Alliance Communications Corporation, Alliance Atlantis Communications Inc., Epitome Pictures, Chapters, CanWest Global, CTV, Rogers Communications, Baton Broadcasting, Good Earth Ventures and the Astral Television Network. Interestingly, there are a number of other IP intensive industries represented: beer (Molsons), wine (Pilliteri Estates Winery) and pharmaceuticals (Pfizer and Apotex - makes you wonder what she said to these two!). And when the 37th Parliament began on January 29, 2001, voila, Ms. Bulte began publicly uttering pro-copyright platitudes. By April 2, 2001, Ms. Bulte stood in the House to "applaud" the initiatives of "the Canadian Association of Broadcasters and its partners, the Canadian Independent Record Production Association and the Canadian Recording Industry Association". By December 6, 2001, Ms. Bulte was announcing to the House the imminent tabling of a copyright bill. And, on June 18, 2002, Ms. Bulte spoke on third reading of Bill C-48, the Internet retransmission exemption won by broadcasters. A Canadian copyright politician is born. Link , Link to Digital-Copyright.ca's Wiki for Parkdale organisers , Link to campaign site for Peggy Nash, Bulte's NDP opponent ( via Michael Geist ) posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:59:39 AM permalink | blogs' comments Cory's Anda's Game podcast concludes I've just posted the third and final part of the podcast of Alice Taylor of the Wonderland games blog reading my story Anda's Game . Anda's Game is a story about in-game sweatshops, child labor, obesity, exploitation and community online. It was originally published on Salon, and reprinted in Michael Chabon's Best American Short Stories. Part 1 Link , Part 2 Link , Part 3 Link , Podcast feed posted by Cory Doctorow at 06:59:24 AM permalink | blogs' comments Excellent tool-bag reviewed This Veto tool-bag, as reviewed on Kevin Kelly's Cool Tools list, sounds like just the thing I've been looking for: The Veto just feels right in your hand or over your shoulder. The quality of construction is simply amazing. A molded polypropylene tray forms the bottom, the sides are 1800 denier nylon which is doubled up in many places and secured with double stitching. The bottom and handle are attached with rows of rivets, and the the zippers are massive.  The large handle is attached directly to the center divider so that all the weight is carried by the center divider and end panels. There is no weight carried by the side panels and zippers. The bag comes with a wide padded shoulder strap attached with rugged metal swivels. The Veto bag is divided into two identical half's. I keep my tools in one side and my electrical meters and plumbing hookup parts in the other. I like that this bag completely zippers closed. I don't like the new trend for bags that are covered with external pockets, I want to know my tools are safe and secure. Link ( via Kevin Kelly's Cool Tools ) posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:39:47 AM permalink | blogs' comments Sunday, January 8, 2006 Face-recognition software may aid search for movie Buddha Indian financial newspaper Business Standard reports that Buddha Films is talking to Google and other tech firms about using facial recognition software to find an actor to play Buddha. The paper also states that Shekhar Kapoor ( Elizabeth , Bandit Queen ) will direct the $120 million feature. Link to news story. Memo to Buddha Films: Think rotund and smiley! Maybe this is your guy . ( Thanks, flipa ) posted by Xeni Jardin at 11:16:38 PM permalink | blogs' comments Fuzzy D20s for your windscreen You can now buy a pair of fuzzy 20-sided dice to hang from your rear-view mirror, and let your geek-flag fly. As Alice says at Wonderland , "+10 coolness, -5 visibility, +35 nerd cred." Link ( via Wonderland ) posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:08:46 PM permalink | blogs' comments Wil McCarthy giving free programmable matter talk in Vegas on Fri Wil McCarthy, the engineer and science fiction author whose Hacking Matter ( free download , review ) explains the physics of creating practical "programmable matter" using contemporary technology that operates at the mezzoscale (between microscale and nanoscale) is giving a free public lecture in Las Vegas this Friday, sponsored by the Southern Nevada Area Fantasy Fiction Union and Las Vegas Future Salon : When: Friday, January 13th at 5:30 pm Where: BORDERS Bookstore, 2190 North Rainbow Blvd. (Best of the West shopping center) Link ( Thanks, Michael ! ) posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:05:24 PM permalink | blogs' comments John McDaid's brilliant sf story Keyboard Practice free online One of my favorite sf stories of the past ten years has been shortlisted for this year's Nebula Award, and is being made available for free download during the final balloting season. Last December, I blogged about John McDaid's "Keyboard Practice, Consisting of an Aria with Diverse Variations for the Harpsichord with Two Manuals," I story I workshopped with John in Toronto a few summers ago. John's an amazing, polymath of a writer, one of those short story writers like Ted Chiang whose all-to-infrequent work breaks new ground with each new installment. Keyboard Practice is hard to summarize here: like much of John's work, it is stupendously weird and expansive. I am so mightily pleased that it is available online in full, at last -- not least because it spares me the near-impossible task of summing up a major work of fiction by John McDaid. Run, don't walk. (I'd be remiss if I failed to point out that my story Anda's Game (originally published in Salon and reprinted in Michael Chabon's Best American Short Stories -- podcast reading by Alice from the Wonderland blog is here ) is up against "Keyboard Practice" on the preliminary Nebula ballot -- whew, tough competition.) Aria I'm an unreliable narrator. Everything I know about classical piano could be stored handily, uncompressed, in the lobotomized set-top box of an antique cathode television. Still, it falls to me to transcribe the events surrounding the Van Meegeren Piano Competition of 2023 and the alleged visitation by the late Stefan Janacek. # Variation 1 Stassy intro, nep Yar, yar, copied; 'swhatcha get when I type not talk. Gomenasai. Not a storyspeaker -- ich bin eine musicalische opster. I clip, I doop, I rap, I dub and shunt, pull leitmotifs from the noosphere 'n' singledoubletriple layer, pack and run the tuples, skiffy ins-n-outs wrapped moebial around sparse, selective, show-don't-tell syllables relevated from the subway and limousine earth. A hardwired hook sniffer: What edge will cut through the commodified wash of minute-15 Will-Have-Beens Hafta lay down a tuff rhythm groove and scan for a tasty solo line; grimly practical, paratactical composition. But a keyboard is needed to massage this medium. Got to force myself to sit down, sluice, educe the force that through these carpal tunnels drives the florid. Grep the keystroked sense of this, in at least a first approximation, before it evanesces. Because I don't believe in ghosts. I never have. I never will. And yet, tonight... And yet tonight, I saw one. With my own eternally doubting fingers. Link posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:00:45 PM permalink | blogs' comments Pledge to boycott DRM CDs Fred sez: Elizabeth Stark (Free Culture @ Harvard) and myself (organizer of the NYC DRM protests, FreeCulte @ NYU) have set up a pledge to boycott DRMed CDs. We want to help recognize people around the world who take a public stance against CDs with DRM. Think out of as another DRM protest, but virtual this time. We've set our goal for 500 people, and we think thats pretty reasonable -- making the decision to avoid dangerous and malfunctioning CDs is obviously not a hard one. So we'd love it if you'd sign the pledge (you may even choose to not disclose your name). It won't take you more than 30 seconds and it'll be a great show of support for our anti-DRM efforts. You can read more about DRM and how it restricts your rights at our wiki . I took the pledge. This is a no-brainer: buy crippleware CDs Get a rootkit Spyware An "agreement" that you didn't know you agreed to until you open the package and find a slip of paper telling you you're not allowed to play the disc in your car or laptop It's just common sense: don't buy CDs that treat you like a crook and attack your computers and privacy. Link ( Thanks, Fred ! ) Update: Gavin sez: "A short update on our pledge to boycott DRM: since being posted on Boing Boing, it has quickly shot past the 500-signatures mark. This is well beyond what most pledged on PledgeBank ever receive -- and we did it in just 3 days. We'll keep collecting signatures -- let this be a warning shot to anyone who thinks consumers are too stupid to protect their own rights." posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:47:43 PM permalink | blogs' comments Hollywood's Canadian MP claims she's no dirtier than the rest Sam Bulte, a Canadian Liberal Member of Par