Office by Alex Penny
My name is Bill, I am a recent graduate in Information Sciences and Technology from Penn State University and this is a place for me to post or give my 2 cents on the fascinating world of technology. I am now working for a pretty big technology related company whose name I will leave out just to avoid any possible complications, however far-fetched them happening may be. Music gets included from time to time as well.
Nearly three dozen computer scientists have signed off on a court brief opposing Oracle’s effort to copyright its Java APIs, a move they say would hold back the computer industry and deny affordable technology to end users.
A dizzying story that involves falsified medical research, plagiarism, and legal threats came to light via a DMCA takedown notice today. Retraction Watch, a site that followed (among many other issues) the implosion of a Duke cancer researcher’s career, found all of its articles on the topic pulled by WordPress, its host. The reason? A small site based in India apparently copied all of the posts, claimed them as their own, then filed a DMCA takedown notice to get the originals pulled from their source. As of now, the originals are still missing as their actual owners seek to have them restored.
» via ars technica
One of the many loopholes in a seriously outdated piece of legislation.
3 Despicable Internet Behaviors That Are Really Your Fault
Hey guys, check out this awesome article I discovered about why your actions online are bringing about the apocalypse. Article could only be better if it went into more detail about how all Norwegians are filthy thieves and should be locked away in prison to rot forever. Reblog this if you agree, like if you think kittens are cute.
Might as well retitle the article “Why Tumblr Kind of Sucks.”
“The problem of excessive patent protection is at present best illustrated by the software industry. This is a progressive, dynamic industry rife with invention. But the conditions that make patent protection essential in the pharmaceutical industry are absent. Nowadays most software innovation is incremental, created by teams of software engineers at modest cost, and also ephemeral—most software inventions are quickly superseded. Software innovation tends to be piecemeal—not entire devices, but components, so that a software device (a cellphone, a tablet, a laptop, etc.) may have tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands, of separate components (bits of software code or bits of hardware), each one arguably patentable. The result is huge patent thickets, creating rich opportunities for trying to hamstring competitors by suing for infringement—and also for infringing, and then challenging the validity of the patent when the patentee sues you.”
A federal judge in San Francisco has handed Oracle another setback in its case against Google. Oracle Corp. had accused Google Inc. of stealing Oracle’s Java programming language to build Google‘s Android software for mobile devices.
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This is one of the most insane attempts by the media industry to hold onto antiquated models. All intellectual property laws were created for the purpose of promoting innovation and fairness, not to allow monopolies to hold us hostage rather than work on creative solutions.
How the jury decided that android infringed on copyright but not patents is beyond me. While I can’t say I disagree with the outcome, this entire trial was incredibly strange. Of course we still have to see what the judge decides about whether API’s are covered by copyright or not but I don’t see there being any chance of Oracle coming away from this happy.
“If Alsup finds that the SSO is copyrightable, the two minor infringement counts will be bundled along with the SSO charge to be handled in any new trial or appeal. If he rules against Oracle on this point, however, Alsup will simply award Oracle statutory damages — a maximum of $150,000 for each of the two counts. That doesn’t leave Oracle out in the cold, though; Alsup’s ruling on SSO copyrightability will no doubt be appealed, and should it be overturned and the case sent down to be tried again, Oracle will have the opportunity to re-open the two minor copyright counts to go after larger damages.”
