Copyright skeptics commonly try to make the claim that copyright enforcement is prone to abuse.1

These claims were especially prevalent during last winter’s debates over SOPA and PIPA. In an article on Popular Mechanics, for example, Adam Savage of Mythbusters said, “This is exactly what will happen with Protect IP and SOPA. We’ve seen it again and again. Give people a club like this and you can kiss the Internet as you know it goodbye.”2

The Google Report, however, paints quite a different story.

Google notes that, “From time to time, we may receive inaccurate or unjustified copyright removal requests for search results that clearly do not link to infringing content,” adding that it does not comply with such requests. How many of these requests are there? According to Google, “We removed 97% of search results specified in requests that we received between July and December 2011.” That means that out of all the requests Google receives, only 3% were sent by mistake or in bad faith.

Three percent.

Rumors of Copyright Abuse Have Been Greatly Exaggerated | Copyhype

Supporters of stronger online copyright legislation weren’t surprised that the anti-SOPA efforts fell flat at the voting booth. Many never believed that SOPA would be much of an election year issue. And the Texas GOP primary proved that.

Rep. Lamar Smith, SOPA sponsor, sees critics retreat in bid to unseat him - Jennifer Martinez - POLITICO.com

This is a rambling, wide eyed conspiracy theory about the technology industry and Creative Commons, written by a Music Industry Prof at UGA. The person who wrote this teaches undergrads about the music industry.

There was a real deal gulf of misunderstanding around the SOPA/PIPA debate between members of the content industry and Internet users - you could see the media interests talking to themselves, absolutely convinced that they were sitting across the table from a bunch of thieves and liars. This sort of essay is exemplary of how detached from reality the thought leaders in the content industries have become. The thinking here is broken enough to be dangerous.

I think that some good could come from attempting to reach out to these people and help them understand what is really happening in technology and why. Unfortunately, they may not necessarily be receptive. My comment on this blog was not accepted by the moderator, and I see almost no critical commentary in the thread. I find it hard to believe that no one let this stand unchallenged.

I also deeply empathize with your generation. You have grown up in a time when technological and commercial interests are attempting to change our principles and morality. Sadly, I see the effects of this thinking with many of my students.

These technological and commercial interests have largely exerted this pressure through the Free Culture movement, which is funded by a handful of large tech corporations and their foundations in the US, Canada, Europe and other countries.

The words "their foundations" are linked to a tax return statement for Creative Commons. In other words, the fact that technology corporations fund Creative Commons is herein presented as proof that the conspiracy is real and the evil technology corporations are manipulating all the innocent little children into becoming corrupt thieves - Creative Commons being, of course, the epitome of pure evil.

The fundamental shift in principals and morality is about who gets to control and exploit the work of an artist. The accepted norm for hudreds of years of western civilization is the artist exclusively has the right to exploit and control his/her work for a period of time. (Since the works that are are almost invariably the subject of these discussions are popular culture of one type or another, the duration of the copyright term is pretty much irrelevant for an ethical discussion.) By allowing the artist to treat his/her work as actual property, the artist can decide how to monetize his or her work. This system has worked very well for fans and artists. Now we are being asked to undo this not because we think this is a bad or unfair way to compensate artists but simply because it is technologically possible for corporations or individuals to exploit artists work without their permission on a massive scale and globally. We are being asked to continue ... [ Read More (0.5k in body) ]

Letter to Emily White at NPR All Songs Considered. | The Trichordist

Oh god, someone gave Matel's designers enough money to make actual cars - and tracks - and hire drivers.

This is the best bad idea to come along since some wild man jumped a Subaru onto a barge in Long Beach Harbor...

More Hot Wheels Insanity: The Double-Loop Dare At X Games

“At their worst peak, condos were at a 17 month supply. Detached housing was at a 14 month supply,” Hunt said. “Now both are at five months.”

Because of all the foreclosures and because of difficulties related to buying and selling homes, Hunt said that there’s been a “massive shift” from home ownership to renters.

Prices still are far from their peaks. Hung said that of the homes that were sold in the last 12 months, about 25 percent were sold for less than $50,000.

This hasn't had an impact where I live yet.

Metro Atlanta’s housing market is beginning to show improvement | SaportaReport

Thank you XKCD - This might be a regional thing. Where I grew up (in Canada) "a couple" was a vague term meaning "roughly two," but when I moved to the South Eastern US this was a source of confusion frequently - here "a couple" seems to mean "exactly two" not "roughly two." This cartoon is consistent with my understanding, but the author is from Massachusetts. Its possible that the English spoken there is more similar to that spoke in Ontario than that spoken in Georgia.

xkcd: Words for Small Sets

The new market for security vulnerabilities results in a variety of government agencies around the world that have a strong interest in those vulnerabilities remaining unpatched.

The Vulnerabilities Market and the Future of Security - Forbes

Hypponen says the job searches he began out of curiosity show a marked uptick in these self-described offensive hacker jobs for U.S. government contractors. “I think this is new,” he says. “The arms race has started, and this proves it. It’s a clear sign of the demand to stockpile cyber weapons and expand the operations underway.”

New Grad Looking For a Job? Pentagon Contractors Post Openings For Black-Hat Hackers - Forbes

When Charles Dickens wrote “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times” to begin “A Tale of Two Cities,” he compared the years of the French Revolution to his own “present period.” Both were wracked with inequality. But he couldn’t have known that 75 years later inequality would cause the Great Depression. Or that 75 years after that, in our own present period, extreme inequality would return for a fourth time, to impact a much greater number of people. He probably didn’t know that the cycles of history seem to drag the developed world into desperate times about every 75 years, and then seek relief through war or revolution.

It’s that time again.

This observation is historically accurate although I think the attached blog post is a bit overdramatic. Policy makers in this age are fairly smart about avoiding these consequences by creating safety valves and ignoring the wining of libertarians. Something probably still needs to be done about housing.

War or Revolution Every 75 Years. It’s Time Again. | Brave New World

Last year, the psychologist Richard Wiseman bought a wide variety of bottles at the local supermarket, from a five-dollar Bordeaux to a fifty-dollar champagne, and asked people to say which wine was more expensive. (All of the taste tests were conducted double-blind, with neither the experimenter nor subject aware of the actual price.) According to Wiseman’s data, the five hundred and seventy-eight participants could only pick the more expensive wine fifty-three per cent of the time, which is basically random chance. They actually performed below chance when it came to picking red wines. Bordeaux fared the worst, with a significant majority—sixty-one per cent—picking the cheap plonk as the more expensive selection.

Having drunk a lot of wine, you can certainly tell the difference between varietals and you can certainly tell the difference between cheap wine and decent wine but rating decent wines of the same varietal is difficult. You can certainly tell if you've gone from a very nice wine down to a less complex wine in the same sitting! The key is finding something you like that doesn't cost too much...

Does Wine from New Jersey Taste the Same as Wine from France? : The New Yorker