No, you don’t own it: Court upholds EULAs, threatens digital resale

The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit today ruled (PDF) on a long-standing case involving used software on eBay, and it came to an important decision: if a company says you don’t have the right to resell a program, you don’t have that right. Could this mean the end of the resale market for all digital content? Yup. But the court says it had no choice.

The case is Vernor v. Autodesk, in which Timothy Vernor made his living from selling items (including software) on eBay. Vernor had picked up some old copies of AutoCAD from an architect’s office sale, complete with their serial numbers, and he put them up on eBay noting that they were not currently installed on any computer. Sounds legal, right?

But there’s a catch. Autodesk, the software’s developer, forced all users to accept an agreement before using AutoCAD. This agreement made clear that AutoCAD was merely licensed, never sold, and that one’s license was non-transferable. Further, a licensee could not rent, lease, or sell the software to anyone else; you couldn’t even physically transfer the discs out of the Western Hemisphere (!). Finally, if you upgraded to a new version, the old version had to be destroyed.

The copies Vernor picked up at the architect’s sale were old copies that had not been destroyed as required. Vernor believed he was in the clear to resell them, as he had not agreed to any license. But after putting them on eBay, Autodesk repeatedly tried to shut down his sales. Vernor, on the verge of getting banned from eBay, sued Autodesk and asked the court to declare his sales legal.

A federal court did so in 2008, but Autodesk appealed, and today the appeals court reversed that earlier decision. In its view, US “first sale” protections don’t apply to Vernor, because he didn’t buy the software from a legitimate “owner.” That, in turn, is because the architecture firm had only “licensed” the software, and that license could indeed allow a software company to prevent resale, lending, and even removal from the Western Hemisphere.

So how does one know when it’s a “license” or a “sale”? (In other cases, courts have ruled that simply calling something a “license” doesn’t make it so.) In today’s ruling, the judges laid out a test:

“We hold today that a software user is a licensee rather than an owner of a copy where the copyright owner (1) specifies that the user is granted a license; (2) significantly restricts the user’s ability to transfer the software; and (3) imposes notable use restrictions.”

…

This ruling has tremendous implications for most digital media, which is licensed rather than sold. For instance, music from Amazon’s MP3 music store comes with these license terms: “You agree that you will not redistribute, transmit, assign, sell, broadcast, rent, share, lend, modify, adapt, edit, license or otherwise transfer or use the Digital Content. You are not granted any synchronization, public performance, promotional use, commercial sale, resale, reproduction or distribution rights for the Digital Content.” Used music stores? Out of business in the digital age (a result we’ve worried about for some time).

Software is likewise at risk. Most is governed by some form of End User License Agreement (EULA); Electronic Arts’s version goes out its way to note, “This Software is licensed to you, not sold” (though it covers on sublicensing and rental and says nothing explicit about resale).

Similar licenses govern most digital media, and it’s therefore no surprise that the American Library Association would be so concerned about the case. Publishers can simply forbid rental or lending in their licenses unless libraries agree to more expensive licenses (something already seen for journals, though not generally for books). And those old software packages your library may loan out? (Mine does.) Forget about them, unless publishers approve.

via No, you don’t own it: Court upholds EULAs, threatens digital resale.

Chinese woman ‘sues cinema for wasting her time’

A Chinese woman is suing a cinema and a film’s distributors for wasting her time by showing 20 minutes of adverts before it started, according to state media.

Chen Xiaomei claims the Polybona International Cinema in the northern city of Xian and film distributors Huayi Brothers Media Corporation should have told her how long the advertisements for the film Aftershock lasted, Xinhua news agency said.

Ms Chen, who is a lawyer, has accused Polybona and Huayi Brothers of wasting her time and violating her freedom of choice.

The case has been accepted by the People’s Court in Xian, the capital of Shaanxi province, Xinhua said, citing a statement from the court.

Ms Chen is demanding the companies refund her 35-yuan ticket (£3.30), pay her 35 yuan in compensation and one yuan (10p) for emotional damages and write her an apology, the report said.

She has also advised the cinema to publish the advertisement times on its website, in the lobby or on its customer hotline and asked Huayi Brothers to cut the length of commercials to less than five minutes.

…

via Chinese woman ‘sues cinema for wasting her time’ – Telegraph.

More than 230,000 Japanese centenarians ‘missing’

More than 230,000 elderly people in Japan who are listed as being aged 100 or over are unaccounted for, officials said following a nationwide inquiry.

An audit of family registries was launched last month after the remains of the man thought to be Tokyo’s oldest were found at his family home.

Relatives are accused of fraudulently receiving his pension for decades.

Officials have found that hundreds of the missing would be at least 150 years old if still alive.

The Justice Ministry said some of those unaccounted for may have died as long ago as World War II, possibly during the post-war turmoil.

Others may have emigrated without reporting their status to local authorities, or relatives simply did not report the deaths.

The inquiry followed the discovery of the mummified remains of Sogen Kato, who was thought to be the oldest man in Tokyo.

However, when officials went to congratulate him on his 111th birthday, they found his 30-year-old remains, raising concerns that the welfare system is being exploited by dishonest relatives.

Reports said he had received about 9.5m yen ($109,000; £70,000) in pension payments since his wife’s death six years ago, and some of the money had been withdrawn.

Japan has one of the world’s fastest ageing societies, with one in five over the age of 65.

Last year’s Health Ministry report said Japan had 40,399 people aged 100 or older with known addresses. …

via BBC News – More than 230,000 Japanese centenarians ‘missing’.

Laws of physics may change across the universe

New evidence supports the idea that we live in an area of the universe that is “just right” for our existence. The controversial finding comes from an observation that one of the constants of nature appears to be different in different parts of the cosmos.

If correct, this result stands against Einstein’s equivalence principle, which states that the laws of physics are the same everywhere. “This finding was a real surprise to everyone,” says John Webb of the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. Webb is lead author on the new paper, which has been submitted to Physical Review Letters.

Even more surprising is the fact that the change in the constant appears to have an orientation, creating a “preferred direction”, or axis, across the cosmos. That idea was dismissed more than 100 years ago with the creation of Einstein’s special theory of relativity.

At the centre of the new study is the fine structure constant, also known as alpha. This number determines the strength of interactions between light and matter.

A decade ago, Webb used observations from the Keck telescope in Hawaii to analyse the light from distant galaxies called quasars. The data suggested that the value of alpha was very slightly smaller when the quasar light was emitted 12 billion years ago than it appears in laboratories on Earth today.

Now Webb’s colleague Julian King, also of the University of New South Wales, has analysed data from the Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile, which looks at a different region of the sky. The VLT data suggests that the value of alpha elsewhere in the universe is very slightly bigger than on Earth.

The difference in both cases is around a millionth of the value alpha has in our region of space, and suggests that alpha varies in space rather than time. “I’d quietly hoped we’d simply find the same thing that Keck found,” King says. “This was a real shock.”

Moreover, the team’s analysis of around 300 measurements of alpha in light coming from various points in the sky suggests the variation is not random but structured, like a bar magnet. The universe seems to have a large alpha on one side and a smaller alpha on the other.

This “dipole” alignment nearly matches that of a stream of galaxies mysteriously moving towards the edge of the universe. It does not, however, line up with another unexplained dipole, dubbed the axis of evil, in the afterglow of the big bang.

Earth sits somewhere in the middle of the extremes for alpha. If correct, the result would explain why alpha seems to have the finely tuned value that allows chemistry – and thus life – to occur. Grow alpha by 4 per cent, for instance, and the stars would be unable to produce carbon, making our biochemistry impossible. …

via Laws of physics may change across the universe – space – 08 September 2010 – New Scientist.

Pentagon Plan: Buying Books to Keep Secrets

Defense Department officials are negotiating to buy and destroy all 10,000 copies of the first printing of an Afghan war memoir they say contains intelligence secrets, according to two people familiar with the dispute.

The publication of “Operation Dark Heart,” by Anthony A. Shaffer, a former Defense Intelligence Agency officer and a lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserve, has divided military security reviewers and highlighted the uncertainty about what information poses a genuine threat to security.Disputes between the government and former intelligence officials over whether their books reveal too much have become commonplace. But veterans of the publishing industry and intelligence agencies could not recall another case in which an agency sought to dispose of a book that had already been printed.

Army reviewers suggested various changes and redactions and signed off on the edited book in January, saying they had “no objection on legal or operational security grounds,” and the publisher, St. Martin’s Press, planned for an Aug. 31 release.

But when the Defense Intelligence Agency saw the manuscript in July and showed it to other spy agencies, reviewers identified more than 200 passages suspected of containing classified information, setting off a scramble by Pentagon officials to stop the book’s distribution.

via Activist Post: Pentagon Plan: Buying Books to Keep Secrets.

At least 4 dead in Gas Explosion and Fires in San Bruno, CA

Lt. Gov. Abel Maldonado says four people have died in the gas line explosion in San Bruno, Calif. At mid-morning, he said the blaze had cover 15 acres and was 75% contained. Maldonado said 52 people have been hospitalized in the blaze, three in critical condition. Earlier, San Bruno Fire Captain Charlie Barringer put the death toll at 6, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Update at 10:10 a.m. ET: County coroner confirms 4 dead, the AP reports.

Update at 8:23 a.m. ET: The San Francisco Chronicle says at least 20 people have been injured and reports that the fire destroyed 53 homes and damaged 120 more. The newspaper says the fire raged “unabated” for almost an hour as emergency crews rushed in an residents streamed out.

….

Fire crews tried to douse the remnants of an enormous blaze and account for the residents of dozens of homes Friday after a gas line ruptured and an explosion ripped through in a neighborhood near San Francisco, killing at least four people.

Crews with dogs went house to house in the neighborhood near San Francisco and officials said there could be more casualties from the Thursday evening blast. Homes were left with just chimneys standing and smoke still rose from blocks of smoldering wreckage. San Bruno Fire Chief Dennis Haag said Friday afternoon a quarter of the homes are still too hot to search.

Police are blocking people from approaching the burn area, telling them it’s being treated as a crime scene.

“It was pretty devastating,” Haag said. “It looks like a moonscape in some areas.”

At least 50 people were hurt, with eight in critical condition at area hospitals. The explosion that left a giant crater and sent flames tearing through the middle-class neighborhood of 1960s-era homes in hills overlooking San Francisco, the bay and the airport. – yahoo

As homes still smoldered in a San Bruno neighborhood after a gas line ruptured and sparked a massive inferno Thursday, residents in the area said they had complained about a gas smell for weeks.

via PG&E Investigating Complaints of Gas Smell in San Bruno | NBC Bay Area.

Tragic. I had a dream as a kid of little fires leaping up all over the place out of the ground in an ordinary neighborhood like this.  I hope this was only a PG&E line that ruptured. That would be something we can fix. If huge bubbles of methane start to surface all over the place, however  …