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By XEROXED | Internet & Copy Culture

WhatsApp now lets you share any file type with other users

WhatsApp is rolling out an update to its billion-plus global users that lets them share any kinds of files with other users.The Facebook-owned messaging giant first debuted file-sharing early last year, though it was restricted to PDF and text-focused files, such as .doc, .txt, .csv, and .xls. Last …

If you're worried about Net Neutrality, you should be worried about web DRM, too

Yesterday's smashing Net Neutrality campaign showed that people have finally woken up to the risks of the highly concentrated telcoms sector using …

Net Neutrality

Pirate Bay Founder Wants to Save Lives With His New App

Of all the early founders of The Pirate Bay, it is Peter Sunde who has remained most obviously in the public eye. Now distanced from the site, Sunde …

Fansubbing: Dutch Court Rules Fan-Made Subtitles Are Illegal And Copyright Infringement

An Amsterdam district court ruled this week that fansubbing, the practice of fan-made subtitles for TV shows and movies, is illegal.The case was …

Download Influential Avant-Garde Magazines from the Early 20th Century: Dadaism, Surrealism, Futurism & More

“I’m tired of politics, I just want to talk about my art,” I sometimes hear artists—and musicians, actors, writers, etc.—say. And I sometimes see …

Should Photographers Use Creative Commons Licenses?

Featured Photo: Kristina Alexanderson, via Flickr || CC BY-SA 2.0Today, you can find over 391 million images that released under Creative Commons …

Creativity

Sharing legally and freely for better learning

By Cable GreenWe live in an age of information abundance where everyone, for the first time in history, can access all the knowledge they wish. The …

Why secret album-sharing forum What.CD was a pirate paradise

On November 17, music-sharing database What.CD was shut down for good by the French authorities. The loss of the illegal members-only forum was …

Computer Hacking

Harvard Report: One Step Closer to Low-Risk OA Orphan Works?

On August 12, the Harvard Library Office for Scholarly Communication published a comprehensive literature review detailing strategies for digitizing …

How to Avoid Being Sued For Plagiarism

Imagine someone to suing you for half a million dollars because you failed to attribute their work correctly. It would be a shock, right? But believe …

Apple Patents A New Invention and Its A - 'Paper Bag'

Trust tech giant Apple to push the envelope each time. Just when you thought that this was it, Apple comes up with something that leaves us …

German Library Claims Copyright on "Nazi Anthem," Censors Documentary on YouTube (Updated)

When it comes to Nazi propaganda, Germany has an extensive censorship track record. After the Second World War it was policy to ban all Nazi …

CC BY and data: Not always a good fit. Office of Scholarly Communication

Last week I wrote about data ownership, and how focusing on “ownership” might drive you nuts without actually answering important questions about what can be done with data. In that context, I mentioned a couple of times that you (or your funder) might want data to be shared under CC0, but I didn’t …

Creative Commons licenses under scrutiny—what does “noncommercial” mean?

Commercial v. noncommercial use of CC licenses. Where's the line of demarcation?By all accounts, Great Minds is an educational stalwart that has …

Warner Bros flags its own website as a piracy portal in copyright takedowns

It turns out that asking a piece of software to decide which websites should be censored and which ones are legitimate has some problems, which I …

Self-Censorship

Nintendo orders takedown of more than 500 indie games

Nintendo has forced 526 fan-made games off the internet with a barrage of takedown requests.The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DCMA) takedown …

Retrogaming

Download 100,000 Photos of 20 Great U.S. National Parks, Courtesy of the U.S. National Park Service

The story of the U.S.’s national parks isn't one story, but many. These have been told and retold since the founding of the National Park Service, a …

1850s Japan Comes to Life in 3D, Color Photos: See the Stereoscopic Photography of T. Enami

For about a quarter of a millennium, Japan had a policy called sakoku, literally meaning "closed country," which put to death foreigners who dared …

Street Photography

Italian earthquake victims asked to disable WiFi passwords

Early Wednesday a 6.2 magnitude earthquake struck central Italy, killing at least 120 people and trapping countless others under debris. To help ease communications for search and recovery, multiple disaster relief institutions are urging locals to temporarily remove their WiFi passwords.In the …

Photographer seeking $1 billion from Getty Images

An accomplished photographer who lets the public use thousands of her images of America for free has sued the Getty Images photo agency for more than $1 billion, saying it is improperly selling her work to customers and threatening those who don't pay.The photographer, Carol Highsmith, whose work …

Paper Trail, No Fail: How to Stay Out of Legal Trouble? Document Everything

Also known as “Contracts or it didn’t happen,” this practice might help you get out of jail—or at least sleep better at night.“I can’t afford an …

ReactOS 0.4.2, An Open-source Windows Clone With Unix Filesystem Support

If you are looking for an open source replacement of Windows operating system, you can go ahead and try out ReactOS. But, don’t expect a Windows …

Send this bot an emoji, and it sends back a related image from the New York Public Library archives

Some Twitter bots are spammy and obnoxious, with eggs for profile images and misspelled suggestions of ways to get rich quick. But not all Twitter bots are bad. Some are downright brilliant. And some, like the New York Public Library’s new emoji bot, are simply delightful.Tweet an emoji at the …

Greenwich Village