The copyright office issued new exemptions on the DMCAs anti-circumvention rule today. The new rules say that it is not a violation of the DMCA to rip lawfully obtained DVDs and remix clips from those DVDs for noncommercial purposes, jailbreak your phone, unlock your phone to use with other wireless carriers, crack lawfully obtained video games [...]

In the United States, copying a DVD can get you up to 5 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. At least, that’s what all of my legally rented Netflix DVDs tell me every single time I watch them. For fun, I thought I’d see if that punishment was reasonable by surveying the California penal [...]

I just got a spam email in my Flickr mailbox from none other than GE promoting their Picture a Healthy World project. Here’s the email I received: Dear Flickr Member: We saw this photo of yours and really love it! [link removed] We selected your photo based on its quality and subject matter, which we [...]