Lawsuit Filed To Prove Happy Birthday Is In The Public Domain; Demands Warner Pay Back Millions Of License Fees

June 14, 2013 by Leave a Comment

The issue, as we’ve noted, is that it’s just not cost effective for anyone to actually stand up and challenge Warner Music, who has strong financial incentive to pretend the copyright is still valid. Well, apparently, someone is angry enough to try. The creatively named Good Morning to You Productions, a documentary film company planning a film about the song Happy Birthday, has now filed a lawsuit concerning the copyright of Happy Birthday and are seeking to force Warner/Chappell to return the millions of dollars it has collected over the years. That’s going to make this an interesting case.
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A Breach of Public Trust: Google+ Hangouts

May 27, 2013 by Leave a Comment

Linux Advocate Dietrich Schmitz finds himself conflicted at Google‘s decision to remove open protocol XMPP in favor of a proprietary ‘Hangouts’ solution. Read why.
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Review of the new Digital Public Library of America

May 21, 2013 by Leave a Comment
digital literacy

The Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) opened last month.

(The official launch had been planned to occur at the Boston Public Library but the temporary closing of the library due to the Boston Marathon tragedy prompted that event to be postponed until the fall.)

The aim of the DPLA is to provide a large-scale, national public digital library of America’s archives, libraries, museums, and cultural institutions into one portal. Leaders from 42 of America’s institutions have contributed to the project, from ARTstor to the Smithsonian Institution and the University of Virginia Library. The idea of a national digital library harks to the early 1990s and the desire to provide a single portal to make cultural and scientific information available to all. It was conceived as a non-commercial alternative to Google‘s proposed digital library or an American equivalent to the European Union’s Europeana digital library. 

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Lightworks Linux Beta Is Finally Public

April 30, 2013 by Leave a Comment

After years of waiting, there is finally a publicly available beta of the Lightworks high-end non-linear video editing software…
Phoronix

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Download Lightworks Linux Public Beta [Professional Video Editor]

April 30, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Lightworks, a professional video editing and mastering software, is finally available for Linux, as a public beta.
Lightworks has been used in renowned Oscar and Emmy Award award-winning films, including The King’s Speech, The Departed, Mission Impossible, Pulp Fiction or Braveheart.

lightworks linux

Lightworks Beta for Linux has only been tested on Ubuntu 12.04 and 12.10, Mint 13 and 14 and Lubuntu 13.04. There are some unofficial Fedora rpm files but this is not an officially supported distribution. Also, there’s a pretty big list of known issues and limitations for now, including:
  • support for only Nvidia and ATI graphics;
  • 64bit builds only;
  • no AVI and H.264 MOV export option;
  • AVI files may play back incorrectly with black flashing frames and there might be no audio for some uncompressed AVI files;
  • PNG Image Sequences are slow to export;
  • the record tool, playout tool will not be available in the current Linux Beta build of Lightworks. They will be added in a future Linux Beta build;
  • no SDI or Firewire support;
  • more.

You can take a look at all these known issues on the Lightworks Beta for Linux downloads page.
Lightworks is free to use, but if you want extra codecs and support, you need to purchase a $ 60/year PRO license.
To be able to download Lightworks Beta for Linux, you need to register and agree to the Terms and Conditions:

Submit feedback or bug reports for the Linux beta, HERE.

Originally published at WebUpd8: Daily Ubuntu / Linux news and application reviews.


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Euro Truck Simulator 2 Game For Linux Available As Public Beta (Steam Only)

April 24, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Euro Truck Simulator 2 is a vehicle simulation game in which you can drive across Europe, picking up various cargos and delivering them.
Euro Truck Simulator 2 beta for Linux has been in closed beta testing for a few days and today it’s available as public beta for all Linux users, exclusively through Steam.

Important: to be able to play Euro Truck Simulator 2 beta for Linux, you’ll need to buy the non-beta game (which shows up as being available for Windows only) and install it from the Steam for Linux client, then in Steam under Library, right click Euro Truck Simulator 2, select Properties and on the Betas tab select “linux_testing – Testing of linux version“, then click close:

Steam Euro Truck Simulator 2 beta Linux

The Linux binaries should now start installing.

According to the public beta announcement, the game works “reasonably well on native NVidia drivers”, but the users have reported some “flickering artifacts on ATI drivers”. 
Also, in my test under Ubuntu 13.04 with Intel graphics (Nvidia Optimus actually, but the game doesn’t work with Bumblebee, at least for now), the game isn’t playable: the screen flickers and setting any resolution other than my desktop‘s resolution (1920×1080), the game isn’t displayed across the whole screen even though I didn’t set it to run in window mode and it also freezes sometimes. I did manage to take two screenshots though:

Euro Truck Simulator 2 Linux

Euro Truck Simulator 2 Linux

Below you can watch the official Euro Truck Simulator 2 trailer:


(direct video link)
You can provide feedback for Euro Truck Simulator 2 Linux beta HERE, in the Euro Truck Simulator 2 – Linux Beta Testing discussion group.

Originally published at WebUpd8: Daily Ubuntu / Linux news and application reviews.


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BitTorrent Sync: Secure File Sync Between Computers Using P2P Technology [Public Alpha]

April 24, 2013 by Leave a Comment
BitTorrent Sync, a free to use (but not open source) tool that can be used to automatically synchronize files between computers using the BitTorrent protocol, is now available for all as public alpha. The application runs on Linux, Windows, Mac OS X and NAS.

BitTorrent Sync Web Interface Linux

The tool, which has been in closed alpha for the past four months, is advertised as “a simple tool that applies p2p protocol for direct live folder sync with maximum security, network speed and storage capacity“.

And indeed, BitTorrent Sync is a great way of syncing and sharing files between computers, even files that you usually wouldn’t trust with cloud sync tools such as Dropbox: besides the files being transferred directly between the users (so your files don’t end up on some cloud server), the connection is encrypted with a AES cypher and a 256-bit key created on the base of your Secret, a random 20 byte or more string. For increased security, there’s also an option to generate a Secret that expires after a day.

Basically, this peer-to-peer (p2p) sync tool can be compared with cloud sync services such as Dropbox or Ubuntu One, but no server is involved which also means that the sync can be faster than such services and there are no space restrictions (except your HDD). This also means the computers need to be online for the sync to work, obviously.

How to use BitTorrent Sync on Linux

Arch Linux users can install BitTorrent Sync via AUR.

To use BitTorrent Sync (or “BtSync”) on Linux, download and extract the binary for your architecture (Ubuntu users: use the “Linux i386″ or “Linux x64″ links on the left; don’t download the “glib 2.3″ binaries), extract it and to run it, simply type the following in a terminal (assuming you’ve extracted the “btsync” binary in your home folder):

cd
./btsync

To see a list of available options, type:

./btsync --help

And if you want to stop BitTorrent Sync, use:

killall btsync

BitTorrent Sync doesn’t come with a GUI for Linux, but it can be configured through a web interface so once you’ve started BtSync like we’ve explained above, open a web browser and enter the following URL: http://localhost:8888/gui/

Now let’s add a folder to sync. To do this, click “Add folder”, then browse for a folder you want to sync and also click “Generate” to generate a Secret for this folder. Then click “Add” to add the folder:

BitTorrent Sync Web Interface Linux
If you want to connect to other devices / synchronize a folder from a remote computer on your machine, follow the same steps as above, but instead of clicking “Generate” for the Secret, paste the Secret generated for the folder from the remote computer.

On Linux, most of the settings aren’t available in the web interface. Instead, you can run:

./btsync --dump-sample-config > sync.conf

Which will create a new “sync.conf” file with a sample configuration file. Modify the settings in this file to suit your needs and then run BtSync using the following command (which will make BtSync use the newly created configuration file):
./btsync --config sync.conf

For more on how to use BitTorrent Sync on Linux but also on Windows and Mac OS X, see the User Guide PDF file.

Download BitTorrent Sync for Linux, Windows, Mac OS X and NAS.

Originally published at WebUpd8: Daily Ubuntu / Linux news and application reviews.


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Why the public domain matters

April 15, 2013 by Leave a Comment
digital content

[The public domain] is the basis of our self-understanding as expressed by our shared knowledge and culture. It is the raw material from which new knowledge is derived and new cultural works are created. [..] Having a healthy and thriving Public Domain is essential to the social and economic well-being of our societies.”

—from The Public Domain Manifesto

The Public Domain Review is a proponent of this message and actively supports other institutions in opening up their digital works to the public domain. Today, the public domain is in danger of being locked up by private companies and institutions who want to try to resell access and reproduction rights to the copies that they make.

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Public access to scientific research endorsed by White House

February 28, 2013 by Leave a Comment
a new dawn

The White House responded last week to the petition: Increasing Public Access to the Results of Scientific Research. It was posted to the We the People petition site and got 65,704 signatures (the minimum required is 25,000).

Notable excerpts:

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Morphlabs Releases Modular, OpenStack-Based Public Cloud Offering

February 8, 2013 by Leave a Comment

Morphlabs, which as built itself up as a provider of OpenStack products designed for service providers and enterprises, has launched a modular, OpenStack-based public cloud platform. Designed for cloud services providers, mCloud Osmium enables them to quickly implement highly-scalable public clouds without the need for large amounts of research, development or capital investments.
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Open, pop culture R&D lab for the public domain

January 23, 2013 by Leave a Comment
open break dance

Release early, often, and with rap music.

Evan Roth is a maker of things with a specific interest in tools of empowerment, open source, and popular culture. We covered him and some of his work recently in an article about how open source is disrupting visual art. And here, we give you some insight into the guy behind open source rap, graffiti, and Brooklyn’s first and only R&D lab for the public domain: F.A.T. Lab.

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