News Bits: Veoh Wins DMCA Case

This is good news for all of us.

Good news for video sites that rely on user-submitted video — Veoh Networks Inc. was found not guilty of copyright infringement for content uploaded by its users.

The decision from U.S. District Court judge Howard Lloyd ruled against adult entertainment company IO Group, which had charged Veoh with copyright infringement after video clips from several of its movies appeared on the Veoh site. The key finding in the decision, according to TechCrunch, is Lloyd’s ruling that transcoding isn’t a crime.

Source: contentinople.com via mtippett

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Tags: news | dmca | BITS | YouTube | veoh | WINS | uploaded | Tech & Biz | Digital Millenium

Fireworks at Gnomedex

I’m technically on vacation this week so I missed Gnomedex this year.  Too bad because it sounds like there were some real theatrics.  According to CNet:

uber-blogger Robert Scoble, who at one point during the session oddly got up out of his seat near the front of the auditorium and marched towards the back of the room to tensely confront author and entrepreneur Geoff Livingston.

Source: news.cnet.com via mtippett

Livingston retorts on twitter:

#gnomedex Scoble hijacks Lacy conversation and turns into the PR Sucks meme. I’m going to the toilet and hope this convo reboots.

Source: twitter.com via mtippett

more to come I’m sure…

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Tags: Austin | Seattle | SXSW | conference | Gnomedex | Keynote | interview | audience | facebook | Mark Zuckerberg | Tech & Biz | sarah lacy | Twitter-fueled mutiny

Judge puts defamation lawsuit against Wikipedia to the sword

Although its name sounds positively Orwellian, the Communications Decency Act contains provisions that provide significant protections for websites that post user-generated content. Those provisions have come into play once again, as a judge in New Jersey has exempted Wikipedia from a defamation trial based on comments posted by its users.

Source: arstechnica.com via mtippett

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Tags: New Jersey | judge | Wikipedia | Tech & Biz | communications decency act

Olympics Proliferate on P2P Networks

Even though you can get it on TV, viewers are getting the Olympics via alternative networks.

Millions have turned to peer-to-peer (P2P) networks for high-definition (HD) video from the Beijing Olympic games, despite the fact that much of the content is widely available for free online.

Just a few days after coverage of the Olympic Games began, TorrentFreak reports that a high-definition version of the Opening Ceremonies was the most popular file on P2P networks last week. So far, more than a million users have downloaded the 5GB file, with more being added every day.

Source: contentinople.com

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Tags: Sports | Beijing | video | Games | million | networks | Olympic | opening ceremonies | high-definition | peer-to-peer | TorrentFreak | bg08

Colorado Creating US’s First Fossil Fuel-Free Community

Wondering how to avoid the crash in the housing market?  Investing in green living seems like an interesting option.

The latest trend in the green movement – other than EVs – seems to be greenhousing communities. Considering everyone needs a place to live, this is a perfect focus for injecting green technology into daily living. Arvada, Colorado is all over this concept, going farther than solar roofing, or LEED certification goals. They’re setting up a community that will completely eliminate the use of fossil fuels.

Called Geos, the 25-acre area will have 250 homes from smaller 850 square feet to mansion-sized 3,500+ square feet placed in four neighborhoods. While that’s a whole lot of houses, they’ll be keeping a whopping 40% of the area as green space.

Source: ecogeek.org via mtippett

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Tags: Environment | Technology | Colorado | electricity | neighborhoods | Community | Peak Oil | HEATING | fossil fuels | Arvada | GEOS | greenhousing | solar roofing

Want to live a long life? Run

Get out there and enjoy the nice weather.  You might even add a few years to your life.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – People who want to live a long and healthy life might want to take up running.

A study published on Monday shows middle-aged members of a runner’s club were half as likely to die over a 20-year period as people who did not run.

Source: news.yahoo.com via mtippett

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Tags: People | Life | Running | Health | Long | Run | HEALTHY | want | live a | runner club

Brits choosing food over flowers for the first time since WWII

There are times when I really think that this whole wisdom of crowds thing is for real.  This is one of those examples.  Given the problems we are already seeing with the rise in fuel and the resulting rise in food prices it is refreshing to see people reacting in, dare I say, an organic way:

There has been a remarkable jump in the past year Atlee-Burpee Seeds, our largest seller, reports a doubling of vegetable seed sales in 2008 over 2007. In London it is reported that vegetable seed sales have surpassed flowers for the first time since WW II. Organic Gardening Magazine repots that for the first time in a generation we are growing more vegetables than flowers. A similar finding has been reported in the United Kingdom. Mother Earth Gardens in Minneapolis reports sales of three times as many fruit trees as ever in their history.

Source: cityfarmer.info

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Tags: Gardens | Environment | Boston | first | London | flowers | rural | urban | sales | Time | America | million | seed | United Kingdom | minneapolis | been | fargo | vegetable | Reports | Percent | growing | HOUSEHOLDS | GROWERS | finds | From | there | About | That | Rejoice | small-scale

New York does carfree day

This is excellent.   It’s one thing when Vancouver has a carfree day but when it happens in NYC it’s a little different.

NEW YORK – In Paris, they call it La Plage, or the beach. And in Bogota, Colombia, it’s Ciclovia, or bikeway.

For six hours Saturday in New York, it was called Summer Streets: Nearly seven miles of Manhattan that were stripped of traffic, creating a weekend playground for bikers, walkers and loungers.

Source: news.yahoo.com via mtippett

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Tags: New York | Environment | Paris | colombia | Manhattan | bikers | EXPERIMENTS | plage | ciclovia | traffic-free | urban playground | bikeway | Summer Streets

7 Myths of Crowd Psychology

How do you imagine an archetypal crowd of people – say at a concert, a sporting event or a demonstration?

If you picture an irrational, spontaneous, suggestible, emotional and even potentially dangerous group then you are in good company.

Source: spring.org.uk via mtippett

…you are also wrong.  This is a very interesting, myth busting, scientific review of many of the false beliefs we have about crowds.  The crowds, it turns out, are much wiser than you think.

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Pirate Olympics: 5 Alternative Ways to Watch the Olympics Online

The Olympics aren’t really a sporting event as much as they are an advertising event (and this year a political one too).  It’ll be interesting to see how new technology will change that.  Will it have the same effect it has had on the recording industry or the news world?  Here’s a rundown of the unofficial Olympic channels:

Countless sports fans will look for video coverage of the Olympic games online while trapped in their cubicles this week, and chances are at least some of them won’t head to NBC’s official web site but will try their luck elsewhere. In fact, NBC’s decision to delay the online video coverage of popular events for three hours is almost an invitation to waste a few hours of time on pirate sites and P2P TV forums.

Source: newteevee.com

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Tags: China | Sports | Beijing | United States | Pirate | Olympic | bg08