Open Source Wins Landmark Legal Validation
The validity of open source software licenses won a major court victory when a federal judge ruled this week that copyright law allows

programmers to control the modification of their software even though it's free. The ruling makes legal sense, said copyright attorney Ross Dannenberg.Open source developers now have newly clarified protection, thanks to an appeals court ruling

over the validity of their licenses. A judge with U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled Wednesday that programmers who "engage in open source licensing" and copyright their work do "have the right to control the modification and distribution" of their products.

The case draws clear lines around what had until now been uncertain territory. It all started in 2006, when a developer at Java Model Railroad Interface claimed someone had used part of his open source code in another product without crediting his company -- something that was required in the Artistic License under which the software was covered. A judge initially said that lack of attribution did not constitute copyright infringement, even though it was a violation of the license agreement. JMRI appealed, and this week's ruling is the result.

Different Reasoning

The original judge reasoned that because JMRI's code was given out for free, the company shouldn't be able to sue and get money when someone breaks its license. The judge this week, however, reasoned differently.

"Attribution and modification transparency requirements directly serve to drive traffic to the open source incubation page and to inform downstream users of the project, which is a significant economic goal of the copyright holder that the law will enforce," the ruling reads.

The judge didn't go as far as to award JMRI any money in the case -- the District Court will now have to reconsider that notion -- but it did reinforce the validity of the company's complaint.

Behind the Jargon

All the legal jargon can be made very simple, according to attorney Ross Dannenberg, a partner with Washington, D.C.-based law firm Banner & Witcoff.

"Just because someone distributes something for free doesn't mean that they're waiving their copyright remedies," he told LinuxInsider.

The ruling, Dannenberg explained, really just reinforces what's already a legal standard: If someone violates your license, you have the right to sue them and collect damages. The only difference, he said, is the distinction that specifies the open source model.

"In the normal case, the license says you can use it as long as you pay me money," Dannenberg, also an adjunct professor at George Mason Law School, noted.

"This is the first time this situation has come up with respect to an

open source license,

Developer Impact

The end result, then, is simple: Open source developers can now rest more easily, knowing that they too are protected under the same guidelines closed commercial-based interests enjoy.

"I can develop something via open source and I can put it out there and say, 'You can use it' -- but by doing that, I'm not leaving my copyright rights," Dannenberg said.

"I just think there's more clarity," he added. "From a legal perspective, this result makes sense.

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Ubuntu Sponsor Canonical Falls In With Linux Foundation Crowd
Ubuntu's commercial backer Canonical has thrown its lot in with the Linux Foundation and is now an official member of the organization.

The company has participated in Linux Foundation activities in the past but has only now become directly associated with the organization."Ubuntu has a huge user base and substantial community support around the world. We think the passion these users have for Linux and the open source movement generally will be important in helping the Linux Foundation to accelerate the uptake of Linux in organizations of all size," Andrew Rodaway, director of marketing for Canonical, told LinuxInsider.

All in the Timing

With Canonical's support, user interests for both commercial and community versions of Ubuntu will be represented, according to LF officials.

The Linux Foundation is an increasingly influential organization in the enterprise market, and Canonical is increasing its own footprint in the same space, Rodaway noted.

"So it seemed logical for us to join the other major vendors supporting the Linux Foundation at this time," he said.

Sideline Participant

Despite Ubuntu's popularity as a Linux distribution, Canonical has not been directly associated with the Linux Foundation until now.

"Even though [Canonical and Ubuntu have] been participating in our activities for the last few years, the direct association with them means we'll have closer coordination across their organization. It also means they see enough value in what we do to financially support it," Amanda McPherson, LF's vice president of marketing and developer programs, told LinuxInsider.

"We have great respect for all the other distros and the people that create and use them," Rodaway added. "That's a fundamental part of the Ubuntu philosophy. The many different types of distros are one of the greatest strengths of Linux over proprietary solutions, where you basically have to take what you are given.

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Copyright Law and the Web, Part 1: A Hazy Intersection
he VCR was just the beginning. Now there's Web video, social networking sites, peer-to-peer file-sharing and blogs. The confusing twists and turns that copyright law takes when the Web is involved

ensure that lawyers keep getting paid, but they often have everyone else wondering what's legal and what's not. That can be said for corporations as well as consumers.Technology often evolves more rapidly than the laws needed to regulate it, especially in the realm of copyright law. The Associated Press, Viacom (NYSE: VIAb) and YouTube are just some of the parties involved in a variety of lawsuits and accusations focused on Internet copyright issues. Guidelines are in place concerning the fair use of copyrighted materials, but their interpretations have often left lawyers, judges, corporations and everyday consumers wondering and arguing about what exactly is legal and what is not.

Copyright questions have been raised since the dawn of the printing press. An array of factors -- the expanding variety of digital content, the growing ability of consumer electronics to handle multimedia data, increasing overlap between traditional and Internet media, and the expanding number of content distribution channels -- have turned them into front-page news.

Originally, companies tried to stop individual consumers from downloading pirated items, such as music and movies. Recently, the focus of the suits has in some cases shifted to corporate copyrights and instances wherein companies attempt to stop other businesses from using what they view as rightfully theirs.

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New Microsoft Tech Converts Photo Soup Into 3-D Image
Photosynth is an amalgamation of technology Microsoft acquired in 2006 when it purchased Seadragon, a Seattle area startup, and a

prototype from Microsoft Research originally called "photo tourism."
From Seadragon came technology capable of delivering a smooth experience browsing large quantities of visual information over the Internet, Microsoft said. At the same time, researchers Noah Snavely, Steve Seitz and Richard Szeliski were trying to find a solution that would take a few dozen or few hundred photos of a place and use them to reconstruct a 3-D model of the scene.

The computer vision techniques developed as the researchers pursued that goal are the basis of Photosynth. Combined, the tools form the foundation for Photosynth, which takes large amounts of visual data to create 3-D environments.

Photosynth fuses together a batch of photos taken of a place or thing. The technology recognizes minute details in each individual photo, such as patterns and shadows, and places each image in the proper perspective and proportion relative to the other photos in the group.

Using Photosynth businesses can enhance their Web sites and marketing and advertising campaigns, Microsoft said, while consumers, for example, can recreate a favorite vacation moment and share it with others.

Currently, Mac users are shut out of the technology, as it is only available for PC users. In addition, users of the site should be aware that any synthed image will be publicly available on the site.

"It appears that Photosynth does a good job in matching brightness and color as well as getting the pixels to line up," said Retallack, but he added that requiring synths to be public is not something likely to last very long.

"Many people want to control the things they share," he pointed out.

Photography 2.0

With Photosynth Microsoft has shown that it understands the way people want to use photography and technology in general to capture and share different experiences with social groups, said Ben Bajarin, a principal analyst at Creative Strategies.

"The photo experience has been such a one-dimensional, here's-a-photo-take-a-look-at-it [experience], as opposed to really being able to tell a story easily, to really share all the experiences you want to share revolving around that story, vacation or moment. Addressing that need for consumers is obviously a huge step forward in some of the ways they're using Photosynth to do that," he told TechNewsWorld.

Being able to move around the photo is a good start, but the innovation needs to go down the path of how consumers can tell a story to truly communicate their experience, Bajarin continued.

"It is a good first step, but it's not all the way there to create a visual storytelling experience around a moment. The more [Microsoft] uses the technology around other things they are working on -- photo editing, video editing -- there is work to be done, but they are headed down the right path," he said.

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Hackers mull physical attacks on a networked world
Want to break into the computer network in an ultra-secure building? Ship a hacked iPhone there to a nonexistent employee and hope the device sits in the mailroom, scanning for nearby wireless connections.
How about stealing someone's computer passwords? Forget trying to fool the person into downloading a malicious program that logs keystrokes. A tiny microphone hidden near the keyboard could do the same thing, since each keystroke emits slightly different sounds that can be used to reconstruct the words the target is typing.
Hackers at the DefCon conference here were demonstrating these and other novel techniques for infiltrating facilities Friday.
Their talks served as a reminder of the danger of physical attacks as a way to breach hard-to-crack computer networks. It's an area once defined by Dumpster diving and crude social-engineering ruses, like phony phone calls, that are probably easier to detect or avoid.
As technology gets cheaper and more powerful, from cell phones that act as personal computers to minuscule digital bugging devices, it's enabling a new wave of clever attacks that, if pulled off properly, can be as effective and less risky for thieves than traditional computer-intrusion tactics.
Consider Apple Inc.'s iPhone, a gadget whose processing horsepower and cellular and wireless Internet connections make it an ideal double agent.
Robert Graham and David Maynor, co-founders of Atlanta-based Errata Security, showed off an experiment in which they modified an iPhone and sent it to a client company that wanted to test the security of its internal wireless network.
Graham and Maynor programmed the phone to check in with their computers over the cellular network. Once inside the target company and connected, a program they had written scanned the wireless network for security holes.
They didn't find any, but the exercise demonstrated an inexpensive way to perform penetration testing and the danger of unexpected devices being used in attacks. If they had found an unsecured router in their canvassing, they likely would have been able to waltz inside the corporate network to steal data.
To keep the phone running, the researchers latched on an extended-life battery that lasts days on end. But they only really need a few minutes inside a building to test the network's security.
"It's like saying, once you get into Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory, and you're in the garden where everything's edible, you have it all," Graham said in an interview.
The attack won't work, of course, if a company's wireless network is properly secured. In that case, Graham and Maynor said there's likely no big loss: the package that had been sitting in the mailroom would probably be mailed back to them so they could try it again elsewhere.
Another talk focused on new twists to Cold War-era espionage tactics that could allow criminals to sidestep the locks on computer networks.
Eric Schmiedl, a lock-picking expert and undergraduate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, outlined several surveillance methods long used by government intelligence agents that have become more accessible to garden-variety criminals because of the falling price of the technologies.
For example, Schmiedl said even low-budget criminals now have a way to eavesdrop on conversations through a window. It involves bouncing a beam from a laser pointer off the glass and through a light sensor and audio amplifier.
If the people inside the room are close enough to the window, their conversation creates vibrations that the equipment can translate into a crude reconstruction of the conversation, Schmiedl said.
"We're burning the candle at both ends," he said. "The technology is becoming easier and cheaper and anybody can do it. And at the same time there's more incentive now to do it. These are two trains on a collision course. The question is when they're going to collide.

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