Defense Chief Lifts Ban on Pictures of Coffins

In a reversal of military policy, the news media will now be allowed to photograph the coffins of the war dead.

The New York Times - WASHINGTON — In a reversal of an 18-year-old military policy that critics said was hiding the ultimate cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the news media will now be allowed to photograph the coffins of America’s war dead as their bodies are returned to the United States, but only if the families of the dead agree.

The decision, which Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates announced Thursday, lifts a 1991 blanket ban on such photographs put in place under President George Bush. It chiefly affects coffins arriving from Iraq and Afghanistan that go through Dover Air Force Base in Delaware.

“I think that foremost in our thinking about issues like this should be the families and giving them choices,” Mr. Gates said in a news conference at the Pentagon.

Renewed as recently as a year ago by the administration of President George W. Bush, the ban has long been a source of intense debate.http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/27/washington/27coffins.html

The military said the ban protected the privacy and dignity of families of the dead. But others, including some of the families as well as opponents of the Iraq war, said it sanitized the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and was intended to control public anger over the conflicts.

Facebook Withdraws Changes in Data Use

After a wave of protests from its users, the Facebook social networking site said on Wednesday that it would withdraw changes to its so-called terms of service concerning the data supplied by the tens of millions of people who use it.

The about-face was made known to many users in a message posted on the Facebook home page saying : “Over the past few days, we have received a lot of feedback about the new terms we posted two weeks ago. Because of this response, we have decided to return to our previous Terms of Use while we resolve the issues that people have raised.”

The posting invited users to click on a link to get more details.

Terms of service generally outline appropriate conduct and grant a license to companies to store users’ data. Unknown to many users, the terms frequently give broad power to Web site operators.

Earlier this month, Facebook deleted a provision from its terms of service that said users could remove their content at any time, at which time the license would expire. It added new language that said Facebook would retain users’ content and licenses after an account was terminated. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/19/technology/internet/19facebook.html

Facebook’s Users Ask Who Owns Information

Reacting to an online swell of suspicion about changes to Facebook’s terms of service, the company’s chief executive moved to reassure users on Monday that the users, not the Web site, “own and control their information.”

The online exchanges reflected the uneasy and evolving balance between sharing information and retaining control over that information on the Internet. The subject arose when a consumer advocate’s blog shined an unflattering light onto the pages of legal language that many users accept without reading when they use a Web site.

The pages, called terms of service, generally outline appropriate conduct and grant a license to companies to store users’ data. Unknown to many users, the terms frequently give broad power to Web site operators.

This month, when Facebook updated its terms, it deleted a provision that said users could remove their content at any time, at which time the license would expire. Further, it added new language that said Facebook would retain users’ content and licenses after an account was terminated. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/17/technology/internet/17facebook.html

New Rules Push Colleges to Rethink Tactics Against Student Pirates

Colleges are about to be told how to fight piracy. They have deployed various tactics over the years to deter illegal file sharing, usually of commercial music and movies, by their students. But this month, the U.S. Department of Education will begin crafting regulations that specify strategies. That prospect is making some campus officials wonder if plans they have already invested in will pass muster.

The regulations will interpret three antipiracy provisions in the Higher Education Act renewed by Congress last year. The law requires colleges to inform students of institutional and criminal penalties for unauthorized file sharing, to "effectively combat" copyright violations with "a variety of technology-based deterrents," and to offer alternatives to illegal downloading. Because the requirements are simultaneously strict and vague, colleges are attentively awaiting their interpretation.

Many are in good shape. "To a large extent, the Higher Education Act codifies what colleges are doing already," says Steven L. Worona, director of policy and networking programs for Educause, the college-technology group. About 90 percent of four-year colleges and universities have policies to deter illegal file sharing, according to an October survey by the Campus Computing Project, which tracks information-technology trends.

Still, community colleges and other institutions that largely escaped the Recording Industry Association of America's mass lawsuits against students accused of violating copyrights may not have developed those policies as fully. And some that do have policies are unsure whether their approaches will comply with the new rules.http://chronicle.com/weekly/v55/i23/23a01901.htm

Shoe Thrower Targets Wen At Cambridge

CAMBRIDGE, England -- A protester threw a shoe at China's Prime Minister Wen Jiabao on Monday while he was giving a speech at the University of Cambridge, police said.

The protester seated near the back of the auditorium stood up during Mr. Wen's speech and shouted: "How can you listen to this unchallenged?" before throwing a shoe that landed some distance from the premier.

Mr. Wen looked unruffled, paused a few seconds and then continued with his remarks. One of his aides quietly stepped on the stage, picked up the gray athletic shoe and removed it.

University officials quickly escorted the protester from the auditorium. He was taken to a local police station for questioning, police spokeswoman Shelly Spratt said.

After the protest, Mr. Wen continued his speech, saying: "We come in peace. This is not going to obstruct China-U.K. friendships. History shows harmony will not be obstructed by any force, so would you let me continue."

About 80 people, both supporters and critics of China, had earlier gathered outside the venue. There was a large police presence in the city and security guards within the building.http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123360341785040427.html

Color This Area of the Law Gray

Post courtesy of Stephanie Toth

The Wall Street Journal - Beauty, it is often said, is in the eye of the beholder, and so might be copyright infringement. Artist Richard Prince never denied that he made use of some photographic images he found in a 2000 book by Patrick Cariou called "Yes Rasta," documenting the community of Rastafarians the French photographer encountered in the mountains of Jamaica, for collage paintings that were exhibited last fall at New York's Gagosian Gallery and reproduced in a book published by Rizzoli.

The question is whether Mr. Prince's use of these images was "transformative" -- borrowing in the process of creating something entirely new -- or just stealing. A lawsuit filed by Mr. Cariou in New York District Court in late December against the appropriationist Mr. Prince -- as such artists are known -- likely will be one more front in the battle over what constitutes copyright infringement in these days of "sampling" and point-and-click downloading.

According to Mr. Cariou's lawyer, Daniel Brooks, Mr. Prince scanned several of Mr. Cariou's images of people and landscapes into his computer and printed them directly onto his canvases. He then defaced them in limited ways (placing an electric guitar in one Rastafarian's hands and daubing paint onto the face, for instance), as well as adding other elements to the paintings. Mr. Prince "didn't transform these photographs -- he just used them," said Mr. Brooks. But it is Mr. Prince's contention that he took the photographer's images as raw material -- the way an assemblage sculptor uses "found objects" -- in order to create something that not only comments on the photographs' previous meaning but also gives them new meaning. Mr. Brooks noted that Mr. Prince could have avoided the problem altogether by traveling to Jamaica to take his own photographs for his canvases, but the entire point of Mr. Prince's art is commentary on images that already exist in the world.

Other artists have stumbled into this gray area of the law. "It's meant to be a gray area, because the copyright law is designed to be flexible," said John Koegel, a lawyer who successfully represented artist Jeff Koons in an infringement lawsuit by a commercial photographer, Andrea Blanch, in 2005. "The law states that the use of a copyrighted image is transformative based on the ordinary lay observer's sense of if the new work is different and how different it is. It is very much of a visual thing, and there is no bright line that artists can go by."http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123319795753727521.html