Archive for May 19th, 2009

Notice and take down

Tuesday, May 19th, 2009
If you have to send a take down notice to someone under the DMCA, send it to them and not their parent: Prof. Goldman here; Plagiarism Today here. Under our legislation, the notice must be sent to the carriage service provider's "designated representative" (Reg. 20D) and the carriage service provider must publish a notice on its website prominently identifying the designated representative, and their contact details, to whom such notices should be sent: Reg. 20C. Of course, all this begs the question, what on earth (or in cyberspace) is a "carriage service provider"? (Unhelpful) hint via s 10 of the Copyright Act, look at s 87 of the Telecommunications Act 1997.

wolfing it down, er, up

Tuesday, May 19th, 2009
Wolfram Alpha, a new search engine that attempts to answer questions, not "just" provide a list of potentially relevant websites. According to the website:

You enter your question or calculation, and Wolfram|Alpha uses its built-in algorithms and growing collection of data to compute the answer. 

Perhaps rather more sexily, ask it what the answer to life, the universe and everything? The Daily Telegraph has a video. Lid dip, Joshua Gans (try his other examples).