Is This The First DMCA Notice Over 3D Printer Plans?

Just a few months ago, we highlighted how an upcoming battle in the copyright world will be coming from the rise in 3D printing, and the ability to simply print out new physical objects based on plans. And, as a few different folks have sent in, a site that collects and aggregates 3D printer plans called Thingiverse recently said that it's received its first ever DMCA takedown notice over a plan for a 3D printer object. To avoid liability, of course, the site complied. The specific DMCA takedown involved this 3D printable design of "the impossible triangle."
Of course many people wondered if the guy claiming copyright on this, Dr. Ulrich Schwanitz, had a valid copyright on this, since the basic design he's talking about is just the famed Penrose triangle, and there are plenty of examples of people making it. On top of that, the DMCA takedown he issued was over people creating similar Penrose triangle 3D printer designs based on a challenge Schwanitz himself put out there, to see if anyone else could figure out how to model a printable Penrose triangle, and the winning results figured it out: Of course, the very fact that they figured it out themselves, without the specific instructions on how Schwanitz did it, lends even more credence to the claim that the takedown was completely bogus. They created these new versions not by copying his work, which was hidden away, but by understanding the basic physics and optics of how to create something that appears like the classic Penrose triangle. In fact, the creator of the 3D printable version above notes that his version was "based solely on the 1934 design painted by Swedish artist Oscar Reutersvard," which makes me wonder what sort of copyright claim Dr. Schwanitz actually has over the design.
In the end, Schwanitz decided to back down, rescinding the takedown notice and promising to release his version into the public domain (where it may have really been all along). Still, this definitely is an early warning sign of things to come. I'm sure it won't be long before we hear of more copyright issues related to 3D printers, and they'll be over issues a lot more serious than an optical illusion.
@'techdirt'

Stanley McChrystal: It Takes a Network

Gaddafi raved and cursed, but he faces forces he cannot control

So he will go down fighting. That's what Muammar Gaddafi told us last night, and most Libyans believe him. This will be no smooth flight to Riyadh or a gentle trip to a Red Sea holiday resort. Raddled, cowled in desert gowns, he raved on.

He had not even begun to use bullets against his enemies – a palpable lie – and "any use of force against the authority of the state shall be punished by death", in itself a palpable truth which Libyans knew all too well without the future tense of Gaddafi's threat. On and on and on he ranted. Like everything Gaddafi, it was very impressive – but went on far too long.

He cursed the people of Benghazi who had already liberated their city – "just wait until the police return to restore order", this dessicated man promised without a smile. His enemies were Islamists, the CIA, the British and the "dogs" of the international press. Yes, we are always dogs, aren't we? I was long ago depicted in a Bahraini newspaper cartoon (Crown Prince, please note) as a rabid dog, worthy of liquidation. But like Gaddafi's speeches, that's par for the course. And then came my favourite bit of the whole Gaddafi exegesis last night: HE HADN'T EVEN BEGUN TO USE VIOLENCE YET!

So let's erase all the YouTubes and Facebooks and the shooting and blood and gouged corpses from Benghazi, and pretend it didn't happen. Let's pretend that the refusal to give visas to foreign correspondents has actually prevented us from hearing the truth. Gaddafi's claim that the protesters in Libya – the millions of demonstrators – "want to turn Libya into an Islamic state" is exactly the same nonsense that Mubarak peddled before the end in Egypt, the very same nonsense that Obama and La Clinton have suggested. Indeed, there were times last night when Gaddafi – in his vengefulness, his contempt for Arabs, for his own people – began to sound very like the speeches of Benjamin Netanyahu. Was there some contact between these two rogues, one wondered, that we didn't know about?

In many ways, Gaddafi's ravings were those of an old man, his fantasies about his enemies – "rats who have taken tablets" who included "agents of Bin Laden" – were as disorganised as the scribbled notes on the piece of paper he held in his right hand, let alone the green-covered volume of laws from which he kept quoting. It was not about love. It was about the threat of execution. "Damn those" trying to stir unrest against Libya. It was a plot, an international conspiracy. "Your children are dying – but for what?" He would fight "until the last drop of my blood with the Libyan people is behind me". America was the enemy (much talk of Fallujah), Israel was the enemy, Sadat was an enemy, colonial fascist Italy was the enemy. Among the heroes and friends was Gaddafi's grandfather, "who fell a martyr in 1911" against the Italian enemy.

Dressed in brown burnous and cap and gown, Gaddafi's appearance last night raised some odd questions. Having kept the international media – the "dogs" in question – out of Libya, he allowed the world to observe a crazed nation: YouTube and blogs of terrible violence versus state television pictures of an entirely unhinged dictator justifying what he had either not seen on YouTube or hadn't been shown. And there's an interesting question here: dictators and princes who let the international press into their countries – Messrs Ben Ali/Mubarak/Saleh/Prince Salman – are permitting it to film their own humiliation. Their reward is painful indeed. But sultans like Gaddafi who keep the journos out fare little different.

The hand-held immediacy of the mobile phone, the intimacy of sound and the crack of gunfire are in some ways more compelling than the edited, digital film of the networks. Exactly the same happened in Gaza when the Israelis decided, Gaddafi-like, to keep foreign journalists out of their 2009 bloodletting: the bloggers and YouTubers (and Al Jazeera) simply gave us a reality we didn't normally experience from the "professional" satellite boys. Perhaps, in the end, it takes a dictator with his own monopoly on cameras to tell the truth. "I will die as a martyr," Gaddafi said last night. Almost certainly true.

Robert Fisk @'The Independent'

No 'civilised' country treats refugee children this way

Shamefully in Australia over 1027 children are currently being held in detention- we now have more children in detention then we did under the Howard Government.

We will present this petition to the Immigration Minister on Thursday. We have 24 hours to make sure we have the biggest impact possible. Can you add your name to the petition below? Together we'll end the shameful practice of keeping children in detention.

Sign the online petition @'Getup!'

HERE

Paul Kelly - I Guess I Get A Little Emotional Sometimes

I ♥ books!

Black ops: how HBGary wrote backdoors for the government

delusional

Gaddafi through the years

Grammy-winning reggae star Buju Banton convicted in federal drug conspiracy case

You are what you...

Via This Isn't Happiness

!!!

BBCWorld BBC Global News

Reports: Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has spoken by telephone with Libyan leader. #Gaddafi says "everything is fine in #Libya."

ردود أفعال من مدينة بنغازي على خطاب العقيد

Defiant Gaddafi refuses to quit amid Libya protests

The Beatles play Prodigy's Smack My Bitch Up

via

Confessions of a Raving, Unconfined Nut: Paul Krassner's 50 Years of Misadventures in Satire and Counterculture

Last month, Paul Krassner released a new and expanded edition of his acclaimed memoir, Confessions of a Raving, Unconfined Nut: Misadventures in the Counterculture. Given the author's iconic status in the annals of self-publishing, it is only appropriate that the paperback is available solely at Paul Krassner's personal site. (But Krassner is no Luddite; the Kindle version is available via Amazon.)

Now 78, Krassner is decades from his busiest days as the Zelig of the American counterculture. But unlike many of his former comrades in America's postwar cultural revolution, Krassner is both alive and kicking. He never gave up his passions or jumped the political fence. An original collaborator of Lenny Bruce, he still performs stand-up, heavy on social satire; a co-founder of the Yippies, he still attends noisy protests; a participant-historian of the last half-century of American publishing, journalism and activism, he still lectures and writes.

Along with the new edition of Unconfined Nut, Krassner has just finished editing a 500-page collection, The Best of Paul Krassner: 50 Years of Investigative Satire, and is waist-deep in the process of writing his first novel -- working title, Court Jester -- about a modern-day Lenny Bruce-type character. (All of which suggests that the Oakland branch of the writers' organization PEN might have jumped the gun in December when it presented Krassner with its Lifetime Achievement Award. Not that the recipient is complaining. "I was happy to receive it, but even happier that it wasn't a posthumous honor," says Krassner.).

When it appeared in the early '90s, the first edition of Raving, Unconfined Nut was arguably the most raucous insider's account yet of the 1960s. The new edition only adds ballast to the argument. The memoir takes its name from an angry letter the FBI sent to the editor of Time after the magazine ran a friendly profile of Krassner. "To classify Krassner as a social rebel is far too cute," wrote the agency. "He's a nut, a raving, unconfined nut."

Krassner began his career as an unconfined nut at the age of six, just as he became the youngest concert artist ever to perform on Carnegie Hall. He was playing Vivaldi's Violin Concerto in A Minor while wearing a Little Lord Fauntleroy suit when he felt an itch. The young Krassner titled on one leg to scratch the itch with his other leg without missing a beat. The hall erupted in delighted laughter. This was the moment, Krassner writes, when he was first "zapped by the god of Absurdity."

What followed was a career as "investigative satirist" that would place him at the center of every major event and current in the postwar history of the alternative press and the counterculture. Krassner made his name as the publisher of the Realist, which appeared intermittently between 1958 and 2001 and peaked with 100,000 subscribers. But the influence of the Realist was always greater than its circulation, and it ranks in importance alongside other storied self-published journals of the last century such as I.F. Stone's Weekly...