Daily Deals (3-27-2023)

Woot is selling the rarely-discounted Nintendo Switch OLED for $310, which is $40 off the list price. The deal is good until 1:00AM Eastern Time or Woot runs out, whichever comes first. Meanwhile B&H is selling the thin and light XPG Xenia 14 lapt…

Woot is selling the rarely-discounted Nintendo Switch OLED for $310, which is $40 off the list price. The deal is good until 1:00AM Eastern Time or Woot runs out, whichever comes first. Meanwhile B&H is selling the thin and light XPG Xenia 14 laptop with an 11th-gen Intel Core i5 processor, 16GB of RAM and […]

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Publishers beat Internet Archive as judge rules e-book lending violates copyright

Internet Archive: Judge’s copyright ruling is a “blow to all libraries.”

Publishers beat Internet Archive as judge rules e-book lending violates copyright

Enlarge (credit: nicolamargaret | E+)

On Friday, a US district judge ruled in favor of book publishers suing the Internet Archive (IA) for copyright infringement. The IA’s Open Library project—which partners with libraries to scan print books in their collections and offer them as lendable e-books—had no right to reproduce 127 of the publishers’ books named in the suit, judge John Koeltl decided.

IA's so-called "controlled digital lending" practice "merely creates derivative e-books that, when lent to the public, compete with those [e-books] authorized by the publishers,” Koeltl wrote in his opinion.

Publishers suing—Hachette, HarperCollins, Penguin Random House, and Wiley—had alleged that the Open Library provided a way for libraries to avoid paying e-book licensing fees that generate substantial revenue for publishers. These licensing fees are paid by aggregators like OverDrive and constitute a “thriving” market that IA “supplants,” Koeltl wrote. Penguin’s e-book licensing generates $59 million annually, for example.

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Ubuntu Touch OTA-1 Focal brings Ubuntu 20.04 LTS to smartphones

The community of developers who have been keeping the dream of Ubuntu phones and tablets alive since Canonical abandoned the project have announced that the first stable build of Ubuntu Touch based on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS “Focal Fossa” is here…

The community of developers who have been keeping the dream of Ubuntu phones and tablets alive since Canonical abandoned the project have announced that the first stable build of Ubuntu Touch based on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS “Focal Fossa” is here. Ubuntu Touch OTA-1 Focal is officially supports five phones at launch. It can also run […]

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Twitter source code was leaked on GitHub shortly after Musk’s layoff spree

Twitter suspects code leaker is ex-employee, which doesn’t narrow it down much.

Illustration of a person's hand holding a magnifying glass over the Twitter logo.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Future Publishing)

Portions of Twitter's source code recently appeared on GitHub, and Twitter is trying to force GitHub to identify the user or users who posted the code.

GitHub disabled the repository on Friday shortly after Twitter filed a DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) takedown notice but apparently hasn't provided the information Twitter is seeking. Twitter's DMCA takedown notice asked GitHub to provide the code submitter's "upload/download/access history," contact information, IP addresses, and any session information or "associated logs related to this repo or any forks."

The GitHub user who posted the Twitter source code has the username "FreeSpeechEnthusiast," possibly a reference to Twitter owner Elon Musk casting himself as a protector of free speech.

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