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Lots of evidence suggests that Mars once had copious amounts of water. There's even some evidence that the planet may have had a large ocean covering the northern pole of the planet. But the existence of the ocean remains controversial. An ostensible shoreline isn't visible across the entire basin that would have been occupied, and arguments have been made that ice would have covered any significant body of water.

Now, however, a large team of scientists has put forward an idea that may help reconcile a number of the apparent contradictions: giant Martian tsunamis. They suggest that one particular region of the red planet they've looked at contains evidence for two of them, the second of which may have driven an icy slurry across Mars' coastal plains.

If you assume an ocean was once in place on Mars, then a tsunami is probably a predictable event. The authors estimate that, in the region they're looking at (part of the Arabia Terra), a meteor big enough to carve out a 30km wide crater would have hit about once every 15 million years. For the area in question, that translates to 23 of these impacts during the time the ocean was thought to be in place.

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For readers unfamiliar with her work, Ellen Seidler is a multi-talented filmmaker, journalist, lecturer and photographer based in the United States. She is also one of the web’s most outspoken critics of online piracy.

Seidler’s crusade began following the release of her movie “And Then Came Lola” in 2010 which, along with every other movie ever, was pirated online. It’s clear from her posts on Vox Indie that this was a turning point and her motivation to highlight piracy’s harms at every opportunity.

This week Seidler published a piece titled ‘BOGUS fair use claims hurt creators already victimized by piracy‘ in which she continued her full frontal assault on Google/YouTube and its users, something that has become a feature of her writing in recent times.

“There was a lot of talk about fair use and takedown abuse at last week’s U.S. Copyright Office Section 512 roundtables in San Francisco. Many of those who spoke, bemoaned how poor, innocent uploaders were victimized, time after time, by malicious DMCA takedowns,” Seidler wrote.

“It’s a tried and true talking point, convenient, but disingenuous all the same. Some of us, myself included, tried to make the point that creators, whose work is routinely (and massively stolen), are often (doubly) victimized by malicious fair use claims.”

Although not mentioned directly, it’s likely that Seidler was referencing efforts by groups such as Fight For The Future and Channel Awesome to ensure that fair use is protected following any revision of the DMCA. They were at the discussions last week doing just that and to suggest those kinds of efforts are disingenuous is pretty unfair. But lets rewind.

As explained in her article, Seidler’s problem stems from the fact that some of YouTube’s users are uploading copyright-infringing content (in this case a full movie whose creator Seidler represents) and making it available via the platform. In this instance YouTube’s own ContentID system flagged the work correctly and the video was blocked. However, that wasn’t the end of the story.

“This YouTube user didn’t seem to think the rights holder had the right to block the full, infringing copy and promptly disputed the block,” Seidler wrote.

“Approval from copyright holder is not required,” the user reportedly wrote in a counter-notice. “It is fair use under copyright law. I don’t need to explain.”

Needless to say, this wrongful claim of fair use had Seidler seeing red.

“Despite all the testimony at last week’s roundtable about fair use and how copyright holders seek out to punish those who claim it using malicious takedowns, it’s worth pointing out, yet again, that for every legit ‘fair use’ claim, there are also false, and rather malicious, abuses of that defense. It’s a fact conveniently overlooked by the anti-copyright apologists,” she wrote.

The above paragraph is somewhat frustrating. People wanting to exercise their legal right to fair use absolutely have a right to protest when they fear that right is under threat. Furthermore, people making fair use claims on a full movie have no connection with those using snippets of content for commentary, parody, criticism or news reporting purposes. That being said, Seidler definitely has a point.

Someone uploading a full movie to YouTube and then claiming ‘fair use’ absent of any of the defining features should not be allowed to do so without repercussions. If fair use is worth protecting then it stands to reason that supporters should not allow it to be abused. There’s little doubt that people claiming fair use in these circumstances hurt the cause.

So here’s a proposal. If we are to protect the sanctity of fair use then abusers need to be held to account, that means that people uploading full movies to YouTube and then filing for bogus fair use protection should have a strike put against their account and eventually terminated from the site.

In return, those who file bogus copyright claims against those who have a legitimate fair use defense should be held to exactly the same standards. File an erroneous claim against a legitimate video, get a strike against your Content ID account. Do it several more times, lose the right to file copyright complaints on YouTube.

Of course, this proposal is never likely to be accepted by the entertainment industries since they all screw up regularly and that would put them in a position of not being able to protect their works. While that would be unfortunate, the exercise illustrates a point.

Protecting content such as that published on Channel Awesome, for example, is just as important as protecting content pushed out by the studios. Therefore, if we are to deal with abuses of the DMCA and fair use then the same rules simply must apply to everyone – no exceptions.

Strikes on one side must be matched by strikes on the other. Deal?

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

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Earlier this year Paramount Pictures and CBS Studios filed a lawsuit against the makers of a Star Trek inspired fan film, accusing them of copyright infringement.

The dispute centers around the well-received short film Star Trek: Prelude to Axanar and the planned follow-up feature film Axanar.

Among other things, the Star Trek rightsholders claim ownership over various Star Trek related settings, characters, species, clothing, colors, shapes, words, short phrases and even the Klingon language.

While the legal battle has barely got going it now appears it will soon end. During a Star Trek fan event on Friday, director J.J. Abrams announced that the case will be over soon, thanks to Star Trek Beyond director Justin Lin.

“We started talking about this realizing that this is not an appropriate way to deal with the fans. The fans should be celebrating this thing,” Abrams said.

“Fans of Star Trek are part of this world. So Justin went to the studio and pushed them to stop this lawsuit and now, within the next few weeks, it will be announced this is going away, and the fans will be able to work on their project,” he adds.

The news is welcomed by Axanar director Alec Peters, who posted a short message on Facebook a few hours ago.

“A huge THANK YOU to JJ Abrams and Justin Lin for their announcement last night that Paramount is dropping the suit against Axanar,” he writes.

However, the case isn’t completely over yet. The parties are still working on finalizing a settlement agreement and no official paperwork has yet been filed in court.

A settlement means that the case won’t be dismissed outright, but that the parties are coming to an agreement they are all satisfied with. Whether they intend to release any details on the nature of their agreement remains unclear at this point.

When Paramount and CBS filed the lawsuit earlier this year they accused the makers of exploiting the Star Trek franchise, so it’s likely that they are looking for financial compensation.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

Use Tuna with Balloon Animal

Do you remember the first time you played your favorite game? For me, it was the NES version of Lucasfilm Games’ Maniac Mansion in the early ‘90s. The point-and-click adventure was brutally hard, and it would take me years of on-and-off play to figure the entire mansion out. But I’d never seen anything like it before, and I was immediately enthralled.

We can’t get back our first experience with beloved games, but for fans of old-school adventure games, there’s something close: Thimbleweed Park.

Successfully Kickstarted in 2014, Thimbleweed Park is a classic-style point-and-click adventure from Maniac Mansion creators and industry vets Ron Gilbert and Gary Winnick. These two didn’t just make some of the most memorable games of all time; they created the SCUMM engine used by LucasArts adventure games throughout the ‘90s, setting the stage for titles like Day of the Tentacle, Sam & Max Hit the Road, and Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis. Gilbert and Winnick recently showed off their new creation publicly and spoke to us a bit about the reaction so far.

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