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Viacom v Internet: round one to Internet

Viacom v Internet: round one to Internet

This is a very sweet victory that will hopefully set a precedent that won’t be overturned…

On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Louis Stanton ruled that YouTube was protected from liability for copyright infringement by the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). The DMCA has a “safe harbor” provision that exempts service providers from copyright liability if they expeditiously remove material on notice that it is infringing. Viacom’s unique interpretation of this statute held that online service providers should review all material before it went live.

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Ancient Romans join neutrino hunt

Ancient Romans join neutrino hunt

Ever on the look-out for ultra-low radioactive materials to shield their sensitive experiments, nuclear physicists have struck gold with a consignment of lead that lay on the floor of the Mediterranean Sea for 2000 years. The almost completely inert ancient lead will be used to line the CUORE neutrino experiment located under the Gran Sasso mountain in central Italy.

Experiments designed to study extremely rare nuclear processes must be shielded from all possible sources of radioactive contamination, which will swamp sensitive detectors with spurious signals. The sources of interference include cosmic rays from space and radioactivity naturally present in rocks. But there is also radioactivity in the very materials used to provide the shielding, such as lead or copper. And it is here that the ancient lead comes into its own.

[via kottke]