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Piracy bill walks the plank
TECHNOLOGY Insight Internet copyright
Jason Alden/aBloomberg via Getty Images
Sound Perfume helps you make a good impression
Piracy bill walks the plank Controversial legislation is sinking – but the war isn’t over for web activists SO THAT’S what a digital revolt looks radical new proposals. It would give like. A million-and-a-half emails and copyright holders the legal right to almost 90,000 phone calls to US have sites which they deem to be Congress. Public complaints from peddling stolen content shut down, Google and Facebook. Even a few a controversial power the European thousand old-fashioned letters to Court of Justice has just ruled against. the US House of Representatives. Concern here is less about blatant This internet ire, marshalled under piracy, which gets limited sympathy the banner of American Censorship from activists, and more about sites on Day on 16 November, came in which copyrighted content is used in opposition to the proposed Stop creative ways. YouTube, for example, Online Piracy Act (SOPA), legislation is packed with satirical remixes of aimed at tackling the online trade in songs and films. If SOPA were enacted, copyrighted movies and music. Claims “Concern is less about piracy that the act, if passed, will “break the and more about sites on internet” helped persuade several big which copyrighted content companies, including a trade group which represents Apple and Microsoft, is reused in creative ways” to withdraw their support. Then, last week, SOPA’s backers in the House just one such mash-up could bring said they were open to changing the down an entire site, notes bill. Internet Activists 1, Big Media 0. Eric Goldman, a technology lawyer But elsewhere the media barons at Santa Clara University in California. appear to be winning. Over the past “Talk about collateral damage,” he says. few years, several countries have The bill also gives copyright holders debated or enacted laws that, in the the right to force search engines to name of tackling piracy, have handed expunge infringing sites from search more power to large companies. In the results. Google and others know that it process, say activists, the movie and is often impossible to determine music industries have gained the whether a site is engaging in piracy or ability to censor websites. creative reuse or some combination of The recent revolt was louder the two. That’s one reason why the because SOPA is one of the more search engine teamed up with 28 | NewScientist | 3 December 2011
Facebook and other sites to run a full-page advert opposing the bill in The New York Times. Other moves by copyright advocates have been less crude and more successful. This July, five big US internet service providers committed to repeatedly caution – and then potentially disconnect – subscribers who share copyrighted material. The measure had limited opposition, but Goldman and others warn that it is not sufficiently overseen. That’s a fear shared across the Atlantic, where British activists have warned that any proposals to speed up processing of industry requests will erode courts’ ability to assess claims of copyright breaches. In Ireland, judges have already been sidelined. After a legal battle in 2009 with a recording industry group, eircom, the country’s largest ISP said it would no longer contest blocking requests from the group. None have yet been submitted. There is a lot of copyright theft online, and content creators have a right to demand protection. Yet the reusers of content, from music remixers to bloggers, are also creators. Striking a balance between the two will prove important if politicians want to stop the angry emails. Jim Giles n
THINK of it as a ringtone for your nose. A team at the National University of Singapore have built a system that allows people to identify themselves with unique smells and sounds. Sound Perfume consists of a pair of glasses fitted with speakers and odour emitters located behind the ears, along with an app running on a smartphone that connects to the glasses via Bluetooth. The idea is that you use the app to choose a personal sound and smell for others to experience when you meet them. Infrared sensors in the glasses detect when you meet someone else using Sound Perfume and your cellphone sends your name, contact number and sound/smell preferences to their handset, which then triggers the appropriate response in their glasses. The current set-up makes use of eight different perfumes in the form of hard blocks that melt and release an aroma when gently heated by a wire to 46°C. Yongsoon Choi and her colleagues tested the system on 52 people and found that using Sound Perfume helped form a positive impression during first meetings. “They seemed to enjoy the new stimuli and diverse information during face-to-face interaction,” she says. Her team is now investigating the possibility of adding Sound Perfume to other fashion accessories. Choi presented the research at the Advances in Computer Entertainment Technology conference in Lisbon, Portugal, last month. However, Neil Martin, who studies psychology and odour at Middlesex University, London, is unimpressed: “Would any sentient individual wear a device that makes you smell as if you’d passed through a very bad department store’s perfume counter?” Jacob Aron n
Jason Alden/aBloomberg via Getty Images
Sound Perfume helps you make a good impression
Piracy bill walks the plank Controversial legislation is sinking – but the war isn’t over for web activists SO THAT’S what a digital revolt looks radical new proposals. It would give like. A million-and-a-half emails and copyright holders the legal right to almost 90,000 phone calls to US have sites which they deem to be Congress. Public complaints from peddling stolen content shut down, Google and Facebook. Even a few a controversial power the European thousand old-fashioned letters to Court of Justice has just ruled against. the US House of Representatives. Concern here is less about blatant This internet ire, marshalled under piracy, which gets limited sympathy the banner of American Censorship from activists, and more about sites on Day on 16 November, came in which copyrighted content is used in opposition to the proposed Stop creative ways. YouTube, for example, Online Piracy Act (SOPA), legislation is packed with satirical remixes of aimed at tackling the online trade in songs and films. If SOPA were enacted, copyrighted movies and music. Claims “Concern is less about piracy that the act, if passed, will “break the and more about sites on internet” helped persuade several big which copyrighted content companies, including a trade group which represents Apple and Microsoft, is reused in creative ways” to withdraw their support. Then, last week, SOPA’s backers in the House just one such mash-up could bring said they were open to changing the down an entire site, notes bill. Internet Activists 1, Big Media 0. Eric Goldman, a technology lawyer But elsewhere the media barons at Santa Clara University in California. appear to be winning. Over the past “Talk about collateral damage,” he says. few years, several countries have The bill also gives copyright holders debated or enacted laws that, in the the right to force search engines to name of tackling piracy, have handed expunge infringing sites from search more power to large companies. In the results. Google and others know that it process, say activists, the movie and is often impossible to determine music industries have gained the whether a site is engaging in piracy or ability to censor websites. creative reuse or some combination of The recent revolt was louder the two. That’s one reason why the because SOPA is one of the more search engine teamed up with 28 | NewScientist | 3 December 2011
Facebook and other sites to run a full-page advert opposing the bill in The New York Times. Other moves by copyright advocates have been less crude and more successful. This July, five big US internet service providers committed to repeatedly caution – and then potentially disconnect – subscribers who share copyrighted material. The measure had limited opposition, but Goldman and others warn that it is not sufficiently overseen. That’s a fear shared across the Atlantic, where British activists have warned that any proposals to speed up processing of industry requests will erode courts’ ability to assess claims of copyright breaches. In Ireland, judges have already been sidelined. After a legal battle in 2009 with a recording industry group, eircom, the country’s largest ISP said it would no longer contest blocking requests from the group. None have yet been submitted. There is a lot of copyright theft online, and content creators have a right to demand protection. Yet the reusers of content, from music remixers to bloggers, are also creators. Striking a balance between the two will prove important if politicians want to stop the angry emails. Jim Giles n
THINK of it as a ringtone for your nose. A team at the National University of Singapore have built a system that allows people to identify themselves with unique smells and sounds. Sound Perfume consists of a pair of glasses fitted with speakers and odour emitters located behind the ears, along with an app running on a smartphone that connects to the glasses via Bluetooth. The idea is that you use the app to choose a personal sound and smell for others to experience when you meet them. Infrared sensors in the glasses detect when you meet someone else using Sound Perfume and your cellphone sends your name, contact number and sound/smell preferences to their handset, which then triggers the appropriate response in their glasses. The current set-up makes use of eight different perfumes in the form of hard blocks that melt and release an aroma when gently heated by a wire to 46°C. Yongsoon Choi and her colleagues tested the system on 52 people and found that using Sound Perfume helped form a positive impression during first meetings. “They seemed to enjoy the new stimuli and diverse information during face-to-face interaction,” she says. Her team is now investigating the possibility of adding Sound Perfume to other fashion accessories. Choi presented the research at the Advances in Computer Entertainment Technology conference in Lisbon, Portugal, last month. However, Neil Martin, who studies psychology and odour at Middlesex University, London, is unimpressed: “Would any sentient individual wear a device that makes you smell as if you’d passed through a very bad department store’s perfume counter?” Jacob Aron n