Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, if you’re not sure whether something you’re doing is infringing upon copyright, the best answer is to seek legal advise.

1. The Default

   Above all else, unless the copyright holder has given you explicit permission to do so you may not copy, alter, modify, redistribute or similar actions anything that anyone has created.

   Everything is copyrighted when it is made. You have no right to do anything with it unless you’ve been told you can.

2. Public domain

   Certain items fall into public domain automatically. If an item is in the public domain you can do whatever you want to it. It normally doesn’t apply to any trademarks or logos contained within the item though.
   Some of the items in this category are many documents released by the Government or its departments.

3. Fair Use

   This terms is often used as a broad defense against copyright infringement and it only really covers a few cases. There are a lot of edge cases, these require you to seek legal advise about because it is a very complex part of copyright law. In general though, you may use a copyrighted works for commentary, criticism, news reporting, research, teaching or scholarship.

4. Copyright Expiry

   Copyrights expire on works after different lengths of time depending on when they were created, and for what purpose.

   From Wikipedia‘s article on New Zealand Copyright law:

   • Literary, dramatic, musical and artistic works; 50 years from the death of the author
   • Artistic works industrially applied; 16 years from when the work is applied
   • Artistic craftsmanship industrially applied; 25 years from when the work is applied
   • Sound recordings and films; 50 years from when it is available to the public
   • Broadcasts and cable; 50 years from broadcast
   • Typographical arrangements; 25 years from first publishing.

   In the US, the terms change depending on when the item was created. For items created after 1978, the term is the life of the author + 70 years for things created by an individual. Work done for hire, for example created by a corporation it is 120 years after creation or 95 years after publication, whichever is shortest.

5. Written Permission

   If the copyright holder gives you written permission, you may do with the works are described in that letter.

To answer the original question, modern TV shows are copyright, downloading copies of them is copyright infringement under NZ copyright law and you can be taken to court for downloading and/or redistributing copies of them. Just because you had the privilege to see it (or miss it) on free-to-air broadcast television, it doesn’t mean that copyright doesn’t apply anymore.

Remember, the TV station paid a fair amount to buy you that privilege, they only bought the rights to show you it on their station.

If you need any more detail on these points please have a read through these links. If you have any corrections or notice any major omissions, comment and I’ll update the post.

References:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_law_of_the_United_States
• http://www.copyright.org.nz/basics.php
• http://www.med.govt.nz/templates/Page____7290.aspx
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain

There are a few articles around detailing why this is and many more showing how to solve it.

The problem is around the fact that the Windows Bootloader doesn’t seem to treat ISO9660 file version numbers correctly. To make a disc work and boot in EFI mode on these machines, you need to rebuild the ISO with ISO9660 version numbers suppressed.

However, all of these solutions required running Windows utilities to recreate the ISO. As I recently installed a new harddrive in my Macbook Pro I didn’t have a version of Windows installed that I could rebuild the ISO with.

I decided to find if I could create a compatible bootable Windows 7 DVD using only tools that are runnable under Mac OS X.

I used an article from jowie.com as a reference. It describes how to recreate the ISO with the fix using a 3rd-party Windows utility “Imgburn”.

I downloaded the latest version of “cdrecord” (formerly “cdrtools“) which includes the latest version of “mkisofs“, a *nix utility for creating ISO files with advanced options.

I managed to find the correct set of arguments to create a bootable DVD. DVD-RWs are my friend, although it only took 4 or 5 tries.

My machine is running Mac OS X Snow Leopard but I don’t see anything that won’t work on Leopard. These steps require the Mac OS X Developer Tools to be installed.

If you’re at this post, you may have already burned a copy of the Windows 7 DVD ISO (or a copy of Windows 7 Retail). I did, so I got the files for recreating the ISO from the DVD, you may choose to simply extract the contents of the ISO to a folder on your harddrive instead.

If you choose to use a folder, replace occurances of “/Volumes/GRC1CULXFRER_EN_DVD” with the folder you extracted the DVD to.

Here are the steps I took:

1. Put the Windows 7 DVD in the drive or extract the ISO.
2. Download the latest version of cdrecord from:
   http://freshmeat.net/projects/cdrecord/
3. Extract the archive and run the following from Terminal:
   make
make install
4. Once again from Terminal:
   cd /opt/schily/bin/
   ./mkisofs -N -UDF -iso-level 4 -no-hfs -U -V GRC1CULXFRER_EN_DVD -no-emul-boot -b efi/bcd -c boot.catalog -o windows7rc.iso /Volumes/GRC1CULXFRER_EN_DVD

5. Now burn the new ISO to a disc. You can use Disk Utility, Toast or any other ISO burning tool to do the job
6. If you haven’t already, make sure you have either free unpartitioned space or a spare partition to install Windows on to.
7. Reboot your machine, hold down Option to bring up the boot menu
8. Insert the DVD into the drive (if it isn’t in there aleady).
9. Select the Windows CD, Windows 7 should now boot without problems

That is it.

Once Windows 7 is installed, insert a Snow Leopard disc to install the 64-bit Boot Camp drivers. If you don’t have Snow Leopard, you can download the latest Boot Camp drivers from Apple’s download section.

Screen-shot of the new design for Aimee's Website

I never got around to fixing it in Internet Explorer, I don’t imagine it works correctly, for one, I didn’t put in the IE PNG Fix, and I definitely used 24-bit transparent PNGs in there. However, it works in Safari, Firefox and Opera and that seems to be all the Aimee cares about so that is that for now, maybe some fixes another day.

I put it live this afternoon, it could definitely use a few tweaks and finishing touches but I think I’m happy with how it came out.

Aimee is planning on moving around the structure of her site, which is using WordPress. In that respect the navigation isn’t particularly useful at the moment and the front page is going to be a static page rather than her blog.

Also, I got bored near the end and put a weird little Easter egg into the theme, try double-clicking the wings.

I wrote a small PHP Script to turn the hostname into a phrase, popped in Google Analytics and bingo, a weird, crazy, phrase thing.

http://i.want.to.punch.you.intotheground.com/

Decided to add a small “make your own” box at the bottom too.

As I’m incredibly lazy, I set about finding a way for my computer to tell me who was calling when the phone rang instead of having to find the cordless phone (or run to the corded one if it was flat) to check who was calling. I have set an option in the control panel at Xnet that sends me an email whenever someone rings my home, which includes the Caller ID but alas, it still takes the email about 30 seconds to arrive in my inbox (I check my email every 1 minute) so it didn’t really help to know who it was before I picked it up.

It turns out that the router’s status page displays the state of the VoIP line and also the last number that called it. Bingo! I whipped up a little PHP CLI script that polled the router’s status page for when the status was “Ringing” and captured the phone number displayed there.

I then added a piece of AppleScript that interfaces with Address Book on MacOS X which could translate a phone number into a name if that number was in the Address Book.

The last piece of the puzzle was to utilise the command line program called growlnotify to send out a Growl notification and made it send out to the two laptops in the house.

I placed this script on the Mac Mini I have connected in the lounge and set it running. A few bug fixes later and I now have Growl alerts show up on my laptop screen within about 3 seconds of my home phone ringing saying exactly who is ringing.

All in the name of laziness.

If anyone is interested, I can post the utility. The VoIP router I designed it for is the Linksys SPA-2102.

So I went hunting and found that Dean Robinson had released a new version of his Fluency Admin plugin rewritten from the ground up for the new version of WordPress. After reading what the plugin changes and why on Dean’s website I knew I’d love it. So, I installed it and… wow. I loved the things Dean did with Fluency Admin 1 in previous versions of WordPress and was suitably impressed with what he did with this one. 

Check out Dean’s page about the plugin for some screenshots. One thing I’m, really loving is similar to a function Habari has. Habari has quick keyboard shortcuts for all the major functions in the menu, and now with this plugin, WordPress Admin has something similar. 

On a side note, the upgrade to WordPress 2.7 went very smoothly, I have WordPress installed the “subversion way” so one “svn switch” command then one Upgrade page visit and boom, all done.

One other useful feature that I use is the screensaver reactor which is activated when I move my phone in and out of Bluetooth range of the computer. It automatically starts my screensaver when I leave my desk and turns it off again when I come close. 

This is all pretty dandy and great but there is one little Mac OS feature I’d like to use, “Require password to wake this computer from sleep or screen saver”. What I’d like to have happen is that if I come back within range of my computer, it won’t require a password. My workstation doesn’t require very high security and as long as there is one factor of authentication for being able to access my machine I’m happy, either my password or my phone being in range.

Implementing a feature like that would probably present a range of issues for the developers and if ever created may end up with some sort of custom screensaver implementation or finding a background way of killing off the screensaver when the device is brought back in range.

Yay, tickets have been bought, flights are being booked, now… time to save money for the trip!

When I was 9, my parents, my brother and I took a trip around the world to visit Mum’s relatives, Dad’s friends and other family friends they had built up over the years. One place I’ve never been to though, is Australia.

I think I might have an opportunity to “jump the ditch” as they say and have a holiday over in Australia next year. A couple of our friends are heading over there for the Soundwave ’09 Festival in February/March next year. Aimee and I are hoping we’ll be able to save enough money to go too but it does mean that I’ll probably need to negotiate time off from my new job only 4 months after starting which may or may not be a problem. The concert is only for one day, depending on which city we go to but we’ll want to stay at least a couple of days.

The bands performing at Soundwave include some of my favourites like Madina Lake, The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus, Funeral for a Friend, New Found Glory and hellogoodbye as well as some major headliners like Nine Inch Nails, Alice in Chains and Bloodhound Gang.

I’ll be straight into C# ASP .NET programming which is all new to me. They have a ton of work on at the moment so they’re hoping I can hit the ground running and I hope so too. It should be lots of fun.