Judge Rules Happy Birthday is an Orphan Work
For a great summary of the whole situation regarding the copyright of Happy Birthday, check out the most recent episode of the Reasonably Sound podcast. Because whoa, this is huge.

Oysterbooks Is Shutting Down

As we continue on, we couldn’t be more excited about the future of ebooks and mobile reading.
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With that, we will be taking steps to sunset the existing Oyster service over the next several months.

This is a real shame. Their product (Netflix for ebooks) was pretty good, but their Oyster Review was one of the best-curated sources of book recommendations on the internet. For proof of this, check out their list of the 100 best books of the decade so far. Can anyone suggest a replacement?

Camera Restricta

Camera Restricta is a speculative design of a new kind of camera. It locates itself via GPS and searches online for photos that have been geotagged nearby. If the camera decides that too many photos have been taken at your location, it retracts the shutter and blocks the viewfinder. You can’t take any more pictures here.

When I go to a concert (lol, like that’s a thing I still do) and I see hundreds of cameraphones shooting up to take a photo of the lead singer, I wonder: what’s the point of that? There’s nothing tying you to that photo. Anyone could have taken it, so why not just go into Twitter or something and grab someone else’s photo? Maybe even someone shooting with better equipment than you?

I don’t think the Camera Restricta will catch on. People care too much about their fitness selfies. But I still love the idea of it.

An Introduction to Cult Movies
Some kind soul on Metafilter has collected together all of Alex Cox and Mark Cousins’ introductions to Moviedrome. You could do a lot worse with your day than to spend a few hours watching these. They’re like a complete film education in short, 10-minute burts. Warning: watching these will make you despair about the fact we don’t have a show like this today.