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+ - Ask Slashdot: Can companies force employees to join social networks?-> 3

Submitted by
rubeon writes "Companies can get a lot of mileage out of social networking services from the likes of Google or Facebook. Chat, document collaboration, and video conferencing using services like Google+ Hangouts or Facebook's Skype are seductive additions to an IT arsenal. But a lot of people have privacy concerns about these services, and there's no shortage of horror stories how these sites track and exploit their users' habits. Can a company force its employees to use Google+?"
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+ - Relinquishing copyright on death

Submitted by dadioflex
dadioflex (854298) writes "Whitney Houston's death prompted Sony to make a mistake that would have seen their profits from her album sales quadruple, or more.

I was browsing wikipedia, looking at comics and their creators, and saw that Dave Sim has made arrangements for the copyright to his revolutionary Cerebus comics to be transferred to the Public Domain on his death.

My initial thought was "wow", an already cool guy got a lot cooler.

So I want to Ask Slashdot, have any other creators arranged to give away, or given away, the copyright to their works to the vast mass of humanity when they die?"

+ - Universities agree to email monitoring for copyright agency-> 1

Submitted by fish waffle
fish waffle (179067) writes "The universities of Western Ontario and Toronto have signed a deal with Access Copyright that allows for surveillance of faculty correspondence, defines e-mailing hyperlinks as equivalent to photocopying a document, and imposes an annual $27.50 fee for every full-time equivalent student to pay for it all.

Access Copyright is a licensing agency historically used by most universities in Canada to give them blanket permission to reproduce copyrighted works, largely to address photocopying concerns that may extend beyond basic fair-use. Since the expiration of this agreement, and with recognition that many academic uses do not require copyright permissions or payments or are already covered under vendor-specific agreements, Canadian academic institutions have been united in opposing continuation of the agreement with the agency. Access Copyright has countered with a proposal for increased fees, and expansion of the definition of copyright to include linking and the need for online surveillance. In a strange breaking of ranks, the University of Western Ontario and the University of Toronto have capitulated and signed agreements that basically accede to the licensing agency's demands.

The Canadian Association of University Teachers bulletin provides detailed background on the issue."

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