Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with permission

A cameo appearance of a book cover

storybored — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 12:06:00 -0800

I'm making a movie which will have shots of a cover of a book. Do I need permission from the publisher to do this?

Who's posting links to malware/viruses from my facebook account? How do I make them/it stop?

unclezeb — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 10:37:11 -0800

Facebook-filter: Somehow two links have been posted to my facebook page, NOT by me, which directly people to a website to "Vote for my modeling pic please :) http://theimageparlour.com/images/?&uploaded=58291H560.jpg" or similar ... that pages contains malware or virus. How is this getting posted? How can I stop it? The first link was posted yesterday, I changed my password and limited some permissions (including "links" requiring that application to "Prompt me" before posting to my wall). It happened again today with a new link which stated:

Vote for my modeling pic please :) http://theimageparlour.com/images/?&uploaded=58291H560.jpg

Today I limited permissions on all my applications and deleted most of the non-standard applications (i.e., Causes, rate beer, etc) and limited the standard applications (Photos, events, links) to "Prompt me" before posting anything.

I get nothing when searching for the specific file name referenced in the link nor when searching for the website it's "uploaded" to ... though that site does seem to offer file uploads.

Any ideas what else I can/should do? Is this a more common scheme that occurs on facebook? Thanks social-networking-privacy-protecting-stranger-helping-mefites!

So... may I do stuff with your mom's poems?

allterrainbrain — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 04:43:36 -0800

I'm writing a letter to the adult children of a poet who died in the 90s, asking them for permission to use their mother's writing as part of a creative project I'm doing (experimental audio/video). Her children run her estate and I was referred to them after asking her publisher for text permission.

I know this is ultra-hypothetical, but can you imagine what you'd be interested in hearing if you were those children?

(Forget the practical considerations like licensing and money; those will be negotiated between me and the publisher later, if the children give permission. Obviously the mother would be credited in all versions of the work, and her texts would be used in full and not altered.)

The only instruction the children's representative gave me was to enclose examples of previous work I've done that included other people's poems.

I have a lot to say about their mother and the effect of her work on me (I could write many pages about that), so I have to decide how much of that her kids will want to hear. I'm asking about using three poems, and one of the poems is about the experience of being pregnant with one of the children I'm writing to. I don't know exactly how or whether to address that directly.

I really, really care about being able to use these poems, so I want to make this letter as appealing as possible. I can only find one other example of this poet's work being used as part of another creative work, and that was done within her lifetime, so that suggests maybe her children have never given such permission before (or have never been asked, which I guess is possible; she's not hugely famous). This is my first experience asking text permission from living people rather than just negotiating with a publisher.

Flight Simulator on TV rights

asavage — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 08:38:25 -0800

Do I need Microsoft's permission to show their flight simulator environment on television? Doing a program in which I'll be in a flight simulator. I'd like to grab the data from the simulator, and, movie-like, show the plane flying from several different angles inside the simulator environment. My company thinks we need Microsoft's permission to do this. I'm not so sure.
Carried out to the extreme the implications are ridiculous. I'm looking for both opinions, and from anyone who's actually dealt with this on a practiacl level.

Where can I find a calendar with group user sharing options?

leptin — Sat, 15 Sep 2007 18:36:00 -0800

Where can I find a web-based/cross-platform calendar that would allow a group of people to add events, but not modify other people's? I am looking for a solution for our workplace where there is equipment scheduling involved, but currently gCal allows only 2 levels of sharing: either a read-only option, or the ability to edit everything, which is undesirable because of the risk of people deleting others off and putting their own names instead. (The honor system is currently what's keeping things going, but the operation may expand so it is not sustainable.) Thank you very much for your help!

Man can't get a few dimes?

koshka — Thu, 10 May 2007 20:38:36 -0800

I was just musically abused without my consent. Can you identify the perpetrator? I was surfing the internet and listening to my winamp playlist today. Suddenly I heard some other music playing on my computer, so I stopped my winamp and this music continued on... and on. Programs I closed: all firefox windows (none of the sites I was on had music to play anyway), winamp, icq. Music still kept on going. It was a song that played all the way through and I managed to grab the mic and record the last minute of it. I googled one line I could understand, "Man can't get a few dimes," and I think it's a song by a group named "Garfunkel Art."

Question! What the hell just happened? Has anyone else experienced this?

Some facts that might help: I'm not schizophrenic (I managed to record part of it). I did have a lastfm app running, but does an entire song I've never heard of just randomly play through that?

Bypass administrator priveleges!?!?

nserrano — Wed, 19 Jul 2006 13:09:03 -0800

What did I do to gain Administrator privileges to install software and how can I do it again? Background info: I work for a company that restricts users to install software in the C:\Program files folder. People can't install Yahoo or MSN messenger nor programs that install themselves (meaning you can't change the installation location). I did however found out you can install a program directly to the c: drive or to the users folder, that is if you can change the location when installing the program. I also have access to manipulate the registry. This still does not let me install yahoo or msn messenger or a few other programs. I can't even pull up the date/time window.
What I did: I downloaded the trial version of ABBYY Finereader Pro and installed it successfully. When I tried to uninstall it through add/remove option in windows, it didn't let me (told me it was busy even after closing it in task manager) so I went to the registry and deleted all traces of the program (I went to find and searched everything with ABBYY and Finereader and just deleted everything that came up. I know that was stupid.) When I tried to install it again, it gave me a registry error so I couldn't install it again. I searched the internet with the error ("the configuration data for this product is corrupt") and was told to add an "installation key" and some other keys (one of the websites is http://support.esri.com/index.cfm?fa=knowledgebase.techarticles.articleShow&d=24710). Also I downloaded PCmechanic and tried to fix the registry. The last thing was to download a program from microsoft )Windows Installer CleanUp Utility from http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;290301) to recover the registry (funny thing is that I could install everything else but not ABBYY again). after all those steps I was able to install ABBYY again. Something that I did or one of the programs I did gave me access to install any program I desired without the "Administrator access required" box. Can anyone tell me what I did and how can I do it again without doing all those steps again? I'm running Windows XP Pro. Let me know if you need any further information.

Can not delete files on portable drive

curiousleo — Mon, 15 May 2006 17:12:24 -0800

Why couldn't I delete/update/rename my files in a portable drive suddenly? I have hard drive based usb portable drive.
I never had much problem modifying files in the drive before from both home and office.
But Suddenly i can not delete/update/rename my files anymore...

it says the file is in use or does not have permission or something similar....

it works well at my home...

but office computer refuse to delete/update/rename files such as jpg, psd, doc... or what ever... I am able to open the files at office though... I am also able to save new data on the drive.....

I suspect it has something to do with permission setting from home or office.....

I may have accidently set something wrong at either home or office in Windows XP system..

what can i do....?

NSPOSIXErrorDomain:13 error in Safari

teem — Thu, 22 Sep 2005 22:15:48 -0800

When I try to access http://apple.com, Safari gives me the following error: "The error was: “POSIX error: Permission denied” (NSPOSIXErrorDomain:13)". What's going on? I'm on a G4 Powerbook running Tiger 10.4.1, accessing the internet with a D-Link DSL-300 modem and an Apple Airport. Safari gives the most descriptive error, but IE and Firefox can't access the same websites, giving me variations on the "Permission denied" error. Even software update doesn't work. When searching for help just a moment ago, I noticed that http://www.hp.com/ also doesn't work.

I've used disk utility to repair my permissions, I've tried moving subdirectories ("Application Support", "Caches", "Preferences") out of my Library folder and logging in again with the defaults, but nothing has helped. No change in software or hardware has coincided with the problem.

Any help would be appreciated.