Zune’s highly touted wireless file sharing will infect otherwise unprotected audio files with proprietary DRM. In cases where users are sharing songs covered by any of the Creative Commons licenses, this would be a clear violation of those license. From the CC FAQ: If a person uses DRM tools to restrict any of the rights granted in the license, that person violates the license
American airport staff almost stopped Harry Potter author JK Rowling boarding a flight because she would not part with the manuscript for the final book. Rowling was not prepared to stow her top secret notes for book number seven in her check-in baggage when she flew back from a book festival in August. Eventually she was allowed to take them on the flight, bound in elastic bands — via BBC News
Google Book Search and the American Library Association have teamed up to offer searchable indices and library links to banned books, in celebration of Banned Books Week
Apple overhauled its digital music and video offerings on Tuesday, introducing new iPods in three categories, an update on iTunes and announcing plans to make movies available for purchase through the iTunes store. Apple also plans to introduce a product in the first quarter of 2007 that lets consumers stream their movies or music to televisions. The new device, code-named iTV, has 802.11 wireless built in. It will sell for US$299 and works with PCs and Macs
A life-size replica of a Guantanamo Bay detainee has been placed in Disneyland by guerrilla artist
Banksy. The hooded figure was placed inside the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad ride at the California theme park last weekend. It is understood to have remained in place for 90 minutes before the ride was closed down and the figure removed
Apple may soon launch a service that allows users to download feature-length films, boosting its presence in the digital home
The naturalist and television star Steve Irwin has died in a diving accident in far north Queensland. He was 44. Police say he was stung through the heart by a stingray while diving off Port Douglas. He was filming a documentary when the accident occurred around midday AEST near the Low Isles
UK graffiti virtuoso Banksy has smuggled 500 doctored versions of Paris Hilton’s new CD into stores across the country. The CD contain Banksy’s remixes and have titles like Why am I Famous?
, What Have I Done?
and What Am I For?
— via Boing Boing
LibriVox is the largest of several emerging collectives that offer free or inexpensive audiobooks of works whose copyrights have expired, from Plato to The Wind in the Willows
Google Books has just started offering downloads of their public domain books as PDF files. You can search for free view
books to find other ones
Known geek and comedy singer/songwriter Weird Al Yankovic has released the first song from his new album Straight Outta Lynwood
for free on his MySpace page. The track is entitled Don’t Download This Song
and tells of the dangers of illegally downloading music from filesharing sites — via Slashdot
People close to the production of Stargate SG-1 said Sci Fi Channel cancelled the series on the eve of its 200th episode, which aired last Friday night, making the show the first cable scripted series to reach such a milestone
YouTube, the popular California Web site that offers video clips, announced a plan to post every music video ever made for free download. The plan threatens iTunes, which charges for videos
The US Federal Communications Commission has begun an investigation of the use of video news releases, sometimes called fake news
, at US television stations. Video news releases are packaged stories paid for by businesses or interest groups. They use actors to portray reporters and use the same format as television news stories
The state of Washington has sued the owners of the Movieland.com, alleging that the company used spyware to strong-arm users into signing up for its paid movie download service
RealNetworks will release open-source software this year that will let Linux computers play Windows Media files
Google has announced a deal to make the books from the University of California library available online. The agreement bolstered the Google Book Search project, a controversial campaign by the online search juggernaut to digitise all the written works in the world and put them on the internet. The state university system has more than 100 libraries on its 10 campuses and bills the aggregate collection as the largest research and academic library in the world
The RIAA brought a file-sharing lawsuit against a guy who died; they offered the departed’s family a 60-day grieving period before they began to depose his children for the suit against his estate — via Boing Boing
Last week the BBC demanded video host YouTube remove many copies of its Top Gear
TV service from its web site. That was because, this week, the BBC made Top Gear
available in its entirety on-line at BBC2 — via digg
YouTube removed all parody/fanfilm/spoof Star Wars content two days ago due to copyright violation. This morning, in an incredibly awesome PR move, Lucasfilm contacted YouTube, and told them to put it all back online — every last one — via digg
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