While record companies prepare for the sentencing of three Sydney men convicted of music piracy by the Federal Court, a new survey shows most musicians and other music professionals believe copyright laws are too harsh. It found that 81% of the 200 respondents felt that the Copyright Act should be changed to allow the copying of a user’s own legally purchased CDs, but not borrowed or downloaded music. Less than half of respondents felt that downloading free music constituted theft from artists and composers, while only 25% felt it was theft from record labels. 27% of respondents did not feel downloading music was theft
Greens Senator Bob Brown says the Immigration Minister Senator Amanda Vanstone should appear before a Senate inquiry into last week’s arrival of suspected asylum seekers on a remote northern Australian island. The Greens also claim the Federal Government plans to excise more islands from Australia’s migration zone
Two days ago a boat load of Turkish Kurds arrived in Northern Australia by leaky boat. Both the foreign minister and the immigration minister stated unequivocally that ‘The passengers of the Minasa Bone did not claim asylum in Australia’. This is in spite of the fact that we can be reasonably certain that at least one of them was begging a Turkish interpreter, in Turkish, to be allowed to stay. But even if they were granted a Temporary Protection Visa, they would be forced into prison camps in inhospitable parts of Australia for years before being shipped back to their homeland to be killed
Identity fraud cost the Australian community AU$1.1 billion in 2001/02, according to a report released by the Minister for Justice and Customs, Senator Chris Ellison, who also acknowledged the rapid subsequent growth of the problem
Weeks after a groundbreaking scientific study said naval sonar appears to be killing marine mammals, the Bush administration yesterday won House approval to use sonar wherever Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld sees fit. Passage next week by the Senate is virtually assured
The FTC has shut down D Squared, a company that’s been spamming via the Windows Messenger Pop-Up Service. In some cases, ads would pop-up every 10 minutes, and only advertised a $30 product that disabled similar pop-up ads. The FTC is slamming the extortion gauntlet on them. Interestingly, the FTC only caught onto all this because one of their own commissioners was among those getting spammed
Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News Channel threatened to sue the makers of the Simpsons over a spoof news ticker. The show’s creator Matt Groening said Fox News raised the unlikely prospect of suing a show broadcast by its sister channel, Fox Entertainment, because it wanted to stop the Simpsons parodying its famously anti-Democratic party agenda
A federal judge in Houston has thrown out the 20-year-old arms smuggling conviction of a former CIA agent, outlining in scathing terms how federal officials knowingly used a false affidavit at his trial and concealed the act through years of appeals
Bruce Hubbard, an Auckland peace activist, sent an email to the US Embassy objecting to the war on Iraq and got charged with misuse of a telephone for his troubles
The Australian National Office for the Information Economy said it wouldn’t endorse use of Microsoft’s controversial document security technology, Information Rights Management in Commonwealth agencies
Did you read the article? If not basically this guy got sacked by Microsoft because of this blog entry entitled Even Microsoft wants G5s. The article contains a happy snap of some G5s being unloaded from a truck. That’s right, just some computer boxes in a truck, no people, no MS references in sight, accompanied by some text about someone getting new toys at Microsoft. Microsoft didn’t like this, or the offer to remove the post and gave him the boot.
I think this quote says it all really:
Good. That means that as it’s your site on your own server, you have the right to say anything you want. Unfortunately, Microsoft has the right to decide that because of what you said, you’re no longer welcome on the Microsoft campus.
Yes indeed, bloggers beware especially if you work for Microsoft or Macrosuck.
The kerfuffle over Bob Brown‘s heckling of the President is by no means over. The speaker Neil Andrew wants to find someone to punish for the sin of letting the world see what actually happened in the Australian Parliament
A company accused of sending unsolicited bulk email was fined US$2 million, the first such ruling under California’s anti-spam law. PW Marketing LLC and its owners, Paul Willis and Claudia Griffin, were also banned from owning, managing, or holding an economic interest in any company that advertises over the internet without first notifying the attorney general. The injunction will remain in place for 10 years
The Motion Picture Association and APRA have commissioned a report from Allen Consulting into the effects of extending Australian copyright from life plus 50 years to life plus 70 years. This forms the MPA and APRA’s contribution to US-Australian free trade negotiations, currently underway. The report recommends that copyright terms should be extended. An extension of copyright would not be in Australia’s interest. Some would argue that it is not in anyone’s interest. Projects such as Project Gutenberg of Australia would be adversely affected by such an extension. Perhaps now is to time to write to your Member of Parliament, asking them to oppose any extension of copyright or patents, and shore up whatever resistance there is to an extension of IP in Australia
In an effort to improve its corporate reputation, adware company Gator has launched a legal offensive to divorce its name from the hated term ‘spyware‘ — and so far its strategy is paying off. In response to a libel lawsuit, an antispyware company has settled with Gator and pulled Web pages critical of the company, its practices and its software. And other spyware foes are getting the message
A judge sentenced an Arizona woman to 60 days home detention for intercepting her husband’s ex-wife’s e-mail, saying the penalty is a warning to others who might be tempted to do the same
A growing number of angry Telstra BigPond customers have registered interest in launching a class action against the telco over delays in its email service during the past three weeks
Reducing journalism to a branch of corporate and government public relations is the hidden agenda of the media deregulators, in Britain and America
Workers at the Streets ice cream plant at Minto, in Sydney’s south-west, were unaware that the manufacture of its major Australian ice-creams might be transferred to China
Indian protesters choked the streets and highways of La Paz with a powerful anti globalisation demonstration
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