You know you’ve really made it as an online entity when an entire country bans your site. In terms of a rite of passage, it’s just after the wide-spread adoption and critical mass stages (which of course is followed by random companies banning you, and mainstream newspapers writing about studies on how inefficient the economy has become since your company’s existence). Twitter now joins the lauded halls of the sites banned for presumably speaking too freely; the United Arab Emirates has decided that its residents shall tweet no more
Facebook is allowing its 55 million users to permanently turn off its Beacon
advertising program, which tracks their activities
Google is making changes to its European launch of Street View to
protect the privacy of those it photographs, may do the same for US version
As if DRM needed more of a hint to get its coat and leave, Amazon is set to announce a promotional giveaway of one billion MP3s during next year’s Super Bowl. Billboard was first to note that this announcement signals an all-out offensive on DRM, which is made even more powerful by parallel pressures brought by Wal-Mart. In a bid for more of the digital download space, the brick-and-mortar retailer heavyweight has reportedly given an ultimatum to some of the largest record labels, including Warner Music Group and Sony BMG Music Entertainment, to provide more of their respective music catalogues in MP3 format (that is, without DRM) next year
Jimmy Wales made an announcement yesterday night at a Wikipedia party in San Francisco: Creative Commons, Wikimedia and the FSF just agreed to make the current Wikipedia license compatible with Creative Commons (CC BY-SA). As Jimbo puts it, This is the party to celebrate the liberation of Wikipedia
— via Slashdot
This week, Deutsche Grammophon, the classical music recording giant that’s owned by Universal Music Group, launched its own DRM-free online music store
Google is preparing a service that would let users store on its computers essentially all of the files they might keep on their personal-computer hard drives — such as word-processing documents, digital music, video clips and images, say people familiar with the matter. The service could let users access their files via the Internet from different computers and mobile devices when they sign on with a password and share them online with friends. It could be released as early as a few months from now
Google Israel gave up the IP address of a Blogger user without being compelled to do so by a court. A preliminary ruling was issued in which a court indicated that the slander the blogger was accused of probably rose to the level of a criminal violation. Google Israel then made a deal with the plaintiffs, local city councilmen whom the blogger had been attacking for a year. Google disclosed the IP address only to the court, which posted a message (Google says the anonymous blogger got it) inviting him/her to contest the ruling anonymously. When no response was received within three days, Google turned over the IP address to the plaintiffs’ lawyers — via Slashdot
Federal prosecutors tried unsuccessfully to force Amazon.com to identify thousands of innocent customers who bought books online, then abandoned the idea after a judge rebuked them. In an order that was sealed but has now become public, US District Judge Stephen Crocker rejected the Justice Department’s subpoena for details on Amazon’s customers and their purchasing habits. Prosecutors had claimed the details would help them prove their case against a former Madison, Wisconsin, city official charged with tax evasion related to selling used books through Amazon
The Court has ordered UMG Recordings, Warner Bros Records, Interscope Records, Motown, and Sony BMG to disclose their expenses-per-download to the defendant’s lawyers, in UMG v Lindor, a case pending in Brooklyn. The Court held that the expense figures are relevant to the issue of whether the RIAA’s attempt to recover damages of $750 or more per 99-cent song file, is an unconstitutional violation of due process — via Slashdot
The controversial Google Street View project has arrived in Australia taking snaps in our major cities and towns. The project has already captured images at street level in 17 US cities and attached them to the highly popular Google Maps online application. It was launched in the US in May, and quickly attracted controversy after claims several images breached privacy
Facebook users are complaining over ads where their shopping habits are shared with their friends as if they are endorsing products. The best part is that you can opt out — if you click a box that disappears after 20 seconds… wait too long, and they assume you are totally fine with it
According to a thread on the forums of AnimeSuki, a popular anime bittorent index site, Comcast has begun sending DCMA letters to customers downloading unlicensed fan-subtitled anime shows via bittorrent. By unlicensed
, they mean that no english language company has the rights to it
Five Australian-based journalists were deliberately killed by Indonesian troops in East Timor in 1975, an Australian coroner’s court has ruled. Dorelle Pinch, deputy coroner of New South Wales, said the killings could constitute a war crime. The two Australians, two Britons and a New Zealander, known as the Balibo Five, were killed to stop them exposing the invasion of East Timor
The Kremlin is using Russia’s new anti-software-piracy laws to target dissident media outlets and shut them down. This is an eerie echo of the Soviet era, when black marketeering and other universal activities were used as the excuse for arresting dissidents and other inconvenient people. The difference is that this time, the anti-piracy laws were enacted at the behest of the US trade representative, who made stringent patent and copyright enforcement a condition of the recent US-Russia free trade agreement, forcing Russia to take on board stricter laws than those in place in the US. This includes laws that would never pass Constitutional muster stateside, like a scheme for police licensing and inspection of CD and DVD presses — via Boing Boing
The RCMP announced that it will stop targeting people who download copyrighted material for personal use [Google translation]. Their priority will be to focus on organized crime and copyright theft that affects the health and safety of consumers, such as copyright violations related to medicine and electrical appliances, instead of the cash flow of large corporations. Around the same time that the CRIA successfully took Demonoid offline, the RCMP made clear that Demonoid’s users don’t have to worry about getting prosecuted, at least not in Canada. Piracy for personal use is no longer targeted,
Noël St-Hilaire, head of copyright theft investigations of the RCMP, said in an interview. It is too easy to copy these days and we do not know how to stop it
— via Slashdot
The University of Oregon has filed a motion to quash the RIAA’s subpoena for information on student identities in what is believed to be the first such motion made by a university with support from the state Attorney General. The motion explains that it is impossible to identify the alleged infringers from the information the RIAA has presented
A handful of consumer groups have filed a complaint with the FCC over Comcast’s delaying
some BitTorrent traffic. The complaint seeks fines of $195,000 for each Comcast subscriber affected by the traffic blocking as well as a permanent injunction barring the ISP from blocking P2P traffic. Comcast’s defence is bogus,
said Free Press policy director Ben Scott. The FCC needs to take immediate action to put an end to this harmful practice. Comcast’s blatant and deceptive BitTorrent blocking is exactly the type of problem advocates warned would occur without Net Neutrality laws
— via Slashdot
US-made censorware is being used to oppress the people in many countries, including Burma. That in itself may not be surprising, but a more interesting point is that according to lawyers it appears to be legal — in spite of all the economic sanctions against the country, and even though people know it will be used to hush up any mention of things like attacks on peaceful protesters — via Slashdot
Apple plans to drop the price of all iTunes Plus tracks. Currently, each track is US$1.29 while normal
DRMed tracks are 99¢ apiece. That discrepancy will be no longer, as Apple will begin pricing all of its iTunes Plus songs at 99¢ apiece (DRMed tracks will also remain at 99¢)
RSS – Posts