The European Union Commissioner for the Internal Market has today proposed extending the copyright term for musical recordings to 95 years. He also wishes to investigate options for new levies on blank discs, data storage and music and video players to compensate artists and copyright holders for legal copying when listeners burn an extra version of an album to play one at home and one in the car — via Slashdot
The communications regulator, ACMA, has cracked down on ISP Dodo, saying it must comply with industry codes of practice relating to complaints handling and billing, or face penalties. The Ombudsman referred Dodo to ACMA after the small ISP racked up almost double the number of customer complaints made against Telstra BigPond — via lifehacker
ISPs are calling on the record industry to put its money where its mouth is on illegal file-sharing, by underwriting the cost of lawsuits brought by people who are wrongly accused of downloading or uploading music
SCO Group, which for years has claimed that Linux infringes on its Unix intellectual property, has received new funding and seems set to continue its battle against the open source operating system
Last week a Danish court ordered the ISP Tele2 to block its customers access to The Pirate Bay. The decision heated the debate on ISPs Internet filtering, and it now turns out that filtering traffic to The Pirate Bay is actually illegal according to European law
Sun Microsystems has signed a stock purchase agreement to acquire Innotek, a Weinstadt, Germany-based supplier of VirtualBox virtualisation software
Google already made it easy to search for the current time anywhere in the world, or to track incoming flights, and now they’re helping us search for local Australian movie times too. You just need to type the name of the movie and your city
Undeterred by the threat of a hostile takeover, slumping Internet pioneer Yahoo completed an acquisition of its own Tuesday by buying online video service Maven Networks for $160 million. The deal marks Yahoo’s latest attempt to expand its online advertising network and snap out of a two-year financial funk that has culminated in unsolicited takeover offer from Microsoft
Yahoo has announced a new mobile phone service that integrates e-mail, instant messaging and social networks. Called oneConnect, the service is expected to launch this spring at the World Mobile Congress in Barcelona. Its open architecture means users and other companies can eventually add many other applications to it
Online video rental company Netflix said on Monday it would exclusively stock Blu-ray high-definition DVDs after a decision by some the world’s biggest movie studios in favor of the Sony Corp developed format. Netflix has stocked DVDs using both Blu-ray and the competing HD DVD format developed by Toshiba since they first came on the market in early 2006
There’s a new gun in town, and some of the Internet’s most powerful companies — including Yahoo, Google, PayPal and AOL — are brandishing it in the ongoing battle against e-mail fraud. The new weapon is called DKIM, an emerging e-mail authentication standard developed by the Internet Engineering Task Force. DKIM, which stands for DomainKeys Identified Mail, allows an organization to cryptographically sign outgoing e-mail to verify that it sent the message
The DataPortability Workgroup announced this morning that representatives from both Google and Facebook are joining its ranks. The group is working on a variety of projects to foster an era of Data Portability — where users can take their data from the web sites they use to reuse elsewhere and where vendors can leverage safe cross-site data exchange for a whole new level of innovation. Good bye customer lock-in, hello to new privacy challenges. If things go right, today could be a very important day in the history of the internet
eBay bowed to pressure Monday from some of its high-volume sellers, saying it will further cut listing fees for books, music, movies and video games sold through the online auction site. Monday’s move amends a fee structure announced last month and could mean savings for merchants who sell those goods in high volume. Those sellers had expected to lose money from the new plan, slated to take effect 20 February. Some had threatened to stop selling on eBay
Yahoo’s board plans to reject Microsoft’s unsolicited $US44.6 billion offer to acquire the web giant. After a series of meetings over the past week, Yahoo’s board determined that the $US31 per share offer massively undervalues
Yahoo. It also doesn’t account for the risks Yahoo would be taking by entering into an agreement that might be overturned by regulators. The board plans to send a letter to Microsoft Monday in the US, spelling out its position
Office may fall under Microsoft’s own definition of adware. It links to third-party commercial add-ons, includes up-selling promos, requires cookies for certain functions, and collects technical information. While this is like a normal day on the web, should the commercial office suite be held to a different standard and possibly be considered adware? The article also notes that clicking advertising links in Office will bring up Internet Explorer, regardless of whether or not it is the default browser — via Slashdot
Repairs on two out of three broken undersea cables providing data services to parts of the Middle East and Asia should be completed by Sunday, while the third should be fixed by Saturday
Documents dating from the Civil War and others to and from Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt are among hundreds of stolen documents sold online that eBay is agreeing to buy back and return to New York’s archives. The online auction giant has no liability in the sale of the stolen artifacts, but agreed voluntarily to offer buyers the amount that they paid, according to the official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because not all details of the investigation have been announced
Google is introducing an online business software package designed to make it easier for people in the same organisation to share documents and information. The free Team Edition software represents the internet search leader’s latest attempt to attract more users to free applications, which poses a potential threat to rival Microsoft’s highly profitable word processing, spreadsheet, presentation and calendar programs
Two Victorian real estate agents have launched a defamation action against Google. Counsel for agents Mark Forytarz and Paul Castran of Castran Gilbert, appeared in the Supreme Court today for a directions hearing, alleging their clients have been defamed by articles found via Google searches
Yahoo this week introduced a new monthly Web Hosting service for small and medium sized businesses, which provides unlimited hosted storage capacity and bandwidth. Subscribers to the new service, priced at $11.95 a month, are free to take up as much disk space on Yahoo’s servers as they need to transfer data, store information or secure e-mail without fear of shrinking capacity restrictions
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