An anti-spam organisation filed a federal lawsuit Thursday targeting so-called spam harvesters, who facilitate the mass distribution of junk e-mail by trolling the Internet and collecting millions of e-mail addresses. The lawsuit was filed in US District Court in Alexandria by a Utah company called Unspam Technologies. The company runs a Web site called Project Honey Pot dedicated to tracking spam harvesters worldwide. Project Honey Pot has collected thousands of Internet addresses that it has linked to spam harvesters, but it so far has been unable to link those addresses to an actual person. The lawsuit names a variety of John Does as defendants, and the plaintiffs hope that the legal process will allow them to track the actual people who are harvesting the e-mail addresses, said lead attorney Jon Praed with the Arlington-based Internet Law Group
Ty Roberts, CTO of Gracenote, made the claim this week that the music industry was about to cave in the next six months
on the issue of DRM, at least when it comes to downloads
Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs indicated on Wednesday he is unlikely to give in to calls from the music industry to add a subscription-based model to Apple’s wildly popular iTunes online music store
Kodak has decided to attempt to buck the trend set by HP by offering low cost printers and reasonably priced ink cartridges. Three of their new printers start at US$149, with ink cartridges costing US$9.99 for a black cartridge and US$14.99 for a five color cartridge. To counter, HP has announced a release of lower-priced cartridges, though with less ink and they are still more expensive than Kodak’s. It will be a matter of time to see whether Kodak can upset the practice of ink cartridge extortion
The tyranny of two-dimensional computer and TV displays could soon be over. A team of MIT researchers has proposed a way to make a holographic video system that works with computer hardware for consumers, such as PCs with graphics cards and gaming consoles. The display, the researchers say, will be small enough to add to an entertainment center, provide resolution as good as a standard analog television, and cost only a couple hundred dollars
Free online encyclopedia Wikipedia is one of the most popular sites on the Web, and Jimmy Wales has operated the multilingual virtual encyclopedia for 6 years without the first ad. Wikipedia have announced that they may add some trivia games and quiz programs in an effort to boost funds in support of the site. Wales has said that the firm will hold off on advertising for now, but turning down millions of dollars in ad revenue that could be applied to humanitarian causes had caused Wales to take pause to consider the lesser of evils
Amazon wants to launch an online music store next month to challenge Apple and is working on plans to sell music with reduced protection against copyright infringement. The internet giant has approached all the music majors in the past fortnight and said that it wanted to sell unprotected MP3 songs in May as it tries to follow Apple in shaking up the music industry. However, it remains unclear if Amazon will meet its deadline. The internet retailer has been trying, unsuccessfully, over 18 months to break into the market dominated by Apple iTunes, which has a share of about 80 per cent
Free internet access will be available throughout all 17 Auckland City Libraries from Thursday 26 April. The service will be funded as part of $25 million being spent by Auckland City Council over the next decade to enhance community facilities. Auckland City Council said providing free internet access will meet the expectation that everyone should be able to access information from any source, using computers, at their local library
Those of you as fond of Ubuntu as we are likely won’t need much convincing, but those that have yet to go ‘bu now have one of the most compelling reasons yet to consider the OS, as version 7.04 (otherwise known as Feisty Fawn
) has now been officially released into the wild. Among the improvements this time around are improved wireless and multimedia support, and a new Windows migration tool that should make things a bit easier for those going for a dual-boot system
A desktop printer loaded with a silver salt solution and vitamin C has been used to produce electronic circuits. The UK researchers behind the feat say their experimental device could pave the way for safer and cheaper electronics manufacturing. Being able to print out electronic components and whole circuit boards could provide an alternative to current manufacturing techniques, which are energy intensive and environmentally unfriendly
With all the new features Mozilla added to Thunderbird 2.0, Thunderbird’s target is clearly Microsoft’s Outlook e-mail program. In the business community, Thunderbird’s ability to make inroads on Outlook has been hampered by Outlook’s integration with Microsoft Exchange, but Thunderbird has had a great deal of success for home users
Google has announced a new Ajax Feed API makes it possible to extract information from multiple RSS feeds with only a few simple lines of JavaScript. The API–which allows web developers to retrieve RSS data as either XML or JSON–can be used to build mashups, unique web applications that leverage multiple sources of data and display the results in a useful or innovative manner
Microsoft, Mozilla, Opera and Google took the stage this week at the Web 2.0 expo and in addition to discussing pressing issues have declared their intent to avoid another browser war. All the panelists agreed that security was the largest concern currently facing browser developers
MySpace.com has launched a beta of a news site it hopes will bring more advertising revenue to the popular social networking site. MySpace News is a hybrid between standard news-aggregation sites, such as Google News, and a news-rating site such as Digg. Like Google and other news sites from portals such as Yahoo and AOL, MySpace News brings in content from a variety of news outlets. But the site also has a Digg-like feature that lets MySpace users rate stories they see on the site, and share stories with other site users
For the members of the iGen, the infinitely connected teens and twenty-somethings who cannot remember a time when the Web didn’t exist, the ritual of mourning is now a social-networking phenomenon
The BBC is to open up its vast archive of video and audio in an on-demand trial involving more than 20,000 people in the UK. Full-length programmes, as well as scripts and notes, will be available for download from the BBC’s website. The pilot is part of the BBC’s plans to eventually offer more than a million hours of TV and radio from its archive
Within a few weeks, Australia may introduce new laws to censor films and literature deemed by the government to be supportive of terrorism. This is not the first time material has been censored in Australia, which has previously censored films and banned publications, including one titled Defence of the Muslim Lands (censored in mid 2006 by Attorney-General Phillip Ruddock). The proposed laws are aimed to target material such as a DVD by Feiz Mohammad containing some of his past controversial sermons calling for jihad and comparing Jews with pigs. The Office of Film and Literature Classification previously classified this DVD as PG
, suitable for viewing by anyone under 15 years of age with parental guidance
The Canadian government is reportedly ready to introduce copyright reform legislation this spring, provided that no election is called. The new bill would move Canada far closer to the US on copyright, with DMCA-style anti-circumvention legislation that prohibits circumvention of DRM systems and bans software and mod chips that can be used to circumvent such systems
It was just a bit of text advocating open data formats that was slipped into a Florida State Senate bill at the last minute with no fanfare, but within 24 hours three Microsoft-paid lobbyists, all wearing black suits, were pressuring members of the Senate Committee on Governmental Operations (COGO) to remove the words they didn’t like
Google CEO Eric Schmidt has confirmed there will be a presentation layer for Google Docs & Spreadsheets. While Google has web-based applications for word processing and spreadsheet management, the addition of a Power Point-style presentation application could be the final step in turning Google’s online office suite into a serious Microsoft Office
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