When this legal melee began earlier this month, I guessed that the judge was simply taking IBM at its word and ordering Papermaster to stop work essentially at their whim. Well, you can’t blame me for underestimating the Judicial Branch, can you? Recently revealed records show that the judge had pretty solid reasoning for believing Papermaster was a serious threat to IBM in his new position at Apple, citing Apple’s interest in the man’s specific knowledge of microprocessors and the history between Apple and the Power processors to which Papermaster is related. God, that’s all a bit dry, isn’t it? But it increases my faith in the court where this thing is being addressed; it also gives weight to IBM’s side of the argument — a non-comp agreement that Papermaster says is too broad. Unfortunately, his complaint may be a little too after-the-fact for the judge to consider it worthwhile. I wish we had flashier legal issues to talk about, but all the ones I mention here aren’t quite as public. So, Papermaster it is! → Read More
We can jokingly say things like “buy a cellphone jammer to silence those annoying people on the bus” but that would be irresponsible. Quite irresponsible, it turns out, as criminals are now using such devices to impede law enforcement efforts. It happened last month in Canada. Two Mounties had pulled over a car, and as they approached to car their radios went out. It turns out that the two guys inside the pulled over car had turned out one of those $200 eBay cellphone jammers, putting the officers at unnecessary risk. This is a good time to remind y’all that using cellphone jammers is illegal in the U.S and most other places. In fact, a first time offender faces up to a $1,000 fine for using a jammer in the U.S. Seems to me that an iPod is a much cheaper way to avoid hearing a fellow commuter’s conversation. And anyone who uses a cellphone at a restaurant should be promptly shown the door. → Read More
Good lord, sir. There are so many lawsuits about that you can’t swing a cat without hitting a lawyer. IBM is suing Papermaster, Papermaster is suing IBM, Apple and Psystar are suing each other, the US is suing LCD makers, Spansion is suing Samsung, and god knows what else just from the last couple weeks has escaped my memory. And now Kodak is getting in on the feeding frenzy, and is suing Samsung and LG for undisclosed damages, saying their mobile phone cameras infringe on Kodak patents in some way. It’s a bit fuzzy right now, but I’d guess that Kodak pretty much has any sensor-related stuff locked down. Without knowing any of the details, I’m guessing LG and Samsung are going to cough up. → Read More
Papermaster doin’ it for his self! Well, his lawyers are helping. They’ve produced a somewhat scattershot countersuit against IBM, which if you don’t remember, sued the man for supposedly breaching a non-competition agreement in his contract. Papermaster’s corner says that not only is the non-comp clause “unreasonably broad,” but the statute of limitations is “unreasonably lengthy” and even if that weren’t the case, it’s “unenforceable” due to it being a part of NY law and Papermaster himself being bound only by Texas and California law. To be honest, it’s pretty dry. I’m think I’ll leave this one alone for a while. → Read More
Yeah…a play on “Boston Legal” probably would have been better (and easier) The ongoing drama between Apple and IBM in which would-be iPod and iPhone division head Mark Papermaster is charged with breaching a non-competition contract with IBM is getting more complicated. On the Apple side, it’s no great surprise to find out that he was considered rather a “long shot” in terms of everything but his technical knowledge. However, the search for an iPod head had been going on for so long that they were starting to scrape the bottom of the barrel — or maybe it’s more charitable to say they were reaching the bottom of the cream and getting to the rest of the crop. At any rate, they offered him the job, which he decided to take. That’s when things get interesting. → Read More
Such shameful conduct! It looks like from 2001 to 2006, LG, Sharp, and Chinese OEM Chunghwa were conspiring to keep the prices of LCD screens high and agreed on pricing floors to guarantee cash flow for everybody involved. Over five years of first- and second-party sales (Dell and Apple were among the buyers), they must have run up quite a tab, although no one’s done the math yet. The companies have, however, been served with fines totalling $585 million between them ($400m from LG alone) — which amount, large as it appears, they can most certainly afford. Their reputation and business relationships may have been damaged severely by the legal proceedings, and perhaps in the coming OLED revolution, big retailers of LCDs may snub the companies, even though it’s likely every other supplier has similar predatory policies. → Read More
A federal jury found yesterday that Samsung willfully infringed two of Pioneer’s patents covering plasma televisions. As such, the Korean electronics giant will have to cough up (“cough up” is the technical term, mind you) some $59 million, payable to Pioneer. As you might expect, Samsung plans to appeal the ruling forever and ever. Sorta interesting: a Japanese corporation taking a Korean corporation to an American court for redress. We’re so globalized! → Read More
French pirates may want to think twice about downloading that episode Entourage off the Pirate Bay. A new law just passed the Sénat that would cut file-sharers off the Internet. Those caught illegally sharing material, be it music, movies, software, or whatever else, will be warned, both by e-mail and regular mail. After two such warnings your connection is shut off. Under the law, a new government body would be created to help patrol the France’s Internet use. The law now has to be approved by the lower house of Parliament, the Assemblée nationale, which is directly elected by citizens. There’s only one small problem with the proposed law: it directly conflicts with the wishes of all mighty Brussels, which has called such a measure—kicking people off the Internet for file-sharing—to be a violation of “civil liberties and human rights.” Don’t mess with Brussels is the new Don’t mess with Texas. → Read More
Go ahead and read this court transcript. It’s a 35-page PDF of the London-Sire Records. Does 1-4 copyright infringement case. It’s the same song and dance you’re all familiar with: RIAA catches someone downloading a song, which entitles it to thousands upon thousands of dollars in remuneration. Only this time, the presiding judge, Nancy Gertner of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, actually recognizes the complete absurdity of suing these people so much money for downloading music. Some highlights: • “There’s a huge imbalance in these cases. The record companies are represented by large law firms with substantial resources. The law is also overwhelmingly on their side.” • “I can’t say this is a situation that is a goof situation or a fair situation, it is , however, the situation.” • “You know, it seems to me that counsel representing the record companies have an ethical obligation to fully understand that are fighting people without lawyers, to fully understand that, more than just how do we serve them, but just to understand that the formalities of this are basically bankrupting people, and that it’s terribly critical that you stop it…” • “…that it was his son who did the downloading and his son has no assets, you’re getting water from a stone. What are you pursuing here?” The whole thing is pretty tremendous. Here’s what I don’t understand about all of this. Let’s say the RIAA catches me downloading a song. All of a sudden I owe them several thousand dollars for copyright infringement, right? Now, let’s say I walk into Best Buy and physically steal a copy of an album. Do I owe the RIAA thousands of dollars in that scenario? Because if copyright infringement=theft and theft=small fine, why is the RIAA suing these people for thousands of dollars? How does that make sense? via Slashdot → Read More
Dear school administrators, What’s the best way to ensure that your computer network remains riddled with security vulnerabilities that leave you, your personnel and [someone think of the] schoolchildren in danger? Why, to demonize the student who discovered the vulnerability and alerted you to it, of course. Have him charged with a felony while you’re at it. A student in a Saratoga County (New York) school alerted his principal to a computer security vulnerability that could expose the names, social security numbers and addresses of school employees. While the student tried to do it anonymously, he was eventually tracked down. Then the school threw the book at him. The student is now being charged with three felonies for his unauthorized use of the computer network. The best is this quote from a state trooper: The kid committed an intentional criminal act. He deceitfully used someone else’s name and password so he would not get caught and was looking to profit from his criminal act. The only thing we can take away from this is, even if you discover a security vulnerability, it’s completely in your best interest to keep it to yourself, otherwise you’ll be branded a criminal terrorist when you were merely trying to do a good deed. Or, if you insist on doing the right then, use Wikileaks. → Read More
How much does it cost to monitor college students’ anti-American P2P activities? A whole lot, and that’s money colleges could be spending on, I don’t know, education. This chart breaks down the cost of complying with, specifically, the new provisions of the Higher Education Act of 2008. That law, which the RIAA and MPAA were able to lobby their way into, requires colleges try to stem the spread of illegal P2P downloads on campus. The tools to police what students are up to exist—ipaudit is one that comes to mind—but is it really the business of colleges, realm of higher learning, to snoop on what their students are up to? Why not live and let live, punishing violations as they occur rather than spending all day playing cyber nanny? One comment at Inside Higher Ed goes into the issue of government-sponsored censorship and prior restraint (in a sense), since the law applies to state schools as while as private schools. That’s an issue for another day, I think. → Read More
Like Achilles, it looks like RealDVD has lived a short but glorious life. Its name will echo for eternity. And so on, and so forth. Right, so that judge that RealNetworks was so confident would rule in its favor did the exact opposite, ruling in favor of the movie studios. The temporary injunction on the sales of RealDVD will go on indefinitely; the odds of RealDVD coming back, especially before Christmastime, now look pretty gosh darn slim. With this sentence, the judge seems to have sealed RealDVD’s fate: I’m not satisfied that in fact this technology is not in violation of the DMCA. That’s quite the innovative statement coming from the judge. Now all we have to do is wait for the record labels to work this line of thinking to their favor. You know, “If the judge says you can’t copy a video discs, why should you be able to copy an audio disc?” Hooray for America. → Read More
Being that lie detectors are complete wastes of space, law enforcement needs, you know, something that actually works. That something could well be brain fingerprinting, which measures brainwave activity to determine if someone is telling the truth or not. VentureBeat puts it in easy-t-understand terms. Imagine you viciously murder someone with an axe. Then, when the police are questioning you, they show you a photo of an axe. Naturally, your reaction to that photo of an ace would be totally different to someone who didn’t just murder someone using an axe. Then, using all sorts of fancy policing, including Vic Mackey-style tooling up, the police are to determine to a greater degree if you’re lying. The method is still in development, and the company behind the technology, Brain Fingerprinting Technologies, says about $25 million in funding is still needed to perfect it. → Read More
Yesterday, the Virginia Supreme Court ruled the state’s anti-spam law unconstitutional. Good news to the ears of Jeremy Jaynes who gets a free pass. The spammer was previously convicted as the first felony spammer in the country in a 2004 trial. He had been sentenced to nine years. Ugh. It’s still morning here on the West Coast. → Read More
A Bronx woman will have to pay the RIAA $6,050 for making songs available to download on Kazaa. That works out to something like $756 per song (there were eight songs in question). The case, Electra v. Barker, matters a little more than serving as anti-RIAA fodder. The RIAA was trying to argue that merely making songs available in a shared folder was tantamount to copyright infringement. If that were the case, the RIAA wouldn’t have to prove that anyone actually downloaded songs from your computer (that is, that you actually uploaded songs). That seems, I don’t know, unfair, but my days of freaking out at the RIAA are over. What’s the worst that can happen to someone who refuses to pay such a settlement? Are you looking at jailtime for downloading some songs? → Read More
The Senate has passed the Higher Education Act (the House passed it earlier this year), which, among other things, provides for federal monies for student loans. What’s most interesting to us here is a provision in the bill, which it’s expected that President Bush will sign into law, that tells college campuses to rein in wanton P2P downloading. To that end, the MPAA will provide colleges with some sort of “briefing book” on how to curtail downloading. Expect mandatory filtering as well, college students. As we all know, college students are proficient at at least two things: drinking and illegal downloading. Fun fact: I was invited to join an Xbox release group in 2004 because of my fast Internet connection. That’s what you get for idling in IRC all day long. Who knows how different my life would be had I accepted the position. It’s hard to get mad at the MPAA and RIAA for wanting to protect their livelihood, but that they could so easily influence the legislative process is somewhat annoying. Not entirely unexpected, just annoying. → Read More
Long story short: some kid got tired of playing Final Fantasy XI, and tried to cancel his account. His parents couldn’t cancel from the game’s Web site, and had to—gasp!—call the number found on the credit card statement. The kid’s dad is a bigwig in his state (Illinois), who got his legislator friend to help pass a law stating that online service providers must provide a way to cancel an account online. The moral of the story is, have important parents, or get the shaft like the rest of us. Neat, right? via The Earth Times → Read More
A more perfect union~! How much do you trust the Department of Homeland Security? Like, a lot, or a lot lot? Doesn’t matter, really—it now has the right to riffle through your laptop, iPod and other electronic (and non-electronic) devices and documents when you cross a border coming into the U.S. To Liberty! Yes, the DHS now has the right to riffle through your junk at the border, all in the name of security, of course. What’s even more troubling—and it’s pretty damn troubling to begin with—is that the DHS can keep your stuff for as long as it wants (a “reasonable period of time,” reads the policy). Oh, and you don’t even have to be suspected of any wrongdoing in order to have your stuff confiscated. Several lawmakers are against the new policy, including Sen. Russell Feingold, who called the policy “truly alarming.” Indeed it is, Russ. What exactly this means for your large collection of V0 MP3s and x264-encoded movies, who knows. Maybe you’ll luck out and they’ll only slap a gigantic fine on you. Wouldn’t surprise me. → Read More
Yeah… those are some l33t photoshop skillz. I guess Don’t Drop the Soap Saga XII and the latest Battle Raper (I wish I was kidding) have been deemed poisonous to the minds ostensibly being rehabilitated by Britain’s overcrowded prison system. Games have been a privilege among institutions for some time now but budget cuts have caused the console-buying programs to be pruned despite prison staff praising the games as good time-wasters for bored, incarcerated youth. Games with adult content (described as “human sexual contact” or “gross violence”) would be banned under the new regulations, and inmates in England and Wales would have to pay for any approved games out of their own pockets — assuming those jumpsuits even have pockets. → Read More
A German court has ruled that having an open, unsecured Wi-Fi access point isn’t tantamount to copyright infringement. Follow the logic for a minute: you’ve got a wide open WAP, and someone comes along and downloads a Metallica album off The Pirate Bay. Metallica’s record company finds the IP address, your IP address, and sends a letter to your ISP demanding retribution. You then argue that it wasn’t you who downloaded the album, but rather some passerby, so you shouldn’t be liable. No court in the U.S. has bought such an argument thus far, often saying it’s your responsibility to secure your property lest it be abused. Well, the Germans disagree. The court said that an “abstract risk of abuse” wasn’t enough to hold someone liable for copyright infringement. While our courts in the U.S. may cite World of Warcraft when handing out judgments, the odds of one going by European law are pretty low, since citing Euro law would be unpatriotic. → Read More
