As Facebook expands its territory and allows for more and richer content, its responsibilities towards that content (and their users, and the law, etc.) become deeper and more complicated. While the structure of Facebook isn’t nearly as permissive as, say, a private message board or tracker site, the sheer amount of activity produced by hundreds of millions of users demands a level of vigilance… → Read More
Intel intimated in somewhat disturbing understatement today that they and everyone else would be suing the pants off anyone who dares to make a HDMI/HDCP encryption workaround device. Listen to this: → Read More
Today’s adjustment of the DMCA has far-reaching legal implications, which will only be evident after a few weeks, months, or even years as various parties exploit them however they can. I’m going to let the experts play in that sandbox. But one of the new rules seems to have had a specific target in mind: Apple. To wit:
“(2) Computer programs that enable wireless telephone handsets to execute… → Read More
So imagine you head into your office one day, and find that an alley outside your window has been turned into a set for Transformers 3 — there are cameras and booms and you can hear Michael Bay yelling. They’re about to pneumatically fire a car down the street (it’s been Transformer-punched, you presume) so you whip out your iPhone and start recording. Up it goes on YouTube and… down it… → Read More
This is interesting. While checking up on the implications of Sony’s removal of the “Install Other OS” option, Thinq ran into a particularly troubling clause in the EULA.
Some services may be provided automatically without notice when you are online, and others may be available to you through SCE’s online network or authorized channels. Without limitation, services may include the provision of… → Read More
Good luck sorting this one out, short-sighted lawmakers. An upcoming piece of major legislation in the UK, called the Digital Economy Bill, would essentially force all public wi-fi points offline by requiring impossibly high levels of copyright protection by libraries and small businesses. The bill, which bears some similarity to the controversial DMCA here in the US, is ostensibly aimed at… → Read More
Looks like Apple didn’t learn its lesson with the whole iTunes DRM thing. I suppose that they might consider some things worth DRM-ing and some not, but I think it’s more along the lines of they’ll do it whenever they think they can get away with it. And they seem to think that’s the case with their new e-book store, which will sell books laced with delicious FairPlay DRM. → Read More
Yesterday, in response to allegations of DMCA violations, several popular music blogs were wiped off the face of the net. They were hosted by Google via Blogger, and it was only after they were completely erased that the owners received emails to the effect of “We got one too many complaints – you’re deleted. Love, Google.” It’s trending around the net as “Musicblogocide 2010,” but that puts too… → Read More
Oh dear, oh dear. How utterly delightful! It seems that the major members of the Canadian Recording Industry Association have been a bit hypocritical over the last… oh, 20 years. It seems they’ve included a truly enormous amount of tracks on compilation CDs without paying the artists a dime, instead putting them on a “pending list.”
This list is somewhere around 300,000 items long, and a… → Read More
A great African American civil rights activist one said, “I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired.” That’s how I feel about copyright these days. You’ve got these entrenched business interests who seemingly have their favorite congressmen on speed-dial, and then you have people who, God forbid, would like to see these businesses embrace new, practical business models that don’t… → Read More
You know how sometimes you turn on the TV, and it’s still on 16:9 mode, but you’re just watching the news? And the people are all kinda squashed, but you don’t feel like picking the remote up and hitting the picture mode button? Yes? So, sir, you are confessing that you willfully modified the original copyrighted image, without the consent of the creator. It’s a good thing you weren’t running a… → Read More
In what was ostensibly a meeting of the majors last week to advise the FCC on broadband policy, the COO of Paramount was allowed to wax ignorant for 10 minutes on piracy and file-sharing technology. As a major content provider, they should certainly have some input, but this was sheer soap-boxery. Sure, peer to peer and torrent traffic (legal and otherwise) is going to be a major driver of… → Read More
Let’s make one thing absolutely clear about the Pirate Party of the United States (PPUS): it has no interest in defending your ability to illegally download The Blueprint 3 from Waffles.fm. It just doesn’t. If you had the idea in your head that the PPUS would somehow work to legalize your bad habits, well, tough break, kid: it’s a legitimate political party whose goal is not to make it so that you… → Read More
Yesterday, August 11, wasn’t just Joe Rogan’s birthday. Nope, it was also the date when a judge in San Francisco ruled that RealDVD was illegal, and reiterated that it was illegal to manufacture or traffic software that makes it possible to copy DVDs. So, every time you fire up DVD Copier on your PC, make a copy of a DVD that you bought, well, you’re breaking the law. The DMCA just keeps on… → Read More
For years you’ve been using the well-supported, ubiquitous file format called MP3. It’s an international standard, it works just fine in every media player, and other universally-accepted formats are in place for the album artwork, lyrics, and what have you.
Sounds like you’re ready for a new, unified format that no one has ever heard of and, if introduced five or six years ago, might have been… → Read More
In moves which may or may not lead to an outcry from the gamer population at large, both Valve and Microsoft have strengthened their DRM on their PC gaming platforms. Whether these changes will simply curb piracy, as intended, or whether they will prove a nuisance as other DRM schemes have done historically is yet to be seen. → Read More
If you somehow managed to avoid all the hype, you might not know that the Academy Awards were handed out this weekend. There were preview shows, review shows, and Oscar-related goings-on all over television all weekend long. The Free Art and Technology Lab threw their own little Academy Award party this weekend by making all the nominated films available to anyone with a USB drive. → Read More
YouTube is chock full of amateur videos. It’s easy to make a video and upload it to YouTube. Making a quality soundtrack for your video is considerably more difficult, though, which is why many folks punt and just use a song from their favorite artist. Don’t be surprised, though, if your recent uploads are silent. → Read More
Flickr’d Imagine you’re at your wedding doing the ol’ “smash cake into your wife or husband’s face” move. It’s a great day, all things considered. The sky is the bluest it’s ever been and birds are fluttering around in a non-threatening manner. (That’s what weddings are like, right? I’ve never been to one.) A man dressed like Spy vs. Spy is… → Read More
Oh my. I like the “Shame on me” button. I think I’m going to go register my trial copy of WinRAR , which I’ve been “evaluating” for 8 years. A commenter points out that in the full screencap you can see that the guy has an 8-core Mac Pro with 10 gigs of RAM. I think he can afford a $20 program! [via Reddit] → Read More
You may or may not be aware, but there has been and still is a war being waged over Blu-ray DRM. Slysoft announced that they cracked the BD+ algorithm back in March this year and has been including Blu-ray backup with AnyDVD HD since March. That was just eight months after Richard Doherty from Envisioneering Group predicted that BD+ would stand for 10 years. But! Just because BD+ plus has been… → Read More
It’s no secret that Apple wants everyone to use iTunes, especially to sync with their iPod. I personally can’t stand iTunes and prefer Winamp, and many others share my view but have enjoyed Apple hardware. Some more code-savvy people than myself have in years past determined how to read and write to the proprietary iTunesDB file, allowing non-Apple software to sync with iPods. Apple… → Read More
Poor, wretched EA. First they have to make 600 staff walk the plank, and now they’re being sued all over the place. There are a lot of hackles raised by SecuROM’s secondary effects, like disabling certain drives or legitimate software. A commenter pointed out this page, which lists the current lawsuits (there are four) against EA on this subject. The most compelling one has to be the… → Read More
What’s more convenient than having an unfamiliar subway system’s map and timetable information right there on your iPhone? Oh, what’s that, Berlin? Such a convenience violates copyright? Excellent! There’s an application for the iPhone called Fahr-Info Berlin. It’s just as I described—a free app that contains the city’s subway (“metro”) timetables; it… → Read More
Really, though — who doesn’t like czars? Although the czars of today are a far cry from their imperial namesakes, they are still in positions of great power and presumed authority. I can’t imagine that, more than a decade into the ongoing controversy, this Intellectual Property Czar position has been created for anything other than the abuse of media lobbyists. After all… → Read More
Famous director Michael Moore released his latest movie, Slacker Uprising, on that there Internet a few weeks ago. Unfortunately, for would-be viewers outside the U.S. and Canada, trying to download the movie results in a great big fail whale. And then the movie appeared on The Pirate Bay, where anyone can download it. Is this Mr. Moore’s doing, or the work of some busybody fan who wants to… → Read More
Note that I have nothing against Mr. Norris per se. You just knew this was going to happen. Sales of RealNetworks’ RealDVD have been suspended while Real fights Hollywood in court, forever. You already know what Hollywood’s beef is, that RealDVD allows people to illegally copy DVDs blah bah who cares. Rent, rip and retun all you want, I say. Take this line from the MPAA’s… → Read More
In yet another ridiculous and short-sighted move, “the nation’s top movie companies” have filed suit against RealNetworks due to the release of RealDVD. Oh my god. Every time I think these heads of industry can’t get any more stupid, they do something like this. What are they going to accomplish here? They’re telling consumers that they can’t back up their own… → 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… → Read More
In case you were wondering, Number 10, the UK Prime Minister’s website uses a WordPress theme called Networker. A WordPress theme, they decided to take credit for. Or at least, not give credit as to where they got it. The theme was designed by Anthony Baggett and is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License. In contrast, we here at CrunchGear are using a… → Read More
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