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… → 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… → 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… → 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… → 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… → 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… → 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… → 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… → 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… → 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… → 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… → 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… → 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… → 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… → 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… → 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… → 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… → 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… → Read More
http://current.com/e/88856223 “Give me a good reason why you’re filming around.” BakelBlog discusses some of the filming restrictions proposed in the UK and the resulting reactions of “community support officers” when folks try to film in public streets. → Read More
The MPAA may have some explaining to do following remarks of one of its lawyers in the Jammie Thomas trial. The remark in question, as written by Marie. L. van Uitert: It is often very difficult, and in some cases, impossible, to provide such direct proof when confronting modern forms of copyright infringement, whether over P2P networks or otherwise; understandably, copyright infringers typically… → Read More
It was bound to happen, and today it’s official: Craigslist is countersuing eBay, claiming unfair competitive practices, fraudulent business claims, copyright infringement and more. The auction site has a roughly 25% stake in Craigslist, and Craigslist wants it back, and the filing says that Craigslist wants eBay to divest its shares. We’ll have to see how this pans out when it goes to… → Read More
Just a quick note for those of you who purchased replacement power adapters for your iBook or Powerbook, the ones that cause sparks and start fires that burn you and your family alive: you’re getting a refund. Depending on which adapter you have and for which portable, you could receive up to $79 from Apple in a class action settlement. This is addition to the power adapter recall Apple had… → Read More
More news in Atlantic vs. Boyer, a case of the RIAA coming down hard on an innocent user and the user fighting back. Yesterday we brought news that the defendant’s attorneys filed a countersuit yesterday and that the judge has dismissed it. Turns out the RIAA filed for a dismissal, but today the judge put aside the RIAA’s dismissal request and will allow the countersuit to stand. This… → Read More
So you know how all those people have been up in arms about the adult content in games like GTA IV? And how they think that the ratings need to be tougher? A few politicians don’t think they go far enough. They want to actually start using retail cashiers to police who buys what, IDing people when they purchase to make sure they’re of age. I’m OK with this for cigarettes and… → Read More
I love it when people fight back against the RIAA. Their bullying tactics are getting old, and it seems the courts are realizing this. Last week a judge made it clear that making files available for download — seeding a file to a P2P network, for example — is not copyright infringement. There are other stories of people fighting back, and Atlantic vs. Boyer. Boyer’s attorneys are… → Read More
GTA IV is still in the news. This week, Take Two, the publisher of the game, is suing the Chicago Transit Authority for pulling the game’s ads out of bus terminals and shelters without explanation. Take Two paid Titan Outdoor, the group that handles advertising for the Authority, $300k for a six-week ad campaign. Titan Outdoor pulled the ads in response to a deadly crime wave that hit the… → Read More
This is bad for the RIAA, but good for file sharers. Yet another judge today disagreed with the RIAA’s assertion that making copyrighted works available — say, on a P2P network like BitTorrent — is not copyright infringement. This marks the second time the law has sided against the RIAA on this exact same issue. The judgment basically says, “leaving something out for… → Read More
Where there is crime, there is a victim, or so the adage goes, and in this case, you’re likely one of the victims yourself. Eddie Davidson was the spam king of Louisville until he was caught in 2007, and he was sentenced today to 21 months in a federal PMITA prison. Davidson sent out millions of spams, from fake rolexes to junk stocks. He was convicted on tax charges and for falsifying… → Read More
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