193443
submission
t-n_dmkr writes:
A verdict today in the Appeal Court in Gothenburg, makes small-scale file sharers "immune". The 45-year old man who was accused of sharing four music files on DC++, was fined 20000SEK (~2000), instead of the prison sentence the prosecutor had demanded, which means that the police are not permitted to demand details of the addresses behind IP addresses and cannot carry out house searches.
The small-scale file sharers can now only be convicted if they go to the police and turn themselves in. Only if the file sharer could get a prison sentence are the police allowed to take further action.
The article in english.
An article in swedish,
another article in swedish.
193305
submission
deathy_epl+ccs writes:
It's not real clear whether this guy's patent on controlling a video game using nothing but a keyboard's arrow keys is just a protest, a statement against the broken nature of the USPTO, or whether he genuinely believes he's managed to get a license to print money with the award of the patent, but we can at least take comfort that it wouldn't be likely to survive being challenged.
I first read about this over at GameSetWatch
193263
submission
Jared writes:
Max Hole, President, Asia Pacific Region and Executive Vice-President, Marketing and A&R for Universal Music Group International recently gave his insight as to what he sees for the future of record companies. Says that record companies should get a cut of concerts, merchandising, sponsorship, song-writing, etc to make up for declining revenue in other areas, and that artists need them so they can take care of the business and marketing side so they can focus on their music.
156609
submission
deviantphil writes:
Linden Labs, the company that runs Second Life, is seeking to roll out a new age verification mechanism which among others things may require residents to turn over their Social Security Number, government ID, or other sensitive personally identifying data in order to access content which is "explicitly sexual or excessively violent in nature". This would be equivalent to requiring a person to give out their Social Security Number before purchasing a game rated "M".
154341
submission
An anonymous reader writes:
If you put the illegal numbers in a query on the MPAA's search page, it prints them on their page. Let's link to this and then issue them a DMCA takedown notice! Give them a taste of their own medicine.
http://www.mpaa.org/search_resultIndexServer.asp? query=09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0
153321
submission
Draque writes:
It looks like Digg is reversing its policy to delete all posts containing the much fabled hex number of doom. Here's the text from a post entitled 09-f9-11-02-9d-74-e3-5b-d8-41-56-c5-63-56-88-c0.'
"Today was an insane day. And as the founder of Digg, I just wanted to post my thoughts...
In building and shaping the site I've always tried to stay as hands on as possible. We've always given site moderation (digging/burying) power to the community. Occasionally we step in to remove stories that violate our terms of use (eg. linking to pornography, illegal downloads, racial hate sites, etc.). So today was a difficult day for us. We had to decide whether to remove stories containing a single code based on a cease and desist declaration. We had to make a call, and in our desire to avoid a scenario where Digg would be interrupted or shut down, we decided to comply and remove the stories with the code.
But now, after seeing hundreds of stories and reading thousands of comments, you've made it clear. You'd rather see Digg go down fighting than bow down to a bigger company. We hear you, and effective immediately we won't delete stories or comments containing the code and will deal with whatever the consequences might be.
If we lose, then what the hell, at least we died trying.
Digg on,
Kevin"
152659
submission
152587
submission
elkcsr writes:
"The U.S. Army has ordered soldiers to stop posting to blogs or sending personal e-mail messages, without first clearing the content with a superior officer, Wired News has learned."
http://www.wired.com/politics/onlinerights/news/20 07/05/army_bloggers
151709
submission
Fo0eY writes:
The folks at Digg.com have let the social news genie out of the bottle, and now they can't control it. Since the HD-DVD encryption code was discovered and published, readers at Digg have been repeatedly submitting stories with the 16 digit hex code in the titles and bodies. Just as quickly as these posts crawl up the Digg charts, admins seem to be deleting them.
109949
submission
An anonymous reader writes:
Michael Geist is reporting
that Canada's Supreme Court has just upheld the ban [decision
here] on publishing election results on the Internet before the
close of polling stations. The dissent was apparently concerned
with the impact on the Internet, noting that people who rely on the net
for news would be denied access for hours to election results.
