The safe harbor provision seems to be extremely shaky (or the youtube-viacom case wouldn't be in doubt). I'm not a lawyer, but with the amount of control Apple exercises on their store..

Youtube is relying on the safe harbor protection. Intuition says that's not going to be applicable in this situation :-)

Are you sure? The wording of 401(d) visual works and 402(d) audio works regarding the notice is the same; the defendant must merely have "had access to" the work (as shown in Maverick v Harper, where the district court decided that this was fulfilled by publishing a notice with the work). Obviously, Maverick v Harper related to an audio work but I cannot see a functional difference between 401 and 402 regarding innocent infringement. The case: http://jgehrke.typepad.com/files/maverick-recording-co.-v.-harper.pdf See (d), innocent infringement defense 401 and 402: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode17/usc_sec_17_00000401----000-.html

What? Untrue. This would wreck prosecution of filesharing. You can't sue for statutory penalties unless the copyright is registered, that's all.

I can't distribute a popular (or even an unpopular) major movie and claim I don't know someone held the copyright to it. Ignorance of copyright law is not an excuse.

I think I'll stay away from Australia, thankyouverymuch :-)

That's weird to hear. PC games (even at the overinflated retail prices which are set to account for distribution, retail cut, promotion and advertising, physical product, etc.) are one of the cheapest things I can think of. Music, books, and movies are ridiculously overpriced to me, but games are dirt cheap. My logic: Music: I've got 20,000 songs I already like competing for attention. Unless your stuff is really extraordinary, it's never going to get much listening. Books: I read a book in a couple hours and rarely ever re-read. Pretty spendy. Getting a non-DRM'd digital version legitimately can be a pain, and I don't really want a physical copy. Movies: Watch once, rarely ever rewatch. Ridiculously spendy unless you Netflix. Have to transcode it into a format that doesn't suck (x264 rip) myself. By contrast, games (through Steam at least) are mostly buy and forget without ever having to worry about losing your copy or digitizing anything.

Just turn the resolution to 1024x600 or so (I think that's what the big console 720 titles are upconverted from) and leave the settings high. Almost anything will run well at that.

most of these games will run on virtually anything, and even "real" games like bioshock will run on $50 each cpu/mobo/vid card.

It's more like a series of improvements on that model. It works really well, though. Cache doesn't seem to help performance as much as you'd think it would, though. There are some core2 cpus described as "pentium dual core" with a fraction of the cache which perform almost as well.

The third core gives a significant performance benefit over two cores, especially since many games were originally designed for consoles and are badly ported to PCs. Unoptimized performance hogs like Grand Theft Auto demand more cores (and can use them). Just today I saw an article on Anandtech describing significant, unexpected benefits from a slower quad core over a newer, faster dual-core in gaming. http://www.anandtech.com/show/3695/the-clarkdale-experiment-mea-culpa

Activision claimed that the bonus pool for Infinity Ward will remain the same and whoever stays will get more money. Not saying it will happen.

They all just randomly decided to quit in a down economy and forgo bonus money + the bonus money owed the two lead devs? Yes, every dev that quits, the bonuses for the remaining ones pile higher. And they're still leaving. Granted, they might believe that Activision are too rotten to pay anyone at this point, but if that's the argument you're relying on..

So do I. I don't compete in tournaments, though. You're talking about people who really care about computer hardware or game casually.

Exactly. People who really care about games are often playing ridiculously low resolutions for the framerate and using low DPI mice they sweep across the desk so they can snipe better. Music? That's off. Graphical effects? Off unless they help gameplay (many hurt).