stephenbooth - Slashdot User

Submission + - BBC's download plans approved

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 31, 2007 @03:10PM

An anonymous reader writes: The BBC reports that following approval from the BBC Trust (an independent oversight body) they are now allowed to release their "iPlayer", enabling the download and viewing of BBC owned content such as Doctor Who. Unfortunately the Trust also mandated the use of DRM to enforce a 30 day playable period, and exempted classical music performances from being made available. There will now be a 2 month consultation period. According to one of the trustees, the Trust "could still change its mind if there was a public outcry and it was backed up by evidence".

Submission + - Google loses "Gmail" in Europe

Submitted by Hippie Hippie Shake on Wednesday January 31, 2007 @01:50PM

Hippie Hippie Shake writes: Google has just lost the right to use the name "Gmail" in Europe, according to the EU. From the article: "Daniel Giersch, a German-born 32-year old entrepreneur, has just announced that his company received a positive ruling last week from the Harmonization Office supporting his claim that "Gmail" and his own "G-mail" are confusingly similar. G-mail is a German service that provides a "gmail.de" email address, but also allows for a sort of "hybrid mail" system in which documents can be sent electronically, printed out by the company, and delivered in paper format to local addresses." It looks like "Google Mail" from here on out, at least in the Old Country.

Why You & Yahoo Should Like This Human Rights Law 217

Posted by CmdrTaco on Wednesday January 31, 2007 @01:00PM from the say-what-you-wanna-say dept.

Regular contributor Bennett Haselton has written in to say that "The Global Online Freedom Act, introduced last year during a firestorm of controversy over American companies cooperating with totalitarian governments in China and elsewhere, was introduced this month as the Global Online Freedom Act of 2007. When Chris Smith (R-NJ) first introduced the law in 2006, Yahoo was under fire for recently turning over information to Chinese authorities that led to the arrest of a political dissident, Microsoft was attacked for removing pages from MSN Spaces China at the behest of the government, Google was being criticized for removing political sites from search results displayed to China, and Cisco was accused of helping to enable Chinese filtering of the Web. All four corporations testified at a February 2006 House hearing during which Representative Tom Lantos summed up the mood of many of his colleagues by telling the companies, "I do not understand how your corporate leadership sleeps at night." The companies protested that they had no choice but to comply with local Chinese laws, but that they were troubled by their own actions, and -- in a rarity for individual tech companies, much less for a chorus -- they all invited the U.S. government to play a bigger role, while being vague about what the role should be."

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