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Submission + - U.S. group wants Canada blacklisted over piracy

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 14, 2007 @05:33PM

An anonymous reader writes: Following up on an earlier story, the **AA's want to add Canada to a "blacklist" of the worst intellectual property offenders:

"A powerful coalition of U.S. software, movie and music producers is urging the Bush administration to put Canada on an infamous blacklist of intellectual property villains, alongside China, Russia and Belize.

Canada's chronic failure to modernize its copyright regime has made it a global hub for bootleg movies, pirated software and tiny microchips that allow video-game users to bypass copyright protections, the International Intellectual Property Alliance complains in a submission to the U.S. government.

YouTube Hands Over User Info To Fox 396

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Wednesday February 14, 2007 @04:34PM from the their-tube dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Tech Crunch has an article about YouTube identifying and handing over a user's information after a request from Fox. 'Three weeks after receiving a subpoena from the U.S. District Court in Northern California, YouTube has reportedly identified a user accused by 20th Century Fox Television of uploading episodes of the show 24 a week prior to their running on television. That user, named ECOTtotal, is also alleged to have uploaded 12 episodes of The Simpsons, some quite old. Apparently Google and YouTube were willing and able to identify the owner of the username ECOTtotal, according to a report on InternetNews.com.'"

Submission + - Law requires ISPs to record all surfing activity

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 14, 2007 @03:54PM

An anonymous reader writes: A bill introduced last week by Representative Lamar Smith (R-TX) is beginning to raise eyebrows. (...) Under the guise of reducing child pornography, the SAFETY (Stopping Adults Facilitating the Exploitation of Today's Youth) Act is currently the gravest threat to digital privacy rights on the Internet. Given the increasing tendency of people, especially young people, to use the Internet as a primary means of communication, this measure would affect nearly all Americans in ways we are only beginning to understand. Also, given the fact that the Act requires all Internet Service Providers to record the web surfing activity of all Internet users, this amounts to the warrantless wiretapping of the entire Internet.

Submission + - Turns Out Google Really Does Listen

Submitted by

SamThomp

on Wednesday February 14, 2007 @02:00PM

SamThomp writes: "There's a perfect Google underdog story going on right now. It goes like this: A college student named Aaron Stanton has an idea he thinks Google will love. He tries to get in touch via phone, e-mail, and their web forms with no luck. Then, spurred by his father nearly dying of an embolism near Christmas, he takes a chance and flies to Mountain View, CA without an appointment, intending to sit in their lobby "like a spoiled child" until he gets a chance to meet with someone. He's been there about three days, now.

Here's where it gets interesting. He creates a website called CanGoogleHearMe.com, and uses Google Video to document his journey in hopes that it might be seen by someone at Google and they'll show pity. At first he's turned away (links to Google Video) at the door and doesn't get a chance to talk to anyone. Then, apparently someone in Google does notice the website and it spreads — word of mouth — inside of Google like wildfire; 600 people visit the site in two hours from inside of Google's headquarters at Mountain View.

Then, late last night — three days into his trip — the guy gets an e-mail with the subject line, "We can hear you :)" that says they're willing to listen to him. No meeting for sure yet, but a step in the right direction.

It's like "actual" reality TV. :) If you're looking for an interesting story to pay attention to for the week, it'll be interesting to see how this turns out. So far, Google seems to be living up to their image of being a large company that's open to ideas. As far as I'm concerned, best of luck to them both."

Comment Re:But did he know? (Score 1) 639

by cynix.org on Saturday December 09, 2006 @06:04AM (#17172472) Attached to: Verizon Can't Do Math

> This guy did the smart thing and had the staff memeber write down that they had quoted him right. Actually this might not help very much. Since all their reps (mis)read $0.002 as "point zero zero two cents", when you ask them to put "I quoted him point zero zero two cents per kB" in the notes, they'll probably write "I quoted him $0.002 per kB"...

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