musicon writes "As seen on Groklaw, a recent court decision upheld the the Creative Commons license in the Netherlands: 'The Creative Commons licenses are quite new, so there has been very little in the way of case law so far, so this is a significant development. The ruling rejected a 'the license wasn't clear' defense, particularly for sophisticated entities, and it upheld the license as binding without the licensee having to agree or even to have knowledge of the terms of the license.' You can read successful plaintiff Adam Curry's blog on the ruling too."

Edge Online has a piece up talking about the success of Xbox Live Arcade. They wonder out loud if the Live Arcade won't end up being the most important next-gen platform in this round of the console wars. From the article: "Live Arcade's conversion rate - the proportion of people who upgrade the demo to the full, paid-for version - is extraordinarily high, according to Canessa: 'The industry average on PC is about 0.8 per cent to one per cent, and in the first generation of Arcade we were hitting about 8.5 per cent, which was fantastic. But in this generation of Arcade we're hitting up to 35 per cent, and averaging over 20 per cent across all the titles. I mean, we had to check the data to make sure it wasn't a mistake. It's absolutely unheard of.'"

Jed from Pan and Scan writes "It's official: when the first HD-DVD players are released on March 28, there will be no movie titles available in the new high-def format for at least another three weeks, and far fewer than initially announced. Warner, the only studio that was planning on having HD-DVD movies to accompany the format's much ballyhooed debut, will now release just three initial HD-DVD titles -- and not until April 18."

Anonymous Coward writes "In a lawsuit brought by the Federal Trade Commission, a subpoena sent to Google orders the turnover of the complete contents of a Gmail account, including deleted e-mail messages. The Judge has granted the subpoena and orders that all e-mail messages, including deleted messages, be divulged. Google's privacy policy says deleted e-mail messages 'may remain in our offline backup systems' in perpetuity. It does not guarantee that backups are ever deleted. So much for the Delete Forever button."

The Guardian Gamesblog has a talk up with Shigeru Miyamoto, where they get into his views on the PS3 delay, and the industry as a whole. From the article: "Any announcement about PS3 will affect Nintendo. But we don't see it as a competition between the two consoles, although the customers always do. It depends on what expectations people have of the PS3 and Revolution. Sony has taken a long time to create their machine but it is obvious that the direction we (Nintendo) are taking is different to the PS3."

An anonymous user writes "Linux.com (a Slashdot sister site) has up a review of Gnome 2.14. The piece touches on usability improvements, as well as the new administration and configuration tools included with this release." From the article: "GNOME 2.14 continues the steady improvement visible in the last few releases. It is an incremental upgrade, consisting largely of tweaks and the filling in of gaps in functionality. If few of these changes are major by themselves, the overall result is welcome. Perhaps the best way of looking at the release is not as an end in itself, but as a milestone on the road to desktop usability in free operation systems. From this perspective, GNOME 2.14 is a sign that much of the journey is already over -- and that the remaining distance is less than many observers think."

f00lforb00l writes "According to an article in New York Times, the French parliament is considering legislation which would require that the iPod also be able to use music from services other than the iTunes Store." From the article: "The outcome of the debate, which began as an update to French copyright law, is far from clear. But taken to one logical conclusion, amendments to the copyright bill could lead Apple, the market leader, to leave the French music business, said Jonathan Arber, a research analyst in London at the technology consultancy Ovum. 'My gut feeling is that Apple will simply pull out of France if these amendments get through,' Mr. Arber said. 'Weighed against breaking their business model for all markets, it doesn't make sense for Apple to continue operating with the iPod and iTunes in France.'" Update: 03/17 15:46 GMT by Z : A previous story covering this topic may also be of interest to you. Sorry, folks.

babbling writes "The Australian Government has shut down a parody website that mocked Australian Prime Minister John Howard. The website featured a satirical speech that 'apologised' for the Iraq war. The site was down for two days before a phone call from Melbourne IT advised the owner that it had been shut down 'on the advice from the Australian Government'. A mirrored PDF copy of the "apology speech" is available."

illeism writes "E-commerce News is reporting that Microsoft is going after Ebay sellers offering pirated copies of Microsoft software. From the article 'The suits do not name eBay as a defendant and Microsoft indicated that it has received extensive cooperation from the auction giant in the past as it tried to ferret out piracy. In fact, Microsoft said it asked eBay to remove some 50,000 suspicious auctions during 2005 alone ... The suits are mainly against individuals and cover alleged counterfeit sales of several Microsoft programs, including Windows and Office XP and older versions, such as Office 2000.'" More interestingly, the article flatly states that MS has no hope of ending piracy. The suits are apparently meant to 'protect consumers'.

An anonymous reader writes "Washingtonpost.com is running a story about a number of botnets and keylogger operations being controlled by Web-sites with point-and-click type front-end software interfaces. The sites mentioned in the story look like fairly slick PHP pages designed to sort through password data from keylog victims and update infected computers with new code or instructions. From the story: 'The hacking software also features automated tools that allow the fraudsters to make minute adjustments or sweeping changes to their networks of hacked PCs. With the click of a mouse or a drag on a pull-down menu, users can add or delete files on infected computers.'"

QuatermassX writes "Forget increased sales of Mac computers, think media players. The iPod 'halo effect' shows its true power in recently compiled statistics from Nielsen/NetRatings and Apple. From the report on WebSiteOptimization.com: 'Podcasting is taking off and iPods are seemingly ubiquitous. Unique users of Apple's iTunes player should pass RealPlayer by mid-2006 with nearly 30 million users in the US alone. People are tuning in over twice as long with iTunes than with RealPlayer or Windows Media Player. As broadband penetration increases we are spending more time on our computers.'"

An anonymouse reader writes "Tom's Hardware has a feature up on the makings of Tron which may interest latent fans. Through interviews with the creators they explore the makings of Tron, from how it came to be picked up by Disney to how the effects were put together ('While the majority of the film takes place in the computer world, only 15 minutes worth of footage actually used CGI', because it would have taken years to make the film otherwise). They then explore why the film flopped at the box office. 'It was like we put LSD in the punch at the school prom and it was just way more than they can handle,' said Steven Lisberger."

Gosalia wrote to let us know about an article which opens with: "In a legal win for Google, a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit filed by a writer who claimed the search giant infringed on his copyright by archiving a Usenet posting of his and providing excerpts from his Web site in search results." Thankfully, we can all still read Usenet articles on Google as well as other archive services.

wh0pper writes "Arcing capacitors have caused Philips to recall select Ambilight flat panel (read plasma) TVs. Because the TVs make use of flame retardant materials, damage was only sustained to the TVs and not homes. This is the first time I've heard of TVs having this type of issue. How safe are LCD and DLP TVs from this type of thing?"

GP writes "How different is China? In the online game version of the idealized Socialist state, you gain experience points by 'doing good deeds' and 'thwarting spys'. You can even meet Chairman Mao!" From a great writeup by Scott Jennings on the game: "And now we have the online MMO version, 'Learn From Lei Feng Online', which allows you to... mend socks. Again - not making any of this up. To quote from the original Xinhua story 'For beginners, sewing and mending socks is the only way to increase experience and to upgrade,' said Jiao Jian, a six-grade pupil in Yuexiu District, quoted by the newspaper. He then continues. 'Every time you are promoted to a higher level, your clothes will become more average,' he said. I'm pretty sure this isn't a translation screw up. The longer you grind, the more you look like everyone else. I guess new users wear designer pastels or something."