b0rsuk - Slashdot User

Submission + - ISPs taking steps to begin charging for email (lawbean.com)

Submitted by Spamicles on Wednesday June 13, 2007 @01:20AM

Spamicles writes: Some of the largest ISPs in the United States have begun to support Goodmail, an email and authentication service that charges money in exchange for guaranteed delivery of email. Goodmail then splits the money with your ISP. Comcast, Cox, Verizon, and Roadrunner join AOL and Yahoo! who are already members of the CertifiedEmail program.

Submission + - How GPL is battled in Russia (livejournal.com)

Submitted by

mud_all_over

on Friday June 08, 2007 @01:03PM

mud_all_over writes: "Yesterday, an owner of a GPL emulator-based Ragnarok server was sentenced to 3 years in Russia. It was not possible to close down such a server in Russia until now. But Russian company Gameland publishing proved, that the "piracy" can be battled, even if running a GPL-based game server clone is not forbidden by the local law. The only thing one should have is the good connections with the "experts" who can forge the expertise results. The court will accept it, they don't quite know what a PC is anyway. Still, this post is not about the dirty Russian court practices, but about the technical methods of copyright expertise used in Russia. It is a close-to-word translation of the expertise's results, why the hard disk contents should be considered pirated, and why software client is actually a server.
"After that, the files contained in the folder "Bgm" were analysed, which is contained in the filestructure of both programs. It can be observed from the printouts of software's "UltraCompare", "Total Commander" and "Microsoft Excel" screenshots, that files contained in this folder totally coincide in name, type, size and contents."
The original of the document with all funny screenshots and statements in Russian can be found here."

Submission + - Software authorisation, another kind of drm (theregister.co.uk)

Submitted by ehanuise on Friday June 08, 2007 @08:09AM

ehanuise writes: In a Register article on the death of antivirus software, Robin Bloor highlights a very scary future, indeed :

"However, software authentication is necessary for many reasons; to prevent people from running the wrong versions of software, to prevent them loading their own favourite software without permission, to prevent people from running software for which your company has not bought a license, or to prevent them running it on a machine for which it is not licensed. Software authentication IS the issue. If you have effective software authentication, it stops malware stone dead AND it helps manage the corporate software resource in a productive way."

Of course the aforementioned reasons are valid for some people and do hold ground in a corporate environment, but what is scary is the consequences a generalisation of this would have. Small independent software writers might not be able to afford getting their software certified/authorised. Whom will be the authority, anyway ? (don't expect it to be the computer/OS user). Also as this would becore a standard operating system feature, we're in TCPA joy again — free software would also effectively stopped 'stone dead' for either the unability to get certified/authorized, or the unwilingless to do so for obvious ethical reasons.

Submission + - Congressman Orrin Hatch caught pirating software

Submitted by

Rocketship Underpant

on Thursday June 07, 2007 @04:35AM

Rocketship Underpant writes: "Orrin Hatch, the Congressman viewed by many as a shill for corporate copyright interests, recently stated that people who download copyrighted materials should have their computers destroyed as punishment. However, as Wired.com reports, Hatch's own website uses copyrighted software without permission — a Javascript menu system developed by a British company. Is Mr. Hatch accepting volunteers to go through his home and office destroying all his computers, or were his comments to Congress just a bunch of hypocritical hot air?"

Submission + - Reporter Arrested for Asking a Question (lawbean.com)

Submitted by

Spamicles

on Wednesday June 06, 2007 @07:48PM

Spamicles writes: "Manchester, NH — Freelance reporter Matt Lepacek, reporting for Infowars.com, was arrested for asking a question to one of Giuliani's staff members in a press conference. The press secretary identified the New York based reporter as having previously asked Giuliani about his prior knowledge of WTC building collapses and ordered his arrest."

Submission + - Court Santions 'Anti-RIAA' Lawyer (com.com)

Submitted by

uolamer

on Wednesday June 06, 2007 @04:51PM

uolamer writes: "Last year, an attorney representing a woman sued by the Recording Industry Association of America claimed his client is innocent and asked a federal judge to levy sanctions against the association's lawyers.

Instead, in an unexpected legal twist, U.S. District Judge Terry Means ruled on May 16 that it was entirely likely that the woman was violating copyright law via the Kazaa file-sharing program — and ordered that her attorney be sanctioned for wasting the court's time with "frivolous" arguments.

CNET Story"

Submission + - Best Buy Lawyer Discovered Editing Documents

Submitted by tengu1sd on Wednesday June 06, 2007 @12:20AM

tengu1sd writes: A new chapter in the Best Buy Saga. Everyone's favorite vendor may have it's head in a noose. . . . revelations about the actions of Minneapolis attorney Timothy Block do not bode well for the company. The lawsuit, filed in 2003, accuses Best Buy of signing up at least 100,000 customers for trial subscriptions to Microsoft Corp.'s MSN Internet service from 1999 to 2003, in many cases without their knowledge. Once the trial period ended, the customers began incurring credit card charges they had not approved. He's accused of altering documents during discovery. Is Tim falling on his sword and taking one for the team and is Best Buy trying pull another over us?

Microsoft Slaps Its Most Valuable Professional 474

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday June 05, 2007 @11:47PM from the schizophrenic-is-one-word-for-it dept.

Violent Offender writes with a touching story in The Register about Microsoft's awarding of its Most Valuable Professional credential to a British hobbyist, Jamie Cansdale, then turning around and threatening him with a lawsuit for the very software that won him the award. The article links to the amazing correspondence from Microsoft on Cansdale's site.

Submission + - Microsoft threatens its Most Valuable Professional

Submitted by Violent Offender on Tuesday June 05, 2007 @02:53PM

Violent Offender writes: http://www.theregister.com/2007/06/05/microsoft_mv p_threats/

Programming hobbyist recognized as Most Valuable Proessional for innovative add-on, then sued by Microsoft in almost the same breath.

Submission + - DOJ calls copyright infringer's terrorists

Submitted by shaggester on Tuesday June 05, 2007 @01:11PM

shaggester writes: A recent article from Businessweek.com confirms the RIAA & MPAA (as many already know) have overwhelming policy making clout in Washington, D.C, and the DOJ recently confirmed it. So you thought terrorists were a threat, the DOJ insist you think again. Because if you even attempt to download that mp3, image, or video you might as well be rubbing shoulders with the likes of those who have been accused of, "bribing officials, taking hostages, and unlawful use of explosives," according to business week. To add insult to injury after your arraignment for "suspected copyright infringement" officials can confiscate any hardware or other device which was used in any manner to commit the infringement.

Submission + - Microsoft Gives Xandros Linux Users Patent Protect

Submitted by DigDuality on Monday June 04, 2007 @11:28AM

DigDuality writes: Microsoft, shrugging off licensing moves to prevent it from repeating its controversial patent deal with Novell, has signed a set of broad collaboration agreements with Linux provider Xandros that include an intellectual property assurance under which Microsoft will provide patent covenants for Xandros customers.

Will the response to Xandros be similar to that of Novell? We can only hope.

Submission + - Microsoft Gives Xandros Users Patent Protection (eweek.com)

Submitted by

AlexGr

on Monday June 04, 2007 @10:42AM

AlexGr writes: "By Peter Galli (eWeek): Microsoft, shrugging off licensing moves to prevent it from repeating its controversial patent deal with Novell, has signed a set of broad collaboration agreements with Linux provider Xandros that include an intellectual property assurance under which Microsoft will provide patent covenants for Xandros customers. These covenants, which are almost identical to the patent agreement and covenant not to sue that Microsoft signed with Novell last November, will ensure that the Xandros Linux technologies customers use are compliant with Microsoft's IP, David Kaefer, Microsoft's General Manager for IP and Licensing, told eWeek. http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2140955,00.as p"

Concerns Over Microsoft's Internet User Profiling 144

Posted by CmdrTaco on Monday June 04, 2007 @10:42AM from the like-they-don't-already-know dept.

jcatcw writes "Microsoft research on Internet user profiling could lead to tools that help repressive regimes identify anonymous dissidents, the Reporters Without Borders advocacy group warned last Friday. Microsoft's new algorithms correctly guessed the gender of a Web surfer 80% of the time, and his or her age 60% of the time. "In China, it is conceivable that this type of technology would be used to spot Internet users who regularly access such 'subversive' content as news and information websites critical of the regime," the group said."

Submission + - Open Source License Staistics

Submitted by

dptalia

on Monday June 04, 2007 @10:08AM

dptalia writes: "I'm writing a paper on open source licensing, and have stumbled on an interesting question: what percentage of FOSS uses which license (GPL, BSD, Apache, LGPL, etc.). Does anyone have any statistics regarding this? I found a paper that states in 2004 70.3% used GPL, 10.8% used LGPL, and 7.1% used BSD. Are these stats still in the ballpark?"

Submission + - Why HD movie downloads are a big lie (com.com)

Submitted by jpfingst on Monday June 04, 2007 @09:47AM

jpfingst writes: "There's a lot of buzz lately about the delivery of HD TV and Movie content over the Internet with shows like Lost being delivered by ABC.com and other video download services with XBox360 or iTunes....But there's one dirty little secret that people are forgetting or that they don't understand, IT'S NOT HD they're getting over the Internet. Heck it's not even NTSC 480i (720?480 60 fields interlaced) DVD quality when you really look at the amount of video data you're getting!"

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