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Submission + - BBC decides to release content with Windows DRM

Submitted by Serious Callers Only on Tuesday February 13, 2007 @06:48PM

Serious Callers Only writes: Arstechnica looks at the BBC decision to use Microsoft DRM for their iPlayer software — forcing users to purchase Windows software to access BBC media. The BBC trust have expressed concerns about the plan, but for now have allowed the BBC to go ahead with their scheme. From the article :

"The BBC now has the means and the opportunity to make its vast archives available over the Internet, but it faces a major problem: rights. On the podcast, BBC workers point out that the difficulty in making the BBC's massive archive freely available is not primarily technical, but legal."

Unfortunately the use of DRM means that the primary problems users encounter in using BBC content will not be legal, but technical. The BBC podcast is available from backstage.

Submission + - Illinois Bill to Ban Social Networking Sites

Submitted by

AlexDV

on Tuesday February 13, 2007 @06:36PM

AlexDV writes: "Library blogger Michael Stephens is reporting that Illinois Senator Matt Murphy (R-27, Palatine) has filed a senate bill which "Creates the Social Networking Web site Prohibition Act. Provides that each public library must prohibit access to social networking Web sites on all computers made available to the public in the library. Provides that each public school must prohibit access to social networking Web sites on all computers made available to students in the school." The bill's full text can be found here.

What is it with politicians introducing crazy Internet-related legislation lately? Could this bill have something to do with the fact that prominent Democratic presidential hopefuls Barack Obama and John Edward are using social networks as a core component of their campaigns? Hmm..."

Submission + - Teacher Framed by Porn Pop-Ups

Submitted by

Stanistani

on Tuesday February 13, 2007 @06:34PM

Stanistani writes: "A Connecticut middle-school substitute teacher was convicted last month of exposing her seventh-grade students to pornography on a classroom computer, and faces up to 40 years in state prison. She claimed that spyware generated the obscene pop-ups. The investigating detectives never checked the system for spyware. MSNBC has the story"

Submission + - GPLv3 license delayed by Novell/Microsoft review

Submitted by

PetManimal

on Tuesday February 13, 2007 @06:31PM

PetManimal writes: "Reuters is reporting that the General Public License Version 3 is being held up by concerns about the Microsoft/Novell partnership. GPLv3 will govern the licensing of numerous open-source software licenses, but the article notes widespread community disdain for Novell, which recently got into bed with Microsoft and uses GPLv2 for SUSE Linux. Free Software Foundation general counsel Eben Moglen had originally expressed hope that the GPLv3 document would be completed this week, but says that's no longer realistic. From the Reuters article:

Some supporters of open-source software have called on the foundation to use the new agreement to address the Microsoft/Novell deal, such as by restricting Novell's ability to distribute upgrades of key parts of open-source Linux that are covered by GPLv3.
"

Journal Journal: Cosmic Rays and Climate Change 4

Journal by TapeCutter on Tuesday February 13, 2007 @06:31PM

A recent slashdot story reported on an article by the ex-editor of New Scientist, Nigel Calder. RealClimate have taken issue with what they call "bizarre calculus that takes evidence for solar forcing of climate as evidence against greenhouse gases for current climate change". They have posted a

Captain Copyright Expires 114

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday February 13, 2007 @06:24PM from the don't-let-the-door-hit-you dept.

The Canadian superhero Captain Copyright has finally expired, not due to pirates or to the passage of 50 years after the death of the author, but because "the current climate around copyright issues will not allow a project like this one to be successful." The cartoon was intended to provide an education in copyright law for children, but it became a focus for criticism when even the Canadian Library Association condemned it for lacking balance because it ignored issues like Fair Dealing (Canada's version of Fair Use). Personally, I was hoping we'd see them get sued by DC & Marvel, who claim to own the trademark on the word "superhero", and vanish in a puff of logic.

Social Networking Sites Opening Their APIs 56

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday February 13, 2007 @05:44PM from the importing-friends dept.

prostoalex writes "Business Week magazine is looking at social networking sites opening their APIs to third-party developers to enable social applications not supported by the network itself. Facebook is setting an example by releasing their API from beta into 1.0, and many others are expected to follow the suit. Quoting from the article: 'Since Facebook, a network of 17 million college students, started a pilot program last summer, third-party developers have created some 100 new applications. Now a Facebook user name and password can be used to log in to content-sharing and chat site Mosoto, and to automatically import Facebook friends into Mosoto's buddy list for chat. Facebook itself does not offer a chat function.'"

Submission + - Why You Can't Trust Google To Protect Your PC

Submitted by

Anonymous Coward

on Tuesday February 13, 2007 @05:21PM

Anonymous Coward writes: "Google and StopBadware have partnered up to blacklist sites on Google's search engine results who distribute malware. However, they've ended up blacklisting many innocent sites while ignoring lots of confirmed offenders. This site posted a list of websites that Google says are safe to visit, but are genuinely malicious. Sounds a lot like Microsoft's misguided forays into computer security.

Why Google Can't Be Trusted To Protect Your Computer"

"Very Severe Hole" In Vista UAC Design 813

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday February 13, 2007 @05:07PM from the she-said-he-said dept.

Cuts and bruises writes "Hacker Joanna Rutkowska has flagged a "very severe hole" in the design of Windows Vista's User Account Controls (UAC) feature. The issue is that Vista automatically assumes that all setup programs (application installers) should be run with administrator privileges — and gives the user no option to let them run without elevated privileges. This means that a freeware Tetris installer would be allowed to load kernel drivers. Microsoft's Mark Russinovich acknowledges the risk factor but says it was a 'design choice' to balance security with ease of use."

Submission + - Microsoft says no plans for new Windows in 2009

Submitted by Janqie on Tuesday February 13, 2007 @04:40PM

Janqie writes: Microsoft has disavowed any announced plans to ship a new version of Windows in 2009 (previous /. coverage), issuing a statement saying that the company is not prepared to offer any guidance on when the next version of Windows might ship. Kevin Kutz, Director of Windows Client development, said: "We are not giving official guidance to the public yet about the next version of Windows, other than that were working on it. When we are ready, we will provide updates."

Submission + - DRM breaks DRM?

Submitted by CompMD on Tuesday February 13, 2007 @04:29PM

CompMD writes: I've been noticing that there are a lot of people using newer Dell machines that are running into trouble with FlexLM, a common license manager. What worries me is there are no FlexLM configuration problems. The issues experienced run the gamut, from not being able to check out a license to the service spawning thousands of server processes until the machine crashes. In the end, people can't use their legally licensed software. It took a while to find something in common with everyone, but eventually I discovered that a program implementing Trusted Computing that Dell preinstalls along with and what appeared to be a Broadcom TPM driver were causing this. This seems to be specific to Dell Precision laptops and perhaps a few other models. Can anyone else corroborate this problem of Trusted Computing breaking an industry standard license manager? What does this mean for the thousands of users of FlexLM licensed products? Is this problem specific to a faulty TC implementation, or is it systemic across all new computers with TC?

Submission + - Windfall Profits Tax on Google..?

Submitted by

bricko

on Tuesday February 13, 2007 @04:14PM

bricko writes: "Should there be a Windfall tax on Google..? http://www.usnews.com/usnews/biztech/capitalcommer ce/070212/windfall_profits_tax_some_mode.htm — Exxon made 37 Billion on sales of 397 Billion for return on sales of about 10%. Google made 3 billion on sales of 10 billion for a return on sales of 30%. Should these proposed "windfalls taxes" be spread more widely, or just on the "perceived" evil companies. If 10% return in evil...is 30% return MORE evil? And would Intel's 20% return. twice that of Exxon be twice as evil..? Since the last time windfalls profits taxes were implemented resulted in an 8% reduction in product availability...is it good policy to start with, or mostly a politicians wet dream."

Journal Journal: Lucas: 'Empire' Was the Worst of the Trilogy

Journal by anaesthetica on Tuesday February 13, 2007 @03:55PM

Entertainment blogger David Poland recently attended a Publicists' Guild luncheon which George Lucas attended. Lucas was present to give an award to Sid Ganis, the in-house publicist for Empire. Lucas credits Sid for creating the aura around Empire as the best of the three original Star Wars films, when, according to Lucas, "it was actually the worst one."

Submission + - AACS Cracked -- HD-DVD and Blu-Ray DRM Defeated

Submitted by esme on Tuesday February 13, 2007 @02:16PM

esme writes: There's a forum thread over at doom9 where user arnezami has posted the keys needed to decrypt all HD-DVD and Blu-Ray discs. This post has details of the strategy he used for getting the keys, though he pointedly doesn't say which player he used.

HD-DVD and Blu-Ray Protections Fully Broken 682

Posted by Zonk on Tuesday February 13, 2007 @02:12PM from the open-season dept.

gEvil (beta) writes "According to an article at BoingBoing, the processing keys for the AACS encryption scheme used by both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray video discs have been extracted, and a crack has been released. What this means is that there is now a method to extract the copy-protected content of any HD-DVD or Blu-Ray disc out there. This is different from Muslix64's previous crack, which only extracted the volume key for each disc. This new method bypasses this step and allows anyone to extract the data without first requiring the volume key."

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