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Submission + - Google and Microsoft Defend Fair Use (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward 11
Anonymous Coward 11 writes: Earlier this month, the Computer & Communications Industry Association filed a complaint with the FTC alleging that professional sports leagues, Hollywood studios, and book publishers were all using copyright notices that misrepresented the law. Now, the group has launched a web site called Defend Fair Use that shows they are serious about making the complaint stick.
Media

Submission + - "Viacom hit me for infringing my own copyright (blogspot.com) 2

Submitted by
Chris Knight
Chris Knight writes: "Long story short: I ran for school board where I live this past fall and created some TV commercials including this one with a "Star Wars" theme. A few months ago VH1 grabbed the commercial from YouTube and featured it in a segment of its show "Web Junk 2.0". Neither VH1 or its parent company Viacom told me they were doing this or asked my permission to use it, but I didn't mind it if they did. It was great to see the commercial was being enjoyed by a far wider audience than I'd expected. I was honored that they chose to use it and thought that Aries Spears's commentary about it was pretty hilarious, so I posted a clip of VH1's segment on YouTube so that I could put it on my blog. This morning I got an e-mail from YouTube saying that the video has been pulled because Viacom is claiming that I'm violating its copyright. Viacom used my video without permission on their commercial television show, and now says that I am infringing on THEIR copyright for showing the clip of the work that Viacom made in violation of my own copyright! Talk about chutzpah! Needless to say, I would like to fight this: not for any kind of monetary compensation, but just for the right to employ my own self-created material per Fair Use."
Music

Submission + - HMV Canada Cut's music CD prices because of piracy 1

Submitted by umStefa
umStefa writes: For the last few years the music industry has claimed that reduced CD sales are the result of piracy, while slashdotters have constantly defended piracy on the grounds that main stream music was overpriced. Well know the largest music retailer in Canada has gone and cut their prices on CD's to try and increase sales (CBC article). If successful could this spur music stores in other countries to reduce their prices? and could it have an effect on piracy rates? or is this simply a move destined to fail (by not increasing CD sales), thereby giving the music industry ammunition to get governments to pass legislation that will support their outdated business model. Only time will tell.

Comment Re:Motivated Youth (Score 1) 479

by CrankyOldBastard (#20367195) Attached to: Teen Hacks $84 Million Porn Filter in 30 Minutes
Thanks for a well considered and constructed reply to my comment. I do not agree with all your conclusions, but I respect the fact that they are well considered opinions. The only point that I feel compelled to comment on is the statement

I don't think Christianity is capable of providing any tool for explaining rationally to or raising mentally sane children.

A short story....

One of the lads I used to associate with in my youth is a sociopath. If A. has a choice between doing things the 'right' way or the 'wrong' way he has to choose the wrong way. He is one of the few people I know who might be a really 'evil person' (he does things like dynabolting shut a person's doors and windows while they're asleep before setting fire to their house, for example). One day, after the birth of his twin sons, he said to me "John, I can see why you sending your kids to Sunday School is a good idea - it would help prevent them growing up like me".

When we have our first kid we have all sorts of ideas about how we're going to raise them, without the 'mistakes' our parents made. Most people learn that we have to compromise our ideals, and that a lot of parenting is a matter of deciding what we believe to be the lesser evil, so that our kids have the best chance at happy and fulfilling lives. For many people Christianity provides a useful set of guidelines for arriving at such compromises. Some people use this same information to abrogate their responsibility for these decisions. I do not think Christians have a monopoly on trying to find the easy option and to avoid responsibility for our decisions.
Censorship

The White House Crowd Control Manual 162

Posted by kdawson from the sliencing-free-speech-silently dept.
quizzicus writes "The Washington Post writes today about a sensitive White House document detailing how to screen for, silence, and remove protesters who show up at the President's public appearances. Obtained by an ACLU subpoena in the Rank v. Jenkins case, the Presidential Advance Manual (PDF) is dated October 2002. It lays out strategies such as searching audience members at the door for hidden protest material, strategically placing 'rally squads' throughout the crowd to intercept and shout down hecklers, and forcefully removing dissenters who cannot be squelched. The manual advises, however, that staff should 'decide if the solution would cause more negative publicity than if the demonstrators were simply left alone.'"
Music

Submission + - Russian court aquits former owner of allofmp3.com (themoscowtimes.com)

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: Moscow's Cheremushkin District Court has acquitted Denis Kvasov, former owner of the music download website allofmp3.com, of violating intellectual property laws, reports Moscow Times.

The court has cited insufficient evidence of criminal activity — a question of fact — without touching the question of law of whether the site's activities (had they been proven by the prosecution) actually violated Russian copyright law. Yekaterina Sharapova, the trial's presiding judge, said: "I want to draw particular attention to the sloppy job done by prosecutors in collecting and analyzing the facts."

According to the Moscow Times, though, the allofmp3.com case is far from over. Two more criminal trials are scheduled to take place: one against Vladimir Mamotin, the media director of MediaServices, the parent company of allofmp3.com, and another against the company itself.

allofmp3.com has been a long subject of controversy. According to the licensing agreement, it pays a percentage of its revenue to the Russian Multimedia and Internet Society, which in turns pays individual rights holders of the songs. However, western music labels claim that ROMS's licensing agreement violates their intellectual property rights.
The Courts

Submission + - Foster Demands RIAA Post $210k Security for Fees

Submitted by
NewYorkCountryLawyer
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: "A few days ago it was reported that, in view of the RIAA's one-month delay in paying the $68,685.00 attorneys fee award in Capitol v. Foster, and its lawyers' failure to respond to Ms. Foster's lawyer's email, Ms. Foster filed a motion for entry of judgment so that she could go ahead with judgment enforcement proceedings. In response to that motion the RIAA submitted a statement that it had no objection to entry of judgment, and intimated that it thought there would be an automatic stay on enforcement of the judgment, and that it would ultimately file an appeal. After seeing that, Ms. Foster's lawyer has filed a motion for the Court to require the RIAA to post $210,000 in security to cover the past and future attorneys fees and costs which are expected to be incurred."
The Media

BBC's iPlayer's Prospects Looking Bleak 369

Posted by kdawson from the kick-their-dog-while-you're-at-it dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The future of iPlayer, the BBC's new online on-demand system for delivering content, is continuing to look bleaker. With ISPs threatening to throttle the content delivered through the iPlayer, consumers petitioning the UK government and the BBC to drop the DRM and Microsoft-only technology, and threatened legal action from the OSC, the last thing the BBC wanted to see today was street protests at their office and at the BBC Media Complex accompanied by a report issued by DefectiveByDesign about their association with Microsoft."
Privacy

Manhattan 1984 545

Posted by samzenpus from the watching-you dept.
Etherwalk writes "The New York Times is reporting on developments in the quest to charge driving fees for all vehicles headed below 86th Street in Manhattan. Notably absent from any part of the discussion is that a record is made of every car or truck that enters, together with the vehicle ownership information and the date and time of travel — either as part of EZ-Pass or in license-plate photos taken for subsequent billing."
The Courts

RIAA Short on Funds? Fails to Pay Attorney Fees 341

Posted by Zonk from the must-be-because-of-all-those-lost-record-sales dept.
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "Can it be that the RIAA, or the "Big 4" record companies it represents, are short on funds? It turns out that despite the Judge's order, entered a month ago, telling them to pay Debbie Foster $68,685.23 in attorneys fees, in Capitol v. Foster, they have failed to make payment. Ms. Foster has now had to ask the Court to enter Judgment, so that she can commence 'post judgment collection proceedings'. According to Ms. Foster's motion papers (pdf), her attorneys received no response to their email inquiry about payment. Perhaps the RIAA should ask their lawyers for a loan?"
Patents

Forgent Patent Troll Loses Again 95

Posted by Zonk from the system-kinda-sorta-works dept.
anagama writes "Forgent Networks, a patent troll, got the slap down by a TX jury in May when it invalidated a patent Forgent held regarding video teleconferencing over telephone lines, and today, its motion for a new trial against EchoStar was denied. In fact, the court awarded EchoStar $90k in costs. Forgent probably isn't crying that much though, it already extorted $28m from other defendants. Some of you may recall that Forgent made a business out of cheating companies for jpeg use — till their patent was largely invalidated on that front as well."
Privacy

Police Data-Mining Done Right 321

Posted by Zonk from the way-its-supposed-to-be-used dept.
enharmonix writes "Courtesy of Bruce Schneier, it's nice to hear something good about data mining for a change: predicting and stopping crime. For example, police in Redmond, VA, 'started overlaying crime reports with other data, such as weather, traffic, sports events and paydays for large employers. The data was analyzed three times a day and something interesting emerged: Robberies spiked on paydays near cheque cashing storefronts in specific neighbourhoods. Other clusters also became apparent, and pretty soon police were deploying resources in advance and predicting where crime was most likely to occur.'"
Censorship

Submission + - Federal Anti-Obscenity Program Comes Up Limp

Submitted by kotj.mf
kotj.mf writes: The New York Times reports that the Federally funded anti-Web pornography campaign run by Morality in Media, a conservative religious group, has yet to result a single prosecution for obscenity, despite having generated more than 67,000 citizen complaints. The group, better known for its campaign to have Cosmopolitan removed from supermarket checkout stands, is pushing the Justic Department to more agressively pursue cases against what it sees as 'a prime threat to society, the growth on the Internet of sexual material involving consenting adults.'
Censorship

Australia to Offer Widespread ISP-level Filtering 208

Posted by Zonk from the definitely-thinking-of-the-children dept.
Phurge writes "According to a Sydney Morning Herald article, the Australia government has decided to take the controversial step of having internet service providers filter web content at the request of parents, in a crackdown on online bad language, pornography and child sex predators. 'The more efficient compulsory filtering of internet service providers (ISPs) was proposed in March last year by the then Labor leader, Kim Beazley. At the time, the Communications Minister, Helen Coonan, and ISPs criticised his idea as expensive. Three months later Senator Coonan announced the Government's Net Alert policy, which promised free filtering software for every home that wanted it. She also announced an ISP filtering trial to be conducted in Tasmania. That trial was scrapped. Today Mr Howard will hail the ISP filtering measure as a world first by any Government, and is expected to offer funding to help cover the cost. Parents will be able to request the ISP filter option when they sign up with an ISP. It will be compulsory to provide it. The measures will come into effect by the end of this month.'"
Music

Music DRM in Critical Condition? 377

Posted by CowboyNeal from the can't-happen-soon-enough dept.
ianare writes "Universal Music Group, the largest music company on the planet, has announced that the company is going to sell DRM-free music. The test will see UMG offering a portion of its catalog — primarily its most popular content — sold without DRM between August 21 and January 31 of next year. The format will be MP3, and songs will sell for 99 each, with the bitrate to be determined by the stores in question. RealNetwork's Rhapsody service will offer 256kbps tracks, the company said in a separate statement. January 31 is likely more of a fire escape than an end date. If UMG doesn't like what they're seeing, they'll pull the plug. UMG says that it wants to watch how DRM-free music affects piracy rates."

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