Lucan Varo - Slashdot User

Comment Call the *AA? (Score 5, Interesting) 377

by Lucan Varo on Wednesday March 19, 2008 @12:22PM (#22796594) Attached to: Comcast Says FCC Powerless to Stop P2P Blocking

The Federal Communications Commission has made clear, Cohen writes, that cable service is not a common carrier and therefore is not subject to common carrier guidelines.

So that means they're responsible for what passes over their lines, right? Gonna be interesting.

Feed Macworld: Danish ISP prepares to fight Pirate Bay injunction (macworld.com)

From feed by macworldfeed on Wednesday February 13, 2008 @10:52AM

One of Denmark's largest ISPs said on Wednesday it will fight a court injunction mandating that it shut off access to a file-sharing Web site, in what could be a closely-watched battle with the music industry in Europe.

Submission + - Groklaw Explains the Cyberlaw "Trademark" (groklaw.net)

Submitted by

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property

on Monday January 21, 2008 @07:15PM

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes: "PJ of Groklaw has written in more detail about the lawyer trying to get a servicemark the term cyberlaw. First, she notes that it's only a trademark application at this point. Furthermore, it's a generic term with 300,000+ hits on Google and an entry in some dictionaries and reference sites. In other words, while it's silly for a law firm that should know better to file a trademark application, it shouldn't and probably won't be granted if the law is followed. Still, it's interesting because it shows the difference between trademarks and servicemarks, as well as explaining the law surrounding them. A law which is significantly different than copyright law."

Submission + - Privacy Commissioner Criticizes Canadian DMCA (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property

on Monday January 21, 2008 @04:59PM

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes: "Jennifer Stoddart, the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, has criticized the proposed Canadian DMCA in a public letter to Jim Prentice, the Canadian Minister of Industry. Specifically, she's asking them not to protect any DRM from circumvention that gathers and transmits personal data, because that would give abusive DRM makers a legal cudgel to use against anyone who exposes them. The proposed bill, which was recently delayed due to heavy opposition, is thought to contain DMCA-style anti-circumvention provisions that would make it illegal to investigate or remove intrusive DRM, even if that DRM was violating Canadian privacy laws."

Submission + - Norway mandates government use of ODF and PDF

Submitted by siDDis on Friday December 21, 2007 @05:29AM

siDDis writes: Earlier this year Slashdot mentioned that Norway moves towards mandatory use of ODF and PDF. Now it's confirmed that the Norwegian government has mandated the use of open document formats from January 1st, 2009.

There are three formats that have been mandated for all documentation between authorities, users and partners. HTML for all public information on the Web, PDF for all documents where layout needs to be preserved and ODF for all documents that the recipient is supposed to be able to edit. Documents may also be published in other formats, but they must always be available in either ODF or PDF.

Leopard as the New Vista? 734

Posted by Zonk on Thursday November 29, 2007 @11:12PM from the angry-apple-man-scares-me dept.

ninja_assault_kitten writes "There's an interesting rant from Oliver Rist up on the PC Magazine site. He compares the catastrophe that is Vista to the recently released OS X Leopard. While clearly one is a lion and the other a cub, there do appear to be some frustrating similarities. From the article: 'A month of using Leopard with the same software I had under Tiger and the OS has dumped six times. That's six cold reboots for Oliver. Apple isn't even honest enough to admit that Leopard is crashing: The OS just grays out my desktop and pops up a dialog box telling me I've got to reboot. Like the whole thing is my fault. I even snapped a picture of it. After all, I HAD PLENTY OF CHANCES!'"

Submission + - New Attorneys Fee Decision Against RIAA 1

Submitted by

NewYorkCountryLawyer

on Saturday September 22, 2007 @08:50PM

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: "The RIAA has gotten slammed again, this time in Oregon, as the Magistrate Judge in Atlantic v. Andersen has ruled that Tanya Andersen's motion for attorneys fees should be granted. The Magistrate, in his 15-page decision, noted that, despite extensive pretrial discovery proceedings, "when plaintiffs dismissed their claims in June 2007, they apparently had no more material evidence to support their claims than they did when they first contacted defendant in February 2005....." and concluded that "Copyright holders generally, and these plaintiffs specifically, should be deterred from prosecuting infringement claims as plaintiffs did in this case." This is the same case in which (a) the RIAA insisted on interrogating Ms. Andersen's 10-year-old girl at a face-to-face deposition, (b) the defendant filed RICO counterclaims against the record companies, and (c) the defendant has recently converted her RICO case into a class action"

Submission + - MediaDefender and the Streisand Effect (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Foldarn on Wednesday September 19, 2007 @08:15PM

Foldarn writes: It looks like MediaDefender, in an effort to quell the explosion of negative publicity, has instead done the opposite (also known as the Streisand Effect) and made it even more widespread. The folks over at Ars Technica have an article about a few popular BitTorrent sites MegaNova and IsoHunt that are being demanded to remove the ever incriminating emails. What's more, Ars is reporting that it appears that MediaDefender, in response to IsoHunt's decline to remove, may be behind a massive denial of service attack against IsoHunt.

Skype Linux Reads Password and Firefox Profile 335

Posted by samzenpus on Sunday August 26, 2007 @11:40AM from the to-send-better-ads dept.

mrcgran writes "Users of Skype for Linux have just found out that it reads the files /etc/passwd, firefox profile, plugins, addons, etc, and many other unnecessary files in /etc. This fact was originally discovered by using AppArmor, but others have confirmed this fact using strace on versions 1.4.0.94 and 1.4.0.99. What is going on? This probably shows how important it is to use AppArmor in any closed-source application in Linux to restrict any undue access to your files."

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

Submitted by

NewYorkCountryLawyer

on Wednesday August 15, 2007 @07:10PM

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."

RIAA Short on Funds? Fails to Pay Attorney Fees 341

Posted by Zonk on Tuesday August 14, 2007 @05:40PM 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?"

YouTube Begins Defense, Seeks Depositions 106

Posted by Zonk on Tuesday August 14, 2007 @04:53PM from the calling-in-the-big-guns dept.

eldavojohn writes "YouTube has begun their defense against Viacom by first calling on 30 depositions from people like Jon Stewart & Stephen Colbert. While the article mentions that YouTube has not revealed what they hope to gain in these depositions, I think Jon Stewart's opinions will weigh in favor of YouTube. Comedy Central's parent company, Viacom, objects to YouTube's hosting of their content. Comedy Central hosts many Daily Show & Colbert Report clips on its own site, bringing in its own ad revenue."

Submission + - Net Neutrality Debate crosses the Atlantic (independent.co.uk)

Submitted by smallfries on Sunday August 12, 2007 @06:07PM

smallfries writes: The network neutrality debate has raged on in the States for some time now. Now broadband providers in the UK have banded together to threaten the BBC that plans to provide programming over "their" network could disrupt operations. The BBC is being asked to cough up the readies to pay for bandwidth charges, otherwise traffic shaping will be used to limit access to the iPlayer. Strange really, I thought that the monthly fee we pay already was to cover access ... but maybe it only covers the final mile and they need to be paid twice to cover the rest of the journey.

Submission + - Bush derails attempts to end illegal wiretapping

Submitted by

P. Rivacy

on Thursday June 07, 2007 @12:01AM

P. Rivacy writes: "Remember how the Congress tried to outlaw the already illegal NSA wiretaps authorized by the President?

Bush is now using delaying tactics to derail the passage of that bill by not providing documents related to the President's warrantless wiretapping program to the Senate Intelligence Committee that is currently reviewing the proposed legislation."

GNU Coughs Up Emacs 22 After Six Year Wait 500

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Monday June 04, 2007 @06:00PM from the hopefully-worth-waiting-for dept.

lisah writes "After keeping users waiting for nearly six years, Emacs 22 has been released and includes a bunch of updates and some new modes as well. In addition to support for GTK+ and a graphical interface to the GNU Debugger, 'this release includes build support for Linux on AMD64, S/390, and Tensilica Xtensa machines, FreeBSD/Alpha, Cygwin, Mac OS X, and Mac OS 9 with Carbon support. The Leim package is now part of GNU Emacs, so users will be able to get input support for Chinese, Tibetan, Vietnamese, Thai, Korean, and other languages without downloading a separate package. New translations of the Emacs tutorial are also available in Brasilian Portuguese, Bulgarian, simplified and traditional Chinese, Italian, French, and Russian.'"

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