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The Courts

Yahoo! Liable In Italy For Searchable Content 145

Posted by Soulskill from the how-does-internet-work dept.
h3rr d0kt0r writes "A recent decision of an Italian court could spark considerable discussion over the liability of a search engines. The court actually ordered Yahoo! to remove any link to any site containing unlawful copies of a movie. Under EU Directives 2003/31, liability of search engines is not regulated (save for caching activities). In the case brought to court regarding the film About Elly, it was not the caching activities of Yahoo! that were questioned (or any content hosted on Yahoo!'s servers), but the mere fact that searching for the film made it possible to reach websites allowing the streaming or downloading of the movie (actually, illegal sites got a better ranking then the official one)."
Earth

Nuclear Energy Now More Expensive Than Solar 635

Posted by samzenpus from the sunlight-is-free dept.
js_sebastian writes "According to an article on the New York Times, a historical cross-over has occurred because of the declining costs of solar vs. the increasing costs of nuclear energy: solar, hardly the cheapest of renewable technologies, is now cheaper than nuclear, at around 16 cents per kilowatt hour. Furthermore, the NY Times reports that financial markets will not finance the construction of nuclear power plants unless the risk of default (which is historically as high as 50 percent for the nuclear industry) is externalized to someone else through federal loan guarantees or ratepayer funding. The bottom line seems to be that nuclear is simply not competitive, and the push from the US government to subsidize it seems to be forcing the wrong choice on the market."
Space

Submission + - Building the Interplanetary Internet

Submitted by
sighted
sighted writes: "Internet pioneer Vint Cerf is leading a NASA effort to create a permanent network link to Mars within the next two years. As Cerf outlined in a recent talk, the "InterPlaNet" protocol is designed to handle the delay caused by interplanetary distances. For example, it can take a signal up to 20 minutes to travel between the Earth and Mars, depending on the distance between the two planets."
Announcements

Submission + - Fran Allen becomes first woman to win Turing award

Submitted by
shoemortgage
shoemortgage writes: "The Association for Computing Machinery, has named Frances E. Allen the recipient of the 2006 A.M. Turing Award for contributions that fundamentally improved the performance of computer programs in solving problems, and accelerated the use of high performance computing. This award marks the first time that a woman has received this honour."
The Courts

Submission + - Apple, Cisco settle iPhone trademark lawsuit

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Cisco and Apple have settled the trademark-infringement lawsuit over the use of the iPhone name for Apple's new multimedia phone. The agreement allows Apple and Cisco to use the iPhone brand on their own products. Also, the companies said they would explore opportunities for interoperability in the areas of security, consumer and business communications.
Networking

How Would You Deal With A Global Bandwidth Crisis? 478

Posted by Zonk from the read-a-book dept.
lopy writes "First Google claimed the internet infrastructure won't scale to provide an acceptable user experience for online video. Then some networking experts predict that a flu pandemic would bring the internet to it's knees and lead to internet rationing. We used to think that bandwidth would always increase as needed, but what would happen if that isn't the case? How would you deal with a global bandwidth shortage? Would you be willing to voluntarily limit your internet usage if necessary? Could you live in a world without cheap and plentiful broadband internet access?"
Space

Low Earth Orbit Junk Yard Nearly Full 443

Posted by Zonk from the get-a-vacuum-up-there dept.
vlado4 writes "The New York Times has up an article on the amount of space junk in Earth Orbit. According to NASA officials, the amount of stuff we've put into LEO is at critical levels. Additionally they have great graphics of the nearly 1000 new pieces resulting from testing the new Chinese anti-satellite weapon, as well as the damage to Hubble's solar array. The litter is now so bad that, even if space-faring nations refrained from further interference, collisions would continue to create more clutter just above our atmosphere. Space debris appear to be a difficult problem to deal with and may hinder future space exploration."
Media

Canada Responsible for 50% of Movie Piracy 459

Posted by Zonk from the should-we-blame-the-government-or-blame-society dept.
westcoaster004 writes "Hollywood is blaming Canada as being the source for at least 50% of of the world's pirated movies. According to an investigation by Twentieth Century Fox, most of the recording is taking place in Montreal theatres where films are released in both English and French. This has led to consideration of delaying movie releases in Canada. Their problem is that the Canadian Copyright Act, as well as the policies of local police forces, makes it difficult to come down especially hard on perpetrators. Convicting someone is apparently rather difficult, almost requiring a law officer to have a 'smoking camcorder' in the hands of the accused. Hence, the consideration of more drastic measures."
Businesses

FTC To Investigate 'Viral Marketing' Practices 299

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the take-what-ya-can-give-nuthin-back dept.
mcflaherty writes "The Federal Trade Commission has stated that it is going to investigate the use of 'Viral Marketing' by corporations. This is the type of advertising that seeks to start a word of mouth campaign for the product via consumers themselves. Previously, consumers themselves set the buzz. But lately advertisement firms are stepping up to the plate themselves, seeding the market with buzz that looks independent of the company, but is in fact funded by them. The crew at Penny Arcade contend that corporate generated buzz is not Viral Marketing, and perhaps Guerrilla Marketing would be a more apt term. Either way, it appears to be a profitable advertising model."

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