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The Internet

Submission + - AC = Domestic Terrorists? 3

Submitted by
Miang
Miang writes: "A video from a recent FOX 11 (Los Angeles) newscast has surfaced on YouTube. In the segment, reporter Phil Shuman investigates so-called "Hacker Gangs" comprised entirely of anonymous users. The segment, which focuses mainly on users at 4chan, 7chan, and 420chan, seems to confuse /b/ raids and motivational poster templates with a genuine threat to the American public. For added FUD, the FOX team inserted an unrelated video of a van blowing up — twice! Presumably, one is intended to equate anonymous posting with domestic terror. The story and video can be found on the local FOX website, so it does not appear to be simply a clever parody."
Music

Submission + - Webcasters call bunk on SoundExchange DRM ploy (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by
RadioFan
RadioFan writes: "The settlement between webcasters and SoundExchange is starting to come apart at the seams, because everyone is realizing that SoundExchange wants to force DRM on Net Radio. DiMA, one of the largest Net Radio lobbyists, has fired back at Sound Exchange, calling them out for leveraging high royalty fees to push through DRM requirements that they failed to obtain in Congress via broadcast flag and anti-recording legislation. Was this whole thing a ruse to get DRM on net radio?"
The Courts

Submission + - RIAA v. Santangelo default judgment vacated

Submitted by
NewYorkCountryLawyer
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: "It was reported last week that at the July 13th status conference in Elektra v. Santangelo II, the default judgment taken by the RIAA against Patti Santangelo's daughter, Michelle, was vacated by Judge Stephen C. Robinson. This has now been confirmed in papers filed by the RIAA's lawyers in which they indicated that the Judge vacated the default judgment because he prefers cases to be decided on their merits, rather than by default (pdf). The papers sought $513 in attorneys fees for (a) procuring the default judgment and (b) preparing judgment enforcement documents. Patti Santangelo is the first RIAA defendant known to have moved to dismiss the RIAA complaint. After two years of litigation, the RIAA dropped its case against Patti Santangelo, leaving open only the question of whether the RIAA will be ordered to pay her attorneys fees."
Software

Submission + - Do "Illegal" Codecs Actually Scare Linux U (earthweb.com) 1

Submitted by
jammag
jammag writes: "In this article, Adrian Kingsley-Hughes says that "Despite strong points that go far beyond price, Linux falls short when it comes to legally supporting file formats such as MP3, WMA/WMV and DVDs." He talks about using Ubuntu and booting up Totem Movie Player, only to be confronted with a burst of legalese about what a hardened criminal he'll be if he uses Totem without a license. (Gasp!) This problem is "a deal breaker" for him."
Internet Explorer

Submission + - Firefox now serious threat to IE in Europe

Submitted by Tookis
Tookis writes: Mozilla's Firefox (FF) web browser has made dramatic gains on Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) throughout Europe in the past year with a marked upturn in FF use compared to IE over the past four months, according to French web monitoring service XiTiMonitor. A study of nearly 96,000 websites carried out during the week of July 2 to July 8 found that FF had 27.8% market share across Eastern and Western Europe, IE had 66.5%, with other browsers including Safari and Opera making up the remaining 5.7%. In some key European markets FF has already reached parity is threatening to overtake IE as the market leading browser. http://www.itwire.com.au/content/view/13517/53/
Television

Submission + - BBC Trust to hear open sourcers' iPlayer gripes

Submitted by AnotherDaveB
AnotherDaveB writes: The BBC Trust has asked to meet open source advocates to discuss their complaints over the corporation's Windows-only on demand broadband TV service, iPlayer.

The development came less than 48 hours after a meeting between the Open Source Consortium (OSC) and regulators at Ofcom on Tuesday. Officials agreed to press the trust, the BBC's governing body, to meet the OSC. The consortium received an invitation on Wednesday afternoon.

The Register has the story.
Sony

Submission + - Sony BMG sues Amergence Group for $12 Million (hollywoodreporter.com)

Submitted by flyboy974
flyboy974 writes: Sony BMG Music Entertainment is suing a company that developed antipiracy software for CDs, claiming the technology was defective and cost the record company millions of dollars to settle consumer complaints and government investigations. The software in question is the MediaMax CD protection system. Sony BMG is seeking to recover some $12 million in damages from the Phoenix-based technology company, according to court papers filed July 3.
Printer

Submission + - CUPS Purchased by Apple Inc. (cups.org)

Submitted by Rick Richardson
Rick Richardson writes: CUPS Purchased by Apple Inc.

In February of 2007, Apple Inc. acquired ownership the CUPS source code and hired me (Michael R Sweet), the creator of CUPS.

CUPS will still be released under the existing GPL2/LGPL2 licensing terms, and I will continue to develop and support CUPS at Apple.
Announcements

Submission + - Samba Adopts GPLv3 for Future Releases (samba.org)

Submitted by
Jeremy Allison - Sam
Jeremy Allison - Sam writes: "Samba adopts GPLv3 for future releases.
—

After internal consideration in the Samba Team we have decided to adopt the
GPLv3 and LGPLv3 licences for all future releases of Samba.

The GPLv3 is the updated version of the GPLv2 license under which Samba is
currently distributed. It has been updated to improve compatibility with other
licenses and to make it easier to adopt internationally, and is an improved
version of the license to better suit the needs of Free Software in the 21st
Century.

To allow people to distinguish which Samba version is released with the new
GPLv3 license, we are updating our next version release number. The next planned
version release was to be 3.0.26, this will now be renumbered so the GPLv3
version release will be 3.2.0.

To be clear, all versions of Samba numbered 3.2 and later will be under the
GPLv3, all versions of Samba numbered 3.0.x and before remain under the GPLv2.

The Samba Team would like to thank Richard Stallman, Eben Moglen and the Free
Software Foundation for updating the GPL license, and also all the individuals
and corporations involved in helping to create the GPLv3. We feel this is an
important change to help promote the interests of Samba and other Free Software.

The Samba Team.

http://samba.org/
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html
http://news.samba.org/announcements/samba_gplv3

FAQ:

What about code submissions ? Does anything change ?
— - —

New code contributions will be accepted in exactly the same way as before. As
Samba has always accepted code with the "or (at your option) any later version"
of the GPL, contributors do not need to change anything about their submissions.

I need to ship 3.0.x for several years as part of a
service contract. What about old versions ?
— - -

As with previous major version changes, the Team will continue to provide
security fixes for 3.0.25b releases for as long as this code base is widely
used. All new features will only be developed for the new 3.2.x or later GPLv3
versions however.

Help ! I've read scary things about the anti-DRM,
language in GPLv3 ? What does this mean for my Samba-based
products ?
— - —

We're not aware of any vendor distributing Samba in such a way that would cause
them to fall foul of the new DRM language in the GPLv3, but as always, consult
legal advice if you have doubts.

I am the author of a GPLv2 licensed program, can I still use the samba
libraries?
— - —

The Samba Team releases libraries under two licenses: the GPLv3 and the LGPLv3.
If your code is released under a "GPLv2 or later" license, it is compatible with
both the GPLv3 and the LGPLv3 licensed Samba code.

If your code is released under a "GPLv2 only" license, it is not compatible with
the Samba libraries released under the GPLv3 or LGPLv3 as the wording of the
"GPLv2 only" license prevents mixing with other licenses. If you wish to use
libraries released under the LGPLv3 with your "GPLv2 only" code then you will
need to modify the license on your code.

What about patent covenant agreements ? How do they
affect the distribution of Samba ?
— - -

Patent covenant deals done after 28 March 2007 are explicitly incompatible with
the license if they are "discriminatory" under section 11 of the GPLv3. Samba
distributors who have made such patent covenant agreements after that date will
not have the right to distribute any version of Samba covered by the GPLv3
(Samba 3.2 or later). The rights of vendors to ship 3.0.25b and previous
versions is unchanged and remains as it was under the GPLv2. Consult legal
advice if you are in doubt."
Encryption

Submission + - DRM Guru: New BluRay Won't Be Cracked For 10 Years (avsforum.com)

Submitted by
Mike
Mike writes: "Supposedly the latest issue of HMM contains a quote from Richard Doherty, a Media analyst with Envisioneering Group which claims that "BD+, unlike AACS, which suffered a partial hack last year, won't likely be breached for 10 years." Doherty also said, "and if so, the damage would affect one film and one player." Will the BD+ format really be impervious to hackers for a decade? I've got ten bucks that says it won't. Any takers?"
Patents

Submission + - A simple plan to defeat dumb patents (blogspot.com)

Submitted by
Steve Jones
Steve Jones writes: "With the EU being rumoured to look at software patents again I thought I'd have a look at the root of the problem — the US Patent Office — and work out if there is a simple way to defeat dumb patents, and I think there is... The big thing, as everyone knows, that defeats a patent is prior art, at the Patent Office they have the definition of Prior Art which includes the phrase

"known or used by others in this country, or was patented or described in a printed publication in this or a foreign country"


Which made me think. If every time we have an idea that we think is "obvious" but not done before, or something we think would be interesting (e.g. Using a PVR for targeted ads) but don't have the money to create, then we should always blog about that idea, tag it as "prior art" via Technorati thus giving people an RSS feed.

My argument is that by doing this we can, rightly claim, that the ideas have been described in the 21st Century version of a printed publication, and even if that is challenged, it is undeniable that by using the RSS feed it can be proven that people in a given country could have "known" about it.

I'm fed up thinking "bloody hell I did that ten years ago" or "I thought about doing that, its a bit obvious" when companies with as little intention as I had in developing the idea up start putting the squeeze on businesses and developers. What I've always lacked is the visible proof to submit against a claim. This is a simple suggestion about using the power of the web to create a massive prior art database. IANAL, but surely it can't be this simple?"
Security

Submission + - Malware Self-Defense Technologies Evolution (net-security.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: This article explores how malware has developed self-defense techniques and how these techniques have evolved as it has become more difficult for viruses to survive. It also provides an overview of the current situation. In order to avoid confusion about what is considered a self-defense technology and what is not, it examines only the most popular and obvious means of malware self-defense. First and foremost this includes various means of modifying and packing code, in order to conceal the presence of malicious code in the system and to disrupt the functionality of antivirus solutions.
The Internet

Submission + - A reprieve for Internet radio?

Submitted by
westlake
westlake writes: "In the wake of Internet Radio's Day of Silence, SoundExchange has proposed a temporary $2500 cap on advance payments "per channel/per station." The Digital Music Association responded immediately in its own press release that it would agree to this, but only if the term for the new arrangement were extended to 2010 — or, preferably, forever. SoundExchange and DiMA Negotiating New Minimum Online Radio Fees On another front, SoundExchange seems aware in its PR that it will have to concede something more to the non-profit webcaster, if it is to avoid Congressional action."
Microsoft

Submission + - Vista is watching you!

Submitted by greengrass
greengrass writes: Are you using Windows Vista? Then you might as well know that the licensed operating system installed on your machine is harvesting a healthy volume of information for Microsoft. In this context, a program such as the Windows Genuine Advantage is the last of your concerns. In fact, in excess of 20 Windows Vista features and services are hard at work collecting and transmitting your personal data to the Redmond company.

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