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."

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. 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."

tom_evil notes a story up on Infoshop.org about a parody site and the lack of a sense of humor in a large multinational. "One day after the Yes Men made a joke announcement of ExxonMobil's plans to turn billions of climate-change victims into a brand-new fuel called Vivoleum, the Yes Men's upstream internet service provider shut down Vivoleum.com and cut off the Yes Men's email service, in reaction to a complaint whose source they will not identify. 'Since parody is protected under US law, Exxon must think that people seeing the site will think Vivoleum's a real Exxon product, not just a parody,' said Yes Man Mike Bonanno. Exxon's policies do already contribute to 150,000 climate-change related deaths each year,' added Yes Man Andy Bichlbaum. 'So maybe it really is credible. What a resource!'"

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "The RIAA is opposing Ms. Lindor's request for discovery into the agreements among the record company competitors by which they have agreed to settle and prosecute their cases together, by which she seeks to support her Fourth Affirmative Defense (pdf) alleging that 'The plaintiffs, who are competitors, are a cartel acting collusively in violation of the antitrust laws and of public policy, by tying their copyrights to each other, collusively litigating and settling all cases together, and by entering into an unlawful agreement among themselves to prosecute and to dispose of all cases in accordance with a uniform agreement, and through common lawyers, thus overreaching the bounds and scope of whatever copyrights they might have. ...As such, they are guilty of misuse of their copyrights.'"

MadJo writes "US Congress has just approved a bill that will make it illegal to spoof CallerID. From the bill: 'The amount of the forfeiture penalty (...) shall not exceed $10,000 for each violation, or 3 times that amount for each day of a continuing violation, except that the amount assessed for any continuing violation shall not exceed a total of $1,000,000 for any single act or failure to act.'"