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Are Innocent Downloaders Being Unfairly Punished?

Posted Nov 2nd, 2007 - Discuss

As record labels are dramatically increasing lawsuits over music piracy, a University of Arkansas law professor argues that the law's automatic punishment of illegal downloading violates the First Amendment.

In his recent article, "Copytraps," assistant professor Ned Snow emphasizes that Internet users who mistakenly believe that it is legal to download music from a Web site - when, in fact, it is illegal - face harsh penalties for downloading. If a copyright holder has not authorized the downloading, regardless of a Web site's representations or appearance, the downloader is liable and can be fined a minimum of $750 per downloaded song. This automatic punishment, Snow argues, represents a penalty for innocent Internet users who have no means to know that the material offered on a Web site infringes a copyright.

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Google Is Making A Cell Phone, The Gphone

Posted Oct 31st, 2007 - Discuss

The Wall Street Journal is quoting “people familiar with the matter” in stating that within two weeks Google will announce plans to bring Google-powered phones to market by the middle of next year. Apparently, Google’s goal is “[T]o make applications and services as accessible on cellphones as they are on the Internet.”

But resistance from wireless carriers is still mounting, and Google won’t win this battle without a fight. Right now, most consumers are locked into using whatever phones and services are provided by their cellphone provider (which is exactly where cellphone providers want their customers). Google is hoping to change that by releasing phones that are “open.”

Google-powered phones will come already configured with a bundle of the most popular Google services, such Google search, Google Maps, YouTube and Gmail. But that would just be the beginning. The idea would be to stimulate a community of independent software developers that have the necessary tools to build additional phone features.

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USB 3.0 On Its Way

Posted Oct 30th, 2007 - Discuss

Intel and other companies have formed a group to promote the USB 3.0, which should deliver more than ten times the speed of the existing USB 2.0 standard.

The third-generation Universal Serial Bus interconnect will transfer data at speeds up to 4.8Gbit/s, ten times faster than USB 2.0's 480MBit/s. It will be backwards-compatible with USB 2.0, which is backwards-compatible with the first USB 1.1 definition.

Intel stated that the USB 3.0 specification would be optimized for low power and improved protocol efficiency. The USB 3.0 ports and cabling will be designed with both copper and optical cable capabilities, meaning even higher speeds will be possible in the future.

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Security: PDF Files Being Used To Target Vulnerable Machines

Posted Oct 29th, 2007 - Discuss

E-mails containing malicious PDF files have been putting computers at risk since Friday, Finnish security software firm F-Secure said on Saturday.

"The e-mails sent in bulk looked like credit card statements, and contained an attachment called 'report.pdf'," its Chief Research Officer Mikko Hypponen said in a statement.

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Leopard vs. Vista: Feature Chart Showdown

Posted Oct 28th, 2007 - Discuss

There no doubt, Vista and Leopard are both extremely advanced, feature rich consumer operating systems. But way back in January when Vista launched knew we had little choice but pit the two in a head to head chartngraph Thunderdome competition. We know we're not even going to be able to stop the epic fanboy arguments about break out over this one, so we just ask that you try to keep it fair. Leopard vs. Vista: it's on.

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University Raids Students Office For Using Bit Torrent

Posted Oct 26th, 2007 - Discuss

Sam Zwenger is a graduate student at UNCO and, like many hundreds of thousands of students throughout the US, makes use of bittorrent. On one particular day, however, he was pulled out of a class, to be admonished by a representative from the university’s IT department. In his hands, a network hub, and power supply, obtained from Mr Zwenger’s office; from his lips, and warnings that such devices were not allowed, to stop downloading illegally, and not to use so much so much bandwidth.

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Mozilla Banks With Google Search

Posted Oct 25th, 2007 - Discuss

Mozilla has released its 2006 audited financials and that little Google search box in the top right of Firefox is the gift that keeps giving.

Mozilla’s revenue, which includes Mozilla’s foundation and corporation, came in at $66.8 million in 2006. That’s up from $52.9 million in 2005.

Mitchell Baker, Chief Lizard Wrangler at Mozilla, wrote in a blog:

“As in 2005 the vast majority of this revenue is associated with the search functionality in Mozilla Firefox, and the majority of that is from Google. The Firefox user base and search revenue have both increased from 2005. Search revenue increased at a lesser rate than Firefox usage growth as the rate of payment declines with volume. Other revenue sources were the Mozilla Store, public support and interest and other income on our assets.”

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Device Driver Update Causes Vista To Deactivate

Posted Oct 24th, 2007 - Discuss

Put simply, your copy of Windows will stop working with very little notice (three days) and your PC will go into "reduced functionality" mode, where you can't do anything but use the web browser for half an hour.

You'll then need to reapply to Microsoft to get a new activation code.

Windows Activation prompt – gave three days to activate Windows or it would be bumped back to RFM (Reduced Functionality Mode). What the? Vista was activated, and a graphics card change shouldn’t have triggered deactivation

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FTC To Take Another Look At P2P File Sharing

Posted Oct 23rd, 2007 - Discuss

The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform has asked the FTC to look more closely at P2P apps—but this time, the worries have nothing to do with copyright.

The committee has a bee in its collective bonnet about the issue of data security, and believes that P2P users across the country are inadvertently leaking private information and financial records into the tubes. Such information could be used for identity theft (and also has national security implications in some cases), and the Oversight Committee wants the FTC to do something.

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Core of "Windows 7" taking shape: meet the "MinWin" kernel

Posted Oct 22nd, 2007 - Discuss

Eric Traut, one of Microsoft's chief operating system design engineers, gave a fascinating demo (WMV) recently at the University of Illinois, where he talked about where the Windows core is going and ended with a sneak peek at the kernel of the next version of Windows, known by the exciting codename of "Windows 7." The demo showed what Windows would look like if it was literally stripped down to the core, showing the kind of work that is going on to optimize the aging NT kernel.
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Canadians May Face Tax On Legal Music Downloads
Posted Oct 21st, 2007 - Discuss

Canadians may soon pay a small tax on every legal music store download, says a new measure (PDF) sanctioned by the Copyright Board of Canada. Requested by the Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada (SOCAN), the tax would apply at least 2.1 cents to every individual song download and 1.5 cents per track for complete albums. Subscription download and streaming services would themselves be charged between 5.7 and 6.8 percent of a user's monthly fees. Minimum fees would also apply for every larger download or subscription.

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TVLinks Shut Down, Owner Arrested
Posted Oct 20th, 2007 - Discuss

It's a sad day for streaming video fans everywhere as news has been reported that TVLinks has been shut down and the owner, a 26 year old man from Chelteham, UK, was arrested.

Though not hosting an actual content himself, and rather merely providing links to where particular titles can be found, he was nonetheless apparently charged for the "facilitation" of copyright infringement.

"Sites such as TV Links contribute to and profit from copyright infringement by identifying, posting, organizing, and indexing links to infringing content found on the internet that users can then view on demand by visiting these illegal sites," said a spokesman for Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT) today.

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Cyberwar: China VS. Western Search Engines
Posted Oct 19th, 2007 - Discuss

Digital Marketing Blog posts that all requests to Yahoo.com and sub-sites are being redirected to Baidu. Google Blogscoped forums indicate that Live.com is also being re-directed to Baidu, as well as confirming the Yahoo story and our earlier Google post. The re-direct would also appear to apply to YouTube.com.

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