Friday, August 27, 2010

BRAD PITT PHOTO PUTS FOX NEWS ON 'FAIR USE' HOT SEAT

By Eriq Gardner
BradpittEXCLUSIVE: How many times will Rupert Murdoch's gripes about "fair use" come back to bite him in the rear?
Fox News is now being sued for showing unauthorized video of Brad Pitt failing to control his motorcycle as he drives slowly in Hollywood. The footage aired during Bill O'Reilly's show, where he used it to criticize paparazzi.
The owner of the footage, Media2Air, says it licensed use of the video to various media outlets but Fox News just took it "as part of its continuing coverage of the Pitt family."
Fox News claimed "fair use." 
As you'll recall, News Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch has been vocal in his belief that courts would eventually bar "fair use." The comments have made their way into Media2Air's new lawsuit against Fox News.
Posted by rorybaust at 6:56 PM

FTC Ends Investigation Into P2P Site LimeWire

The Federal Trade Commission has closed its investigation into peer-to-peer site LimeWire, though the agency said it remained concerned about the security implications of users running legacy versions of the company's software.
"Upon review of the matter, including non-public information submitted to the staff, we have determined not to recommend any further action by the commission at this time," Mary Koelbel Engle, associate director of the FTC's bureau of consumer protection, wrote in an Aug. 19 letter to LimeWire chief executive George Searle.

Posted by rorybaust at 5:47 PM

Sony obtains Australia ban

on PS3 hack chip


Sony has won a temporary ban to prevent Australian distributors selling a hardware hack for the PlayStation 3 (PS3).
The PS3Jailbreak "dongle" allows gamers to play homemade and pirated games on the game's console.
The ban prevents OzModChips, Mod Supplier and Quantronics from importing, distributing or selling the device. Sony has until August 31 to makes its case to the court for a permanent ban. If it fails, the chips could go on sale on 1 September.

Posted by rorybaust at 5:10 PM

Facebook’s Not So Neutral Ad Policy

By Michael Klurfeld 
Yesterday BoingBoing posted about how the “Just Say Now” campaign to legalize marijuana had its ad pulled from Facebook. After 38 million impressions, Facebook’s staff pulled the advertisement (pictured in this post) because it contained an image of a marijuana leaf, despite the interests group’s argument that it did not advocate smoking pot, only its legalization.

Posted by rorybaust at 4:41 PM

Paul Allen's Interval Licensing patent complaint takes aim at Google, Apple, others

By Larry Dignan
Paul Allen’s Interval Licensing sued a bevy of technology companies including AOL, Apple, eBay, Facebook, Google, Netflix and others for patent infringement.
Interval Licensing, a research firm hatched in 1992, is suing those aforementioned Internet companies for patent 6,263,507 among others. The patent was issued for an invention revolving around browser navigation in a body of information and audiovisual data.
In a nutshell, the patent goes to the core of what these companies do. 

Posted by rorybaust at 4:37 PM

Turkey and Russia Feature the World’s Riskiest Web Surfers

AVG study looks at the safest and most dangerous places to surf the Internet - Australia No. 37th and New Zealand No. 63rd riskiest

Melbourne and Amsterdam, 24 August 2010. Where in the world are you most likely to be hit by a malicious computer attack or virus? According to Internet Security company AVG Technologies, it’s the Caucasus region, with web surfers in Turkey, Russia, Armenia and Azerbaijan all being the most likely to face threats while online.
However, at the other end of the scale, some of the world’s safest surfers can be found in Japan and Taiwan, while seven of the 10 safest countries in which to surf the Internet are in Africa. As a continent, South America was ‘safest’, and North America ‘riskiest’. Meanwhile, globally your chances of being attacked while online on any given day are 1 in 73.
By compiling data for 144 countries (including Australia and New Zealand), involving 127 million PCs, AVG was able to look at the incidence of security threats that its software had to deal with in the last week of July 2010. From these figures, AVG was able to average out the likelihood of the average web user facing a web security attack. Key results are as follows:


More: http://www.avg.com.au/news/avg_turkey_and_russia_the_worlds_riskiest_web_surfers/#ixzz0xqRE2PtV
Posted by rorybaust at 2:39 PM
by Caroline McCarthy


Quirky social news site Reddit always seemed an unusual acquisition for Manhattan media giant Conde Nast, and it's never been more evident: Asked by Conde Nast overlords to stop running advertisements on behalf of advocates of California's Proposition 19, which supports the legalization of marijuana, Reddit decided they'd do it anyway.
Because Conde Nast's main concern was obtaining revenue from those controversial advocacy groups, Reddit's solution was that they would simply run the ads for free.
Posted by rorybaust at 2:25 PM

Netflix soars as Blockbuster plans bankruptcy

As if fights for survival, video-rental chain Blockbuster is preparing to file bankruptcy next month, according to a report in the Los Angeles Times.
Blockbuster executives met with the six largest Hollywood film studios recently to brief them about the company's plan, the Times reported. The move by Blockbuster, which closed down nearly 1,000 retail stores in the past year, appears designed to help the company get out of leases on perhaps as many as 800 underperforming stores, according to the report. The chain operates more than 3,400 stores.
Blockbuster reportedly plans to file something called a "pre-planned bankruptcy" and will continue to pay the studios and other most other major creditors. This development shouldn't surprise anyone. For years, Blockbuster has closed stores, laid off thousands, and generally been tumbling towards extinction. Driving to a video store to rent a movie is rapidly becoming as unnecessary as hiring a travel agent, developing film, or listening to music on compact discs.

Posted by rorybaust at 2:10 PM

Czech Gov’t Drafting Copyright Bill to Legally Gut Creative Commons, Chop Creators Royalties By Nearly Half

Written by Drew Wilson

If you ever thought that no one would ever actually legally attack Creative Commons and, if they did, you’d hear about it, consider this the article you “hear about it”. A draft copyright bill from the Czech Republic has leaked online and it may be one of the most disturbing copyright bills ever created.

One of the key aspects of Creative Commons is the ease to obtain a license. You just browse to the Creative Commons website, select the license you want by answering a few simple questions, and then you get a block of code you can paste on any HTML website you are building to tell everyone what you can and cannot do. This is one of many reasons Creative Commons is so successful.
Posted by rorybaust at 2:05 PM

Sony working on 3D TVs that don't need glasses

From the Melbourne Age
Sony is working on 3D televisions that don't need special glasses, joining a race with rival Toshiba, but sees cost and technological hurdles to overcome before they can go on sale.
Toshiba said earlier this week it is working on glasses-free 3D TVs, although no decision had been made on when they will go on sale.
Mainstream 3D TVs now on sale, such as those from Panasonic and Sony, require glasses. But there are already screens that don't require glasses, mainly intended for store displays. They require the viewer to stand in specific spots for the 3D effect to emerge, and the image quality is much lower than that of screens using glasses.
http://www.theage.com.au/digital-life/digital-life-news/sony-working-on-3d-tvs-that-dont-need-glasses-20100827-13unz.html
Posted by rorybaust at 2:01 PM

Studios sue ad shop for pirate sites

By Jacqui Cheng
Movie studios are extending their efforts to take down sites that offer pirated material, with a new lawsuit targeting an advertising company that provides services to such sites. Warner Bros. and Disney have teamed up to sue Triton Media, accusing the company of both contributory and induced copyright infringement because Triton helps to keep the sites alive by providing them with advertising and referral income.
Warner and Disney say that Triton has relationships with at least nine sites that they consider to be "one-stop-shops" for illegal copies of the studios' work. The list is made up of mostly no-name sites, such as free-tv-video-online.info, watch-movies-links.net, andthepiratecity.org. According to the complaint, Triton and the nine sites basically had a symbiotic relationship—both sides allegedly profited from the distribution of pirated works, and Triton made it possible by offering "material assistance" to the websites.
Posted by rorybaust at 1:58 PM