It’s been argued before that the RIAA’s claim of $750 per song shared in damages — a standard figure used in all filesharing cases within the US — may be unconstitutional. According to Ray Beckerman of Recording Industry vs. The People, the defendant in Atlantic vs. Boggs has not only challenged the constitutionality of the claim, but has entered a counterclaim based on the challenge. That means we’re playing for real dollars and the RIAA isn’t impressed.
The RIAA moved to dismiss the counterclaim and, in a somewhat unusual action, the US Department of Justice filed a motion with the court asking for a 60 day stay in which it will decide whether or not to intervene.
If the RIAA’s constitutionality claims can be set aside, it will take serious muscle out of the spamigation being perpetuated, and could force an extreme change of strategy.
Archive
Archive for July, 2007
Firefox 3 is slated to add full-page zoom, which lets you enlarge or shrink the entire contents of a web page (including text, images, and flash) rather than just text,—handy for increasing size of online video or zooming in closer on an image. Opera and IE both have page zooming, so it’s nice to see the added functionality in the ‘fox.
With piracy enforcement becoming a major issue worldwide, and the focus being on frightening the living daylights out of anyone with a p2p client, a reasonable person might assume that the number of illegal downloads would be decreasing. Apparently the Brits aren’t reasonable people.
According to Torrent Freak, the British are downloading music at an unprecedented pace, and show no signs of slowing down. “Asked to look into the future to predict next year’s downloading habits, 18% of those asked said they were likely to download more often, up from 8% in 2006 and just 6% in 2005. 41% said they would download the same next year while an identical number said they would download less.”
Due to the security fixes, we strongly recommend that all Firefox users upgrade to this latest release.
If you already have Firefox 2.0.0.x, you will receive an automated update notification within 24 to 48 hours. This update can also be applied manually by selecting “Check for Updates…” from the Help menu starting now.
For a list of changes and more information, please review the Firefox 2.0.0.6 Release Notes.
If you are still running Firefox 1.5.0.x, you are highly encouraged to upgrade to the Firefox 2 series as Mozilla ceased supporting Firefox 1.5.0.x in May 2007. Simply choose “Check for Updates…” from the Help menu to begin the upgrade process.
avast! 4 Home Edition is a complete ICSA certified and Secure Computing Magazine awarded antivirus software for home noncommercial use.
Version 4.7.1029
July 28, 2007
– infrastructure changes in the scanning engine bringing higher detection rates
– fixed a bug that was sometimes causing crash of the avast screensaver during its initialization
– improved handling of corrupted files in the SIS and CAB unpackers
– Standard Shield: fixed a minor memory leak in the Vista (and Vista only) driver
– Standard Shield: improved the “move to chest” command in Vista
– Standard Shield: the default scan exceptions are no valid for read/write access only (no execute)
– added more “installer” unpackers
– added more Win32 executable unpackers (Enigma etc.)
– for NTLM proxy authorization (via ISA Server) it is now possible to specify the account under which the avast service will perform the update
– added Arabic language pack
A federal judge Friday denied a request from a small Virginia company to stop the online auction powerhouse eBay Inc. from using a feature that allows shoppers to purchase items at a fixed price…
In his ruling, Friedman said the company was not irreparably harmed because it continued to make money from its patents, either by licensing them outright or by threatening litigation against those it believed infringed upon them…
The case became a rallying point for critics who argue the U.S. patent system is riddled with abuse from small businesses that sue established companies to enforce patents for ideas that have never been developed into products.
YouTube will launch a system in September designed to prevent pirated material from going up on the site, a Google lawyer said in court on Friday.
Google, which acquired YouTube in October, plans to generate a library of digital video fingerprints that would be used by a computer system to screen clips being uploaded to YouTube, said Philip Beck, one of the attorneys representing Google and YouTube. Beck added that the screening process would take only a few minutes to determine whether a clip is copyright material…
“We hope to have the testing completed and technology available by sometime in the Fall,” said a Google spokesman in an e-mail. “But this is one of the most technologically complicated tasks that we have ever undertaken, and as always with cutting-edge technologies, it’s difficult to forecast specific launch dates…”
“If in fact Google puts this (system) in place, it is obviously way too late,” Solomon said. “But we encourage Google to come forward and do what other companies have already done and treat all the content providers fairly. Not just the favorite few who have agreed to share advertising revenue with YouTube.”
This download provides the DirectX end-user multi-languaged redistributable that developers can include with their product. The redistributable license agreement covers the terms under which developers may use the Redistributable. For full details please review the DirectX SDK EULA.txt and DirectX Redist.txt files located in the license directory.
By now, everyone has heard of Microsoft’s next version of Windows, Windows 7 or used to be known as Vienna, would be made available in 2010. Every new windows spot a slightly change in the user interface, the most drastic changes would be the introduction of Windows 95 that caught the world by storm and sealed the entire computer industry’s fate where Microsoft became the world’s most powerful software company.
According to source, Windows 7 may spot a hypervisor or a drastic change in the user interface, this can be seen with Microsoft’s introduction of its Surface computer in late May. The surface computer looks like a coffee table with touchscreen interface that lets users move photos around by hand synchronize devices by placing them on the table. Sound like the tablet computer that Microsoft said would be a hit but turned out to be the other way round.
Here is a list of possible unique features in Windows 7:
- Touchscreen user interface
- Improved desktop search
- Hypervisor Technology
