The copyright trolling firm Righthaven hit a new low on Monday when one of its targets sought to have a US Marshal drag Righthaven officers into court to explain their failure to comply with a previous court order. When we began covering Righthaven last year, the firm seemed like it could pose a serious threat to fair use online. But 2011 hasn't been kind to the company, as it has experienced setback after setback in the courts[......]
A year ago, Google announced a new initiative to combat illicit file-sharing on its various websites. [......]
Ding dong, sing the naysayers , AT&T's bid to buy T-Mobile is almost dead. We've been keeping an eye on the troubled $39 billion acquisitions crusade through the recent weeks[......]
Megaupload filed another response in its dispute with Universal Music Group on Friday morning, charging that the label had withheld key information about UMG's takedowns of Megaupload's video. But in its rush to get the document out the door—it was responding to arguments UMG filed less than 18 hours earlier—Megaupload seems not to have done its homework. The locker site claims that UMG's YouTube takedown was part of a broader campaign to suppress Megaupload's video on other video sites, but its evidence for this broader campaign was noticeably flimsy[......]
Who's got the most oppressive internet censorship in the world? If you answered USA! USA! USA! you've clearly been listening to Google. [......]
Capture from Megaupload video A federal judge has given Universal Music Group until the end of the day Thursday to respond to charges that it abused the DMCA takedown process to censor a promotional music video by the locker site Megaupload. There's been no love lost between the American recording industry and the Hong Kong-based Megaupload. [......]
Starting next month, Microsoft will begin automatically upgrading some Windows users to the latest version of Internet Explorer available for their PCs, the Redmond software juggernaut announced in a blog post today. [......]
We try to steer clear of explosive atmospheres, freezing conditions, and sand storms whenever possible, but if there's no way around it, you can bet we'll leave our Ultrabook at home. A more appropriate companion is a rugged PC designed for harsh environments, and GammaTech claims its new Durabook R13C convertible is the type of PC that's perfectly suited for law enforcement, military, homeland security, field service, mining, and mobile works in any type of outdoor environment[......]
Apps masquerading as legitimate third-party programs like Angry Birds, Cut the Rope, Tetris, Need for Speed, and others are part of a so-called "RuFraud" scam in which unknowing victims are charged premium SMS fees. This has reportedly been going on for the past few months, mainly in Europe, and it's something Google is cracking down on by removing offending apps from the Android Market. [......]
The federal government experienced two embarrassing setbacks last week related to Operation In Our Sites, the campaign to seize domain names suspected of being used to infringe copyright. A federal judge dismissed a forfeiture complaint against the Spanish sports site RojaDirecta.com (though the government is keeping the domain for now). Also last week, the government returned the domain Dajaz1.com , tacitly admitting that it had made a mistake in seizing the domain in the first place[......]
LightSquared is furious over a news report suggesting that, in various trials, the satellite broadband company's proposed transmission system bumps into GPS devices around 75 percent of the time. A leaked preliminary draft of the government test report quotes the document concluding that LightSquared signals "caused harmful interference to majority of GPS receivers tested" and that "No additional testing is required to confirm harmful interference exists." The experimentation, which was carried out between October 31 and November 4, showed that 69 of 92 GPS receivers "experienced harmful interference" when within 100 meters of a LightSquared base station, according to the Bloomberg story[......]
A proposed nationwide, open-access 4G wireless broadband network has hit another snag. Testing carried out by a federal agency at the behest of the Department of Defense, Federal Aviation Administration, and a handful of GPS makers showed that the proposed broadband service messed with the performance of 75 percent of the GPS receivers tested[......]
This week HP webOS open-sourcing, RIM’s problems in Jakarta, and giving away a few Speck iPhone cases. Join us, won’t you, in the TC Gadgets Webcast? This week we have a special giveaway[......]
Security firm Symantec this week announced the results of its November 2011 Intelligence Report, a monthly analysis on the state of security and trending cyber threats. The roller coaster report notes that the number of targeted attacks quadrupled since January (boo!), but the global spam rate in November is not only the lowest all year, but for the past three years as well (yay!). Symantec identified the public sector as the most frequently targeted industry during 2011, with about 20.5 targeted attacks blocked each day. [......]
Get your tinfoil hats on, folks. In the documentation released earlier this week by Microsoft on its upcoming Windows 8 Store, the software giant said that apps purchased from the App Store will come with a “ kill switch .” Redmond can use this to disable or remove the app from Windows 8 machines. Even if its intentions are good, users are likely to be suspicious of Microsoft on this one[......]
