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Orange to launch mobile games store with HMV
All networks covered Orange and high-street retailer HMV will next week launch what they claimed is a first for a UK mobile phone operator: an online games download store for Java-enabled phones.…
Continue reading »"Piracy" sounds too sexy, say rightsholders
For years, we’ve heard complaints about using the term “piracy” to describe the online copyright infringement—but most have come from Big Content’s critics. As noted copyright scholar William Patry argued in his most recent book, “To say that X is a pirate is a metaphoric heuristic, intended to persuade a policymaker that the in-depth analysis can be skipped and the desired result immediately attained… Claims of piracy are rhetorical nonsense.” Read the comments on this post
Continue reading »UK MPs to Allow Blocked Sites to Appeal
Liberal Democrats prepare to amend their proposed amendment to the Digital Economy Bill, but disclosure that the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) wrote the original draft has led to calls for Parliament to fully debate the Bill. Earlier this month I mentioned how Liberal Democrat Lord Clement-Jones had proposed an amendment to the Digital Economy Bill that would cause a huge shift in the way ISPs are asked to deal with copyright infringement on their networks. Amendment 120a would give courts the power to “prevent access to specified online locations for the prevention of online copyright infringement” with the threat of “injunctions” against those ISPs that have “actual knowledge of another person using their service to infringe copyright,” but has failed to “prevent copyright infringement content being accessed at or via that online location or taken reasonable steps to remove copyright infringing content from that online location (or both).” What it doesn’t spell out is exactly how ISPs are supposed to verify claims of copyright infringement nor does it offer a means of appeal.
Continue reading »Why Google keeps your data forever, tracks you with ads
Not many companies could get away with defending controversial data retention practices by saying that the data is needed to “learn from good guys, fight off bad guys, and invent the future.” But that’s how Google sees itself and its practices—not surprising from a company that would give itself an unofficial motto like “don’t be evil.” I had the chance recently to sit down with two of Google’s top privacy people: deputy general counsel Nicole Wong and security/privacy engineer Alma Whitten. While the “good guy/bad guy” and “don’t be evil” quotes may seem too cute by half to some, Wong and Whitten made a strong pitch for the truth of both slogans. In their view, Google really is fighting the good fight when it comes to your online privacy.
Continue reading »Web-Lockers Next in Line on UK Politicians’ Black List
Engaged in an overwhelming battle against online piracy they are planning to win, the UK government has not been taking the best decisions lately as we already noted in a previous post this week. After the politicians’ intention to alter the Digital Economy Bill by introducing a regulation that empowered judges to block access to a specific website if suspected to promote copyright infringement caused a wave of public discontentment, the UK government tried to fix things but only managed to come up with yet another outrageous solution. In fact, the “reassessed” proposal announced by politicians may have an even more pronounced negative impact on perfectly legitimate online resources, as Cory Doctorow describes in his write up in The Guardian : “As our routine media files have increased in size – multi-megapixel images, home videos, audio recordings of meetings and so on – it's become increasingly difficult to use email to share data privately with family, friends and colleagues, because most email servers croak over really big files.
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