It's like Rambo said: "Nothing is over! Nothing! You just don't turn it off!"

It's definitely not over for Mac-copycat Psystar, either. After Apple filed a lawsuit against Psystar alleging copyright infringement, the small company announced its plans Tuesday to turn the other cheek by filing a lawsuit of its own alleging that Apple engages in anticompetitive business practices.

Psystar's attorney told CNET that Miami-based Psystar will sue Apple for allegedly violating laws discouraging monopolies. Apple's end-user agreement reads, “You agree not to install, use or run the Apple Software on any non-Apple-labeled computer, or to enable others to do so.” Psystar, which started selling computers hacked to run Mac OS X Leopard in April, believes Apple's prohibitive end-user agreement constitutes "an anticompetitive restrain of trade."

Sounds like this is going to be a tough fight for Psystar, since the company blatantly violated that end-user agreement -- but heck, I'm no lawyer. The company's deadline to file its response to Apple's lawsuit was this afternoon. We'll have to wait and see what transpires.

Psystar Responds to Apple Suit, will countersue [CNET]

Just three weeks after its official Mac-clone product launch, Open Tech said its company was up for sale.

Open Tech vice president Elijah Samaroo on Saturday night sent an e-mail to Wired.com that said, "Open Tech is For sale. This includes all trade secrets and brand equity. Thank you for tour time." (Note the typo.) OpenTech's web store, where originally you could order a Mac clone, has been replaced with a sales ad for the entire company -- for $50,000, which you can even shell out through PayPal.

Before the company seemingly waved the white flag, Open Tech was following the footsteps of Mac cloner Psystar, which is currently in a legal scuffle with Apple. While Psystar sold computers with OS X Leopard pre-installed, Open Tech was offering to sell two computers with a how-to kit to install the operating system of your choice, including Apple's.

Despite Psystar's legal troubles, an Open Tech official had made bold statements saying the company was confident it could avoid a lawsuit; yet he declined to disclose his full name.

Open Tech officials did not respond to calls or e-mails for comment.

Also read:

• Open Tech Launches Mac Clones
• Open Tech: Apple Can't Stop Us From Making Mac Clones
• Attorney: Open Tech Mac Cloner Subject to Legal Troubles
• Another Mac Clone to Come
• Apple Finally Sues Psystar

Apparently Apple's efforts to fix the 3G in iPhone 3G aren't enough: A customer has stepped up to sue the corporation.

Alabama resident Jessica Alena Smith filed the complaint Tuesday; the plaintiff calls the lawsuit "Defective iPhone 3G," Ars Technica reports. In her lawsuit, Smith alleges that iPhone 3G is slower than expected and only stays on the 3G network 25 percent of the time -- despite advertisements claiming the new handset is "twice as fast for half the price" compared to the original iPhone.

Smith's lawsuit doesn't come as much of a surprise: Thousands have complained about spotty 3G-network performance with Apple's new handset, and you'd have to figure at least one person would be angry enough to take his or her complaints to court. That person just happens to be Smith.

Also see: Apple: iPhone Update Improves 3G Network Performance

• Apple: iPhone Update Improves 3G Network Performance
• Video: AT&T Blames iPhone 3G For Network Issues
• Opinion: Firmware Update to Fix iPhone 3G? I Doubt It
• Participate in Wired.com's Global iPhone 3G Study
• What's Wrong With the 3G in iPhone 3G?
• IPhone 3G Users Heated Over Network Issues

(Photo credit: Magerleagues/Flickr)

Original photo [edjar/Flickr]

In a story straight out of Cory Doctorow's Little Brother, three MIT undergraduates concocted a scheme to hack Boston's transit payment system, the Charlie Card (no relation). The students managed to reprogram the cards to increase their credit balance, thus allowing them to ride the subway for free.

Of course, being MIT students, they decided to write up their prank as an academic paper. But the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA), already stinging from such a thorough pwning, took it to the courts, citing computer fraud, and asking for time to fix the system before the paper was presented. It is also thought that an MBTA official was overheard saying "It's not fair. I'm telling my mom."

MBTA lost. Judge George O'Toole ruled that "presenting an academic paper would not violate computer fraud laws." Go hackers.

The students, Zack Anderson, R.J. Ryan and Alessandro Chiesa, went on to receive "top marks" for their paper, from which we can conclude the following: RFID is very insecure, and MIT is awesome.

For more coverage, check out Wired.com's Threat Level blog: Federal Judge Throws Out Gag Order Against Boston Students in Subway Case

A GPS device could drive you straight to jail if you're a domestic abuser or stalker.

A new Michigan law allows the state's judges to order domestic violence suspects to wear GPS devices, which would alert victims with a phone call if their abusers are nearby. Another law signed this month allows judges to order convicted stalkers to wear the device as well. Eleven other states, including Oklahoma and Hawaii, have adopted similar laws this year, according to a CNN article.

Though many police have found electronic monitoring with GPS rather helpful, the technology has been used inversely as well. In 2003, Milwaukee woman Connie Adams testified in court that her boyfriend had installed a satellite tracking device in her car to stalk her.

It just goes to show: Give people technology, and some people will find a way to abuse it. And it all comes down to fighting fire with fire.

GPS devices to keep tabs on stalkers, battering spouses [CNN]
 
(Photo credit: rautiocination/Flickr)

Talk tough but keep your ass covered.

That might be the motto of companies who want to take on famously litigious Apple by making Mac clones.

An official from Open Tech has said the company is confident it can sell its Mac clones and avoid a lawsuit from Apple. He wasn't so confident that he was willing to let us publish his full name, though.

Tom, an Open Tech employee who asked that his last name not be revealed to protect him from legal retribution, said his company's legal team has carefully looked over the complaint Apple filed against Mac cloner Psystar to ensure Open Tech doesn't meet a similar fate. He added that Open Tech's method of selling computers with how-to kits for users to install the operating system of their choice -- OS X Leopard, Windows XP, Ubuntu or Vista -- would not violate Apple's copyrights.

"If Apple didn't want to have this problem with us or anybody, all they have to do is remove their software from their shelves, because if they don't want that software used then they shouldn't even sell it," Tom said in a phone interview.

Saying Apple has a "ruthless reputation" for stomping Mac cloners, Tom noted it was possible Apple might allege contributory infringement. Contributory infringement requires two conditions: 1.) The company is aware of which violation(s) it is assisting others in committing; 2.) The company provides materials to assist users in infringement.

Apple's end-user agreement reads, “You agree not to install, use or run the Apple Software on any non-Apple-labeled computer, or to enable others to do so.”    

Open Tech emerged a week after Apple sued Mac copycat Psystar, which sold hacked PCs with OS X Leopard preinstalled. Shortly after filing a lawsuit alleging copyright, trademark and shrink-wrap infringement, Apple demanded Psystar recall all the Mac clones it sold. Days later, Psystar's office building appeared for sale in an ad.

Open Tech has not announced a price for its computer lineup. One of the systems will feature a 3.45GHz Intel Pentium D Dual-Core processor, a 500GB hard drive and 3GB of RAM.

Tom said Open Tech is making necessary preparations, as Apple is already beginning to take action.

"We're on guard for the sharks," he said. "They're already coming at us."

If Open Tech follows through with selling Mac clones, it will face legal issues just like the company that sold a similar product before it, according to an intellectual property lawyer.

By selling computers with a how-to kit for users to install OS X Leopard themselves, Open Tech would be subjecting itself to contributory infringement of Apple's end-user agreement, said Carole Handler, an intellectual property lawyer with Wildman Harrold.

"Making the user instead of the company the perpetrator of any violation will not avoid the issue of a new company's contributory infringement and/or vicarious liability for what it facilitates and enables the user to undertake," Handler said in an e-mail interview. "This kind of workaround is not a bar to Apple bringing contributory infringement or vicarious liability claims."

By definition, contributory infringement requires two conditions: 1.) The company is aware of which violation(s) it is assisting others in committing; 2.) The company provides materials to assist users in infringement.

Apple's end-user agreement reads, “You agree not to install, use or run the Apple Software on any non-Apple-labeled computer, or to enable others to do so.”

Open Tech emerged just a week after Apple sued Mac copycat Psystar, which sold hacked PCs running OS X Leopard. Shortly after filing suit alleging copyright, trademark and shrink-wrap infringement, Apple demanded Psystar to recall all the Mac clones it sold. Days later, Psystar's office building appeared for sale in an ad.

Open Tech has not announced pricing for its systems. The company was not available for comment before publishing.

The best way to avoid a speeding ticket is, of course, not to speed -- but if you like to put the pedal to the metal, a GPS device might be your best bet. At least, that's what a GPS seller is trying to tell you.

Rocky Mountain Tracking, a GPS manufacturer, on Thursday issued a press release recounting the story of 18-year-old Shaun Malone, who is protesting a speeding ticket with the help of an RMT GPS device.

Mind you, this wasn't an ordinary GPS that guides you to the nearest Starbucks; this particular GPS was a vehicle tracking device -- the type used by nosy, distrusting parents. An officer ticketed Malone for going 62 miles an hour in a 45 mile-per-hour zone, but Malone's GPS device said he was driving the speed limit. That piece of data is giving him ammo to fight his ticket in court. His trial resumes Oct. 3.

If Malone wins the trial, then shoot, a heck of a lot of people are going to buy GPS devices. How easy would it be to manipulate the data? All you'd have to do is present data showing you were driving the speed limit around the time the officer wrote the ticket. Heck, you could probably provide data for when you were slowing down as you got pulled over. I'm all for sticking it to the man, but I don't see Malone winning because of the implications.

(Revised at 9:53 p.m. with more up-to-date information from a reader. Thanks, Paul!)

Speeding: Radar Gun vs. GPS [via Slashdot]

(Photo credit: lustymonk/Flickr)

The Psystar vs Apple cage-fight continues, and Apple now wants the Mac clone maker to recall all the OS X equipped PCs it has sold – something that will likely come as a relief to Psystar's disappointed customers (unless, of course, they have a pile of leaves that needs blowing).

That Psystar has violated the OS X End User Licensing Agreement is obvious, but these things have never really had a good hard test in court. So Apple is going after copyright issues, saying that Psystar modified its OS X Leopard code to run on standard PC hardware, and then effectively distributed that code on the hacked computers. Add to this that Psystar's business model requires that it makes similar modifications to all OS updates, and you see the tangle it is in. At the very least, customers will be left with no future OS updates and therefore no support. At worst, Psystar will be giving them their money back.

We'll see how this one plays out, but given the tenacious reputation of Apple's legal attack dogs, we almost feel sorry for Psystar.

Apple wants Psystar to snatch back Mac clones from customers … and other thoughts [ZDNET via TUAW]

The Governator said it loud and clear: Talking time is ovah -- while driving, that is -- unless you use a hands-free device. And if you recently received a hefty ticket for holding a phone behind the wheel, Jawbone is offering to soften the blow with a $20 discount on its bluetooth headset.

To receive the discount, you'll have to enter your citation number at Jawbone's web site. Ultimately it's a marketing scheme, but it's a clever one that encourages people to avoid repeat violations.

Of course, abiding by this law doesn't make talking while driving anymore safe -- hands free or not. But, baa. We'll play along. 

Jawbone maker giving $20 off if you got a traffic ticket for not using a Bluetooth headset [Boing Boing]

Photo credit: Allshavelin1206/Flickr

Can't say they weren't warned.

In a move that took longer than expected, Apple filed suit in a California federal district court against Florida company Psystar alleging copyright, trademark and shrink-wrap license infringement.

In April, Psystar began selling an "OpenMac" -- essentially a PC hacked to run OS X Leopard -- which the company renamed OpenComputer. The sort-of Mac clone cost $399, or about $2,400 cheaper than a Mac Pro.

And when you thought Psystar had already crossed the line, the company kept going further -- later releasing OpenServ, a clone of Apple's Xserve server hardware.

This kind of reminds me of that scene in Hancock when a little French boy calls Will Smith an asshole.

"Call me an asshole again," Smith says.

"Asshole," says the boy.

And then Hancock flings the boy about 10,000 feet in the sky. Only difference is Apple isn't going to catch Psystar when the company falls.

Confirmed: Apple files suit against Psystar [ZDNet Via TUAW]

While drilling for the Olympics, Chinese police in Jinan, the capital of the Shandong Province, seem to have forgotten to check their copyright law. Still, at least the knock-off Segways they're riding look a little less wussy than the real thing.

We have one question, though: Despite being so small as to look like pea-shooters, those automatic guns presumably still have a big kick. Are these cops just going to tumble over backwards, or is the Segway (fake or not) able to handle the recoil? Answers in the comments, along with captions for the photograph. The best caption wins a Gadget Lab virtual beer.

UPDATE: We have a winner! Actually, two winners. The first, left in the comments, is from Kevin, and is now the title of this post:

The Chinese Segway Division seemed unstoppable...until criminals started using staircases.

And, via email, we have this from Kurt:

Dr. Grant: They're wheeling in uniform direction changes, just like a flock of birds evading a predator.

Tim: They're, uh, They're flocking this way.

Congratulations, gentlemen, and enjoy your virtual beers.

Anti-terrorist drill in Shangdong [China View via Raw Feed]

 

There is insufficient training. Our officers are not properly trained in this legislation and that is probably leading to misunderstandings shall we say [...] I can find no evidence of any training on this part of the legislation.

This is what the chairman of the Metropolitan police, Peter Smyth, told an interviewer on BBC Radio 4's iPM program. Speaking about the recent rash of clashes between photographers and the British police, he admitted that many new laws are passed without adequate training being given to the officers on the ground. The cops are therefore misinterpreting the laws and persecuting innocent people carrying out innocent activities.

Continue reading "Metropolitan Police: UK Cops Not Trained To Deal With "Terrorist" Photographers" »

Increasing numbers of Lollipop Rage incidents will be combated in the UK by the government's law enforcement tool of choice: cameras. Lollipop Ladies and Lollipop Men, known in the US as crossing guards, help kids cross busy roads on their way to and from school (yup, kids in the UK still walk to school).

Even though the Lollipop stop sign they carry is accorded the same legal status as a red traffic light, drivers are ignoring them in droves. David Sparks, chairman of the Local Government Transport Board, is incensed, and to prove it he adopted the tone of a tabloid newspaper:

[A]buse and intimidation of lollipop men and women who are carrying out a vital service to the community will also not be tolerated.

The new, custom made Lollipops, costing £900 ($1788) each, will have two cameras facing in opposite directions to capture cars which harass or plain ignore the guards. Normally this would be the cue for a rant about the pointlessness of cameras and the surveillance culture etc. but the issue here is the drivers. Who on Earth could be so selfish as to hate on somebody helping schoolkids to cross the road? What next? Giving the finger to ambulance drivers when they try to pass?

UK "Lollipop" traffic rage fight goes technical [Reuters]

Photo [rightee/Flickr]

This video illustrates perfectly the confusion caused by the mixed messages coming from the British Police. Photographers Lawrence Windrush and John (no last name given) started snapping a tussle between a man, a security guard and a police officer in a Middlesborough high street. In the clip below you'll see Windrush being harassed by one jobsworth "security supervisor."

Idiotic psuedo-cops are nothing new, of course, but since the Metropolitan Police instigated its War on Photography, we're hearing a lot more about the plight of photographers in Britain. Simply pointing a camera at something or someone marks you out as a Terrorist. That's Terrorist with a capital "T", a term almost as useful as Communist was back in the 1950s for silencing any and all activity regarded unfavorable by the authorities.

Continue reading "Clueless Security Guards and Police Harass Photographers. What Rights Do We Have?" »

This video illustrates perfectly the confusion caused by the mixed messages coming from the British Police. Photographers Lawrence Windrush and John (no last name given) started snapping a tussle between a man, a security guard and a police officer in a Middlesborough high street. In the clip below you'll see Windrush being harassed by one jobsworth "security supervisor."

Idiotic psuedo-cops are nothing new, of course, but since the Metropolitan Police instigated its War on Photography, we're hearing a lot more about the plight of photographers in Britain. Simply pointing a camera at something or someone marks you out as a Terrorist. That's Terrorist with a capital "T", a term almost as useful as Communist was back in the 1950s for silencing any and all activity regarded unfavorable by the authorities.

Continue reading "Clueless Security Guards and Police Harass Photographers. What Rights Do We Have?" »

Apple and Sony have decided to settle at least one lawsuit stemming from the whole lithium-ion battery debacle of '06. And who can blame them at these bargain basement prices. The two companies are jointly paying a Japanese couple a total of about 1.3 million yen (that's $12,903) for damages to their home and burns the man sustained while trying to remove his flaming Apple computer from the house. The couple argued this fire was caused by a defective Sony lithium-ion battery.

To date, Sony has recalled 9.6 million of these occasionally unstable batteries with the help of some major laptop manufacturers, including Apple, Toshiba, Lenovo and Acer.

Apple, while accepting liability in the case, insisted it would not settle the dispute out of court because the couple had demanded excessive compensation (they were asking for 2 million yen). Despite agreeing to pay its share of the settlement, Sony still maintains there was no link between the fire and the battery.

Just days after settling the "millions of colors" lawsuit over its LCD monitors, Apple is facing yet another frivolous suit about claims for its flat panels. According to the Apple Insider, the class-action lawsuit wants satisfaction for marketing claims. That's right. Apple's iMac product blurb says that "No matter what you like to do on your computer — watch movies, edit photos, play games, even just view a screen saver — it’s going to look stunning on an iMac."

Law firm Kabateck Brown Kellner disagrees, saying that the 20" iMac uses cheaper 6 bit film in its LCD and is "particularly ill-suited [for] editing photographs". It also says that this use of cheaper components in the cheaper computer is gouging customers. Let me make that clear. Apple is being sued, essentially, for using cheaper components in lower range models. You know what? I'm considering calling my lawyer. My MacBook should have a Blu-ray drive in it, for starters, not this crappy old CD/DVD drive.

Apple hit with another "millions of colors" lawsuit [Apple Insider]

British Labour MP Austin Mitchell is as annoyed as we are about the UK police's persecution of photographers. The Member of Parliament for Great Grimsby, England has tabled a formal motion to introduce a "photography code", which would make clear the rights of people to take photographs in public places:

Continue reading "UK Politician Calls Police War On Photography "Daft"" »

A New Yorker emailed Gawker with the story of a rather picky pilferer. The housebreaker grabbed only the Apple products in the apartment, leaving behind a Dell notebook:

True story. My apartment in 'prime Williamsburg' was broken into. The thieves searched out my [Apple] iPod and [Mac] PowerBook, but the didn't touch my roommate's Dell that was sitting out in plain sight on our kitchen table. PS: A kitchen table - suck it Manhattan.

Gawker bills this thief as a "Hipster", but we wonder if this Apple-centric burglar simply knows the market: It's probably a lot easier to sell an iPod and a PowerBook than it is to fence a brick.

Hipster Thief Of Williamsburg Wants Only Apple Products [GAwker via FSJ]

We have a sneaking feeling that law enforcement officers might not have the same understanding of technology as you, Gadget Lab reader. This hilarious case from blogger Rottin' in Denmark tells a story of the astounding ineptitude of Danish police when confronted by 1. The internet, 2. An iMac and 3. WiFi. This wouldn't be so bad, but the cops had come a-knockin' to investigate computer crime.

According to the blog post, the Police made a dawn house call to investigate a suspicious credit card transaction made over the writer's open WiFi network.

Continue reading "Danish Cops Flummoxed by Internet, Wifi and iMacs" »

Reports claim that Transport Security Administration agents are making travelers completely empty out all their electronic devices at airport security checkpoints.

Continue reading "New Airport Security Theater: All Gadgets out of the Bag, Sir" »

Surf Recon LE is a porn-hunting forensic tool that comes on a thumbdrive and claims to find smutty pictures on almost any Windows, Apple or Linux computer. The makers claim it can even distinguish kiddie porn from the legal stuff.

Continue reading "Track Down Porn On Others' Computers With Surf Recon" »

BJ and Julia Davis, director and screenwriter of deathless cinematic masterpiece Forget About It, are attempting to silence Gregory Conley's negative review with a Mardi Gras of meaningless claims, such as "bashing our actors" and the classic "linking to our websites without authorization."

Such missives typically read as if they were written with crayola on a napkin, and this one doesn't disappoint:

"As we understand, the administrator of this website is acting on behalf of the group of recently-convicted individuals, in order to undermine the commercial potential of the feature film “Forget About It”... Gregory Conley is obviously engaging in fraud and acting as an imposter, which will result in the most serious legal ramifications for his actions."

Any threat has to be taken seriously, even if it's obviously geared to intimidate using malformed DMCA requests cut-and-pasted into rambling conspiracy theories, but I wouldn't get the lawyers out for this one quite yet. With a title like Forget About It, the jokes write themselves.

Filmmaker suing me over bad review [Your Video Store Shelf via BoingBoing]

UPDATE 3rd January: The RIAA is not in fact claiming that CDs can't be ripped. It is objecting to the resulting MP3s being put in the KaZaA shared folder. From the Plaintiff's Supplemental Brief:

Once Defendant converted Plaintiffs’ recording into the compressed .mp3 format and they are in his shared folder, they are no longer the authorized copies distributed by Plaintiffs.

Unbelievably standing up for the RIAA (this one time) [Ten Reasons Why via Daring Fireball]

In the muddy waters of copyright law, it has always been understood that making a copy of a CD that you own is OK. Whether it was a tape for the car or an MP3 rip for your iPod, personal copies were held to be just fine.

Gadget Lab editor Rob Beschizza covered the latest claims of the hungry, greed-driven RIAA on against Jeffrey Howell on Monday.

Howell chose to fight back against one of the RIAA's speculative extortion lawsuits and the Association upped it's game with this new legal claim. In short, it is illegal for Howell to have copies of CDs, which he legally bought and owns, on his computer.

I did a little digging and found that the RIAA doesn't seem to have its story straight. Take a look at the website and you'll find this contradictory piece of advice:

Continue reading "RIAA Making Up Laws As It Goes Along?" »

UPDATE 3rd January: The RIAA is not in fact claiming that CDs can't be ripped. It is objecting to the resulting MP3s being put in the KaZaA shared folder. From the Plaintiff's Supplemental Brief:

Once Defendant converted Plaintiffs’ recording into the compressed .mp3 format and they are in his shared folder, they are no longer the authorized copies distributed by Plaintiffs.

Unbelievably standing up for the RIAA (this one time) [Ten Reasons Why via Daring Fireball]

In the muddy waters of copyright law, it has always been understood that making a copy of a CD that you own is OK. Whether it was a tape for the car or an MP3 rip for your iPod, personal copies were held to be just fine.

Gadget Lab editor Rob Beschizza covered the latest claims of the hungry, greed-driven RIAA on against Jeffrey Howell on Monday.

Howell chose to fight back against one of the RIAA's speculative extortion lawsuits and the Association upped it's game with this new legal claim. In short, it is illegal for Howell to have copies of CDs, which he legally bought and owns, on his computer.

I did a little digging and found that the RIAA doesn't seem to have its story straight. Take a look at the website and you'll find this contradictory piece of advice:

Continue reading "RIAA Making Up Laws As It Goes Along?" »

UPDATE 3rd January: The RIAA is not in fact claiming that CDs can't be ripped. It is objecting to the resulting MP3s being put in the KaZaA shared folder. From the Plaintiff's Supplemental Brief:

Once Defendant converted Plaintiffs’ recording into the compressed .mp3 format and they are in his shared folder, they are no longer the authorized copies distributed by Plaintiffs.

Unbelievably standing up for the RIAA (this one time) [Ten Reasons Why via Daring Fireball]

In the muddy waters of copyright law, it has always been understood that making a copy of a CD that you own is OK. Whether it was a tape for the car or an MP3 rip for your iPod, personal copies were held to be just fine.

Gadget Lab editor Rob Beschizza covered the latest claims of the hungry, greed-driven RIAA on against Jeffrey Howell on Monday.

Howell chose to fight back against one of the RIAA's speculative extortion lawsuits and the Association upped it's game with this new legal claim. In short, it is illegal for Howell to have copies of CDs, which he legally bought and owns, on his computer.

I did a little digging and found that the RIAA doesn't seem to have its story straight. Take a look at the website and you'll find this contradictory piece of advice:

Continue reading "RIAA Making Up Laws As It Goes Along?" »

UPDATE 3rd January: The RIAA is not in fact claiming that CDs can't be ripped. It is objecting to the resulting MP3s being put in the KaZaA shared folder. From the Plaintiff's Supplemental Brief:

Once Defendant converted Plaintiffs’ recording into the compressed .mp3 format and they are in his shared folder, they are no longer the authorized copies distributed by Plaintiffs.

Unbelievably standing up for the RIAA (this one time) [Ten Reasons Why via Daring Fireball]

In the muddy waters of copyright law, it has always been understood that making a copy of a CD that you own is OK. Whether it was a tape for the car or an MP3 rip for your iPod, personal copies were held to be just fine.

Gadget Lab editor Rob Beschizza covered the latest claims of the hungry, greed-driven RIAA on against Jeffrey Howell on Monday.

Howell chose to fight back against one of the RIAA's speculative extortion lawsuits and the Association upped it's game with this new legal claim. In short, it is illegal for Howell to have copies of CDs, which he legally bought and owns, on his computer.

I did a little digging and found that the RIAA doesn't seem to have its story straight. Take a look at the website and you'll find this contradictory piece of advice:

Continue reading "RIAA Making Up Laws As It Goes Along?" »

A story Threat Level reported almost a month ago has finally hit the mainstream press: an RIAA lawyer affirming in a federal lawsuit that it considers copying music from compact disk to computer to be stealing.

Continue reading "RIAA: Copying Music From CD To Computer Is Theft" »

If a sign tells you not to take photos in the courtroom, that includes ones taken with cellphones, too. That's the lesson taught to 49-year-old Jean Johnson, who took an unauthorized shot in Judge Vincent Gaughan's house of R. Kelly (there for his kiddie porn case) and ended up with a custodial sentence.

Or, rather, here's the real lesson: be a wealthy man accused of owning nasty photos of little girls, and you get to stay out of jail for five years waiting for your trial, even after failing to turn up in court. Be a grandmother taking photos before the same ego-mad judge, you go directly to the cells and get your property confiscated and destroyed.

Penalty Paid for R. Kelly Snapshots [Chicago Trib]
Kelly Court Photos Lands Woman in Jail [AP]
R. Kelly: Take My Pic, Go to Jail! [TMZ]

You might remember a little spat which occurred between Apple and the Apple rumor site Think Secret, way back in January 2005. Apple filed a lawsuit against the dePlume Organization LLC (the company behind Think Secret) in order to force Nick dePlume (aka Nick Ciarelli) to reveal his sources for stories he published about a "$499 headless iMac" (which was most likely the Mac Mini)

Ciarelli claimed First Amendment rights as a journalist, and the EFF stepped in with legal help. Almost three years later, the case has been settled. Ciarelli gets to keep his sources secret, but has shut down Think Secret. The terms are confidential, so we don't know what Apple got out of the settlement, other than the death of a rumor mill.

In a short press release, Ciarelli says "I'm pleased to have reached this amicable settlement, and will now be able to move forward with my college studies and broader journalistic pursuits".

Press release [Think Secret]

Think Secret goes on offensive, asks to have Apple lawsuit dismissed [Think Secret]

Plugging Leaks [Daring Fireball]

You might remember a little spat which occurred between Apple and the Apple rumor site Think Secret, way back in January 2005. Apple filed a lawsuit against the dePlume Organization LLC (the company behind Think Secret) in order to force Nick dePlume (aka Nick Ciarelli) to reveal his sources for stories he published about a "$499 headless iMac" (which was most likely the Mac Mini)

Ciarelli claimed First Amendment rights as a journalist, and the EFF stepped in with legal help. Almost three years later, the case has been settled. Ciarelli gets to keep his sources secret, but has shut down Think Secret. The terms are confidential, so we don't know what Apple got out of the settlement, other than the death of a rumor mill.

In a short press release, Ciarelli says "I'm pleased to have reached this amicable settlement, and will now be able to move forward with my college studies and broader journalistic pursuits".

Press release [Think Secret]

Think Secret goes on offensive, asks to have Apple lawsuit dismissed [Think Secret]

Plugging Leaks [Daring Fireball]

You might remember a little spat which occurred between Apple and the Apple rumor site Think Secret, way back in January 2005. Apple filed a lawsuit against the dePlume Organization LLC (the company behind Think Secret) in order to force Nick dePlume (aka Nick Ciarelli) to reveal his sources for stories he published about a "$499 headless iMac" (which was most likely the Mac Mini)

Ciarelli claimed First Amendment rights as a journalist, and the EFF stepped in with legal help. Almost three years later, the case has been settled. Ciarelli gets to keep his sources secret, but has shut down Think Secret. The terms are confidential, so we don't know what Apple got out of the settlement, other than the death of a rumor mill.

In a short press release, Ciarelli says "I'm pleased to have reached this amicable settlement, and will now be able to move forward with my college studies and broader journalistic pursuits".

Press release [Think Secret]

Think Secret goes on offensive, asks to have Apple lawsuit dismissed [Think Secret]

Plugging Leaks [Daring Fireball]

A Bostonian is suing HP and Staples for colluding to inflate the price of printer ink. According to the suit, filed by Ranjit Nedi, Staples took a $100 million hint from HP not to stock cheap generic competition to its $8,000-a-gallon juice.

Continue reading "Printer Ink Now $8,000 A Gallon: Boston Man Sues" »

This is an open-source logo, designed by Neuros, for content creators to slap on media that isn't shackled by digital rights management (DRM). It's got some pedigree in the area, too: Neuros makes the OSD, a Linuxurious DRM-free media recording box.

I like the idea, but the implementation could be sharper: the horizontal lines on the lock and the black shroud of shadow make it seem indistinct.

Unlocked! Neuros's open logo for non-DRMed media and devices [BoingBoing]

"The Magnificence of the Disaster" — What a great name for a paper about Sony's DRM-enforcing virus.

Written by Aaron Perzanowski and Deirdre Mulligan, it charts the company's decision to secretly install illegal software on its customers' computers, and how it ultimately killed sales of its own products as a result. Cory Doctorow has an excerpt up. Read the whole thing for yourself in PDF format.

How Sony BMG lost its mind and rootkitted its CDs -- prepublication law paper [BoingBoing]

Best Buy, the category-killing Wal-Mart of gadgetdom, is under the impression that journalists who write about Improv Everywhere's Best Buy parody T-Shirts are "promoting, not reporting" infringement. Accordingly, they may be crushed with lawyers.

The company fired Cease and Desist letters not only to Improv Everywhere and Neighborhoodies, which sells  the shirts, but to the Laughing Squid, one of the blogs which reported it.

The story began with Improv Everywhere launching an amusing prank, flooding a big box with a mob dressed to resemble store clerks. And now it ends in a cascade of stupid legal threats, contrived to help strategically protect a trademark by targeting those who report the alleged infringement.

UPDATE: Best Buy's lawyers back off.

Best Buy Cease & Desist Letter For Blog Post About Another Blog [Laughing Squid]

Improv Everywhere Tee Product Page [Neighborhoodies]

Western Digital's 1TB MyBook external hard drives won't share media files over network connections (UPDATE: Don't install the "required" client software! See workaround below). From the product page:

"Due to unverifiable media license authentication, the most common audio and video file types cannot be shared with different users using WD Anywhere Access."

It doesn't matter what the files are: If you try to share these formats over a network, Western Digital assumes not just that you're a criminal, but that it is its job to police users. You see, MP3, DivX, AVI, WMV and Quicktime files are copy-protected formats.

Continue reading "Western Digital DRM'd Hard Drive Won't Let You Share MP3, DivX ... Or Impulse Tracker" »

Comcast customers who frequently log in to their online accounts have already chosen theirs. The rest of us are getting them chosen for us and delivered by mail. It's time for Comcast account security PIN numbers, folks. From the letter:

"You will need this Security PIN whenever you call Comcast to discuss the details of your Comcast phone bill, to reset your primary user ID and/or password to any of our websites, or to reset your voice mail password. It's just one more way we're helping protect you."

FCC mandate, ladies and gentlemen. Put simply, they need something that only you know — chances are that your birthday, your mom's maiden name and your SSN can already be bought. It protects you from Hewlett Packard's spies and other pretexters, and protects Comcast from having to deal with the forgetful.

PDF is public.

Submitted to ISO, the International Standards Organization, for inclusion, it's received approval and been redubbed ISO 320000. In the voting, Russia abstained and France voted against inclusion. The other 13 members of the consortium said "Aye."

Ratification will come after a commenting session beginning January 21, and a final two-month drafting period and vote. It's not clear why France hates PDF.

What does it all mean? ISO takes control of the format's spec, but it doesn't matter an awful lot because it's already freely usable. The ISO won't go development crazy —  standardization encourages compliance and uniformity and dampens radical change. The real beef here is Adobe throttling Microsoft's PDF clone format, XPS, in the crib.

The US House of Representatives has passed the Securing Adolescents From Exploitation Online act. This allegedly boils down to "if you see obscene photos or artwork anywhere on the internet or in your email and don't report it, you are complicit in its propogation and can be fined up to $300,000."

That legal responsibility extends to others' use of your own WiFi network. From news.com:

"That broad definition would cover individuals, coffee shops, libraries, hotels, and even some government agencies that provide Wi-Fi. It also sweeps in social-networking sites, domain name registrars, Internet service providers, and e-mail service providers such as Hotmail and Gmail, and it may require that the complete contents of the user's account be retained for subsequent police inspection."

Does it really ban all forms of "obscenity," including cartoons, or just the nasty stuff that obviously depicts kids? I don't have time to pile through it. But let's imagine it does, so we can all have something to be upset about. It's not as if representatives read these things before voting on them, after all.

Securing Adolescents From Exploitation Act of 2007 [loc.gov]
House vote on illegal images sweeps in Wi-Fi, Web sites [CNET]
 House Bill Could Criminalize Free Wi-Fi Operators [Slashdot] 

What's a few kilobytes between friends? A massive class-action lawsuit, is what.

A megabyte is 1,048,576 bytes, if you count up the traditional byte multiples from 2, 4, 8, 16 and so on. But a megabyte is also only 1,000,000 bytes, if you decide that decimals will do.

Continue reading "Tebi Vs. Tera Battle To Eternally Recur?" »

Well, I don't disagree with the principal principle of it, but the safety factor is, er... Unsafe

In the end, the drivers have to get the car towed home, a distance of about one block. And check the crowd of cyclists who go by. A perfect synchronicity.

Pedal-powered car gets pulled over by Toronto Police [BoingBoing]

Well, I don't disagree with the principal principle of it, but the safety factor is, er... Unsafe

In the end, the drivers have to get the car towed home, a distance of about one block. And check the crowd of cyclists who go by. A perfect synchronicity.

Pedal-powered car gets pulled over by Toronto Police [BoingBoing]

A Washington judge has ruled that spam is "personal e-mail" exempt from anti-spam laws if it's written in a style that suggests familiarity with the recipient. In the words of small-claims Judge Judith Eiler herself (via Slashdot):

"These are anti-spam laws, which imply that they are mail just sent out in huge bulks, which would be the antithesis of a personal e-mail.  And here he puts his name, in fact this is the person that you directly sued rather than somebody that's in a corporation or a company.  The court does think that there's some indication that this is a personal-type e-mail.  While it may have gone out to a number of people, it doesn't have quite the earmarks."

This twit sits at the business end of the whole "legal spam" fiasco, wherein this nation "banned" unsolicited bulk email by outlining how it may legally be sent. Lawmakers are bought and paid for, but the ignorance and stupidity of judges like Eiler is far more reliable.

Following is the spam itself, addressed to "Dear Webmaster" and hocking a scammy link exchange scheme.

Continue reading "Judge: Spam Exempt From Law When Sender Names Self" »

The EFF won reexamination of one of the biggest targets in its patent-busting project Friday, a particularly odd and nasty award concerning domain registration.

Subdomains are the best way to blast out platform-targeted content—mobile.wired.com is a much better idea than, say, www.wired.mobi—but a bogus patent has helped stymie delivery. Held first by Ideaflood and now by Hoshiko, LLC, U.S. Patent 6,687,746 covers the automation of subdomain registration, an obvious idea enshrining no innovative method, design or technology.

Ideaflood tried to shake down a bunch of people for offering subdomains, including blogging site LiveJournal and various webhosts.

EFF Wins Reexamination of Bogus Internet Subdomain Patent [EFF]

The European Union wants powers to override the national telco regulators in its member countries. Yesterday the European Commission proposed a new body which could have the power to split large companies and break up what it sees as monopolies. The Commission claims that this will stimulate competition and innovation: both good for the customer.

Continue reading "EU Proposes Europe Wide Telco Watchdog" »

Swedish investigators plan to file only a sparse roster of charges against local bittorrent search engine, The Pirate Bay, despite a year-long investigation.

While the site's sympathies, and intent, are broadcast by its name, the fishing expeditions to find actual laws being broken haven't been a great success. While everyone knows what you can find at this particular search engine, it's not so easy to blame it for the existence of what it indexes.

Continue reading "Clouseau-Like Pirate Bay Investigators Finally Plan Charges" »

Just like school: You get popular, than everybody wants to take you down. So it is with this frivolous lawsuit from Frederick Black. Just for fun, we'll disprove his claims right here, so the Southern California US District court can save its time (the case was moved from Florida at Apple's request).

Continue reading "Apple Hit with Yet Another Lawsuit: iPods Illegally Tied to iTunes" »

Just like school: You get popular, than everybody wants to take you down. So it is with this frivolous lawsuit from Frederick Black. Just for fun, we'll disprove his claims right here, so the Southern California US District court can save its time (the case was moved from Florida at Apple's request).

Continue reading "Apple Hit with Yet Another Lawsuit: iPods Illegally Tied to iTunes" »

Major League Baseball switched DRM providers, forcing customers who bought videos from their old system to buy them again if they want to continue watching them. From one of its victims, sportswriter Allan Wood:

"MLB no longer supports the DDS system that it once used and so any CDs with downloaded games on them 'are no good. They will not work with the current system.' ...I was told there is absolutely nothing MLB can do about these lost games. Plus, they said my purchases were all 'one-time sale' and thus 'there are no refunds.'"

It's a perfect example of why DRM is bad. Those who imagined the worse case scenario to be DRM systems failing or disappearing were wrong. The truth is far nastier: DRM will be disabled by content providers any time they please, destroying your media collections whenever the pleasure takes them.

Continue reading "Major League Baseball Wipes Out Customers' DRM Licenses" »

Welcome once again to Marshall, Texas, infamous for its plaintiff-friendly patent lawsuit juries. The latest troll in town is Wi-LAN, which came all the way from Canada to find the perfect spot for an industry shakedown. 22 companies are alleged to have infringed its patents, which relate to WiFi and power consumption.

Continue reading "Everyone, Even Retailers, Sued By Latest Technology Patent Troll" »

Why would Nigeria pay for 17,000 Mandriva Linux licenses and then immediately pay to replace the installations with Windows? Those familiar with the operation of African governments will suspect someone got bribed, but Mandriva CFO François Bachilon prefers to cloak his claim in a veil of innuendo:

"It’s pretty clear to me, and it will be clear to everyone. How do you call what you just did Steve [Ballmer], in the place where you live? In my place, they give it various names, I’m sure you know them."

Come now, Mr. Banchilon. If you're going to be a gangsta, don't pussyfoot around. Most countries' defamation laws concern implicit as well as expressly stated communications, anyhow.

Continue reading "Did Mandriva CFO Accuse Microsoft Of Bribery?" »

Sprint may soon unlock the phones of departing customers. The phone operator was accused of anti-competitive practices in a California class action lawsuit, and has offered the unlock codes as part of a proposed settlement.

It's not all good news, though. Sprint has an effective technological lock-in with its CDMA network. You might be able to free your phone, but you won't be using it with any GSM networks. And double bad luck if you have one of Sprint's iDEN (Integrated Digital Enhanced Network) based phones – aside from a handful of small carriers, these won't work anywhere else.

Carrier lock-in isn't a new problem, but the fuss about the iPhone has made it big news recently. We think it's a little silly to single out the Apple/AT&T partnership, but anything which chips away at the phone companies' customer hatred has to be a good thing.

Sprint Nextel Agrees to Unlock Phones [AP]

Take that! phone thieves. If you're working in the UK, you'll need to find a different scam, or get into the export business.

According to a new report published by the Mobile Industry Crime Action Forum (MICAF), "Across all networks, 98 per cent of mobile phones reported stolen are blocked within 48 hours".

Continue reading "98 Percent of UK Stolen Phones are Blocked by Networks Within 48 Hours" »

Flash memory giant SanDisk seems to have sued just about the whole flash industry, with three patent cases targeting 25 companies, including the top produces of memory cards, thumb drives, media players and more. Two of the suits were filed in a Wisconsin federal court and the third before the newly beloved (by plaintiffs)  International Trade Commission, naming familiar brands such as Corsair, Memorex, Kingston, LG Electronics, PNY, Verbatim, Buffalo, Imation and more.

Details are light on which "system-level patents" are at question, but don't expect this to be good for gadget prices.

SanDisk Sues 25 Companies for Patent Infringement  [ExtremeTech]

If you steal something strange and high-tech, it's probably a bad idea to call tech support. Take, for example, the high-end vinyl card printers used by the DMV to splat out drivers' licenses.

These things don't come off the shelf at Best Buy. And if you call to ask for driver disks, well, you're as good as busted. Timothy Scott Short did just that, allegedly, leading the state of Missouri--which was down one digimarc card printer--right to his door.

Major retailers are selling obsolescent analog TV sets without the required disclosures, attracting fines from the FCC. Radio Shack is the most well-known outlet that's up to no good, with other targets including HH Gregg, FYE, Fred Meyer Stores and Ultimate Electronics.

The fines add up to a toothless $96,000: not so much a slap on the wrist as it is a neutrino phasing imperceptibly through a subatomic particle somewhere inside the wrist. At least enforcement is occurring, however, giving us an excuse to remind you that analog televisions will soon be quite useless.

Retailers vs. FCC: fines for warning-free analog TVs as ban draws near [Ars]

Daniel Terdiman has a great story today up on the front page here at Wired News, covering the EFF's hit list of 10 bad patents.

And before you cry "but they're obviously bullshit!," remember that in U.S. courts, it effectively costs thousands, and sometimes even millions of dollars just to wet your lips.

• Transmitting media over the internet.
• Burning CDs of live music during the event.
• Sending phone calls over internet.
• High score charts for online games.
• Naming internet subdomains after people.
• Networked Barcode lookups br>• Online tests
• Game emuation
• Voice recognition
• Compiling musical song data into a single file

Go read the full story for the details on who owns—and tries to enforece—such clearly abusive patents.

Spain's top three mobile operators are being investigated by the National Competition Commission for price fixing. Orange, Vodafone and Movistar were recently banned from rounding up call charges to the nearest minute (ironically, Orange launched itself in the UK with the exact opposite strategy: per second billing).

According to Reuters, the companies made 1.21 billion Euros ($172 billion) from this scam, so were obviously unhappy at its end. The Commission thinks that the three might have colluded on a simultaneous tariff increase in February this year, to compensate for the revenue drop. Of course, we trust the phone operators, as until now we've never heard of them screwing anybody.

Spain's top 3 cell phone companies probed for collusion [Reuters]

Apple has been hit with another lawsuit over iPhone lock-in, this one filed on behalf of a Washington State and a California consumer unhappy with Apple's attempts to prevent iPhone buyers from doing anything Steve Jobs dislikes. The case states that the recent firmware update deliberately KOed unlocked phones, causing $1.2 billion worth of damage to the plaintiffs and other parties to be named. According to the suit:

Apple expressly designed its software release 1.1.1 expressly to disable Third Party Apps and to disable any unlocked SIM cards, and to create technical barriers to install new Third Party Apps or to unlock the SIM cards.

iPhone lawsuit seeks over $1 billion in damages [MacCentral]

Sony recently released an amazing new ad for its Bravia range, depicting hordes of brightly-colored play-doh bunnies leaping around New York. It immediately transpired that this ad was obviously swiped from a proposal sent to it by Kozydan, which has not been paid or otherwise credited for the work — despite Sony's ad agency, it claims, calling them to get more samples.

Well, for what it's worth, here's Sony's side of the story — which is to say, a "making of" video that explains how its people executed the ad. It also offers a strongly-worded denial of the claims.

Continue reading "Sony Denies Swiping Play-Doh Bunnies Ad" »

Add to the growing list if iPhone-related lawsuits a new case that claims Apple is violating California antitrust laws by tying the überphone to a single carrier. Timothy Smith claims in the suit that Apple's agreement with AT&T violates the state's Cartwright Act.

He's seeking an injunction that would require Apple to sell phones unlocked. Further cause for hacker hope: He also wants the court to require Cupertino to honor warranties on phones that have been unlocked by their owners.

Lawsuit claims iPhone breaks Calif. antitrust laws [Macworld]

Like an infintely-growing fractal tree of bullshit, the record industry's inexplicable belief system grows ever crazier. The latest legal promulgation from one of its tendrils? According to Britain's Performing Rights Society, which collects royalties for the music industry, playing radios loud enough for other people to hear amounts to an unlicensed public performance. The punishment? Hundreds of thousands of dollars, please.

There are pros to this, mind you. First. when some kid's subwoofer-laden ricer lumbers down the street at 4 a.m., he is now a filthy pirate in addition to being a noise polluter. Second, workers at car-repair chain Kwik-Fit, the first to be targeted by this new legal campaign, will get back to fixing your 1986 Corolla instead of dancing the Macarena.

And then there is the con: any speaker bigger than an earbud is now illegal, unless it is in a soundproofed room.

So, how do you think trying to own culture will work out for them?

The next Copycrime: "making hearable" rings up £200,000 copyright suit [Ars]

Like the punchline to a bad joke, the U.K. Information Comissioner's Office has determined that local privacy laws, designed to limit unsolicited marketing messages, do not apply to Bluetooth. This is because "text messages or emails" are not "covered" by the technology.

Continue reading "Dumb Regulators To Legalize Bluetooth Spam" »

Analysis of the RIAA's victory over Jammie Thomas doesn't have to be long, folks.

• Thomas got what was coming to her. She was obviously guilty.
• The size of the award — $220,000 in actual (not punitive) damages for 24 shared files — is laughably out of touch with reality.
• This victory is the RIAA's money shot after years of lobbying, rent-seeking, bankrolling politicians and other legal and legislative maneuvering. Nailing consumers for piracy is no longer untested law: it's now backed by precedent.
• The victory is Pyhrric. The record industry is so obviously corrupt and immoral that most people either see thieving from it as a virtue, or are indifferent to its misfortunes. Once an exemplar of venture capitalism's driving spirit, the record industry is now nothing more than an economic and legal parasite.
• CTRL-C, CTRL-V. It's not hard to remember.

Read Threat Level's in-depth coverage of the RIAA's stunning court victory, in which a jury has awarded $220,000 against a woman accused of sharing 24 songs. Here's the short form of what it all means:

To get you done for file-sharin' 'n' copyring infringin', the music industry:

• Does not have to prove your computer had a file sharing application installed.

• Does not have to prove anyone downloaded the shared file, only that one was being shared. 

• Does not have to prove you are the person associated with the file-sharing account identified as sharing infringing files.

• Does not require any physical evidence, such as hard drives or media: your IP and MAC address being associated with illegally shared files is enough to secure a judgment.

• Does not have to prove you were using the computer at the moment investigators accessed the files you are alleged to be sharing.

• Is in it for the money, not the justice: The RIAA's lawyer said afterward that "this is what can happen if you don't settle."

Don't Stop. Settle!

Video Professer, the company that makes the computer learning CDs oft-pitched on television by fatherly tech supremo John Scherer, is after 100 unnamed Does that criticized it or its products.

Continue reading "Video Professor Sues The Internet" »

Californian teens: You have only nine and a half months left to endanger others through multitasking. On July 1st, 2008, the new Teen Drivers Cellphone Safety Bill comes into force. The bill, signed Friday by Governor Schwarzenegger, will impose fines on any kids using electronic communications devices while driving.

First offenders will be hit with a $20 fine, which then increases to $50 for subsequent infractions. The law comes into force the same day as another law which mandates that adults must use hands-free devices to make calls while driving, but the Governator said at a press conference that teens are a special case:

Continue reading "Governator Bans Teens from Phoning While Driving" »

Toshiba and SanDisk have been called out on alleged price fixing in the NAND flash memory market. Last month, SanDisk, Toshiba's US partner, was sued in the U.S. District Court, California, along with 23 other companies (hey, if you're going to price fix, you need partners in crime). Along with the subpoenas served to the two companies, SanDisk CEO Eli Harari has been called on individually. The Canadians are taking a look too: The Canadian Competition Bureau has also sent notice to SanDisk.

With the world going crazy for NAND flash, which is used in pretty much anything portable, from iPods to digital cameras, it's easy to see why suppliers might want to halt the price-lowering principals of the free market, but if these anti-trust allegations prove to be true, expect a big bust and potentially huge fines which could send the already volatile pricing of RAM into a spin.

SanDisk subpoenaed over U.S. antitrust issues [Reuters]
Toshiba says subpoenaed over flash memory [Reuters]

The Brits are cracking down on mobile phone use while driving, and they're doing it the right way. Instead of making up new laws, the UK legal system is simply re-classifying the offense.

It used to be that you'd receive a fine of £60 ($120), and/or an endorsement on your license, for "Using a hand-held mobile while driving". At worst, drivers fiddling with phones or satnav could be hit with a "careless driving" charge, which carries a fine of up to £2,500 ($5,000), or a community service penalty.

Continue reading "UK Increases Texting While Driving Penalties to 14 Years Jail Time" »

We love GPS. From geo-tagging photos to drawing virtual pictures (Brighton Elephant!), GPS is the pinch of salt that makes any gadget tastier. But ignorance of this wonderful technology is most certainly not bliss, as school employee John Halpin found out.

Continue reading "Man Tracked With GPS Cellphone for Five Months: Loses Job" »

Herbert H. Kliegerman took Apple's slogan "You can browse the Internet and send emails as often as you like without being charged extra" a little too seriously. On a two week vacation to Mexico, Kliegerman ran up $2,000 in call and data charges, and decided to sue Apple when he got back.

The lawsuit, filed Monday in the New York Supreme Court, claims that Apple and AT&T's SIM lock-in caused the high charges:

As a result of [Apple's] deceptive and misleading acts, members of the Class have been injured because they are unable to unlock their phones for use with non-AT&T SIM cards.

We're not arguing with the unlocking part. We're as excited as anyone to see an internationally usable iPhone. But something tells me that Kliegerman might have known before he went to Mexico that he couldn't pop in a foreign SIM. Perhaps Mr. Kliegerman should hit up AT&T for a refund. After all, the telco already waived a $5000 iPhone roaming bill.

Alternatively, he could actually grow up and take some responsibility for his own actions instead of running in tears to Mummy Courtroom.

Apple faces new class-action suit over locked iPhones [Apple Insider]

In the eyes of the law, "stealing" WiFi is at roughly the same level as child abduction or murder. In a story that brings to mind the phrase "shouldn't you be out catching real criminals?", police in Chiswick, London arrested a 39 year old man suspected of leeching an unsecured WiFi signal.

Continue reading "UK Police in a Froth Over WiFi Theft" »

Remember this odd clause in the iPhone Applecare terms and conditions?

Apple is not authorized to sell the AppleCare Protection Plan for iPhone to residents of Alabama, Connecticut, Nevada, or Wyoming.

It turns out that in Vermont, you're not even allowed to use an iPhone. AT&T doesn't offer a service in the Green Mountain State, instead it piggybacks on partner networks. This is fine if you roam with your iPhone, but residents – called "rebels" by AT&T – will be quickly shut down. According to AT&T spokesman Mark Siegel:

Continue reading "Rebel iPhone Users in Vermont Will be Terminated" »

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals toasted a Cingular contract tidbit recently, ruling as "unconscionable" a  clause which declares that by using its service, you void your right to bring a class action lawsuit against them.

These contracts, often presented as End-User License Agreements, often represent, in black and white, everything that's rotten about the relationship between company and consumer. These are often designed to deprive the buyer of as many rights as possible, and the argument over their legality goes on and on. This was one such example, seeking to replace the legal system with a corporate Monkey Court.

It's time for a federal law that establishes once and for all that unread, unsigned contracts, "agreed" to simply by performing acts necessary to the operation of a consumer product (like removing shrinkwrap or installing software), are unenforceable.

Shroyer vs. New Cingular Wireless (PDF) [via The Consumerist]

Wireless R&D company Qualcomm is getting shafted again, this time by Nokia. Back in June, the company had a range of 3G EV-DO and WCDMA chips banned from import into the US because they infringed on Broadcom patents. Now Nokia  wants more import bans, claiming that Qulacomm isn't paying enough to license Nokia's chip tech.

In truth, this looks more like a hardball negotiating tactic – Nokia has been paying $100 million a quarter to Qualcomm to license other technology, and the Finnish company wants a discount. This is the state of the US cellphone market today, folks: Forget innovation and great products and instead patent everything that moves, and if the lawsuits don't work, get the government involved.

Nokia Asks for Ban on Qualcomm Chip Imports [NYT]

In politics, you'd expect the right wing party to be all over compulsory ID, with opposition from the left, right? Not so in Britain. Yesterday the Labour Government began the selection process to choose which companies will make the new privacy-killing national ID card, while in an unexpectedly lucid moment, right wing Conservative party spokesman David Davis said "This project will do nothing to improve our security". The Conservatives promise to abolish the scheme if they ever return to power.

The compulsory ID Card, which will carry fingerprint, iris and face-recognition biometrics, is expected to cost £5 billion over the next ten years. The excuse? Terrorism and organized crime. You know, the two groups that have the motivation and resources to bypass the technology and make fakes.

As always, this security theater will only diminish the rights of the innocent. And if the new biometric British Passport is anything to go by, it'll be hacked in five minutes anyway.

Britain begins ID card procurement process [Reuters]

Another day, another Apple Lawsuit. This time it's a spat over the iPhone virtual keyboard, and not because it's hard to use. A doctor named Peter V. Boesen claims that Apple infringes on a patent granted in August 2004, and wants "reasonable royalties" on every unit sold.

The patent abstract looks absurdly generic, describing an "input area [which] is created by a computer program on a display capable of receiving touch-screen input" (read: every touch screen ever).

Continue reading "Apple Sued Over Keyboard Patent: Troll Suspected" »

Ahh, DMCA, let us count the ways you suck. The latest abuse of copyright law has been directed at importers and sellers of console Mod Chips, add ons which let people run home-brew software and store games on their hard drives. The chips will also enable the use of pirated software, but that is by no means their only function.

Continue reading "US Agency Raids Mod-Chippers: Lady Justice Weeps" »

Ahh, DMCA, let us count the ways you suck. The latest abuse of copyright law has been directed at importers and sellers of console Mod Chips, add ons which let people run home-brew software and store games on their hard drives. The chips will also enable the use of pirated software, but that is by no means their only function.

Continue reading "US Agency Raids Mod-Chippers: Lady Justice Weeps" »

The V-Chip is back in the news. Yesterday the Senate Commerce Committee approved new legislation which could see the content blocking chip finding its way into any device used to view programming, including cellphones and "The Internet", despite the fact that indecency laws don't apply to the web (yet).

Arkansas Senator Mark Pryor thinks that the government needs to further invade on parents' territory and help them to protect the children. "It's an uphill battle for parents trying to protect their kids from viewing inappropriate programming" Pryor told the Hollywood Reporter. An uphill battle if you leave your kids alone, tucked away in their bedrooms unsupervised.

Continue reading "US Government Wants to Filter Cellphone and Internet Content" »

Foolish Illinois lawyer Larry Drury didn't bother to actually check the facts before filing a suit for his client Jose Trujillo. Trujillo bought an iPhone and then started to whine that it could only be charged 300 times before the battery would need to be replaced. In a perfect illustration of US litigation culture, he decided to sue Apple. Had Trijillo or his lawyer cared to check the Apple website, they would have found this statement:

Continue reading "Moronic Lawsuit of the Day: iPhone Battery" »

A proposed Canadian tax could add $75 to the price of an iPod. The tax, which the Canadian courts ruled against back in 2005, has been re-submitted and this time approved by the Copyright Board of Canada. If appeals are unsuccessful, the "levy" could go into effect next year.

It breaks down like this: $2 on a 1GB memory card, $4 on an 8GB card and a whopping $75 on a 30GB digital audio player (the tax tops out at 30GB). Of course, this implies that all owners of MP3 players are thieves: As Universal Media Group CEO Doug Morris said last year, "These devices are just repositories for stolen music, and they all know it."

There is already a tax on blank media in Canada (21 cents on a CD) which supposedly goes to compensate artists for pirated music. Not to worry, though. If the music industry doesn't stop shaking down its customers and start servicing them, it won't be around for much longer.

New tax could raise price of iPods by $75 [Digital Home]
Tariff proposal [CPCC – PDF]

19 year old Briton Rachel Begg has been sentenced to four years in a young offender institution for causing death by dangerous driving. Begg, who had only been driving for 18 months when the incident occurred last November, was sending text messages as she sped along a road near Newcastle. In the rain. At night. Doing 70mph.

Police checked her cell phone records and found that she had used her phone nine times in 15 minutes, and wasn't paying any attention to the road when she came up behind 64 year old Maureen Waites and rear ended her. Waites' car span off the road and into the barrier, killing her instantly.

The judge in the case, Judger Milford, said "The cause of this accident was that you failed to see her, until it was too late, for the simple reason that you had been sending a text message to your male friend,” he said. “To send a text message is even more perilous at night in a darkened car."

What can we say? Using a telephone whilst driving is a bad enough, but texting? Don't do it.

Woman killed by teenage driver who was sending text messages at 70mph [The Times]

The Spanish might hate Telefonica for its terrible customer service and price gouging, but today we can celebrate the Spanish telco for sticking up for the little guy. Telefonica refused to turn over the IP addresses of users accused of file sharing over Kazaa, so a group of music producers filed a legal complaint. The Spanish courts turned to the EU for advice, which upheld Telephonica's claim that the information only need be provided in criminal cases.

So, good news that not every ISP caves into music industry demands, although the climate in Europe is a little different to that in the US, where civil liberties and privacy seem to slip further away every day. And while it's not a legal precedent, it could become a strong guideline throughout the EU.

Of course, if these music producers had any idea about the technology, they could just join a BitTorrent share and grab the IP addresses right off their own computers.

EU: ISPs don't have to disclose subscriber names [CNET]

Truphone, the British mobile VoIP provider, has won a court injunction against T-Mobile, forcing the cellphone company to connect its calls. Truphone, who we spoke to at 3GSM earlier this year, routes calls over WiFi and 3G where available, and costs anything from free to three cents a minute.

Continue reading "Truphone Beats Down T-Mobile in UK Court" »

Ted Stevens, the Series-of-Tubes senator, seems to have woken up to technology at last. On Wednesday he introduced legislation to help number portability, and not just for call phones but for all voice devices.

The legislation will impose time limits on service providers, so they can't use massive inconvenience to deter customers from switching networks. Stevens said "This legislation would require the FCC to revisit its number portability rules and extend them to all applicable voice communications services, not just telecom services", which sounds like it may apply to VoIP, too.

Rob made a good point yesterday in the comments to this post. Politicians might know zip about the internet and email, but they all have cell phones. One more reason to get some tech education into government.

New legislation could make number portability easier [CNET]

While we have to admire this audacious little trick, we also understand that it is bad, ok? A British Muslim woman has been arrested for contempt of court after hiding her headphones inside her hijab headscarf. Why so bad? She was on jury duty at the time. According to the UK Times, the still unnamed woman was acting so absent mindedly in court that other attendees thought she was doodling on important documents.

Continue reading "British Woman Faces Jail for Listening to Music in Court" »

David Cameron, the leader of Britain's opposition Conservative Party, has offered a U.S.-style copyright extention term to the media industry in return for an agreement to self-censor itself.

In a speech to the British Phonographic Industry group, he said that his party would work to the extend the copyright term to 70 years and make new laws to fight piracy. Labels, however, would agree no longer to sell products which gloriy misbehavior and immorality.

Continue reading "U.K. Opposition Offers 70-Year Copyright For Self-Censorship" »

Bored of imagining that WiFi is making children ill, British nannies have turned their attention to ... projectors! The bulbs are too bright, they say, threatening to overexpose kids' peripheral vision and damage retinas "even when not actually staring directly into the beam."

Continue reading "Activists: Whiteboard Projectors Too Dangerous For British Schools" »

Tanya Anderson, a disabled single mother who recently defeated the RIAA in court, is suing the music labels and their legal bulldogs for malicious prosecution.

Continue reading "Lawsuit: RIAA Lied To School Staff To Gain Access to 8 Year-Old" »

Wheatgrass might not seem to have a whole lot in common with satellite radio, but financial analyst/blogger Todd Sullivan makes an interesting connection. Federal regulators recently blocked a proposed merger between natural foods chains Whole Foods and Wild Oats, he notes. Combined with several other recent decisions, there's a clear indication the feds are thinking narrowly when it comes to defining the competitive market a company serves.

And that's exactly the kind of thinking that will kill the proposed merger between satellite strugglers XM and Sirius, who argue they compete with everything from iPods to your weird neighbor's homemade Theremin.

Me, I just wish the display on my Sirius receiver would stop acting funny. Because I'm pretty sure that wasn't Cannibal Corpse they were playing on the Sinatra channel yesterday.

Sirius/XM Satellite Radio: Merger is Doomed [SeekingAlpha]

Click Wrap agreements come as standard with almost any software you buy. You know, the ones you never read. Often just mounting a disk image requires you to click and agree to something, often waiving your basic rights as a consumer or even your legal rights.

So take heart from stubborn ex-real estate investor Dennis Sheehan, who is locked in a court battle with Gateway that will make your head spin. Sheehan sued Gateway for failing to replace, repair or refund a computer he bought from them. The problem? A malfunctioning display which scatters graphics.

Continue reading "Buyer Beware: EULA in Crazy Court Paradox" »

The U.S. International Trade Commission has issued a ban on all new models of cellphones containing patent-infrininging chips from Qualcomm. The chips are those used to connect to 3G networks, specifically EV-DO and WCDMA, and violate patents held by Broadcom.

Any model already on sale in the US (up until Thursday 7th - yesterday) will be exempt from the ban and can still be sold. Anything new, however, cannot be imported.

Continue reading "3G Handset Import Ban Gives iPhone a Leg-Up" »

The spymasters at Hewlett-Packard are already infamous for such alleged activities as surveilling the company's own board and lying to get personal information about their targets. Now it's claimed that this latter practice, known as pretexting, is not the one-off tactic that the world's largest PC maker said it was. And there's even a cherry on top: the latest claimed victim is one of their own former employees, originally hired, he claims, to keep a naughty eye on rival Dell.

Continue reading "New HP Pretexting Allegation Surfaces" »

Ann Summers, the UK's favorite soft-core high street sex shop, has drawn the ire of Apple's lawyers with the poster ad campaign for their iGasm, an iPod accessory.

The iGasm hooks up like any other speaker accessory, but instead of listening to the music, the beats drive a vibrator and you get to feel the music instead.

Apple doesn't seem to care about the actual device; if it sells more iPods then everything is rosy, right? Their beef is with the posters, which are obviously ripped off from the famous colored silhouette campaign. I like them. As a parody this is clever and funny, but I expect it will only be a matter of days before the campaign gets pulled.

Continue reading "Apple Sends Takedown Notice to UK Sex Shop" »

UK traffic wardens are to get webcams in their caps. They'll beam the pictures back to a central station to be used as evidence in case of disputes over tickets.

There are scams to get yourself out of paying a parking fine, some apocryphal and some real, and the law enforcement side play dirty, too, primarily because British traffic wardens have quotas to meet. The camera scheme, launching in Manchester, could actually help the public out in many cases, just so long as the tapes don't go 'missing'.

Video report [BBC News - Realplayer via The Inquirer]

The chances are, you think your laptop's LCD panel displays millions of colors. If so, the chances are that you're very much mistaken.

Apple is being sued after saying its laptops offer colors by the million, and after user complaints about its displays. The claim is that a combination of 6-bit display panels and inferior software makes a mythology of its marketing.

But it's a claim that could, potentially, apply to many makers of similar technology: the majority of LCD panels show color at only 6 bits of depth per RGB element, for a total of only about 260,000 colors. However, finely-detailed dithering at the sub-pixel level tricks our eyes into perceiving millions, as would be seen in a true-color 8-bit display.

Continue reading "Million-Color Myth; Apple's Not Alone Making 6-Bit Displays" »

The inability of some citizens to take responsibility for themselves is proved once again. Fred Greaves and Dave Gatley of San Diego have filed a suit against Apple, claiming that, among other things, the displays of the MacBook and MacBook Pro are either too "Sparkly" or too "Grainy".

Continue reading "Idiotic Lawsuit: Class Action Against MacBook Screens" »

There is a magic word in the Intellectual Property Protection Act, referring to what would, if the act were to become law, be considered illegal under the DMCA: "Intended." In other words, you could be punished for infringement you haven't actually committed yet, but plan to undertake.

"Any property used, or intended to be used, in any manner or part, to commit or facilitate the commission of the offense" of violating the DMCA could be confiscated."

Continue reading "Proposed I.P. Law: Gadgets Evidence Of Criminal Intent" »

You might be forgiven for putting money into the Vonage deadpool. Their beating from Verizon's patent-stick has been a textbook example of how a company can be killed by the broken US patent system.

Hope isn't dead. Jeffrey Citro, the Vonage CEO, claims that the company has come up with a way around the two patents, which describe the process of moving calls off the internet and into the phone system.

Continue reading "Vonage Episode III: A New Hope" »

Through last week's HD-DVD Process Key insanity, a common-sense claim was often made: you can't copyright a number. Though represented in hexadecimal, the key is just a series of digits, and a short one at that. However, a number certainly can be subject to copyright if it contains information that represents an original work. Everything can be represented as numeric data. Even prime numbers can be owned thanks to the data they contain: think Jpeg images.

Continue reading "The Skinny on Copyrighting Numbers" »

Take the iPhone. Right in the balls. Yes, you're the handset industry. Now, pick yourself up off the floor and get to work. How are you going to beat Cupertino's cellular side-suto?

LG's already got a good start on Jobs and the gang, managing to get its similar Prada-phone to the market first. Now it's double or nothing for the Taiwan-based company, which is set to offer a dual-touchscreen model. Brilliant!

It's even gone to the trouble of filing a patent application for this novel and wholly original concept, titled "Mobile Communication Terminal Having Multiple Displays," which reads like a long, prolix description of a Nintendo DS with a cellphone in it. The illustrations are great, though, featuring the cutest mascot yet seen in a patent filing.

Patent Filing [USPTO via Unwiredreview]

Didn't Acer get the memo? HP patented the idea of resizing video to match the display resolution. Oh, and power management. As perhaps the largest foreign importer of PCs into the United States, and the world's fourth-largest PC maker, what better target for a lawsuit based on patents that cover the bloody obvious?

This latest high-profile patent claim has HP suing Acer for the second time in a month, adding four new complaints atop the five already filed. The suit seeks an injunction to prevent the Taiwan-based company from exporting to the U.S. A simultaneous complaint was filed with the International Trade Commission.

The patents involved refer to conserving power by dialing back on video processor consumption, power management, "concurrent bus operations," and — my favorite — on resizing video output to match a display's native resolution. I kid you not. HP has patented "various methods and apparatuses" that replicate a technology inherently characteristic in the first kinematograph of the Victorian age. Maybe HP should sue Giotto for expanding his paintings to cover the entirety of a wall.

Now, maybe it's possible that Acer has stolen some specific implementations of these technologies, being quite unable, as an $11bn company, to manufacture its own. Or maybe HP has been awarded patents on vaguely described and obvious ideas, filed in pursuit of a business model that relies on the near-impossibility of mounting timely challenges to bad patents.

Legislators are doing something about this kind of strategic, speculative patent, but it comes as part of a typically pork-filled package, and it isn't really clear who the pork is for.

HP sues Acer again over patents [News.com]

Attention, owners of bad patents: your number is up! A group of legislators plan to make it easier to dismantle these houses of cards.

The Patent Reform Ac, introduced yesterday in the Senate and House, will award patents to the first to file (instead of by claimed invention date), limit damages patent holders can collect, and, more importantly, make it easier to strip companies of bad patents after they've been granted. This will simplify the system, make patent trolling less profitable, and, if not making big companies liable for bad-faith patents, at least make it easier to dismantle the consequences of such abuse.

Continue reading "Legislators Take Second Stab at Patent Reform" »

Some people were late for appointments when Daylight Savings Time came early last month, but Cody Webb, a pupil at Hempstead Area high school (Pittsburgh) got to spend the best part of two weeks in lockup.

A bomb threat against the school was left on the Student Hotline at 3.17am on March 11th. School officials checked the caller ID records against the time of the call and found a call from Cory a few minutes before.

The school hadn't set the clocks forward on the Caller ID system and Cory had in fact called an hour later earlier (although Lord knows why he was calling at such a time). In a stunning example of the innocent-until-proven-guilty rules, the principle said this to Cory when he protested innocence:

Well, why should we believe you? You're a criminal. Criminals lie all the time.

This is a horrible story. The poor kid was banged up because of a dumb mistake. Not being from the US, I tend to see lawsuits as a bad thing, but in this case I hope they really go to town on the school body's ass.

Boy jailed over clock change mix-up [Passably New via Slashdot]

This is either the stupidest or the most resourceful WiFi freeloader we've seen. An unnamed man was arrested and cautioned in the town of Redditch in the UK for leeching bandwidth from neighbors. But here's where it gets good. According to the BBC:

He attracted attention from neighbours in the early morning, as he had put up cardboard around his car windows but the light from his computer could be seen through the back window.

So the neighbors called the police on this fellow. If he hadn't made the very suspicious move of blanking out the windows, would anyone have noticed?

Seriously, guy, just go to a Starbucks.

Two cautioned over wi-fi 'theft' [BBC]

If we needed further proof that YouTube will cave to anyone, here it is.

A 15 year old Australian schoolboy said he represented ABC Television and sent documentation to YouTube demanding they take down all episodes of "The Chaser's War on Everything", a comedy satire show on ABC which carries out this kind of prank itself.

YouTube complied and started sending out infringement notices to users.

This is a great prank, to be sure, but it's a little worrying that YouTube is performing absolutely no checks to prevent this kind of thing.

Teen apologises over ABC YouTube sham [NineMSN]

It looks like cell phone users in the EU will be able to rest easy when making international roaming calls: lawmakers intend to cap what operators can charge to 40 eurocents a minute outgoing and 15 eurocents a minute incoming.

A vote will be held in May to approve the deal, which the EU Commissions expects to see reduce roaming bills by 70 percent.

Cellular charges are an excellent illustration of how artificial complexity and obfuscation can, when used by a cartel-esque group of providers, make it extraordinarily difficult for a reasonable customer to understand what they're receiving in a contract and what they'll have to pay for it.

Price caps are a typical social-democratic solution to this, curing the ailment but not really preventing similar problems from arising. The American way should be to let them charge what they want, but force them to quit with all the bullcrap service plans. A law regulating cellular service contracts, similar to those which bind tenancy agreements, might be just the ticket.

Story [AFP]

A 15-year-old boy has apologized to the Australian Broadcasting Company after pretending to represent them in demanding the removal of hundreds of video clips from YouTube.

After sending a signed form telling the site to rid itself of footage, YouTube apparently not only did so without any attempt to verify the order, but threatened the original uploaders with the closure of their accounts if they reupped the material. ABC, it turns out, expressly didn't want the material removed. Here's their head of comedy, Courtney Gibson:

"But what was of concern to us was the fact that YouTube was sending copyright infringement notices to people who have been uploading Chaser clips to YouTube, threatening to shut down their access to YouTube if they persist. That's what was worrying to us."

It turns out that ABC encourages sharing the show in question, The Chaser's War on Everything, as it's the the kind of satirical comedy series that intelligent broadcasters like to have doing the viral rounds.

Teen apologises over ABC YouTube sham [MSN]

Are you a Vonage customer? Have you paid them more than $275 since signing on? If not, they haven't even broken even with you yet.

Furthermore, that's just counting the PR and advertising they bought to get you onboard in the first place. It doesn't include infrasctructure and operating expenses. It certainly doesn't include the $50m judgement awarded against them, mindlessly affirming the bureacratic fact that Verizon owns the innovative and completely non-obvious concept of putting VoIP calls through to standard landlines.

Anyway, the Guardian notes that CEO Michael Snyder is toast, 10 percent of the workforce is toast, and the stock price is browning at the edges. Time to butter the beast and call it a bagel?

If it croaks, Vonage's corpse should be mounted on the battering ram of patent reform: making it easier to challenge bad awards is one of the first steps to making the system work again.

Is Vonage Toast? [Guardian]

LG has issued stern warnings to Hong Kong retailers ordering them not to stock Chinese knockoffs of their Shine handset. According to reports, stores have complied, making this an interesting pre-emptive strike against the copycats.

While in this case it's clear that the targeted handsets are clones, imagine if we got to the point where patent trolls were able to simply order retailers, on pain of lawsuit, not to stock their competitors' products? And without so much as an ITC or Federal District Court filing.

Nah. Couldn't happen here.

LG Threatens To Sue

Toshiba is suing everyone. "Everyone" is hereby defined as Daewoo, jWIN and Memcorp in the U.S. and various Chinese and H.K. companies useing the Dongguan, GVC, Star Light and Tonic marques abroad.

The complaint, filed with the International Trade Comission and in federal district court, seeks to halt alleged infringement of Toshi-owned patents related to DVD players. It also seeks to prohibit importation to the U.S. of players and recorders and whatnot made by the targeted firms.

Toshiba claims that it "licenses patents essential for meeting DVD format specifications," and that the listed companies haven't licensed them. This appears to imply that Toshiba thinks they get to do the licensing shakedown on anyone who tries to make a DVD player, somehow, but the press release doesn't indicate exactly what the patents cover, so it's impossible to determine whether there is actually something innovative and specific being protected here, or if it's just speculative patent trolling.

In other patent licensing news, the agreement between Nokia and Qualcomm just expired. It's time, as they say, for popcorn and hotdogs.

Press Release [Toshiba]

Earlier today we posted a link to i-Mate's 2007 product roadmap. The document originated with Brightpoint, a distributor of mobile phones, as attested to by the prominent watermarks on every single blinkin' page of the PDF.

This afternoon, we received a "cease and desist" letter from Brightpoint's lawyers, demanding that we remove some unspecified "Unauthorized Materials" from our web site "pertaining to i-Mate's 2007 Product Roadmap." So thank you, Mr. Craig Carpenter, for confirming that this is in fact i-Mate's product lineup and not a hoax or spoof.

However, since the PDF is not hosted on our site, and since the only thing that is hosted on our site is a thumbnail image, we believe that we're well within our legal rights to continue posting the item, the photo, and the link. We can't, however, guarantee that Pocket PC Thoughts -- the site that first sleuthed up the PDF and that is currently hosting it -- will be able to keep the file online.

In other words: We're consulting our lawyers too, so in the immortal words of our fearless leader, bring it on.

UPDATE 4/6/2006: So much for our editorial bravado. Our lawyers are advising us that fighting this battle would probably cost us more than it's worth. We've removed the links, with apologies.

The entire text of the legal letter is after the jump.

Continue reading "Brightpoint Lawyers Want to Stop Us From Telling You About I-Mate" »

Hey! Let's fix broken intellectual property laws!

Following is a bunch of half-baked, I-Am-Not-A-Politican ideas to accomplish this. Will anything be done about patent-troll tulipomania? About the reasons why people hate the RIAA and its ilk so much they've come to consider theft a virtue? Of course not! But that won't stop us fantasizing.

Continue reading "How to Get the RIAA Off Our Backs and Solve the I.P. Crisis" »

Qualcomm, a slurping Lovecraftian horror decimating the mobile phone landscape with its patent porfolio, has launched two new IP lawsuits against Nokia, alleging infringements of five patents.

The suit appears to be an early round in a bigger brewing war, as a major licensing agreement between the two companies expires next monday. Qualcomm says their claim relates to downloading applications over wireless networks, which is to say, obvious functionality that ended up an effective patent due to the same old tricks.

Funnily enough, Nokia's edging toward using the "Patent Troll!" line itself, describing Qualcomm's IP strategy as a "pattern of serial litigation."

Qualcomm files new patent suits against Nokia [Reuters]

Not even a day after the world shaking announcement from Apple and EMI to drop DRM from the iTunes Store and the EU is back harassing them. Many thought that Apple's move would pacify the suits in Brussels and their lawsuit over interoperability, but those Cupertino boys just can't catch a break.

A European commission is investigating the pricing of the the iTunes store across the continent. They say that

"Consumers can only buy music from the iTunes online stores in their country of residence and are therefore restricted in their choice of where to buy music."

Apple countered with the expected claim that it was the record companies wot dunnit:

"We were advised by the music labels and publishers that there were certain legal limits to the rights they could grant us."

The EU wants to force equal pricing across countries and let customers buy from any store, not just the one in their own country. At the moment a regular 99c iTune will cost $1.56 in the UK.
Although it would be a welcome change if the prices were to come in line with those in the US, I really just want to be able to download Lost.

EU price probe into Apple iTunes [BBC]

While it's almost impossible to believe anything you read on the Internet on April 1st, this one is looking more likely than most.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Steve Jobs appearance at the Apple event in London is not about The Beatles, as everyone thought, but an announcement from Apple and EMI that they plan "to sell significant amounts of its catalog without anticopying software".

This is potentially amazing news. Steve Jobs has made it pretty clear that he wants to go DRM free at the iTunes Store, and EMI have been toying with the idea for a while. It's obvious to most people that DRM only hurts the honest user. Any pirates can and do break copy protection easily. This could be the day the record industry finally saves itself.

EMI to Sell Music Without Anticopying Software [WSJ, behind paywall, via PSFK]

We throw our hat into the ring and declare that we too shall be damned if patent system defenders aren't being disingenuous when they trot out the idea that patents exist to encourage "disclosure" rather than to defend innovative propriety. It's delusory ivory-tower silliness.

From Techdirt:

"There's a simple response to that ... If there's economic benefit to keeping an idea secret, and the creator of that idea knows that he or she can keep it secret for greater than the length of the patent, then there's still no incentive to disclose. They'll simply keep the idea as a secret, because the economic benefit of it being a trade secret is much greater than the value of the patent."

While disclosure meant something in the past, it's much harder today to imagine scenarios where this remains the case. Intellectual Property is a world of speculative, strategic civil actions built on deliberately vague, incomplete and imprecise patent applications: it's a chess game played by huge corporations in a legal world which would be alien to the concerns and intent of those who framed the relevant laws.

In short, the modern business of defending I.P. practically mandates that "inventors" say as little as possible about their invention, and research and disclose as little as possible about anything similar, so as to avoid any liability implicit in such knowledge.

Can We Get Rid Of The Disclosure Myth For Patents? [Techdirt]

IBM's announcement of an optical transceiver that can download data at an amazing speed of 160 Gigabits a second prompted me to do some math. After converting 160 Gigabits into 20 Gigabytes, I saw that a digitized feature-length film in an .avi format totals about 700 Megabytes. So by my calculations, IBM's device would allow you to download about 28.8 movies in a split second. An HD movie could be downloaded in about one second as well, IBM said.

I can hardly wait for the day to happen when you can download any film you want, when you want for a reasonable price anywhere in the world in just a fraction of a second--although now I am blocked from buying a movie download or other licensed digital content from the U.S. sites I tried from where I live in Europe--for whatever idiotic licensing reason. That same reasoning, whatever it is, helps to explain why DVDs you pay a lot of money for cannot be played on players from different zones around the world. Should I mention DRM restrictions, as well? Sadly, if and when IBM's optical transceiver does see application, the technology might just not mean that much as far as what you will be able to do with it.

Best Buy has been forced to admit that it runs a secret in-store version of its website which denies customers the prices advertised at BestBuy.com.

Best Buy spokesman Justin Barner, who earlier claimed the employee-only site did not exist, now says the company is "cooperating fully" with the investigation that pressured them into owning up. From Courant.com's George Gombossy:

"(Connecticut) State Attorney General Richard Blumenthal ordered the investigation into Best Buy's practices on Feb. 9 after my column disclosed the website and showed how employees at two Connecticut stores used it to deny customers a $150 discount on a computer advertised on BestBuy.com."

Blumethal seems far from happy, however, as Best Buy still won't tell him what the site's purpose is — "Their answers are less than crystal clear" — as if it wasn't bloody obvious: it lets Best Buy salespeople trick customers into paying higher prices than they would at BestBuy.com, using an near-identical clone of the public site.

Best Buy is in similar trouble in New Jersey and Ohio, having been accused of similar offenses, such as repackaging used merchandise and selling them as new, and for refusing to fulfill rebates. It'd be easy to to rant about how Best Buy plays a careful game of legal brinkmanship, screwing its market (you) exactly as ruthlessly as it thinks it can get away with, but the real solution comes in one word: Newegg.

Best Buy Confirms It Has Secret Website [Courant.com]

As there are but two partners in a standard-issue marriage, and the union itself being an either-or state of sorts, it's appropriate that greenKarat should create a binary wedding ring.

That said, it's just a plain old ring with a 20-character message cut into five parallel tracks running along its circumference. But it's the thought that counts. Think about the love, not the price tag.

Custom carved by Gideon Weisz, a binary band will be $950 for white or yellow gold or $1,750 for platinum.

Product Page [greenKarat via ]

Sen. John McCain (R-Arizona) is planning to introduce a bill today that would require ISPs and, possibly, websites, to alert the government of illegal images of minors. According to C|Net, it would also ban cartoon smut of a like kind, making it legally no different to images that involved the actual abuse of a victim. Pictured is an image of teenaged cross-dressing combatant Bridget from Capcom's Guilty Gear, a game series that might have to tone it down a bit should this legislation pass.

He'll be announcing it this afternoon at a Capitol Hill press conference with co-sponsor Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-New York), John Walsh of America's Most Wanted, and Miss America.

The Securing Adolescents from Exploitation-Online Act states that ISPs that find an illegal image must make an "exhaustive report" including time, date, content, the personal information of responsible users, IP addresses, and so on.

The legislation would affect any "service which provides to users thereof the ability to send or receive wire or electronic communications." Nice and specific, eh?

If the technology to scan for pictures of victims of abuse exists and can be simply deployed, I'm fine with businesses being told to keep their houses in order. The idea, however, that authorities can look at a painting and subjectively determine it as the same matter — despite there being no victim — is unsettling. Who is protected? The problem with it is that it changes the law to stop protecting people, like the victims of abuse, to instead start protecting things, like society and morality. This isn't a strengthening of the law, but a dilution of it.

Securing Adolescents from Exploitation-Online Act (PDF) [Politechbot]

Senator to propose surveillance of illegal images [Cnet]