p2pnet - rss feed: p2pnet headline roundups, May 15, 2008
p2pnet headline roundups | Last of the day
Cox, Comcast Internet subscribers blocked - Associated Press
Cox Communications appears to be interfering with file-sharing by its Internet subscribers in the same manner that has landed Comcast Corp. in hot water with regulators, according to research obtained by The Associated Press. A study based on the participation of 8,175 Internet users around the world found conclusive signs of blocked file-sharing connections only at three Internet service providers: Comcast and Cox in the U.S. and StarHub in Singapore. Of the 788 Comcast subscribers who participated in the study, 491, or 62 percent, had their connections blocked. At Cox, 82 out of 151 subscribers, or 54 percent, were blocked, according to Krishna Gummadi at the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems in Saarbruecken, Germany.
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Company Hopes To Challenge CRB’s Existence - Billboard
Royalty Logic hopes to challenge the very existence of the U.S. Copyright Royalty Board, which sets rates for compulsory licenses under federal copyright law. The company filed a motion on Tuesday with the federal Appeals Court in Washington, D.C., which will be hearing the webcasters’ appeal of the CRB’s rate decision from last year, asking for permission to file additional legal arguments. The arguments challenge the constitutionality of the law that created the CRB. Royalty Logic was a party in the webcaster rate trial. The company wanted the authority to compete with SoundExchange, which the CRB denied. SoundExchange is the only organization currently authorized to license and collect royalties for sound recording owners, musicians and vocalists under section 114 of the Copyright Act.
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Microsoft discourages competition, Britain says - Associated Press
A British watchdog agency said Tuesday it had complained to European Union regulators that Microsoft’s new file format for storing documents discouraged competition. Britain’s agency for education and information technology said it wanted to help the EU with an investigation it launched in January into whether the software giant deliberately withheld information from rivals. The current controversy centers on the ability of other companies to create products compatible with Microsoft’s new file format, Office Open XML, which stores Word, Excel and PowerPoint files. This comes on the heels of other EU antitrust action against Microsoft that resulted in $2.63 billion in fines over how Microsoft’s Windows operating system works with rivals’ programs and how it was bundled for sale.
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ACS calls for internet ’snoop’ safeguards - Australian IT
Australia’s IT industry group is calling on the federal Government to adopt guidelines surrounding the use of workplace internet records. The Australian Computer Society (ACS) has made its submission as part of the government’s review of the country’s privacy laws. “Historically, Australia has had strong laws regulating interception of telephone communications,” ACS president Kumar Parakala said. “Thought needs to be given to how (current privacy laws) can be adapted and the appropriate balance achieved to ensure national security is not compromised but people’s reasonable expectations of privacy are not violated.” Among the list of recommendations, the ACS wants to see the mandatory publishing of an employer’s email and web use policy, guidelines on who can authorise the accessing of employee emails, a logging system to identify when email records are accessed, and random auditing of those logs.
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Harvey Schein, Promoter of Betamax at Sony, Dies at 80 - New York Times
Mr. Schein led the Sony Corporation of America in the 1970s and doubled its size in spite of championing the failed Betamax video recording system.
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