p2pnet headline roundup, September 17, 2008
Election officials poke around Facebook vote-swapping group – CBC News
Canada’s election watchdog is probing whether a vote-swapping group set up on Facebook is illegal or just strategic voting. The online group, titled “Anti-Harper Vote Swap Canada,” is trying to match Canadians who are willing to swap votes to keep the Conservatives from winning a majority in the Oct. 14 federal election. More than 1,200 people had become members of the group by early Friday evening, two days after its creation. Chief electoral officer Marc Mayrand said Friday that Elections Canada is looking into the scheme. In an interview with Canadian Press, Mayrand said it may be nothing more than “organized strategic voting,” but it could also fall afoul of a law prohibiting people from selling votes or accepting bribes for them. “Right now, we have very little information,” Mayrand said about the group.
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Australia issues first license to clone human embryos - Reuters
[OT] The Australian government has issued its first license allowing scientists to create cloned human embryos to try and obtain embryonic stem cells. The in vitro-fertilization firm Sydney IVF was granted the license and reportedly has access to 7,200 human eggs for its research. If the firm is successful it would be a world first, the Australian government’s National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC), which granted the license, said on Wednesday.
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Danish ISPs Reject Anti-Piracy Proposals – TorrentFreak
Danish ISPs have rejected proposals from the IFPI for a ‘3-strikes and you’re out’ policy to deal with illicit file-sharers. In a joint statement, the telecoms companies said that they would not be a part of ‘detection and monitoring’ activities and that the solution to piracy should come from elsewhere. Efforts to reach a voluntary agreement between the IFPI and ISPs in Denmark on the issue of unauthorized file-sharing have failed. The telecoms companies have completely rejected the demands of the music industry.The IFPI wanted to be able to hunt down file-sharers, report them to their ISP and have them implement a so-called ‘3 strikes’ policy. They proposed that the first time someone got caught sharing copyrighted files, they would receive a warning from the ISP, the second time they would have their Internet connection slowed down. After a third warning, or strike, the user would be disconnected from his ISP and banished from the Internet.
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7digital first to sign up big four to unrestricted MP3 – The Guardian
A UK start-up yesterday stole a march on digital music rivals such as Apple’s iTunes and Amazon by becoming the first in Europe to offer the catalogues of all four of the big labels free of rights restrictions.London-based 7digital, which launched in 2004, said the move to offer the majority of its 4m tracks in MP3 was a major step forward for the music industry. It also vowed to boost download sales, which have been growing – but not fast enough to make up for a decline in CD sales – by slashing the price of album downloads. It will offer some new albums at £5 and back-catalogue titles at £2 and £3.
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Canadian changes name to dodge US ‘no-fly’ list – SindhToday.net
Fed up with repeated detentions at American airports for seven years, a Canadian businessman, whose name figures mistakenly on the US ‘no-fly’ list, has changed his name to dodge airport security. Montreal-based Mario Labbe, who wonders how his name landed on the US terror watch list, has added the word Francois to his name to avoid grilling and detention at US airports. He says he wrote to the US Department of Homeland Security to remove his name from the watch list. But the department wrote back saying his name was included in 2004 probably after he became a victim of identity theft.
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DVD sales flat, but still dwarf downloads – CNET News
DVD sales are flat but the drop doesn’t have anything to do with movie downloads, according to the NPD Group. The research group reported Tuesday that, on average, consumers spent 41 percent of the money budgeted for movies and other video content by purchasing DVDs of films. Movie rentals on DVD were the next biggest category with 29 percent. Consumers spent 11 percent purchasing TV shows on DVD. About 18 percent went to theater tickets, according to the report. Here’s the kicker for Internet video: only 0.5 percent was spent on renting or purchasing TV shows or movies off the Web.
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