p2pnet headline roundup – Jan 9, 2009
Rick Boucher heading telecom committee – Hollywood Reporter
Veteran lawmaker Ed Markey will be handing over the reins of the House telecom subcommittee to Virginia Democrat Rick Boucher, a co-author of the Anti-Spam Act of 2003 who has been a leader in telecom issues as well. Boucher, in taking over the telecom panel, will give up leadership of the Subcommittee on Energy and Environment. It means that Markey, who has been instrumental in the telecom committee, will have a much lesser hand in shaping media and telecom policy in the new 111th Congress. But Markey said in a statement Thursday afternoon that he would work with Boucher on the DTV transition that is scheduled to take place in a little more than a month.
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Obama Pushes for Digital-TV Delay – Wall Street Journal
President-elect Barack Obama’s transition team asked Congress Thursday to consider delaying the U.S.’s planned Feb. 17 switch to digital-only television, citing concerns about consumer readiness for the transition. “We have discovered major difficulties in the preparation for the February 17 conversion,” wrote John Podesta, co-chair of the Obama transition team in a letter to congressional leaders Thursday. “In addition, the government’s programs to assist consumers through the upheaval of the conversion are inadequately funded.” The Obama team asked Congress to reconsider the Feb. 17 analog cut-off date and push it back further into 2009.
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LA judge hears bid to dismiss MySpace conviction – Washington Post
An attorney for a woman convicted in a MySpace hoax directed at a teen who ended up committing suicide asked a judge to dismiss her convictions Thursday, saying a computer-fraud law was improperly used to prosecute her. U.S. District Court Judge George Wu did not immediately rule after oral arguments and will likely issue a written decision, although he didn’t indicate when. He did set an April 30 sentencing date for Lori Drew, who was not present. Drew was found guilty in November of three misdemeanor counts of accessing computers without authorization. Prosecutors said the Missouri woman violated MySpace service rules by helping create a fictitious teen boy on the social networking site and sent flirtatious messages from him to 13-year-old neighb Megan Meier, a former friend of Drew’s daughter.
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Get ready for the collision of social networking and peer-to-peer file sharing – CNET News
With the beta release of LimeWire 5.0 (download for Windows| Mac), which was announced at the Consumer Electronics Show here, the popular P2P service is incorporating a social element that will enable people using Jabber-compatible services like Gmail to share files with friends on their buddy lists. Lime Wire calls this a “personal sharing network.” The idea, said Lime Wire CEO George Searle, is to add trusted context to user searches for content, given that people are more likely to want–and feel comfortable with–content from people they know.
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Ex-’Sopranos’ actor gets 10 years in prison – Associated Press
A former actor on “The Sopranos” was sentenced Friday to 10 years in prison for a botched burglary in the Bronx in which an accomplice shot and killed an off-duty police officer. A jury acquitted Lillo Brancato Jr. in the death of the police officer, but convicted him of attempted burglary. He faced up to 15 years in prison.
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