Motions adjourned in SONY BMG Music Entertainment v. Tenenbaum Recording Industry vs The People
In SONY BMG Music Entertainment v. Tenenbaum, the defendant’s motion for reconsideration as to video streaming was denied, and all of the other motions have been adjourned to June 5th.

EU reaches draft deal over Internet spat Reuters
The European Union has reached a draft deal to resolve a spat holding up a sweeping reform of the bloc’s telecom sector, lawmakers and diplomats said on Tuesday. The battle over handling copyright abuse has emerged as a final sticking point between EU states and the European Parliament, which have a joint say on the reform. “Subject to final agreement by all member states tomorrow I do think we have a package which will advance the European telecoms sector,” said Malcolm Harbour, a British center-right member of the European Parliament. “I am absolutely delighted. It has been deeply frustrating to feel this one issue which was not in any way at the center of what we were doing could derail two years of work,” Harbour said. Another source in parliament confirmed the deal. A draft deal was reached at a meeting between the Czech EU presidency and members of parliament on Tuesday.

MPAA: RealNetworks could strip DVD copy limits CNet News
The film industry in court Tuesday tried to show a federal judge that the software known as RealDVD entrusts its creator, Real Networks, with the job of protecting digital film copies from piracy. U.S. District Judge Marilyn Patel resumed hearing testimony in the legal dispute between the largest movie studios and Real. The Motion Picture Association of America claimed in a lawsuit filed last fall that the company’s RealDVD software, which enables people to copy DVDs and store them to a hard drive, violates copyright law. Patel halted sales of RealDVD last fall. Robert Schumann, an expert on securing DVDs who was called to testify by the MPAA, told Patel that RealDVD introduces a set of copy protection schemes for the copies made by RealDVD. The software’s copy controls can be altered or removed all together from Real’s servers in the form of a software update. Schumann told Patel that those limits could easily be removed all together by buy removing just one line of code.

Windows Vista SP1 blocking expires Heise Online
Users who do not wish Windows Update to automatically install a service pack straight after release can download a blocking tool from Microsoft to prevent this. However the blocking is in all cases time limited. As previously announced, blocking for Service Pack? for Vista it expires today (Wednesday) and as a result, SP1 will now be distributed via Windows Update even to users who have applied the tool. The expiry date for blocking Windows XP Service Pack is also looming. In this case the expiry date is 19th May.

Scammers, Spammers Embrace Swine Flu News Washington Post
There’s something vaguely diabolical about a form of unwanted communication named after a brand of canned, chopped pork that piggybacks on a public health scare involving a flu strain derived from swine. Yes, you guessed it: Spammers have seized upon public awareness around the Swine Flu epidemic to hawk knockoff prescription drugs. And we’re not talking about flu vaccines, either.

Ex-DoubleClick CEO Rosenblatt To Leave Google New York Times
David Rosenblatt, Google’s president of global display advertising, will leave the company on May 15, the latest in a string of top sales execs who have left Google or moved on to new roles in recent weeks. Analysts said that the departure of Mr. Rosenblatt, who is leading Google’s efforts in display advertising, is a cause for concern by investors. Google has said that building its display advertising business is one of the company’s top strategic priorities. The company has not yet been able to make major inroads into that market. “We are nervous about the exodus of senior executives at Google,” said Ross Sandler, an analyst with RBC Capital Markets.

Court climax premature for Madonna of Orgasm Church The Local
The Madonna of Orgasm Church (Orgasmens Madonnas kyrka) has suffered a disappointing reversal following a Swedish court ruling that the church`s name is unacceptable and offensive. The church`s founder, artist Carlos Bebeacua who resides in Lövestad in southern Sweden, has been fighting a lengthy legal battle in his bid to have the Madonna of Orgasm Church registered as a faith community in Sweden. Founded by Bebeacua in the early 1990s, the Madonna of Orgasm Church is centered on a similarly named painting by Bebeacua which sparked protests during the 1992 World`s Fair in Seville, Spain. “The orgasm is God, the orgasm should be worshiped,” Bebeacua once told the Kvällsposten newspaper.

Flu Scare Scares Off Wolverine IMDb
Twentieth Century Fox has canceled Wednesday’s Mexico City premiere of X-Men Origins: Wolverine, citing the swine flu, which has claimed more than 150 lives in that country. Hugh Jackman, who stars in the title role, had been expected to attend the gala, which the studio says will be “postponed.”

Apple CEO stays home; attorney makes case for demolishing Woodside home Mercury News
Steve Jobs stayed home Tuesday night, leaving his attorney to make the case to the Woodside Town Council that he should be allowed to demolish his historic 14-bedroom house and build a new one. “I don’t think he would be strong enough if we were here until 1 a.m., and I think there’s a strong possibility of that,” Howard Ellman told the council, referring to the health issues that have forced his client to take a leave of absence from his job as Apple CEO. Ellman was right that the meeting would run late into the night. As of 10:30 p.m., the council was still hearing arguments from members of the public, including locals defending Jobs’ property rights and historic preservationists from as far away as Florida and Virginia making their case to save the home. The tech mogul has been trying for years to tear down the dilapidated mansion and replace it with a smaller, presumably sleeker, home for his family to move into. He got permits from the town in 2004, but preservationists sued to save the structure and have prevailed in court so far.

Follow p2pnet on Twitter.

April, 2009