Techdirt On Performance Rights Act RIAA [No! Really!]
Mike Masnick, a reliable RIAA critic, recently posted another piece about the Performance Rights Act. The case he makes is colorful (the PRA is called both “silly” and “ridiculous” before the first graph is even finished), well written and grounded in enough truth to appear compelling, but ultimately a distorted and misleading review of the facts and history. Masnick appears to cherry-pick the facts (or purported facts) most helpful to his argument and avoid the rest…. [Comment: Also see p2pnetRIAA telepathy: reading Masnick’s mind ]

Norway Decides Privacy Is More Important Than Protecting The Entertainment Industry’s Business Model TechDirt
It appears that Norway has decided that it’s sick of passing laws designed to prop up obsolete industry business models at the expense of individual privacy. First, the country started telling ISPs to delete log files after just three weeks (making it pretty hard to identify individual filesharers), and now it’s refused to renew the license given to the one law firm allowed to sniff IP addresses in trying to seek out unauthorized file sharing.

Elsevier Won’t Pay for Praise InsideHigherED
As if the textbook industry didn’t have an image problem already… Elsevier officials said Monday that it was a mistake for the publishing giant’s marketing division to offer $25 Amazon gift cards to anyone who would give a new textbook five stars in a review posted on Amazon or Barnes & Noble. While those popular Web sites’ customer reviews have long been known to be something less than scientific, and prone to manipulation if an author has friends write on behalf of a new work, the idea that a major academic publisher would attempt to pay for good reviews angered some professors who received the e-mail pitch.

German Court Says Rapidshare Must Get Magical Powers To Know Which Songs Infringe And Which Do Not TechDirt
Last year, the German music collection society GEMA sued Rapidshare claiming that the company had to filter out any infringing content. Of course, this makes little to no practical sense. Rapidshare is a platform that users use to share content. Rapidshare itself has no way of knowing whether the content is infringing or not, and any liability should be on the users, not the platform. But… courts don’t always understand such things, and so a German court has now ruled that Rapidshare must stop certain songs from being distributed. GEMA, of course, is thrilled … [Also see Big Music lawyers, investigators, score ]

Security Breach Leaves 45,000 at Risk of Identity Theft Cornell Sun
On Tuesday Cornell informed more than 45,000 current and former members of the University community that their sensitive personal information — including name and social security number — had been exposed when a University-owned laptop was stolen earlier this month.

Apple wins right to continue Hackintosh beating The Register
Erstwhile Apple clone-maker Psystar is trying to escape, but Apple won’t let them. Psystar, which announced its line of Mac clones just over a year ago, filed for bankruptcy this May in order to elude Apple’s legal minions – but Cupertino is having none of it. And neither is the judge. Last Friday, Judge Robert A. Mark of the US Bankruptcy Court of the Southern District of Florida signed an order allowing Apple to proceed in its copyright-infringement case against the Florida ex-Hackintosher.

China blocks Google website Financial Times
Google’s global website was blocked in China on Wednesday night, marking an escalation in Beijing’s unprecedented crackdown on the world’s leading search engine company. Attempts to access Google.com and Gmail from different computers in Beijing started failing after 9pm local time, but the websites could be accessed through proxy servers – normally a sign that a website is being blocked by internet censors. The service in Beijing at least was back after two hours.

UK Newspaper Agency Wants To Regulate, Charge For Linking Privileges TechDirt
…the rather amusing news that the Newspaper Licensing Agency in the UK, which currently licenses things like clippings and reprints of newspaper articles, has now declared that it also controls the right to link to newspaper sources, if done for commercial purposes. So, for example, PR services that used to send out clippings, but now just send out links to online sources will soon have to pay up, according to the agency. This is quite an interesting interpretation of how the web works, to claim some sort of extended right to how one can use a link to your site. It’s basically saying “to hell with the way the web works –

Woolworths resurrected as online store Canoe
The 100-year-old Woolworths brand was resurrected on Thursday as an online store almost six months after the retailing stalwart went bankrupt and shut down its high street shops. The new brand owner, Shop Direct, reportedly paid administrators for the failed company between 5 and 10 million pounds (US$8-16 million) to take on the name of a company that was once a household favorite.

Britain looks to geeks to foil cyber foes Canoe
Britain is hiring former computer hackers to join a new security unit aimed at protecting cyberspace from foreign spies, thieves and terrorists, the country’s terrorism minister said.

Swedish court says Pirate Bay judge not biased Reuters
The judge who sentenced four men to prison for running The Pirate Bay, one of the world’s biggest free file-sharing websites, was not biased, a Swedish court of appeal ruled on Thursday.

Australia wants to censor online games The Inquirer
The China of the South Pacific, formally known as Australia, has found something else it wants to censor. Not happy with its failed attempts to build a system similar to the Great Firewall of China, the Aussie governmeent has now set its sights on gamers, promising to use its Internet censorship regime to block websites hosting and selling video games that are not suitable for 15 year olds. Australia is the only developed country without an R18+ classification for games, meaning any titles that do not meet the MA15+ standard are banned. This blacklisting will be done at the ISP level and people will not have the option to tell their ISP to let them have access to that particular game. [Additional: Web filters to censor video games http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/games/web-filters-to-censor-video-games-20090625-cxrx.html]

Microsoft installs surprise windows updates-Even if you don’t want them The Inquirer
Software giant Microsoft has been installing updates against the wishes of users who have set up their computers to stop them deploying patches without permission. According to Windows Secrets’ Brian Livingston, users who have set options in Windows Update, the operating system’s default update service, to require their okay before installing patches have watched in horror as updates have been installed automatically despite their wishes.

True Blood: WSJ publisher calls Google a “digital vampire” with “fangs,” “sucking blood” out of publishing biz BoingBoing

In a recent discussion of why his newspaper business is failing, Dow Jones Chief Executive Les Hinton called Google a ‘digital vampire.” Presumably, this makes the Wall Street Journal and other Dow Jones publications zombies, because their antiquated business models amount to a dead man walking…. By offering its content free on the Web, the newspaper industry “gave Google’s fangs a great place to bite,” he continued. “We will never know what might have happened had newspapers taken a different approach.”

DHS to Cut Police Access to Spy-Satellite Data Washington Post
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced yesterday that she will kill a controversial Bush administration program to expand the use of spy satellites by domestic law enforcement and other agencies. Napolitano said she acted after state and local law enforcement officials said that access to secret overhead imagery was not a priority. Two years ago, President George W. Bush’s top intelligence and homeland security officials authorized the National Applications Office (NAO) to expand sharing of satellite data with domestic agencies. But congressional Democrats barred funding for what they said could become a new platform for domestic surveillance that would raise privacy and civil liberties concerns.

U.S. urges China to revoke Internet filter requirement Reuters
Top U.S. officials urged China Wednesday to abandon its proposal to require Internet filters installed on personal computers starting next month, warning the step could violate world trade rules. “China is putting companies in an untenable position by requiring them, with virtually no public notice, to pre-install software that appears to have broad-based censorship implications and network security issues,” U.S. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke said in a statement. China says the “Green Dam” Internet filtering software is needed to protect children from pornographic and violent images. [Also see Green Dam censor boss gets death threats ]

Marc – p2pnet

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