p2pnet World Headlines: Jan 5, 2010
Fresh legal woes for ConnectU founders CNet News
It must have been quite the unwanted holiday gift: CNET has learned that there’s a new lawsuit on the table against Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, the identical twins who alleged that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg stole their code and business plan–and who will be prominent supporting characters in the forthcoming film “The Social Network.” Now, a former partner of the twins claims in the suit that he was shut out of ConnectU’s own business and is owed a part of the settlement it recovered from the Facebook suit. The court complaint obtained by CNET, filed December 21 in Superior Court in Suffolk County, Mass., names as defendants ConnectU, the Winklevoss twins, their father and investor Howard Winklevoss, their business partner Divya Narendra, and their attorney Scott Mosko along with his firm Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett, & Dunner. The suit attempts to recover damages for the denial of plaintiff Wayne Chang’s alleged ownership rights in ConnectU, as well as to charge the legal team with negligence and a failure to represent Chang adequately in court. He states in the complaint that he retains a 15 percent stake in ConnectU, held a 50 percent stake in the now-dissolved joint venture he formed with the twins, and therefore is entitled to part of the ConnectU vs. Facebook case–a $65 million mixture of cash and Facebook stock.
Piracy: The Trend Of The Decade Forbes
Defenders of digital content might overplay their hands, alienating the few paying customers they have left. Three examples make a trend. consider these: a computer company getting into the home theater PC business admits the main use of its product is watching illegally downloaded movies. An executive of a consumer electronics company says that if pornography helped popularize technologies like videotape a generation ago, then music and movie piracy is in the driver’s seat today. Finally, a venture capitalist lets on over lunch that the real high-tech executive of the decade should not be Apple’s Steve Jobs or the cofounders of Google but Sean Fanning, the kid behind the short-lived but trailblazing music “sharing” service, Napster.
Spain’s EU webpage hijacked by Mr Bean Reuters
An unidentified hacker briefly hijacked Spain’s official website for its presidency of the European Union, inserting a large smiling picture of comic character Mr Bean, an official said on Monday. The supposed resemblance of the bumbling slapstick character played by British actor Rowan Atkinson to Spain’s Socialist Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero has been a running joke in Spain for years. A recent edition of leading newspaper El Pais printed a cartoon depicting Zapatero as Mr Bean above an article critical of the government’s handling of the economy, in which unemployment has more than doubled to about 19 percent.
Antarctic’s first plane found in ice Independent
Rare things happen once in a blue moon, and on New Year’s Day a blue moon, coupled with an exceptionally low tide, uncovered a long-sought treasure in the frozen wastes of Antarctica: one of the world’s earliest aeroplanes, entombed in ice for decades. The plane – the first off the Vickers production line in Britain – was built in 1911, only eight years after the Wright brothers executed the first powered flight. It was taken to Antarctica by Douglas Mawson, the Australian explorer, but abandoned in 1914 after its engine seized up during attempts to use it as an “air tractor”, or motorised sledge. For the past three years, a team of Australian explorers has been engaged in a fruitless search for the aircraft, last seen in 1975. Then on Friday, a carpenter with the team, Mark Farrell, struck gold: wandering along the icy shore near the team’s camp, he noticed large fragments of metal sitting among the rocks, just a few inches beneath the water.
Brief outage of China’s ‘Great Firewall’ allows glimpse of Facebook, Twitter Los Angeles Times
Web users reported an outage of China’s strict Internet controls, known as the Great Firewall, for several hours Monday morning, allowing them brief access to banned Web sites such as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. Cautious excitement spread on some social-networking platforms as hope flared that Internet freedoms suddenly were being expanded after months of intensifying scrutiny. “It’s finally unblocked, reasons unknown,” wrote a blogger named EFanZh. “I hope nothing gets blocked anymore. I can’t take it any longer.” But by the time many woke up, strict restrictions had returned. Error messages once again flashed across computer screens for sites blocked by the nation’s censorship filter. “It seemed just like a dream,” said Michael Anti, a social critic and one of hundreds who tweeted about the development on Twitter.
Discovery, Imax and Sony Form 3-D Television Channel New York Times
Discovery, Imax and Sony confirmed on Tuesday that they are forming a joint venture for a 3-D television channel. The announcement was timed to coincide with this week’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, where 3-D television is expected to be a hot topic. Discovery Communications, which operates the Discovery Channel, TLC and other cable channels, will distribute the channel, which has a 2011 start date. It is expected to showcase a mix of 3-D content, including entertainment and sports. It will also show some of the natural history programming for which Discovery is well known. The three companies will own equal stakes in the channel, according to a person with knowledge of the deal.
..… and identi.ca
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi
January, 2010
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January 5th, 2010 at 11:47 pm
Author of the book Successful Lisp is being screwed out of royalty payments – he asks that you do NOT buy a copy of his work.
http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/alxc0/author_of_the_book_successful_lisp_is_being/
January 6th, 2010 at 7:28 am
The Forbes piece was better than I expected. Nice to see some more high-profile attention paid to this.