p2pnet World Headlines: Feb 5, 2010
Judge Tosses EMI’s Case Against Seeqpod Founders GigaOm
UPDATE: A U.S. District Court judge has thrown out a complaint by record label EMI against the founders of now-defunct music search engine Seeqpod, effectively ending a year-old case that attracted special attention because it also named as a defendant a developer who had used the company’s application programming interface (API). Earlier this week, Judge Laura Taylor Swain granted Seeqpod’s founders’ motion to dismiss the case against them, citing a lack of personal jurisdiction in the U.S. District Court of the Southern District of New York.
Rulings Leave Online Student Speech Rights Unresolved Wired
Do American students have First Amendment rights beyond the schoolyard gates? The answer is yes and no, according to two conflicting federal appellate decisions Thursday testing student speech in the online world. ‘Ultimately, the Supreme Court is going to have to decide if there ever is a time students have full-fledged First Amendment rights,’ said Frank LoMonte, executive director of Virginia-Based Student Press Law Center. He’s one of the attorneys in the cases the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decided. The U.S. Supreme Court has never squarely addressed the parameters of off-campus, online student speech, but might soon. So far, lower courts appear to be guided by a 1969 high court ruling saying student expression may not be suppressed unless school officials reasonably conclude that it will ‘materially and substantially disrupt the work and discipline of the school.’ In that landmark case, the Supreme Court said students had a First Amendment right to wear black armbands to protest the Vietnam War. But that precedent, which addressed on-campus speech, is now being applied to students’ online speech four decades later.
Curran uses Clinton speech to criticise ACTA, s92A Computerworld
Opposition ICT spokesperson Clare Curran is using Hillary Clinton’s recent speech on internet freedom to renew criticism of Section 92A of New Zealand’s Copyright Act and the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). Clinton, speaking in Washington in the wake of attacks allegedly by the Chinese government on the sites of major US companies and local dissidents, compared ‘the freedom to connect — the idea that governments should not prevent people from connecting to the internet, to websites, or to each other’ to the basic right of freedom of assembly in the physical world. ‘I’ve been writing quite a bit about this,’ Curran wrote on the Labour Party’s RedAlert blog recently ‘and thinking about the wider issue of the right of our citizens to equitably access the internet (which implies that they shouldn’t be cut off from access).’ Section 92A, in spite of being considerably liberalised in its second draft, still retains the ultimate penalty of disconnection from the internet for six months for the offence of repeatedly trading copyright material on the internet. The draft Bill is yet to go through the Parliamentary process.
DOJ not pleased with latest Google Book agreement CNet news
Comcast and NBC Universal executives went to Washington, D.C., on Thursday to answer lawmakers’ questions about the proposed deal for Comcast to buy a controlling stake in the media and network TV giant. In separate subcommittee hearings, lawmakers in the House of Representatives and the Senate questioned Comcast CEO Brian Roberts and NBC Universal President and CEO Jeff Zucker. Specifically, they asked how the $37 billion proposed merger between the nation’s largest cable company and the TV network and movie studio would affect consumers’ cable prices, the budding online TV business, and the distribution of cable and broadcast TV content. Sparks flew during the Senate subcommittee hearing on antitrust issues when Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) said he didn’t trust his former bosses at NBC to live up to their promises. Franken, a former comedian, worked for several years on NBC’s Saturday Night Live, and he even had a short-lived sitcom on NBC in the early 1990s called “Lateline.”
Jack Layton diagnosed with prostate cancer Canadian Press
Jack Layton says he has been diagnosed with prostate cancer and will stay on as leader of the federal NDP while he’s being treated. Layton says he intends to battle the disease and win, just as his father did. He says his treatment plan is underway and he’s feeling good, and joked that could give him more time to watch the Winter Olympics.
Apple CEO Steve Jobs Talks iPad to New York Times Execs, Says Report eWeek
Apple CEO Steve Jobs reportedly visited New York City to talk with New York Times executives about porting their content onto the company’s iPad tablet PC, which is widely expected to be a formidable competitor in the e-reader arena. Companies such as Amazon.com have previously signed deals with The New York Times and other media companies to port media onto their e-readers, although recent tussles between Amazon and book publishers suggests that more deal-wrangling is imminent as the iPad heads towards release.
..… and identi.ca
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi
February, 2010
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