A couple is accusing Google of diminishing the value of their property and causing them "mental" suffering" for including their recluse home in the Google Maps Street View project. The road leading up to their house is apparently labeled "private", something the Street View operator must've missed. We checked the Street View footage up to the house and didn't notice any clear "private" signs, but don't take our scientific analysis as fact.
They didn't like that Google invaded their "privacy". Some of the court papers are available online, and if you check them out, you'll notice mainly boring gibberish but also the address of the home. Suing Google has already done more damage to their "privacy" than the pictures on their own.
Aaron and Christine Boring want at least $25,000 and the 360 degree pictures destroyed, but something tells us the case doesn't stand a chance against Google's well paid, state-of-the-art, corporate lawyers, which come from the best lawyer factories in the nation.
If you like yourself some BitTorrent downloading action, we recommend you help Azureus fight BitTorrent throttling ISPs like Comcast, Adelphia, SusCom, and others by installing the Network Status Monitor plug-in for Azureus / Vuze. The plug-in monitors your network traffic for anything that might prohibit your computer from utilizing its broadband connection to the fullest.
Lately, some ISPs have been using BitTorrent throttling techniques to prevent BitTorrent programs from working properly. It is understandable that ISPs need to manage their networks in order to ensure that every customer gets a fair share of the bandwidth pie, but as individuals, traffic throttling techniques take away from the service we were promised when signing up.
If you choose to share the data collected via the Network Status Monitor, the Azureus team may analyze and compare it with the data collected from other users in order to develop ways of circumventing BitTorrent throttling. The plug-in only works on Windows machines for now, but Mac support is coming.
Due to another company trademarking "G-Mail" in Germany, similar to Google's "Gmail" in the US, the search engine giant lost an appeal to use "Gmail" in the European Union. G-Mail stands for "Giersch Mail" in Germany, where Daniel Giersch runs an electronic postal delivery service -- if that's not email, we couldn't say what it is.
As a result, Gmail is now known as Google Mail in Europe. Google's email service is also known as Google Mail in the UK, where another company trademarked "Gmail" shortly after Google launched the service.
And the moral of the story is: The next time you launch any product or service, make sure to trademark the name before. As for Google, the company "got caught slippin" -- as we say in the hip hop world -- so too bad, so sad.
Not so fast, jack. The offending copyright infringements totaled just 24--that's right, twenty-four copyright protected files on the user's drive. Breaking down to nearly 10 large per infringement; the defendant Jammie Thomas was hit square in the face with the book the court threw, wiping out her finances and sending her out of the courthouse literally in tears.
As an aside, we're left to wonder if the artists infringed upon could have generated the kind of revenue which would make such an enormous judgment possible if it weren't for the enthusiasm demonstrated by fans like Jammie. After all, a business needs its customers and, like it or not, rabid filesharers are also some of music's biggest fans, and the recording industry's bread and butter.
Nevertheless, Jammie, a MySpace user, has apparently raised nearly a thousand bucks to fund her appeal of the case, courtesy of her MySpace friends. She's also receiving funds from her Native American tribe, but not nearly enough to match the might of the RIAA, whose pockets have grown deep through record sales and insanely lopsided settlement agreements.
Declan McCullough of CNET wrote that the jury instructions given before deliberation may have been slanted in favor of a heavy statutory damage claim, as high as a hundred grand per incident. Is it just us, or does this kind of onesie-twosie infringement seem like it should be covered by a different set of fines? You can get a DUI with children in the car and still get off cheaper than Jammie Thomas did.
The statement was directed to a panel of judges mulling over the legality of a Spanish file-sharing case, and could be a harbinger of things to come in the EU. Kokott's declaration essentially asserts that although ISPs can be required to turn over identities in criminal matters, file-sharing is a civil issue and therefor doesn't enjoy the same legal privileges.
Debbie Foster who recently went head to head with RIAA and then subsequently won a dismissal with prejudice in Capitol Records v. Fosteris also getting the last laugh since her attorney's fees of $68,685.23 must be paid by RIAA.
The saga began in November 2004 when Foster was sued by RIAA for copyright infringement. Rather than bowing down and taking it, Foster denied the allegations and began a legal fight with the music industry which just ended with her award for the attorney's fees.
The $68,685.23 award represents Foster's attorney's fees, and does not include the nice, big, fat attorney fees of RIAA's own counsel. You can make a fair assumption those fees are at least that of Ms. Foster's, if not more.
Let's see. Two years, hundreds of thousands of dollars, bad press, huge loss in court - not pretty. There's an old saying "He who laughs last, laughs best." As RIAA licks its wounds and hopefully figures out a new paradigm, we're laughing with Ms. Foster today.
If you ever needed proof that big media and big government are a big crock of... well, let's just say look no further than the SPY Act. The U.S. House of Representatives already sold you down the river but, the bill is currently making it's slimy way through the Senate. The EFF has an action alert on how you can tell your Senator exactly what you think of making it legal for the recording industry to install spyware on your box.
The EFF's alert puts it succinctly, "The SPY Act is supposed to help stop spyware, deceptive adware, and other malicious software, but it is unlikely to do any good and could actually make things worse. If enacted, it would block lawsuits similar to the one EFF brought against Sony-BMG for infecting customers' computers with privacy-invasive copy protection."
The EFF did PC users a serious solid by slapping Sony for invading your machine through trojaned music CDs. This bill would essentially give the media industry carte-blanche to install what they wish any time you insert a disc you've paid for.
After Microsoft made the claim that Linux infringes on 235 of its patents, some folks became worried that the company might begin suing companies who use OSS. Even individual users have launched a 'Sue Me First' campaign, challenging the company to "put its lawyers where its mouth is" and prove the patent infringement.
Fortunately, Microsoft might not attempt to succeed where the SCO failed - at least not yet, anyway. In a statement emailed to ZDNet UK (though, strangely, posted on ZDNet Asia), a Microsoft spokesperson assured us that they would not litigate for now. "If we wanted to go down that road we could have done that three years ago" said Mr. Spokesperson. Funny - everyone was kinda under the impression that Microsoft has already been there, done that (for a recap on Microsoft's relationship with the SCO: MS was apparently funding the SCO's patent litigation efforts against IBM and their use of Linux).
The latest theory that takes into account this promise of no immediate litigation is that Microsoft is simply trying to scare OSS-slinging businesses into rethinking their position. Perhaps Redmond can convince these companies to rejoin the red, green, blue and yellow side of the fence - or at least into OSS that is sanctioned by Microsoft and/or Novell.
It's still early on in this whole patent infringement situation Microsoft has drudged up again, but the company surely isn't hurting for cash with which to fuel their army of lawyers. Still, during a time where Microsoft's reputation is likely at an all-time low and users are switching in record numbers to free and/or fruitier pastures, pulling a stunt like suing users or even businesses that pick up copies of software they haven't yet proven is infringing on anything isn't the brightest move they could make.
In March, the state of Utah passed the Trademark Protection Act, designed to protect companies that register their trademarks in Utah.
Essentially, the law creates a database of trademarked terms, and prevents online advertisers from using those terms as keywords. In other words, if you're Mazda, you can't buy paid advertisements from Google that will show up when users search for Pontiac.
While some bloggers have declared that the bill shows an inherent misunderstanding of how the web works (every company that ever buys keyword advertising will have to check with Utah's state registry to make sure the term isn't trademarked in that state), it's amusing that the Utah lawmakers behind the bill have taken to the blogosphere to defend the law. [via Slashdot]
He writes, "Nonexperts are often surprised to learn that programs can do things the programmers didn't expect. These surprises can be vexing; but they're also the main reason computer science is fun." Felten gives an example of a simple Python script which even source code inspection wouldn't explain. It's only three lines, games run into millions of lines of code.
import sys, sha h = sha.new(sha.new(sys.argv[1]).digest()[:9]).digest() if h.startswith("abcdef"): print h[6:9]
Can you predict every possible outcome from these three lines of code? Would it ever print anything kids shouldn't see, like, for example, a four letter word?
Google has failed to win the Gmail name in a trademark battle in Europe. The name has been owned for over six years by a German entrepreneur that has founded a service called GMail, a same day mail delivery service. A body that is responsible for European community trademarks rejected the appeal from Google. Google had apparently tried to buy the rights for $250,000 but were shut down and saw to be threatening, aggressive, and unfaithful by the entrepreneur. Shortly after, the entrepreneur also mentioned that he also owned trademarks for Switzerland, Norway, and Monaco. Google had already had issues with the Gmail name in the UK, where a financial analytical software company settled with them out of court. Looks like Google will have to rename their Gmail email service to Google Mail all across Europe.
This just in to our venerable news room here...the same guy who doesn't like bloggers (John McCain) is partially behind the legislation to stop Internet access from being taxed. Why, I have no idea. This legislation, if passed, would ensure that Internet access will remain cheaper and therefore more accessible to the American public. The Permanent Internet Tax Freedom Act would also allow a grandfather clause to provide for the 12 states that have already instituted an Internet access tax, which I call the "not stepping on the states toes" clause. How permanent is permanent here, who knows. It would just be nice to have this law passed, so keep an eye out for this law if you're into this sort of thing.
Universal Tube & Rollform Equipment is getting mighty angry these days with all the hype over Google acquiring YouTube. Why, you ask? Well, Universal Tube & Rollform Equipment's web site is at Utube.com, and it seems that they get hit with over 2 million people each month now, mistyping YouTube's URL. So what else comes with the increase from 1500 users a month to 2 million? Crashed servers, and calls from the police about child porn on their web site! Wow! This must be coming as a shock to the Ohio equipment company. Anyway, the lawsuit is asking YouTube to stop using the YouTube.com domain name, or pay Universal's rebranding. As if Google is going to give that domain up. I could see Google just buying Universal Tube & Rollform Equipment to get the Utube.com domain, and all of the traffic they're missing out on! Then they could develop some extra strong, high speed data pipe roll things for networks to search Google or something.
Lime Group LLC, the company behind peer to peer application LimeWire, sued today in federal court by the RIAA for damages including $150,000 per occurance of copyright infringing files. The complaint seeks damages on the grounds that LimeWire, and thus Lime Group LLC, facillitated the trade of copywritten music between users and profited as a result of LimeWire's failure to "block" copyright protected material.
Lime Group LLC has so far refused comment.
Lime Group was threatened last September, along with a host of other P2P application developers, with legal action if the company failed to comply with RIAA demands to either shut down, successfully filter all copyright protected material or drop the open peer to peer topology for a licensed content model approved by the RIAA.
KaZaa recently settled a similar case for $115 million, others such as WinMX and Bearshare have shut down. Qtrax, another less known but veteran name in peer to peer is preparing to offer a licensed peer to peer model that would comply with the RIAA's demands.
In its famous cast against Google, claiming that Google dropped its PageRank down to zero, Kinderstart is out in the alley. They lost their case against Google claiming that Google manipulated search results, and took them out of the Google search results since they were a competitor.
It's over, and from now on we never have to hear about Kinderstart again. Maybe next time they will try to get some real publicity, instead of hogging and misusing court rooms.
If you ever needed proof that big media and big government are a big crock of... well, let's just say look no further than the SPY Act. The U.S. House of Representatives already sold you down the river but, the bill is currently making it's slimy way through the Senate. 
After Microsoft made the claim that 
