pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/gizmodo/2008/12/steve-jobs-psystar.jpg" width="520" height="320" style="display:block;" /In a new turn of events after the a href="http://gizmodo.com/5092638/apple-gets-judge-to-dismiss-psystars-antitrust-counterclaim"judge dismissed Psystar's anti-trust claims/a, Apple is now on the offensive, accusing them of being associated with a group of shady John Does breaking the law:/p blockquote p18. On information and belief, persons other than Psystar are involved in Psystar’s unlawful and improper activities described in this Amended Complaint. The true names or capacities, whether individual, corporate, or otherwise, of these persons are unknown to Apple. Consequently they are referred to herein as John Does 1 through 10 (collectively the “John Doe Defendants”). On information and belief, the John Doe Defendants are various individuals and/or corporations who have infringed Apple’s intellectual property rights, breached or induced the breach of Apple’s license agreements and violated state and common law unfair competition laws. Apple will seek leave to amend this complaint to show the unknown John Doe Defendants’ true names and capacities when they are ascertained./p /blockquote pIn other words: There's somebody else behind Psystar. Someone who is worth prosecuting by Apple's mighty lawyers. Groklaw says that this is important because it may explain why Psystar has been ignoring Apple and continue to boldly sell their crappy PCs running Hackintosh, a hacked Mac OS X version that runs in generic Intel hardware./p pApple is also asking for a preliminary injunction against all Psystar activities related to Mac OS X. Groklaw speculates that the people and corporations behind Psystar may be important and that, when Apple finally identifies them, they will obliterate them. [a href="http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20081202230318899"Groklaw/a via a href="http://www.macrumors.com/2008/12/03/apple-suggests-possible-conspiracy-behind-psystar/"MacRumors/a]/p br style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=321d8ae94b786812d00a196150a339e8p=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=321d8ae94b786812d00a196150a339e8p=1"//a img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=321d8ae94b786812d00a196150a339e8" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/div class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=WvT51SCm"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?d=120" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=PPU9MKsA"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=v1cunSEe"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?i=v1cunSEe" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=naJbEP9z"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?i=naJbEP9z" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~4/ec6QDv6naE8" height="1" width="1"/

The MPAA has been a href="http://techdirt.com/articles/20080609/1811451352.shtml"pushing/a the FCC to allow it to basically add a kind of DRM to broadcasts. As it stands, the FCC blocks broadcasters from using "selectable output control" (SOC) to stop people from recording shows broadcast on television. They do this realizing that recording for the purposes of time or place shifting is perfectly legal, and allowing broadcasters to block consumer rights would be tremendously undesirable. br /br / The movie studios, however, are trying to figure out yet ianother/i way to get money, and they want to rejigger release windows for movies. The way they're done now, movies are released to theaters, then special locations (airplanes, hotels), then DVD, then cable and finally network TV. What the studios would like to do is charge cable companies a lot of money to show movies on cable after they're in theaters but ibefore/i they're released on DVD. Their (misguided) fear is that, if they show them on TV, people will record them and make them available via file sharing sites, killing off the DVD business. This is wrong on many levels, especially since high quality versions of the movies are almost always available on file sharing networks long before they are released on DVD, anyway. So, blocking the ability to record the movies on your DVR (which is what loosening SOC restrictions would do) wouldn't actually do anything to stop piracy -- but would ipiss off/i an awful lot of DVR owners out there, who want to know why they can't record the latest movies on TV. br /br / The MPAA has been saying a lot of a href="http://techdirt.com/articles/20080721/0742051745.shtml"funny things/a in trying to defend its position, claiming that this form of DRM is a href="http://techdirt.com/articles/20080805/1501391901.shtml"necessary/a to let the studios release the movies early. That's simply wrong. There is nothing stopping the studios from releasing the movies in this manner iright now/i. It's just their own misguided fear of people doing what they're legally allowed to do (record stuff on their TV) that's stopping them. br /br / Yet, now, as a bunch of you have sent in, it seems the MPAA is going even further in this "up is down, black is white" argument in favor of being able to use SOC. It's claiming that it's the imovie studios/i who are being pro-innovation here, and it's the consumer electronics companies (and consumers) a href="http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20081203-mpaa-opposition-to-selectable-output-control-astonishing.html" target="_new"who are anti-innovation/a: blockquotei "At its core, the position of CEA is that technology should be frozen in time, and any new services that require advanced technology should be banned," the MPAA told Adelstein on November 25. "This position is quite astonishing, coming from an organization that in the past has advocated in favor of technological innovation." /i/blockquote This is a neat bit of intellectual judo. Take your opponents (accurate) argument, and claim that it's actually your argument. The MPAA is lying, of course. They don't need SOC to innovate and release movies however they want. And, the CEA is quite pro-innovation, in letting consumers actually make use of their rights to record content. It's quite a statement for the MPAA to claim that itaking away/i consumer rights is innovation. But, I guess that's what you get from a dying organization fighting for its life.br /br /a href="http://techdirt.com/articles/20081203/1910033014.shtml"Permalink/a | a href="http://techdirt.com/articles/20081203/1910033014.shtml#comments"Comments/a | a href="http://techdirt.com/article.php?sid=20081203/1910033014op=sharethis"Email This Story/abr / br style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=28054e996723b630703ae49d5d26cba6p=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=28054e996723b630703ae49d5d26cba6p=1"//a img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=28054e996723b630703ae49d5d26cba6" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/div class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.techdirt.com/~f/techdirt/feed?a=J14Fo"img src="http://feeds.techdirt.com/~f/techdirt/feed?i=J14Fo" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.techdirt.com/~r/techdirt/feed/~4/474902544" height="1" width="1"/

div style="FLOAT: right"img title="Yao Ming Transformer" alt="Yao Ming Transformer" hspace="5" src="http://www.ubergizmo.com/photos/2008/12/yao-ming-transformer.jpg" vspace="5" border="0" //div pThe famous Chinese icon in the world of basketball, Yao Ming, has yet another source of income (assuming the company marketing this toy pays him royalties, that is - you can never be too sure with Chinese products protecting intellectual property). When closed, he looks like an ordinary basketball, but you are able to transform him by opening up the outer layer of the basketball, revealing a robotic body with Yao Ming's head popping up finally. Looks pretty weird to us, this. Maybe he would have sold better if released during the Summer Olympics./p pPermalink: a href="http://www.ubergizmo.com/15/archives/2008/12/yao_ming_transformer.html"Yao Ming Transformer/a from Ubergizmo (a href="http://www.ubergizmo.com"US/a, a href="http://www.ubergizmo.com/fr"FR/a) | a href="http://www.uberbargain.com/"Good deals/a | Hot: a href="http://www.ubergizmo.com/15/archives/2008/11/blackberry_storm_review.html"Storm Review/a/p pmap name="google_ad_map_081204093647" area shape="rect" href="http://imageads.googleadservices.com/pagead/imgclick/081204093647?pos=0" coords="1,2,367,28"/ area shape="rect" href="http://services.google.com/feedback/abg" coords="384,10,453,23"//map img usemap="#google_ad_map_081204093647" border="0" src="http://imageads.googleadservices.com/pagead/ads?format=468x30_aff_imgamp;client=ca-pub-7335032025195922amp;channel=9684588219amp;output=pngamp;cuid=081204093647amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ubergizmo.com%2F15%2Farchives%2F2008%2F12%2Fyao_ming_transformer.html"//p pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/6zzol1-ZEg6dFxLJw2sCbBFSxMM/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/6zzol1-ZEg6dFxLJw2sCbBFSxMM/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?a=ai25iFUJ"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?a=iAuMFhVx"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?i=iAuMFhVx" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?a=6of8Rzk4"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?d=52" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?a=bTLokHx1"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?i=bTLokHx1" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?a=0a7BJIuy"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?i=0a7BJIuy" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ubergizmo/~4/KlGIA6uyLEw" height="1" width="1"/

Open Enterprise: "Despite that, I strongly recommend a new book from someone who not only approves of the term "intellectual property", but of its fundamental ideas. I do so, however, because this avowed fan also has serious reservations:"

The ongoing a href="http://techdirt.com/search.php?site=#038;cx=partner-pub-4050006937094082%3Acx0qff-dnm1#038;cof=FORID%3A9#038;ie=ISO-8859-1#038;q=psystar"lawsuit/a between Apple and "MacOS on non-Apple machines" company Psystar has taken an interesting turn. Groklaw notes that in its latest filing, Apple adds a dash of conspiracy, noting that a href="http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20081202230318899" target="_new"some mysterious "other persons" are behind Psystar/a, and it intends to figure out who they are: blockquotei On information and belief, persons other than Psystar are involved in Psystar's unlawful and improper activities described in this Amended Complaint. The true names or capacities, whether individual, corporate, or otherwise, of these persons are unknown to Apple. Consequently they are referred to herein as John Does 1 through 10 (collectively the "John Doe Defendants"). On information and belief, the John Doe Defendants are various individuals and/or corporations who have infringed Apple's intellectual property rights, breached or induced the breach of Apple's license agreements and violated state and common law unfair competition laws. Apple will seek leave to amend this complaint to show the unknown John Doe Defendants' true names and capacities when they are ascertained. /i/blockquote There's some a href="http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=3122" target="_new"speculation/a that this is a bit of a fishing expedition by Apple to uncover the names of various hackers who have been making it possible to run the Apple OS on generic machinery.br /br /a href="http://techdirt.com/articles/20081204/0208113021.shtml"Permalink/a | a href="http://techdirt.com/articles/20081204/0208113021.shtml#comments"Comments/a | a href="http://techdirt.com/article.php?sid=20081204/0208113021op=sharethis"Email This Story/abr / br style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=d8300ba1c1a1d0e11f841b095c5bbcaep=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=d8300ba1c1a1d0e11f841b095c5bbcaep=1"//a img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=d8300ba1c1a1d0e11f841b095c5bbcae" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/div class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.techdirt.com/~f/techdirt/feed?a=dvPeo"img src="http://feeds.techdirt.com/~f/techdirt/feed?i=dvPeo" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.techdirt.com/~r/techdirt/feed/~4/474699296" height="1" width="1"/

They say that Paris is an expensive city to live in, but at least it makes a special effort twice a year to attract bargain hunters. Time for the sales, which we like to call "Soldes by Paris"!
Before Xmas one is obliged to spend money on other people. What a bore! Hurrah then for the month of January when you can treat yourself without feeling any guilt, thanks to the sales! This year they start 7th January 2009, with reductions of up to 70% on some items (at least that's what they say), and an extra 12% tax discount for visitors from outside the EEC. Sound too good to be true ? No, it's just five weeks of Soldes by Paris...

To remind visitors (and Parisians) the importance of the event, a site has been created (English version on its way) with lots of tips about how to save and spend as much as possible. Perhaps the most useful is the "shopping book" which gives details of five themed itineraries through the city:

- Classis (in search of timeless elegance:)
- Trendy (always cutting edge)
- Bobo-chic (looking for the charm of arty intellectual Paris:)
- Creative (Looking for young designers), and
- La Fusionfashionworld (searching for cultural melting pots)

Instictively, I have a preference for Fusionfashionworld, firstly for the name - simply too fabulous darling - but also because it passes through Odéon, right by out hotels! (Just so you know, Bobo-chic comes through Saint-Germain too).

In addition to the "shopping book", you'll find "shopping stations" in five strategic parts of the city, filled to the brim with "shopping coaches". If you don't manage to get some "shopping" done with all that help, there's really no hope for you!

The madness starts the 7th January 2009!

Click here for the official site.

div class="rxbodyfield"p page="1" class="ArticleBody"As a target="_blank" href="http://www.csoonline.com/article/459963"President-Elect Barack Obama/a looks for ways to deal with a shattered economy and an ongoing war on terrorism, security experts are urging him to pay attention to something that has a big impact on both: The nation#39;s growing -- and fragile -- cyberinfrastructure./pp align="right"a href="http://ad.doubleclick.net/jump/idg.us.info.rss/news;pos=imu;tile=6;sz=336x280;skey=patch_management;pkey=security;ord=123456789?" target="_blank" /img src="http://ad.doubleclick.net/ad/idg.us.info.rss/news;pos=imu;tile=6;sz=336x280;skey=patch_management;pkey=security;ord=123456789?" width="336" height="280" border="0" alt="" align="right"//a/pp page="1" class="ArticleBody"Potential adversaries have increasingly turned to a target="_blank" href="http://www.csoonline.com/article/337713"cyberespionage/a as a way to find a target="_blank" href="http://www.csoonline.com/article/462477"weaknesses in networks/a run by the U.S. government and the nation#39;s a target="_blank" href="http://www.csoonline.com/article/451294"critical infrastructure providers/a ./pp page="1" class="ArticleBody"b[ Learn how to secure your systems with Roger Grimes#39; a href="http://weblog.infoworld.com/securityadviser/?source=fssr"Security Adviser blog/a and a href="http://www.infoworld.com/newsletter/subscribe.html?source=fssr"newsletter/a, both from InfoWorld. ]/b/pp page="1" class="ArticleBody"Meanwhile, retailers increasingly dependent on the Web for commerce have launched online transaction portals that rely on a target="_blank" href="http://www.csoonline.com/article/412163"Web applications that are easily targeted/a by digital miscreants. Many of those features are increasingly accessible via popular social networking sites like a target="_blank" href="http://www.csoonline.com/article/458070"Facebook/a ./pp page="1" class="ArticleBody"Realistically, most of the necessary improvements must be devised and deployed from within private companies and government agencies. But a target="_blank" href="http://www.csoonline.com/article/467864/subject/Barack+Obama"Obama/a is in a unique position to lead on this issue and inspire others to fix the security holes, experts say./pp page="1" class="ArticleBody"With that in mind, a target="_blank" href="http://www.csoonline.com/"CSOonline has compiled/a a five-point list of areas Obama should focus on, based on feedback from security pros./pp page="1" class="ArticleBody"strong1. Secure the Web appsbr//strongWith more and more people doing their shopping online, attackers will continue to ramp up attacks against the Web applications customers use to make purchases. Companies that allow sensitive customer data to fall into sinister hands face a world of hurt in terms of reputation and future business, and so Obama should use his bully pulpit to demand better security./pp page="1" class="ArticleBody"quot;Obama [and his IT security advisors] needs to focus on securing Web applications that have largely been ignored by previous administrations,quot; says Mandeep Khera, chief marketing officer for security vendor a target="_blank" href="http://www.csoonline.com/article/467864/subject/Cenzic+Inc."Cenzic/a . quot;With millions of hacking attempts on our government infrastructure every day and thousands of successful attacks against corporations through the Web site, government needs to step in and create stronger regulations to enforce the security of our Web sites.quot;/pp page="1" class="ArticleBody"strong2. Wipe the dust off of older regsbr//strongThat a security vendor would favor more regulation is of little surprise. But security regulations are very much on the minds of those polled -- and not the potential new regulations, either. Instead, some experts would prefer Obama put pressure on subordinates to revisit longer-standing regulations that are in need of a makeover./pp page="1" class="ArticleBody"Former Cisco/WebEx CSO Randolph Barr, now working in the security division of Redwood City, Calif.-based financial application provider Yodlee, is among those who believe the Federal Information Security Management Act ( a target="_blank" href="http://blogs.csoonline.com/is_fisma_compliance_for_state_local_governments_too"FISMA/a ) is outdated, for example./pp page="1" class="ArticleBody"quot;The regulatory requirements for DIACAP/FISMA 805, etc., are catered more towards systems and software and not updated to reflect the innovation of other companies when it comes to selling software as a service and cloud computing, making it very difficult for an organization to be successful in partnering with the government,quot; Barr says. quot;Some time should be taken to revisit these regulatory requirements.quot;/pp page="2" class="ArticleBody"Sharing Barr#39;s concern about FISMA is Krag Brotby, a security architect who has worked for Xerox, TransactPlus (a JP Morgan subsidiary) and the Singapore government. He says FISMA compliance is in a dismal state of affairs in critical agencies, and a lack of training is part of the problem./pp page="2" class="ArticleBody"quot;FISMA compliance remains poor in some of the critical agencies and, coupled with substandard personnel proficiency, would seem to pose an unreasonable level of risk to the country,quot; he says. quot;Pushing ahead with training and certification of government security personnel should take priority as well as mandating FISMA compliance.quot;/pp page="2" class="ArticleBody"strong3. Demand better security trainingbr//strongBrotby#39;s concerns highlight another weakness on the minds of many security professionals -- training, or the lack of it. Brotby has encountered what he calls a quot;significant percentage of IA (information assurance) practitioners and managers in the government and armed forcesquot; that haven#39;t been adequately trained to provide a reasonable level of security./pp page="2" class="ArticleBody"Barr listed education as one of his big concerns, and hopes the Obama Administration will push for security to be emphasized from middle school to college and beyond./pp page="2" class="ArticleBody"quot;From the perspective of what is taught in college to what is taught down at the middle school to high school level, in my opinion we don#39;t have a lot of programs that teach individuals the history of security and what we should be doing to better protect ourselves,quot; he says./pp page="2" class="ArticleBody"Since kids are increasingly learning via computers and the Internet, an education on the dangers of cyberspace and ways to secure oneself should be a natural part of the lesson plan, he says./pp page="2" class="ArticleBody"strong4. Build a great cyber wall (against China and others)br//strongAnother item of concern for security pros is the increased level of a target="_blank" href="http://www.csoonline.com/article/337713/Nation_States_Espionage_and_Counterespionage"cyberespionage between companies and countries -- most notably activity from China/a . Barr wants the Obama Administration to revisit requirements for restricting U.S. companies with a presence in China and other countries./pp page="2" class="ArticleBody"quot;The concern cited in most cases [of cyberespionage] is stolen intellectual property and malware embedded in source code,quot; he says. quot;This is a danger regardless of where the code is developed, and cybersecurity should focus less on the geographic location of developed code and more on the controls in place to reduce the likelihood of a successful attack.quot;/pp page="2" class="ArticleBody"In other words, focus on building a stronger wall around the sensitive data so that protection is assured regardless of where the bad guys are attacking from./pp page="2" class="ArticleBody"strong5. Give someone control (and make them accountable)br//strongThe final -- and arguably most important -- item Obama should focus on is giving government security officials some real power and a tougher code of accountability to go with it./pp page="2" class="ArticleBody"Security industry veteran a target="_blank" href="http://www.csoonline.com/article/410513"Richard Stiennon/a made the point in a a target="_blank" href="http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/34777"letter to Obama that ran in Network World/a , a sister publication of a target="_blank" href="http://www.csoonline.com/article/467864/subject/CSO+Magazine"CSOonline/a ./pp page="2" class="ArticleBody"The first of his 10 suggestions is to issue and executive order establishing responsibility for cybersecurity with quot;real negative repercussions for those who fail to prevent breaches.quot; For civilians this means being fired; for the military this means court marshal, demotion, and expulsion for serious security breaches, a target="_blank" href="http://www.csoonline.com/article/467864/subject/Richard+Stiennon"Stiennon/a wrote./pp page="3" class="ArticleBody"quot;Do not allow the blame to be foisted off on contractors. The only way that security gets implemented is if someone#39;s job is on the line,quot; he continued. quot;This goes all the way to the top, of course. Whoever you appoint to replace the current assistant secretary for cybersecurity and communications must understand that security breaches imply failure and those responsible will be replaced.quot;/pp page="3" class="ArticleBody"strongThe Official Obama Planbr//strongThe following is a list of the incoming Obama Administration#39;s cybersecurity goals, taken from a target="_blank" href="http://change.gov/agenda/homeland_security_agenda/"Change.gov/a , the official site of the President-Elect. Does it reflect some of the suggestions listed above? We welcome feedback in the comments section of this article./pp page="3" class="ArticleBody"-- Strengthen Federal Leadership on Cybersecurity: Declare the cyber infrastructure a strategic asset and establish the position of national cyberadvisor who will report directly to the president and will be responsible for coordinating federal agency efforts and development of national cyberpolicy./pp page="3" class="ArticleBody"-- Initiate a Safe Computing Ramp;D Effort and Harden our Nation#39;s Cyberinfrastructure: Support an initiative to develop next-generation secure computers and networking for national security applications. Work with industry and academia to develop and deploy a new generation of secure hardware and software for our critical cyberinfrastructure./pp page="3" class="ArticleBody"-- Protect the IT Infrastructure That Keeps America#39;s Economy Safe: Work with the private sector to establish tough new standards for cybersecurity and physical resilience./pp page="3" class="ArticleBody"-- Prevent Corporate Cyberespionage: Work with industry to develop the systems necessary to protect our nation#39;s trade secrets and our research and development. Innovations in software, engineering, pharmaceuticals and other fields are being stolen online from U.S. businesses at an alarming rate./pp page="3" class="ArticleBody"-- Develop a Cybercrime Strategy to Minimize the Opportunities for Criminal Profit: Shut down the mechanisms used to transmit criminal profits by shutting down untraceable Internet payment schemes. Initiate a grant and training program to provide federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies the tools they need to detect and prosecute cybercrime./pp page="3" class="ArticleBody"-- Mandate Standards for Securing Personal Data and Require Companies to Disclose Personal Information Data Breaches: Partner with industry and our citizens to secure personal data stored on government and private systems. Institute a common standard for securing such data across industries and protect the rights of individuals in the information age./pp page="3" class="ArticleBody"a target="_blank" href="http://www.csoonline.com/"emCSO Online/em/a emis an InfoWorld affiliate./em/p/divbr style=clear: both;/ a href=http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=77c6b5e7b7f4be725af7f3f33aadf55bp=1img alt= style=border: 0; border=0 src=http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=77c6b5e7b7f4be725af7f3f33aadf55bp=1//a img src=http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=77c6b5e7b7f4be725af7f3f33aadf55b style=display: none; border=0 height=1 width=1 alt=/

You may recall, just about a year ago, there was suddenly a bunch of news over the possibility of Canada introducing its a href="http://techdirt.com/articles/20071210/134616.shtml"own version/a of the US's Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). To the surprise of both the entertainment industry (who helped craft the law) and the politicians who were pushing it, the a href="http://techdirt.com/articles/20071213/105615.shtml"opposition/a to this law was incredibly successful in getting its message out. Starting with calls on various blogs and Facebook groups, kicked off by law professor Michael Geist, the issue became a big one throughout the media. The politicians who promised the entertainment industry that they would pass this law tried to a href="http://techdirt.com/articles/20071210/134616.shtml"delay/a the introduction, assuming that the opposition, while loud, was thin and would fade away. They were wrong. The issue continued to get attention, and when the law was finally a href="http://techdirt.com/articles/20080612/1017381387.shtml"introduced/a, the opposition, across the board, was widespread and strong. It wasn't just a fringe issue among "internet activists." It was something that people from all over the economy saw as a fundamental issue worth fighting for. br /br / But why? br /br / For years, copyright (and wider intellectual property) law has been considered to be sort of inside baseball, something that only lawyers and the entertainment industry cared about. But that's been changing. There are a variety of reasons for why this happened and why copyright is considered a a href="http://techdirt.com/articles/20081111/0327252799.shtml"key issue/a for so many people in so many parts of the economy. Michael Geist has now put together a film that tries to examine that question. After first discussing how the issue became such a big deal, Geist interviews a number of Canadian copyfighters to get a sense of iwhy/i copyright is an issue worth fighting about: center embed src="http://blip.tv/play/AdzqIovtag" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="500" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true"/embed /center Not surprisingly, Geist has also made the movie available in a variety of different formats so people can do what they want with it, including remixing or re-editing it. There's the a href="http://blip.tv/file/1513205/"full version/a (seen above), an a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTFEwXi1Pnk"annotated version/a, a a href="http://dotsub.com/media/cdd2f6d7-d101-4142-b18c-3ad11ba79193"version for subtitling/a, or you can download the full movie via BitTorrent at either a href="http://www.mininova.org/tor/2054674"Mininova/a or a href=" http://www.vuze.com/details/2OQKU47Y56JSCE6RXQ2W5JNDSL3KBEM7.html"Vuze/a. Unless, of course, you live somewhere where they claim that BitTorrent is evil and must be blocked.br /br /a href="http://techdirt.com/articles/20081203/1826493010.shtml"Permalink/a | a href="http://techdirt.com/articles/20081203/1826493010.shtml#comments"Comments/a | a href="http://techdirt.com/article.php?sid=20081203/1826493010op=sharethis"Email This Story/abr / br style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=1c14b7e79411174ec5ad8a1ed278b03fp=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=1c14b7e79411174ec5ad8a1ed278b03fp=1"//a img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=1c14b7e79411174ec5ad8a1ed278b03f" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/div class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.techdirt.com/~f/techdirt/feed?a=vcWNo"img src="http://feeds.techdirt.com/~f/techdirt/feed?i=vcWNo" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.techdirt.com/~r/techdirt/feed/~4/474606566" height="1" width="1"/

divimg alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/41745?ns=guardianpageName=Media%3A+Disgraced+ex-New+York+governor+Eliot+Spitzer+to+write+for+Slate.comch=Mediac3=guardian.co.ukc4=Digital+media%2CPress+and+publishing%2CMedia%2CBusiness%2CUS+news%2CInternet%2CPoliticsc5=Press+Media%2CDigital+Media%2CNot+commercially+useful%2CBusiness+Markets%2CMedia+Weekly%2CTechnology+Gadgetsc6=Jemima+Kissc7=2008_12_04c8=1128700c9=articlec10=GUc11=Mediac12=blogc13=c14=PDAh2=GU%2FMedia%2Fblog%2FPDA" width="1" height="1" //divpWhat next for the ambitious career politician who fell from the heady heights of strongNew York/strong governor after being linked with a prostitution ring? Journalism, apparently./ppMaybe no-one else would take him, but strongEliot Spitzer/strong has re-emerged a href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20081203/media_nm/us_spitzer_slate"on the magazine site strongSlate.com/strong/a a modest nine-months after the scandal of his involvement in a $1,000-per-hour prostitution ring./ppa href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/wonderferret/125543849/" title="Front Door by wonderferret, on Flickr"img src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/52/125543849_7c5a11958d.jpg" width="460" alt="Front Door" //abr /emNope, no prostitutes here. Photograph: a href="http://flickr.com/photos/wonderferret/125543849/"wonderferret/a/Flickr/a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en_GB"Some rights reserved/a/em/ppSpitzer has begun writing a column for the site on the economy and financial regulation, group editor strongJacob Weisberg/strong said last night. a href="http://www.slate.com/id/2205995/pagenum/all/#p2"The first column/a explains why the government should not bail out big financial institutions, and that that money could have been used to "increase the intellectual capabilities of the next generation". "Our dependence on entities of this size ensured that we would fall prey to a 'too big to fail' argument in favor of bailouts," he wrote./ppWeisberg said Slate approached Spitzer several months ago about writing the column, and would have hired him "even if he'd never been governor"./pp"He was the de facto national regulator of the financial industry. I think he just has a keen understanding and a shrewd perspective on those issues," Weisberg said of the former 'Sheriff of strongWall Street/strong' - who had developed a reputation for cracking down on prostitution and financial crime./pp/pdiv style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/digitalmedia"Digital media/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/pressandpublishing"Press publishing/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/usa"United States/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/internet"Internet/a/li/ul/diva href="http://www.guardian.co.uk"guardian.co.uk/a copy; Guardian News Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html"Terms Conditions/a | a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/webfeeds/1,,1309488,00.html"More Feeds/a pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/1GFB2kMkOKWwaq_f7SD0l15JIIY/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/1GFB2kMkOKWwaq_f7SD0l15JIIY/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/p

A podcast and public radio interview program with authors, academics and innovators. I’m Jenny Attiyeh, the host and producer. ThoughtCast offers something that is glaringly absent from the media today: a bridge between the publications and pursuits of the intellectual world and a curious, informed, mainstream audience. nbsp; nbsp; By providing detailed, unhurried and personal conversation with current writers and thinkers, ThoughtCast is that rare hybrid - a show that is both informative and engaging - a synergy between mass media and the ivory tower. Think of it as ”Terry Gross comes to Harvard.” nbsp; nbsp; another great site a HREF=http://www.prx.org/Public Radio Exchange is an online marketplace for distribution, review, and licensing of public radio programming. PRX is also a growing social network and community of listeners, producers, and stations collaborating to reshape public radio./a nbsp;

Jürgen Habermas currently ranks as one of the most influential philosophers in the world. Bridging continental and Anglo-American traditions of thought, he has engaged in debates with thinkers as diverse as Gadamer and Putnam, Foucault and Rawls, Derrida and Brandom. His extensive written work addresses topics stretching from social-political theory to aesthetics, epistemology and language to philosophy of religion, and his ideas have significantly influenced not only philosophy but also political-legal thought, sociology, communication studies, argumentation theory and rhetoric, developmental psychology and theology. Moreover, he has figured prominently in Germany as a public intellectual, commenting on controversial issues of the day in German newspapers such as Die Zeit. nbsp; nbsp; However, if one looks back over his corpus of work, one can discern two broad lines of enduring interest, one having to do with the political domain, the other with issues of rationality, communication, and knowledge. (In what follows, unnamed citations refer to works by Habermas; quotations are from the English editions, where available.) a HREF=https://www.msu.edu/~robins11/habermas/ nbsp; The Jürgen Habermas Web Resource/a

The venerable New York Review of Books was launched amidst a newspaper strike in the winter of 1963, and has continued unabated ever since. Devoted to intensive and nuanced coverage of politics, the arts, literature, science (and now movies and the Internet!), the paper, as it’s called, is considered to be the premiere journal of the American intellectual elite. nbsp; Robert Silvers, its longtime editor, who shared the post with Barbara Epstein until her death in 2006, spoke with ThoughtCast in the WNYC studios in New York. nbsp; nbsp; 40 min. podcast

Claude Lévi-Strauss, who is 100 years old on 28 November 2008, is perhaps the most famous anthropologist in the history of the discipline (with the possible exception of Margaret Mead). Among French intellectuals, he cut a singular and imposing figure, second to none and close to none. By making their hearts beat faster with the promise of intellectual adventures, he attracted to anthropology generations of students - I was one - who otherwise would have become philosophers, historians or sociologists. nbsp; nbsp; Many of these students, unlike their master, became thorough fieldworkers and spent little time with theory. In his seminar, they would typically present ethnographic data and he would make theoretical comments. He was critically encouraging of my own rare theoretical musings. I remain grateful for this, while recalling that others influenced by him regarded such feedback as presumptuous - as if they could at most add exegeses and footnotes to his theorising. nbsp; nbsp; The naturalist at heart nbsp; nbsp; Say Claude Lévi-Strauss and people answer structuralism. This is right as far as it goes, but at the height of his career Lévi-Strauss was also, and quite consistently, a lone defender of a naturalistic and mentalistic perspective in anthropology. While his structuralism was met with enthusiasm, his naturalistic approach was generally treated as an impropriety, an intellectual faux-pas that was better ignored. Lévi-Strauss, undeterred, insisted throughout his work on the validity of this perspective.

Let’s Tap is another mini-game compilation for the Wii, but the unique concept of tapping a cardboard platform to control the games makes it stand out. Unfortunately, Let’s Tap only has four games so it’s a micro mini-game collection. I played Tap Runner at TGS and it was pretty fun so I’m still looking forward to Let’s Tap, but not as much after seeing this trailer.

Rhythm Tap is essentially Taiko Drum Master with tap control and a mode where four players hit different notes. Silent Blocks is similar to Jenga… with tapping and a puzzle based alchemy mode where you can clear same color pieces. Bubble Voyager looks like the strongest single player game out of Let’s Tap and It’s essentially the Balloon Trip mode from Balloon Fight. The rest of the package is padded with visualizers. I suppose this isn’t too bad since Let’s Tap is priced like a second tier Wii game at 5,040 yen ($55) (note: games with this price usually retail for $39.99 in the US), but Let’s Tap has more visualizers than games.



Sega will shove Let’s Tap into stores on December 18, the same day they are releasing Bleach: Versus Crusade and the Wii version of Sonic: Unleashed in Japan. Launching a new intellectual property title among two staple franchises can’t be a good early sign for Let’s Tap.

http://www.siliconera.com/2008/12/03...s-in-lets-tap/

This whole case between Apple and Psystar just keeps getting weirder and weirder as it goes on. Apple now believes there are “persons other than Psystar” involved in the case and has amended its lawsuit to included DMCA violations. Pass the popcorn, this is getting good.

On information and belief, persons other than Psystar are involved in Psystar’s unlawful and improper activities described in this Amended Complaint. The true names or capacities, whether individual, corporate, or otherwise, of these persons are unknown to Apple. Consequently they are referred to herein as John Does 1 through 10 (collectively the “John Doe Defendants”). On information and belief, the John Doe Defendants are various individuals and/or corporations who have infringed Apple’s intellectual property rights, breached or induced the breach of Apple’s license agreements and violated state and common law unfair competition laws. Apple will seek leave to amend this complaint to show the unknown John Doe Defendants’ true names and capacities when they are ascertained.

Comments

A reader named EmJay wrote in with a snide comment about how we wouldn't write about the following story because it's a case where "copyright and patents made sense." I never understand these sorts of comments. We write about all kinds of cases, and if there were one where an intellectual property lawsuit made sense, we'd be thrilled. It would be an example of the system working as planned: encouraging innovation. That would be fantastic. Unfortunately, EmJay's example is no such thing. It's not an example of the system making sense, but of the system being used to slow down innovation and block competition. br /br / The story involves a guy who started making plastic turkey wishbones for Thanksgiving/Christmas celebrations, so that families wouldn't have to fight over the actual turkey wishbone in the traditional "breaking" of the wishbone. Of course, maybe it was just my family, but I don't recall ever "fighting" over the wishbone. Anyway, the agency Young #038; Rubicam, which represents Sears, had asked for a sample for possible inclusion at Sears. A year later, Sears was selling a similar plastic wishbone, made by a different company, so this guy a href="http://money.cnn.com/2008/11/11/smallbusiness/wishing_on_bones.fsb/index.htm" target="_new"sued and won/a. From the article, the guy says they won on both patent and copyright infringement claims, but that's not true. The lawsuit was over a href="http://www.bpcouncil.com/apage/694.php"copyright infringement/a claims only, and Sears made two good points that should have prevailed, in our opinion. First, you can't copyright something occurring in nature -- such as a wishbone. Second, the wishbones that Sears ordered were in different colors and sizes than the ones supplied by the original company. br /br / And, in fact, that's exactly how competition should work. Sears pushed another manufacturer to innovate, designing different (and, in their opinion, better) wishbones. That's competition and that's how innovation works. In fact, the guy from the original company now admits that his company didn't do any updating of their design for years while fighting this lawsuit, and are just now starting to update the design. In other words, all copyright did was get these companies locked in a silly legal battle, rather than focusing on providing better solutions to customers. It's too bad this guy was afraid to compete in the marketplace.br /br /a href="http://techdirt.com/articles/20081126/0822122959.shtml"Permalink/a | a href="http://techdirt.com/articles/20081126/0822122959.shtml#comments"Comments/a | a href="http://techdirt.com/article.php?sid=20081126/0822122959op=sharethis"Email This Story/abr / br style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=9384c9ff33ce52e6d212ce459e3394cap=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=9384c9ff33ce52e6d212ce459e3394cap=1"//a img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=9384c9ff33ce52e6d212ce459e3394ca" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/div class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.techdirt.com/~f/techdirt/feed?a=Tti4o"img src="http://feeds.techdirt.com/~f/techdirt/feed?i=Tti4o" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.techdirt.com/~r/techdirt/feed/~4/473803020" height="1" width="1"/

Touted as the biggest ever anti-piracy collaboration, the MPA and several major anti-piracy groups have announced that by the time the 2012 Olympics begin, they will have made London “a fake-free zone”. This impossible mission to stamp out DVD piracy was launched by Intellectual Property Minister, David Lammy.

The Motion Picture Association, U.K. Film Council, UK Intellectual Property Office, Federation Against Copyright Theft, London Councils, Trading Standards and the Police are teaming up to eliminate DVD piracy in London before the 2012 Olympics.

Intellectual Property Minister David Lammy endorsed the launch of the ambitious ‘Fake Free London’ project, noting that the police will be required to enforce already-existing laws: “Legislation alone will not combat counterfeiting and piracy. Good law is great but enforced law is better.” He said the aim of the campaign was send a message that people are serious about tackling the problem, and that consumers and legitimate businesses would be better off as a result.

Apparently there have already been dozens of arrests, but it is unclear if these were connected to running an operation manufacturing the counterfeit DVDs, or selling them. In the UK right now, the difference in terms of how the courts deal with the people at the top compared to the bottom is marked.

Street sellers, often from other countries, are at the bottom of the food chain and are usually cautioned by the police, DVDs confiscated and sent on their way. Some receive small fines but more usually, those that continually flout the warnings could find themselves the subject of an Anti-Social Behavior Order. If they breach the terms of those, it’s possible they’ll go to prison, but few do. It’s hard to see that this process is much of a deterrent, it relies on an offender getting caught lots of times. Besides, the UK has very little prison space right now.

Towards the top end of the food chain, things are different. Last month, another UK man Steven Adams, a fairly large-scale counterfeiter who also fitted huge numbers of XBox and Playstation modchips, received a fairly hefty sentence from the courts. He pleaded guilty to 44 charges, including the manufacture and selling around £1 million of counterfeit products. Adams had toured computer and flea markets all over the UK and at the time of his arrest, police found 31,000 counterfeit discs in his possession. He had numerous expensive properties, vehicles and possessions but didn’t try to hide his wealth, something which he will now regret as the court takes action to seize them. For his sins, Adams also received 3 years in jail.

The punishment for commercial piracy in the UK starts with a simple caution and goes up 10 years in jail and an unlimited fine, so it seems the tools to deal with the problem are already there, but is there the will to start locking more people up? Time will tell, but it seems unlikely. So can the MPA win its very own Olympic event? A bronze medal, absolute maximum.

Post from: TorrentFreak

A few months ago Sequoia Capital doused the ever ebullient Silicon Valley with a bucket of ice cold reality when it laid “good times” to rest. Today, one of Sequoia’s all time stars laid a big wreath on that grave in the pages of The Wall Street Journal. Google. And while it didn’t implicitly state that it might face tough times next year, comments by its CEO amount to a proverbial bear call which could mean bad news now only for Google but also for rest of the media and advertising sector.

“We have to behave as though we don’t know what’s going to happen,” Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt told the Wall Street Journal. It seems like a prudent move. But I see it as a big red flag and I think Schmidt is preparing us for what could be a terrible 2009. The WSJ says that Google executives have been preparing for slower growth for a year but “the economic crisis is forcing them to step up their efforts.”

According to conventional wisdom (and investors) Google is the best positioned company to survive and perhaps thrive in the current advertising slump. If the leader of the pack is feigning ignorance about its chances, what can one say about mere mortals.

I find it hard to believe that a company that keeps world famous economist like Hal Varian (who muses on economy and Google’s prospects often on the investor calls), doesn’t know. As a company Google collects enough data on a daily basis that it can take a fair pulse of the broader economy. Remember, they could accurately track the spread of flu across America just based on searches, so why can’t the track the economic-sentiment? Additionally i