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We have written about the Internet Archive recently and are surprised to see that they are being sued - for providing the archive itself! A Philadelphia law firm was defending a health care company being sued in a trademark violation. The firm used the way-back machine to show the courts old web-pages dating back to 1999 to prove their use of the trademark. Now the plaintiff is filing suit against the Internet Archive for violations of two federal laws: the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. Now I am not a lawyer, but I don’t see how they broke copyright by archiving a copy of a public website, and making it available for the Internet in general.
Read More 
| NYTimes - Reg Required
Just about 30 percent of households in the United Kingdom have broadband now, a number that suggests that by 2010 the number of people watching TV via their broadband connection will be higher than those viewing with an analog television. Media regulator Ofcom also says that there are now 8.1 million broadband connections accross the UK, while only 7.5 million households are using dial up, a number that has dropped 1.1 million in the last six months alone. It seems falling broadband prices and increased connection speeds are responsible for the nearly 2 million people who have signed up for broadband since December of 2004.
Read More | BBC News
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Is Canada about to outlaw search engines and Internet archive sites? Bill C-60, which calls to amend the Copyright Act, hints that it just may be illegal for sites such as Google or the Internet Archive to provide someone with copyrighted information through “information-location tools”. Right now, it’s not all that clear, but thats due to the bill being written so vaguely.
The way it is drafted strongly suggests that the reproduction and caching activity done by Google or the Wayback Machine at archive.org and similar essential research tools would be illegal in Canada. It could be read by a court as a ‘deeming’ provision, which was hopefully not the intention. “We shouldn’t cripple the Googles of the world by imposing copyright chill on the very basis of their architecture. In fact, they perform a very useful service to copyright owners by enabling easy detection of infringement. The owners should go after the actual infringer, rather than effectively shooting the messenger.
Read More | Globe Technology
Latest Gear Live Videos
Check it out - this guy removed the casing a standard Nintendo Entertainment System, and put the innards into a custom-built LEGO shell. The result was a fully playable LEGO-ized retro NES. Double retro!
Read More | Spoocher
...Glenn Alvin Reed, 31 of Waco, Texas who apparently managed to piss off every juror while on trial for stealing a cell phone by making an obscene gesture to a Texas Ranger that testified against him and going off into profanity-laced tirades. Reed told they jury, “There’s things I choose to do, like, if I go in a store and choose to take a Snickers bar. If you catch me, you catch me. If not, I’m going to go home and eat it up and go on about my business, dog.” Trying hard to sound tough, he told the jury that he didn’t care if they gave him life in prison. I guess in this case, the defendants’ wish was the jurys’ command, as they gave him 99 years in prison. Have fun, Glenn!
Read More | Wired
We’ve all heard that the entertainment industry expects ISP’s to hand over IP information when suspected pirating has occured. On a positive front, Tuesday in the Netherlands a court ruled that Dutch ISP’s do not have to hand over IP info, and even went as far as to say that doing so is a violation of privacy laws. As with everything in life, there are a few exceptions, and this ruling is pretty specific to the case, but it’s nice to see a court protecting privacy instead of giving out information over little evidence.
Read More | Constitutional Code
In the United Kingdom, Labour MP Tom Harris is asking Parliment to consider his 10-Minute Rule Bill, which asks that, among other things, the maximum sentence for hacking is raised from 6 months to 2 years, and that jail terms for unauthorized modification of computer material be between 5 - 10 years. The bill also asks that a specific law be created against “denial of service attacks”, where a flood of emails is used to overload and crash a computer system. Harris believes that harsher penalties are needed against computer crimes in order for courts and prosecutors to take them seriously, and uses the example of an Exeter University student that hacked into a US Government laboratory’s computer network, but was only ordered to do 200 hours of community service.
The media like to imagine that hacking, virus-proliferation and denial-of-service attacks using email are the product of bright but lonely, socially challenged teenagers sitting in their bedrooms. This is an outdated, inaccurate and, I think, dangerous notion. Those who regularly and increasingly hold website operators to ransom are more likely to be members of an organised crime syndicate than the school computer club.
Read More | BBC News
The forums over at nwizard are abuzz with the possibility of a Nintendo wireless router for the Revolution, which would allow it - and the Nintendo DS - to connect to the Internet. The specs are rumored to have the router connect via USB 2.0 to a users computer and rebroadcast their internet connection. I’m not sure how this differs from standard routers - I’ll be interested to see how it’s priced compared to non-Nintendo branded gear.
Read More | NWizards
In quite possibly the strangest corporate cross-promotion ever Papa John’s is now offering a free (after rebate) Blackberry 7100g phone to customers who place an online order for Pizza, drinks, and a side. A two-year service agreement is required so it sounds like a fairly standard cellular deal to me. What I don’t get is what the link between hot, fresh, cheesy pizza, and cutting edge wireless devices.
Read More | Wireless IQ
In releasing OS 10.4 (Tiger) Apple certainly managed to present Windows XP with some serious competition. Deeply integrated features like Spotlight and Dashboard brought it head and shoulders above many other operating systems. Like all operating systems it had a few flaws (of which this editor noticed the WiFi issues the most) but luckily Apple announced the 10.4.2 update today which should fix the majority of the problems encountered so far. Updates include:
- File sharing using AFP and SMB/CIFS network file services
- Single sign-on authentication and reliable access to Active Directory servers
- Autologin for managed user accounts
- AirPort and wireless access
- Core Graphics, Core Audio, Core Image, including updated ATI and NVIDIA graphics drivers
- Finder updates including finding on Kind and using Slideshow
- Synchronizing your iDisk with .Mac
- Installation reliability
- Managing Dashboard widgets
- Address Book, Automator, iCal, iChat, Mail, Safari, and Stickies applications
- Compatibility with third party applications and devices
Check your Software Update panel for the goods! I did and so far I’m quite happy (other than the install failed the first time, but I think there was a download glitch). This update is one of the rare OSX updates that requires a restart.
Read More | Mac OS 10.4.2 information
