Tech Titans challenge copyright claims in the media

Sounds a bit long-winded, but is a simple thing. When you watch a baseball match or a football match, you will get bombarded with warnings that tell you what you can or cannot do with the thing that you are watching on TV. They never tell you what you can do, instead it is all about not reproducing nor transmitting it any form, coupling this with an official warning and with logos of the league. This practice is now being challenged by a tech association, Computer & Communications Industry Association (comprising such titans such as Google and Microsoft) who contend that these warnings do represent the whole truth, and hence are essentially misleading customers about their rights.

The Computer & Communications Industry Association has filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission Latest News about Federal Trade Commission stating that such organizations as Major League Baseball, the National Football League and NBC/Universal, to name just a few, have been misleading consumers for years about their rights under the fair use doctrine in copyright law.
"Every time an American consumer opens a book, plays a DVD or watches a wide range of broadcast programs, he or she is confronted by strong language warning of what they are not allowed to do with that product," the executive summary of the complaint reads. "By design or effect, many of these warnings are misleading and harmful to millions of American consumers, customers and businesses," it continues. In fact, these statements grossly misrepresent federal law, which allows use of this material in certain circumstances, the CCIA contends.
"Uses of copyrighted works unauthorized by the copyright holder are not only permitted by federal law," reads the complaint, "they are actively encouraged by it. Section 107 of the Copyright Act, for example, encourages the unauthorized use of copyrighted works for various purposes, including criticism, commentary and news reporting. Under some circumstances, fair use permits the reproduction of an entire work by consumers."
Further, it goes on to say, MLB's claim that news accounts or "descriptions" of the game cannot be "disseminated" is, no pun intended, completely off base. "No author may copyright facts or ideas. Copyright serves to promote the dissemination of information by ensuring that every idea, theory and fact in a copyrighted work becomes instantly available for public exploitation at the moment of publication.

This seems an important issue. For years now, viewers have been essentially threatened that even if they take a section of the recording for doing a critical commentary, it is illegal; and how many users are so aware of that their rights that they don't get dispirited by such challenges.
The concept of fair use is subject to a fair amount of interpretations, and with the rapid advance of technology, legislation and legal compliance is typically falling behind. And for fundamental issues affecting the First Amendment Rights of a citizen, it is even more difficult for a court to refer to the Constitution and interpret it in such cases. Not to talk about how this complaint may even be biased, since many of the complainant companies are running searches, user to user networks, on which many of these clippings get posted.

Ask.com goes for anonymous search

Google has faced some rough times over the past few years due to its policies on privacy getting thoroughly questioned by privacy experts. It has had to reduce the amount of time that it carries information about users, and is now down to 18 months, from the previous years and years that it used to carry such information. Well, Ask.com has thrown down the gauntlet significantly, and if another search engine were to implement such a policy, the pressure on Google would grow significantly.

Ask.com took a major step toward protecting protecting the privacy of its users when it announced yesterday that it would be launching a new tool that would allow users to use its search engine anonymously. The tool, called AskEraser, will ensure that users' search records will not be retained by the company in any form for any period of time. Users will be able to set AskEraser settings in their privacy preferences, and the company says that the settings will be clearly displayed on results pages so that users will always be aware of the privacy status of their Ask.com searches.
The move comes after Google's recent attempts to placate privacy advocates by shortening the lifespan of its search preference cookie (as long as users never return) and anonymizing its server logs after 18 months. Ask.com also decided that it will anonymize server logs after 18 months, ensuring that even users who don't make use of AskEraser will be able to rest easy knowing that their search histories won't be kept around forever.

This is currently a voluntary measure on Ask.com, and users will have to change their settings for this to work. However, one is always curious about this major fight regarding privacy, since all such time limits such as 18 months is based on the fact that a user does not return to Google, and it is hard to find people who have used Google once and not used again for 18 months, at which time the user's information will be wiped off from the servers.

EMI signs deal with YouTube

YouTube has managed to sign a deal with another music company for letting YouTube users access songs and videos from the catalog of EMI. With this, YouTube has now managed to sign a deal with all major music companies - EMI, Warner Music Group, Universal Music Group and Sony BMG Entertainment. The deal with EMI will allow users to access music and videos, and even allow them to incorporate some of these elements in their own content.
Details of the deal in terms of financial compensation to EMI is not available. However, YouTube is still facing a major lawsuit on behalf of other videos on their site, with several companies such as Viacom, The English Premier League, etc having files lawsuits against Google for infringing their copyright. This lawsuit is being fought by Google on the grounds that they are not knowingly infringing piracy, and that YouTube is just a platform, protected by the law. It could be very much possible that Google will also claim that there are a number of companies who have signed deals with YouTube, and that the companies who have filed the lawsuit are the ones who could not reach an agreement. The market does not seem to worry about the lawsuit too much, with Google's share going above $500.

New firmware update allows remote play of PSP files

Some time back, the Sony Playstation 3 had a firmware update 1.8 that gave it a number of HD capabilities. And now it is the turn of the Sony PSP to get a firmware update that allows remote play of the Playstation files. The 3.50 update for PSP gives the ability to browse through wireless hotspots, the main point being that you can use this ability to browse content remotely. Refer this update from Sony:

* Network
o You can now connect a PSP® system to a PS3™ system via the Internet using [Remote Play].
o [Communication Settings] has been added as an option to the [Remote Play] menu.
o [RSS Channel Guide] has been added as a feature under [RSS Channel].

This is a slightly different feature from other feature upgrades that one normally sees. How does this work ? Say you are obligated to go to a social gathering, but over there, you are left alone. With the new workflow, you can connect from the PSP to the PS3 at home (as long as you can connect to the internet), and from the PS3, you can connect to the Home PC and view files (movie files) from there. Cool, and most people will not even know what you are doing.

Novell publishes details of Microsoft deal

Late last year, Novell had signed a deal with Microsoft that was puzzling to a number of people in terms of details. Now, under the annual 10K filings to the SEC, Novell has revealed details of 3 agreements. These are all the more important as well as controversial now that Microsoft claimed that Linux was in violation of 235 patents that it has, as well as Microsoft's denial to reveal details of these patents. It was claimed that Microsoft offered Novell patent protection for its Linux distribution, while denying this to other in the Linux community, this trying to drive a wedge in the Linux movement. Refer this article:

Novell on Friday published redacted versions of the three agreements it signed with Microsoft in its annual 10K filings to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, providing the public with its first detailed look into a deal that some see as critical to the future of Linux. The 10K filing had been delayed by an internal stock options review at Novell, which was concluded Wednesday.
Under the terms of the agreements, Microsoft will spend hundreds of millions of dollars on licensing fees and sales and marketing costs over five years, including US$240 million for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server subscription certificates. For its part, Novell has agreed to pay Microsoft a percentage of revenue from open-source products.
Linux advocates are expected to scour the documents for signs of how the agreement may affect Linux and whether anything in it will put Microsoft or Novell in potential violation of the upcoming version 3 of the GNU General Public license (GPL). The GPL is used in licensing many components of the Linux operating system.
Microsoft has claimed that Linux violates more than 235 of its patents, and because the deal offers patent protection to Novell users, it is seen as potentially driving a wedge in the Linux community. "Novell had a choice here, and Novell's choice was to be in the same boat with the rest of the free software community, or not," Perens said.

One issue that comes through the agreements is that Novell does not automatically recognize Microsoft's patents; as well as the fact that Microsoft may not have actually offered patent protection to Novell.
The nature of the deal as published by Novell was that these agreements were done in order to drive a better inter-operation of Windows and Linux and hence drive better penetration of Linux in the enterprise world, but open-source experts are pretty skeptical about the intentions of Microsoft. The deal has been good for Novell from a purely business point of view.

The internet becoming less open with more censorship

The common expectation is that democracy is increasing around the world, and associated with that is the concept of the internet being a beacon of openness, letting the global citizen access new from anywhere and on anything. Difficult to block, and complicated enough that slow-moving governments can only play catch-up. Well, was a good thought, and now onto reality. A study by the Open Net Initiative shows how wrong this belief is:

The level of state-led censorship of the net is growing around the world, a study of so-called internet filtering by the Open Net Initiative suggests.
The study of thousands of websites across 120 Internet Service Providers found 25 of 41 countries surveyed showed evidence of content filtering. Websites and services such as Skype and Google Maps were blocked, it said.
Such "state-mandated net filtering" was only being carried out in "a couple" of states in 2002, one researcher said. "In five years we have gone from a couple of states doing state-mandated net filtering to 25," said John Palfrey, at Harvard Law School.
Countries which carry out the broadest range of filtering included Burma, Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen, the study said.

And of course you have China, which was not covered in the survey (since it was probably not considered safe to do a survey on censorship in China). China is the best example of how to beat the openness of the internet; it has an entire department dedicated to censorship, and they do a pretty effective job. In addition, the lure of China's size is that even supposed big corporations such as Yahoo, Google and Microsoft have buckled down. And you also have India, which at one time blocked off access to all the blogs on Google's blogger for a few days because of adverse comments. Of course, the power of democracy showed when people pressure and adverse comments forced the Indian Government to lift their blockage.

MySpace refuses to provide sex offender names to attorney generals

In a letter this Monday, attorney generals from 8 states sent a letter to MySpace asking it to provide names of registered sex offenders who use the social networking site. MySpace has finally responded, and the answer is a nyet. Citing federal privacy laws (Electronic Communications Privacy Act), MySpace refused the request from the attorney generals, and instead passed the blame onto them in terms of the attorney generals not following the law. As per MySpace, they can only provide information after a proper legal process is followed, not on the basis of a letter.
MySpace is one of the leaders of the social networking websites, but it is not following all the security measures about preventing minors from logging on (and minors are very influencable, and hence the need to make sure that they are not allowed easy access where predators can get at them), for example, people under the age of 14 are not allowed to create a profile, but the only check is that the user has to certify whether they are above or below 14, hardly a very water-tight security measure.
On their side, MySpace proclaims that they are very proactive about removing registered sex offenders; and while denying the request of the attorney generals, claim that they still want to follow the law and make their network safe for everyone to access. Refer this story:

Citing federal privacy law, MySpace.com said Tuesday it won't comply with a request by attorneys general from eight states to hand over the names of registered sex offenders who use the social networking Web site.
"We're truly disheartened that the AGs chose to send out a letter ... when there was an existing legal process that could have been followed," the security officer, Hemanshu Nigam, said in an interview.
Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal on Tuesday blasted MySpace for refusing to share the information and said no subpoena is needed for MySpace to tell the attorneys general how many registered sex offenders use the site "or other information relating to possible parole violations."
Christian Genetski, an attorney who has represented MySpace, said the Electronic Communications Privacy Act requires subpoenas, court orders or search warrants, depending on the information sought.

A contradiction between wanting to make its network safe (and it would do almost anything to preserve that reputation) while also ensuring that it follows the complete law even when cooperating with legal authorities could prove difficult for MySpace. It might have to buckle down.

Google upgrades its search engine

What do you get when you search in google for something ? You get a page of search results in text format, although when searching for an image, you can do an image search that shows you resulting images matching your search pattern. However, would it really not be good if you could get a composite search result, for example, when searching for a public figure, you get text searches, images and videos (from Youtube), all in the same search ? Well, this is going to be the next reality of Google search. In a presentation to press and analysts, Google presented a revamped search that integrates news, pictures, videos along with the regular text search. One side benefit of this is that advertisements on the search page could be made better looking and richer. Refer this article from MSNBC:

Google announced a significant upgrade to its core search engine on Wednesday, promising a richer multi-media experience for users and pointing the way to increased business with advertisers, the source of 99 per cent of its revenues.
Other examples included a search for Steve Jobs, the co-founder and chief executive officer of Apple, that produced pictures, video and news from Google Images, Video and News along with the regular text links.
"The move potentially should be a huge boon for searchers, while search marketers who have paid attention to the importance of specialised or vertical search will see new opportunities," said Mr Sullivan in a blog note.

This entire news has been touted as something incredible and that will make the searches more user-friendly in terms of results. However, and this is a point that all of them may be missing; people were attracted to Google in the beginning because of the simplicity of its search results, and the fact that Google has never let any kind of clutter come in the way.
In fact, as per a number of interviews, the founders of Google rejected the concept of showing ads other than plain text because that would detract from the users search results. If they now give up that concept (and maybe buckle down to advertise needs), and if they screw up their implementation by making it very heavy or confusing, they will turn away a number of their users.

Amazon jumps on DRM free bandawagon

DRM (Digital Rights Management) was the ultimate solution to prevent piracy and trading through the torrent network and others, you could have a way to ensure that everybody is getting their songs legally. It was the solution recommended by the recording industry; but there is a contrary position pushed by a number of people. This position states that there is a large section of people put off by copy protection schemes (such as DRM) and would purchase songs if they were DRM free.
A start was made in this direction when Apple signed a deal with EMI a few weeks back when Apple announced that they would make DRM free songs available on iTunes (slightly more expensive than regular DRM restricted songs). Now Amazon has jumped on this same platform, announcing that Amazon will make DRM free songs available that will be playable on a wide variety of portable music players, including Apple's iPod and Microsoft's Zune.
If it turns out that this strategy starts to sell more songs, then a lot of other retailers will jump onto this effort, and start to sell DRM free music. More such successes will start to hurt the basic claim that DRM is necessary, after all, money and sales count. Refer this article:

Apple's iTunes and e-tailer Amazon.com are in position to test this hypothesis in the coming months. On Wednesday, Amazon announced that it plans to sell digital songs from record label EMI Group that will be DRM-free. Amazon's unprotected music, which will be sold from the retailer's upcoming download store, can be played on a wide variety of portable music players, including Apple's iPod and Microsoft's Zune. Amazon's announcement follows one last month from Apple, which is also due to begin selling unprotected music from EMI.
"DRM is the only thing that has given the industry any kind of control," said one record executive, who requested anonymity. "Amazon is a strong endorsement for this (unprotected music) strategy," Card said. "The question of whether it's enough to tilt the tables away from DRM remains to be seen. The sales would have to be huge to bring the others on board."
Sales of traditional CDs are in a free fall. The industry reported a 17 percent decline in album sales so far this year. Ipsos Insight, a Chicago-based market research firm, issued a report recently that showed a 15 percent drop from 2002 in the number of U.S. consumers who had bought a CD within the past six months. The music industry is waiting for music downloads to make up these losses, but that hasn't happened yet.

A lot of people are pushed off by the restrictions on purchased music, where the music can only play on one player, and not others. However, by offering both DRM protected songs, and non DRM protected songs, they could end up confusing users, large sections of which cannot be expected to understand the reasoning and basis for copy-protection.
Another possible outcome is that users do not buy these songs just because they are priced higher than protected songs. If such a thing happens, it is not going to be far-fetched for music industry executives to claim that consumers have rejected DRM free songs, while the reasoning could be a matter of simple economics.

Microsoft attacks open-source Linux with lawyers

Microsoft has been an open advocate of dangers posed by open-source systems; trying out concepts such as Total Cost of Ownership (to make it seem that MS was cheaper than Open source if you add training and support), that these systems were unsafe, and now Microsoft has launched its latest attack on Linux, using its famous method of legally harassing a competitor to death. This policy is certainly not going to win it any friends, even if it may be a legal way. Refer this story:

Microsoft Corp. said on Tuesday that open-source software, including the rival Linux operating systems, violates 235 of its patents, making its most detailed intellectual property challenge to open source.
The maker of the Windows operating system said it wants to work out licensing deals with open source companies instead of fighting out the patent disputes in court.
"The real question is not whether there exist substantial patent infringement issues, but what to do about them," said Horacio Gutierrez, Microsoft Vice President of Intellectual Property and Licensing in an e-mail statement.

This can be a serious challenge, because Microsoft will use it arsenal of lawyers to harass open source companies, and at the same time, if they actually have some patents that seem to have been copied, it will be open season.
Of course, with open-source being a big thing, such moves by Microsoft are likely to draw even more bad press and deal a blow to its efforts to portray itself as promoting some form of open source for a section of its technologies. Developer mistrust of Microsoft is deeply entrenched, and such moves are likely to make them even more so.

MySpace buying Photobucket ?

MySpace is one of the biggest spaces in the world of social networks. It fact, most people would call it the biggest space. Pretty simple to operate, it allows users to create their own profiles and put whatever they want on these pages; text, pictures, video, anything goes. The younger generation have taken to MySpace like a fish to water. But you really can't store much of photos and videos on MySpace, so users need to store these on another service and link them off their MySpace pages.
Photobucket attempts to fill that void, and allows users to store their photos and video at the site, and more importantly link them from their MySpace page so that users viewing their profile are able to see these images and videos in a very efficient way.
But one wonders as to how Photobucket makes money ? It allows millions of users to store their images and videos, but it does so for free. If they started to charge money for this service, people would switch to something else in a flash. Trying to entice advertisers by showing them lots of young users trying to update images and edit videos may not exactly work. After all, YouTube also had a ton of users, but they were not exactly able to set the advertising world on fire. So it is apt that Photobucket tries the same route that YouTube took, selling themselves to a richer buyer who is looking for this functionality.
Refer this article from Forbes:

Are MySpace and Photobucket tying the knot?
But that's what Gawker Media's Valleywag blog reported Monday morning. A few hours later, the TechCrunch blog said it had confirmed the acquisition at $250 million. Both MySpace and Photobucket representatives declined to comment--which could very well mean that something is going on between the two companies. Or not.
A brief recap: MySpace is one of the world's most dominant social networks--with 107.7 million visitors per month--and allows its users to stick just about anything they want on their pages. Many of them have been using Photobucket, a relatively unknown start-up until recently, to store the images they stick on the site, as well as other sites they visit.
MySpace’s interest in Photobucket should not serve as evidence of a probable exit strategy for other start-ups that thrive largely on the user bases of social networks like MySpace. Photobucket is a rare case. In many other instances, MySpace would prefer to build its own competitor than buy a tool or feature off a popular widget maker. And when MySpace does that, those start-ups are toast.

Google blasts Viacom over lawsuit

Viacom had filed a $1 billion lawsuit with Google, alleging that YouTube, owned by Google was indulging in massive intentional copyright infringement. This is based on the fact that YouTube has a large number of video clips from Viacom's properties (MTV, Paramount Pictures, and numerous other media properties). Viacom claim that all these infringements are encouraged by the nature of YouTube, and that they are not doing enough to remove these.
Google, in a counter-offensive, has claimed that it is actually a hosting provider, and similar to numerous other hosting providers. It claims that Viacom's legal action, if taken forward will threaten the information exchange across the internet. The claims made from both sides are heated, and follow after failed negotiations.
Further, Google claims that it is protected by the terms of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, which protects Internet service providers that act quickly to block pirated material once notified by the copyright holder. Viacom claims that because of the large number of clips, it takes a large effort to identify these pirated clips.
There was a fair amount of debate over this exact issue when Google had acquired YouTube. Did Google factor in the legal troubles that it would face when it decided to spend around $1.6 billion to buy YouTube ? In a bit of time, as this case progresses, we will get to know.

Google making public records easier to find

Google is known as the premier search engine, and is now a mega-corporation. This makes sure that every move of Google is under the public scanner, and every action will be seen both positively and negatively.
Google is helping US states re-work their public records in a way that these will be easily accessible to search engines. Currently partnering with 4 states, Arizona, California, Utah and Virginia, Google is working on technology that will help make their records (dealing with education, real estate, health care, and environment). These records will be made accessible such that all search engines can access these records.
This is a good move, making records public increases the open nature of governments. This will also make it easier for citizens to navigate government web sites and find the information that they require.
At the same time, this initiative is making privacy groups worried that such information contains records identifying individuals such as social security numbers, and records that become more easily available should hide such records. As a response, states are working to ensure that such information still remains hidden.
Read this news article:

By providing free consulting and some software, Google Inc. is helping state governments make reams of public records that are now unavailable or hard to find online easily accessible to Web surfers.
The Internet search company hopes to eventually persuade federal agencies to employ the same tools -- an effort that excites advocates of open government but worries some consumer privacy experts.
Despite the obvious benefits of the Google initiative for those conducting Web searches, privacy advocates said they are worried about unintended consequences, saying some records may contain personal and confidential information that should not be widely available.
California's chief information officer, Clark Kelso, said he is concerned about the consumer privacy issues raised by this initiative and he has directed all state agencies to redact Social Security numbers and other confidential information from documents that now will be available online.

Using iPods to cheat

Reading into a set of decisions across schools, one realizes the limitless scope of usage of modern technology and how a younger generation is the one which can more easily adapt to these devices, while the authority group is the one which keeps on playing catch-up.
What happened? Well, schools across the country are banning the usage of digital media players in schools due to their potential usage for cheating. It seems very obvious though: These are kids with a very comfortable way with technology, able to be much further ahead than their teachers in their utilization of technology, including misuse. Read this article here:

Banning baseball caps during tests was obvious -- students were writing the answers under the brim. Then, schools started banning cell phones, realizing students could text message the answers to each other. Now, schools across the country are targeting digital media players as a potential cheating device.
Devices including iPods and Zunes can be hidden under clothing, with just an earbud and a wire snaking behind an ear and into a shirt collar to give them away, school officials say.
Mountain View recently enacted a ban on digital media players after school officials realized some students were downloading formulas and other material onto the players.
Some students use iPod-compatible voice recorders to record test answers in advance and them play them back, said 16-year-old Mountain View junior Damir Bazdar.
Others download crib notes onto the music players and hide them in the "lyrics" text files. Even an audio clip of the old "Schoolhouse Rock" take on how a bill makes it through Congress can come in handy during some American government exams.

These media players are very small, and can be hidden very easily. In addition, the functionality available with these players makes it very easy to cheat, you can record answers as a music file, can stores answers in lyrics, and so on and so on.
However, this fight between technology and people in authority is going to be increasing difficult. What happens when you get watches that can act as an interface to a music player, and what happens when you get sunglasses capable of acting as media players.
This problem will not go away. The better solution is to re-structure learning in such a way that people are quizzed on application of what they learnt rather than having to remember things exactly as they are. What will happen when the iPhone becomes available ?

Google's acquisition of Doubleclick worrying privacy advocates

The practise of using cookies to store information has always worried people worried about their privacy. Even in the matter of a search engine, Google's saving of user searches has worried people in the past, and Google announced in March of this year that they would take steps to drop such information from their servers after a period of time.
However, with Google buying DoubleClick, these privacy concerns are causing more worry. When DoubleClick was at its prime, there were regular accusations that it was not very concerned about users privacy and shared this information with its advertisers.
Google bought DoubleClick primarily to take advantage of its knowledge and market related to banner ads. DoubleClick has built a network that serves banner ads and then tracks user activities through cookies, leveraging this information to better server its advertiser. Now that Google has bought this, it brings DoubleClick's abilities into much stronger limelight.
Google has a corporate slogan about 'Do no evil'. However, it has a business about monetising its search, and in order to provide a good service to advertisers, it has to better track its customer profile and their activities, thus bring them into conflict with privacy advocates. This battle is only going to grow, and is guaranteed to not reflect positively on Google.

Rivals fear spread of piracy after EMI - Apple deal

Last week's decision by EMI and Apple to announce a big deal for selling music online with the protection of Digital Rights Management (DRM) has led to 2 different reactions from other competing groups. Since the DRM removal can lead to potential piracy since the music albums / songs can be moved to other players as well as potentially transferred to other people. The rollout of this new version is planned for May 2007, with the expectation that this will appeal to a music enthusiasts who are currently turned off from buying off iTunes due to its DRM restrictions. Competitors are claiming that this move by EMI is a short-sighted move by EMI that will short-circuit the drive to make consumers aware of the need for DRM.
The other move by competitors is that they are going to be constantly tracking how this gambit of releasing DRM free versions of songs is going to work. If this seems like working, then one can be sure that they will immediately get into the act.
Read excerpts from this article:

Media industry executives and analysts have expressed surprise and alarm at last week's decision by EMI, the record label, to start selling music videos without the protection of anti-piracy software.
While labels have previously insisted on DRM to prevent illegal copying, many in the industry have come to believe that the restrictions are deterring people from buying songs and may be driving them on to peer-to-peer file-sharing networks such as LimeWire - where pirated music, free of constraints, can be downloaded without paying.
One media industry executive said that EMI's restriction-free video on the iTunes site was setting an unwelcome precedent. "We are perplexed as to why EMI has done this and surprised at their thoughtlessness," he said.

Familiar news: EU tightens screws on Microsoft

In an anti-trust ruling from 3 years back, the European Commission had ordered that Microsoft had to license technical information to competing companies (IBM, Sun, and Oracle) so that they make their softwares work better with the Windows platform.
For Microsoft, complying with the order would have been hard to do, since it never believed that it was doing anything wrong; more so, because the European Commission was far stricter than US regulatory authorities on finding Microsoft guilty of anti-trust.
As a result, Microsoft demanded around 5.95% of these competing companies server revenues for royalty purposes. This is a pretty high amount, given that margins are not very high, and companies would be very unwilling to pay such revenues.
Now it seems that the European Commission is proposing that this demand from Microsoft be rejected, with objections from the commission stating that this demand was very high. A response from Microsoft is awaited.
Read this story here.

Apple and EMI abandon Digital Rights Management (DRM) protection

The iPod is one of the largest selling personal music player ever. When linked with the iTunes store, this is a combination that has become a major business for Apple, and brought in increasing proportion of total revenue. However, the DRM locks on iPods ensured that content bought through iTunes and transferred to an iPod could not be transferred to music players manufactured by other companies, and this was an oft-repeated complaint.
Now, in a collaboration with EMI, Apple will start providing songs and albums via the iTunes store that is not content protected by DRM, but will be transferrable to other players. The concept is that this is a customer friendly move, and is not really about relaxing any of the fight against piracy.
This does not actually come free. Songs that currently cost 99 cents will now cost $1.29 for a 'premium' version; this premium version is DRM free and also doubles the quality level from 128 kbps to 256 kbps. Albums will be available at no extra charge. And, in the neatest part, users who already have bought songs will be able to exchange these for the new premium version by paying an extra 30 cents. This is free money for Apple. These new premium songs will start to be available in April.
This is a sweet deal for Apple any which way. EMI was willing to do this deal with everyone, but Apple is the one who is the first on the starting block, and will be able to appear to customers as more concerned about their choices. This deal also has the potential of adding to the revenue that Apple currently generates. This deal also hits Microsoft by showcasing Apple as the better service, and Microsoft only struggling to play catch up. If this deal becomes a hit, Microsoft will be under great pressure to respond.

Using PS3 computing power for good

For a long time, PC users have been to able to contribute the power of their machines during idle time through projects such as SETI, and now the Sony Play Station 3 can do the same.
One area of research that requires a large amount of computing power is the study of how 2 dimensional protein strands in the human body folds into the three-dimensional molecules that determine their biological functions. So Sony has launched the PS3/Folding@home initiative such that PS3 participants will be able to lend the massive computing power of their consoles. This project is expected to start on March 23, and be able to access Folding@home
via the PS3's XrossMediaBar. Read more about this.

Turkey blocks YouTube over an offending video

The world of online content aggregators such as YouTube, Blogspot, eBay, etc remains in a constant spot of vigilance over court cases in different countries.

It started with eBay being ordered by German courts to remove Nazi stuff from being auctioned, with India threatening YouTube over a video posted on the popular video sharing site that lampooned Mahatma Gandhi, and now a Turkish court has ordered the country's ISP's to block YouTube till a video that mocks modern Turkey's founder is removed from the YouTube website.

When will these countries learn ? You cannot stop or censor such items so easily. YouTube may buckle down and remove the video, but since YouTube is based on user contribution, tomorrow another video may come up on the same issue, or may land up on another sharing site. Modern technology allows bypassing all such restrictions (although like China, you can be fairly successful if you throw a large number of resources and are able to arm-twist big companies to do your bidding).