He added that because upgrading the server OS underneath an existing Exchange server wasn’t supported, MS has made the painful decision to ditch Exchange 2007 SP2 support and focus instead on the existing Exchange 2007 deployment on Windows Server 2008 R2 domain controllers.
[...]
All of which might leave Microsoft open to criticism it is probably all too familiar with. IT departments might complain that such a decision was simply an attempt by Redmond to swiftly shunt Server 2008 R2 customers over to Exchange 2010.
According to a report by Microsoft virus specialist Chun Feng at the Virus Bulletin malware conference in Geneva, criminals spying out users’ online gaming login data in Chinese internet cafes and subsequently selling this information are said to have caused 1.2 billion US dollars in damage. The criminals use the Dogrobot trojan, which hides in the system and can even survive a Windows system recovery.
A new, freeware game, based loosely on Space Invaders, serves up quirky game play that can result in files being deleted off a player’s computer permanently.
Summary: A deeper investigation of the forces at play and routes of funding for SCO
BACK IN July, SCO was found in the midst of a major scandal which might not relate to its litigation against Linux but might as well do. We wrote about this in:
An investigative report from from Capital Madrid has just unraveled some more details and Groklaw has the translation.
If you are interested in the Pelican Equity litigation against Darl McBride and the gang, here’s an article in Capital Madrid, a Spanish financial newsletter, that provides some background on the parties. If you don’t read Spanish, you can use Google Translate. Here’s the English translation.
The article particularly focuses on Robert Brazell’s accomplishments, because one of his businesses is in the news in the Spanish language press, and it mentions that Steven Norris is “a friend of the Bushes and of Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal Al Saud” (“amigo de los Bush y del príncipe saudí Al-Waleed bin Talal Al Saud”).
I always remember at the beginning of the saga a SCO executive, Chris Sontag, saying we shouldn’t be surprised if the government submitted an amicus brief in the SCO v. IBM case. That implied to me that they expected an appeal, at least, at which point they thought the government would support them, allegedly because of concerns about terrorists using Linux. If you recall, one of SCO’s allegations in its complaint is that IBM had violated export regulations. Mozilla actually inquired about that issue in connection with Firefox, by the way, and it seems SCO’s dreams were misplaced. It received a letter stating Firefox does not violate export regulations, which likely will impact the IBM case. Of course, SCO executives have said a lot of things, so maybe that hope of an amicus brief was more a dream than not, and the administration has since changed, but then again, who knows? My job is just to let you know everything I find, and others can do the rest.
There’s that connection again between “terrorists” and Free software. The previous post refuted this FUD which had come from CBS/CNET/ZDNet. Several weeks ago we showed that Microsoft is still trying to compare Free software to terrorism when in fact, the only real “terrorist” here (by definition) is Microsoft [1, 2, 3]. Jim Allchin, Microsoft’s President of Platforms & Services Division at one time, was quoted as saying: “I’m an American; I believe in the American way, I worry if the government encourages open source, and I don’t think we’ve done enough education of policymakers to understand the threat.”
As market forces show, there is nothing more capitalist than robust Free software which is sold commercially, as opposed to a monoculture where people are forced to buy one particular brand and nothing else. As SJVN puts it after Red Hat’s fantastic results, GNU/Linux is heading upward while Microsoft’s income has been down sharply for two consecutive quarters (with more of the same likely to come).
Take Red Hat for example. In Red Hat’s latest quarter, which ended on August 31st, the company reported higher than expected revenue and profits. “Profits minus one-time expenses and including a 4-cent per share tax benefit hit $39.4 million, or 20 cents per share, up more than 30 percent from 2008.”
It’s not just Red Hat though. Novell recently reported a much more typical quarter for a tech. company in 2009. That is to say Novell also had a poor quarter. Except for their Linux lines — that was a different story. There, Novell saw its Linux revenue go up 22% from the same quarter last year.
Microsoft? Oh, they’re still worth billions and billions, but “Microsoft revenue declined 17% and net income declined 29% year over year in the company’s fiscal 2009 fourth quarter due to continued weakness in global sales of PCs and hardware servers.” Funny, that didn’t seem to bother the Linux companies.
In another new post from Groklaw, insight is offered into the cleaning up that SCO’s new Trustee ought to make.
Here’s what the Chapter 11 Trustee has been doing:
9. The Trustee has been diligently reviewing the Debtors’ pending litigation and business operations and prospects. Indeed, the Trustee’s recent appointment has not allowed for sufficient opportunity to review and evaluate fees incurred and sought in these cases. Moreover, the Trustee is evaluating the retainers received by professionals and any unused retainers available to certain professionals. The Trustee interposes this Reservation of Rights to request additional time to review and evaluate the reasonableness of the Fee Applications that have been filed. Absent a more fulsome review of the Fee Applications, the Trustee is unable to take a position on the reasonableness of the fees requested by the Fee Applications.
10. Accordingly, the Trustee files this Reservation of Rights to reserve all rights to object to interim and final allowance of the Fee Applications, if any, until the Trustee has completed the review process. Any failure by the Trustee to have filed or to file an Objection with respect to a Monthly or Interim Fee Application shall not serve as a waiver to the Trustee’s right to object to the reasonableness of any Professional’s fees on a final basis.
With closer inspection (by an outsider) of what SCO has been doing, more dirty secrets are likely to come out. █
Summary: Rather than ignoring, some news sites decided to publish articles refuting the latest FUD from ZDNet
IT IS not exactly news that ZDNet employs many writers who are favourable to sponsors and advertisers, by selection. It shows [1, 2] and it impedes realistic thinking; it’s almost indoctrinating. To complain about it blindly would not be productive and some other sites “feed the trolls” — so to speak — by posting lengthy technical refutations of the recent FUD from ZDNet.
The first one is an incident that we wrote about last week — one where crime and Free software were tied together as means of daemonisation (it was published in silicon.com, ZDNet, and CNET for maximal impact). Maximum PC has posted a rebuttal to this.
If you think about the actual definition of open-source for a moment, you’ll wind up being as confused as I am about this latest bit of fad reporting to pass around the Web. According to an article from CNET, virus-makers are apparently transforming their wares into open-source projects and using the power of the group to achieve advancements in virus deployment, nasty features, and scanner obfuscation.
That’s all well and good (for the virus-makers), but that’s as open-source a situation as an apple is an orange. What’s being described is an example of collaboration and communication based around a common or to-be developed piece of code. That sounds like open-source–an apple and an orange are both pieces of fruit, after all. But that’s not really open-source because we’re ignoring the critical elements that help define what open-source software truly is. Virus-makers aren’t going open-source in the slightest. They’re spinning derivative works from older viruses and developing free code while holding hands and singing the Pirates of the Caribbean song, but that’s it. And it’s hardly a new fad.
Here is a response to another piece of FUD which we highlighted the other day because it turned out that a major conflict of interest had been concealed by ZDNet.
Nominum executive Jon Shalowitz’s attempt to explain what’s “wrong” with BIND, however, is absolutely priceless.
I’ll skip over Shalowitz’s muddled claim that “open source” equals “freeware” — a whopper that he follows with a disingenuous attempt to associate “freeware” with “malware.”
“Gates is trying to make sure that he has a proprietary position in controlling the tools that allow you and me to access information. And that’s profitable by definition. How would you like to own the printing press?”
Summary: Another Microsoft-taxed Linux phone debuts; Microsoft’s CEO says Microsoft “screwed up with Windows Mobile”
THERE are particular Linux phones which ought to be avoided because they help Microsoft establish a practice whereby devices using Linux pay a ‘tax’ to Microsoft for software patents it claims exist (but won’t show, ever). It’s racketeering. One set of phones to avoid is LG's Android phones and another is Samsung's LiMo phones, which are now coming to Vodafone (links to news appended below).
Why did Vodafone pick a company that pays Microsoft for Linux? One possibility is that the head of Vodafone, being Microsoft’s former head of the failing Windows Mobile unit, is looking to obey Microsoft’s will [1, 2]. Ex-Microsoft staff also tends to favour SUSE, as we have shown before.
“Ballmer says they screwed up with Windows Mobile. Wishes they had already lauched WM7. They completely revamped the team,” reported venture capitalist Paul Jozefak.
Samsung Electronics Co., the world’s second largest handset maker, said Friday that it released its first open source-based mobile phone exclusively for a British mobile carrier.
Samsung Electronics Co. (KSE:005930), the world’s second largest handset maker, said Friday that it released its first open source-based mobile phone exclusively for a British mobile carrier.
The company’s new handset, the Vodafone 360 H1, made exclusively for British carrier Vodafone Inc., is its first open source mobile phone, running on “Vodaphone 360,” built on the the Linux for Mobile, or LiMo, platform.
Samsung Electronics will supply Linux-powered mobile phones to Vodafone, the world’s largest wireless carrier, company officials said Friday.
The Vodafone 360 H1, a “smart” phone that enables Web browsing and multimedia features atop of voice, is the industry’s first commercial handset using the latest version of the LiMo operating system, Release 2.
NOVELL has once again failed to deliver to its customers what they consider to be acceptable terms. According to this report from The Register, Novell has added new fees which raise the cost of the product in unexpected ways that customers never anticipated.
Commercial operating system and add-on systems software maker Novell this week felt the ire of its user base, as it warned partners that in a few months it would be requiring that customers get a maintenance contract on software before they would get access to patches, updates, and technical documents for that software.
[...]
The gnashing of teeth began shortly after this hit the forums. And Colleen O’Keefe, senior vice president of teleweb and operations for Novell’s services group, jumped on the Novell forums with a post that tried to clarify, explaining that this change would not affect SUSE Linux products. These are distributed for free, given their open source nature, but they require a subscription already to get patches and updates other than the freebie security patches.
O’Keefe added that the change in maintenance requirements did not apply to NetWare, to any products that have moved beyond “the general support phase of the product lifecycle,” or to customers with ALA/SLA licenses in academia, who get all kinds of breaks from Novell.
Unfortunately, a new kernel was part of the updates and when the laptop rebooted it was in a bad state. X windows wouldn’t start and critically, there were no network drivers for the new kernel. To make matters worse, OpenSUSE does not keep the old kernels in /boot (why is that?) so there was nothing to fall back on.
Marcel Gagné had a similar issue some months ago. █
So, for now let’s indulge the analogy that Microsoft is the Superpower to Linux’s Insurgency and explore what that means. No more history, but what on earth makes some Insurgents/Guerillas/FreedomFighters/Terrorists so darned good at what they do?
IBM is betting that places like Kazakhstan will eventually see growth as vendors spread their wares around the globe and local businesses move onto the Internet. Linux is a perfect fit as far as encouraging low-cost technology in these areas. The center will be in Astana, Kazakhstan, the capital of the country.
Since this is Linux Magazine, it’s no shock that I consider Linux essential for the job. Virtually every tool and package is available on the platform, and since much of the software I use originates on Linux, its my canonical reference for operation. A bug in a Linux package installed via apt-get likely means the bug exists on all platforms. Software installation is also a snap, the source to every utility and library is readily available, and hosting is cheap. For software development, there is no equal.
But there are changes happening. BMC’s survey found increasing use of Linux, for example.
“IBM is pushing z/Linux and we’re finally seeing a big upswing in interest. Some customers are even using their entire mainframe as one giant Linux box,” said Miller.
Expert sessions, informative keynotes, and multiple opportunities to kick back and socialize with Linux consumers of all stripes–these marked the flavor for LinuxCon. Attendees appreciated the balance of learning and information they got from the sessions–feedback from those I (unscientifically) surveyed was overwhelmingly positive, and I was asking for all comments, not just the good.
Intel has invested $500,000 in TransGaming, a Canada-based company focused on bringing PC games to other platforms like Mac, Linux, and — eventually — television sets as an “on-demand” service.
I have received a few emails asking about emulation on the Linux platform. These questions were mostly by Windows users who enjoy running retro titles and don’t know much about Linux and its thriving emulation scene. From being active in many forums I think retro gaming is one of the most popular pastimes of the hobbyist computer user and I think that mainstream gaming of the latest modern titles is moving away from the PC and to the consoles, where patches and workarounds are a thing of the past with consoles really being “plug in and play”.
What’s new in this release (see below for details):
– Support for OpenAL.
– Many improvements in HTML and JavaScript support.
– Many common controls fixes and improvements.
– More Direct3D 10 work.
– Better MAPI support.
– Various bug fixes.
I’ve been a huge fan of Ardour. I talk about this program constantly. I was overjoyed when I read about the LinuxDSP plugin kit. The kit is several plugins designed for the JACK Audio Connection Kit and programs such as Ardour that can patch into Jack.
Of course, you know regular computer system backups are important and it’s always a good idea to store your most critical data offsite for added security. If you’re a Linux user, finding a service that’s compatible with your operating system isn’t easy, but they do exist. Here are five online backup and storage services for personal or business use that work great with Linux.
GNOME 2.28 provides a few new features and improvements to well-known functions and components. So the GNOME Epiphany browser now uses the sleak WebKit that makes apps such as Google Chrome work faster.
Working on Mandriva network tools, I looked on one of the most essential ones the network monitor (net_monitor). It was introduced a couple of releases before, and was mostly doing its job. However, it has a number of flaws and lack of features that motivated us to look closer at it.
New Ubuntu Karmic comes with still faster boot times. That is a welcome development and lets hope, sooner than later, boot time will reach sub 10 second levels. In my case boot up time is an atrocious 40-45 seconds now.
Here is a nice collection of themes for Gnome and ubuntu for September 2009, most of these themes are just updated in this month or just published, so you will find themes that you see for the first time.
You may be wondering why I’ve chosen to title this article “10 Days of Ubuntu 10.10 Feature Requests.” If you haven’t already, now would be a good time to read my case for the one feature Ubuntu 10.04 needs. In that article I make the case for Ubuntu 10.04 being a “featureless” release – e.g. one that focuses solely on stability and performance. I stand by that opinion, and to that end I believe that Ubuntu 10.10 could be a great place to focus on a feature-heavy release (having solved all it’s stability and performance issues in 10.04, of course :p).
This week in Ubuntu has seen a proverbial flood of new artwork for our favourite operating system’s latest pet – the Karmic Koala. One of the biggest additions has been a new default wallpaper (for the Alpha’s and Beta’s at least).
Two new Freespace products from Hillcrest Labs, the libfreespace open source library and the Freespace Reference Kit (FSRK) Version 3.1, provide everything engineers need to create applications and products that incorporate Freespace in-air pointing and motion control technology.
If this was You-and-Your-Eight-Children.com, we might be more tempted to give this a glowing review. Anyone with a vague interest in organising their lives, however, should invest the cash in a low-powered Linux netbook or cheapo all-in-one machine and stick that in the kitchen instead. Fridge door my arse.
EmperorLinux has started reselling three rugged “Panasonic Toughbook” laptops (and one rugged tablet) with Linux preinstalled: the Scarab, Ant, Wasp, and Tarantula. The CF-model ToughBooks join other “Windows-only” laptops and tablets that have been tuxified for customized resale by EmperorLinux, including models from Dell, Fujitsu, Lenovo, and Sony.
With the launch of HTC’s Hero, and with other Android phones from the likes of Samsung looming on the horizon, it seems the perfect time to take a gander at ALK’s CoPilot Live 8 satnav software, which is now available for Android and the iPhone.
[...]
Twenty-five quid is good value for a fully functioning satnav system for a phone. The essential navigation part of the package does everything that 99 per cent of users are ever likely to require, while the various ‘Live’ features are a handy addition.
Two prolific open web standards advocates at Mozilla are leaving the non-profit foundation for Palm, vowing to spread their developer-centric gospel to the smartphone maker’s webOS platform.
Ajaxian.com co-founders Dion Almaer and Ben Galbraith have accepted new positions helming Palm’s developer relations team. The duo announced their change of venue on their blogs this Friday.
Wireless behemoth Vodafone on Thursday announced an aggregation platform that brings a user’s contacts, social networks and messages together in one place.
Big news from the Vodafone camp today, with the announcement of Vodafone 360, a new internet service based on the LiMo Foundation’s OS, a platform developed using Linux.
Handset manufacturers and operators like Linux phones for lots of reasons. They like open source for lots of reasons. But for an industry that contributes as much to UK GDP as the oil and gas industry, few of those reasons are connected with the philosophy of openness that draws developers like Cyanogen.
Basically, you’ll see a variety of Linux titles covering utilities, games, media players and more. At first, I thought there wasn’t much of a need for such a store, but as Linux continues to fragment, I can see why Intel wants one place for Moblin users to find software. That makes it more consumer friendly, which in turn could lead to wider adoption. Once I have Moblin running, I’ll look to install the special Mobile Application Installer and see how it works.
Swedish Software Company Mobile Sorcery announced it will increase its efforts around Moblin, an optimized open source Linux operating system project optimized for Intel® Atom™ processor-based mobile devices, and is now in the process of porting the MoSync SDK to Moblin v2. MoSync is a cross-platform (Windows-based) development system for mobile devices, allowing users to develop and deploy applications for Moblin technology and many other platforms from a single code source, thereby radically cutting development cost and time to market.
Moblin.org shipped the final version of the Moblin v2.0 netbook distribution, and released early-preview versions of a Moblin app store, Moblin installer, and Moblin v2.1. Meanwhile, Moblin v2.0 is now available on Dell’s Mini 10v netbook, as part of an “Ubuntu Moblin Remix Developer Edition” option.
This newest laptop from OLPC features the VIA C7-M a 1GHz variable speed processor, which SJ Klein of OLPC says will empower learning in several key ways:
1. Full screen video playback
2. Faster eToys and scratch animation
3. Larger offline library and storage capacity
4. better image capture and remixing
5. and a better Java experience, allowing for guilt-free Java programming for Sugar
Open Source Speak is a new resource that (as its name denotes) deals with Open Source considerations of every type. On the site you can read information regarding enterprise open source applications, and more than 150,000 are currently featured.
Want a PC full of free software? To get it, you don’t need to adopt Ubuntu or any of the other Unix-based operating systems. Nor do you have to rely on the sometimes risky freeware you find scattered around the Internet. Instead, you can look to the open source movement, where free software is not synonymous with underpowered and unsupported. In fact, many of the best open source applications are not only updated as often as commercial packages. In some cases, they are simply superior. Here’s a rundown of open source applications that are widely considered best-of-breed. — Office Suite
The Digital Forensics Framework is an open source tool with a flexible module system which will help you in your digital forensics works, including files recovery due to error or crash, evidence research and analysis, etc. The source code is written in C++ and Python, allowing performances and extensibility.
Time will come when one can get rid of costly commercialized office application licenses. With the help of Open Source using Open Office Suite, these software applications could provide for lesser or no cost. All one need is to learn and apply this application in their respective offices.
September 21, 2009 – Zenoss Inc., corporate sponsor of the award winning open source network monitoring project Zenoss Core, today announced it will host its second Zenoss Community Day on September 25. The daylong event is a precursor to the seventh annual Ohio LinuxFest, where Zenoss is a gold sponsor and exhibitor.
On September 11, LibLime announced the launch of Enterprise, a Software as a Service (SaaS) version of the Koha open source integrated library system (ILS). Takings its cues from similar open source software development and support models in the broader software industry, LibLime will focus all of its development efforts on features requested by its subscriber community. Though the company currently supports Koha installations for hundreds of subscriber libraries, mostly small public libraries and school libraries, much of the funding for feature development comes directly from its largest clients.
Among them are projects to assess return on investment (ROI) in academic libraries; explore online patron instruction in public libraries; develop an open-source ILS for public libraries; delve into energy-saving opportunities in research libraries; extend depository libraries’ collection development practices; collect television news; explore early literacy; digitize works from the Middle East; create a statewide institutional repository; and much more.
For Pascal Flamand, leader of the Open Source commission, “You find Java in practically all types of software and there are thousands of tools based on Java (frame-work, development environments, prewritten components…). The advantage is that just about everything is in Open Source. Thanks to this region’s wealth of resources and skills, I am convinced that the technology park can become a place of reference for Open Source technologies.”
Rivet Logic Corporation, a leading provider of open source content management and collaboration solutions, officially launched Crafter rivet — an innovative open source Web content delivery framework. Crafter rivet offers Web application developers an open source framework for building content-rich applications, including next generation enterprise Web sites, portals, and social networking platforms.
We want to know who you think are the best bloggers and Twitter users in the UK IT industry, so to kick off the Awards we’re asking IT professionals to submit their nominations to us.
ElementRiver has announced the launch of Potomac, an open source framework for Flex developers giving them the ability and confidence to bring Flex into Enterprise application development.
FOR Sabino Matera the goal was to have the Quoco website up and running for the Taste of Sydney event last March where he had paid to have a stand to display food products imported from Puglia in Italy.
Indeed, as Ann outlined there is a “”big gap’ in availability of consultants versed in open source BI. Smaller companies often install and maintain their own open source BI applications and tools because they lack the money to hire outside help. Enterprises do it because they often possess the appropriate internal resources.”
The next three years will be a golden time for open source providers while users will have viable applications and certified Linux-Open Office users will help create an economic impact by reducing imported software with local related business worth at least 1.5 billion baht.
A quiet revolution in the confines of a computer’s Disk Operating System (DOS) is causing a stir among the software enthusiasts across Gujarat. Linux and other parallel open source programmers from the state have finally made the dream of an Operating System (OS) in Gujarati a reality.
Corporate houses, educational institutes and cyber cafes have reason to rejoice. A new software was launched on Tuesday that will help monitor usage of computers hooked to any particular local area network.
Cyberoam-iView, an open source logging and reporting solution was launched today by Cyberoam. iView is Cyberoam’s contribution to the open source community.
EnterpriseDB, the leading enterprise-class open source database company, and VDEL, the largest open source services distribution company in Eastern Europe, Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), today announced that VDEL has been named as a Master Distributor of EnterpriseDB products in the regions it serves. VDEL will resell and fully support EnterpriseDB’s line of open source database products and services, ultimately meeting the growing demand for a cost-effective alternative to proprietary databases.
We are pleased to announce a new stable release of libtheora, the Xiph.org Foundation’s reference implementation of the royalty-free Theora video format. This new release, version 1.1, codenamed Thusnelda, incorporates all of the recent encoder improvements we have been making over the past year, though some of the code had its genesis all the way back in 2003. It also brings substantial speed and robustness improvements to the 1.0 decoder.
The Xiph.org Foundation’s open source developers have released version 1.1 (“Thusnelda”) of their reference implementation of the libtheora encoder library. Thusnelda is said to offer considerable quality and performance improvements over version 1.0.
Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) license compliance is a contentious topic. There are different perspectives about when and how license terms apply, about which licenses can be used together, and about how potential issues should be resolved. The consumer electronics market is an area where FOSS license compliance is particularly problematic. This is primarily attributable to economic reasons rather than dishonesty, but in a market worth more than $335 Billion in 2008, it is an issue worth exploring.
Our early thinking is that the broad direction of Wikipedia should ultimately be owned and developed by the social movement that powers it. Over the next six months, a series of task forces comprised of community members and external advisors (to bring in new perspectives) will be analyzing, discussing, recommending action on a range of tough strategic issues and figuring out the roles, responsibilities and resources needed to achieve Wikimedia’s vision. In fact, an open call for participation launched Monday, September 21, to attract volunteers. We will soon find out if there are volunteers inside and out of the community ready to roll up their sleeves.
By the way, if Ellen Degeneres wants to respond in a reasonable and constructive way to the lawsuits over her use of song snippets to dance to, she could always start using Creative Commons-licensed music, with a nice plug for the open-hearted musicians making our lives more tuney.
More interestingly though, recent effort has been made to use open source to address one of its inherent weaknesses. I’ve written before about how difficult it can be to spread the open source message due to limited resources. One Texas entrepreneur is challenging that idea though. Ken Starks, founder of the HeliOS project in Austin, Texas booked professional radio talent and produced a quality radio commercial, then put it on the air during a popular computer tech help show in the area.
While so far there is no report of the success of the commercial, what interests me is that Ken also provides the audio files for the commercial, and allows them to be used free of charge. Open source ads about open source software. I think he might be onto something here.
Ira Stoll of the Future of Capitalism makes the amusing point that Paramount Vantage, the distributor for Michael Moore’s Capitalism: A Love Story, is controlled by Viacom, “on whose board sit none other than Sumner Redstone and former Bear Stearns executive Ace Greenberg, who aren’t exactly socialists.”
And that’s my real problem with DRM. It cannot enable a new business model economically. That’s because it’s only purpose is to limit behavior. There are no business models that are based solely on limiting behavior. It may be the case that some companies may be too afraid to implement a business model without this faux “protection,” but that’s entirely different than saying DRM enables the business model.
Intel is putting Atom processors almost everywhere these days, with the latest target being televisions. The company announced a new Atom-based system-on-a-chip (SoC) design for television sets to make them the hub of social networking and interactivity.
[...]
Another, potentially disturbing element for privacy advocates, of the smart TV was it knew, thanks to a mobile Internet device (MID) Rattner had been carrying, that he recently visited a musical instrument store. The MID told the TV this, and among the different shows offered for suggested viewing were shows on guitarists. At the bottom of the screen were banner advertisements, one of them for a guitar store.
“BT is clinging on to an old business model which is supported by illegal downloading. That’s not only unfair to artists and creators, but penalises BT’s many customers who use the internet legally,”
This implies — incorrectly — that file sharing is somehow a massive boon to ISPs. The very same ISPs who keep claiming they need to use traffic shaping to prevent any network from being overloaded by file sharing. It’s pretty ridiculous to claim that ISPs are relying on file sharing as any sort of business model at all.
Edwards also seems fully enamored with the myth that copyright law is based on some sort of “labor theory” — that the more time you put in, somehow the more money you deserve to get out. While I’m unfamiliar with New Zealand copyright law, in the US, such theories have been widely discredited in the courts repeatedly. And, of course, they make no sense when viewed alongside the actual purpose of copyright law. Edwards seems to believe that copyright is welfare for creators, rather than an incentive to create.
In a move that surprises no one, the Obama administration finally got around to officially nominating Victoria Espinel to be the IP Czar, a position that was created out of thin air a year ago in the ProIP Act, though the position went entirely unfilled until now. Hollywood lobbyists have been pushing the administration to appoint someone ever since the spring, and VP Joe Biden had to come out and calm Hollywood execs and lawyers by promising them the “right person” would be appointed (meaning: not someone who is interested in copyright reform).
[...]
So where did the position end up? Yup… it’s a part of OMB, just like Hollywood wanted.
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