Blogcritics The critical lens on today's culture & entertainment
Chinese government censors chat and persecutes anti-government chatters: The extent of Chinese Government censorship of what its people say in online chat rooms has been exposed by Reporters Without Borders. Messages critical of the Chinese Government either never appear or are purged from popular chat rooms, a study by the …
Read More »Science and Technology
Grokster Attorney
Michael Page beat the RIAA because he was able to spoonfeed the judge the distinction between centralized and decentralized P2P service: Late last month, however, U.S. District Judge Stephen V. Wilson in Los Angeles ruled that Grokster and Streamcast Networks Inc., which distributes Morpheus file-sharing software, didn’t violate the studios’ …
Read More »M.E.L.O.N.
Media and Entertainment Law Online News: Interesting monthly publication for those concerned with legal aspects of media and entertainment (duh) – this month’s issue has features on Assembling an Entertainment Industry Team, the legal status of the RIAA vs. P2P, and the question of Who Controls the Right to Make …
Read More »Pressplay to Become “Napster” – No I’m Not Kidding
Roxio is close to buying Pressplay: Roxio Inc., a maker of CD-burning software, is close to a deal to buy music subscription service Pressplay for about $30 million in cash and stock, the Wall Street Journal said, citing people familiar with the matter. Pressplay, a joint venture between Sony Corp.’s …
Read More »RIAA and Tech Industry: Buds?
Apparently on break from writing new IP laws for Iraq (actually, no confirmation on that one yet), RIAA chairman Hilary Rosen tosses out a nice little propaganda pie to the readers of Business 2.0: As head of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), I’ve been the public face for …
Read More »Free the Yang Brothers! – “Korean Napster” Case Dismissed
Seoul District Court dismisses case against Soribada, a P2P service: “The prosecution’s case did not state why the defendants’ acts qualify as an offence, thus the case is in violation of procedural regulations,” the court said in its ruling. “The prosecution stated that the defendants (brothers only known by their …
Read More »DVD Wars
321 Studios in court challenging the Hollywood studios over its DVD-copying technology. As we have said here ad nauseum, all citizens have a right to make a back up copy of their own DVDs and music CDs. The DMCA denies citizens this right; ergo, the DMCA is crap. Lisa Bowman …
Read More »Online Chat About College File Sharing Next Week
The Chronicle of Higher Education will host an online chat next Thursday, May 22, at 1 p.m. Eastern with Graham B. Spanier, president of Pennsylvania State University: Colleges are under increasing political and legal pressure to block file sharing by their students, who use campus networks to obtain free music …
Read More »Dave on DRM
In Wired, our own legendary David Weinberger digs into the violations against our humanity that underlie digital rights management (apparently, the subject of the day): Digital rights management sounds unobjectionable on paper: Consumers purchase certain rights to use creative works and are prevented from violating those rights. Who could balk …
Read More »“More trouble than it was worth”
A puppy? Wearing a condom? The war in Iraq? NO! TurboTax’s anti-piracy feature: Intuit announced Wednesday that its top-selling TurboTax software will dump an unpopular anti-piracy feature that turned out to be more trouble than it was worth. The Mountain View company disclosed its change of heart with the release …
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