If you’re among the happy campers who believe iTunes is “pure,” you could be in for a nasty shock.
“Apple - a brand that prides itself on the purity of the user experience - will soon put up billboards on its popular iTunes service, according to content partners who have been briefed on the plan,” says Advertising Age.
“The introduction of visual ads could be the first step to allowing ads in other content areas or on iPods.”

Read more »

Important Canadian musicians including Barenaked Ladies, Avril Lavigne, Sarah McLachlan and Chantal Kreviazuk have banded together in a new group Called the Canadian Music Creators Coalition to fight against p2p lawsuits, statutory damages, DRM and anti-circumvention legislation.
Among other things, “Fans who share music are not thieves or pirates,” they state flatly. “Sharing music has been happening for decades.”

Read more »

Important Canadian musicians including Barenaked Ladies, Avril Lavigne, Sarah McLachlan and Chantal Kreviazuk have banded together in a new group Called the Canadian Music Creators Coalition to fight against p2p lawsuits, statutory damages, DRM and anti-circumvention legislation.
Among other things, “Fans who share music are not thieves or pirates,” they state flatly. “Sharing music has been happening for decades.”
But the University of Texas’ information technology services told computer science sophomore Chet Wynn, head administrator of the DC++ hub for on-campus file-sharing, to shut the hub down.

Read more »

French president, Jacques Chirac hopes his great legacy to France’s “struggle against the global dominance of the US” will be a series of technological projects, among them a, “European search engine to rival Google,” says The Guardian Unlimited.
“After the biggest street protests in decades forced him to stage a U-turn on employment reform last month, Mr Chirac is keener than ever to be remembered for doing something positive for French pride,” says the story.

Read more »

Apparently, ABC television network’s decision to sell content online had nothing to do with money. Perish the thought! It was to show those dastardly pirates what’s what.Angering affiliates, the move, “was aimed at preventing piracy from eroding the broadcasting business, a senior network executive said on Tuesday,” states Reuters, going on:

Read more »

Unhappy eBay online auction customers are legion, but a Romanian programmer and engineer who allowed his anger get the better of him will pay dearly.
Unhappy with eBay’s business practices, he admitted e-mailing threats to eBay chief executive Meg Whitman and company founder Pierre Omidyar.

Read more »

Olmi is a rapidly spreading Internet worm that propagates through instant messages, IRC chats, file sharing networks, e-mails with malicious attachments, weakly protected network shares, malicious backdoors and by exploiting known system and software vulnerabilities.

Once executed, the parasite secretly installs itself to the system and runs a spreading routine. Olmi sends copies of itself to contacts in the Windows Address Book and random, generated addresses. The worm searches for opened instant messages and sends replies containing malicious links. It uses Kazaa, eDonkey, LimeWire, Warez P2P, iMesh and Morpheus peer-to-peer applications to share infected files across popular file sharing networks. Furthermore, Olmi spreads through IRC chats, weakly protected network shares by picking common user names and passwords, and via backdoors left by some widely spread threats.

Read more »

Pioneer Research into Behaviors of Online DVD Traders Serves as Base for New DVD-Member Matching Engine in Peer To Peer Network

Menlo Park, Calif. (PRWEB) April 27, 2006 — http://www.peerflix.com[Peerflix, the leading peer-to-peer (P2P) network that allows members to legally trade http://www.peerflix.com/[DVDs online, today announced the launch of a new, proprietary technology designed to optimize and further accelerate the DVD trading process among its members. These technology improvements are the culmination of nearly six months of extensive analysis of online DVD trading behaviors at Peerflix, which has given the company unique insight into the habits of online traders.

Read more »

ISPs can do whatever they want, but I will vote with my wallet. If they do anything to limit my bandwidth or IPs, I will simply switch ISPs.

Believe it or not, this is what many service providers would like you to do. If you’re the kind of person who wants to eat $200 of steak all week long at the $5.95 buffet, we’d gladly help you go patronize someone else.

Read more »

The music industry began the next phase of its fight against file sharers in Europe Tuesday, filing 2,000 more lawsuits against people in 10 countries. Altogether, some 5,500 lawsuits have been filed in 18 countries since the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) started its latest effort.

The IFPI is the European equivalent of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). Here in the United Sates, the RIAA has filed nearly 18,000 lawsuits.

Read more »

Whoever said that things couldn’t be any worse is probably eating his/her hat right now. CNET News is reporting that there are proposals to expand copyright restrictions on the DMCA. Such additions would include coverage on devices or software that have the ability to circumvent copy protection (AKA DRM - Digital Rights Management), and willful copyright infringement.

Read more »

There is an epidemic of pop-trash spreading on P2P networks, with girls as young as 12 listening to Britney Spears and even grandmothers who think they are anonymous uploading the latest Justin Timberlake track.

I say it has gone too far. I can’t imagine a crime more disgusting than spreading the filth from these artists. It is time to take action and the tools the RIAA need for this 21st Century crime are in the new DMCA.

Read more »

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is suing a family for downloading music illegally, but the family is denying the charge on the grounds that it does not have internet access or a computer.

In a federal lawsuit the RIAA claimed that the Walls family from Rockmart, GA had been downloading tracks from artists including Bob Seger, TLC and Whitney Houston.

Read more »

Warner Home Video has begun trial sales in China of a movie DVD priced at just Rmb12 ($1.50), a move likely to anger consumers in developed markets such as Europe and the US, who typically pay $20-$30 for a recently released film on DVD.

The test sales of the modestly packaged edition of the The Aviator mark one of the boldest efforts yet by an international film company – WHV’s Chinese joint venture, CAV Warner – to adjust its marketing strategies to the potentially huge but piracy-plagued Chinese DVD market.

Read more »

According to itnews.com a court ruling today demands defendants Microsoft and Autodesk to pay a total of $133 million to programmer, David Colvin, founder of z4 Technologies.

The suit was over Microsoft and Autodesk using patent-protected anti-piracy technologies on their software.

“While we are disappointed with this verdict, we continue to contend that there was no infringement of any kind and that the facts in this case show that Microsoft developed its own product activation technologies well before z4 Technologies filed for its patent,” Microsoft spokesman Jack Evans said.

Read more »