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Etisalat DB India To Shut Down [2G License Cancellation]

22-Feb-12
After the Supreme Court of India’s 2nd February order on the 2G License scam, where it canceled the 122 telecom licenses of various telco’s, Etisalat DB has decided to shut down its India...

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Entertainment Industry Embraces New Business Model: Suing Google For Third-Party Android Apps That ‘Promote Piracy’

22-Feb-12
Who says the entertainment industry can't embrace new business models? From their hamfisted attempts to make digital movie distribution less convenient than driving to the store and purchasing a DVD to their recent "collateral revamping" of various cloud services, the entertainment industry has never been more flexible.

Plagiarism Today points us in the bold new direction the entertainment industry will be heading in the future. More specifically, a bold new direction the entertainment industry's lawyers will be headed.

[A]t a charity luncheon for the Entertainment Law Initiative, which was raising money for the Grammy Foundation, there was a thunderous applause from the audience, mostly comprised of attorneys, over a paper regarding Android applications the promote piracy wondering why no lawsuits had been filed against Google for secondary liability. Though most of the other papers admitted only received scattered applause, that one seemed to whip the crowd into a frenzy, indicating the possibility that industry lawyers are considering such a tactic in the near future.
It's not an entirely new direction. Google is still the entertainment industry's favorite punching bag. But, hey, billable hours! New billable hours! Surely that's reason for a standing ovation! And a platform switch! Exciting!

A few more details emerged at the Wall Street Journal:
[T]he room went nuts during videotaped remarks by Ryanne E. Perio, a student at Columbia Law School, who wrote about Android smartphone apps that facilitate piracy.

During remarks describing her paper, Perio wondered aloud why offering those apps hadn't generated lawsuits against Android parent Google, for "secondary copyright infringement" - i.e. facilitating piracy.

There seems to be no link to Perio's actual paper, entitled "Policing The Android Market: Why The Expanding DMCA May Harbor Google From Liability For Illegal File-Sharing Apps Available On Android," so it's unclear whether Perio is referencing the official Android app store or simply broadbrushing (+4 troll points) Google as co-conspirators on any piece of software compatible with the Android platform.

If it's the App Store angle, it's a bit like claiming Walmart is responsible for secondary infringement because they sell copies of Nero (not to mention computers, blank discs, cable modems and other tools of the pirate trade). If it's just because it's Google's platform, then it's about as meritous as suing Microsoft because Limewire Frostwire runs on Windows.

Of course, a lack of merit has never stopped a lawsuit. And it certainly has never stopped lawyers from racking up expensive hours constructing a variety of legal Spruce Gooses. Sadder still, it has never stopped a court from rendering a ridiculous decision in favor of the even more ridiculous plaintiffs.

 

 



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SanDisk claims world’s smallest 128-gigabit flash chip

22-Feb-12

It may not change the world today, but it could lead to some pretty cool stuff.

Per Electronista, electronics maker SanDisk set a record today after the company claimed to have the world’s smallest 128-gigabit (16GB) memory chip. The 19 nanometer, three-bit-per-cell storage has a footprint of about 170mm square (0.26in square), or less than that of a penny. It’s also relatively quick for its capacity and size at 144Mbps (18MB) per second.

Chips built on the newer storage were considered ideal for smartphones, tablets, and solid-state drives for computers. Many such chips can be stacked on top of each other or side-by-side and give more reasonable capacities without having a physically larger device than they do now.

SanDisk has just recently started making 128Gb flash in large quantities on a basic level, although it has yet to say how quickly it expects the shrunken-down design to reach the market. Other companies have 128Gb chips in development, but these have been larger and usually haven’t reached into mainstream devices.

Stay tuned for additional details as they become available.



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FTC Reminds EPIC That Suing The FTC To Get It To Investigate Google Might Not Be The Best Idea

22-Feb-12
If you're unfamiliar with EPIC, it's an extremist "privacy" rights group. We've called the group out in the past for its rather ridiculous position on privacy issues. EPIC has particularly had it in for Google, which it appears to think is the evilest of evil sites and the government has to step in and stop it from collecting information to make your search experience better (even if users can block such data collection themselves). What I hadn't realized was that EPIC has such an infatuation with Google that it actually sued the FTC (pdf) to try to force it to investigate Google for its recent privacy policy change. No matter what you think of Google's privacy policy issues, it's ridiculous for EPIC to go that far, and the FTC is making that clear to the overzealous organization, pointing out that it has absolutely no standing whatsoever in terms of making the FTC do anything at all. The FTC may still investigate, but EPIC should have no part of that.

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Hitachi announces 500GB, 7mm, 7,200 RPM Z7K500 notebook hard drive

22-Feb-12

On Wednesday, Hitachi announced the release of its 500GB Travelstar Z7K500. Per Electronista, the drive is the first to hit a half-terabyte at the slimmer 7mm height while keeping a full 7,200RPM spin speed and just one drive platter. Along with being the first to have both a 6Gbps SATA3 connection and a 32MB buffer, it’s billed as being not just faster than other 7mm drives but faster than many regular 9mm drives as well.

The disk is intended both for thin regular notebooks as well as for ultrabooks. Although not fast enough by itself to match a solid-state drive, including an SSD as a cache theoretically offers a best-of-both-worlds design where the responsiveness of an SSD and the lower prices of a rotating hard drive are combined. It consumes more power, but at 1.8W peak and 0.8W idle is relatively efficient.

Hitachi has had test versions of its newer Z7K500 drives since January and is already expecting mass production for March, with 250GB and 320GB editions already available. It hasn’t named the customers that will be using it, although it conspicuously mentioned that “all major PC OEMs” had already qualified the pre-500GB drives and implied that Apple, Dell, HP, and others were either using or planning to use the new Travelstars.

Final pricing details for the Z7K500 drives also have yet to be announced.

Stay tuned for additional information as it becomes available.



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Camino updated to 2.1.1

22-Feb-12

caminologo.jpg

Late Wednesday, the Camino Project released version 2.1.1 of Camino, its free, open source web browser.

The new version, an 18.5 megabyte download, adds the following fixes and changes:

- Upgraded to version 1.9.2.27 of the Mozilla Gecko rendering engine, which includes several critical security and stability fixes.

- Blocked versions of Adobe Flash Player 10 older than 10.3.183.15 and Flash Player 11 older than 11.1.102.62 on Intel Macs due to severe security issues.

- Tweaked the autocomplete algorithm to reduce the weight of visit count.
Added a hidden preference to allow turning off autocomplete’s use of page titles in matches.

- The location sheet once again shows an autocomplete window.

- It is now possible to clear the “Recently Closed Pages” menu with the “Clear History…” menu item even when history is disabled.

- Improved the appearance of the bookmark toolbar in background windows on Mac OS X 10.7.

- On Mac OS X 10.7, Camino now appears in the “Productivity” category when sorting Finder windows by category.

- Camino now correctly checks for the presence of a Java plug-in on Mac OS X 10.7.

- The “open location” AppleScript command now supports optional “referrer” and “loading in background” parameters.

- Camino will now display an error message when the “open location” command’s direct parameter is empty or missing.

- A new “reload” command allows AppleScripts to reload browser windows and tabs.

- The status of Camino’s offline mode is now available to AppleScript, and scripts can toggle offline mode on and off using the application object’s “online” property.

- The AppleScript “visit count” bookmark property once again works correctly.

- Pressing Escape will now cancel Tab Overview.

- “Fill Form” no longer fills disabled hidden form controls.

- The “Block Flash animations” checkbox is no longer enabled if Flash is not installed.

- Camino now correctly resolves Bonjour services that do not include an initial forward slash in their “path” information.

Camino 2.1.1 requires Mac OS X 10.4 or later to run.

If you’ve tried the new version of Camino and have any kind of feedback about it, let us know.



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European Commission Suggests ACTA’s Opponents Don’t Have ‘Democratic Intentions’

22-Feb-12

Last week, we had a story about the IFPI (the international equivalent of the RIAA) saying that the ACTA protests were trying to "silence the democratic process". You might have thought that was bad enough, but here's worse.

Netzpolitik.org points us to leaked internal minutes of a meeting of the European Commission the day before the massive Europe-wide demonstrations against ACTA. They reveal the EU's top politicians taken aback by the scale of the planned demonstrations, but dismissing them with almost the same words as the IFPI (German original):

ultimately it will be hard to convince civil society organizations [about the benefits of ACTA]. Represented among them are interests that do not reflect the wider community. Specific activities were observed that do not always live up to the supposedly democratic intentions.
The minutes went on to detail some of the things people are up to:
ACTA's opponents are trying to mobilize people against the agreement, in order to influence the remaining MS [Member States that have not yet signed] and EP [Parliament].
So the European Commission thinks that tens of thousands of people on the streets somehow don't reflect the wider community -- presumably unlike the small band of negotiators and lobbyists behind closed doors that drew up ACTA in secrecy for years, who do represent the European Union's 500 million people.

And the Commissioners are just shocked that the opponents of ACTA, who have been denied any meaningful transparency about what was being agreed to in their name during those now-concluded negotiations, are desperately trying to make their voices heard by the only institutions left that can listen: the EU nations that haven't signed ACTA, and the European Parliament that must still ratify it.

This suggests that the European Commission is completely out of touch with the people it supposedly serves, and still doesn't understand the growing anger that its arrogant approach and condescending tone continues to generate on the streets.

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The ‘New’ Righthaven Offers Discount To Techdirt Readers Who Want ‘Spineful’ Hosting

22-Feb-12
Remember Righthaven? No, not that Righthaven who sued tons of people and companies on questionable claims in order to get them to cough up settlements. We're talking about the other Righthaven... the Swiss company that bought the Righthaven.com domain that was auctioned off after the old Righthaven failed to pay the attorneys' fees it owed. The new Righthaven is all about being the anti-Righthaven in many ways: it's about setting up an ISP that provides "spineful" hosting, that will stand up to questionable takedown attempts. This does not mean that they're offering "no questions asked" type hosting that spammers and malware providers love. Quite different. They're simply looking to host those who often have their free speech rights challenged, and who won't fold under questionable pressure without a valid legal basis. As the company explains:
There are many hosting providers who maintain a "no questions asked" policy with respect to their clients and use this approach and lax, evasive or non-existent abuse handling infrastructure to effectively provide a safe-harbor for bad actors. That is not our business model.

Instead, we focus on hosting expression that has traditionally been subjected to frivolous legal threats based on its content. Our approach focuses on our team's wealth of expertise in dealing with high tech abuse and legal issues and our willingness to zealously defend our clients from frivolous, manipulative, abusive or outright fraudulent litigation. Our experience and expertise in issues ranging from fair-use to libel and whistle-blowing protections means we can often gently (and sometimes firmly) remind third parties about the many protections afforded legitimate publishers in these areas.

Often a proactive, responsive and competent abuse management team engaging in an open dialogue and discussion with copyright holders or their legal counsel is all it takes to close what might otherwise escalate into a frivolous suit.

But dialogue isn't always enough. Against this unfortunate possibility we have a second level of defense: In cooperation with our upstream providers in Switzerland we have some of the best free speech counsel in the world on retainer.
The folks behind the company, which is based in Switzerland, admit that they're a bit more expensive than other hosting companies, but that's to cover the cost of actually having people who will take the time to understand legal threats made against you.

Either way, the kind folks over at this new Righthaven are offering a 15% discount to Techdirt readers on everything except their bandwidth upgrades as a "thank you" for speaking out on various issues lately:
Remember us? The upstarts over at Righthaven.com? Providers of "spineful" shared, virtual private server and dedicated server hosting services from the copyright-sane environs of Switzerland?

We've enjoyed your coverage of SOPA, PIPA, ACTA (and us) and since we're launching this coming week, we'd like to give your readers the first bite at the jellyfish (so to speak).

So for the next 14 days new accounts opened by Techdirt readers get 15% off of everything except bandwidth upgrades. Readers who sign up for 3 or 6 months can lock that discount in for the duration.

Just browse on over to our order page at https://plutus.righthaven.com/ and type "dirtlaunch" when prompted for a promotion code.

Just our way of saying "Thank you" for increasing digital rights awareness.
We certainly cannot vouch for these guys, but we absolutely appreciate the need for more ISPs that have a spine in protecting their customers' free speech rights. Hopefully more ISPs will realize that that's a good selling point to potential customers.

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How to replace the AED battery

22-Feb-12
An AED (automated external defibrillator) is that electric portable device that is used in case of a potential heart attack. It delivers shocks to the heart through the chest walls to restore a regular rhythm. The device is designed to be easy to use so that they can be used the layman. Their use is...
By: myarticles

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Megaupload Boss Kim Dotcom Granted Bail After US Fails To Prove He’s Got Cash Stashed Away To Make An Escape

22-Feb-12
Whatever you might think of Kim Dotcom (originally Schmitz), the founder of Megaupload, he at least deserves a fair trial. US officials had worked hard to keep him locked up without bail, but a New Zealand court has finally granted him bail after no one could show him having access to vast funds elsewhere that he could use to make a run for it. Apparently, US officials insisted that he must have those funds, but couldn't produce any evidence, and the court realized that's not a particularly good reason to keep him locked up:
In the North Shore District Court this morning, Justice Nevin Dawson said that after a long time where officials could investigate the Dotcom's potential access to funds - none of significance had been found. Justice Dawson said it was "highly unlikely" that he had other financial resources available to him that had not already been seized.

Prosecution acting for the United States Government had said that because Dotcom was "very wealthy" it was probably he had more bank accounts.

However, Justice Dawson said that put Dotcom in the position of having to "prove a negative" and that assertion was not enough to imply his flight risk.

Four new bank accounts were discovered in the Philippines, but they were empty, he said.

"The suspicion that Mr. Dotcom is very wealthy is not evidence of further assets and cannot be used against him."
I've certainly noticed attempts by many to try Dotcom based on his outward appearance or the fact that he clearly was a show off who flung money around. And I can understand that desire. But, any trial should be based on the actual facts against him, not the fact that he was apparently tacky and a showoff when he spent money. If that, alone, was a crime, then tons of famous musicians, movie stars and athletes deserve the same treatment.

That said, the conditions of bail include no internet usage, which (as we've noted in the past) is pretty ridiculous, since nearly everything touches the internet these days, including popular phone systems. It seems perfectly reasonable to say that he can't have anything to do with cyberlockers or Megaupload or such, but a complete internet ban seems extreme.

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