Lostie - Slashdot User

IWF Backs Down On Wiki Censorship 226

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday December 09, 2008 @04:10PM from the that-streisand-thing-again dept.

jonbryce writes "The Internet Watch Foundation, guardians of the Great Firewall of Britain, have stopped censoring Wikipedia for hosting what they considered to be a child porn image. They had previously threatened to block Amazon for hosting the same image." Here is the IWF's statement, which credits the Streisand Effect for opening their eyes: "...in light of the length of time the image has existed and its wide availability, the decision has been taken to remove this webpage from our list. Any further reported instances of this image which are hosted abroad, will not be added to the list. ... IWF's overriding objective is to minimize the availability of indecent images of children on the internet, however, on this occasion our efforts have had the opposite effect."

Labels Agree On Free Music Downloads To Cell Phones 104

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday February 12, 2008 @09:41PM from the free-as-in-bundled dept.

An anonymous reader writes "CNet's Crave reports on a potentially revolutionary digital music service set to launch worldwide later this year. It's offering free, unlimited over-the-air downloads to cell phones, with music from all four major record labels, with no subscription. And the selections that users download get automatically downloaded to their PC or Mac. Rather obviously, the tracks are DRMed, but unlike the similar Nokia service unveiled last year to much disappointment, this MusicStation Max service will have exclusive handsets from LG and no additional fees to customers. This is a little similar to an idea talked about last year, but with all four majors on-board it seems to have greater potential."

RIAA Trying To Avoid a Jury Trial 183

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday September 11, 2007 @07:02AM from the judges-are-friendlier dept.

Joe Elliot writes "Faced with a jury trial set to begin on October 1, the RIAA has filed a motion for summary adjudication of specific facts: that the RIAA owns the copyrights to the songs in a file-sharing case; that the registration is proper; and that the defendant wasn't authorized to copy or distribute the recordings. If the judge rules in their favor, Ars notes that it may turn into a Novell v SCO situation where the only thing left to be decided are the damages. There are some significant problems with the copyright registrations — they don't match up. 'Thomas argues that since she lacks the financial means to conduct a thorough examination of the ownership history (e.g., track the ownership of "Hysteria" from Mercury to UMG) for the songs she is accused of infringing the copyright to, her only opportunity to determine their true ownership is either via discovery or cross-examination at trial.' Ars also notes that the RIAA's biggest fear is of losing a case. 'A loss at trial would be catastrophic for the RIAA. It would give other defense attorneys a winning template while exposing the weaknesses of the RIAA's arguments. It would also prove costly from a financial standpoint, as the RIAA would have to foot the legal expenses for both itself and the defendant. Most of all, it would set an unwelcomed precedent: over 20,000 lawsuits filed and the RIAA loses the first one to go to a jury.'"

Hans Reiser Interview from Prison 611

Posted by CmdrTaco on Wednesday June 27, 2007 @07:48AM from the now-that-paris-is-out dept.

JLester writes "Wired Magazine has an interview this month with Hans Reiser (of the ReiserFS journaling file system for Linux) from prison. It contains more details about the murder case against him. Some of the questions still go unanswered though."

RIAA Can't Have Defendant's Son's Desktop 283

Posted by Zonk on Monday April 02, 2007 @01:34AM from the greedy-buggers dept.

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "The RIAA's attempt to get Ms. Lindor's son's desktop computer in UMG v. Lindor has been rejected by the Magistrate Judge. The judge said that the RIAA 'offered little more than speculation to support their request for an inspection of Mr. Raymond's desktop computer, based on ... his family relationship to the defendant, the proximity of his house to the defendant's house, and his determined defense of his mother in this case. That is not enough. On the record before me, plaintiffs have provided scant basis to authorize an inspection of Mr. Raymond's desktop computer.' Decision by Magistrate Judge Robert M. Levy. (pdf)"

Comment Re:Not again! (Score 2, Interesting) 89

by Lostie on Saturday March 25, 2006 @07:54PM (#14995721) Attached to: First 3G BlackBerry Announced

I have a HTC Universal, and trust me, this thing really does have it all. It's so powerful it can play 700MB XVID movies WITHOUT having to re-encode them like you have to do on almost all other devices, and battery life is many orders of magnitude better than all laptops.
It comes with Skype and MSN pre-installed in ROM usable over wi-fi or 3G, so you can war-drive, chat to your mates, video conference, VNC or RDP into a desktop PC, GPS navigation for your car, hell there is hardly anything this device cannot do.

Why Americans seem so obsessed with these pathetic little Blackberries I do not know - you enjoy your "email" while I have fun with Skype, MSN, IRC, VNC, RDP, etc. at 640x480 over 3G/wi-fi on my HTC Universal.

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