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The Courts

UK Internet Filtering Bill Watered Down 183

superapecommando writes in with news that in the UK, Liberal Democratic peers will soften their filtering amendment to the Digital Economy Bill, to allow those wrongfully accused of illegal filesharing to sue the rightsholders in court. The previous version of the Bill had drawn instant criticism from some of the world's largest technology companies, including eBay, Google, and Yahoo, who signed an open letter against the filtering proposal. Blogger Glyn Moody summed up opposition to the Bill, stating that in its previous form, it was "utterly one-sided, where the only winners are a music recording industry too lazy to change, and the losers are everyone else."

Comment Re:They make it sound like a natural thing (Score 2, Insightful) 70

Also reading between the lines can be amusing.

"...and we passionately believe that working in partnership with ISPs to develop first-class, safe, legal, digital music services is the way forward."

Digital music services that are controlled by BPI members that is. Not music services controlled by "new media" companies or independent record labels.

"the [ISPs] need to educate their customers not to steal music..."

The ISPs need to educate their users not to take advantage of the fact that modern packet-switched networks make it very easy to transfer information and that ultimately music is just information. The ISPs need to educate their users that only the big, 20th century media companies that grew big by distributing music on plastic discs of various sorts (when that was the most technologically cutting edge way of distributing music) can distribute music in the 21st century, even when music consumers are voting in droves with their wallets and saying that they aren't so interested in plastic discs of finite capacity containing semi-arbitrary selections of tracks any more. The ISPs need to educate their customers not to circumvent these old business models. Also the ISPs need to educate their users that the copyright laws of the printing press era are rigid and unchangeable, even when they are spectacularly unsuited to and incapable of dealing with "mass piracy" brought on by the aforementioned ease of transferring information.

Yes, that's what ISPs need to educate their users about in the eyes of Big Media.

Feed Engadget: Uniquephones's iPhone unlock release 'slowed' by AT&T lawyers (engadget.com)

Filed under: Cellphones

Hope you weren't waiting in tense anticipation to get your hands on Uniquephone's iPhone unlock software, because things certainly aren't going as planned. Reportedly, the gurus behind the software unlock were contacted by "a Silicon Valley law firm" who is "slowing down the release of the software." Of course, they still claim to have the app "ready to go," but until this legal hubbub gets cleared up, it seems like their method of freeing your iPhone will remain a well kept secret. We'll keep you posted.

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