Items involving the law or legal action
Disappointing to see that two Hollywood studios, Universal and Warner Bros, have taken legal action against Zattoo, a service that streams live TV to computer screens.
Zattoo isn’t a fly-by-night operation and has legal agreements with the TV channels that it shows over its service.
Continue reading Zattoo Hit By Hollywood Studio Legal Action In Germany
The media may be stuffed full of hand-wringing tales of evil pirate downloaders busily hammering the last nails into the music industry, but new figures show that legal downloads are soaring.
UK industry bods the BPI have announced that 9.5% of the population bought music downloads in 2008, a mighty leap upwards from the 5.1% who bought music online in 2007.
The UK’s Information Commissioner has ruled that Google’s Street View is not a threat to privacy after mulling over an official appeal by privacy campaigners, Privacy International.
Launched in the UK last month, the nifty add-on to Google Maps and Google Earth lets users view an unfurling panorama of pannable, zoomable street-level photographs of major streets and cities.
Continue reading Google Street View Gets OK; EU To Sue UK Over Privacy
Buckling under blistering criticism from the Author’s Guild, Amazon has made it possible for their controversial text-to-speech feature to be disabled on its new Kindle eBook reader.
The online book-shifting behemoths have now promised to modify the Kindle 2 so that authors, publishers or any holders to a novel’s rights can decide whether the feature will be available for their work.
Continue reading Kindle 2 Text-To-Speech Feature Blasted By Authors Guild
A new UK based survey has found that nearly half of web users have used illegal file sharing sites to help themselves to free content.
A study involving over 1,000 consumers by Tiscali.co.uk and music site DrownedinSound (DiS) found that 46% of users had used peer-to-peer sites (P2P), with Limewire (34%) and BitTorrent (25%) being the most popular.
Continue reading Nearly Half Of UK Web Users Have Illegally Downloaded Music
Brandishing virtual pitchforks, a user revolt against a new Terms of Service (TOS) agreement foisted on Facebook fans has seen the company perform a swift volte-face.
Faced with growing masses of outraged users and tenacious Twitterers – and with the thread of the Electronic Privacy Information Centre (EPIC) coming onboard – Facebook crumbled in the face of complaints that their updated terms equated to nothing more than, “We Can Do Anything We Want With Your Content. Forever.”
Continue reading People Power: Facebook Revolt Sees Off Dodgy New TOS Clause
You may remember that the four of the people behind Pirate Bay had copyright violations charges brought against them about a year ago.
Today their trial started with them facing the accusation of “promoting other people’s infringements of copyright laws,” and earning money from advertising on the site.
The representatives of the film, music and video games industry are asking for around 115 million kronor ($13.5 million) in damages.
Continue reading #Spectrial: Pirate Bay Trail Ends First Day
We’ve already commented about how the photographers rights in the UK were rapidly being eroded by aggressive cops, but things look set to take a turn for the worse with the introduction of section 76 of the Counter Terrorism Act 2008 today.
Continue reading Section 76 Photographers Scotland Yard Protest: Report
There’s been a lot of concern in the UK about members of the public and journalists being restricted in where and what they can take photographs of in public places.
Where previously there hasn’t been any significant limitations, there is now much concern that the Counter-Terrorism Act 2008 contains a clause that allows for the arrest of people taking photos “likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism.”
A definition that broad could lead to any photographer being arrested.
The NUJ arranged a mass-photo taking this morning outside New Scotland Yard, our man Mike was down there and will be reporting back shortly. has now published his Section 76 Photographers Scotland Yard Protest: Report.
Photo: Alberto OG
If you haven’t heard, mxiwit, the great Web service that lets people create their own online mixtape, complete with a player that looks like a real old compact cassette tape with rotating reels, is closing, describing their situation as being “between a rock and a hard place.”
There’s two pieces of good news to add to this sad news.