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Software Industry Assocation About To Learn What Safe Harbors Mean

It appears that the Software and Information Industry Association (SIIA) is about to learn what DMCA safe harbors mean. The group is apparently upset about the fact that some people sell counterfeit software on eBay. That's not surprising. But, the SIIA is planning to sue eBay for this activity , rather than going after the counterfeiters themselves. Of course, if anyone from the SIIA had been paying attention, they would know that courts in the US have repeatedly found that eBay and sites like it are protected by various safe harbor provisions. This is for a very good reason: it's not eBay counterfeiting anything. eBay is merely the platform. If the SIIA wants to go after the actual counterfeiters, that's their issue. But going after eBay for providing the platform is going to fail miserably. You would think that a trade group that claims they cover the "Information Industry" would know that already.

Sisters of the Gion


Sisters of the Gion (祇園の姉妹 Gion no shimai) 1936

Director: Kenji Mizoguchi

The movie Sisters of the Gion was filmed in 1936 in Japan and directed by the famous Japanese director Kenji Mizoguchi. The film is thought to be one of Mizoguchi’s best prewar films.

Hugo Fähndrich


Hugo Fähndrich (1851 – 1930) was an Austrian–Hungarian chess master.

Born in Hungary, he moved to Vienna. In 19th/20th century, the Viennese chess school, founded by Max Weiss, was propagated by the Carl SchlechterArthur KaufmannHugo Fahndrich trio. Judaism and Chess

Transformers Animated Hits Nintendo DS in Fall

Publisher Activision has announced Transformers Animated for the Nintendo DS, a licensed action-adventure game developed by WET (PS3, 360) makers A2M (Artificial Mind and Movement).

Shack PSA: BioShock $15 on Steam this Weekend

The PC edition of 2K Boston and 2K Australia's deep sea shooter BioShock (PC, PS3, 360) is now on sale at Valve's digital distribution platform Steam for $14.99.

Shack PSA: BioShock $15 on Steam this Weekend

The PC edition of 2K Boston and 2K Australia's deep sea shooter BioShock (PC, PS3, 360) is now on sale at Valve's digital distribution platform Steam for $14.99.

Craigslist Forced To Cough Up Name Of Oscars Ticket Seller To The Movie Industry

Apparently, the Motion Picture Academy, the folks who put on the Oscars (also known as "The Academy Awards"), say that the tickets to that event are non-transferable. That's fine. It's their event, they can set up whatever rules they want. However, where it gets strange, is that they are now suing a bunch of folks who tried to sell their tickets online , and even got a judge to force Craigslist to reveal the name of a seller in order to sue him.

Pop Report: ABBA Via MP3; King Online, Mobile Video; Broadband ... - Washington Post

Pop Report: ABBA Via MP3 ; King Online, Mobile Video; Broadband ...

Pop Report: ABBA Via MP3; King Online, Mobile Video; Broadband ... - Washington Post

Pop Report: ABBA Via MP3 ; King Online, Mobile Video; Broadband ...

Pop Report: ABBA Via MP3; King Online, Mobile Video; Broadband ... - Washington Post

Pop Report: ABBA Via MP3 ; King Online, Mobile Video; Broadband ...

Lack of Bandwidth Oversight Damages HDTV Quality

tv

mattnyc99 writes "Over at Popular Mechanics, Glenn Derene has a great new column investigating the lawless lands of broadcast television, where the quality of the picture that ends up on your expensive hi-def set is determined by a bunch of fuzzy math. Quoting: 'In fact, there's no real regulation over high-definition picture quality at all — "none whatsoever," one industry consultant told me. And that's part of the reason why different HD stations often have wildly varying levels of picture quality that change from one moment to the next. Behind the scenes, content producers, broadcasters and cable and satellite providers are engaged in a constant tug-of-war over bandwidth and video quality, with no hard metrics to even define what looks acceptable. Even officials at HBO, where Generation Kill looks pretty fantastic on my TV, bemoaned the lack of a silver bullet ... for now.'"

Evening Reading

Oh, sure , I'm looking forward to the weekend. I'm just not quite as stoked at the notion of Final Fantasy IV beating the everloving snot out of me again like last night. Maybe I'll just play Quake and reflect fondly on a time when I was actually good at video games.

Garrie Gibson


Garrie David Gibson (born 17 October 1954) is a retired Australian politician. Born in Brisbane, he was educated at the University of Queensland and the North Brisbane College of Advanced Education before becoming a primary teacher. He was an organiser with the Queensland Teachers Union before his election to the Australian House of Representatives in 1990 as the Labor member for Moreton. His election was the first time the Labor Party had ever won the seat, which has existed since Federation, although independent James Wilkinson sat as a Labor member from 1904-1906. Gibson held the seat until his defeat in 1996.

References

Taking Stock: The Gibson-Goldstein Index

Some say that every cloud has silver lining. Those people are dumb, but looking at this week's list and the abundance of up-down pairs, well, let's just call it a coincidence. Hollywood

SF Reveals Usernames And Password To City Network In Accidental Effort To Prove Terry Childs' Case For Him

In the ongoing lawsuit against the disgruntled city of San Francisco tech worker, Terry Childs, who held the city's network somewhat hostage for a few days (before finally coughing up the admin password to Mayor Newsom), the San Francisco DA has now entered into evidence approximately 150 usernames and passwords of individuals who log into the city's network via a VPN from home. City officials don't seem too concerned that they're revealing the usernames and passwords, even though that would appear to be a huge security violation.

PHOTO GALLERY: Celebrity home run derby at Dodd Stadium - Norwich Bulletin

PHOTO GALLERY: Celebrity home run derby at Dodd Stadium

Russia Looking To Ban Goth And Emo Music And Websites

The history of modern culture is littered with examples of older generations freaking out and having moral panics concerning the culture of younger generations. In the US, while much of the focus these days is on video games and social networks, in the past it's included certain types of music and comic books as being threats to children. Over in Russia, it appears that their latest moral panic is around goth and emo music. However, it's become so "bad" that laws may be passed to ban both types of music as well as regulate websites about the music (found via Digg ). It includes all the typical "but think of the children" type quotes. The politician who introduced the legislation calls the music a "dangerous teen trend," a "social danger" and "a threat to national stability."

Google URL Index Hits 1 Trillion

google

mytrip points out news that Google's index of unique URLs has reached a milestone: one trillion. Google's blog provides some more information, noting, "The first Google index in 1998 already had 26 million pages, and by 2000 the Google index reached the one billion mark. Over the last eight years, we've seen a lot of big numbers about how much content is really out there. To keep up with this volume of information, our systems have come a long way since the first set of web data Google processed to answer queries. Back then, we did everything in batches: one workstation could compute the PageRank graph on 26 million pages in a couple of hours, and that set of pages would be used as Google's index for a fixed period of time. Today, Google downloads the web continuously, collecting updated page information and re-processing the entire web-link graph several times per day."

Christopher Cox

Charles Christopher Cox (born 16 October 1952, in St. Paul, Minnesota, USA) has served as Chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) since 3 August 2005. He had served as a Republican member of the United States House of Representatives from 25 January 1989 to 2 August 2005, representing a district in southern California.