Posts Tagged ‘riaa’

Verizon to forward RIAA warning letters (but that’s all)

// November 13th, 2009 // No Comments » // Tech News

If you’re a copyright owner who has gone to the trouble and expense of tracking down online copyright infringers, don’t send warning letters to Verizon without striking a deal first; Verizon simply chucks them in the bin. Do a deal with the “big V” and Verizon is willing to forward warning letters on to its subscribers, but that’s it. No customer information is exchanged and no sanctions are implemented—and Verizon has been handling the issue this way for years.

NASA sees "significant quantities" of water on the moon

// November 13th, 2009 // No Comments » // Tech News

Shortly after NASA’s LCROSS probe slammed into a crater in the polar region of the Moon, the Agency held a press conference to announce that it had obtained significant amounts of data from the collision. Unfortunately, to the frustration of many present, it wasn’t ready to interpret that data. That reticence ended today, as NASA held a press conference in which it announced that the data contains unambiguous evidence of water, present in what it termed “significant quantities.” But the signal from water isn’t the only one lurking in the data, and NASA is remaining coy about what the other signals indicate. Back in October, the LCROSS mission sent two objects crashing into the Cabeus crater, which has an interior that is permanently shadowed due to its location in the Moon’s polar region. The first was a heavy booster rocket; its collision was imaged by instruments on the actual LCROSS probe, which followed it into the crater a few minutes later. Its collision was tracked by Earth- and space-based instruments.

Radio "pay to play" law ready for vote in House, Senate

// October 16th, 2009 // No Comments » // Tech News

The recording industry’s bid to make radio pay more when it plays music lurched ahead yesterday as the Senate Committee on the Judiciary voted the Performance Rights Act (S. 379) out of committee and on to the full Senate. A House committee did the same thing back in May (H.R. 848), so the bill is now cleared for a final vote in both chambers. Broadcasters, of course, are apoplectic. Some quick background: thanks to some legal fiddling decades ago, US radio stations can play any song they want—but they only have to pay the songwriters, not the recording artists. That means that music labels see no direct cash from having their songs played on the air, though the understanding has always been that this is a fair tradeoff for radio’s promotional value and “hit-making” capacity. Why else would the labels engage so often in payola (bribing radio programmers to put certain tunes on the air)?

Ars Mobile crowdsource, round 2!

// October 16th, 2009 // No Comments » // Tech News

Welcome to the Ars Technica Mobile Crowdsource, Round 2, brought to you by  lotusknows.com !  Thanks to everyone who shared your opinions, preferences, and device use data in our  initial mobile crowdsource kick-off survey . We’re back with another, shorter survey aimed at gathering a few more of your thoughts.  First, a bit about what we learned from the last survey. The interest in us building a mobile version of the site is quite high: more than 75% of you want an improved experience over what we have now.  Webkit rules the mobile seas. 74% of you use a webkit browser (mostly iPhone users), with Blackberry coming in second. IE Mobile, however, had only 7% share. Today’s survey asks you to simply look at two different headline listings and choose which one you like better. Perhaps in some future version of the site we could toggle this, but not for the 1.0 launch. So we have two options: straight headlines (Alpha), or headlines plus description (Beta). Take a gander first at Alpha:  And here’s a look at Beta: Please vote and let us know what you think. We’ll also be following the comments on this thread if you have more you want to share.  Which story listing presentation style do you prefer? ( surveys )

Back to school with RIAA-funded copyright curriculum

// September 17th, 2009 // No Comments » // Tech News

School kids in American could certainly stand to learn about copyright in the classroom—it’s a fascinating topic that increasingly impacts the life of every “digital native” and intersects with law, history, art, and technology. But should they be exposed to industry-funded materials meant to teach kids: That taking music without paying for it (”songlifting”) is illegal and unfair to others (RIAA) Why illegally downloading music hurts more people than they think (ASCAP) How the DVD-sniffing dogs, Lucky and Flo , help uncover film piracy (MPAA) To use problem-solving approaches to investigate and understand film piracy (The Film Foundation) To help students understand and appreciate the importance of using legal software as well as the meaning of copyright laws and why it’s essential to protect copyrighted works such as software (Business Software Alliance) If this sounds more like “propaganda” than “education,” that’s probably because Big Content funds such educational initiatives to decrease what it variously refers to in these curricula as “songlifting,” “bootlegging,” and “piracy.”

Students appear less likely to cheat in online classes

// September 17th, 2009 // No Comments » // Tech News

Anyone who has ever taught knows that students sometimes cheat. With the increasing prevalence of online classes , there has been some fear that cheating would shoot through the roof—it’s a lot harder to spot answer-sharing on tests when it’s all online, after all. A new study, however, suggests that cheating is actually less common among students in virtual classrooms, though limitations in this study mean that further research is needed before declaring a winner between online and traditional classes. The study, titled ” Point, Click, and Cheat: Frequency and Type of Academic Dishonesty in the Virtual Classroom ,” acknowledges previous reports stating that students who have a close relationship with their professors tend to be more honest—a belief that feeds into the idea that virtual classrooms invite more cheating. “Both students and faculty perceive that cheating occurs more frequently in virtual classrooms because online students are often believed to be more savvy at utilizing online resources than their on ground counterparts, or are less likely to be caught by faculty who are unfamiliar with online detection techniques,” wrote the researchers.

IE program manager endorses HTML 5 multimedia tags

// September 17th, 2009 // No Comments » // Tech News

On Wednesday, Google’s Mark Pilgrim published episode 35 of This Week in HTML 5 , a series of articles that he is writing at the WHATWG blog to document the progress of the Web standards effort. In this episode, he praises Microsoft’s Adrian Bateman, who is providing useful feedback on the HTML 5 draft on behalf of Microsoft. Pilgrim’s article highlights some of Bateman’s commentary on specific features of HTML 5, including statements which indicate that Microsoft is supportive of the HTML 5 multimedia tags. HTML 5 is the next generation of the hypertext markup language standard that is used to produce content on the Web. It originally emerged from the Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group (WHATWG) and is presently undergoing editing through the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The HTML 5 specification describes a number of important emerging Web features, including the Canvas and Video elements. Some aspects of HTML 5 are already widely implemented in modern browsers.

Japanese RIAA wants server-side music DRM for mobile phones

// September 14th, 2009 // No Comments » // Tech News

Imagine the outrage that would occur if everyone’s iPhones and BlackBerrys wouldn’t let them play music until each song was authenticated on a DRM server as a legit purchase? Such a scenario could play out in Japan if the Recording Industry Association of Japan (RIAJ) has its way—the organization is pushing for an agreement with music sites that could result in every phone checking with the cloud before playing the user’s selections in an attempt to curb music piracy within the country. Executives from the RIAJ have begun talks with unnamed music download sites and mobile phone operators this week, according to anonymous participants speaking to the Financial Times . It works like this: when a user chooses a song on his or her phone, the phone would first talk to a server to see if the song was legitimately purchased from… somewhere. If the server gives the green light, the song will play; if not, the user is out of luck. If the companies come to an agreement by the end of this year, a system could be in place by 2011.

US govt says $1.92M P2P damage award totally fair

// August 16th, 2009 // No Comments » // Tech News

The US Department of Justice has weighed in on Jammie Thomas-Rasset’s $1.92 million liability for damages , calling the amount perfectly constitutional. In fact, Congress intended for such massive damages to fall like a stone upon even noncommercial P2P users. Thomas-Rasset was the first defendant in the RIAA’s 18,000-person war on file-sharing to take her case all the way to trial. After two trials, she ended up owing $80,000 per song, for a total of $1.92 million, an amount promptly challenged as “unconstitutional” by the defense.

Team Tenenbaum to fight on for those "RIAA has screwed over"

// August 9th, 2009 // No Comments » // Tech News

Harvard Law professor Charles Nesson can only shake his head over the outcome of the Joel Tenenbaum trial , a case in which his young client was hit with a $675,000 damage award for uploading and downloading 30 songs. “How can a jury of common sense people be brought to a conclusion that is clearly divorced from its common sense base?” he wants to know. “The law here is off base,” he added, the verdict functioning as a reductio ad absurdum that highlights the problem with applying statutory damages to noncommercial copyright infringers.

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