Conches

Google Provides User's Identity to Indian Governement

This is a real morass, or best case scenario, a slippery slope.  An individual citizen wrote (just words) what seems to be very inflammatory statements about an Indian gov official.  This qualifies, under the Indian sedition laws, as an imprisonable offense. The person who wrote the statements is responsible to know that his statements were illegal.  This would be the benefit of the doubt version of what happened. 

The next thing that happened was that Google gave up the identity of the writer to the Indian government and that person will potentially spend 5 yrs in jail and throw away a 22yr career in IT. 

Do we care?

clipped from www.webguild.org Google provided Indian police with information that led to the arrest of 22 year IT professional, Rahul Vaid, on Friday (May 16, 2008). Vaid posted derogatory content about Congress chief Sonia Gandhi on a orkut community named — “I hate Sonia Gandhi”. The messages were circulated through an email address – Rahulvaidindia@gmail.com, which is operated by Google's Gmail. Monday, May 19, 2008

RIAA sues MP3Tunes for providing remote storage

The RIAA believes it is illegal to make a copy of your music.  Period

clipped from gizmodo.com cloud computing EMI Says You Can't Backup Your Music Online Cloud computing is supposed to be the next big tech revolution. One of the basic ideas, for the uninitiated, is that all of your apps and files (docs, pictures, music) are stored online in a digital locker, and you can access them from anywhere, no matter what computer you're using, thus heralding the end of the localized desktop, Windows, etc. MP3Tunes provides a digital locker for backing up music files—it's not a covert file-sharing thing, you can't share a locker with someone, so it's really only for personal backup/place-shifting. The record label EMI says it's illegal and is suing them to turn over all the music stored by the site's users. More »

There goes the Network Neighborhood: RIAA and MPAA in bed with ISP's

Special content delivery rates for RIAA and MPAA and lots of content and support for anti-net neutrality legislation. And, this back room deal is struck after all the corporate players didn't bother to show up at the FCC's public hearing at Stanford (http://tech.slashdot.org/tech/08/04/21/2250207.shtml)

clipped from www.variety.com MPAA, RIAA going steady with ISPs Leaders say relationship will continue By WILLIAM TRIPLETT The content industry's budding cooperative relationship with broadband service providers will continue to develop even after their current principal common interest ceases to exist, top execs said Thursday. As part of an Institute for Policy Innovation panel addressing online piracy, leaders of Hollywood, the recording industry and the wireless industry touted the beginnings of a long-term relationship built on a foundation of making the Internet a thriving market for legal content and a dead end for bootleggers. "We're all in this together," said MPAA chairman-chief exec Dan Glickman. "We're moving toward a world where all our interests align," said RIAA chairman-CEO Mitch Bainwol.