Who's to Blame for Star Wars Distribution?

Two days prior to Episode III's release, inaccurate reports dictated this movie was already spreading on the BitTorrent network. However, it was soon discovered the copy purportedly existing on BitTorrent was simply a false copy. On Wednesday, May 18th, approximately 3 hours before Episode III officially debuted in theaters, a release group named "ViSA" uploaded this film to the Newsgroups. This was the genuine article...

http://www.slyck.com/news.php?story=797

Can Bill Gates Slow Google Down?

Fortune Magazine features a great article on the challenges Microsoft faces from Google's juggernaut. The amazing list of innovations -- think Google Maps, Google Mail, Blogger, and the nearly omniscient Google search engine -- are jaw-droppingly good. Okay, let me sidetrack my narrative for a moment. If you haven't experimented heavily with Google's search engine (and only a few serious geek losers like me have), you'll find that it is a calculator, a dictionary, an address-and-phone book, a UPS/Fedex package tracker, a stock quotation device, an airline flight checker...

http://directorblue.blogspot.com/2005/05/can-bill-gates-slow-google-down.html

BBC Announces P2P Broadcasting

If you're a fan of British programming and live in the United Kingdom, the BBC is continuing what they hope will be the iTunes for TV show distribution. Although the initiative is still in the testing phase, it is now being opened to 5,000 UK citizens. Participants will be able use the pilot P2P application, dubbed "interactive Media Player (iMP)" to download select BBC programming...

http://www.slyck.com/news.php?story=791

Yahoo forces RIAA Staff Cutbacks

Ok, not yet. But they are coming. I promise. Not that I ever want to see anyone lose their jobs, but it will be nice for music label employees to have all the subsidies they are paying the RIAA go to their artists. (Yes you were supposed to laugh at that one.) As Barry Ritholz smartly pointed out in his blog, the introduction of Yahoo’s Music Unlimited Service sets the new marketvalue for all the music you can download in a month… 5 bucks. The RIAA can no longer claim that students who are downloading music are costing them thousands of dollars each. They can’t claim much of anything actually. In essence, Yahoo just turned possession of a controlled music substance into a misdemeanor...

http://www.blogmaverick.com/entry/1234000270043583/

MPAA warns China of piracy fallout

Dan Glickman said he delivered the message to heads of various government departments in Beijing this week during his first visit to China as new chief executive of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA)... "We said the U.S. Congress ... is becoming increasingly agitated about piracy," Glickman, a former agriculture secretary under the Clinton administration, told Reuters during an interview in Shanghai. "We said they need to do something or there would be trade related problems. ... There's consequences if they don't get it down..."

http://www.gnutella.com/news/16936

Official BitTorrent Developer Releases Trackerless Client

Earlier this month, Azureus introduced a new beta client with DHT (Distributed Hash Table) layer support. Many touted this as a "trackerless" BitTorrent network. Two weeks later, the creator of BitTorrent, Bram Cohen, released the latest official version of his client, fresh with "trackerless" support...

http://www.slyck.com/news.php?story=795

Sweden Threatens Ban on Copy-Protected CDs

Sweden's justice minister, Thomas Bodström, has called for record companies to stop copy-protecting CDs. In a move which will stoke up the country's increasingly heated copyright protection debate, Bodström has said that if the industry continues to put blocking technology on new music CDs, the government will make it illegal. "Obviously it should be possible to make a copy of your own newly-purchased CD for an mp3 player, or to make an extra copy of the CD to have in the car," he argued on the Swedish Television web site...

http://www.gnutella.com/news/16919

Apple Recalls 2.25 million Batteries

Apple Computers and the US Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) have jointly announced a massive recall of 2,25,000 lithium ion rechargeable batteries in some of Apple notebook computers due to a fire hazard risk posed by overheating of these batteries. In exchange, Apple is offering free replacement batteries for certain units of the 12-inch iBook G4, and 12-inch and 15-inch PowerBook G4s, sold between October 2004 and May 2005...

http://www.gnutella.com/news/16939

Music biz wary of copyright sharing movement

An innovative approach to sharing and licensing copyrighted material is spreading around the globe, gathering millions of creative works under its umbrella. The movement, spearheaded by a nonprofit organization called Creative Commons, is little-known in the music industry. Yet sponsoring groups in 31 countries have adopted the Creative Commons approach...

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20050521/media_nm/music_copyright_dc_1

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