Today saw the end of one of the biggest cases in file sharing since Napster. If you aren’t interested in filesharing, americas effect on the world, your legal rights or what goes on in the world around you, now is the time to stop reading.
Blogs all of the internet are buzzing with opinions on the MGM versus Grokster case. Now before you read my thoughts on what has gone down, please go and read the yahoo news story. It is located here.
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Washington, DC - Today the Supreme Court issued a ruling that could impede makers of all kinds of technologies with expensive lawsuits. The long-awaited decision in MGM v. Grokster states that P2P software manufacturers can be held liable for the infringing activities of people who use their software. This decision relies on a new theory of copyright liability that measures whether manufacturers created their wares with the “intent” of inducing consumers to infringe. It means that inventors and entrepreneurs will not only bear the costs of bringing new products to market, but also the costs of lawsuits if consumers start using their products for illegal purposes.
“Today the Supreme Court has unleashed a new era of legal uncertainty on America’s innovators,” said Fred von Lohmann, EFF’s senior intellectual property attorney. “The newly announced inducement theory of copyright liability will fuel a new generation of entertainment industry lawsuits against technology companies. Perhaps more important, the threat of legal costs may lead technology companies to modify their products to please Hollywood instead of consumers.”
The Supreme Court has also ordered the lower court to consider whether peer-to-peer companies Grokster and StreamCast can be held liable under the new standard. StreamCast is confident that it will pass muster under the new, multi-pronged test.
MGM v. Grokster was brought by 28 of the world’s largest entertainment companies against the makers of the Morpheus, Grokster, and KaZaA filesharing software products in 2001. The entertainment companies hoped to obtain a legal precedent that would hold all technology makers responsible for the infringements committed by the users of their products. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), along with StreamCast counsel Matt Neco and Charles Baker of Porter and Hedges, defended StreamCast Networks, the company behind the Morpheus filesharing software.
The entertainment companies lost their case in District Court, then lost again on appeal to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The lower court rulings were based on the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in the 1984 Sony Betamax case, which determined that Sony was not liable for copyright violations by users of the Betamax VCR.
Court Ruling [PDF]
Great Commentry on the Ruling
EFF Press Release (Article Quoted Above)
Key Quotes
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The US military trial of two Marines, accused of a brutal attack last year on a young Australian in a Townsville nightclub, has dropped charges against one and acquitted the other.
Despite the attack occurring in Townsville and the Marines being arrested and charged there, the case was not dealt with in Australia. Instead the suspects were transferred to the US to be dealt with by a military court.
The Townsville student never had the chance to give evidence against them in the Military Court and he was not even told by either the US or Australian Governments of the acquittal. Further, the father of the injured boy was also told by an American investigator that one of the Marines had made a confession.
The Australian Government has asked the US for a ‘full report’ of the matter.
[Link]
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NEW YORK - Dark clouds have gathered over Gotham. Crime is rampant, despair is widespread and no one is safe. Who will rescue the metropolis from itself, fight the forces of evil and save the good people of the city?
Why don’t you do it?
Forbes has a fricking cool article on what you’d have to do to actually become batman. Remember… he isn’t superhuman… he’s not like spiderman or superman… he’s just an ordinary guy with a lot of money.
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High Resolution Footage of Australia has Arrived :D
Google maps has been in the US for about 6 months… but today its finally gone and got some footage of Australia. I found my house… my work… my uni… everything. Its so damn cool.
I’ll leave you with a shot of brisbane city. You can zoom in twice as far as this. I could pick my own house out pretty easily!
[Link to start you off with]
To navigate just click and drag, or double click to centre, or use the lame ass arrows.
The slider allows you to zoom in and out!
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Fox has announced that they’ll release “Family Guy Presents Stewie Griffin: The Untold Story” on September 27. This 83-minute unrated direct-to-DVD title will follow Stewie as he sets out in search of his real father. Special features will include deleted scenes, still galleries, animatics, and a commentary featuring Seth MacFarlane.
[More info]
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Fuel jumped about 10 cents yesterday. In one day. It’s funny considering I missed another war starting or Saudi Arabia being destroyed by a Nuclear Bomb. In fact the only thing thats changed this week is it just so happens to be 2 days before school holidays. Ironically before many families go on holidays, fuel prices skyrocket…
The world oil price has someone stagnated in the past 15 days, it’s stopped rising. So why has petrol just gone up… thats right… school holidays. They’d never price fix I hear you cry…
They do it every weekend. Feel free to refer to graph 1 to see that there is no corrolation whatsoever with world oil prices hiking each weekend.
The GST doesn’t help much either. The government said it would not cause fuel prices to increase. It did though, although it never made big news. Two indepentdent investigations both found the GST made our fuel more expensive:
The fact that cost savings to fuel companies were overestimated by the Commonwealth was also confirmed in a report by Econtech, commissioned by the Australian Automobile Association. Both the Econtech and ACCC reports estimated that the savings arising from ANTS were only 0.4 cents a litre, i.e. the Commonwealth actually increased tax paid by motorists by 1.1 cents per litre.
- Government Fuel Tax Inquiry
This is so incredibly insignificant when you look at how much tax we pay on our fuel already. The RACV has a huge collection of tables on it here, but as a rule of thumb, almost half (and sometimes more) of what you pay ends up in the governments pockets.
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Improv Everywhere have pulled off another brilliant mission. They held a fake U2 rooftop concert in New York, pulling a crowd of hundreds below…
“Back in January, U2 announced the dates of their “Vertigo” world tour. I contemplated trying to purchase tickets for the May 21 gig at Madison Square Garden. I was a big U2 fan growing up, and MSG is right across the street from my apartment. I ultimately decided it wasn’t worth the steep ticket price. The tickets to the event sold out literally in seconds. As I was thinking about the show, a few things occurred to me:
- U2 is playing right across the street from where I live.
- I have rooftop access at my four-story apartment building.
- U2 is famous for playing on rooftops.
It seemed obvious that “U2″ would have to play an unannounced gig on my rooftop an hour before the doors opened at the Garden.“
[Link]
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A vintage blue taxicab converted into a seagoing vessel and carrying several Cuban immigrants was intercepted Tuesday off Key West by the Coast Guard, a television station reported.
Footage from NBC-6 in Miami showed Coast Guard officers boarding the blue vehicle, which had been modified with a boat prow in front and appeared to have at least four immigrants aboard.
In 2003, immigrants tried to cross the Florida Straits aboard a green 1951 Chevrolet pickup, which a man named Luis Grass had converted into a boat. They were intercepted and sent back to Cuba. The Coast Guard then sunk the craft.
In 2004 Grass made a second attempt to get to the United States illegally — this time aboard a Buick sedan powering another homemade barge.
Grass and his family had more success sticking to land: on March 12 they entered the U.S. through the Texas-Mexico border and were allowed to stay
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Over the past couple of days the sandstorming gallery system has been completely redesigned.
You may have noticed a few weeks ago that our current system changed, and all or a sudden every single image in the gallery was being displayed on one page. This sucked, not only for your viewing… but for our bandwidth and server performance too. As of 1am this morning however, the gallery system has been relaunched. It now includes:
- Easy viewing with 9 images per page
- Complete intergration with the site template
- The ability to submit your own images!
We want you to get submitting. Please note any offensive images will be removed.
Check the new gallery out HERE!
Submit your own images for the gallery HERE! (gif, jpg,png accepted)
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