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Youtube Responds to Viacoms Negative Allegations

Ryan Whitwam — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 18:02:56 -0500

I case you had forgotten, Viacom is still suing YouTube. Opening statements were presented today and the arguments are shaping up much as we expected. Viacom says YouTube doesn’t do enough to keep copyrighted materials off YouTube, and YouTube says that the “safe harbors” provision of the DMCA protects them from the claims. However, some interesting bits of behind the scene dealings have also come out.

According to a blog post by YouTube Chief Counsel Zahavah Levine, for years Viacom hired people to upload their content, and even went so far as to “rough up” the video so it looked stolen. In an attempt to be stealthy they sent employees to the local Kinkos to upload some content so it wouldn’t be traced to Viacom. All this sneaking around worked super well, even on Vacom itself. YouTube points out that Viacom occasionally asked for a clip to be removed only to reverse themselves upon realizing they uploaded it. According to YouTube, several of the clips involved in the suit were uploaded by Viacom.

The post closes with assurances that YouTube would fight the charges and continue to be a “leader in providing media companies with 21st century tools to control, distribute, and make money from their content online”. Do you think YouTube is at fault, or is Viacom just spoiling for a fight?

HTC Ready to Defend Against Apple's Patent Suit

Pulkit Chandna — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 17:14:40 -0500

Android is on the upswing, having become the fastest growing smartphone platform among its contemporaries in the U.S market. While it has a fair distance to go before it can overtake the Apple iPhone, it is more a question of when than if, given the speed of its ascent.

But Apple can be expected to pull out all the stops to retain its comfortable lead over its younger rival. Earlier this month, it dragged Taiwanese phone maker HTC to court, alleging that its Android phones infringe nearly 20 of its patents. It wants a ban on the import of all such HTC handsets that infringe the iPhone-related patents.

Although HTC is yet to officially respond in court, the phone maker from the Far East has finally broken its silence over the lawsuit. It should not surprise anyone that HTC disagrees with Apple's claims and remains unfazed. It has vowed to “fully defend” itself.

“HTC strongly advocates intellectual property protection and will continue to respect other innovators and their technologies as we have always done, but we will continue to embrace competition through our own innovation as a healthy way for consumers to get the best mobile experience possible,” said Peter Chou, chief executive officer, HTC Corporation.

The press release appears to be a reminder of HTC's ability to innovate to anyone who doubts it. It quite proudly points out “HTC’s technology firsts” that include the first Windows PDA (1998), first 3G CDMA EVDO smartphone (October 2005), first Google Android smartphone and first 4G WIMAX smartphone (November 2008).

XFX Radeon HD 5670

Loyd Case — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 17:12:01 -0500

Can a budget card make you happy?

Can you get great gaming performance for $99? That’s the burning question we wanted to answer when the XFX Radeon HD 5670 arrived. The version we tested, with 512MB of GDDR5, can be found for just under a hundred buckazoids on the web. The other question: How well does it stack up against a similarly priced Nvidia card?

Like other Radeon 5000 series GPUs, the 5670 chip is built on a 40nm manufacturing process. For those still trying to wrap their heads around the huge size of the Radeon HD 5970, the 5670 is a mere 6.5 inches long, occupies just a single PCI-E slot, and has no requirements for a power connector. The two cards, of course, are not in the same class.

XFX's Radeon HD 5670 delivers DirectX 11 on a budget.

The HD 5670 has half the stream processors, texture units, and ROPs of the Radeon HD 5770. The GPU core is also clocked lower, as is the GDDR5 memory. With these specs, we expected something to give when running games. Sure enough, when we tried running modern games at 1680x1050 at high detail, the frame rates were unacceptable. Antialiasing? No way.

We took the XFX card for a spin on our graphics test system, a Core i7-975 with 6GB of fast DDR, dialed the graphics option down a couple of notches and re-ran our benchmark games at 1280x720 (or 1280x768 for Battle Forge). Since we were running at a relatively low resolution, we did pump up AA to 4x, just to keep our eyes from bleeding at all the jaggies. We also ran our suite of tests on an EVGA GeForce GT 240, a $99 card based on Nvidia’s GT 240 GPU. Like the AMD GPU, the GT 240 also has 512MB of GDDR5 running at 790MHz, and a core clock of 550MHz.

The Verdict? The XFX card beat the EVGA card in most benchmarks, but the overall margins were fairly small. The sub-$100 category keeps getting better—but games keep getting more demanding. If you’re willing to sacrifice resolution and graphics detail, the XFX Radeon HD 5670 should get the job done. It’s not a strong card for gaming, but it should shine in home theater PCs and other environments that have space and power constraints.

Facebook to Update Safety Protocols After Death of 17-year-old User

Ryan Whitwam — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 17:00:50 -0500

In the wake of the death of a 17-year old girl, Facebook has committed to improving their safety protocols. Many wanted to social networking site to add a “panic button” to flag profiles of suspected pedophiles. Facebook is instead expanding their current reporting system.

Richard Allan, director of policy for Facebook Europe reaffirmed the company’s focus on protecting its users, but said the idea of a panic button was unworkable. Commenting on the reporting system Allan said, “The system effectively handles all manner of potential abuse we see on the site, ranging from the common minor breaking of the rules, such as embarrassing pictures, to the extremely rare serious matters that are quickly escalated to law enforcement."

Facebook has managed to avoid looking out of though here, but is this enough? Some groups are still pushing for more aggressive tools to protect users. Facebook has not completely ruled out a panic button, but says more consideration is needed.

Murphy's Law: Can Chrome OS Beat Windows? Can Anyone?

David Murphy — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 14:23:15 -0500

"Why don't more people use Chrome OS?"

It was an innocuous question, part of a grander lunchtime chat about life, the Internet, and The Future Way of Things. My coworker was curious about the benefits of open-source--specifically those advantages with a dollar sign preceding them--and naturally thought that the upstart Google operating system could someday attract a huge portion of Microsoft Windows's market share.

Why wouldn't enterprise businesses love the Google solution? The amount of money they would be able to save from the reduced desktop licensing requirements would be large enough to transform a CFO's eyes into saucers, Roger Rabbit-style. Similarly, entities that rely on a variety of customized programs and applications to conduct business could weave these elements into the open-source architecture of Chrome OS.

Given that Chrome OS is going to be heavily focused toward a Web-based platform for applications and file hosting, it's only fitting that it find a new home in the world of the enterprise--where one doesn't have a desktop PC so much as a virtualized environment that can be accessed using any piece of hardware in the office. A hard drive crash doesn't much matter if your data is sourced on the cloud.

So let's roll out the red carpet and prep the TV hosts for the big unveiling of Chrome OS in big busin... or not. There's one reason, and one reason only, why an open-source desktop isn't going to succeed in the consumer or enterprise markets: Microsoft was there first.

It's a funny state of affairs: When it comes to technology, we see big-name companies ping-pong between crippling failure and extraordinary success all the time. Nintendo? Completely screwed the pooch with the Gamecube--an absolutely horrendous system that was beaten back by the market faster than you can say "Luigi's Mansion." Yet, up comes the company from the bowels of its R&D labs to produce the Wii, otherwise known as, "the best-selling console of 2009."

Not a gamer? Consider Apple, then--a company that suffered setback after setback in the late 1990s after the relative success of its early hardware launches. Yet, one iMac later, and Apple revolutionized its product lines with a focus on aesthetics to become a significant market driver. Not in computing, per se--at least, not compared to Windows machines--but in its slew of i-themed devices that all borrowed the same design concepts of its initial iMac.

Yet, here sits Windows: untouched. It's arguable that Linux and OSX, and even Chrome OS, all offer features that outpace those found on Microsoft's operating systems--especially less-than-impressive revisions like Vista, which practically require a service pack before they're truly ready for desktop use. But I'm just speaking from the standpoint of someone who sits in front of the keyboard. For the person behind the ledger, it's clear that open-source is the de facto winner.

The issue is that Windows has reached, and blown apart, the critical mass it needs to ensure its own longevity regardless of the competition. Interestingly enough, it's even superseded Microsoft's own revisions to the software--a number of businesses will still use Windows XP even though two iterations of the operating system have taken place over the last four years.

How has this happened? Complacency, mixed with a touch of costs. Businesses in today's economy are a bit loathe to spend the required money upgrading systems (both in licenses and labor) when there's no prevailing reason to do so beyond security concerns. And even then, depending on the nature of the use, even a Windows XP workstation can be locked down to all but essential business functions.

As for complacency, there are enough mission-critical Windows systems that "just plain work" as to make a business uncomfortable to consider jumping even to an upgrade of Windows itself. I don't even want to fathom the potential compatibility issues and internal restructuring that would come up should a large enterprise business try to readjust itself to a cloud-based platform like Chrome OS. I'm not saying it's impossible, I just don't think IT decision makers will consider it a possibility.

It's kind of a killer catch-22: For a new operating system to gain a significant share of the market, it has to reach enough popularity to warrant an investigation (or a switch) toward porting software. But to reach this critical mass, the software has to be available and working in order to give a person or a business a reason to cross the threshold. No matter its software faults, Microsoft holds the ace: Windows is the best solution for enterprise environments because it's always been.

What is Chrome OS (or Linux, or OSX) going to do?

David Murphy (@ Acererak) is a technology journalist and former Maximum PC editor. He writes weekly columns about the wide world of open-source as well as weekly roundups of awesome, freebie software.

Foxconn: We're Not Splitting Up (Not Yet, Anyway)

Paul Lilly — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 11:09:11 -0500

Rumors had been circulating that Foxconn (otherwise known as Hon Hai Precision Industry) planned to split its operations into three separate businesses, but if that's the case, it doesn't look like it will happen any time soon.

Foxconn didn't rule out the possibility entirely, but did say this kind of thing would need careful evaluation, adding that there are no current plans to blow up its business model. In a strange move, Foxconn did, however, express "gratitude" in a filing with the Taiwan Stock Exchange for the media's interests in the matter.

Should Foxconn ultimately slice its business into three units, Chinese-language Next Magazine says one of those would include the company's chassis and connector manufacturing division. Another group would consist of the company's channel retailing business and OEM products, while the third group would put its attention into optoelectronics, monitors, LCD TVs, and other display technologies.

Are You A Criminal? 12 Cyber Law Questions Answered

Quinn Norton — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 10:54:19 -0500

Before you find yourself being grilled by the Computing Crimes Unit, know where your activities fall on the scale of digital rights and wrongs

Make no mistake, we are living in the future. In a matter of moments, we can publish our thoughts, communicate with people on other continents, or start downloading more information than we can ever consume. We are presented with hundreds of great offers every day—each with a thousand caveats. We hear about hackers stealing identities and kids being sued for copyright infringement, and even a New York socialite slap-fight taking place in an anonymous forum can take the national stage. The future is odd, indeed. To help you get some of it straight, we sat down with various lawyers and asked: How do our rights work in the digital age? Can you get in trouble posting messages about someone online? Are there exceptions to copyright? Is it legal to back up your ebooks? Not all of these questions have clear answers, and some answers don’t make much sense. We might be living in the future, but the legal system was designed to deal with the increasingly obsolete present.

Can I be sued for anonymously posting on the Internet that someone is a 'ho'?

Anyone can sue you for anything, anytime, provided they file the paperwork and pay a fee. Whether they have a case is a completely different matter. “Falsely accusing someone of being a prostitute may be defamation, but, depending on the context, a court might read the statement as mere hyperbole, not an actual accusation that [the person] exchanges sexual favors for money,” says Kurt Opsahl, senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. (DISCLOSURE: Quinn Norton does paid photography for the EFF occasionally.)

The intention of the writer matters. “For example,” says Opsahl, “It was not defamation for ESPN to caption a photo ‘Evel Knievel proves you’re never too old to be a pimp,’ since it was—in context—not intended as a criminal accusation, nor was it reasonably susceptible to such a literal interpretation.” (Besides, with Knievel, it’s so clearly true.)

Even if the plaintiff doesn’t know your identity, you can be sued as a John or Jane Doe, or they can use the pretense of the lawsuit to get access to records that will identify you, as was the case with the New York–based model who subpoenaed records from Google to find out which socialite blogger was dissing her. She dropped the case as soon as she found out who had called her a skank. This is yet another reason to use the anonymous Tor web browser when you’re sophomorically taunting D-list celebrities.

Is there any circumstance that allows for legal downloading of copyrighted material through torrents or P2P?

Definitely, but we’ve got to make a few things clear. First off, copyright is automatic and pervasive. “All creative content is automatically copyrighted as soon as it is created—if you scribble on a napkin, that’s copyrighted,” explains Nicholas Reville, cofounder and executive director of the Participatory Culture Foundation.

To “un-copyright” something, the copyright has to expire or be waived, as the U.S. government has done on all content it produces. To legally download something copyrighted—be it over P2P, BitTorrent, or even off an FTP site—you’ll need permission. That second point, authorization, is where the P2P legal action comes from.

“Content that people put online for free download—for example, anything on Legaltorrents.com—is perfectly legal to download and is also copyrighted. The key question is whether the copyright holder has authorized the content to be posted or downloaded,” says Reville.

Is it legal for software that I buy to expire?

Probably, but the vendor has to tell you that up front. What software companies sell you isn’t the stuff they’ve made; they sell you a specialized contract called a license that lets you use the stuff they’ve made. That license, generally printed on the plastic the software is wrapped in (hence, “shrink-wrap license”) or on a webpage in a very small font with an “I agree” button at the bottom, actually tells you what you just bought. “What you see in the fine print is what you get,” says Wendy Seltzer, a fellow with the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School. “Under a license, you might be denied the right to transfer or reverse engineer the software, or the amount of time you may use the software could be limited. Some courts have been saying, however, that if it looks like a sale, it should be treated as a sale, in rulings that limit the effect of some of these unexpected provisions.”

While selling you just about any kind of license is legal, vendors have to be clear about what they’re selling. If it says that it’s reliable forever on the box, and in the small print it says it may knock out your power grid, sour your fruit, shave your cat, and stop working after a week, you probably have a case. “If you’ve been misled about what’s in the package, the Federal Trade Commission might like to hear about unfair or deceptive trade practices,” says Seltzer. “If the box or download page doesn’t clearly say ‘time-limited,’ yet the software goes poof in the middle of a critical project, you’d have a good argument that you didn’t get what you paid for.”

The moral of the story is that when it really counts, always read the fine print.

We can 'format-shift' music by ripping CDs; what about movies or books?

Copyright allows you to make a backup of anything you’ve legally acquired for your own use. If you want to scan your books and back up your software or movies for your own personal use, have at it. But (there’s always a but, right?) the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) makes it illegal to get at the things you’re trying to back up if they are copy-protected. “If the media is restricted by DRM... the DMCA forbids ‘circumventing’ the DRM, even for media you own,” says Fred Von Lohman, the EFF’s senior intellectual property attorney. So, while the backup itself is a fair use, making it is breaking the law. “The MPAA has argued consistently that ripping a DVD you own for use on an iPod is always illegal,” reminds Von Lohman. It’s the perfect catch-22 that let former MPAA president Jack Valenti tell consumers, “If you want a backup copy, you buy another one.”

Of course, it’s worth noting that as long as your backups remain in your possession and aren’t distributed, there is little likelihood of you ever getting caught.

Is downloading TV shows off BitTorrent illegal? After all, I can have recorded versions of TV content via TiVo.

This issue haunts the space somewhere between “it depends” and “no one knows.” You have to have permission from the copyright holder, except when it’s a fair use. Owning a TiVo gives you permission (for the stuff on the TiVo). The Pirate Bay can’t give you permission—but even so, it depends how you use it. “Where time-shifting is concerned, the most relevant exception will be fair use. If you are a student and need a 30-second clip for a class assignment, that’s likely a fair use. On the other hand, if you download the latest episode of Weeds simply because you don’t want to pay for Showtime, that’s probably not a fair use,” says Von Lohman.

TiVo has negotiated contracts for you, and the court has cleared using a VCR to tape something for later. But P2P is still in legal limbo.

“What about downloading a TV show that you would otherwise have been entitled to TiVo, but the power was out and it’s not on Hulu? I think that’s probably a fair use, but it’s hard to know without a court getting involved,” says Von Lohman. It might even depend on what protocol you’re using, since using BitTorrent makes you a distributor as you download, and you probably don’t have the right to distribute, even if you can argue the right to download.

Also, is that really what you should be using your UPS for?

Is it legal to download Girl Talk, Bootie, and other mashup music, or to host them for download?

Thus far, the answer seems to be that it depends on the musical taste of the judge, which is really no way to run a legal system. The legal question is: Does the remix so transform the music that the mashup itself counts as a whole new form of expression? “At the Organization for Transformative Works, we take the position that remixes, distributed noncommercially, are generally fair use because they represent new creative works that add to the variety of expression available and don’t generally interfere with the market for the originals. That said, not all copyright owners agree,” says Rebecca Tushnet, professor at Georgetown Law and a legal advisor for OTW. It’s even hazier for commercial works, which are OK in some circuit courts and not others—a recipe for getting the Supreme Court involved.

“It would be great to have a bright-line rule, but there simply isn’t one. Larry Lessig has suggested that we should reform the law to make clear that noncommercial remix is legal,” says Tushnet. Then it would be nice to reform the law to make the status of commercial remix clear, as well.

Downloading isn’t legally different from hosting files, but generally, copyright holders send cease and desist letters to the host rather than the downloaders. Since EMI gave itself a public relations black eye by going after DJ Danger Mouse’s The Grey Album in 2004, not many rights holders have pursued the mashup world, preferring to focus on more straightforward piracy.

Next up, what about open wi-fi?

If I bring my work home and my own PC is hacked with my work stuff on it, am I liable?

If you’re following your employer’s rules, you’re OK. “So far, no one has been held liable for someone else’s hacking in the absence of any specific statutory or contractual responsibility to keep the information safe,” says Jennifer Grannick, civil liberties director of the EFF. That bit about “statutory or contractual responsibility” is important, though. If you’re a government employee or contractor, there are certain types of work you either can’t take home or can’t expose to the Internet, like Social Security information. You may have sensitive information from your private employer that’s not supposed to leave the building, as well. It should be a no-brainer that you don’t take that kind of stuff and put it on a home PC connected to the Internet, or leave it on a laptop in the car while you eat lunch, but people keep doing it—and their Data Valdezes keep ending up in the news.

Think before taking work home, or better yet, leave work at work. Your Blood Elf Warlock won’t level himself!

Am I liable if I share my Wi-Fi, or leave it open, and someone else breaks a law from my IP?

The law is all about intention. “People aren’t held liable for the bad actions of others, unless they have a duty to prevent the harm, or they conspire, solicit, aid, or abet the wrong-doer,” says Grannick. If you aren’t nudging and winking at the lawbreaker, and if you had no idea it happened, you haven’t broken the law. But we don’t have court-appointed mind readers yet, and it’s not impossible to find yourself pressed to prove you weren’t knowledgeable of or complicit in a crime committed from your Wi-Fi. “Merely having open Wi-Fi should not cause you any liability, but it does leave open the possibility that law enforcement investigating a crime will think you are the culprit and act accordingly.” Even though you are likely to clear your name, it might be a headache to get there. If someone breaks your WEP key, you could find yourself in the same position anyway—fortunately, both situations are more rare than getting struck by lightning.

Is it legal for my ISP to advertise unlimited Internet, then throttle my usage?

Like buying, ahem, rather licensing, time-bomb software, “the answer would depend on the small-print terms of service,” says Art Brodsky of the nonprofit Public Knowledge. “ISPs often cover themselves with the details.”

But Kevin Bankston, senior EFF attorney in free speech and privacy law, says, “Depending on the facts, such advertising may rise to the level of deception, in which case it may violate state laws prohibiting unfair and deceptive business practices, as well as the Federal Trade Commission Act, which (among other things) prohibits false advertising.” They’d have to make that asterisk on the word “UNLIMITED!” very small to be liable, and the best protection is still reading the annoying fine print in the first place.

If I bring my personal laptop to work, does my employer have the right to search that computer?

The net may be complex, but legally speaking, personal property is pretty well understood. Both taking your property and searching it are issues the law is quite clear about. Your employer can potentially get into all kinds of trouble, both criminal and civil, if you haven’t given your permission for the taking, much less the searching, of your property. If any damage is done to your property in the process, you can sue your employer under various tort laws, with names like “tort of conversion” and “trespass to chattels,” not to mention the crime of theft. Plus, there’s “potential... liability under federal and state laws criminalizing unauthorized access to a computer system,” says Kevin Bankston. “Depending on how invasive the search is and what kind of personal data is stored on the computer, such a search may also constitute an invasion of privacy under state law,” Bankston adds. Of course, you can sign all those rights away with your employment contract. It’s all there, in the really tiny print.

Can my company legally install a keylogger or track everything I do?

We don’t know, and it’s not because we didn’t do our homework. “The federal courts are currently split on whether secretly installing a keylogger violates federal wiretapping laws,” says Bankston. What that means, in a practical sense, is that there either is no law, or existing law hasn’t been interpreted such that the matter is settled.

There’s a lot of law like this in every field—it’s just unknown until the courts take it up and argue over it for a few years. But the Internet is new enough and strange enough that places where it touches (like copyright and privacy) are in real legal turmoil. And if that weren’t enough, these debates get to be hashed out on the state level in every single state, as well.

“One district court in New Jersey has found that it is a wiretapping violation if the keylogging occurs while the computer is connected to the Internet, while another district court in California has found that it is not a wiretapping violation at all, although it did so in part based on the reasoning in another wiretapping decision from the Sixth Circuit that was later vacated,” says Bankston. Meaning that the precedent for that decision fell apart, leaving it on precarious grounds. None of that even gets into the possible privacy claims, which could be harsh and would vary between states.

There is one way your company could surveil you without any trouble, though: with your permission. “A conscientious employer with good legal counsel would likely seek to notify and obtain consent from an employee before installing a keylogger,” says Bankston. Making that a condition of your employment? Perfectly legal as soon as you sign on the dotted line.

When All Is Said and Done...

It’s an interesting time to be a lawyer (if a stressful time to be a PC user) with the legal eight-ball so often coming up “Answer hazy, try again later.” Don’t expect the situation to settle down anytime soon. The law moves notoriously slowly and the net hasn’t shown any signs of waiting for the law to catch up. Now more than ever, it’s important to read the fine print, but often we deal with impossible amounts of fine print. Try to know what you’re buying, renting, licensing, and so on, and be aware that even well-known brands often bait-and-switch their services.

The good news is that this legal incoherence has turned so many of us into scofflaws that getting caught is like winning the reverse lottery—unpleasant, to be sure, but also unlikely. Wait, that’s the good news? Let’s try that again: The good news is that we have so many more ways to express ourselves, be creative, and connect to each other that the law is floundering trying to understand it, and we’re making a new world while it flounders. So happy netting, people of the future!

Quinn Norton has written about the intersection of technology and law for Wired, The Guardian, FAIR, The Irish Times, and more. She knows too many lawyers, and has been known to get them drunk, hang out at their parties, and DM their D&D sessions. Quinn is reachable at quinn@quinnnorton.com.

Nexus One Sales Much Lower than Expected

Paul Lilly — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 10:50:09 -0500

Google likes to refer to the Nexus One as a "superphone," but there's nothing super about the sales figure. On the contrary, sales of the Nexus One will probably be around 1-1.2 million during its first year of release. That's a good chunk less than the 2.5-3.5 million units many had originally projected.

Google may have shot itself in the foot in a number of ways, the first of which is offering the Nexus One as an online-only item. That's fine for geeks, but does nothing for the average smartphone owner who prefers to roll old school by walking into an actual store front.

Numerous other factors have held the Nexus One back, including a high unsubsidized price tag, initially limiting the device to T-Mobile, limiting the upgrade pricing to only those on an Individual 500 plan, and implementing their own termination fee in addition to any applicable carrier fees.

The latest announcement from the Google camp is that a second Nexus One model is now being offered, one that is compatible with AT&T's 3G network. But so far only offered at the unsubsidized price of $529, it's difficult to see this move reversing the Nexus One's sales fortunes.

Image Credit: Google