Posted 12/15/09 at 05:12:36 PM by Bart Salisbury

Doesn’t seem to take a whole lot these days to get French knickers in a twist, and Google seems to have accomplished it big time. Rather than let Google--an American company--digitize the works held by France’s National Library, French president Nicolas Sarkozy said France would provide $1.1 billon for the job--France will go this one alone, thank you very much. According to Sarkozy: “We won’t let ourselves be stripped of our heritage to the benefit of a big company, no matter how friendly, big or American it is.”

France’s effort comes on the heels of some failed attempts to offset the dominance of Google on the Internet in Europe. France and Germany planned a join-effort multimedia search engine, “Quaero” (Latin for “I seek”), but that’s been abandoned. (Making a search engine is tougher than it looks--ask Microsoft.) And France has been unsuccessful in prodding the European Union to undertake its own book digitization project.

Cash-strapped France plans to borrow the money to digitize the 14 million books and millions of other documents held by the National Library. The European Union isn’t too keen on France’s venture, as France’s debt and deficits are now at record levels. But, this sort of irrational, fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants bravado served France well at the outbreak of World War II. It should serve them just as well now.

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Posted 12/03/09 at 04:39:52 PM by Bart Salisbury

It’s not as daft as it sounds. Henrik Anderson, a Danish citizen, turned himself into police, confessing he had broken Danish anti-piracy laws by breaking the Digital Rights Management (DRM) on more than one hundred legally purchased DVDs. He did so because he wants some clarification. It seems, under Danish law, it’s okay to copy, and at same time not okay to copy.

Danish law allows the owner digital media to make private, non-commercial copies of works they own. And, it prohibits owners from making such copies without the rightholder’s consent if the copying circumvents DRM.

Anderson initially sought clarification from the Danish anti-piracy outfit Antipiratgruppen: was he a criminal or not? Antipiratgruppen never got back to Anderson on whether he would be prosecuted, so he took, for him, the next logical step: he turned himself in. Anderson wants a trial so the law can be clearly established.

Anderson may have a broader motive here--drawing attention both to the inconsistency in the law, and to the matter of whose rules he should be following: the laws of Denmark or the dictates of the lawyers for the companies whose DRM is being circumvented.

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Posted 01/05/09 at 03:46:52 PM by Mark Edward Soper

When Build 7000 of Windows 7 leaked onto the Internet recently, some bloggers speculated that Microsoft had deliberately leaked Build 7000. If that's the case, Redmond has some 'splainin' to do: numerous users have reported that Windows Media Player 12 (the media player included in Windows 7) corrupts some MP3 files. 

According to posters at a Neowin.net forum, WMP 12 removes the first 2 to 3 seconds of MP3s that have large headers (over 16KB) when the "automatically fill in missing metadata using the online service" option is selected. This option is part of the Express setup defaults. According to ZDNet's Hardware 2.0 blog, the problem seems to be confined to variable bit-rate (VBR) MP3 files.

Microsoft is aware of the bug and is working on a patch, but if you've decided not to wait for an official Beta 1 of Windows 7, what should you do in the meantime to protect your MP3 collection? Join us after the jump to learn how to protect your precious rips and purchased files - and for your chance to tell us if this has happened to you.

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Posted 03/11/08 at 02:19:11 PM by Michael Brown

Cowon makes some of the most interesting digital media players we’ve laid hands on. The iAudio 7 is no exception, although it won’t earn a place in our pantheon of favorites.

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Posted 03/01/05 at 12:00:00 AM by The Maximum PC Staff

In the PDF archive of the March 2005 issue, you can find:

• How To: Copy Every Disc You Own!
• Digi-Cam Shoot Out!
• Case Painting: How to Paint Like a Master Modder
• Behind the Scenes Look at Product Testing
• 11 New Reviews
• Ask the Doctor
• Rig of the Month
• The Watchdog
• And a whole lot more!

Click the big giant cover image to the right to download the PDF archive today!

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