Unless Vista was properly activated, it would drop into “reduced functionality mode”, in which the only thing you could do with it was access the Internet in order to complete online activation — or buy a valid product key.

In Service Pack 1, the behavior was changed so that the operating system would still operate, but the background turned black and nagging boxes warned you that you “might be a victim of software piracy”.

Now, Microsoft is going to bring this “feature” to Windows XP Professional with a new version of the Windows Genuine Advantage. From the WGA blog:

With this update to WGA Notifications in Windows XP, we’ve implemented a couple of related features that draw on the notifications experience we designed for Windows Vista SP1. After installing this version of WGA Notifications on a copy of Windows XP that fails the validation, most users will discover on their next logon that their desktop has changed to a plain black background from whatever was there previously.

The desktop background can be reset to anything else in the usual ways, but every 60 minutes it will change back to the plain black background. This will continue to happen until that copy of Windows is genuine.

Also, the user will see the addition of what we call the “persistent desktop notification.” This notification is similar to a watermark but works a bit differently. The image appears over the system tray and is non-interactive in the sense that you can’t click on it or do anything to it.

This update will come only to XP Pro users, since Microsoft says that’s the most-pirated version of XP. If you use XP Home or Media Center Edition, you won’t get this new release of WGA. It will take several months before all XP Pro users have the new WGA.

Blog author Alex Kochis claims this is something XP users actually want:

. . . Our research has clearly shown that customers value the ability of Windows to alert them when they may have software that is not genuine, but they also want the ability to stay up to date with the least effort required on their part. . . .

OK, Alex, if you say so . . .

While I don’t think users of activated, valid copies of XP Pro will care much about this, it could become an issue if WGA malfunctions, as it has in the past. If Microsoft’s WGA servers mistakenly report a valid copy as being not genuine, XP Pro users aren’t likely to “value” this feature all that much.

Original URL: http://blogs.chron.com/techblog/archives/2008/08/got_a_pirated_copy_of_xp_expect_to_be_nagged.html

The fact that Myspace.co.uk was originally used to offer email services and websites to subscribers meant TWS had insulated itself from an action for some time. But MySpace’s main argument to Nominet centred on the most recent use of the domain as a Pay Per Click website which sent MySpace.co.uk visitors to a parked page with advertisements for social networking websites including MySpace. MySpace Inc says the practice started in July 2005 when News Corp took it over, boosting its fame, but TWS claims it was “at least” before June 2005.

Secondly, at issue was whether parking the .co.uk domain had become “abusive” when the PPC ads changed because MySpace.com became well known. In the case of MySpace.co.uk, the ads on the parked domain did change to “reflect the fame of MySpace.com”, admitted TWS, “but that had happened automatically as a result of the algorithms used by parking company Sedo.” In other words, TWS fingered the firm servicing the ads. While MySpace Inc. argued that TWS should have exercised control over the content of the adverts, TWS said this did not constitute a “change of use”.

The three-person appeal panel said they were “reluctant to place any duty on a registrant, who has merely had the good fortune (or maybe ill fortune) to register a name in good faith…” so long as they don’t exploit the situation.

There appears to be no more steps that MySpace can take within the Nominet DRS arbitration process to challenge TWS’s right to hold onto the name. So it’s the end of the line – unless there is further action MySpace can take through the civil courts.

Total Web Solutions also claims that Nominet tried to “unfairly help” MySpace by at first denying the existence of emails sent between solicitors and MySpace which may have aided TWS’s case. The solicitor who represented Total Web Solution in the case, Jim Davies, is now standing for election to the Nominet board, as he believes it’s unwise to “operate the DRS (Domain Resolution Service) from within the company.” Davies has been involved in a number of the more high profile domain name disputes in the UK recently.

Total Web Solutions’ Managing director Paul Fallon issued a statement saying “We refused to be bullied by one of the largest media organisations in the world. This has been a very stressful case for a legitimate medium sized ISP to have to take on – but we had to defend our reputation and to stand up for what was right.”

Of course, the MySpace.co.uk domain is now effectively worthless since TWS would be ill-advised to do anything with it at all now. It is currently displaying a blank page. MySpace continues to use uk.myspace.com/. A MySpace spokesperson declined to comment.

Original URL: http://uk.techcrunch.com/2008/04/29/myspacecom-loses-myspacecouk-on-appeal/

Nielsen is developing the system with Digimarc, a provider of digital watermarking technology. The service, which the companies plan to start rolling out in the second quarter of next year, would tap into technology Nielson currently uses in the services it sells to advertisers and TV networks.

The system would first be used for policing the use of TV programs, clips of which are often posted on user-generated content sites, such as YouTube, which is owned by Google. Much of that content is uploaded without authorization or compensation to the content provider, which has led to tension between Internet companies and Hollywood studios. These tensions reached a peak in March whenViacom filed a $1 billion lawsuit against Google, accusing the company of massive copyright infringement.

The Nielsen/Digimarc system would be offered as a way to quickly discover unauthorized content on sites. To do that, the system would leverage Nielsen’s existing watermark technology, which is used on more than 95% of TV programming distributed today. The watermarks are used by the meters installed in people’s home to identify the programs they watch. Nielsen sells data from people’s viewing habits to TV networks and advertisers.

Besides watermarking, Nielsen also tags over-the-air TV programs intercepted by 700 installations across the nation. For those programs without watermarks, Nielsen creates a digital signature based on unique patterns in the audio signal.

Nielsen’s watermarks and digital signatures are stored in a database that would be used in the copyright-protection system. When a clip is posted on a Web site, the system would search for the watermark. If one doesn’t exist, then the system would create a digital signature. In either case, the identifier would be compared to what’s in the database to find a match. Once the program is identified, the Nielsen system could notify site operators and content providers when a clip is being shown without authorization.

While the system wouldn’t automatically delete unauthorized material, Web site owners could configure their systems to take that step. “The purpose of this system is not to be a policeman on the Internet, but to provide a system where the content provider can have confidence and knowledge of where their programming is being distributed,” Dave Harkness, senior VP of strategy and business development at Nielsen, told InformationWeek. “They also can develop a business relationship with the content distributor, which in this case is the Web site.”

Nielsen is confident it can convince many TV producers to buy into the system, since the company already has relationships with most of these businesses. Convincing Web sites may be more difficult, since many already have some kind of copyright-protection system in place or are developing one. Google, for example, is developing a system for YouTube. In general, most sites take down unauthorized content as soon as the owners notify them.

Nielsen believes it can turn many sites into customers by offering a system that’s ready to plug into their infrastructure, saving them the cost of building a copyright-protection system themselves, Harkness said. Besides generating revenue from the service, Nielson could also use it to track the use of video on the Web and sell the gathered data to advertisers.

If Nielsen launches its service it will have competitors, albeit smaller businesses. Those companies that provide services for policing the use of copyrighted content online include Audible Magic, Vobile, and BayTSP.

Original URL: http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=204701360

There are countless MP3 file-sharing sites that don’t look anything like BitTorrent or Lime Wire. They’re low-key, homegrown blogs that don’t host illicitly copied music, but do provide links to third-party sites, or storage lockers, such as Megashare, where pirated music is stored. These bloggers do it for the love of the music, they say, but it doesn’t hurt that they make a little money from advertising along the way.

The low-profile success of MP3 blogs, and the apparent unconcern of the music industry, is in stark contrast to the aggressive anti-piracy actions taken by the Recording Industry Association of America in other spheres. For instance, the RIAA recently won a $222,000 judgment against a single mother of two for using file-sharing software Kazaa to trade copyright files. No similar action has been taken against MP3 bloggers.

Many of these sites, like Hangover Heart Attack and It’s Coming Out of Your Speaker, run ads through Google’s AdSense program, which means that Google, too, makes money from sites that direct people to bootleg MP3 files.

Anyone can sign up for AdSense — bloggers, publishers, nonprofit groups or even aspiring poets — although Google’s terms-of-service agreement prohibits websites that promote illegal activity or infringe on others’ rights. Google sells ad space on members’ sites, and it splits the revenue with the publishers.

Technically, these blogs could be considered illegal. The RIAA could make a claim that bloggers who direct people to pirated music may be committing “contributory copyright infringement.” And a claim could even be made against Google for profiting from the sites, says attorney Eric Custer, a partner at Manatt, Phelps & Phillips.

But who wants to put a stop to it? The RIAA declined to comment for this story, but the publisher of one MP3 aggregator, who asked to remain anonymous, says music labels have been extremely cooperative. This blogger monitors more than 3,000 music blogs daily, providing links to files that have been uploaded to various music lockers. And no, the blogger has never been asked by a label to take a link down.

“Actually, we’ve been contacted by labels, promo agencies and even musicians and bands to help promote them. Which we’ve done, free of charge,” the blogger wrote by email. The blogger also has the impression that the site has helped expose people to music they wouldn’t otherwise hear, and may even help drive CD sales, although there’s no hard evidence of this.

A major moneymaking operation it is not. The blog, which generates thousands of pageviews daily from thousands of unique visitors, makes its creator just 75 cents for each hour put into it.

Google keeps the AdSense revenue split confidential, so it’s unknown exactly how much the company makes from each publisher in the program. In a recent SEC filing, Google said it pays “most” of the fees it makes from advertisers to publishers. A 2006 New York Times report suggested one publisher, Digital Point Solutions, took home 78.5 percent of the revenue, presumably leaving 21.5 percent to Google.

Whatever the split, AdSense is an incredibly profitable operation for the company, generating billions in revenue each year. In the third quarter of 2007 alone, Google made $1.45 billion, or one-third of its revenue, from AdSense. The amount of money generated by music bloggers, though, could be fairly marginal.

“Proportionately, I think (blogs) probably represent a very small percentage of the file-sharing market,” says Eric Garland, co-founder and CEO of BigChampagne, a Beverly Hills, California, market research firm that follows the file-sharing universe. “There are always going to be different mechanisms or vehicles for exchanging files, but ultimately, people go to a search-driven environment that you find in file-sharing applications.”

For its part, Google denies responsibility for content on the AdSense network and says it acts fast when it identifies publishers who violate its terms of service. And to enforce this policy, Google reviews participating sites to weed out content that violates the AdSense terms-of-service contract.

“In the same way we crawl websites (for our search service), we crawl publisher websites to flag information that may violate our policy,” says Google spokesman Brandon McCormick. “Every site at some point goes through a manual review. It’s something we take very seriously.”

Original URL: http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/news/2007/12/mp3_blogs

One of the world’s best-known BitTorrent indexing sites, The Pirate Bay has defiantly linked to pirated copies of films, TV shows, music videos, and other content while often boasting that it ignores Hollywood’s requests to remove them. The Pirate Bay does not host any unauthorized content, but the service is internationally famous for being a highly effective file-sharing tool.

Prince will file similar suits against The Pirate Bay in the U.S., France, a country with laws favorable to copyright owners, and Sweden, where The Pirate Bay is based. In addition, Prince is preparing to take civil action against companies that advertise on The Pirate Bay, many of which are headquartered in Israel, according to John Giacobbi, Web Sheriff’s president.

Prince has hired Giacobbi and Web Sheriff, a service that protects copyright materials from Internet piracy, to coordinate the legal challenges against The Pirate Bay and others who the singer believes has violated his copyright.

Giacobbi said Web Sheriff is also helping to launch an investigation into The Pirate Bay’s off-shore connections to determine whether the company is compliant with Swedish and international income and corporation tax laws.

The Pirate Bay has already weathered several attempts by the governments of Sweden and the United States to shut down the site. Yet, this is likely the largest civil challenge the Web site has ever faced.

At the core of Prince’s lawsuits are his claims that the three founders of The Pirate Bay are profiting from the work of artists without compensating them. The Pirate Bay earns $70,000 a month in advertising revenue, Giacobbi alleged. The site’s founders have previously denied that the operation makes money.

None of the three founders of The Pirate Bay could be reached for comment.

Prince, who Giacobbi said has the backing of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, or IFPI, the group that represents the recording industry worldwide, is only adding to The Pirate Bay’s legal troubles. The site founders also face criminal charges, according to a story published Thursday on the blog TorrentFreak.

A prosecutor in Sweden announced that he plans to press charges against five people involved with The Pirate Bay before January 31, 2008, the blog reported. The five are being accused of infringing on intellectual property.

The copyright battle that Prince has waged the past two months has not been without its costs. He was widely criticized this week when three unauthorized fan sites accused him of trying to violate their free speech rights when his handlers demanded that they remove several photos of him.

It was widely reported this week that Prince had begun suing fans. His representatives denied this.

“Prince is not suing his fans, is not looking to penalize fans and nor is he looking to inhibiting freedom of speech in any way,” said AEG, Prince’s promoter.

Prince began making headlines in September after lashing out against sites he believed were violating his intellectual-property rights.

In September, the singer said he planned to take legal action against The Pirate Bay, YouTube, and eBay. As of Friday, Prince’s lawsuits appeared to be solely targeted at The Pirate Bay.

By suing The Pirate Bay in three different countries, Prince is hoping to put financial pressure on the service, Giacobbi said. Copyright laws in the United States and France would also make it nearly impossible for a site like The Pirate Bay to triumph, he claimed.

“There is no way that they will have any defense because it’s blatant piracy,” Giacobbi said. “They’ll either have to come out and fight or just try and ignore it. In that case, we’re going to win a default judgment against them. This could be a ticking time bomb for them. They can’t outrun this. We are very confident.”

Original URL: http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9814504-7.html

In an October 25 grand jury indictment, John Escalera, 29, and Gustavo Razo, 28, were charged with using Escalera’s position within California State University, Fresno’s IT help desk center to gain access to the university’s grades database.

The men could face 20 years in prison and $250,000 in fines if convicted of the eleven counts on the indictment, which includes charges of unauthorized computer access, identity theft, conspiracy, and wire fraud.

Though they are charged with identity theft, a university spokeswoman could not immediately say whether or not sensitive information such as social security numbers had been compromised during the crime.

According to the indictment, Escalera used “computer hacking techniques” to acquire the password of a supervisor and then used this account to get access to usernames and passwords used by the university’s Web-based PeopleSoft academic record system, hosted at a Unisys data center in Salt Lake City, Utah. PeopleSoft products are sold by Oracle.

Escalera allegedly obtained user name and passwords for the university’s registrar, extension academic program registrar, academic records coordinator, and others, and used these passwords to bump up his own grades as well as those of his friend, Razo, who paid cash for the grade change.

The grades were changed several times between January and June of 2004, the indictment states.

The university had recently updated to PeopleSoft from a legacy system known as the Student Information Management System/Relational database, and IT staff finally caught wind of the problem during a routine audit designed to check the accuracy of the conversion.

Original URL: http://www.infoworld.com/article/07/11/02/…/grades_1.html

Three plaintiffs were each seeking 69,000 euros (100,000 dollars) in damages for invasion of their privacy after their homosexuality was revealed on the website, which is written and edited by thousands of anonymous contributors.

But a judge rejected their demands in a ruling reached on Monday, arguing that “the Wikimedia Foundation’s responsibility … has not been clearly established,” a decision welcomed by the foundation.

“The decision is very clear and we appreciate the fact the court acknowledges our role as an Internet host, rather than an editor,” said Florence Devouard, chair of the Wikimedia Foundation’s board.

Founded in 2001, Wikipedia is an “open-source” Internet encyclopedia, which is to say anyone with access to a computer can edit it. The Foundation’s task is to work out ground rules and editorial policy and raise funds to pay for IT investments and development projects.

Devouard said the contested information was added anonymously to a Wikipedia article before being “quickly withdrawn, even if it remained accessible for a while through the site’s records.”

One of the plaintiffs “sent an e-mail which we never received before turning to his lawyer,” she said.

“When we are informed of this type of mistake we always try to react in the following hours to withdraw such information,” said Devouard, who is based near the central French city of Clermont-Ferrand.

With eight million articles and counting, in 250 languages from English and Arabic to Tagalog or Wolof, Wikipedia says it is used each month by more than 100 million people.

Although its accuracy is reportedly on a par with the Encyclopaedia Britannica, Wikipedia has also faced a mounting battle against misinformation and information vandalism.

Original URL: http://www.physorg.com/news113281459.html

Filed on October 12th, the suit claims that the Fargo, North Dakota-based Usenet.com service “…sells access to a body of content from a global network of computers” that “…contains…millions of copyrighted sound recordings” and “…touts its service as a haven for those seeking pirated content.”

The complaint even cites Usenet’s own “about” section with the following:

Today’s hottest way of sharing MP3 files over the Internet is Usenet; forget about all the peer-to-peer software applications, which quickly become outdated. Usenet allows everyone around the world to share their files on a worldwide network of peer servers and make them available to any member of this worldwide network.

A usenet is comprised of a large number of servers that communicate with each other. An individual user reads and posts messages to a company’s local computer server. Messages are stored on that server and then exchanged with other servers.

Usenet.com loads online bulletin boards(newsgroups) obtained from the usenet network onto its server and then sells access to the newsgroups that it has chosen to host on its usenet.com service.

The suit claims that many of the newsgroups that usenet.com chooses to offer “are explicitly dedicated to copyright infringement.”

The complaint continues:

Users of Defendant’s service post copyrighted sound recordings to these newsgroups on Defendant’s services; the works are identified by artist and title so that users can easily find any sound recordings they might want to copy. Those copyrighted works are then propagated worldwide, allowing millions of users of the Usenet network, including Defendant’s own subscribers, to copy copyrighted sound recordings with ease and anonymity – and without authorization.

It sums up its lawsuit with the claim that Usenet.com “provides essentially the same functionality that P2P services such as Napster, Aimster, Grokster, and and did,” and that it even goes further than them by customizing “…its services to make it as convenient and seamless as possible for subscribers to distribute and obtain copyrighted music without authorization and without paying for music.”

It’s too early to tell how things will paly out, but one thing’s for sure – the RIAA is leaving no stoned unturned in its scorched earth legal strategy.

Original URL: http://www.zeropaid.com/news/9058/

“I want people to know that they are being sued based on hacked, spoofed computers. They should still fight back in these cases,” Jammie Thomas, 30, said in a telephone interview moments ago. “I have to pay for somebody else’s actions.”

Thomas, a single mother of two from Brainerd, Minnesota, is among the 20,000-plus individuals the Recording Industry Association of America has sued in the past four years. She was found liable for 24 songs and ordered to pay $9,250 per track in penalties. She faced fines as high as $3.6 million.

Her case was the first to go to trial, while the bulk of them have settled and others are pending.

When the verdict was read, she said she became “disgusted because I didn’t do this.”

She said she would not settle the case before trial. “I wasn’t going to pay for something I didn’t do,” she said. She and her attorney, Brian Toder, are mulling whether to appeal the judgment.

The RIAA put on evidence that the internet protocol address and cable modem account linked to her internet service provider was sharing some 1,700 files on the Kazaa program on Feb. 21, 2005. Thomas was logged in to Kazaa using the name Tereastarr, jurors found.

Thomas uses Tereastarr on her e-mail accounts, for online shopping, on MySpace, and even with an online dating service.

When asked if she was going to buy any new music, she said “I don’t have any money for that.”

The Native American woman works as an administrator at a local tribe and said she would worry about the financial implications of paying the judgment “when I cross that bridge.”

Original URL: http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/riaa_trial/index.html

Last week, Performance Pricing filed a lawsuit against AOL, Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo, charging the four companies with infringing upon its patent, “Systems and methods for transacting business over a global communications network such as the Internet.”

The suit was filed in the Eastern District of Texas, where a large number of patent cases have been filed in recent years due to the district’s perceived friendliness to ostensibly wronged inventors.

According to the Coalition for Patent Fairness, a group that counts Google and Microsoft as members, there were 218 infringement lawsuits filed in Marshall, Texas, from January 2004 through April 2006.

At the end of August, AOL, Amazon, Borders, Google, IAC, and Yahoo were sued in the same district by Texas-based Polaris IP for violating a patented method of automated e-mail routing.

Illinois Computer Research sued Google in Illinois’ Northern District Court in mid-September for violating a patented method of navigating through online books.

Performance Pricing alleges that Google AdWords, AOL Search Marketplace, Microsoft adCenter, and Yahoo Search Marketing all violate its patent, which was filed in 1999 and granted in 2005.

The patent describes a system for competitive bidding.

“The present invention comprises a business model used to determine the price of goods and/or services to be provided from a seller or sellers to a buyer or buyers,” the patent explains. “Various forms of electronic competition and/or entertainment are used as intermediary activities between said buyers and sellers to ultimately determine a contract price.”

The patent claims to cover a wide variety of activities: video games, electronic board games, crossword puzzles or other word games, sports betting, card games, or any other activity or combination of activities.

Presumably, the plaintiff believes the patent covers Internet ad auctions, too.

In a September 4th blog post, Google policy counsel and legislative strategist Johanna Shelton and Michelle Lee, head of patents and patent strategy, urged Congress to pass patent reform legislation.

“Google and other technology companies increasingly face mounting legal costs to defend against frivolous patent claims from parties gaming the system to forestall competition or reap windfall profits,” Shelton and Lee said.

Three days later, on Friday, September 7th, the House of Representatives passed the Patent Reform Act of 2007. The Senate is expected to vote on a version of the bill shortly.

If the Patent Reform Act passes the Senate and is signed by the President in its current form, monetary damage awards for patent infringement are likely to decline and venue shopping will be curtailed.

“Certain district courts have become notorious for rarely invalidating a patent, and have tilted the balance too often in favor of plaintiffs,” said Shelton and Lee. “We support judicial venue provisions to ensure that patent lawsuits are brought only in district courts with a reasonable connection to the case.”

Original URL: http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=202200345