Hollywood loses court battle with ISP
The Hollywood studios have lost a landmark case against the ISP iiNet today after an eight-week trial.
The case would have impacted how Australian ISPs would have had to react to potential pirates, but the judge ruled that iiNet was not responsible for the downloading habits of any of its subscribers.
Justice Cowdroy said all the evidence showed that iiNet was simply providing Internet service for its customers, not facilitating piracy. He did conclude, however, that iiNet had knowledge of infringements occurring and did not anything to stop them, which was fine as the ISP is simply “a legitimate communication facility,” not “intended nor designed to infringe copyright.”
“iiNet is not responsible if an iiNet user uses that system to bring about copyright infringement … the law recognises no positive obligation on any person to protect the copyright of another,” Justice Cowdroy added.
Video Daily: Chrome OS to be used on tablets, as well
Today’s Video Daily comes from Google, which has announced that its upcoming Chrome OS will be used for tablets as well, with some of the concept pictures and a video posted on their blog.
What will make this special compared to the recently unveiled iPad? Looks like we will have to wait and see for the most part.
Future Kindle device to be touchscreen
Amazon has announced their acquisition of the touchscreen company Touchco, a move that will lead to the next Kindle e-reader being a touchscreen device.
The NY Times says Touchco’s “interpolating force-sensitive resistance technology allows for flexible, transparent, pressure-sensitive touch-screens that could cost as little as $10 a square foot.”
By comparison, the iPad’s touchscreen is more expensive and “cannot detect the unlimited amount of simultaneous touch points that Touchco’s technology allows.”
Touchco’s screens can distinguish between the different pressures produced by a human finger or by a pen stylus.
RealVideo use continues to die
Arstechnica is reporting today that RealVideo continues its death spiral, this time with C-SPAN getting rid of the streaming video format in favor of Flash and Windows Media.
Says the C-SPAN site: “Due to lack of demand for the RealVideo format, we will be retiring our links to C-SPAN live video streams in the RealVideo format effective March 1, 2010.”
The Ars reporter says the codec lives on in a few Government committees, such as the Senate’s Committee on Environment and Public Works but the FCC finally upgraded last year to Flash, after previously broadcasting all their meetings on a server that could handle only up to 200 users and produced 240×240 resolution video.
Verizon service headed to iPad, says source
Apple is still working with Verizon on an iPad model that will support Verizon’s 3G service says Fox News, citing a source within Verizon.
Earlier this week Fox News reported that AT&T had outbid Verizon and therefore will be the carrier of choice at launch in March. AT&T had not ironed out a deal until six days before the iPad launch event on January 27th, says the report.
Following Fox’s note, a few Wall Street firms predicted that a Verizon deal would be signed by the end of 2010. Some say Apple will announce a new iPhone and an iPad, both with Verizon support at June’s WWDC event.
Apple patches iPhone/Touch exploits
Apple has released a patch this week for the iPhone/iPod Touch that should fix five exploits, a few of which could have allowed remote access to the device in question.
If a user opened an infected audio or image file, or hit a malicious FTP server, hackers could run code remotely, taking control of the device.
Another of the exploits could allow hackers to bypass the password on a locked device, as long as they had access to the actual device.
The update is for those with iPhone OS 3.1.3.
Full support page here: About the security content of iPhone OS 3.1.3 and iPhone OS 3.1.3 for iPod touch
Sony: We will pass Xbox 360 in sales soon
According to an interview with IGN, Sony senior VP of marketing Peter Dille says the company is on the fast track to passing the Xbox 360 in sales soon, also saying that the PS3 will still be around in 10 years, and the 360 will not.
“We can be passionate fans, but I don’t think they’ll be around in 10 years so I’m very confident we’ll pass them within that time frame,” says Dille. “I mean, we’ve got 31 million [units sold] worldwide right now - they’ve got 39 million [units sold]. I don’t even need to go out 10 years. I’m not going to make any predictions for your interview today other than we’ll pass them, but you look at where we are today and where they are today, and they had an opportunity to sprint as far ahead of us as possible when they had the head start. Well, we’re breathing down their necks and they can see us in the rearview mirror and it’s not going to take too long to pass them.”
Additionally, Dille confirmed that the company would begin adding subscription models to PSN, although gaming would remain completely free.
Motorola Devour now official
After months of leaks and rumors, Verizon has officially unveiled the Motorola Devour, and will begin selling it in March.
Touted as a younger brother to the DROID, the new phone will have the MOTOBLUR interface and run Android 1.6, at least at launch.
The Devour has a slider QWERTY keypad, a 3.1-inch HVGA screen and an optical trackpad. It will use Verizon’s EV-DO Rev, 3G and has Wi-Fi b/g and Stereo Bluetooth support. The GPS receiver and 3.2MP camera are standard.
The device will come bundled with an 8GB microSD memory card.
No word on pricing yet.
Rumor: AT&T outbid Verizon for iPad 3G pact?
Fox News is reporting that Verizon and AT&T fought over having their 3G service available to future iPad owners and that AT&T won the rights by outbidding the competition.
iPad 3G costs $30 USD monthly for unlimited, or $15 for 250MB data plans, a price about half the cost of what 3G service would normally cost from AT&T for a netbook or modem owner.
Verizon had no comment on the report, and AT&T did not either except to say it’s happy to be the “main carrier partner” for the iPad.
Twitter forcing password resets after account thefts
Twitter director of Trust and Safety Del Harvey has posted today that it will be forcing a number of users to change their passwords this week after it was discovered that hackers had used torrent sites to steal access to user’s data.
“As part of our ongoing efforts to monitor our user base for odd activity, we noticed a sudden surge in followers for a couple of accounts in the last five days. Given the circumstances surrounding this we felt it was best to push out a password reset to accounts that were following these suspicious users,” said Harvey.
It is unclear how many users are affected.
The details were stolen from third-party torrent sites that require logins. Because many users use the same information for multiple sites, the hackers used the torrent site logins for Twitter as well.
“As a general rule, if you signed up for a torrent forum or torrent site built by a third party, you should probably change your password there,” adds Harvey. “The takeaway from this is that people are continuing to use the same email address and password (or variant) on multiple sites. We strongly suggest that you use different passwords for each service you sign up for.”
