Christopher Poole, founder of the infamous meme site 4chan came out this week claiming that Verizon was “explicitly blocking” access to the site, and it appears Poole may have been right.
Jeff Nelson, a public relations employee for the ISP said via Twitter this morning: “2 of 4Chan affiliates were staging for attacks.” However, “They’re green-lighted for tonight’s network update.”
Poole’s full post earlier had read: “Over the past 72 hours, we’ve been receiving reports from Verizon Wireless customers having difficulty accessing the image boards,” Poole wrote. “After investigating, we found that Verizon is dropping traffic… only on port 80 (HTTP). No other subdomain/IP/port is affected, which leads us to believe this block is intentional. After an hour and a half on the phone, we’ve received confirmation from Verizon’s Network Repair Bureau (NRB) that we are “explicitly blocked.”
Verizon had refused comment until today except to say that they were being bombarded with calls about the issue, adds PCWorld.
Result for: bd
JVC has launched the XV-BP11 today, an “ultra-thin” 1.5-inch tall Blu-ray player aimed at the entry-level set.
The player is only Profile 1.1 capable however, killing off all BD-Live features. The player has a USB port for content viewing and will read AVCHD video.
The player uses HDMI 1.3 and has RCA Video and coaxial audio and analog audio connections.
For audio, the player supports “Dolby’s Digital, Digital Plus and True HD standards as well as DTS, DTS Essential and DTS HD Master Audio,” says Electronista.
The player has an MSRP of $200 USD, making it a bit too expensive given the BD-Live players out there for $150 and under.
Result for: bd
In April, Wizards of the Coast sued 8 alleged file sharers over copyright infringement for unauthorized sharing of the then newly introduced Dungeons & Dragons Player’s Handbook 2.
The lawsuits claimed the Handbook was illegally shared on file-sharing websites and the many downloads of the unauthorized copies led to lost sales and lost revenue for the company.
This week, two of the eight accused have settled with Wizards, and the company is seeking a default judgment against one more of the accused.
Thomas Patrick Nolan of Florida settled for $125,000 USD and Arthur Le of California settled for $100,000, says Komo. Le’s co-defendant, Mike Becker of Oklahoma, was ordered to pay $30,000 in damages and almost $15,000 in legal fees but has so far not responded to the lawsuit and remains in default. Wizards is hoping to collect that money.
Two other cases, against Stefan Osmena of the Philippines and Krysztof Radzikowski of Poland, remain pending, while the three other defendants still remain unknown, most likely because Wizards is having trouble prosecuting the non-American defendants.
The “Player’s Handbook 2″ retails for $40 USD and includes 242 pages of rules for the game Dungeons & Dragons. The online version has electronic watermarks specifically restricting the material to the person who purchased it.
Wizards says 2600 copies were downloaded from Scribd.com and another 4200 copies were viewed online before it was taken down by request from the copyright holder.
