U.S. wants end to Allofmp3 spinoffs, knocks Russian antipiracy efforts
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Politicians and trade officials are still pressuring the nation to shut down "illegal" Web sites and to align its intellectual property laws with "international standards."
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(InfoWorld) - U.S. government antitrust regulators have asked Intel Corp. and STMicroelectronics NV to provide more information about theirÂ plan to spin off their flash memory unit into a new company, the vendors said Thursday. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission made the request as part of its regulatory review in an effort to ensure the deal does not violate antitrust laws, according to Intel. If FTC investigators approve the terms, Intel and ST will be able to close the deal after a 30-day waiting period, the company said. "These kinds of transactions are reviewed by the FTC and it's not unusual for them to come back and ask for more information," said Intel spokesman Tom Beermann. Intel plans to comply with the request, but gave no deadline for providing the new information. "As part of the regulatory review, they do look at antitrust issues. This is a fairly complicated deal because there are three partners and there are different types of technology, and it is a fairly large deal," Beermann said. Intel and STMicroelectronics will share ownership of the new semiconductor business with ST holding a 48.6 percent stake, Intel owning 45.1 percent and private equity firm Francisco Partners LP holding 6.3 percent. The new company will be based in Switzerland and incorporated in the Netherlands. It will compete against flash vendors including Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., Toshiba Corp. and Spansion Inc. Intel's main chip rival AMD spun off its flash unit in December 2005 to create Spansion. Intel and ST announced plans for the new business in May and expect it to employ about 8,000 staff. They will make NOR and NAND-type flash chips, which are typically used for storing data in consumer and industrial products such as cell phones, MP3 music players and digital cameras. Intel has struggled for years to make a profit from its flash business, and earlier in May said it would lay off as many as 1,000 workers when it closed an outdated flash plant in New Mexico. A spokeswoman for ST said the company also planned to comply with the FTC request, but would not confirm whether it was related to antitrust concerns. "We will provide all the information they need. The FTC needs it by the second half of 2007," said ST spokeswoman Carol Brown. "This is just part of the approval process." Â
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Federal attorneys are trying to shut down an allegedly illicit Internet business operated out of a dance club in Rochester that is deluging computers with unwanted pop-up ads by hijacking their browsers.
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U.S. officials are expected to  announce on Monday a coordinated crackdown on the theft of U.S.  intellectual property such as pirated compact discs and  knockoff auto parts, the Wall Street Journal reported on  Monday,
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A music download site that was the poster child for U.S. anti-piracy crusaders and an obstacle to Russia's bid to join the World Trade Organization has been shut down by Russian authorities, according to the U.S. government.
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HAVANA -- The US government strives mightily to stamp out intellectual property theft all over the world -- except for Cuba, where it tries to broadcast anti communist messages to anyone able to see US programming through illegal satellite dishes.
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Just let it die!  The amount of damage this will cause our economy and to the Technology industry is staggering.  Let this argument evolve.  The RIAA/MPAA doesn't speak for the entire country. All this will do is push P2P development offshore.  "The U.S. Copyright Office has drafted a new version of the Induce Act that it believes will ban networks like Kazaa and Morpheus while not putting hardware such as portable hard drives and MP3 players on the wrong side of the law."  "The original Induce Act has been severely criticized for possibly jeopardizing products such Apple Computer's iPod that could "induce" people to commit piracy."
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(InfoWorld) - Two consumer protection groups are asking the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to investigate FastMP3Search.com.ar, a Web site that distributes software that can be used to search for digital music on the Web. The FastMP3Search plugin disables the Windows Firewall, installs adware and Trojan horse programs, and generally hobbles the user's PC, said John Palfrey, the Harvard Law School professor who is StopBadware.org's co-director. The software is also virtually impossible to remove once installed, he added. StopBadware.org and the Center for Democracy and Technology plan to file a formal complaint with the FTC on Thursday. "We are asking the FTC to take a close look at an application that we consider to be the worst of the bad applications that we've seen over the course of the last year," Palfrey said. Representatives from FastMP3Search.com.ar could not be reached immediately for comment. The Web site is registered to a company called Direct S.A., based in Buenos Aires, according to the Network Information Center Argentina domain name database. StopBadware.org was also unable to reach representatives from the company before filing its complaint Palfrey said. The company's Web site tells users that the software will provide a fast way to search the Internet for downloadable music files, "in exchange for your agreement to also install our plugin software, which may occasionally display ads on your computer." Although the FTC has sought court orders to shut down Web sites in the past, the fact that FastMP3Search.com.ar appears to be based in Argentina complicates matters, Palfrey admitted. Still the FTC has worked on international efforts to fight spam and online fraud. "When an application is hosted outside of the U.S., but is plainly affecting U.S. consumers, they can coordinate with other governments," Palfrey said. "We would hope that they would start an investigation of this application." FTC representatives could not be reached immediately for comment. Formed earlier this year with funding from Google Inc. Lenovo Group Ltd., and Sun Microsystems Inc., StopBadware.org has issued reports on dozens of software products that engage in questionable or downright malicious behavior. It has exposed problems in everything from Kazaa to the Jessica Simpson Screensaver, to AOL LLC's free client.
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Rank is planning to sever its last link with its celluloid heritage with the sale or demerger of its Deluxe film-making arm. The group yesterday said it would investigate &quot;separating&quot; Deluxe
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Oct. 12 - The Federal Trade Commission wants to shut down software that it says, hijacks computers without the owners&#39; knowledge.
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A group composed of the RIAA, MPAA, BSA and other groups representing corporate intellectual-property interests are pressing the U.S. government to keep China and Russia at the top of a government watchlist for violations.
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In a blog post, Steve Jobs calls for an end to anti-piracy restrictions.
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Sanford Wallace and his two companies have agreed to stop distributing spyware while he fights a lawsuit from the U.S. Federal Trade Commission.
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Controversial plan could force file swappers to face criminal charges.
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Federal authorities have asked a US District Court judge to shut down an operation that they said installed intrusive spyware on people&#39;s computers and then sold the victims anti-spyware software
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(InfoWorld) - The Free Software Foundation has released the fourth or "last-call" draft of the third version of its GNU general public license, set a date for its official publication, and laid out reasons why the free and open source software community should adopt GPLv3 sooner rather than later. The GPL gives users the right to freely study, copy, modify, reuse, share, and redistribute software. Created by Richard Stallman in 1989 for the GNU free operating system project, the license was last fully revised 16 years ago as GPLv2. Besides releasing the fourth draft of GPLv3 on Thursday, the FSF also published an essay by Stallman extolling the benefits of moving from GPLv2 to GPLv3. The new license deals with issues that have emerged recently, notably the patent-licensing deal around Suse Linux struck between Novell and Microsoft in November. Parts of the Linux operating system including its kernel are licensed under GPLv2. Earlier this month, Microsoft executives created a firestorm of protest in the open source community when they asserted that Linux and other open source softwareÂ infringe on 235 of the software vendor's patents. "Microsoft made a fewÂ mistakes in the Novell-Microsoft deal, andÂ GPLv3 is designed to turn them against Microsoft, extending that limited patent protection to the whole community," Stallman wrote. "In order to take advantage of this, programs need to use GPLv3." Software distributors who make discriminatory patent deals after March 28, 2007, may not pass on to others software covered under GPLv3. Ultimately, the FSF would like to do away with software patents altogether but realizes that is currently impossible, aiming instead with GPLv3 to ensure free software can't be made proprietary through patents, according to Stallman. GPLv3 also deals with what Stallman terms "tivoization" or computers containing software covered by the license that can't be changed as well as DRM, or digital rights management, which the FSF prefers to call "digital restrictions management." "Freedom means _you_ control what your software does, not merely that you can beg or threaten someone else who decides for you," Stallman wrote. "GPLv3 ensures you are free to remove the handcuffs. It doesn't forbid DRM, or any kind of feature. ... Rather, it makes sure that you are just as free to remove nasty features as the distributor of your copy was to add them." The fourth GPLv3 draft draws on feedback the FSF received from the general public and official discussion committees on the previous draft that appeared in March. One of the key changes is around license compatibility between the GPL and open source licenses. In the new draft, GPLv3 is now compatible with version 2.0 of the Apache License. The license also supports BitTorrent and contains language to make it friendlier to an international audience. Previous drafts of GPLv3 were met with a mixed reception in the open source community. In particular, Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux, was highly critical of the first two drafts, butÂ mellower about the third draft. Like other developers, he's previously stated he prefers to stick with GPLv2. "GPL version 2 will remain a valid license, and no disaster will happen if some programs remain under GPLv2 while others advance to GPLv3," Stallman wrote. "These two licenses are incompatible, but that isn't a serious problem." By "incompatible," the FSF means that it sees no legal way to combine code licensed under GPLv2 with code under GPLv3. Such incompatibility is only an issue if developers want to link, merge, or combine code from programs licensed under GPLv2 and GPLv3. "There is no problem in having GPLv3-covered and GPLv2-covered programs side by side in an operating system," Stallman wrote. The FSF will take comments on the fourth draft for 29 days and plans to officially publish the final GPLv3 license on June 29. The fourth draft of GPLv3 and Stallman's essay are on the FSF's Web site atÂ gplv3.fsf.org.
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Industry group will offer a free program to help users find and eliminate illegal files. The Motion Picture Association of America this week announced that it has begun filing lawsuits against people who use