Lots of people know I hate social media. Not as a technology or idea, but for the stupidity of people living their lives out in public and the havoc that is can bring into your life.
For a great example – and, yes, I know, its not a pure social media example – read how Sarah Palin’s email account was hacked, and then think about you are making it easier and easier for people to hack into your life as well.
Check out Will Richmond’s VideoNuze piece on the latest round of data from pre-roll providers in the US and in Europe. Feisty. Don’t these people know there’s torrents out there? Jeeeez.
Taking nothing away from the credentials of Phil Dunkelberger, chief executive of security software firm PGP Corp, his dire warning to people travelling to China for the Olympics seems a little overblown to me.
Travelers carrying smart cell phones, blackberries or laptop computers could unwittingly be offering up sensitive personal or business information to officials who monitor state-controlled telecommunications carriers, Dunkelberger said.
He said that without data encryption, executives could have business plans or designs pilfered, while journalists’ lists of contacts could be exposed, putting sources at risk.
Maybe I’m reading too much into it, but aren’t these the same security concerns that buisiness travellers should have any time they go to China?
In the meantime, the International Olympic Committee is sill waiting for the Chineese government to turn the Web back on.
Once again, Mediapost’s Cathy Taylor misses the point. Shame to see a social media columnist, who works for a media company with its own intellectual property, so blatantly misunderstand the state of IP, fair use, copyright law and jump to ridiculous conclusions like:
…let’s contemplate how severely Hasbro doesn’t get it. The company actually thinks it owns the game, when consumers actually own the game, no matter how many legal documents Hasbro can throw at the situation.
Un-fucking-believable.
Update: The creators of Scrabulous have launched a new Facebook application, Wordscraper.
DRM ain’t bad. Dumb DRM is bad. STUPID Yahoo! is going to fuck over all their customers and give people another reason to rally against DRM.
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2008/07/yahoo-shutterin.html
So easy for them to have handled this right. Not sure why they couldn’t just transfer a user’s licenses over to the Rhapsody account they are getting. I love Rhapsody. Seriously.
http://www.dantynan.com/2008/07/21/the-riaa-vs-the-mothers-of-prevention/ includes great mini-anecdotes and the full resolution to the “baby dancing to Prince song” fiasco.
Reuters reportS: Canadians will be allowed to copy legally acquired music to their iPods and computers but would be banned from getting around any digital locks that companies might apply.
Legislation protects Internet service providers from liability for copyright violations by their subscribers, requiring them only to pass on notices of violations.
University of Ottawa professor Michael Geist complains “All these rights force consumers to read the fine print — you can shift a song or a television show, but once it’s locked down, your rights disappear and your potential liability skyrockets.”
Awwww…..they’d have to readi the fine print. Hey, read the f’in fine print and keep your ass out of jail.
Legislation doesn’t specify how the government would monitor whether people had built up personal libraries of recordings. Liberal Party member Dan McTeague criticized the bill as being incomplete. “How are you going to enforce this when existing jurisprudence doesn’t allow you to walk into someone’s home?” he pointed out.
Looks like business as usual for digital rights legislation. They just don’t get it.
The video of a 13-month old dancing to a Prince tune – 13 months, not a teenager – has opened the debate once again on what constitutes “Fair Use,” Mediapost reports.
Prince has been notorious for protecting his copyrights, but this is one video that couldn’t be a clearer example of when to leave well enough alone.
Whats your call?
The Recording Industry Association of America has sued music search engine Project Playlist, claiming that the service infringes copyright by making it easy for users to find and play pirated tracks.
The company does not host files on its site, but rather provides a player that can be embedded on social networking sites.
Nice to see some traditional, mainstream media outlets covering the file sharing and bittorrent communities.
In the past week, Mediapost’s Wendy Davis has written about Pirate Bay’s new blogging platform as well as ISPs and their efforts to throttle bandwidth.
Thanks for putting some of these issues in front of a new audience. Too often, the coverage we see is biased and prejudiced against anyone who uses a lot of bandwidth – even for legal P2P applications, like Joost or Vuze.