YouTube has been removing all copyrighted content from the Comedy Central Network after a request was made for them to take them down. The removal includes clips of “South Park”, “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart” and “The Colbert Report”, among a few others. I watched a few videos with Jon Stewart and The Colbert [...]

Video clips with bugs attached? That’s right. It was only a matter of time before the malicious coders out there turned to putting viruses into video clips. YouTube is not the only target, though, with so many new video sites cropping up. More codecs are booby-trapped and some file compressors are being tainted before requiring [...]

Despite the best efforts of the RIAA, MPAA, and others to trick people into a state of fear and reticence over file-sharing, BitTorrent users continued to be treated to the best and the worst of what these industries have to offer. In an interesting piece of info to note, The Departed, the recent Martin Scorsese [...]

The buzz in videogames is all about new hardware, including the imminent launch of Sony Corp.’s PlayStation 3 and Nintendo Co.’s Wii consoles, along with the prospects for Microsoft Corp.’s Xbox 360 in its sophomore holiday season. The biggest money in games, though, is coming from older, less sexy machines such as Sony’s PlayStation 2, [...]

As a result of a Free Trade Agreement between Australia and the U.S. that came into force in 2005, Australia is required to rewrite its current, relatively flexible, technological protection measure law by 1 January 2007, to make it more like the DMCA. A serious policy debate on how to frame a DRM law that [...]

Apple announced Tuesday that its second-generation iPod shuffle will be available in stores worldwide beginning Friday, Nov. 3, 2006. The tiny iPod shuffle holds 1GB of music and costs $79. About half the size of the original, the new iPod shuffle is crafted from aluminum and measures about half a cubic inch in volume. It [...]

The personal computer has finally gone to driving school. Three decades after they began appearing on desktops, PCs are about to start showing up in vehicles. They will let people check e-mail, avoid traffic jams or make restaurant reservations via the Web while on the job or at play. The idea could prove especially popular [...]

Google Inc said Monday that it wants Microsoft Corp. to make sure users can easily choose Internet search engines in future products — but Google refused to say if changes Microsoft has already made to its upcoming operating system, Vista, have gone far enough. David C. Drummond, Google’s senior vice president of corporate development, spoke [...]

Universal Music is now lowering the wholesale cost on various catalog albums, according to information received Monday. The company pointed to an “aggressive European strategy” that will “permanently reduce the digital download prices” of about 1,500 catalog albums. Included in the cut-rate batch are Buddy Holly, Dusty Springfield, Bob Marley and the Wailers, and The [...]

Over the past few months I have become increasingly obsessed with a company that I have followed for a very long time. For most people, today was like any other Monday. They went to work, talked about their weekend and couldn’t wait for it to be over, but for me I spent the day waiting [...]

Firefox 2.0 is causing quite a stir these days. The browser has been downloaded more than two million times since it was officially released last week – and the debate is heating up about whether the upgrade is worth it or not. In the shadows of this ruckus another Mozilla offspirng hatched a few days [...]

A Michigan-based software and web developer has published a program that allows music fans to remove dirty words from songs to “protect the mind of a child”. From the Safemusic website: “It allows you with the ease of a point and click interface to remove explicit/unwanted words, lyrics, or sounds from any song or recorded [...]

Microsoft Corp said today it is preparing 55 legal actions worldwide against sellers on auction sites who are hawking illegal copies of the company’s software. The actions are a mix of lawsuits and criminal complaints, said Jean-Christophe Le Toquin, a Microsoft attorney for Europe, the Middle East and Africa region. Microsoft has or will file [...]

SNOCAP, the first end-to-end provider of digital licensing, copyright management services and artist distribution for the digital music marketplace, today announced licensing deals with a number of leading independent music companies. As part of the agreements, the companies will upload and register their extensive music catalogs into SNOCAP’s Digital Registry, expanding the distribution of their [...]

For years, major music labels have waged a doomed war against file sharing in the hope lawsuits and secretly corrupted files would convince the millions who download music illegally to return to the record store. But new relationships between music companies, advertisers and file-sharing networks are signalling a major change in the corporate attitude toward [...]

Music is an incredibly integral part of the MySpace experience, and a high percentage of profile pages feature popular songs. Most of those tracks are copyrighted, and streamed without permission. Tackling the thorny issue, MySpace has now tapped audio identification experts Gracenote to filter unauthorized content. Moving forward, MySpace will proactively identify and block copyrighted [...]

The threat of recording industry lawsuits has certainly given pause to peer-to-peer music file-sharing services. Few have dared show their servers on U.S. soil since the Supreme Court in 2005 ruled Grokster and Morpheus could be sued, declaring open season on companies that enable users to swap copyrighted files. On Oct. 30, even News Corp.’s [...]

The Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) has called for outdated copyright laws to be changed and modernized. Currently it is illegal to copy music CDs and then place them in your MP3 player for listening. Making copies of CDs and DVDs does not impact the copyright holders and this law should change, so IPPR [...]

Google plans to release Google AdSense for Audio to monetize podcasts sometime this quarter, according to sources. I’ve been sitting on this news for months out of deference to a colleague’s wishes, but today Seeking Alpha has some information on it too, so I thought I might as well post. Earlier this year, Google contracted [...]

UK copyright law should be changed to include a ‘private right to copy’ that protects users of Apple iPod and other MP3 players, according to a new report published today by the Institute for Public Policy Research (ippr). The UK’s current copyright laws mean that millions of Brits break the law each year when they [...]