The Digital Hobo

When are people going to learn to turn off the “Allow Sharing” function in Kazaa? Isn’t this how most of the RIAA’s tarets have been caught?

New shmuck of the week goes to Boston University graduate student Joel Tenenbaum, for getting caught and earning himself a $1 million lawsuit from the RIAA.

Why does Mr. Tenenbaum deserve such notoriaty? Certainly not because he’s just another busted music pirate. No, of course not. It’s because of his mom.

His mom, you say? Yes. According to the article in Boston University’s Daily Free Press, Mr. Tenenbaum’s mother is a lawyer who specializes in copyright and Internet law.

Now he’s being helped by cross-river rival Harvard Law professor Charles Nesson.

A security hole in Adobe Systems Inc software has enabled users free access to record and copy from Amazon.com Inc’s video streaming service.

According to Reuters, the Replay Media Catcher from Applian Technologies, recorded movies from Amazon and other sites that use Adobe’s encryption technology.

If you’re so inclined, instructions can be found at tvadfree.com

A federal judge granted a new trial to Jammie Thomas, the Minnesota woman who was the first to fight the RIAA over file-sharing in court.

In an interesting twist of events, the judge determined that he gave the jury bad instructions that could have “substantially prejudiced” the outcome.

The judge has now put the burden of proof back on the RIAA and record companies to show that Ms. Thomas actually “distributed” the copyrighted material, not just made them available. How they will trace back any P2P connections at this point is beyond me, but I suspect somewhere, somehow, someone knows how to do it.

What continues to amaze me more, however, is that people are still using Kazaa and leaving the “share” function on. While I agree with the judge and hope for the best for Ms. Thomas, I still maintain that if you are too stupid to protect yourself, you deserve to get fucked. Just not this royally.

Kids - Watch out. If you think you are just downloading “to try it out before you buy it,” think again. Activision has been suing pirates of its most popular games. Kotaku has a nice, profane version of the story, and Edge Online has some deets too.

These folks a just the latest to find themselves in some hot water. When are people going to smarten up?

# awn Guse of Federal Way, Washington. Guse, unrepresented by counsel, agreed to pay Activision $100,000 (CoD 3 Wii, CoD 3 Xbox 360) to settle the case.
# Chris Hyman of Abbeville, South Carolina. Hyman, also unrepresented, agreed to pay Activision $25,000 to settle the case. (CoD3 Wii, Tony Hawk’s Project 8, Xbox 360).
# George Laflin of New Jersey. Laflin, apparently the only defendant who had an attorney, agreed to pay Activision $100,000 (CoD 3 Xbox 360).
# Maryanne Leach of Northome, Minnesota. Leach, with no attorney, agreed to pay Activision $1,000.
# Kenneth Madden of York, South Carolina agreed to pay Activision $100,000 (CoD 3 Wii, Cod 2 The Big Red One PS2, Tony Hawk’s Project 8, Xbox 360). He too was unrepresented.
# James R. Strickland, aka Ryan Strickland of New York State; case is still active (CoD3 Xbox 360).

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.