John Lister

YouTube has blocked user uploads and comments in South Korea: the result of a new law which bars anonymous posting. However, there is an easy way around the ban, which makes the rules virtually worthless and could even help YouTube's business. Since ... April 1st, 2009, Korea's Cyber Defamation Law means any firm with more than 100,000 different daily users must verify their identity and receive an identification number. They must then post their name and number when uploading video clips or posting comments. Google Follows Letter, but not Spirit, of Law YouTube's owner Google has complied with ... (view more)

A professor specializing in copyright law says that the justice system devised for prosecuting illegal file-sharers is out of control. She argues that it "has evolved in a manner that results in too many arbitrary, inconsistent, unprincipled, and ... grossly excessive awards and that reform is needed." The comments came in a paper by Professor Pam Samuelson of the University of California, Berkeley, along with co-writer Tara Wheatland. (Source: publicknowledge.org ) The authors say the biggest problem with the system is that the range of damages which can be awarded for copyright ... (view more)

Microsoft has cut the price of Windows by almost 80% for the special netbook edition. However, the price is for manufacturers, meaning consumers won't necessarily see all of the savings. Until now, computer makers normally had to pay around $70 to ... include Windows on their machines. Microsoft has now started offering Windows for just $15 to firms making netbooks. Of course, there's no guarantee manufacturers will pass all of those savings on; depending on how competitive the market is, they may attempt to keep back some of the $55 reduction for themselves. Microsoft feels the price cut is ... (view more)

A federal court has fined Microsoft $388 million for breaching the copyright of a rival software company. Ironically, the firm concerned was a producer of anti-piracy products. The court found Microsoft breached a patent belonging to Uniloc and ... involved the copy protection used on Windows XP and some parts of the Microsoft Office suite. Microsoft had not licensed the technology used in the activation process by which a product can be installed repeatedly on a single machine but can't be shared with other people or copied to another computer. Award Among All-Time Highs The sum is believed to ... (view more)

The major players in the Internet search market continue to add new tweaks to their presentation: Google is putting more emphasis on local results, while Yahoo has launched a refined image search feature. Previously, Google would supply search ... results based on the location of the IP address. For example: searching for a "museum in Cameron, North Carolina," using a mobile phone would produce results towards the phone's current location. Local Links Without Log-in From now on, people searching from a computer will get their usual results, but for appropriate search terms they'll also ... (view more)

T-Mobile is planning to use Google's open source operating system " Android " on devices that blur the line between cellphone and home PC. In addition, Samsung says they will also produce Android phones, but need to work out the kinks, first. Both ... announcements come shortly after HP revealed that it is investigating the idea of using Android to power some of its low-cost netbook computers in place of Windows. Home Phone to get Data Features According to the New York Times, T-Mobile is working on two home devices using Android, an open source rival to systems such as Windows Mobile ... (view more)

Security experts have put together some intriguing statistics about the Conficker virus, including the total spread of the worm and the worst-hit country. It seems Vietnam has seen the most serious invasion, while four per cent of all computer ... infections are related to Conficker. The figures come from OpenDNS, a firm which offers DNS (Domain Name System) resolution services. This is the process of mapping a website name (such as www.infopackets.com ) to the actual IP address where the website physically exists. Because Conficker interferes with this process, the firm has plenty of data to ... (view more)

A Texas senator is trying to make it illegal for any government agency to buy Windows Vista without prior approval. Juan Hinojosa says simply "Don't buy it because it's not worth it." If the law passes, all state agencies in Texas would need written ... approval from the Legislative Budget Board before buying Vista itself or any machine with the system pre-installed. The only exception would be for places of higher education. Anti-Vista Amendment Rides State Budget The proposal is not a separate law. Instead it's a rider to the budget: one of 800 amendments added during the legislative process. ... (view more)

Google will invest a whopping $100 million in start-up companies over the next 12 months, and says a recession is an ideal time to invest in firms that could someday make it big. The money comes from a scheme titled Google Ventures, which aims to ... combine the firm's technical knowledge and financial resources with the creative ideas of new companies. The firm says it will focus on industries including "consumer Internet, software, clean-tech, bio-tech, health care" and others. (Source: theregister.co.uk and nytimes.com ) Google says there's no reason not to invest during an economic slowdown ... (view more)

China is receiving a double dose of blame for the Conficker virus, as reports suggest that the country may either be the source of the virus, the reason why it spread so quickly, or both. The Conficker virus is due to update itself on Wednesday . ... China has already been in the news recently for security issues. It's been blamed for a widespread network of spy computers which have allegedly infected computers including those of the Dalai Lama. Origins may reach as far back as 2001 Vietnamese security firm BKIS says it has analyzed Conficker's coding and believes there are some unmistakable ... (view more)