Anonymous Fails, Once Again, to Make Its Point

Big as they were, the attacks carried out in revenge for the Megaupload arrests accomplished nothing significant.
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The Full Valenti: Dodd Trades His Olive Branch to Tech for a Howitzer, After SOPA/PIPA Gets Delayed

What would Jack do? (And would it work anymore?)
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Content is President

Simply put, it doesn’t matter how great a piece of technology you have invented, or how innovative a distribution platform you have created. You must have content.

– Former senator and current MPAA president Chris Dodd, in a speech Tuesday in which he stressed that Hollywood and Silicon Valley are in the content (and content protection) business together

Tips for Mark Zuckerberg to Sleep Better at Night

Here is the latest comic from our Joy of Tech friends at Geek Culture, Nitrozac and Snaggy. Joy of Tech appears three times a week in the Voices section of this site. (Click on the image to see a bigger version.)

Online Privacy: Can Tinseltown Teach Silicon Valley the Way?

If there is one topic trending higher in the press than the latest celebrity breakup, it’s the issue of online privacy. The government is now exploring tighter regulation of the online advertising industry. The FTC recently called for a do-not-track system that would allow consumers to opt out of being monitored online. And now the Department of Commerce has taken up the cause with recommendations for a Privacy Bill of Rights.

Hollywood Groups Weigh In on FCC Internet Reclassification

An alphabet soup of entertainment-industry groups submitted filings to the Federal Communications Commission today as part of its request for comment on a framework for broadband services. Specifically, whether or not to reclassify the Internet as a telecommunications service, which would trigger all kinds of juicy regulatory power. There are all kind of complex issues at stake, from net neutrality to piracy to open Internet to broadband access.

Rent. Rip. R.I.P.: RealDVD Takes a Dirt Nap and RealNetworks Ordered to Pay Hollywood $4.5 Million

The Motion Picture Association of America has finally, and permanently, dispatched RealNetworks’s “legal” DVD ripper, RealDVD. On Wednesday afternoon, U.S. District Judge Marilyn Hall, who in January dismissed Real’s antitrust claims against Hollywood, really dropped the hammer on the company, issuing a permanent injunction barring it from manufacturing or trafficking in RealDVD.

StealDVD? Well, You Were Asking for It…

Just hours after RealNetworks filed a preemptive lawsuit against the major Hollywood studios to avoid outcry over its RealDVD DVD-ripping software, Hollywood responded in kind. The Motion Picture Association of America asked a federal court in Los Angeles for a temporary restraining order to halt the sales of RealDVD, arguing it illegally bypasses DVD copyright protections. Said the MPAA, “RealNetworks’ RealDVD should be called StealDVD.”

The Day After

Sue. Rent. Rip. Return.

Turns out RealNetworks Inc.’s new DVD ripper RealDVD is as legal as its creator is litigious. Real debuted RealDVD this morning and along with it a preemptive lawsuit against the Hollywood interests that will inevitably attempt to litigate it into oblivion. Brought against the DVD Copy Control Association and a who’s-who of major studios, the suit asks the court to rule that RealDVD complies with the DVD Copy Control Association’s license agreement.

TorrentSpy Takes a Dirt Nap

AAPLsauce, Part II

AAPLsauce, Part II

Sundance Bound