Top Items:
Marc Fisher / Washington Post:
Download Uproar: Record Industry Goes After Personal Use — Despite more than 20,000 lawsuits filed against music fans in the years since they started finding free tunes online rather than buying CDs from record companies, the recording industry has utterly failed to halt the decline …
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Duncan Riley / TechCrunch:
RIAA's Target In 2008: You — The RIAA has lodged documents in the ongoing case of the Record Industry vs Jeffrey Howell that argues that ripping music from legally purchased CD's is illegal. — If the Judge rules that the RIAA is right, any person in United States who has ever ripped …
Brian Caulfield / Forbes:
Will The iPod Kill Blockbuster? — Forget the cavernous big box stores that laid waste to the retail landscape a decade ago. Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs' tiny iPod has turned his company into a category killer for the digital era—first wiping out music stores and now, potentially, the corner video store.
Discussion:
The Unofficial Apple Weblog
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Variety:
Fox, Apple to sign iTunes deal — Service will make movies available for rent — Apple is set to break new ground with iTunes, offering movie rentals in a bid to rejuvenate that sluggish part of the otherwise boffo service. — Fox and Disney will be announced as partners in a major unveiling …
Mpuhala / interface:
Kindle Easter Eggs: We have GPS! — [click on image for high resolution version] — Yes - The Kindle has GPS (mind you, not the real GPS but rather CDMA location based) and even more Easter egg goodness: — Google Maps, show current location (Alt-1 while in the browser) — Play Minesweeper (Alt-M)
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Jon / p2pnet:
Maine law students vs the RIAA — RIAA News:- One of the most important, but as yet largely unrecognized, Big Music stories to break this year centres on a small university legal clinic in Maine. — And, it's about to cause a revolution in the P2P filesharing war launched by Warner Music …
Jason Chen / Gizmodo:
Question of the Day: Watch or Cellphone For Telling Time? — Our last phone poll discovered that an astonishing 28% of our readers used iPhones—go ahead, see for yourself—which brings us to this question. Do you wear a wristwatch, or do you tell time using your cellphone?
Charles Eicher / The Register:
How to copyright Michelangelo — Some of the world's greatest artworks are turning into copyrighted properties.Five hundred years ago, Michelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel ceiling. Today, those images are copyrighted. How can ancient cultural icons become commercial properties, centuries after they fall into the public domain?
Discussion:
Techdirt
Ionut Alex Chitu / Google Operating System:
Google in 2000 — What search engine did you use in 2000? It's very likely that the answer is not Google. Three months before Google became the default search provider for Yahoo, Google's search results looked slightly different than they look today. Google showed relevant categories from DMOZ …
BBC:
Web icon set to be discontinued — The browser that helped kick-start the commercial web is to cease development because of lack of users. — Netscape Navigator, now owned by AOL, will no longer be supported after 1 February 2008, the company has said. — In the mid-1990s the browser …
Discussion:
Boing Boing
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Mike Masnick / Techdirt:Wait... AOL Was Still Making A Netscape Browser?
Discussion:
Silicon Alley Insider, BetaNews, paidContent.org, franticindustries, Engadget, mathewingram.com/work, DSLreports and The Last Podcast
Bill Carter / New York Times:
Letterman Makes Deal With Writers — David Letterman has secured a deal with the striking Writers Guild of America that will allow him to resume his late-night show on CBS next Wednesday with his team of writers on board, executives of several late-night shows said today.
Associated Press:
Sex Offenders Are Barred From Internet by New Jersey — EWING, N.J. (AP) — New Jersey enacted legislation on Thursday banning some convicted sex offenders from using the Internet. — In signing the restrictions into law, Acting Gov. Richard J. Codey, who is filling in while Gov. Jon S. Corzine …
Discussion:
Digital Trends
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Jnack / John Nack on Adobe:
Adobe ate me baby!! — Ding ding ding! We have a winner. — Every year around this time, the online community latches onto some story (CS3 icons last year; “Microsoft to buy Macromedia” before that; etc.) and goes nuts with speculation. The specualtion is all the more thrilling given …
Ed Bott / Ed Bott's Windows Expertise:
The v2 extender has landed! — DHL dropped off my Linksys DMA2100 Media Center Extender yesterday, and I had it completely set up within 30 minutes. — My first impression was, “Wow, this is small." The v1 extenders were the size of large pizza boxes, and an Xbox 360 has a certain chunkiness to it.
Discussion:
Multimedia-PCs.com
Associated Press:
Baggage Ban on Batteries Begins — WASHINGTON (AP) — To help reduce the risk of fires, air travelers will no longer be able to pack loose lithium batteries in checked luggage beginning Jan. 1, the Transportation Department said Friday. — Passengers can still check baggage with lithium batteries …
Discussion:
Geek News Central, Gizmodo, MacNN, Paul Kedrosky's …, Guardian Unlimited, Gadget Lab and The Intuitive Life …
Mathew / mathewingram.com/work:
What can we learn from Wal-Mart? — As more than one person has already pointed out, the demise of Wal-Mart's video download service comes as no real surprise. In many ways, it was stillborn to begin with. Why? Simple. Even when it was launched, it was obvious (to everyone but Wal-Mart …
