Displaying items by tag: Legal

With the introduction of the Internet as a consumer product the world was changed forever. I am not just talking about new levels of communication and new revenue streams for companies that burst onto the scene, but the way that files were moved back and forth between systems. Although the sharing of applications, music and files was happening long before the internet existed this new medium made things easier to pass these files between users. The first of the sharing sites started to show up and the rest was history.

Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom and his legal team have won a fairly significant victory in the ongoing case with the US DoJ. A New Zealand Judge has ruled that the US MUST hand over all evidence it has against Dotcom. This is something that the US has resisted since the beginning for reasons known only to them, but there is speculation that they case was founded with no evidence at all. This type of blind accusation is actually something the MPAA and RIAA are used to. If you look back at their copyright lawsuits you will find that they often submit anonymous indictments which allow them to subpoena ISPs to get information on certain IPs. It seems they like doing things that way and have tried to push this to Megaupload.

Judge Lucy Koh has asked that Samsung and Apple executive meet for a third time. Her request for a peace talk is coming with only about a day and half of Samsung’s presentation in the bag. This move seems a little odd to us considering her defiance in allowing for key pieces of Samsung evidence to be shown to the jury and her refusal to throw out some Apple patents based on Prior Art.

The Samsung V Apple trial is still going on, but what we have noticed is that now that Apple is finished with their side of the story many sites that were carrying the Apple flag have stopped covering it. As Apple paraded one witness after another we saw so many headlines proclaiming that Apple had won with this or that witness that is became comical. This is despite the fact that in many cases the actual experts felt that the key witnesses either had a neutral effect on Apple’s case or ended up slightly in favor of Samsung (with Peter Bressler and Terry Musika being two of the worst).

Anton Vickerman, the owner of Tvstreaming links site SurfTheChannel was sentenced to four years in jail at Newcastle Crown Court. He was found guilty of consipracy to defraud for facilitating copyright infrigement. The operation was prosecuted by the MPAA (Motion Pictures Association of America) together with UK FACT (Federation Against Copyright Theft). They were able to acquire evidence against the site operator. The site itself was one of most visited streaming link websites, averaging 400,000 visits daily. You could see many of the popular TV-shows on the site for free, illegally of course.

Apple rested their case today in the Samsung V Apple trial currently underway. Apple’s last big hurrah was parade their licensing chief in front of the jury. From looking at the testimony it was an attempt to show how much Apple tries to cooperate with the competitors. We are not sure that their effort was successful though. The primary focus was to put in a value on the “infringement” that Apple claims Samsung is guilty of.

When we got into the lab this morning and started checking things out we stumbled across something that was simply shocking.  At appears that Judge Lucy Koh has decided to bar testimony of the Samsung designer that started their move to more simple designs. Her claim is that because she did not design any of the phones that Apple claims are infringing her testimony will not be of value: “The risk of undue prejudice to Apple outweighs the probative value of Ms. Park’s testimony”.

If there is one thing I really cannot stand, it is blatant spin (well, two things since you can also throw in FUD). These two items are becoming rather rampant in the technical media (almost as bad as in the TV news). There are some who have claimed it is because the technical press has become a big business now and is no longer concerned with the facts or anything close to them. What they want is entertainment.  There is another factor to this that many might be missing; technical sites are capable of spreading FUD and spin on a massive scale. If a company wants to get the word out they can “leak” information to a few chosen sources and it will spread faster than bad news.

Apple has a very short memory and also a nasty little habit of getting people involved that share their paranoia. Today one of the people that Apple called was designer Peter Bressler. For those of you that do not know who he is he is a famous designer that also founded his own design group in Philadelphia and was also a leading member of the Industrial Designers Society of America. Sounds like some pretty impressive credentials right? Well we though so as well until we found a small note on the Bressler Group’s site that said “In a world where distinctions are becoming ever more indistinct. Where a $10 wristwatch may well keep better time than a $10,000 chronograph. Where new products proliferate, and differences between them are the difference between success and failure, product design that communicates has never mattered more.”

The MPAA, RIAA and in fact the entire copyright industry is a very interesting organization. On the one hand they fit an almost textbook definition of a Cartel (According to the Sherman Anti-Trust Act) but have been allowed to exist and act with impunity for many years. They have a revolving door with Government agencies in the US where many of their executives have come from our law making bodies or former executives now have positions inside those bodies. Their history of unethical and borderline illegal (many times actually illegal) actions has become the stuff of legend across many internet sites. Yet still they persist in trying to portray themselves as the victim in the cases that they are perusing around the globe.