Online freedom advocates feared on Thursday that Google is changing allegiance in the battle to stop Internet service providers from giving preferential treatment to those that pay.
The concerns surfaced amid reports by the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal that Google and Verizon are crafting a deal in which online traffic such as data-rich video from YouTube would move faster, for a fee.
Such an arrangement would be a major blow to the campaign for “net neutrality” in which no content is given priority treatment online.
Fake handbags, watches, and perfumes are a way of the past. The largest underground industry in the world, Counterfeit Goods bring in hundreds of billions, while sapping the economy, putting lives in jeopardy, and funding organized crime in the process.
CNBC presents “Crime Inc.: Counterfeit Goods,” a CNBC Original reported by CNBC’s Carl Quintanilla takes viewers inside where the goods are produced and confiscated in a world of high-risk and high-reward.
The one-hour special brings you on raids with the LAPD anti-counterfeiting unit, inspections at ports, and back-room factories where counterfeits are produced. Meet a couple who was paralyzed by counterfeit Botox, a company whose whole brand was copied, and the story of a defense contractor who counterfeit defense parts that found their way into weapons depots in Iraq.
At around 7% of all global trade, Counterfeit Goods are a big business with low overhead. It makes too much money to go away any time soon.
Starting this month, colleges and universitiesthat don’t do enough to combat the illegal swapping of “Avatar” or Lady Gaga over their computer networks put themselves at risk of losing federal funding.
A provision of the Higher EducationOpportunity Act of 2008 is making schools a reluctant ally in the entertainment industry’s campaign to stamp out unauthorized distribution of copyrighted music, movies and TV shows.
MOST people who illegally download movies, music and TV shows would pay for them if there was a cheap and legal service as convenient as file-sharing tools like BitTorrent.
That’s the finding of the most comprehensive look yet at people who illegally download TV shows, movies and music in Australia, conducted by news.com.au and market research firm CoreData.
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court seemed skeptical Wednesday of arguments by gay rights opponents that the names on a petition asking for the repeal of Washington state’s domestic partnership law should be kept secret.
Several justices questioned whether people who voluntarily signed a petition asking for a public referendum could then expect privacy. They were concerned that keeping the names of petitioners private might invalidate other vital open records like voter registration rolls or lists of donors to political candidates.
“Running a democracy takes a certain amount of civic courage,” said Justice Antonin Scalia, who also called the arguments to keep the names private “touchy-feely.”
The case could draw a new line between voters’ desire for openness in government and the right to political speech unfettered by fear of intimidation.
Internet service providers could become copyright cops encouraged to block access to suspected pirate Web sites, according to a previously secret draft treaty made public on Wednesday.
One section of the proposed digital copyright treaty says that immunity from lawsuits would be granted to Internet providers “disabling access” to pirated material and adopting a policy dealing with unauthorized “transmission of materials protected by copyright.” If the ISPs choose not to do so, they could face legal liability.
We’ve all seen the studies trumpeting massive losses to the US economy from piracy. One famous figure, used literally for decades by rightsholders and the government, said that 750,000 jobs and up to $250 billion a year could be lost in the US economy thanks to IP infringement. A couple years ago, we thoroughly debunked that figure. For years, Business Software Alliance reports on software piracy assumed that each illicit copy was a lost sale. And the MPAA’s own commissioned study on movie piracy turned out to overstate collegiate downloading by a factor of three.
The U.S. Supreme Court may have stopped broadcasts of California’s same-sex marriage trial, but that has not prevented filmmakers from re-enacting it for the Internet.
Two Los Angeles-based filmmakers have used transcripts, bloggers in the courtroom and professional actors to help recreate the trial. The first of 12 episodes – each covering a day of the trial – appeared on YouTube on Monday.
Filmmaker John Ireland says the goal was to allow Americans to judge the constitutionality of Proposition 8, which restricted marriage to a man and a woman. Ireland and fellow filmmaker John Ainsworth oppose the ban.
The Supreme Court last month blocked a plan to have testimony in the trial uploaded to YouTube, saying it could subject supporters of Proposition 8 to harassment.
In what is being bashed as a decision that will allow foreign corporations to control elections in the United States, the Supreme Court decided to invalidate elements of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (BCRA). Among other things, BCRA prevented Unions and Corporations from supporting or opposing a candidate for public office within 30 days of a primary. I guess that’s bipartisanship, because it didn’t do much.
However, the SCOTUS determined that anytime the government prevents a person (Unions and Corporations are people, just like you and me) from expressing a particular viewpoint, it offends the 1st Amendment.
Premised on mistrust of governmental power, the First Amendment stands against attempts to disfavor certain subjects or viewpoints or to distinguish among different speakers, which may be a means to control content.
Is this the beginning of a new era of corruption in politics? Hardly. The SCOTUS specifically invited congress to amend the BCRA to prohibit foreign content manipulation of U.S. campaigns.
Because [BCRA] is not limited to corporations or associations created in foreign countries or funded predominantly by foreign shareholders, it would be overbroad even if the Court were to recognize a compelling governmental interest in limiting foreign influence over the Nation’s political process. Pp. 46–47. (Italics added)
So…a BCRA amendment that prevents foreign manipulation of political content would not be overbroad and therefore constitutional? I got the hint, I wonder if congress will. The Obama administration appears to have missed the distinction.
