Australia. EBay has finally reached its strtegic limit. Though it is still a power in the auction/resale market its dominance has been exposed. In a case of sellers leaving and PayPal enforceemnt EBay’s fortunes have changed. They have so ticked many in their community that a small percentage may never come back. –

eBay has officially withdrawn all further plans to make its online payment system PayPal its sole acceptable payment method, but offering PayPal as one of the payment options remains a requirement and there’s no sign of the auction giant apologising for suggesting that its opponents were no better than drug addicts.

The war is now officially over. Having been told by both the regulator and its customers that plans to make PayPal compulsory were unacceptable, greedy, anti-competitive, and just plain stupid, eBay has finally thrown in the towel on plans to make PayPal the only way to pay for eBay auctions in Australia.

eBay’s statement acknowledging its backdown — something widely anticipated ever since it removed its target date for changing its current approach — contains the closest we’ll ever see to an apology for its greedy and rapacious tactics.

“eBay has withdrawn its notification to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) about removing other payment methods,” it reads. “Instead eBay will continue to allow all existing payment methods on eBay.com.au. We have decided to withdraw the notification to stop any further confusion and disruption among the eBay Community. eBay regrets any uncertainty that this process has caused among the Community and believe that today’s decision will remove further doubt.”

The internet age institutes an iron maiden — Communities make industries and communities break companies. Any company that attempts to buck the lady is gone before they are buried. Ebay is no different. With both the ACCC and sellers raising hell EBay had no choice but to back down on their PayPal restrictions. But the maiden will not have it stop there. Once the ruckus has begun nothing short of near capitalization will satisfy the community.

If you are a business that operates on the internet keep one thing in mind. If you find a ‘Your Company Sucks’ web site do not discount it. Nor should you attempt a cease and desist thru your lawyers. That is just bear bait for your eventual defeat. Better to ask for a conference with the site owner and ask them what it will take to bring things to a satisfactory conclusion. Your success in that endeavor is up to your political skill.

Regardless, EBay is in the thick of it. It will take more than just a PayPal retreat to satisfy the mob.

Linky

Hold onto your hat! The world of top level domains is about to explode. Oh yeah, the old .com, .edu, .org and 10 others will remain. But if the Paris round recommendations are approved soon we will have “.disney”, “.apple”, “.nyc”, etc. If you can pony up the $100k for the registration you too could have one. Heck there might even be a “.gates” domain, he can afford it. –

None of the new names is likely to dethrone “.com” as the world’s leader, and critics fear new suffixes will merely force companies and organizations to spend more money registering names such as “microsoft.paris” simply so others can’t. Legal battles are possible over common but trademarked names like “.apple.”

The other proposal before ICANN would permit addresses entirely in non-English characters for the first time. Specific countries would be put on a “fast track” to receive the equivalent of their two-letter country code, such as Bulgaria’s “.bg,” in a native language.

The ICANN board said it would seek public comment on the guidelines before its next major meeting in November.

Demand for such names has been increasing around the world as Internet usage expands to people who cannot speak English or easily type English characters. Addresses partly in foreign languages are sometimes possible today, but the suffix has been limited to 37 characters: a-z, 0-9 and the hyphen.

It had to happen. It was getting crowded as it was. I would have preferred a little more structure however. Having to know essentially a fully qualified domain name for a user to hit a web site might become a daunting task. The other observation is that this will be a corporate phenomenon. With a $100k entry fee it is going to be the retailing giants that go for this. The odd question not answered? If Coca-Cola buys a TLD, “.cola” does it mean they have to give up the .com address they are using?

More at Wired.

DTV has ushered in a new wave of technologies that enable the content provider to control how, where and on what device the media is used. These technologies were added to DTV standards without much public fanfare, because no one outside of the industry could have foreseen how digital rights management would be employed in consumer devices.  As it stands today, your pretty new 50″ flat screen is full of on-off switches that only big media can access. And there’s more to come. Now big media wants more of these on-off switches only they can control to be built into our internet.

The very characteristic that makes digital TV look so good is the one that makes it so vulnerable to restriction and manipulation: A TV broadcast is no longer a signal, it’s a bitstream, one that has far fewer points of origination than the Internet and is therefore easier to control. Digital TV is rapidly heading for precisely the sort of lockdown that entertainment and broadcast lobbies desire for the Internet, and to the extent that they can be used as video players and recorders, our PCs, Macs, and notebooks.

The primary example of digital lockdown is HDMI, the High Definition Multimedia Interface. Simply put, HDMI is how you get digital video into a high-definition TV. HDMI looks like a dream come true: A single cable with a small connector passes digital video, digital audio, and control signals. HDMI has always incorporated High Definition Copy Protection (HDCP), but for a long time its enforcement was relaxed. You could hook an LCD computer monitor to a cable box or DVD player with an HDMI output. All you needed was a $20 HDMI/DVI adapter.

It doesn’t work that way now. If you plug an LCD monitor into a late model DVD player or other device with an HDMI output, all you’ll see is text telling you that your device is incompatible. If it were truly incompatible, it wouldn’t be able to display that text. Wait, it gets better. (Infoworld)

Copyright law was never intended to enable the producer of content to impose so many restrictions on its use. We have reached the point where you have broken the law by listening to or viewing content you have paid for the right to use on a device that was not approved by the content distributor. It’s time for Congress to repeal the DMCA and start over. Beyond that, our rights as consumers  should be protected  by insuring the net remain free from micro management by the big media. In the mean time, we recommend you not buy any new video device that does not have analog inputs and outputs. Boycott HDMI only.

Of course we believe that stealing copyrighted works is wrong. But we are also been very critical of the RIAA’s tactics. Herein is a case in point–

But then there’s the case of a New York family accused of copyright infringement. The case, defended by Ray Beckerman, an outspoken critic of the RIAA and the publisher of the blog — Recording Industry v. The People — was awaiting a decision for about a year from a federal judge on whether the case should be dismissed.

Beckerman argued that merely making copyrighted music available on peer-to-peer networks was not infringement, an argument bolstered by recent opinions in other jurisdictions — but a viewpoint shared by only a handful of judges. Beckerman’s argument was that if the RIAA can’t prove anybody downloaded the music from an open share folder, then the case would have to be dismissed.

What is most egregious here is that the RIAA withdrew their suit only to refile in another court with a more favorable judge. In withdrawing the suit the presiding judge should have identified ‘with prejudice’. That would have prevented the RIAA from refilling.

Read the whole thing here.

Attention RIAA: Here is an example of the correct way to grow your business. The new site Wolfgang’s Vault offers free streams of classic to current concerts, and DRM free downloads for a reasonable price. You can listen to the entire show before you decide to buy. You don’t need a subscription or an annoyingly invasive player/media manager to access your downloads. You can play the media you buy on any device, and manage it any way you like.

But enough of that, the other really big thing is the content on Wolfgang’s Vault is stuff millions of fans could only get access to via illicit means (AKA bootlegs) in the past. The big labels never offered most of these recordings to the public at any price. Now it’s possible to buy high quality legit copies from an easily accessible source:

The additions were made possible through a deal between Universal Music Group (UMG) and Wolfgang’s Vault founder Bill Sagan. The recordings include live performances by UMG artists culled from thousands of concerts produced by late promoter Bill Graham, along with gems from other catalogs and archives dating back decades.

“This is a far-reaching agreement to make available what I would consider previously unreleased live performance recordings of Universal Music Group artists from the mid-’60s on through today,” Sagan told Billboard.com. “It covers hundreds of UMG performers and thousands of live performance concerts.”

Sagan launched the Web site in 2003 after acquiring Graham’s cache of memorabilia and concert recordings for $5 million. The downloadable content deal is for 10 years, with a streaming deal stretching “into perpetuity,” Sagan said.

If the concert is longer than 30 minutes, a full download is priced at $9.98, with concerts of less than 30 minutes at $5.98. Some one- or two-song performances cost $3.98. The site will continue to offer free streaming. (Yahoo)

Well this is choice. MediaDefender an electronic hired gun for the RIAA and MPAA brought down the site of Revison3 this past weekend. The attack brought down Revision3’s internal website, RSS and mail systems. FBI is now on the case. –

It’s an open debate whether MediaDefender’s actions were lawful, even when it targets illicit torrent-tracking sites pointing the way to unauthorized, copyrighted material. The FBI is examining the Revision3 affair.

One bureau source told Threat Level that it was a “gray” area in federal computer security law.

Then there’s the area of corporate responsibility. Louderback said in an interview that Revision3 closed the hole in its tracker over the Memorial Day weekend and subsequently got slammed by MediaDefender.

“That’s when MediaDefender went into overdrive and started pummeling us,” Louderback said. “If a tracker was previously open and suddenly shut, their systems are automatically configured to put them out of business.”

So what’s wrong with MediaDefender protected the property of their clients? Well to concede a point, yes Revision3 servers were supporting a bitTorrent feed pointing to locations where copies are hosted. But here are MediaDefenders’ problem(s):

• The feed has an IP address. Doesn’t take much to do a quick whois search and call the assigned tech contact for that listing. MediaDefender made no attempt to contact Revision3
• By MediaDefenders approach the attack is indiscriminate and harms others. SYN floods typically end up as a router level attack to firms like Revision3. That is also where the defense occurs as well. As the flood continues the router is brougt to its knees impacting the service of all rather than the single server that is the culprit.
• Such defense attacks impact not just the receiver but the backbone traffic as well. Why should the public be impacted by such actions when the issuer has not even taken the preliminary steps of contacting the hosting company?
• Finally, such actions by MediaDefender are a form of electronic vigilantism. Our legal system does not permit a victim to take the law into their own hands as MediaDefender has done. Which is the core problem here. To allow the actions of MediaDefender to stand is to open a major pandora’s box. Every person with a grudge would posses legal standing to do this to anyone without recourse.

I hope the FBI invokes RICO, and nabs MediaDefender, MPAA and RIAA. Would do them justice.

Linky

This 3 panel cartoon more than all the words spilt over Net Neutrality, IP law and Copyright encapsulates all that is wrong with the law giving in this area. They know not what they are doing and should have left well enough alone years ago.

In a turnabout, the judge in the Thomas-RIAA case is indicating a new trial for the case. His cover is that he erred in procedural instructions to the jury. My gut says the judge is having second thoughts having reviewed other cases and assessment of the ‘distribution’ component of Copyright law. –

The federal judge who oversaw the Recording Industry Association of America’s lawsuit against Jammie Thomas said Thursday he might have erred with one of his instructions to the jury, and is considering granting a new trial.

In response, an RIAA spokeswoman said, “if we have to re-try the case, we will do so without hesitation.”

U.S. District Court Judge Michael Davis, who presided over the nation’s only file sharing case to go to a jury, noted in a brief order (.pdf) Thursday that, under federal case law, infringing a copyright likely requires actual dissemination of the pirated content, not merely making copyrighted works available.
Thomas_testimony
Jammie Thomas testifying in her civil trial last October, while U.S. District Judge Michael Davis watches from the bench.
Courtroom sketch: Wired News/ Cate Whittemore

In October, Davis instructed jurors that infringement occurs the moment a Kazaa user makes copyrighted music available to others from their share folder — an instruction he now regards as a “manifest error of the law.”

The Duluth, Minnesota, jury found Thomas liable for infringement and awarded the music industry plaintiffs $222,000 for 24 songs.

The so-called “making available” argument is at the center of the legal battle over file sharing. But whether Thomas could ultimately prevail on a retrial is unclear. After three days of testimony, it took jurors only five minutes to conclude that Thomas was liable, and a few more hours to affix a price tag.

One of the cases Judge Davis cited in his order Thursday is also something of a double-edged sword for the defense. In that April decision, Atlantic v. Howell, an Arizona judge said that merely making a copyrighted work available for downloading wasn’t infringement. But the judge also held that the RIAA’s own investigators can effectively turn it into an infringement just by downloading a copy from the share folder involved.

What this shows is that our legal system is not infallible. Judges do make errors and ordinary citizens are the lesser for the loss of justice before notches. Best guess is that this is not a situation that will overturn the original award. The error was procedural not a fact of case law. So the result will probably be the same.

But our legal system should not be a game.

Linky.

A recent trend that has become a national embarrassment is the formation of companies whose sole purpose is to collect outdated patents and try to apply them to new technology and sue the makers and users of that technology. It’s called a legalized protection racket. They produce nothing, clog the courts, raise the cost of goods and services while stifling innovation. Latest in the headlines is a group that calls themselves “Rembrandt”.

Rembrandt Inc. owns a patent on technology that it says is part of the digital television broadcasting standard used by the TV networks. Rembrandt is suing 14 companies, including Walt Disney Co.’s ABC, General Electric Co.’s NBC Universal, CBS Corp. and News Corp.’s Fox Broadcasting for patent infringement and wants millions of dollars in royalties.

The American Antitrust Institute, a nonprofit advocacy group, asked federal regulators last month to bar Rembrandt from enforcing its patent. Otherwise, Rembrandt’s suits could add “tens of millions” of dollars to the cost of digital TV, most of which will likely be passed on to consumers, the nonprofit said.

“This is a massive tax that Rembrandt is trying to place on the transition to digital TV,” said David Balto, an antitrust attorney who co-wrote a petition the AAI submitted March 26 to the Federal Trade Commission.

The AAI argues that Rembrandt is violating antitrust and fair competition laws by abusing the monopoly provided by its patent.

In recent years, the FTC has required companies to license their patents and set maximum royalties in several cases that involve technology standards.

Industry groups set technical standards in areas such as computer networking and memory chip technologies. The standards let different companies make compatible products. (Yahoo News)

Unfortunately a significant percentage of our elected reps in DC are lawyers, including 2 of 3 running for president.The patent act needs revision, and the patent office needs a housecleaning. It will take more them this one small voice to get their attention.

There is an outfit called Joyent that is offering free python cloud computing for developers. All they ask is — “… Joyent only asks that you provide Joyent unlimited access to your customer information and clickstream data. …”. Sounds like a great deal for the developer doesn’t it? We don’t think so –

• To enter this ‘garden’ you have to have 25k unique clicks a month. Well ok, but supporting those clicks have to come from somewhere don’t they — like the app is running on some existing server farm somewhere. Well if that investment has already been made then scaling is the factor to be considered.
• What does Joyent intend to do with the data? Do not Dear Developer think that you are immune from prosecution for the acts of another. If Joyent does something nefarious with the data collected you may still be sued as the portal agent that some customer data was scarfed from. The ‘I was not aware’ defense is so weak as to be indefensible.
• How portable is that data set once you want to exit? I have seen way too many startups die because the switch costs of going to the platform they needed to be on bankrupted them. Define your exit strategy before you sign up for any SaaS compute services.

If you are a business manager looking to make a move to Saas bring your trusted IT guy with you. Make sure they provide you ranking on the level of difficulty of a switch out of services to another provider. As an example. Right now I would rank the switch costs of EC2/S3 platform lower than the BigTable engine in GAE. Know how to get out before you try to get in with Saas. Your business depends on it. And for Gods Sake, know what may be done with any data so hosted.

Linky.