Comcast van. Source: Titanas on Flickr. License: CC BY-SA 2.0.

Ars Technica reports that Comcast has filed suit against the Federal Communications Commission over its ruling against the provider for Comcast’s use of throttling technology.

Almost a year ago, Comcast pledged that it would sue the Federal Communications Commission over its Order sanctioning the cable ISP for peer-to-peer throttling. Now, the company has filed its case with the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Although Comcast’s legal arguments are complex, the crux is simple: there were and still are no statutes or credible regulations that support the Commission’s authority to act on this matter, the company says.

“For the FCC to conclude that an entity has acted in violation of federal law and to take enforcement action for such a violation, there must have been ‘law’ to violate,” Comcast’s Opening Brief to the court contends. “Here, no such law existed.”

Well, it certainly took them long enough.

• Ars Technica
• Slashdot

Wired.com reports that RealDVD, the DVD ripping software that launched a few months ago, lost its case against the Hollywood studios. The judge ruled that RealNetworks violated the DMCA by distributing the software, regardless of its intended use.

[Judge] Patel said the RealDVD software violates the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 that prohibits the circumvention of encryption technology. DVDs are encrypted with what is known as the Content Scramble System, and DVD players must secure a license to play discs. RealDVD, she ruled, circumvents technology designed to prevent copying.

But the decision, although mixed, left open the door that copying DVD’s for personal use “may well be” lawful under the fair use doctrine of the Copyright Act, although trafficking in such goods was illegal.

“Because RealDVD makes a permanent copy of copyrighted DVD content, there is no exemption from DMCA liability, statutory or otherwise, that applies here. Whatever application the fair use doctrine may have for individual consumers making backup copies of their own DVDs, it does not portend to save Real from liability under the DMCA in this action,” Patel wrote (.pdf) in a lawsuit brought by Hollywood.

Glickman praises this decision in the article, as if RealDVD would be of any use to those who wish to violate copyright on DVDs by making copies for others to use, or its prohibition will stop others from ripping movies with other software instead, without seeming to consider that such actions may be causing the very infringement the MPAA claims to be fighting against. No doubt many people get their DVD-purchased films from sources unsanctioned by Hollywood because they are unaware of or don’t know how to use DVD ripping software with their own discs (or because they might consider a $150,000 civil fine a lighter sentence than 5 years in prison). The long-established process of CD ripping gives them the belief that their acts are not in violation of copyright (or that their violation is justified) due to their purchase of the DVD. Removing the DRM on DVDs could very well reduce this behavior, as the awareness of rippers would increase and the lack of legal concern could lead to easier and more efficient ripping technologies. It could also make Hollywood stop looking like they believe we are still in a world where CSS is a barrier to DVD access.

• Wired.com
• Slashdot

Serial Console - Credit: jmcar on Flickr (CC BY)

Matthew Crippen, a 27 year old student from California, was arrested for hacking video game consoles in violation of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act.

“Matthew Crippen was arrested yesterday for hacking game consoles (for profit) in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. He was released on a $5,000 bond, but faces up to 10 years in prison. This is terribly disturbing to me; a man could lose 10 years of his freedom for providing the service of altering hardware. He could well lose much of his freedom for providing a modicum of it to others. There is no piracy going on, necessarily — the games a modified console could run may simply not be signed by the vendor. It’s much like jailbreaking an iPhone. But it seems because he is disabling a ‘circumvention device’ it is a criminal issue. Guess it’s time to kick a few dollars over to the EFF.”

We are now one step closer of turning our world into the dystopian future found in Richard Stallman’s The Right to Read.

• Slashdot

Money - Credit: AMagill on Flickr (CC BY)

Joel Tenenbaum has lost

A Boston federal jury has ordered Joel Tenenbaum to pay a total of $675,000—$22,500 per song—to the major record labels for willfully infringing 30 songs by downloading and distributing them over the KaZaA peer-to-peer network. The figure is closer to the $222,000 award in the first Jammie Thomas-Rasset trial than the $1.92 million figure from the second trial.

….

The RIAA was pleased with the verdict. “We are grateful for the jury’s service and their recognition of the impact of illegal downloading on the music community,” the RIAA said in a statement. “We appreciate that Mr. Tenenbaum finally acknowledged that artists and music companies deserve to be paid for their work. From the beginning that’s what this case has been about. We only wish he had done so sooner rather than lie about his illegal behavior.”

…

The Tenenbaum litigation was dominated by the larger-than-life personality of Tenenbaum’s counsel, Harvard Law School professor, who infuriated the plaintiffs, and at times Judge Nancy Gertner, with his unusual litigation tactics. These included making audio recordings of the attorneys and the court, and then posting the results to his blog, and publicizing internal discussions with potential expert witnesses about legal strategy. A sanctions motion against Nesson for his recording practices remains pending.

Hmm…If I were in Joel’s shoes I’d wonder how I let my crazy prof convince me I stood a chance.

• Ars Technica
• Joel Fights Back

net neutrality... to the power of you - Credit: markrabo on Flickr (CC BY)

Once again Network Neutrality has been brought back to the table in Congress, this is already the third time. But since we now have  a new President and a new FCC chairman it seems more likely that there will be a different outcome this time.

The war over network neutrality has been fought in the last two Congresses, and last week’s introduction of the “Internet Freedom Preservation Act of 2009” (PDF) means that legislators will duke it out a third time. Should the bill pass, Internet service providers will not be able to “block, interfere with, discriminate against, impair, or degrade” access to any lawful content from any lawful application or device.

I’m not really sure how I feel about this. I definitely support net neutrality and I think it’s extremely important but maybe a better approach to insure net neutrality is to increase ISP competition.

• ars technica
• Slashdot

Blackboard. Source: shonk on Flickr. License: CC BY 2.0.

The Washington Business Journal reports that all 38 contested claims in Blackboard’s e-learning patent have been invalidated on appeal of the Desire2Learn infringement case.

“Blackboard is obviously disappointed with the Federal Circuit’s decision and will seek further judicial review,” said Matthew Small, chief business officer for Blackboard (NASDAQ:BBBB). “Meanwhile, claims 39-44 of the 138 patent remain valid and enforceable. These claims were not at issue in the appeal.”

Even though Blackboard won just more than $3 million in damages from a jury trial in the U.S. District Court for Eastern District of Texas in February 2008, that court also found 35 of 38 claims of the patent to be invalid.

A good victory against bad patents, even if a number of claims remain valid. Blackboard is still proprietary and still has a horrible UI, so if you are still in the process of ditching it, I would continue to do so.

• Washington Business Journal [Print Version]
• Slashdot

Little Case - Credit: Banalities on Flickr (CC BY)

Jammie Thomas’ lawyers are planning to appeal, according to p2pnet.

Will they be answered in my favor?  I truly hope so because then every other person who has been targeted in the RIAA’s litigation campaign might have a better fighting chance.

I will admit this battle is wearing me rather thin, but I have to continue as I don’t know of anyone else to have ever reached this point, and we might help to establish a more fair set of laws in a new digital age.

I didn’t ask for this, it was thrust upon me by the RIAA and now they get to deal with the consequences of their extortion litigation tactics of using the law as a hammer to squish innocent bystanders in their war against everything new and not under their control.

Wish me luck.

Good luck indeed.

• p2pnet

United States Court House - Credit: jamidwyer on Flickr (CC BY SA)

Many newspapers are having a really difficult time these days. Also they are now facing competition from many online news sources and their classifieds business has been crippled by websites like craigslist.com. A judge makes a controversial suggestion on how to save them:

“Expanding copyright law to bar online access to copyrighted materials without the copyright holder’s consent, or to bar linking to or paraphrasing copyrighted materials without the copyright holder’s consent, might be necessary to keep free riding on content financed by online newspapers from so impairing the incentive to create costly news-gathering operations that news services like Reuters and the Associated Press would become the only professional, nongovernmental sources of news and opinion.”

I think this idea is completely ridiculous. davester666, a commenter from Slashdot, couldn’t have put it better…

“This sounds like a “new methods are making an old business model obsolete, so we should outlaw the new methods type thing.”"

• Slashdot

Freedom of Speech (CC-BY Credit : danstrange on flickr)

In a dangerous judgment for British bloggers and whistleblowers, a British court has ruled (absurdly) that because blogging itself is a public activity, bloggers have no reasonable expectation of privacy regarding their identities, and newspapers are allowed to publish their identities if they can find them by fair or foul means

Something similar happened in India few months back. The question remains should internet really be anonymous?

• Slashdot
• Times Online

U.S. Patent and Trademark Office seal - Credit: U.S. government (Public domain) http://www.uspto.gov/

The nature of innovation and technology has changed a lot but patent law may not be keeping up with the changes. In this Wall Street Journal opinion piece, L. Gordon Crovitz, argues that patent reform is long due because in their current form they maybe causing more harm than good for innovators.

The last time the Supreme Court heard a case on what kinds of innovations deserved patents was in 1981 — the year IBM launched the first personal computer using a disk operating system from a young Microsoft. The Internet as we know it was still years in the future.

This month, the Supreme Court agreed to reconsider what can be patented. At stake are tens of thousands of existing patents and a rethinking of why we have patent protections in the first place.

I hope the Supreme Court opens its eyes to the disaster that is patent law in the United States. Hopefully this also the beginning of the end of software and business methods patents.

Why Technologists Want Fewer Patents

Donald Knuth: Mathematical Ideas, or Algorithms, Should Not Be Patented