Yesterday, I discovered that The Times (UK), a well-respected newspaper owned by News Corp., is involved in an extensive campaign to spam social media websites with links to Timesonline.co.uk articles.
Since 2004, The Times retained the established SEO consulting firm Sitelynx to handle their search engine marketing. Working on behalf of The Times, a Sitelynx employee posted thousands of links to community and social news websites, including Mahalo, Del.icio.us, StumbleUpon, Metafilter, Yahoo! Answers, Ma.gnolia, and Netscape's Propeller. His actions were done without any disclosure of his affiliation to Sitelynx or The Times and were, in some cases, posted under the assumed identity of his wife. Update: The Times didn't know what Sitelynx was doing, the Sitelynx employee was fired suspended, and The Sun is also involved. See the updates at the bottom of this entry.
Full Article
Friday, February 01, 2008
Pirate Bay charged by Sweden
Sweden plans this week to charge the people running Pirate Bay, one of the world's most visited Web sites, with being accessories in breaking copyright law.
Pirate Bay helps Web surfers share copyrighted music and film files, which is illegal in many countries, including Sweden.
Public prosecutor Hakan Roswall said last week he will charge the Swedish site's organizers with accessory and conspiracy to break copyright law, which could lead to fines or up to two years in prison.
The charges will be filed in a district court on January 31.
The Motion Picture Association of America and the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) are among those who have called for action to shut down the site.
No copyright material is stored on Pirate Bay's servers and no swapping of files actually takes place there. Rather, Pirate Bay locates file sharers on the Internet and acts as a directory of so-called torrent files.
Full Article
Pirate Bay helps Web surfers share copyrighted music and film files, which is illegal in many countries, including Sweden.
Public prosecutor Hakan Roswall said last week he will charge the Swedish site's organizers with accessory and conspiracy to break copyright law, which could lead to fines or up to two years in prison.
The charges will be filed in a district court on January 31.
The Motion Picture Association of America and the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) are among those who have called for action to shut down the site.
No copyright material is stored on Pirate Bay's servers and no swapping of files actually takes place there. Rather, Pirate Bay locates file sharers on the Internet and acts as a directory of so-called torrent files.
Full Article
A new battle in the War of P2P
Two weeks into a Federal Communications Commission public comment period on whether Comcast deliberately degrades P2P broadband traffic, there's no shortage of angry users who feel cheated and want the tampering to stop. Evidence is also mounting that Comcast is blocking more than just P2P traffic.
Related StoriesFCC fines Comcast for fake news story
FCC to investigate Comcast BitTorrent blocking
Evidence mounts that Comcast is targeting BitTorrent traffic
Comcast traffic blocking: even more apps, groupware clients affected
"On numerous occasions, my access to legal BitTorrent files was cut off by Comcast," a systems administrator based in Indianapolis wrote to the FCC shortly after the proceeding began. "During this period, I managed to troubleshoot all other possible causes of this issue, and it was my conclusion (speaking as a competent IT administrator) that this could only be occurring due to direct action at the ISP (Comcast) level."
The comment cycle began on January 14. It came at the request of net neutrality advocates whose petition to the FCC cited an Associated Press investigation concluding that in some instances Comcast "hindered file sharing by subscribers who used BitTorrent."
The cable giant claims that it has delayed access when usage was high, but has not deliberately singled out any sites or services. But Free Press, Public Knowledge and others groups want the Commission to issue a declaratory ruling on whether the practices with which Comcast and others have been charged violate the FCC's Internet policy statement.
Full Article
Related StoriesFCC fines Comcast for fake news story
FCC to investigate Comcast BitTorrent blocking
Evidence mounts that Comcast is targeting BitTorrent traffic
Comcast traffic blocking: even more apps, groupware clients affected
"On numerous occasions, my access to legal BitTorrent files was cut off by Comcast," a systems administrator based in Indianapolis wrote to the FCC shortly after the proceeding began. "During this period, I managed to troubleshoot all other possible causes of this issue, and it was my conclusion (speaking as a competent IT administrator) that this could only be occurring due to direct action at the ISP (Comcast) level."
The comment cycle began on January 14. It came at the request of net neutrality advocates whose petition to the FCC cited an Associated Press investigation concluding that in some instances Comcast "hindered file sharing by subscribers who used BitTorrent."
The cable giant claims that it has delayed access when usage was high, but has not deliberately singled out any sites or services. But Free Press, Public Knowledge and others groups want the Commission to issue a declaratory ruling on whether the practices with which Comcast and others have been charged violate the FCC's Internet policy statement.
Full Article
Will Google go "all the way"?
Google Inc. succeeded in its push to force the winner of airwaves being sold by the U.S. government to open its network to any mobile device.
One bidder offered $4.71 billion for the biggest set of airwaves being auctioned, surpassing a $4.6 billion threshold that triggered so-called open-access rules, the Federal Communications Commission said today on its Web site. The agency didn't reveal which company made the bid.
The rules aim to boost consumer choice by requiring the winner of the so-called C-block airwaves to let any legal wireless handset or program use the network. Google, owner of the most popular Internet search engine, may now exit the auction after winning the conditions, said Jeff Lindsay, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. in New York.
``What people don't know now is if Google will drop out of the bidding and allow someone else to win,'' Lindsay said today in an interview. ``It's a totally different scenario if Google goes all the way.''
The total value of all bids climbed 4.3 percent to $15.6 billion in the latest round, exceeding government projections and making the airwaves sale the largest ever in the U.S.
Google, AT&T Inc. and Verizon Wireless are among 214 companies participating in the auction, which includes 1,099 slices of spectrum. The C-block comprises about a third of the airwaves, which will become available when television broadcasters switch to digital signals in 2009.
Full Article
One bidder offered $4.71 billion for the biggest set of airwaves being auctioned, surpassing a $4.6 billion threshold that triggered so-called open-access rules, the Federal Communications Commission said today on its Web site. The agency didn't reveal which company made the bid.
The rules aim to boost consumer choice by requiring the winner of the so-called C-block airwaves to let any legal wireless handset or program use the network. Google, owner of the most popular Internet search engine, may now exit the auction after winning the conditions, said Jeff Lindsay, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. in New York.
``What people don't know now is if Google will drop out of the bidding and allow someone else to win,'' Lindsay said today in an interview. ``It's a totally different scenario if Google goes all the way.''
The total value of all bids climbed 4.3 percent to $15.6 billion in the latest round, exceeding government projections and making the airwaves sale the largest ever in the U.S.
Google, AT&T Inc. and Verizon Wireless are among 214 companies participating in the auction, which includes 1,099 slices of spectrum. The C-block comprises about a third of the airwaves, which will become available when television broadcasters switch to digital signals in 2009.
Full Article
Mafia's style HP Behaviour
A Boston man has filed a class-action lawsuit accusing hardware maker HP and office supply retailer Staples of colluding to inflate the price of printer ink cartridges in violation of federal antitrust law. According to the suit, HP allegedly paid Staples $100 million to refrain from selling inexpensive third-party ink cartridges, although the suit doesn't make it clear how plaintiff Ranjit Bedi arrived at that figure.
For most printer companies, ink is the bread and butter of their business. The price of ink for HP ink-jet printers can be as much as $8,000 per gallon, a figure that makes gas-pump price gouging look tame. HP is currently the dominant company in the printing market, and a considerable portion of the company's profits come from ink.
The printer makers have been waging an all-out war against third-party vendors that sell replacement cartridges at a fraction of the price. The tactics employed by the printer makers to maintain monopoly control over ink distribution for their printing products have become increasingly aggressive. In the past, we have seen HP, Epson, Lenovo and other companies attempt to use patents and even the Digital Millennium Copyright Act in their efforts to crush third-party ink distributors.
The companies have also turned to using the ink equivalent of DRM, the use of microchips embedded in ink cartridges that work with a corresponding technical mechanism in the printer that blocks the use of unauthorized third-party ink. Adding insult to injury, most printers are lying, filthy ink thieves, according to a recent study, misreporting that they are low on ink when they are not.
Bedi's suit asks for unspecified damages and an injunction barring the two companies from engaging in anticompetitive business practices.
Full Article
For most printer companies, ink is the bread and butter of their business. The price of ink for HP ink-jet printers can be as much as $8,000 per gallon, a figure that makes gas-pump price gouging look tame. HP is currently the dominant company in the printing market, and a considerable portion of the company's profits come from ink.
The printer makers have been waging an all-out war against third-party vendors that sell replacement cartridges at a fraction of the price. The tactics employed by the printer makers to maintain monopoly control over ink distribution for their printing products have become increasingly aggressive. In the past, we have seen HP, Epson, Lenovo and other companies attempt to use patents and even the Digital Millennium Copyright Act in their efforts to crush third-party ink distributors.
The companies have also turned to using the ink equivalent of DRM, the use of microchips embedded in ink cartridges that work with a corresponding technical mechanism in the printer that blocks the use of unauthorized third-party ink. Adding insult to injury, most printers are lying, filthy ink thieves, according to a recent study, misreporting that they are low on ink when they are not.
Bedi's suit asks for unspecified damages and an injunction barring the two companies from engaging in anticompetitive business practices.
Full Article
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Stumble It!