Image: steakpinball/Flickr (Creative Commons)
So, if you have been living under a rock, iiNet has won its three year long case against the movie industry, sparing itself being liable for any copyright infringement of movies and music by users on its network.
Flickr competitor 500px has finally announced a upgrade option that can compete with Flickr Pro. Previously, users who had wanted to store more than 10 photos a week, plus not hit a number of other limits, had to upgrade to an ‘Awesome’ account for a whopping US$49.95, compared to Flickr Pro, which is US$24.95.
Image: Skye Suicide/Flickr (Creative Commons)
The controversial Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect IP Act could find themselves back in the spotlight again, with the chief of the Motion Picture Association of America hinting at a possible revival of the bills.
Talk about choice. The BBC has announced on Tuesday (and yes, we sort of missed it, but we didn’t realised it until now) that it will be launching 24 new channels for the duration of the London 2012 Olympic Games.
Grooveshark’s luck is running out, with their last major record label partner, EMI, terminating its contract with the company. Without any major record label support, the streaming music service’s future is now even more uncertain than it was ever before.
It has taken a while, but the Harry Potter books are now available in a digital format – eBook or as a digital audio book. And surprisingly, despite partnering up with Sony – known for installing some restrictive practices on their content, Rowling’s books will be made available not only as an EPUB format, but it will also be available on the Amazon Kindle, Google Play and on Barnes and Noble’s NOOK stores.
Reporters Without Borders have released their list of countries that they consider to be “Internet Enemies” as part of its World Day Against Cyber-Censorship on March 12. However, while some countries – like China – are expected to be on the list; France and Australia have made the list under “Countries under Surveillance”.
A selection of tweets from the Twittersphere about the Herald Sun paywall.
Image: photographerglen/Flickr (Creative Commons)
Internet content piracy has been an issue for a fair while, but only lately has it really begun to hit its peak with the introduction, and subsequent failure of SOPA and PIPA, as well as the shutting down of many popular downloading sites such as BTJunkie and Megaupload.
Image: Luc De Leeuw/Flickr (Creative Commons)
I guess it was bound to happen. The Melbourne tabloid owed my News Corp, the Herald Sun, is about to bring out new digital offerings next month and will, as long speculated by the media, bring up a paywall if you want to access all of its content.
The ABC will be trialling audio description on television content broadcast on ABC1, improving access to those who are visually impaired. The trail will commence in the middle of 2012 for 13 weeks with 14 hours of drama, documentary and other content that will feature audio description.
MegaUpload’s founder Kim Dotcom has been granted bail, according to several reports from New Zealand. The North Shore District Court found that since the authorities froze all assets, he was incapable of fleeing the country.
A report in a British newspaper has stated that the notorious site The Pirate Bay could be blocked to UK internet users, after a UK court ruled that the site was indeed breaching the country’s copyright laws.
Tweets by Scott Browning, marketing director for JB Hi Fi, has noted that the company has plans to release the app for its JB Hi Fi NOW streaming service “by the end of March” and has confirmed that it will allow users to download songs on their mobile devices for offline use.
The Pirate Party in Catalonia and MegaUpload have announced that it will file a joint complaint against the FBI over their decision to seize the company’s assets, which meant users’ files were lost – some of which were copyright infringing, but many others were note.