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Rapidshare hands over uploader’s details, house raided
- In Germany, the file-hosting service Rapidshare has handed over the personal details of alleged copyright infringers to several major record labels. The information is used to pursue legal action against the Rapidshare users and at least one alleged uploader saw his house raided. Like many new releases, Metallica’s latest album “Death Magnetic” was uploaded to the popular file hosting service Rapidshare one day prior to its official release date last year. Since users don’t broadcast their IP-address or distribute files to the public directly though Rapidshare, it came as a surprise when the police raided the house of an uploader a few weeks ago. At first it was unclear how the identity of the uploader was revealed, but today German news outlet Gulli said it had found out that this was likely to be accomplished by creative use of paragraph 101 of German copyright law. It turns out that several record labels are using this to take legal action against those who share music on Rapidshare. Previously the paragraph was only used by rights holders to get the personal details of those who share copyrighted works on file-sharing networks. It basically enables the copyright holders to get “permission” from a civil judge to ask ISPs to disclose the personal details of a user behind a certain IP. Now, however, this also seems to be the case for file-hosting services such as Rapidshare, which is based in Germany. This of course opens up the possibility for rights holders to go after a wide range of file-hosting services and potentially even BitTorrent sites. Indeed, everyone who now uploads a torrent file to a site hosted in Germany is at risk of having his personal details revealed. Although it will be impossible to prove that the uploader actually seeded the file it might be seen as assisting in copyright infringement. Pretty much all torrent sites keep track of the IP-addresses of their (.torrent) uploaders, and if the rights holders can get the IP-address of people who upload to file-hosting services such as Rapidshare, they can easily extend this to BitTorrent sites hosted in Germany. A dream come true for copyright holders, but a nightmare for the privacy of Internet users. Source: TorrentFreak -
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Yahoo closes Geocities webhost after 15 years
- Yahoo announced Thursday that it will shut down GeoCities, the Web site building business it acquired a decade ago. “We have decided to discontinue the process of allowing new customers to sign up for GeoCities accounts as we focus on helping our customers explore and build new relationships online in other ways,” Yahoo said in a statement. “We will be closing GeoCities later this year.” The closure is part of an effort to streamline operations at Yahoo, a plan that chief executive Carol Bartz outlined in more detail during the company’s Tuesday earnings call. “We are increasing investment in some areas while scaling back in others,” according to a spokeswoman. “For example, after careful consideration, we recently discontinued products such as Yahoo Briefcase, Farechase, My Web, Yahoo Audio Search, RSS ads, Yahoo Pets, Yahoo Live, Kickstart and Yahoo For Teachers, and outsourced Launchcast radio to CBS. We continue to evaluate our portfolio of products and services on a regular basis, and plan to share details of further changes with our consumers and partners in the months ahead.” People with existing Geocities Web sites can still access and add content to their sites, but they will be shut down by the end of the year. “You don’t need to change a thing right now — we just wanted you to let you know about the closure as soon as possible,” Yahoo said in a FAQ on the Geocities site. “We’ll provide more details about closing GeoCities and how to save your site data this summer, and we will update the help center with more details at that time.” The company urged users to upgrade to Yahoo Web Hosting service. Yahoo purchased GeoCities in January 1999 for $5 billion. Source: PC Magazine -
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Microsoft unveils Virtual XP mode in Windows 7
- Microsoft Corp. will unveil an add-on to Windows 7 that lets users run applications designed for Windows XP in a virtual machine, the company confirmed Friday — the first time Microsoft has relied on virtualization to provide backward compatibility.Dubbed “Windows XP Mode,” the add-on creates an XP virtual environment running under Virtual PC, Microsoft’s client virtualization technology, within Windows 7, said Scott Woodgate, the director of Windows enterprise and virtualization strategy. In a post to a company blog , Woodgate said the add-on is part of the pitch to convince businesses to migrate to Windows 7. “All you need to do is to install suitable applications directly in Windows XP Mode,” said Woodgate. “The applications will be published to the Windows 7 desktop and then you can run them directly from Windows 7.” Details of Windows XP Mode (XPM) were first reported Friday afternoon by Rafael Rivera and Paul Thurrott, two prominent bloggers who are also collaborating on a book, Windows 7 Secrets , due out this fall. Windows 7 Enterprise is available only to companies with volume licensing agreements. Windows XP Mode (XPM) requires processor-based virtualization support and is based on the next-generation Microsoft Virtual PC 7 virtualization technology, said Rivera, who also disclosed that Microsoft will include a fully licensed copy of Windows XP Service Pack 3 (SP3) with the add-on. That, in effect, gives Windows 7 users a way to run older applications without having to pay for another operating system license. Rivera also touted, as had Woodgate, the ability to run Windows XP applications directly from the Windows 7 desktop without having to first open a separate virtual machine window. Source: Computerworld -
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Microsoft: first earnings drop after 23 years
- Microsoft has reported its first ever year-on-year drop in sales as the decline in the global PC market hit the world’s largest software supplier. The company announced third quarter revenue of $13.65bn (£9.3bn), six per cent down on the same period last year. Net income of $2.98bn (£2.03bn) was down 32 per cent. In its previous financial quarter, Microsoft announced 5,000 job cuts, which resulted in $290m (£198m) spent on employee severance charges in the subsequent three months. The supplier said that sales in its Client, Microsoft Business Division, and Server & Tools divisions were most affected by the weakness in the global PC and server markets, although revenue from corporate customers remained stable. “With our continued R&D investment and our broad suite of products and services, we remain in a great position to compete and gain share in the marketplace,” said Kevin Turner, chief operating officer at Microsoft. Chris Liddell, chief financial officer at Microsoft, added: “While market conditions remained weak during the quarter, I was pleased with the organisation’s ability to offset revenue pressures with the swift implementation of cost-savings initiatives. We expect the weakness to continue through at least the next quarter.” Analyst IDC said worldwide PC sales slumped by 7.1 per cent in the first three months of this year. Source: Vnunet -
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Apple sold 21M iPhones and 1 billion Apps
- Despite how some consumers feel about Apple products, few will argue that Apple has some of the most desirable products and best product marketing on the planet. Apple has dominated the mobile music player market and is now conquering the smartphone marketwith its iPhone. To go along with the iPhone, Apple launched its App Store last year that provided third-party applications for the handset ranging from video games to productivity apps. The App Store was a raging success from the start with over $30 million in sales during its first full month of operation. This week Apple announced that the billionth download had been made from the App Store. A contest was running as the countdown to one billion downloads ran and the contest is now over. The one-billionth download was made yesterday by an unnamed user. Apple says that it will announce who made the billionth download soon. The person who made the record setting download stands to get a serious gift package including $10,000 in iTunes credit, a 17-inch MacBook Pro, a 32GB iPod touch and a Time Capsule backup system. Apple says that in all it will give away $13,000 in prizes for the contest. All App downloader’s were automatically entered into the contest. Apple’s App Store is so popular and has generated so much revenue that most all smartphone makers are now readying their own versions of the App Store, each trying to be slightly different from the Apple offering. Source: DailyTech -
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