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| | | September 14, 2003
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Sunday, September 14, 2003 |
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RIAA sues, settles, offers amnesty
After a summer of anticipation, the recording industry, rattled with slumping CD sales and an ever deteriorating Internet piracy climate, began suing individual file-swappers for illegally distributing thousands of copyrighted songs online.
The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), a trade group representing virtually all major record labels, filed 261 lawsuits against Internet users across the United States, alleging they represented some of the most "egregious" violators of music makers' rights. According to the group, most of the people sued had been offering a thousand or more copyrighted music files on popular music-sharing networks such as Kazaa, Grokster, Blubster and others. Although the RIAA did not release names and personal details, media organizations swiftly disinterred the identities of the defendants. Most of them learned from reporters about the litigations and told them they were unaware that file-swapping songs was illegal.
A 12-year-old New York girl caught in RIAA's dragnet captivated much of the media attention. Brianna LaHara, an honors student from Manhattan, allegedly shared more than 1,000 songs on the Internet. Her mother became the first to settle with the recording industry, agreeing to pay $2,000 for her daughter's misdeeds. And although LaHara issued a statement through RIAA in which the 12-year-old expressed sorrow for her actions, peer-to-peer (P2P) players and even some news outlets expressed ire over the event. P2P United, a file-swapping lobbying group representing the makers of Grokster, Morpheus, Limewire, BearShare and other peer-to-peer applications, offered to reimburse the girl's mother. Grokster's chief executive, Wayne Rosso, went even further, comparing RIAA's tactics to those of Russia's brutal communist dictator Joseph Stalin.
The music industry's proponents weren't late in their reaction, either. MusicRebellion.com, an online store offering songs for 99¢ per download, set up a special account for Brianna LaHara, which she could use to download music worth $2,000. In a statement, the site applauded LaHara for "admitting a mistake" and quickly cooperating with the copyright owners.
Confirming last week's reports, RIAA also launched Clean Slate, an amnesty program for song-swappers, offering them protection from future litigations if they deleted all infringing materials from their hard drives and signed a notarized affidavit pledging to cease uploading and downloading copyrighted music files from peer-to-peer networks. The group, however, also warned that if a signee's name turned in future investigations, more stringent fines would be sought. But RIAA's opponents and even a U.S. Senator urged file-traders to shun the Clean Slate offer, warning of further legal complications should users publicly turn themselves in. A California resident even filed charges against the RIAA, alleging the group engaged in deceptive and fraudulent business practices.
More from: AP (via CNN.com) | CNET News.com 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 | InternetNews.com 1 2 3 | InternetWeek | Reuters 1 2 | TechWeb 1 2 | USA Today 1 2 | VNUNET.com 1 2 3 4 | The Washington Post | Wired News 1 2
Microsoft faces a security headache
Microsoft's software security was strongly undermined this week after two prominent computer and network security firms claimed a recently released cumulative patch for Internet Explorer is not working.
eEye Digital Security and Secunia said an "Object Data" vulnerability was extremely critical as Microsoft's patch was inadequate and the hole easy to exploit. Both companies urged their customers to disable IE features, including loading ActiveX controls and plug-ins, in order to keep their computers safe until a working update is released from the software giant.
On Wednesday, Microsoft's day for patch releases, the Redmond, Washington-based software maker unveiled another critical update fixing a hole similar to the one exploited by the MSBlast virus. The Distributed Component Object Model (DCOM) of the Remote Procedure Call (RPC) service turned out to have another susceptibility, which could potentially allow an attacker to completely overtake a user's computer. The RPC protocol is used by Windows to facilitate communication between applications across a computer network.
Security researchers noted the stunning similarity with the RPC flaw exploited by the Blaster virus made it possible that a new destructive worm might appear much sooner than usually expected.
More from: CNET News.com 1 2 3 | Computerworld 1 2 | CRN | InternetNews.com 1 2 | Reuters | TechWeb
Altruistic hacker surrenders
Adrian Lamo, a 22-year-old nomadic hacker, surrendered to U.S. federal authorities in California to face charges for illicitly accessing the internal network of The New York Times. In February 2002, Lamo allegedly hacked into the newspaper's corporate network, viewing personal information about well-known Times columnists and contributors.
Lamo, a legend in the hacker world, was widely known as an altruistic "attacker" who uncovered security holes and worked for free with companies to fix them. He is known to have hacked Excite@Home, Microsoft, WorldCom, Yahoo! and others. Companies often expressed gratitude for Lamo's help, but The New York Times filed a formal complaint against him.
He negotiated his surrender with incredible media savvy and was later released to his family after posting a $250,000 bond.
More from: CNET News.com | Computerworld | InformationWeek | Reuters
In Other News...
 Bill Joy, co-founder and chief scientist of Sun Microsystems, is leaving the California-based computer company. Joy, 48, was at the center of many of Sun's innovations, including the Solaris operating system and the Java technology. According to a statement from the company Joy will be looking into new opportunities, but no additional details about his future were released. He will be succeeded by Greg Papadopoulos, Chief Technology Officer and Executive Vice President of Sun.
Internet search giant Google celebrated its fifth birthday this week. Starting in a crowded field of well-established names, such as AltaVista, Yahoo! and others, Google swiftly became a phenomenon and a synonymous with searching the web.
Online bookseller BarnesandNoble.com shelved its e-books division, citing weak sales, lack of expected growth and unavailability of adequate technology. The move came three years after the e-books store was launched in partnership with Microsoft, and later, Adobe Systems.
A U.S. District Court Judge ruled that pop-up advertising originating from adware software is legal. WhenU, the operator of a program called SaveNow, often bundled with third-party software products, was being sued by a web site publisher, charging the company illegally served pop-up advertisements when users visited its web pages.
A newly released study, commissioned by Microsoft, found developing software solutions in the Windows operating system is cheaper than using Linux. The report, written by Giga Research and paid for by Microsoft, claims developing web-based portals over a four year period with Windows tools is less expensive than using Linux and the Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) tools.
At the OracleWorld conference, Oracle Executive Vice President Chuck Phillips said "it wouldn't make sense" for Oracle to raise its unsolicited $7.25 billion bid for rival PeopleSoft before regulatory clearance, if ever.
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