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| | | December 14, 2003
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Sunday, December 14, 2003 |
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Canada: P2P downloading is legal, but uploading isn't
The Copyright Board of Canada ruled that under current Canadian legislation unauthorized downloading of copyrighted materials from peer-to-peer networks is legal, although it noted uploading is not. The decision was harshly criticized by the country's recording industry association and is widely expected to be challenged in Canadian courts.
In addition, the board expanded a government imposed fee on recording mediums to MP3 players. Canada has for long practiced charging manufacturers of potential song storage media such as blank CDs a small fee, which goes into a fund reimbursing copyright owners for privately made copies of their works. The fees for MP3 players will depend on the storage capacity of the player and will range from $2 to $25.
More from: AP (via USA Today) | CNET News.com | The Register
SCO.com is forced down... again
For the third time this year, SCO's web site was taken down by a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack. In a press release, the Utah-based company blamed thousands of compromised servers for flooding its Internet Service Provider (ISP) with useless traffic and noted it is working closely with law enforcement authorities to find the culprit(s).
This time, however, security mavens blasted SCO's statement saying it contained erroneous, or at least inaccurate information. Some called SCO's system administrators incompetent as the DDoS method described in the company's press release was an antiquated technique with necessary protection against in up-to-date software. Others, openly dubbed SCO's statement fraudulent by putting up evidence that the company's ISP was hardly overwhelmed with traffic.
More from: CNET News.com | Computerworld | Groklaw | eWeek | InternetNews.com | LinuxWorld
In Other News...
 Danish security firm Secunia warned that a bug reseacher has uncovered a flaw in Internet Explorer that could allow for a fake web site to use a misleading URL address in the browser's location bar. "Zap the Dingbat" posted a working demonstration which displayed a web page purporting to be Microsoft.com. Microsoft officials have confirmed they are looking into the issue.
Internet search company LookSmart announced plans to lay-off half of its staff in a regulatory filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The move comes weeks after LookSmart lost its largest client, Microsoft's MSN division.
Microsoft is expected to release the beta version of Windows XP Service Pack 2 to testers in the coming days. The final version of the update is set for release in the first half of 2004.
- - More to come.
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