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Senate Passes Movie Theater Camcorder Piracy Bill

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on June 25, 2004 - 7:37am.
Washington -- The U.S. Senate voted unanimously on Friday to make it a crime, punishable by up to three years in prison, to bring a camcorder into a movie theater for the purpose of pirating a film. The Cornyn-Feinstein ART Act will also ratchet up penalties for anyone who distributes promotional or pre-release movies or music on the Internet before their release dates, and enable copyright holders to sue for damages. In addition, the bill provides the Justice Department with an added $5 million per year through 2009 to support enforcement efforts. "The digital age is making rampant theft easier and more damaging, and the overlap between online file swapping and the production of counterfeit movies and CDs has become so blurred as to become indistinguishable," said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), who sponsored the bill. "We are now one step closer to making thefts far more difficult, prosecution of criminals much easier, and the protection of consumers and artists much stronger."
tags: Senate | Passes | Movie Theater Camcorder Piracy Bill |

Microdrive Maker Seagate Files Patent Suit Against Rival Cornice

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on June 25, 2004 - 7:35am.
Scotts Valley, Calif. -- Seagate Technology, a manufacturer of hard disk drives, announced this week that it has filed a patent infringement suit against Colorado-based rival Cornice, which makes the microdrives used in digital music players from firms including Rio and iRiver. Earlier this month, Scotts Valley, Calif.-based Seagate released the first of its own 1-inch, 5GB microdrives designed for consumer electronics. "We cannot allow the competitive advantage we've established through our long-term investment in R&D to be unfairly attacked by those who would illegally infringe on our technology portfolio and intellectual property," said Seagate president Bill Watkins. Seagate is seeking monetary damages and a permanent injunction that bars Cornice from making, using, importing, offering to sell, or selling the allegedly infringing products in the United States.
tags: Law | Seagate | Patent | Cornice | Microdrive Maker |

Wash. Schools, Libraries Receive Questionable Antitrust Settlement CDs

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on June 25, 2004 - 7:34am.
Seattle -- The Seattle Post-Intelligencer recently reported on the quantity and quality of CDs being distributed to area schools and libraries by the major record labels, as part of their antitrust settlement with the government over CD price-fixing. Several recipients of Washington state's 115,241 CDs, many of which were earmarked for public schools, reported receiving too many copies of the same CD, several marked with "Explicit Lyrics" labels, and dozens that were marked "For Promotional Use Only," or notched, indicating they could not be resold. Gary Larson, spokesman for state Attorney General Christine Gregoire, told the Seattle PI that the terms of the settlement called for titles to have been on a Billboard chart for at least 26 weeks and to have appeared in the top half of the chart, but added that national settlement administrators discovered mistakes when they calculated the distribution for the CDs. "We didn't feel they were up to snuff to be added to our collection," King County Regional Library spokeswoman Julie Wallace said of the 7,700 CDs they received, which the library decided instead to donate to a fund-raising foundation to sell. The Puget Sound Educational Service District received 1,355 copies of Whitney Houston singing "The Star-Spangled Banner; among its CDs, the Seattle Public Library received 48 copies of "Scary Sounds for Halloween" from Martha Stewart and 84 copies of an album by rhythm-and-blues artist Samantha Mumba. In addition to the library and school CD handouts, labels also paid out $13 checks to thousands of consumers who purchased CDs during the price-fixing period as part of the settlement.
tags: Libraries | Wash. Schools | Questionable | Antitrust Settlement CDs |

Report: U.S. Video Game Sales in May Down 17.1% From 2003

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on June 25, 2004 - 7:33am.
Toronto -- U.S. sales of video games for consoles and handhelds during the month of May were down 17.1% from a year ago, reports Toronto-based analyst firm RBC Capital Markets, citing sales data from NPD Group. PlayStation 2 unit game sales were down 11.7%, Game Boy Advance game sales down 11.8% and Xbox title sales down 10.4%, while sales of games for Nintendo GameCube were up 36% over May 2003 figures. RBC added in its note that, last year, a single title, Atari's "Enter the Matrix," was responsible for a large chunk of game sales during May and no comparable breakaway title sold as well last month.
tags: Reports | Sales | Down | U.S. Video Game |

Calif. Man Charged With Fraud for Duping Google AdSense System

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on June 25, 2004 - 7:31am.
San Jose, Calif. -- A California man has been indicted on charges related to software he created that could be used to defraud search engine Google's "cost-per-click" AdSense advertising system out of millions of dollars, Reuters reported. Michael Anthony Bradley, of Oak Park, Calif., was charged with one count of interfering with commerce by threats and 10 counts of wire fraud. The U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of California told Reuters that Bradley's software created fraudulent "clicks" for publishers' websites, and that he approached Google and threatened to sell the software to spammers if the company did not pay him $150,000. Bradley pleaded not guilty and is free on a $50,000 bond.
tags: Law | Fraud | Calif. Man | Google AdSense System |

Employee Charged with Selling AOL Email Addresses to Spammers

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on June 25, 2004 - 7:27am.
Dulles, Va. -- Following months of activities and promotions designed to help stamp out spam, America Online suffered a blow to its image on Wednesday when federal prosecutors charged one of its employees with conspiring to sell the Internet service's list of 92 million email addresses to spammers. Employee Jason Smathers, a software engineer from Harper's Fairy, W.Va., is accused of illegally selling the list to Las Vegas resident Sean Dunaway. Both men were arrested. The case will be one of the first to be prosecuted under the new federal CAN-SPAM Act, which went into effect on Jan. 1. AOL said in a statement that it had learned of the problem earlier this year while pursuing litigation against a habitual spammer. The company said that it has no reason to believe that either credit card numbers or passwords were stolen. "We deeply regret what has taken place and are thoroughly reviewing and strengthening our internal procedures as a result of this investigation and arrest," the company said in a statement.
tags: Law | Employee | AOL Email Addresses | Spammers |