Recently, we wrote about how satellite TV provider Echostar had been sending out subpoenas

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We’ve all heard stories of various online filters that block perfectly legitimate sites as being “porn” or something else objectionable, but sometimes there are such extreme cases that it makes you wonder what people are thinking. Apparently, some ISPs are using a filtering system that believes the W3C site should be blocked as porn. W3C, of course, is the body that manages standards for the web. It was founded, and still run, by the creator of the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee. Any filtering system that classifies the W3C as porn doesn’t deserve to be in the filtering business. Hell, they barely deserve to be on the web at all.

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By taking action this week, both the House and Senate gave webcasters and music labels a few more months to work out a royalty rate everyone can live with. Without legislation, Pandora and others might soon have been forced out of business.

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Ars takes a look at the question that all mobile users have asked at one point or another: what’s up with the number of “bars” of signal that we’re getting on our cell phones, and why does that number so often seem to lie?

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A federal judge has turned aside the Oregon State Attorney General’s effort to halt the RIAA’s attempt at discovering the identities of 17 students accused of sharing music over Gnutella.

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For years, questionable “software” firms would buy up ads that pretended to look like computer warning messages telling you that your computer was at risk. Then there were scamming companies that would include a web-based “test” of your computer to see if it was at risk — and, of course, it always found that you were. The scam is just to get you to download (and buy) their software which rarely does anything (and most of the time you don’t need it). The FTC had cracked down on these companies a while back, but it appears at least some are still in business. Washington state is now suing a software company that apparently did something similar sending messages to computer users claiming “CRITICAL ERROR!” and demanding that they download the company’s product immediately to repair the problem. Of course, there was almost never an actual problem… but the software cost $40.

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Cable may be faster than the DSL offerings from telecoms, but poor customer satisfaction is making users “highly vulnerable” to competition, according to a new report from CFI Group. Lousy customer service and rising rates are to blame for cable customers looking elsewhere.

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P2P traffic is still growing, but it’s being eclipsed streaming video and direct download link from services like RapidShare. As content owners lean hard on P2P, Internet video is going both legit and further underground.

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Longtime readers know that I’m no fan of metered broadband or it’s half-sibling “broadband caps.” They’re not the worst thing in the world, but they set in place the wrong incentives, making an internet connection a lot less valuable. There are certainly those who disagree, but we’ve lived in worlds with metered internet access and phone systems before, and it leads to decreased overall usage — and that’s not a good thing. It acts as disincentive to creating the next great internet service that could be a boon to the economy.

Customers recognize this implicitly. They hate the idea of any sort of mental transaction cost associated with “watching” their bandwidth usage — especially since they have no clue how much bandwidth they really use. A recent study highlights this pretty clearly. 83% had no idea how much bandwidth they use — with many not even having an idea of how much data one gigabyte represented. 81% of those surveyed stated they were against the caps, and 51% said they’d look for alternative providers if their ISPs implemented such a cap. Interestingly, even light users were against such plans. That seems to go against what ISPs tell everyone, claiming that light users would be able to get cheaper access. Yet, those light users recognize that it would more likely end up with them keeping the same price, but with more limits.

Now, some will be quick to respond that of course people surveyed will hate broadband caps. It’s like asking people if they want to get less for the same price. But the key point here is how many people would look for alternative providers, combined with the fact that, for most users, there really aren’t many choices. Once again, this highlights the key problem with US broadband: there’s almost no real competition. You have the duopoly of the telcos and cablecos, and not much else that represents real competition. Most of the biggest providers (Comcast, AT&T, Time Warner Cable) have made it clear that they intend to cap broadband. The only really big holdout is Verizon, who is betting that its FiOS offering won’t require similar caps. But FiOS is still limited in its footprint, and it will be worth watching what happens over time. So while there are plenty of skirmishes about things like net neutrality and broadband caps, don’t lose site of the real issue: the lack of significant competition for broadband in most markets.

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Late last year, the US Department of Energy published an analysis in which they concluded that over 60 percent of US commercial buildings could go zero emissions. Now, the DOE has handed out $15 million in grants to get business in touch with the experts who know how to make this happen.

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As was widely expected when RealNetworks announced plans to release some

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Earlier this year, Alex Iskold wrote up a piece on why the economics of “free” was somehow bad. That didn’t make much sense and we tried to explain why. Now he’s written another article trying to explain why the patent system is in crisis, and it seems equally as confused. We absolutely agree that the patent system has some serious, serious problems — but it’s not for the reasons Iskold describes. First, he claims that the patent system used to work — when historical evidence suggests otherwise. Almost every look at the patent system over history has found little to no evidence that it increased innovation. From Fritz Machlup to Eric Schiff to the more recent research of Scherer and Weisburst and others have consistently found little evidence that patents increase innovation.

Iskold, oddly, suggests that the reason why we’re seeing open source rise up and an open sharing of ideas proliferate is somehow because of the patent system’s failures (despite the fact that both became more prevalent and common long before software was considered patentable), and warns that this is somehow dangerous, because: “What happens when a big company copies a startup? What happens when dozens of startups copy each other?” Of course, that’s what most people consider competition, and we tend to think it’s a good thing in a capitalist society. It’s what actually drives innovation, as pretty much all of economic history has shown. If someone copies you, you continue to innovate and beat them to the market. If you really understand your market better, then you can out-innovate them. And, despite continuous worries about “big companies” copying startups, history shows that it’s not quite so easy. If the startup is successful, it’s not so easy to just copy, because the startup has built up a reputation, which isn’t so easy to copy. Witness how Netflix outran Blockbuster, despite Blockbuster copying Netflix. Witness how Google outran both Yahoo and Microsoft. Witness how Microsoft outran IBM.

It’s not so easy to just “copy.” And just copying isn’t enough to actually gain marketshare.

From here, Iskold’s column skids off the rails completely. It claims that the real problem of the patent system is the time between filing the patent and when the patent is granted, because that allows plenty of other companies to copy your patent and beat you to the market. That’s so wrong it’s difficult to know where to start. First, patents aren’t published until 18 months after being filed. So, no matter what, you have an 18 month headstart. And if we’re talking about software firms, that seems like a pretty damn big headstart. Furthermore, there’s very little evidence of startups or even larger companies in the software space scouring patent applications to “steal ideas” from others. No, they tend to focus on what the market is actually asking for. And, in fact, there’s ample evidence that many software firms actively forbid employees from looking at patents, as doing so may open them up to treble damages for “willful infringement.”

Iskold seems to think that this patent scanning is what leads to tons of “me too” startups — but the truth usually has absolutely nothing to do with the patent system. It’s because multiple people recognize the same or similar markets, and over time are likely to attack it in similar ways. Again, that’s competition — and it’s a good thing.

Oddly, towards the end, Iskold finally admits what he calls “the biggest irony in this patent debacle”: it actually benefits consumers. That’s not “irony.” That’s correct. Competition benefits the customer. That’s how it’s supposed to work. So what’s the problem?

Well, according to Iskold, this isn’t sustainable: “To not have patents at all means that at the end of the day big companies will always absorb all the best innovation for free.” But, again, as we already pointed out, that’s simply not true. Sometimes big companies win, but quite often, they do not. Big companies are slow and lumbering. Small companies are faster and more nimble and can often out innovate the slow companies with legacy issues. Competition is a good thing, Alex. Don’t fear it.

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A few weeks ago, we wrote about the bizarre and troubling lawsuit filed by John Dozier against Ronald J. Riley. Riley, of course, is a well-known pro-patent system supporter who has generally made a nuisance of himself in the comments. Whenever he stops by here, it’s usually to personally insult me (and, in some cases, my family) and to spew what usually amounts to lies or totally unsubstantiated comments about the patent system. In other words, this is not someone I’m likely to defend. Yet, Dozier’s lawsuit is very troublesome. It basically highlights all sorts of questionable things that Riley has done to establish his “reputation” as a patent expert — but then the actual lawsuit is on trademark issues. The background on Riley, while amusing and interesting to us, has absolutely nothing to do with the lawsuit at hand. Dozier seems to merely be dragging Riley’s name through the mud. Why? Well, it appears that Riley insulted Dozier (similar to the way that Riley insults us) and even went so far as to put up some websites making fun of Dozier. Dozier, of course, isn’t known for taking criticism well, so apparently, he decided to go after Riley on very questionable trademark claims, while also dragging his name through the mud (which very well might be deserved — but if it’s got nothing to do with the lawsuit…)

Dozier’s still at it, with a blog post describing the latest details of what’s been happening, where he repeatedly references our original post (which slams Dozier’s lawsuit as being highly questionable). Dozier falsely suggests that Techdirt has somehow changed its opinion of his lawsuit. He says that a comment defending Riley on Techdirt was shown by commenters to likely have been Riley himself, but that’s not true. I know the IP addresses that Riley uses. And, I know who the person is who “defended” Riley and it is not Riley. It is another regular commenter who knows Riley and supports Riley (and trashes us all the time), but it’s not Riley himself. Dozier also suggests that Riley posted an article in a different forum pretending to be someone else, though there’s evidence that that’s not true either (edited to avoid confusion).

What’s much more troubling is Dozier’s claims that he’s been able to convince various webhosts to take down Riley’s websites. As much as we may find Riley to be an insulting pest, we would never suggest he doesn’t have the right to speak his mind. Dozier claims that any new webhost that hosts Riley’s websites will be accused of “aiding and abetting”, “conspiracy”, and “contributory trademark infringement” claims. Dozier must realize that such claims are a clear abuse of trademark law. The webhosts are quite clearly protected under section 230 of the CDA and are not responsible for the content hosted on those sites. Dozier, as a self-professed “internet law expert” should know this, suggesting that his claims to various webhosts are misleading. Once again, we’re probably the last people on earth to ever want to defend Ronald Riley — but Dozier’s campaign against him is equally as abusive as anything Riley has done.

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You would think that after years and years of evidence that a second-hand, “used” market for products increases the value of the original products that executives who create the original products would know better than to complain about resales or demand a cut of the profits — but apparently you’d be wrong. Reader Lucretious writes in to let us know that the audio director of Bungie Studios, a Microsoft subsidiary and the makers of Halo among other things, is out complaining about how the second-hand market for video games has a huge detrimental effect on the industry, claiming that the game makers deserve a cut of all of those sales.

Except that’s not just wrong, from a common sense standpoint, it’s wrong from an economic stand point and a legal standpoint. It’s almost impossible to come up with a rationale where it actually does make sense. First, on the legal front, the first sale doctrine is well established. When it comes to copyright products, once you’ve sold something, you really have sold it, and the buyer has every right to resell it — just as they do with things like a chair or a house — without owing the original creator another dime. Second, from an economic standpoint, plenty of studies have shown the importance of an active second-hand market. First, for buyers of the initial product, the fact that they can resell it is part of the value they put in the price. Wipe out (or heavily tax) the second-hand market, and you decrease the amount people are willing to pay for the initial product. Thus, you actually shrink the market for your product. There’s also a lot more research in terms of signalling and market adoption that show that a second-hand market is important. Finally, from a common sense standpoint: you sold the game, you no longer have control over what people do with it. That’s how transactions work. Would the folks at Bungie like it if we suddenly started telling them how they could spend the money we gave them for games? No? Then they shouldn’t complain about what people do with their games.

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ATI’s finished off its HD 4000 lineup (at least for now) with the introduction of new 4350 and 4550 parts. At sub-$60 prices, none of these cards are going to wow the 3D market, but you might be surprised at what they offer in other areas.

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Real’s new DVD archiving product copies movies to the hard drive without affecting their encryption; in fact, it adds a second layer of DRM. But Real says that hasn’t stopped threats from movie studios, and the company wants a judge to rule that its product is legal. Meanwhile, the MPAA has filed a countersuit.

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Nokia has launched Qt Extended 4.4, a Linux-based mobile platform that leverages the Qt toolkit. Ars takes a look at some of the components of the platform and what it offers third-party application developers.

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With the

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As a web software shop specializing in small business and productivity applications, Zoho’s new Marketplace for customizable third-party apps could give it a leg up on the competition.

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The folks who run The Pirate Bay sure do seem to have quite a bit of fun. The latest is that, in response to a report from Swedish book publishers about how they scraped TPB’s results for a period of time and noticed that 85% of Sweden’s best sellers could be found on the site, the folks from TPB are threatening to sue the publishers for copyright infringement. Hypocritical? Yes. But, clearly, the TPB guys are merely making the point of just how silly copyright laws are. The TPB guys aren’t big believers in copyright, obviously, so any such lawsuit isn’t so much hypocritical as it is pointing out the absurdities of such a system to those who seem to think that copyright systems make perfect sense.

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Two brothers who ran a plethora of scam sites have been outed online, resulting in the disappearance of the sites they used to run. It’s funny what the posting of a few pictures and addresses can do.

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While EA Sports enjoys an exclusive deal with the NFL, the NFL Players’ Association, and the NCAA, a lawsuit claims that a licensing deal with Madden 09 deliberately left retired players, many of whom face serious health and financial issues as a result of their careers, out in the cold.

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Here’s an interesting little factoid pointed out by Clive Thompson that, while not surprising, does quickly indicate some major shifts on college campuses from just a few years ago. A report from Amherst on the technology used by entering freshmen in the class of 2012 found that only 1% have a landline phone, while 99% have Facebook accounts. Also, students arriving on campus registered, on average, more than one electronic device per student on the university’s network. And, it would appear that the concept of the desktop computer is pretty much dead among students. Only 14 out of 438 students brought one.

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Richard Stallman, one of the fathers of the software freedom movement, has declared that cloud computing is stupid in calling for users to reject web applications. Ars tells Stallman why we think he is wrong and takes a close look at emerging initiatives that aim to bring software freedom to the web.

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What began as a minor squabble over the terms of service that went with iTunes in Norway quickly blew up into a bigger deal, with Norway blasting Apple for locking songs bought via iTunes only to the iPod via FairPlay DRM. While we can understand the frustration that some might have about this, it is still a user’s choice to buy from iTunes, knowing that the music won’t work with other digital music players. It’s why I don’t buy music from iTunes, for example. And these days, we’re seeing more open competitors hit the market, such as Amazon’s MP3 store. Thus, Apples use of DRM hardly seems like a reason for the government to force the company to open up.

However, that’s exactly what’s happening with Norway, as the government is moving forward with a case against Apple that might force the company to either open up FairPlay or shut down iTunes in Norway. If the latter is the end result, it’s difficult to see how anyone actually benefits. If Apple wants to limit its own market, that’s Apple’s decision. It doesn’t make sense for Norway to get involved.

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FCC Chair Kevin Martin says he wants to top and tail those Sprint/Clearwire, Verizon/Alltel merger applications before Santa comes down the chimney.

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While failing to do much of anything (other than fingerpointing) to deal with the economic crisis we’re facing, the folks in the House did spend some time

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Sony is really on to something with LittleBigPlanet—its headline title for the holidays banks on a YouTube-like approach to bring video game content creation to the masses.

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For years and years we used to make fun of the press and analysts for either saying that WiMax existed when it did not or for predicting huge uptake before the tech was even ready. Plenty of companies offered wireless broadband, but it was not WiMax, no matter what they (or the press) called it. Back in 2003, we even made a pretty clear prediction: WiMax would not be ready for prime time until 2008, going against plenty of analysts who insisted it would be the big thing in 2004. And 2005. And 2006. And 2007. So, it’s nice to see Sprint squeeze in the launch of its WiMax Xohm service before the end of 2008, and make our prediction accurate. Of course, those analysts who predicted huge WiMax success stories in 2004 have moved on and have already declared WiMax dead, and now LTE is the huge success story to watch out for. Let’s wait and see on that one as well. There’s just something about wireless technologies that make the press and analysts assume that what is being talked about at the tech level will take the world by storm immediately. These things take time.

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First off, we should point out that there’s a tendency in the press to discover a patent app (or even a granted patent) from a company and immediately write up an article claiming that the company is planning to implement what’s in said patent — as if the patent gives a glimpse into that company’s future plans. The truth is that plenty of companies patent stuff that never amount to anything. So, reading the tea leaves via patent application is unlikely to be very accurate. So, it’s difficult to put much weight into the claims from Wired that Google is planning to “kill off cellphone contracts” based on a recently revealed patent application on a flexible communications system, that would effectively bid out to various telco providers for the best possible rate before initiating a connection.

The real question shouldn’t be about whether or not this will kill off mobile contracts, but why anyone should think this is patentable material. Least cost routing techniques have been around for ages, and you could buy a fax machine that would do it automatically for you years ago (I think I bought mine at least five years ago). It’s hard to see what’s all that different here, other than that it would be for data instead of voice or fax (which are really data in their own way) and that it could include mobile lines or alternative broadband options like WiFi. But that hardly seems worthy of a patent. Even odder? Google was sued about three years ago for apparently infringing on a least cost routing patent held by RTI, a patent holding company that recently had its tactics exposed.

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In recent years, progress toward self-driving cars has proceeded rapidly. In the first part of our three-part series, Ars looks at current technologies: in the lab and in the showroom.

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The days of the stuffy job fair are fading as recruiters favor the Internet, where social networking sites are enabling organizations, including government agencies, to target the exact audiences they’re looking for when it comes to recruits.

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It continues to amaze me how important a law like section 230 of the CDA is to keep ridiculous situations from occurring. Fundamentally, we shouldn’t even need a section 230 — which notes that online service providers aren’t responsible for the actions of users — since it should be common sense. The person liable for violating a law should be the person who actually violated the law, and not the tool they used to violate the law. Yet, as we see time and time again in other countries that have no Section 230 equivalent, such common sense doesn’t always play out.

Take, for example, a ruling by the Advertising Standards Authority in the UK, that says that any online publishers are responsible for the text of any ads they display — even if those ads are automatically generated, such as by a system like Google’s AdSense. That puts publishers in a really tricky position. The whole benefit of using something like AdSense is the fact that it easily fills in mostly relevant remnant ad inventory, without requiring the publisher to carefully review and sell the ad space. Making those publishers liable for the content of those ads is only going to drive them away from using such ads altogether, which doesn’t benefit anyone. Yes, you can understand that the ASA doesn’t want questionable ads out there, but then the liability should fall on those actually responsible: the advertiser who created the questionable ad. Not the publisher who had no control over it.

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Microsoft and Washington State are teaming up again, this time with an eye on software providers who market unnecessary repair/maintenance products. Such programs, known colloquially as “scareware,” cost users significant amounts of money, and provide unnecessary “protection.”

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An interview with three Australian ISPs finds them convinced that their metered service model has lessons for their counterparts in the US, who wouldn’t have to worry about net neutrality if they’d simply institute Australian-style usage-based pricing.

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Most patent infringement lawsuits you hear about involve utility patents, but every once in a while we hear about cases involving design patents, which are about the ornamental design of a product, rather than the process or method. However, most IP attorneys are always quick to point out how

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A recently discovered flaw in Amazon’s Video on Demand service allows users to rip Flash streams, but it’s not clear that Adobe deserves all the blame on this one. Amazon may have made mistakes of its own, in the name of improving user convenience, and the company’s online content distribution system could be headed for a revamp.

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A bunch of folks have been submitting the news that financial information giant Thomson Reuters is suing George Mason University for the high crime of releasing some software that can convert the output of Thomson Reuters own EndNote software into a more open format. EndNote is software for creating bibliographies, from a variety of different databases. The George Mason software, Zotero, does the same thing — but also will take documents saved in EndNote’s proprietary format and save it in its own open format. In normal times, under normal laws, this shouldn’t be a problem. Reverse engineering is considered a perfectly legitimate practice in most cases — and, in fact, is considered an important part of the competitive market in driving innovation. But, thanks to the DMCA, when it comes to software, this type of behavior can be blocked within a license agreement. This is one of the worst parts of the DMCA, in that it’s clearly not about protecting copyrighted material, but about preventing any sort of competition in the market place.

If Thomson Reuters execs actually thought about this, they would realize that Zotero actually makes EndNote more valuable by making the output more valuable. As long as Thomson Reuters is willing to keep adding more and better features, then it should have nothing to worry about from Zotero, who only enhances the value of EndNote’s output. Instead, Thomson Reuters is using the old claim of felony interference with a business model to shut down a university-produced open competitor. Thomson Reuters’ claims make this quite clear, in saying that Zotero is “destroying the EndNote customer base.” Back here, in the real world, most people call that competition and think it’s a good thing, rather than against the law.

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We’ve talked about how both Hasbro and Mattel seriously screwed up in dealing with Scrabulous, the online version of Scrabble written by two brothers in India and placed in Facebook where it became a huge hit. While the companies did make overtures to working with the brothers, eventually they sued to shut down the game, pissing off plenty of legitimate fans, leading to widespread boycotts of Hasbro and Mattel games, and allowing the brothers to create their own new game that has also won fantastic reviews.

It appears that not every game company is so short-sighted. Reader Doug Schneider writes in to let us know about a guy who created a virtual copy of the popular casual game Bejewled inside the virtual world World of Warcraft. Yet, rather than shut the guy down or threaten to sue him, the makers of Bejewled, Popcap Games,
hired the guy to create an official version for World of Warcraft, saying that the original version lacked polish, so they figured it made sense to just hire him to clean it up and make an official version. What a concept.

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Nero announced LiquidTV today, a combination software and hardware product that brings TiVo and much of its glory to Windows PCs, complete with that great remote. Ars Technica spoke with Nero and went hands on to see how well TiVo software performs outside of its natural habitat.

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There have been a variety of highly questionable stories over the past few months claiming that piracy was somehow killing the PC gaming industry — even as stats were showing that the industry is actually thriving. A lot of this came to a head over the last month, with the EA Spore fiasco — with folks in the comments still insisting that EA had no choice and that video game companies somehow need to include DRM or they would go out of business. That’s clearly not the case for a variety of reasons: (1) no DRM actually stops piracy so if piracy is costing game companies, the DRM isn’t making much of a difference and (2) companies like Stardock have shown for a long time that you don’t need DRM to be a success. Recently, we heard about execs from two more video game companies hitting back and explaining why DRM isn’t needed.

The first, pointed out by a reader named Dave, is a guest post at Penny Arcade by the CEO of Three Rings, Daniel James, where he explains why DRM is pointless:

The business model of putting bits in a box and charging to experience said tasty bits is forever broken. Furthermore, to prevent the copying of bits is futile and ultimately destructive to the goal of any modern digital business, which is to conscript enthusiastic ‘users’, and from them, customers….

Money can’t buy you love, but love can bring you money. In software the only sustainable way to earn money is by first creating love, and then hoping that some folks want to demonstrate that love with their dollars….

DRM takes a big poo on your best customers — the ones who’ve given you money — whilst doing nothing practical to prevent others from ’stealing’ your precious content juices. Worse, it makes these renegades feel nice and righteous about sticking it to ‘the man’. Stop trying to persuade people to love you more by hitting them a rusty pipe. Put down the pipe, and give up on DRM.

Then, reader Tyler Hipwell alerts us to an interview with the founders of Good Old Games, a video game company that sells old, out-of-print PC games for very low prices… and without DRM. Basically, the company recognizes the marketplace it’s in and doesn’t freak out about DRM or piracy (like so many others in the video game space):

“The games we offer are probably already easy to get on torrent sites, but we believe gamers would prefer to buy their products legitimately than pirate them. They just need a good reason to buy those games and we give them those reasons by selling games at low prices, optimized to run on modern operating systems and adding great bonus materials.”

Not treating your customers as criminals? Giving them reasons to buy? Providing extra reasons to pay? Pricing the games reasonably? According to some video game companies, those are all impossible.

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Earlier this month, we wrote about a neat marketing campaign put on by the Eepy Bird guys using

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Days before recessing for the year, the Senate has at last passed the Broadband Data Improvement Act. It directs the FCC to gather far more detailed (and useful) information about the US broadband market, including better deployment maps and price information.

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Nobody likes DRM, especially not the Norwegian Consumer Council. Consumer Ombudsman Bjørn Erik Thon is, after two years of requests and meetings, giving Apple until November to make FairPlay-protected content compatible with competing portable music players.

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Americans not only expect companies to have a presence on various social media sites, according to a new report by Cone, they also expect those companies to interact with customers, help troubleshoot problems, and even solicit feedback on products and services.

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We were just talking about how the UK had granted all sorts of extraordinary trademark rights to the Olympics for the 2012 games, but the same is true in Canada. Last year, we had reported on similar special trademark rights given to the Olympics for the games in Vancouver in 2010. However, now the Canadian Olympic Committee is taking it to another level. Reader Michael_S alerts us to the news that the Olympic Committee is trying to trademark a line from the Canadian national anthem, “O, Canada.” Specifically, it’s applying for a trademark on “with glowing hearts,” which comes from the song’s lyric: “With glowing hearts we see thee rise, the true North strong and free.” Even more ridiculous is the list of products that the Olympic Committee claims its trademark would cover: “laundry bleach, diesel fuel, dietary supplements, key chains, belt buckles knapsacks, bobble-head dolls, bathrobes, edible fats and beer.” Is the Olympic committee planning to sell diesel fuel under the brand “with glowing hearts”?

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Sprint’s new WiMAX data network, XOHM, launches today in Baltimore with no contracts and no restrictions. It also promises 2-4Mbps download speeds and ushers in the “4G wireless era.”

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A report in a Japanese business publication may have broken the news of a new DS with built-in camera and music playback. If true, Nintendo may be eying the personal media player market in a big way.

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Originally Syndicated via RSS from Ars Technica

Following the misguided lead of both Microsoft and Yahoo, it appears that Wal-Mart has decided to turn off its DRM servers, basically screwing over anyone who trusted Wal-Mart to make sure that music bought from Wal-Mart would keep working. What’s amazing is that Wal-Mart would do this after seeing the backlash that made both Microsoft and Yahoo eventually back down (with Yahoo even going so far as to offer refunds). Wal-Mart, on the other hand, just told people they have a week to burn their music to a CD and re-rip it — or they lose it entirely. Obviously, by this point, you should know that buying DRM’d music is a mistake, because you’re leaving the music in a situation where the company you bought it from can “turn it off” at some point, but what’s more amazing is that Wal-Mart would make the exact same mistake after seeing what happened to both Yahoo and Microsoft.

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Originally Syndicated via RSS from Techdirt