Google Inc., stepping up competition with Facebook Inc., will add a layer of social- networking features to its main products, Chief Executive Officer Eric Schmidt said.
The changes will come in the fall of this year, Schmidt said today at a press briefing in Arizona. He declined to elaborate. The remarks followed comments by a Facebook executive that Google was building a new social-networking site.
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Want to boost the world's sagging economies? Here's one strategy: if governments reduced the piracy rate for computer software by 2.5 percent each year over the next four, it would stimulate most nations to the tune of $142 billion, add almost half a million new high tech jobs, and produce about $32 billion in new tax revenues by 2013.This assessment comes from the Business Software Alliance's new study: The Economic Benefits of Reducing Software Piracy, which tracks the phenomenon in 42 countries that represent almost the entire global market for software.
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Nearly half of 7,000 adults surveyed in 14 countries around said they felt it “legal” to download a single music track, album or movie without paying (17%, 14%, and 15% respectively), proving that suing file-sharers isn’t a good idea when it likely means targeting so many of your customers.
I’m not sure what he says about the people involved, but according to the recent Norton Cybercrime Report: The Human Impact a number of people actually think it’s “legal” to download copyrighted material online without permission.
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Microsoft's top lawyer said on Monday that the company is taking action in the wake of a report that its antipiracy efforts have been used by the Russian government as a means to monitor computers of dissident groups in that country.
In a blog post, general counsel Brad Smith said that the company is hiring an outside law firm to investigate a report in The New York Times that the Russian government has used Microsoft's antipiracy efforts as a pretext to search computers of potential dissidents and, separately, that some lawyers hired by Microsoft have worked with corrupt police to shake down businesses over the piracy issue.
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Every single US Copyright lawsuit against nearly 19,000 John Does has been filed in Washington DC. Discovery has been granted in every case, which means the identification process against many of these individuals is taking place as you read this article. Before the USCG can obtain the identifiable information associated with the IP address collected during their copyright infringement investigation, they have the opportunity to file a motion to quash - or prevent the USCG from obtaining their information.
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At a time where content producers are increasingly using peer-to-peer technology to distribute data, there are still Internet providers that wont allow such traffic on their networks. This type of discrimination is not limited to mobile or cellular networks either. In Ireland, Vodafone users are not permitted to use peer-to-peer services on their broadband connection.
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