Displaying items by tag: DOJ

73With the news that the warrants used to justify the storming of the home of MegaUpload founder Kim Dotcom many are looking for reasons why this is important, unimportant and a few other things in the process. We have heard from news sites that say this is the death blow for the US case and others that claim just the opposite. But what few have mentioned is why the US tried to pull of this in the first place and why they hoped it would not be noticed by the authorities.

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despdConflict of Interest; it is an interesting term. As an absolute definition it means; “when an individual or organization is involved in multiple interests, one of which could possibly corrupt the motivation for an act in the other.” As a legal term (as you might imagine) there are multiple meanings with enough ambiguity to keep things interesting. However, to one group of people most notably the MPAA and RIAA it is a way to support and defend their position in the world when they push their lawsuits around the globe. In part two of our look at the MegaUpload case we will dig into how the Content Industry and the DoJ have tried to deny even the right to a defense to MegaUpload.

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73There is nothing like a little drama, just as there is nothing quite like seeing the big copyright holders having to actually prove their case. In no other recent case has this been more important than the in the criminal copyright case against MegaUpload. If you remember the Us DoJ went after the file sharing site some of their managers and the owner Kim Dotcom. Since the seizure of all of their servers property and money there have been some pretty major issues with not only actual evidence, but the warrants, seizure and more. There is even some talk that the DoJ committed some pretty bad procedural errors that might get the whole thing thrown out.

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anonymousIn a bold move AntiSec (part of the Anonymous movement) has decided to release what they claim is 1.7GB of files from a branch of the US Department of Justice. Unlike many other dumps which have been on Pastebin this time they chose to use The Pirate Bay. We are guessing that it has to do with the size of the dump (a fairly hefty 1.7GB), but could also be partly due to issues that have popped up with Pastebin and their decision to remove dumps like this as quickly as possible. Then dump was been tweeted about on the twitter feed PlanetHacks who has claimed responsibility for posting the file (the name of the person tweeting about it is Joke which makes us Wonder…). According to the Twitter feed the attack was “a local file inclusion to obtain an encrypted password, and decrypted it afterwards.”

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73Here is an interesting one, after our report that covered a few emails where Steve Jobs himself got involved in creating a new eBook pricing structure we find out that one of the five publishers in “the club” has now settled with the 29 states that have open class action suits against Apple and company (This is not the same as the Departmetn of Justice Antitrust suit).

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14621rotten_appleWell, well, well; it looks like Apple has been caught altering the data that Siri returns to their users when asked specific questions. Last week it was reported that when users asked Siri “What is the best smartphone” it replied with the answer The Nokia Lumia 900. Now Apple has previously stated that the information from Siri all comes from WolframAlpha “computational knowledge engine” (pronounce that search engine) and they have no power to alter the data that Siri sends.

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17In the last few days we have seen a couple of things that just might break the old business model of the MPAA and RIAA. The indicators are things like the decision that code is not physical property was pushed down by the 2d appeals court only a matter of days ago along with an increase in lobby presence by some media content providers (not the content owners) while the final piece of the puzzle is actually the US DOJ suite against Apple and a handful of book publishers for price fixing.

Published in Editorials
Wednesday, 30 November 2011 19:43

Karma pays a visit to AT&T

ATTKarma is a bitch they say and there are times when that is perfectly the case. The FCC was blocked from enforcing a level of net neutrality and also in its attempts to prevent carriers and ISPs overstepping their bounds as service providers. The block came from some of the heavyweights in the industry with AT&T being one of the gang that jumped the FCC and made statements to the effect that the FCC had no authority to enforce any regulations.

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Friday, 02 September 2011 21:44

Will AT&T Offer a Compromise to the DOJ?

fingersWell, well, well it looks like the folks at AT&T are going to have a go at settling the Anti-Trust suit brought by the DOJ. Originally some statements from the Telecommunications giant had indicated they would fight this in court. Now it according to a report from Reuters they are looking for a compromise that will allow the deal to go through without the need to bother any judges. This would seem to indicate that the deal is a bit shady in the first place, despite AT&T’s claims to the contrary.

But what kind of compromise would AT&T need to make to get this merger deal through? We know that T-Mobile does not care one way or the other. In fact they have a rather healthy failed merger clause that gives them a nice chunk of money in the event it is blocked. So the internet and the press begin to speculate and analyst put in their two cents. Right now there are rumors that AT&T will agree to sell off 25% of T-Mobile to its competitors. It will also probably agree to maintain the pricing and plan structure that T-Mobile has (for a predetermined period of time). These all sound good on the surface, but they hardly address the core argument in the suit. You see the DOJ put it very bluntly; if AT&T and T-Mobile merge it will reduce the competitive market by 25% and put the GSM Market firmly in AT&T’s hands.

This is something that is absolutely not in the interest of consumers, but then again most business dealings are not. AT&T is in a rough position, with the loss of the iPhone to Verizon and the possibility that Sprint will get the iPhone5 later this year AT&T no longer has a truly big seller and the fact that they banked on the iPhone instead of working on 4G put them behind their competitors. Now they have to act or they will fall even farther behind. Instead of investing in rebuilding their aging network they want to buy up one that is working towards modernization and pickup quite a few customers in the mix.

For now it is all in the hands of the Federal Regulators and perhaps even judges as this merger moves towards its fate; whatever that is

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