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Wednesday, July 05, 2006 |
Record industry to sue Yahoo China over pirated tunes. Xeni Jardin:
Back in February, I posted an item on BoingBoing about the abundance of pirated tunes one can find by way of Chinese-language search engines Yahoo China and Baidu. Not news for anyone who's spent time on those sites, but as a non-Chinese-speaker, it was news to me. Unlike Yahoo.cn (which is 60% owned by China's Alibaba.com) the user interface for Yahoo.com does not include a top-level "Music" tab displaying links to files of ripped top-40 hits (plus lyrics, the ability to save to "My Yahoo," and other goodies).
Now there's news that the International Federation of the Phonographic Industries plans to sue Yahoo China over that very issue. They filed a similar suit against Baidu not long ago. What's most interesting about the threatened action is the fact that Yahoo China is not *hosting* the infringing files, just disclosing to users where they are on the internet. That and the reality that copyright law norms in the US tend to be... ah, different than how things tend to work in China.
Should search companies be liable for the copyright status of what their services allow you to find? Some argue this is like suing an eyeglass manufacturer because a pair of specs helps you see where someone else commits a misdeed. The question of just how much responsibility search firms bear isn't a new one, but it is an increasingly contentious one -- more so as the business of search continues to grow beyond national borders:
"Yahoo China has been blatantly infringing our members' rights. We have started the process and as far as we're concerned we're on the track to litigation," said John Kennedy, chairman and chief executive of the music industry trade group the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry. "If negotiation can prevent that, so be it," he added.
Yahoo China officials could not immediately be reached for comment. Yahoo China is a partnership between Internet giant Yahoo Inc, which owns 40 percent of the business, and China's Alibaba.com. The IFPI has blasted Yahoo China's search engine for providing links to Web sites that offer unlicensed music downloads.
Link to Reuters article. Here is the full text of IFPI's statement on Yahoo China.
[Boing Boing]
6:24:38 AM 
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Almost all of my subscriptions surreptitiously vanished. Odd and annoying.
We're transitioning to a new box here at A blog doesn't need a clever name. That, along with events in Real Life could mean occasional outages or dark days over the course of about the next week.
6:24:37 AM
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Kinderstart.com v. Google.
The Kinderstart.com v. Google search-ranking court case progressed recently:
The search giant is being sued in California by a parenting website which claims it lost most of its traffic when its ranking dropped to zero. The site, Kinderstart.com, claims that it was downgraded because it is a competitor to Google. A motion by Google to dismiss the case was heard in California last Friday, where Kinderstart argued that it competed with Google because it also offers a search facility on its site.
Now, it is, err, my opinion, that Kinderstart.com was downgraded because the site looks like a spam-type directory, not because "it is a competitor to Google" (if it's a competitor, Google has nothing to worry about ...). But Kinderstart.com is riding the wave of Googlenoia, so it's getting a lot of coverage.
When Google defended its right to rank sites as an "opinion", in legal terms, it used the word "subjective", which is causing some discussion over the subjective meaning of "subjective". In English, though, the key part was that they're saying that if they think you're playing web-spam games, it's their right to throw you out of the search rankings with no notice or explanation, notwithstanding whatever else may be in their ranking algorithm. While that's not exactly a nice thing to do, it does seem to be a pretty solid legal right.
See also Eric Goldman for some primary sources [Infothought]
6:21:50 AM
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Report: North Korea test fires 6 missiles, including long-range. Xeni Jardin:
CNN reports that North Korea test-fired at least three five six missiles earlier today, but the device was not the intercontinental missile being monitored by the United States (update) including an intercontinental missile being monitored by the US.
North Korea launched a long-range Taepodong-2 missile early Wednesday in an apparently unsuccessful test that failed in flight, a senior State Department official said. North Korea also tested at least two smaller missiles, U.S. sources told CNN.
Both missiles were launched from a site other than the one intelligence officials have watched for weeks ahead of the long-range missile test, a senior State Department official said. The United States, Japan and other countries have warned North Korea against a long-range missile test, saying such a move would be considered a provocation.
Link to CNN's report, here is a Reuters item with technical details on the missiles believed to have been fired.
Just yesterday, North Korean state-run news daily Rodong Sinmun quoted a government "analyst" as saying the country would respond to any pre-emptive US military action with "a relentless annihilating strike and a nuclear war with a mighty nuclear deterrent." Here is the source article in Rodong Sinmun.
Here's Wikipedia's entry about Rodong Sinmun, and you can read the daily publication online at a Japan-hosted "Korea News Service" website: Korean, English/Spanish. (Thanks, Joseph)
Wonder if the hands on the Doomsday Clock will move anytime soon.
Reader comment: Lee Colleton says,
Reported by our media as "an apparently unsuccessful test that failed in flight". Reported by North Korean news as a success, no doubt. Which was it? I'm hoping it was the former but Mr. Bartlett from Maryland testified before the house on June 9, 2005 that "superatmospheric detonation of a nuclear weapon" would "shut down your power grid and your communications for 6 months". Cryptome.org text link. Wikipedia has pretty pictures of EMP blast dispersal patterns from various altitudes: Link.
[Boing Boing]
6:21:08 AM
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