The Newspaper Shop -- Friday edition

[walktalker]

My favorite day of the week
Download music like a maniac
The future of music is online, but the future of online music is cloudy. Now that a widely usable format for online music has come along -- MP3 -- issues of quality and availability are no longer problems. Instead, as Napster's woes and the recent lawsuit against MP3.com illustrate, the problems now revolve around copyright infringement. Even the fairly innocuous ohhla.com, which offers no music but simply transcriptions of rap lyrics, was threatened with a cease-and-desist order by music giant BMI. So what does all this litigation mean for you? It means that while the Web sites and record labels and music publishing companies hash out the legalities, you should download like a maniac! There are some big sites with vast music libraries from which you can download.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/co...809154,00.html

DOJ to Supreme Court: Drop MS appeal
The U.S. Justice Department urged the Supreme Court on Friday not to reconsider an appeals court ruling that the company violated U.S. antitrust laws. The department told the high court in a legal brief that there was no reason to review the case, and it disputed Microsoft's argument that a lower court ruling against the company should be disqualified because of misconduct by a lower court judge. Microsoft's argument for Supreme Court review "rests squarely on a mischaracterization of the court of appeals' ruling," the Justice Department said. The department also said that, since Microsoft may later appeal other portions of the case, "granting (a review) now would likely lead to multiple, piecemeal requests for review... "
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02

Cold War II? Russia warns tech experts
Russia warned its computer experts on Friday of the dangers of visiting the United States after a Russian software designer was arrested there for violating a controversial new law. Last July, Dmitry Sklyarov became the first person to be arrested on charges of selling technology designed to circumvent a 1998 U.S. copyright protection law. Formally arraigned on Thursday, he faces up to 25 years in jail if convicted. "We want to point out to all Russian specialists cooperating with U.S. firms in computer programming and software design that, whatever the outcome of Sklyarov's case, they may fall under the jurisdiction of the 1998 Act on the territory of the United States," the Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02

Sun to break the mold on StarOffice
Sun Microsystems is showing Linux fans the next version of StarOffice, the most viable competition to Microsoft's Office package, and will release the beta version in October. Sun acquired StarOffice from Hamburg, Germany-based Star Division in 1999, and has made it available as a free download in an effort to undermine popular programs such as Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint that help to keep the Windows operating system dominant. The company also released the source code for the software under the General Public License (GPL), the same license that allows anyone to see, modify and distribute Linux software. Version 6.0 will break these programs into individual applications that can run independently, said software demonstrators at the LinuxWorld Conference and Expo where the software has been demonstrated this week.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02

Copywrong?
For computer geeks and civil libertarians, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act is one of the most despised laws of the land. But the 3-year-old law passed a major test on Wednesday: To the dismay of critics, the U.S. Copyright Office evaluated the effects of the DMCA without calling for a complete revision. Specifically, the 200-page study judged whether the new Net-focused law violated two relevant sections of offline copyright law: the doctrine of "first sale," or the right to resell or make personal copies of a copyrighted work without a publisher's permission; as well as a copyright law that permits the owner of a computer program to make a backup copy. The study does give critics some ammunition to work with.
http://salon.com/tech/feature/2001/0...ort/index.html

South Korea keeps eye on sex offenders
South Korea carried out a controversial plan Thursday to post the names of convicted sex offenders on a government Web site, sparking hot debates and a Web traffic jam in the world's most wired nation. The Commission on Youth Protection posted the names, birth dates, occupations and hometowns of 169 people convicted of crimes including rape and pedophilia -- a move that had activists cheering and legal experts crying foul. The controversy mirrors reactions from civil liberties groups in the United States when Web sites began disclosing the identity of sex convicts, as well as the nature of their crimes. The trend took off in the late 1990s after states began enacting "Megan's law," named after a New Jersey girl who was sexually assaulted and killed by a repeat sex offender living in her neighborhood. The law requires that such criminals register with local police departments, allowing people to access a list of offenders in their area.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200...html?tag=cd_mh

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