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It's nothing new to see copyright lobbyists making absurd claims about the evils of piracy, but a group called the International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA) has sunk to a new low. In a report to the office of the US Trade Representative (USTR) they claim that merely encouraging the use of free or open source software by government agencies promotes piracy.

The report was submitted as part of the USTR's annual review of international intellectual property enforcement issues. The purpose of this process is supposed to be identifying countries which aren't doing enough to combat IP infringement.

One solution that's becoming popular is promoting free and open source software. Such a solution addresses the economic reality that the price of software is a leading cause of piracy, especially in poorer countries.

In their 498 page report the IIPA urges the USTR to bully countries like Indonesia, Vietnam, and Thailand into discarding policies giving preference to open source software. It even goes so far as to say just promoting the use of such software "encourages a mindset that does not give due consideration to the value to intellectual creations."

Large textbook publishers Bedford, Freeman & Worth and Macmillan, Cengage Learning, Elsevier, The McGraw-Hill Companies and Pearson filed a lawsuit against file sharing host Rapidshare earlier this month, and today have gained an injunction, meaning the service must now proactively filter about 150 textbook titles, or face a hefty fine.

The suit cited all 148 titles to which the publishers owned the copyright, and demanded that digital copies be taken down, and not allowed to be distributed at all.

Because of the new injunction, if any of the books is ever found available on Rapidshare, the company could face a fine up to 250,000 euros.

"This ruling is an important step forward. Not only does it affirm that file-sharing copyrighted content without permission is against the law, but it attaches a hefty financial punishment to the host, in this case Rapidshare, for noncompliance," adds Tom Allen, CEO of the Association of American Publishers, via TF. "Consider this a shot across the bow for others who attempt to profit from the theft of copyrighted works online."

Last year, in the US, a law known as PRO-IP was signed into law. It mandated the creation of a Justice Department position responsible for the enforcement of intellectual property rights. The second part of that law, requesting comments about IP enforcement issues from the public, is now underway.

Specifically, they are looking for "written submissions from the public identifying the costs to the U.S. economy resulting from infringement of intellectual property rights, both direct and indirect, including any impact on the creation or maintenance of jobs."

Comments should be emailed to the Office of Management & Budget (intellectualproperty@omb.eop.gov) and must be received by March 24.

Comments received by the deadline will be published on a government webpage, so make sure you don't include anything you wouldn't want available to the general public.

PRO-IP (the Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property Act of 2008) is a thinly veiled excuse to divert government resources to the entertainment industry's war against P2P file sharing.

The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) being brokered by the U.S. government on behalf of the entertainment industry has caught the attention of the European Data Protection Supervisor, Peter Hustinx. He authored an opinion paper on several topics that include ACTA, and said he was concerned that it violated the legal rights of citizens in nations across Europe.

"The EDPS strongly encourages the European Commission to establish a public and transparent dialogue on ACTA, possibly by means of a public consultation, which would also help ensuring that the measures to be adopted are compliant with EU privacy and data protection law requirements," Hustinx writes in his opinion piece. ACTA has already found itself in the line of fire from the ACLU and the Electronic Frontier Foundation for some of its provisions.

A look at the minimum system requirements for the upcoming blockbuster Just Cause 2 shows that the title won't work on installations of Windows XP. This would represent one of the first high profile releases not to be supported by the still-popular Microsoft operating system. The requirements specifies that an operating system newer than XP is required, and provides a hint why.

The game requires at least DirectX 10. Windows XP can only officially go as far as DirectX 9, meaning that gamers would need to be using Windows Vista or Windows 7 to play the game. A recent hardware/software survey from Steam showed that 42.15 percent of its users were in fact still running the Windows XP operating system, although Windows 7 was becoming popular very fast.

Of course, there have been several methods used to install DirectX 10 on Windows XP since it was launched, none of which are supported by Microsoft and several of which have no support from their original authors either. So maybe it is "technically" possible to run it on Windows XP, but it is a shame that users should have to install a hacked DirectX 10 package and probably patch the game files themselves to play it on Windows XP.

Amazon.com incorrectly lists XP as supported in search results.

• Operating System: Microsoft Windows Vista or Windows 7 (Windows XP is unsupported)
• Processor: Dual-core CPU with SSE3 (Athlon 64 X2 4200 / Pentium D 3GHz)
• Graphics Card: Nvidia Geforce 8800 Series / ATI Radeon HD 2600 Pro with 256MB memory or equivalent DX10 card with 256MB memory
• Memory: 2GB RAM
• DirectX: Microsoft DirectX 10
• Hard Drive: 10GB of free drive space
• Optical Drive: DVD-ROM drive
• Sound Card: 100% DirectX 10 compatible sound card
• Internet Connection: Internet connection required for product activation
• Input: Keyboard and mouse (Microsoft Xbox 360 controller optional)

• Operating System: Microsoft Windows Vista or Windows 7 (Windows XP is unsupported)
• Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo 2.6GHz or AMD Phenom X3 2.4GHz
• Graphics Card: Nvidia GeForce GTS 250 Series with 512MB / ATI Radeon HD 5750 Series with 512MB or equivalent DX10 card with 512MB memory
• Memory: 3GB
• DirectX: Microsoft DirectX 10.1 with Vista SP1
• Hard Drive: 10GB of free drive space
• Optical Drive: DVD-ROM drive
• Sound Card: 100% DirectX 10 compatible Dolby Digital 5.1 sound card
• Internet Connection: Internet connection required for product activation
• Input: Keyboard and mouse (Xbox 360 controller optional)

LG Display has increased fears of rapid supply growth of LCD panels by announcing it is considering constructing a new LCD production line to meet demands. Manufacturers of LCD television products have been enjoying a healthy level of demand for LCD flat-screens, bolstered recently by Chinese holidays and sporting events like the Winter Olympics.

However, concerns are taking root in the industry that it may return to a state of oversupply as manufacturers beef up production to capitalize on the demand. Controlling supply is important for players in the industry to maintain profit margins for the technology.

"Although demand is strong, growing capacity will become increasingly burdensome for the industry," said Jason Kang, an analyst at NH Investment & Securities. "Supply is already growing and the growth will be faster next year."

LG plans to begin operation of a separate production line in the first half of 2010, while Taiwanese rivals are increasing factory utilization. "We are considering increasing capacity because we have been unable to meet all client demand for some time," said an LG Display spokesman. "But nothing has been decided yet."

Cablevision is set to trial a new concept service in New York, where it serves 3 million homes. A household with both Cablevision Internet access and cable television services will be able to take part. Basically, the service will use your Internet connection to stream pretty much anything from your computer screen to your television, delivered as your own personal TV channel through your cable.

Titled PC to TV Media Relay, Cablevision is offering the service to customers in an attempt to provide innovative and useful solutions for home media consumption as sites like Hulu become more popular. In order to use the service, a user only needs to install software on a Windows-based machines. Cablevision will market it as enabling online viewing on a television with the push of a button.

Pricing for the service has yet to be decided, and users of Macs will be included as soon as software for the platform is developed. The move follows a service from Comcast called On Demand Online, launched last year to offer cable programming to subscribers of both Comcast Internet and cable TV services.

Consumer Focus, a consumer watchdog that operates in the United Kingdom, has called for the region's copyright laws to be adjusted after research showed most consumers are unaware of copyright law. Millions of people are totally unaware that they regularly break the law in the UK, according to Consumer Focus. Their great crimes? Ripping and format shifting.

Consumers regularly rip CDs to computers as MP3 or other digital file formats for convenience, a practice which could very well be illegal depending on the circumstances. The same user would then break the law again by transferring those files to a portable media player device; a practice known as format shifting (technically, just ripping to a computer is format shifting, but the CD -> MP3 player example is usually given).

Some rights holders believe format shifting should be illegal, and that consumers should have to pay again to consume the same content on a different format. In a poll of 2,026 people, 73 percent were totally unaware of what they could legally copy or record. Jill Johnstone, of Consumer Focus, said that the law does not take the advance of technology over the past decade into account and needs to be changed.

The European Commission has set its sights on Google Inc. following a number of complaints alleging that Google unfairly indexes search results in order to bury results from competitors. Google admitted that the European Commission was following up on three complaints made against U.S. giant, and protests its innocence while pledging to cooperate.

"Though each case raises slightly different issues, the question they ultimately pose is whether Google is doing anything to choke off competition or hurt our users and partners," senior competition counsel Julia Holtz said. "This is not the case."

The complaints were made against Google by Microsoft's Ciao! from Bing, eJustice.fr (a French legal search engine) and Foundem, a British price comparison website. Google has said it is confident that its operations conform to competition laws in the European Union.

Ciao! was a longtime user of Google's Adsense platform, and began to raise complaints about the terms of the arrangement when Microsoft bought it out in 2008. "We always try to listen carefully if someone has a real concern and we work hard to put our users' interests first and to compete fair and square in the market," Holtz said.

According to a MediaPost report, Twitter will be launching an official advertising platform, with head of product management and monetization Anamitra Banerji confirming it at the IAB Annual Leadership Meeting.

The platform is "only in the test phase," however. When asked how it would work, Banerji says it will be "explicitly clear that a sponsor paid for the ad," and it will be "relevant and useful, so the user doesn’t think of it as an ad."

As reported today, the company says they receive and distribute about 600 Tweets every second, reaching a popularity almost as high as Facebook, meaning advertising revenue could be very high if done correctly.

We will keep you updated when the platform is better explained.

PCWorld has reported this week the results of their annual 13-city 3G wireless data test, and the changes in results from last year are drastic.

Averaging the lowest average download and upload speeds last year, AT&T has brought itself back, registering the best average speeds for this year, including the best performance in 10 of the 13 cities, besting rivals Verizon, T-Mobile, and Sprint.

AT&T average download speed grew to 1410 kbps, and reliability increased as well.

Before posting the charts, here is how the source reports their testing:
Before getting into the details of our test results, a few words about the testing and the data. During December and January, PCWorld and our testing partner, Novarum Inc., tested the download speeds, upload speeds, and network dependability of the AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon 3G networks from 20 locations in each of 13 U.S. cities. Altogether we ran more than 51,000 separate tests covering 850 square miles of wireless cell coverage servicing 7 million wireless subscribers (see “How We Do the Testing”).

At each testing location, we connected to the 3G network via both laptops and smartphones. The laptop tests accurately measured the capacity and performance potential of a given network, while the smartphone tests approximated the real-world connection speeds users of these popular devices might experience, given the less-powerful processors and 3G radios that the devices contain.

Although it was announced months ago, Google has officially dated the end of Internet Explorer 6 support via YouTube, with March 13th being that day.

The date was posted under YouTube Help, with the header: "When does older browser support end for YouTube and what does this mean?" The answer reads: "Support stops on March 13th. Stopped support essentially means that some future features on YouTube will be rolled out that won’t work in older browsers."

YouTube will also notify visitors using IE6 to change browsers whenever they try to access the site.

Google has also announced that IE6 support will be dropped from Google Docs starting March 1st.

Pic via Mashable:

Apple shipped 24.89 million iPhone units in 2009, making it the top shipped smartphone for the year.

The numbers come from industry group Gartner, which showed off smartphone market share.

Phones with the Symbian OS remained on top with 80.88 million units shipped, with RIM second at 34.35 million smartphones shipped for the year. Finishing off the list are Windows Mobile, Linux, Android, and WebOS.

Percentage-wise, Symbian controlled 46.9 percent, RIM followed at 19.9 percent, Apple with 14.4 percent, WinMo at 8.7 percent, Linux at 4.7 percent, Android at 3.9 percent and WebOS at 0.7 percent.

Overall, 1.211 billion phones were shipped in 2009, down from 1.222 billion in 2008.

Adobe Systems said on Tuesday that it patched a critical vulnerability that affected the Adobe Download Manager. The Download Manager is used when Internet users download Flash or Reader software from Adobes websites.

A critical vulnerability was discovered that could be used by attackers to remotely install malicious software on a victims PC. In order to fulfill an exploit, an attacker would lead the victim to a special modified link on the adobe.com domain.

The combination of the two combined to make a very serious security threat. The download manager is usually removed from a users' PC as soon as a computer is restarted. Users of the download manager in the past can ensure security by making sure the directory - C:Program FilesNOS - is not present.

More information on the issue is available at:
http://www.adobe.com/support/security/bulletins/apsb10-08.html

Acer has decided to halt its efforts to develop and market an e-book reader to compete with Amazon's Kindle, Sony Readers and now, Apple's iPad. The company only revealed last month that it was working on an e-book reader with the intention to launch in mid-year, but has had a change of heart and now would prefer to sit back and watch how the market develops first, Acer chairman Wang Jeng-tang said.

He said that the hardware is standing by, just in case the market does prove to be successful. Jeng-tang said that the question is whether or not e-book readers can break away from their current niche market and into the mainstream. Until consumers clearly display that they are willing to open their wallets to buy e-book readers, Acer does not see the business as being profitable.

The head of Acer's IT Products division, Jim Wong, revealed its efforts and intentions for an e-book reader in late January, but at the time did hint that Acer might adjust its product line-up based on what new device Apple would bring to the market this year. Just six days later, Apple launched the iPad, which the company asserts is a perfect solution for e-books.