As it has been known by all creatures on earth (maybe except lawyers), the U.S. Library of Congress issued a statement on Monday that legalized “jailbreaking” wireless telephone handsets.
It is no doubt a good news for jailbreakers, the unauthorized App developers, as well as iPhone buyers. Now you can strut up to the black corner of the computer arcade, looking straight inside the eyes of the guy who knows how to satisfy your desire (of anything that Jobs don’t want you do, such as watching flash video), and speak laudly: "break it, please."
"Wait, wait! It’s an iPod … OK … if you like to call it iTouch, then it is an iTouch… It’s not an iPhone, I mean … not a telephone handset."
"What?"
Let’s stop the drama and go back to the law:
At least from the literal meaning of the newly annouced exemption, iTouch owners may be excluded from the benificiaries. Here is the fulltext of the exemption:
… Persons making noninfringing uses of the following six classes of works will not be subject to the prohibition against circumventing access controls (17 U.S.C. § 1201(a)(1)) until the conclusion of the next rulemaking.
…
(2) Computer programs that enable wireless telephone handsets to execute software applications, where circumvention is accomplished for the sole purpose of enabling interoperability of such applications, when they have been lawfully obtained, with computer programs on the telephone handset.
…
Is an iTouch a "wireless telephone handset"? I don’t know. At least Apple, even before such exemption promulgated, has already said it isn’t a telephone – it is a great iPod, a pocket computer and a game player, but not a telephone… because only iPhone will be a telephone. (How about iPad 3G? Too big to be a "handset"?)
Please watch Berkman Fellow Ethan Zuckerman‘s awsome talk puncturing the information cocoon. He introduces Yeeyan (译言), a website translating English articles into Chinese, and asks a very sharp question: who is translating the Chinese daily stories into English? And an even sharper question: if such culture bridges are constructed, who and how many ppl will cross them? Furthermore, (I say it in my words and I believe it should be what Ethan want to say) how to make people being used to crossing them?
The latest full-text of ACTA agreement leaked again on 14 July. The version is dated July 1st 2010 from the Luzern round of negotiations, including the name of the negotiating parties along with their positions.
It is interesting that the ACTA always leaks (at least three times in this year). Would it be an intentional strategy of "announcing" the negotiating progress? … Just my guess…
Anyway, as a matter of fact, the leakage would more or less relieve the pressures from those countries who did not involve in the negotiation (India & China?), as well as from the stakeholders in the negotiating countries who are worrying about the privacy and other rights, and provide the public an opportunity to assess whether or not ACTA would cause "trade-distorting effects", which is the major concern at the WTO’s TRIPS council.
I was sitting in the court when Professor Nesson presented his motion of either placing a new trial or granting a remittitur. Briefly, Charlie’s argument is: 675,000 dollars is unconstitutionally high, and therefore instructing the jury that maximum amount should be a mistrial.
After five months awaiting, Judge Nancy Gertner agreed Joel’s motion of remittitur by reducing the damages Joel owes to $67,500 – one-tenth of the original one. In her ruling, she wrote:
Reducing the jury’s $675,000 award also sends another no less important message: The Due Process Clause does not merely protect large corporations, like BMW and State Farm, from grossly excessive punitive awards. It also protects ordinary people like Joel Tenenbaum.
Still, for each song, Joel has to pay $2,250 (USD), and if my memory serves, upon what is the appropriate amount of damages, "30 Dollars", Charlie said after the hearing.
The game of “Spoting the Difference" starts again!
Google’s ICP license renewed. See the captured today’s Google.cn web page below (left), and compare it with the page in last week (right).
Google.cn on 9 July 2010:
Google.cn on 4 July 2010:
Exactly as what I predicted, Google is trying to make Google.cn being a non-search engine website. It now places "Music", "Translation" and "Shopping" at the web page. These are what Google wishes to keep on running in China. While the search engine service of Google.cn is replaced by a link to google.com.hk. Legally speaking, Google.cn is not providing search engine service currently. It is merely a link to another website. Just like the links added in any of our own web posts.
