Top Items:
Lou Young / WCBS-TV:
Bill Banning iPods In Crosswalks Slated For Albany — State Sen. Kruger: Electronic Devices Put Many In Danger — (CBS) NEW YORK First it was cell phones in cars, then trans fats. Now, a new plan is on the table to ban gadget use while crossing city streets.
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Thomas Ricker / Engadget:
Bill banning iPods and cellphones on New York City streets coming — Brace yourselves good people of New York, mother government is prepared to step in (again) and save you from yourselves. Senator Carl Kruger is reportedly set to introduce legislation that would ban the use of MP3 players …
Peter Rojas / Engadget:
RIAA misreads Jobs' open letter on DRM, thinks he's offering to license FairPlay — Steve Jobs' open letter about DRM and music yesterday definitely got a lot of tongues wagging, but there's one group that might want to re-read what he wrote. Bit Player (you gotta scroll down to the bottom of the post) …
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Jon Healey / Bit Player:
Jobs to DRM: Drop Dead — Steve Jobs posted an essay of sorts today on Apple.com dubbed "Thoughts on Music." It's not really about music, though; it's about the way the major record labels have been selling their products online. In particular, Jobs urged the labels to drop their demand …
Discussion:
ResourceShelf, Boing Boing, Lawgarithms, iMedia Law Blog, The Tech Report, Listening Post and TechBlog
Ed Felten / Freedom to Tinker:Apple Offers to Sell DRM-Free Music
Discussion:
Business 2.0 Beta, Lessig News, The Navel of the Internet, rc3.org and The Technology Liberation …
Matt Loney / CNET News.com:
Google opens Gmail to all — Google on Wednesday said its Gmail service is now open to anyone who wants an account. Previously the service, which provides users with 2.8GB of e-mail storage space, has been by invitation only. — The service, known as Google Mail in the U.K., has proved very popular.
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Ionut Alex. Chitu / Google Operating System:
More People Can Sign up for a Gmail Account — Although Google posted in Gmail's help that "anyone in the world is now welcome to create a Gmail account at mail.google.com/mail/signup", Google's definition of the world was pretty limited. — Gmail is now a public beta in Europe …
Declan McCullagh / CNET News.com:
Senator to propose surveillance of illegal images — A forthcoming bill in the U.S. Senate lays the groundwork for a national database of illegal images that Internet service providers would use to automatically flag and report suspicious content to police.
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Declan McCullagh / CNET News.com:
GOP revives ISP-tracking legislation — All Internet service providers would need to track their customers' online activities to aid police in future investigations under legislation introduced Tuesday as part of a Republican "law and order agenda." — Employees of any Internet provider …
Discussion:
The Progress & Freedom …, GigaLaw.com Daily News, broadbandreports.com, Techdirt and Slashdot
Amazon.com:
TiVo and Amazon.com Announce New Service Enabling Amazon Unbox Video Downloads to TiVo — TiVo Subscribers Will Soon Be Able to Watch Amazon Unbox Movies and TV Shows on Their TVs — ALVISO, Calif. & SEATTLE—(BUSINESS WIRE)—Feb. 7, 2007—TiVo Inc. (NASDAQ: TIVO), the creator of and a leader …
Discussion:
IP Democracy, Digital Media Wire, ResourceShelf, MacUser, TechBlog, Zatz Not Funny!, Podcasting News and Tech Beat
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Gamasutra:
SOE's Station Exchange - The Results of a Year of Trading — John Smedley is CEO of Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) (makers of Everquest 2 and Star Wars Galaxies), and sometimes serves as a lightning rod for debate in the Massively Multiplayer genre. SOE and Mr. Smedley made the bold decision …
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Kim Cameron / Kim Cameron's Identity Weblog:
Structuring our announcement — I felt we needed an objective criterion for deciding who to approach as representative of the OpenID community. — Posted on Wednesday 7 February 2007 — Identity Woman Kaliya, who is a key community figure and has played a pivotal role in bringing everyone together …
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Jason Schultz / Electronic Frontier Foundation:
Big Win for Innocent RIAA Defendant — Good news today from the great state of Oklahoma. Debbie Foster, a single mom who was improperly sued by the RIAA back in 2004 for file sharing, has won back her attorneys' fees. The decision today is one of the first in the country to award attorneys fees …
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Nick Gonzalez / TechCrunch:
Social Networking For Change(.org) — Nonprofit social networking site Change.org is launching this morning and hopes to change the way the average person or activist interacts with nonprofits. The site focuses on getting users to issues they care about - ending hunger, stopping global warming, etc.
Yahoo! Search blog:
A Search Box that Fits — Since launching Yahoo! Search Builder back in August we've received a lot of great feedback and have been working to address the issues nearest and dearest to our users. We've noticed a lot of talk around the width of the search box being too wide and not easily fitting …
Ellen Messmer / Network World:
RSA '07: Bruce Schneier casts light on psychology of security — Security decisions often are much less rational than one would prefer, Schneier says — SAN FRANCISCO — One of the security industry's most outspoken experts, Bruce Schneier, spoke at RSA Conference on the topic …
Paul Kapustka / GigaOM:
AT&T's 'Free Call' Bill: $2 Million — Guess who got stuck with a big bill for all those "free" international calls touted by outfits like FuturePhone? None other than AT&T, which has filed a lawsuit in Iowa claiming that "deceitful and unlawful schemes" like FuturePhone's caused a jump …
SEM Punch:
Yahoo Bugs Deactivate Advertiser Accounts - Google Laughs — Just as I thought my Yahoo experience couldn't get worse, an even more ridiculous thing happened to me yesterday - my entire Yahoo account was put offline and traffic stopped. I simply got the follwoing message in my account:
