Techmeme
January 28, 2012, 11:20 PM

Top News

Jennifer Granick / The Shout:
Megaupload: A Lot Less Guilty Than You Think  —  The recent Department of Justice decision to indict Megaupload for copyright infringement and related offenses raises some very thorny questions from a criminal law perspective.  A few preliminaries: I'm responsible for the musings below …
Enigmax / TorrentFreak:
Mega Aftermath: Upheaval In Pirate Warez Land  —  Despite its “rogue site” status and various other warnings, when MegaUpload went down last week it still came as a shock.  —  But what came next was unprecedented, a dramatic reaction in cyberlocker land that took out vast libraries of digital content and capacity.
More: rc3.org
Mary Riddell / Telegraph:
Bill Gates: ‘I wrote Steve Jobs a letter as he was dying.  He kept it by his bed’  —  People's plutocrat Bill Gates talks about friendly rivalry, and how to get bankers to part with their money.  —  Change the world: 'If you have a dream and it comes true, it's a very cool thing,' says Bill Gates
Jolie O'Dell / VentureBeat:
Pass the popcorn: Y Combinator startup caught stealing from 37signals  —  Here's some developer drama for your Saturday morning: Curebit, a Y Combinator startup that just closed a round of funding from Dave McClure's 500 Startups fund, has been caught red-handed stealing HTML code, images, and the like from 37signals.
David Beren / TmoNews:
T-Mobile To Offer Additional Unlocked iPhone Support Beginning January 30th  —  Starting on January 30th, T-Mobile will “begin offering additional support to customers using an Apple iPhone on our network.”  T-Mobile's added iPhone support will include “common procedures …
Michael Geist Blog:
The ACTA Fight Returns: What Is at Stake and What You Can Do  —  The reverberations from the SOPA fight continue to be felt in the U.S. (excellent analysis from Benkler and Downes) and elsewhere (mounting Canadian concern that Bill C-11 could be amended to adopt SOPA-like rules) …
Electronic Frontier Foundation:
We Have Every Right to Be Furious About ACTA  —  If there's one thing that encapsulates what's wrong with the way government functions today, ACTA is it.  You wouldn't know it from the name, but the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement is a plurilateral agreement designed to broaden …
Sarah Lacy / PandoDaily:
That Was Fast: Betaworks Returns All Capital... And Then Some  —  The New York tech scene has certainly received a lot of hype, but a lot of people are waiting for results that prove it's more than just that.  Proof that New York is really a tech ecosystem that is here to stay, no matter what may happen to Foursquare and Gilt.
Alexia Tsotsis / TechCrunch:
Someone Finally Makes “S**t Silicon Valley Says”  —  After an onslaught of “S**t [blank] Says” videos in my Facebook Newsfeed, I appealed to Twitter yesterday, surprised that the industry that invented YouTube hadn't weighed in on the phenomenon.  —  Little did I know that husband …
Danny Sullivan / Search Engine Land:
Two Weeks In, Google Says “Search Plus Your World” Going Well, Critics Should Give It Time  —  Two weeks ago, Google launched Search Plus Your World.  Since then, Google has faced strong criticisms that SPYW is making its search relevancy worse and favoring its Google+ social network too much.
Reporters Without Borders:
Letter to Twitter Executive Chairman Jack Dorsey urging him not to cooperate with censors  —  Reporters Without Borders has written to Twitter Executive Chairman Jack Dorsey voicing deep concern about yesterday's announcement that Twitter will introduce geolocated censorship …
Heather Kelly / VentureBeat:
Macworld finds its footing as a “hardcore consumer lifestyle event”  —  Macworld Expo, a once powerful Mac tradeshow, is getting new life as smaller event for Apple consumers and fans.  The revamped three-day event, now called Macworld |  iWorld, is taking place this week in San Francisco.

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