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Finn and Rey, in the official Star Wars trailer. (credit: Lucasfilm)

A Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) notice sent by the Walt Disney Company earlier this week seems to have truly awakened The Force, and now the group can't seem to decide if it wants to be on the light side or the dark side.

Marjorie and Arnie Carvalho run Star Wars Action News, a podcast about Star Wars collectibles. Earlier this week, SW Action News staffer Justin Kozisek purchased an action figure of "Rey" in an Iowa Wal-Mart. The figure, which hasn't been seen elsewhere, was presumably put on the shelves by accident ahead of its official release date. An image of the figure was posted on the SW Action News Facebook page—and promptly subjected to a wave of DMCA takedown demands by Lucasfilm. Many of those who had spread the image on social media were also subject to copyright claims.

Marjorie Carvalho didn't just complain, though. She wrote a polite e-mail to the Disney company e-mail address listed in her DMCA notice, explaining exactly what happened. While Carvalho didn't get a direct reply, her message seemed to have worked. Last night her account got a late e-mail from Facebook stating that "The Walt Disney Company has retracted their intellectual property report."

(credit: Ben Larcey)

On Friday, three major US airlines’ ban against so-called "hoverboards" goes into effect.

American, United, and Delta banned the devices on Thursday out of concern that their lithium ion batteries could be a fire hazard on a flight. According to the Los Angeles Times, British Airways will also reject the self-balancing devices.

In a statement, Delta said that it had "reviewed hoverboard product specifications and found that manufacturers do not consistently provide detail about the size or power of their lithium-ion batteries. This investigation revealed devices often contain battery varieties above the government mandated 160 watt hour limit permitted aboard aircraft."

(credit: Ian Kennedy)

Update (12a, Saturday 12/12): An appeals court in New York has issued an emergency stay of a lower-court's ruling that daily fantasy sports sites FanDuel and DraftKings must shut down their New York operations. “The day has ended well and now New Yorkers who love daily fantasy sports can continue to play,” Randy Mastro, DraftKings’ attorney, told the Washington Post. “The takeaway from today is these are legal questions that deserve a full airing. We believe that when we have our full day in court, we will prevail.”

Original story: On Friday, New York Supreme Court Judge Manuel Mendez ruled that FanDuel and DraftKings—two daily fantasy sports websites—must cease operations in New York, at least as long as the two companies are embroiled in a legal dispute with the state attorney general over whether their businesses constitute an illegal lottery.

State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has maintained that the two sites promote daily betting on fantasy sports and advertise their services as a path to easy money. Although both New York-based FanDuel and Boston-based DraftKings have been operating for a number of years, the two sites have garnered attention this fall for their aggressive marketing campaigns, especially during National Football League games.

Microsoft will be giving back some, but not all, of the OneDrive storage that it was planning to take away from users of its cloud storage service.

In early November, the company made a surprising announcement to OneDrive users in two parts. First, the unlimited storage that came with Office 365 subscriptions was being cut back to 1TB. Second, the free storage tier was cut from 15GB to 5GB, and the 15GB bonus that comes from syncing your camera roll with OneDrive was also removed.

The change was unsurprisingly unpopular. The OneDrive UserVoice site, used by Microsoft to solicit feature requests and feedback, quickly recorded a new top complaint: more than 70,000 votes for the storage to be reinstated, dwarfing every other suggestion on the site.