Month: February 2018

Der geplante Telekom-Lautsprecher wird zum Multitalent. Nicht nur Amazons Alexa, sondern auch der Google Assistant wird auf dem Magenta Speaker laufen. Es wird auch nicht ausgeschlossen, dass ein weiterer digitaler Assistent auf dem Lautsprecher genutzt werden kann. Von Ingo Pakalski (MWC 2018, Google)

Earlier this month, the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit overturned the $25 million piracy liability verdict against Internet provider Cox.

The panel of three judges concluded that the district court made an error in its jury instruction and ordered a new trial.

The erroneous instruction said that the ISP could be found liable for contributory infringement if it “knew or should have known of such infringing activity.” The Court of Appeals agrees that based on the law, the “should have known” standard is too low.

As a result of the ruling, music publisher BMG Rights Management and Cox would have to go head to head again in a new trial. However, according to BMG, the Court of Appeals itself made a mistake.

A few days ago the copyright holder petitioned the court for a rehearing en banc, asking for a do-over before all the judges of a court.

The music publisher argues that the appeals court judges mistakenly reached their decision based on a legal principle that applies to “inducement” of liability, while BMG was pursuing a claim of “material contribution.”

“The panel’s unprecedented application of a heightened knowledge standard creates a conflict with decisions and pattern jury instructions from other circuits as well as with the common-law rules underlying contributory infringement.

“All of those recognize that BMG’s material-contribution theory requires only constructive knowledge,” BMG’s brief adds.

Even if the appeals court persists with its assertion that the liability standard is “willful blindness” rather than “should have known,” a new trial would not be warranted, according to the music publisher.

They point out that plenty of evidence was presented which proved that Cox was wilfully blind to the copyright infringements and describe the erroneous instruction as a “harmless error of the most benign kind.”

The music publisher’s request for a rehearing is supported by the RIAA, which filed an amicus curiae brief together with the National Music Publishers Association.

Both music industry groups back BMG’s arguments and ask the appeals court to consider a rehearing, stating that it would be in the best interests of artists, songwriters, and other rightsholders.

“The level of copyright infringement that takes place over the Internet is ‘staggering,’ and it is vital that copyright owners have effective mechanisms to address it. It is also critical that copyright owners can adequately address infringement that occurs in other contexts.

“If the panel’s decision is not corrected, it would threaten the very incentives of artists, songwriters, and others to create valuable works and distribute them to the public,” the RIAA and NMPA add.

For the RIAA the case is particularly important since it filed a similar lawsuit against Internet provider Grande Communications last year.

Given what’s at stake, we can assume that Cox will protest the request for a rehearing. And it wouldn’t be a big surprise if other telecommunications companies take the same position.

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BMG’s petition is available here (pdf) and a copy of the RIAA/NMPA motion can be found here (pdf).

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN discounts, offers and coupons

IBMs KI-System Watson bekommt ein Pixelgesicht, einen Körper und einen Astronauten zur Seite. Auf der ISS soll der Roboter getestet werden. Zunächst soll er als automatisierter Protokollführer von Experimenten und fliegende Kamera eingesetzt werden. (Watson, IBM)

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Der Europäische Gerichtshof in Luxemburg muss klären, ob Gmail ein Telekommunikationsdienst ist oder nicht. Google begrüßte dieses Urteil. Man strebe eine grundsätzliche Klärung der "einmaligen" deutschen Rechtslage an. (Gmail, Google)

The Superbook looks like a laptop, but its actually a smartphone accessory that you can connect to your phone to interact with mobile apps on a notebook-sized display, keyboard, and touchpad. Sentio launched a Kickstarter campaign for the Superbook in 2016, raising nearly $3 million to bring the device to market. And while the company […]

Superbook laptop dock for smartphones is (finally) shipping is a post from: Liliputing

Die iCloud basiert auf der Infrastruktur der Konkurrenz. Ein iOS-Sicherheitsdokument bestätigt, dass AWS und Google die Partner sind. Bis 2016 war es wohl statt Google noch Microsoft gewesen. (iCloud, Google)

Künftig mit Vulkan-Grafikschnittstelle statt mit OpenGL: Die Khronos Group und Valve haben Dota 2 unter MacOS portiert, so dass das Spiel höhere Bildraten erzielt. Basis ist eine Runtime, welche die Calls von Apples Metal-API auf Vulkan mappt. (Vulkan, DirectX)

Beim Axon M von ZTE gibt es weder Vorder- noch Rückseite: Das Klapp-Smartphone hat zwei Displays, die sich nebeneinanderlegen lassen. So können wir viele Apps deutlich komfortabler als gewohnt nutzen. Der Komfort hat mit 850 Euro aber auch seinen Preis. Ein Hands on von Tobias Költzsch und Michael Wieczorek (MWC 2018, Smartphone)

Want to run a full-fledged GNU/Linux desktop environment on a Chromebook? While it’s possible to replace Chrome OS entirely, the simplest method is to run Ubuntu or another Linux distro alongside Chrome OS by enabling developer mode and using Crouton. But soon you may be able to run some native Linux software without enabling developer mode (and without […]

Chromebooks may get native support for (some) Linux apps via Crostini is a post from: Liliputing