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(credit: Wikipedia)

Well-known copyright lawyer Marc Randazza used the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) to delete an online article about a dispute between his former employer and himself.

Randazza says he sent the notice on behalf of Xbiz.com, a porn-industry news site that he represents. Last July, Xbiz (NSFW) published an article about Randazza's legal dispute with a former employer, gay porn publisher Liberty Media. The brouhaha with Liberty Media was also featured here at Ars in a story titled "Bribery, gay porn, and copyright trolls: the rise and fall of lawyer Marc Randazza." It describes how an arbitrator found that Randazza—the Nevada lawyer once championed for helping bring down copyright troll Righthaven—solicited a bribe in a bid to settle a copyright case for Liberty. Randazza soon found himself under investigation by the State Bar of Nevada.

A blog called Fight Copyright Trolls (FCT) mentioned the arbitration award as well. The blog's owner, who goes by "SJD," also noticed that the Xbiz article had been changed—but he had kept an original copy, saved and published as a PDF file on his site. On Feb. 1 nearly seven months after the FCT blog published the Xbiz article and related commentary, SJD was on the receiving end of Randazza's copyright takedown request. The FCT blog had re-published the entire Xbiz story, and Randazza claimed that made it a piratical, infringing copy.

(credit: g4ll4is)

Broadband industry lobby groups urged the Federal Communications Commission on Thursday not to impose privacy rules that dictate "specific methods" of protecting customer data, since that would prevent "rapid innovation."

ISPs should have "flexibility" in how they protect customers' privacy and security, said the letter from the American Cable Association, Competitive Carriers Association, Consumer Technology Association, CTIA, the Internet Commerce Coalition, the National Cable & Telecommunications Association, and USTelecom. Together, these groups represent the biggest home Internet service providers and wireless carriers such as Comcast, AT&T, Verizon, Time Warner Cable, Charter, Sprint, T-Mobile, and many smaller ones.

"Rules dictating specific methods quickly become out of date and out of step with constantly changing technology, and will only hamper innovation and harm consumers," they wrote.

The Samsung Gear VR.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Google is developing an "all-in-one" virtual reality headset that doesn't rely on a computer or smartphone to function.

You might have a bit of deja vu reading this post, since earlier this week we posted about Google's supposed other VR headset in the works, a plastic "successor" to Google Cardboard. This would be a plastic shell with lenses and a few extra sensors, with the display and processing coming from a slotted-in smartphone—basically a Samsung Gear VR competitor. This new VR headset from Google would be a completely standalone device, with the screen, processor, and storage permanently embedded in the headset. The Journal backed up this earlier report, and says that Google is working on both the smartphone-centric and standalone headsets.

A VR headset in this form factor this hasn't really been announced by any other major players. The Oculus Rift and HTC Vive both strap a screen and sensors to your head, but require a PC to run. Google's headset would essentially be a game console for your face.