RIAA Wants Your Anti-Virus To Scan For Pirated Content

So now the RIAA wants your Anti-virus to scan your downloads for pirated content. The one thing that went through my mind at first was "I can barely get the damn Anti-virus to do what it was designed to do", and now the RIAA wants to Big Brother my downloads via Anti-virus? Cary Sherman says "doesn't give rise...to any privacy concerns because it can operate automatically and anonymously"? uhh.... yeah, right.

But Sherman at least knows that people wouldn't go for this:

"Why would somebody put that on their machine? They wouldn't likely want to do that, they'd do that when it benefits them such as for viruses and so on and so forth...it could be enforced at the modem or put in by the ISP."

Oh, so now you want my ISP provider to filter my content now? Yes copyright material should be protected, but this isn't the way. If the ISP providers open this Pandora's Box, where will it end?

What else will be filtered one day? News? Blogs that bad mouth ISP's?

We can't afford to let this happen.

[Public Knowledge via Gizmodo]

Are People Returning HD DVD Players Now?

You just knew that this was coming after the news that broke this past weekend, but reports from the CES are that people are returning HD DVD players bought on the cheap on Black Friday. What I find funny is that I couldn't find a cheap HD DVD player anywhere, and now it looks like that might have been a good thing.

Anyone get a HD DVD player this holiday season who's looking to return it?

[CES 2008 via Gizmodo]

Google: Entire World's Content In An iPod By 2020

Talk about how cool and important storage will be in the future, Google BP Sukhinder Singh Cassidy drove home the point at the Captains of Industry Conference. She pointed out the fact that prices have fallen 3.6 million since 1982, and said that:

"if this trend continues, and the cost of storage continues to decrease, we estimate that somewhere around 2020, all the world's content will fit inside an iPod, and all the world's music would sit in your palm as early as 2015...rendering the CD format unnecessary."

She went on to say:

"We estimate that everyday somewhere around 65,000 new videos are added to YouTube, 100,000 blogs it's just staggering if you look at the rate at which content is being produced."

A 100,000 blogs? wow!!!

[macworld via Gizmodo]

RIAA Says CD's Ripped To Your Computer Are "Unauthorized"

I've been known to go on a rant or two about the RIAA and how they go after their own customers. Well I'm going to let you add your own opinion about this latest gem from the RIAA. In the case of Atlantic vs. Howell, a couple who is being sued for sharing music on KaZaA. The RIAA says that music ripped to your hard drive (turning music into MP3's) for personal use is making an "unauthorized" copy. So any CD that you own, and have put on your computer to listen too, by the RIAA's definition is stealing. Check the statement below:

"It is undisputed that Defendant possessed unauthorized copies of Plaintiffs' copyrighted sound recordings on his computer ... Virtually all of the sound recordings on Exhibit B are in the ".mp3" format. ... Defendant admitted that he converted these sound recordings from their original format to the .mp3 format for his and his wife's use."

This should frighten everyone.

[The Brief via Gizmodo]