eldavojohn advocates coverage at Ars on a Byzantine case just thrown out by an appeals court. The US Air Force cracked the code that would expire a piece of software. For this they were sued under the DMCA in Blueport v. United States. The Court of Federal Claims heard it and threw it out. “The reasoning behind the decisions focuses on the US government’s sovereign immunity, which the court describes thusly: ‘The United States, as [a] sovereign, “is immune from suit save as it consents to be sued… and the terms of its consent to be sued in any court define that court’s jurisdiction to entertain the suit.”‘ … ‘The DMCA itself contains no express waiver of sovereign immunity,’ the judge wrote, ‘Indeed, the substantive prohibitions of the DMCA refer to individual persons, not the Government.’”

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NewYorkCountryLawyer writes “Apparently the RIAA’s ‘big gun’ didn’t fare so well this morning in Duluth, when he tried to persuade the judge in Capitol v. Thomas that the part of the Copyright Act which states ‘by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending’, can be disregarded. According to an in-person account by Wired.com the Judge indicated that he’s prone to grant a mistrial, setting aside the $222,000 jury verdict based upon his incorrect jury instruction, and that he will probably hand down his decision in September. Just yesterday some of the same lawyers got rebuffed by the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in their attempt to argue that Cablevision’s on the internet storage for its customers constitutes a copyright infringement, in Cartoon Network v. CSC Holdings. There, too, the content owners had argued that the wording of the Copyright Act didn’t mean what it stated. There, too, the Court politely but firmly disagreed.”

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unassimilatible writes to tell us that according to the Financial Times, the music industry should embrace illegal file-sharing websites. A current study of the recent Radiohead album release found that huge numbers of illegal downloads actually helped the band’s popularity and, by extension, concert ticket sales. “Radiohead’s release of In Rainbows on a pay-what-you-want basis last October generated enormous traffic to the band’s own website and intense speculation about how much fans had paid. He urged record companies to study the outcome and accept that file-sharing sites were here to stay. ‘It’s time to cease swimming against the tide of what people want,’ he stated.” Update 19:46 GMT by SM: several readers (including the original author) have written in to mention that it isn’t stressed enough that this study was engaged by the music industry itself, making the findings that much more interesting. Take that as you will.

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negRo_slim writes “AMD has pushed Fusion as one of the main reasons to justify its acquisition of ATI. Since then, AMD’s finances have changed colors and are now deep in the red, the top management has changed, and Fusion still isn’t anything AMD wants to discuss in detail. But there are always ‘industry sources’ and these sources have told us that Fusion is apt to be introduced as a half-node chip.”

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narramissic writes “The Global Internet Freedom Consortium (GIFC) offers a set of free tools that can be used to circumvent Chinese World wide web censorship. The group claims approximately 1 million people in China use its tools to access the World wide web. And, says Tao Wang, director of operations for GIFC, ‘it’s a very good time remind Western reporters that there are such tools.’”

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dontmakemethink writes “CTV reports that over the last couple of weeks class-action lawsuits have been filed against two major Canadian cellular service providers, Bell and Telus, for imposing fees on incoming text messages. While there has been very vocal opposition to the introduction of the fees, those who cannot change providers due to binding contracts feel the situation is actionable in court. Some of those not bound by contract, such as myself, have given their service provider notice that they’ll charge the provider for having to contact them to have charges reversed for unsolicited texts. Because service providers are aware of the volume of unsolicited texts, we feel they’re liable for the inconvenience to their clients for preventing spam charges, and more importantly under no circumstances should service providers profit from spam. We also feel that requiring us to buy text bundles to avoid the inconvenience of reversing spam charges constitutes extortion. They have the ability to charge me for texts when they stop the spam.”

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Filed under: World wide web, Web services, P2P, web 2.0

Rapidspread is a a easy file upload site that automatically forwards your files to as many as 10 filesharing sites. From the upload page, simply browse for your file(s), agree to the terms of service, and click share. Once the upload is complete, RapidSpread displays a URL to send to your friends as well as direct links to your file on the supported hosts it’s been transferred to.

My test rar file successfully uploaded to eight of the ten possible hosts - not too shabby. When I chose to upload several images, RapidSpread was even smart enough to limit mirroring to the media-sharing services (ImageShack, Badongo, ZShare, and ZippyShare).

Anyone that uploads files on a regular basis will appreciate the simplicity and power of RapidSpread. If the developers would just intergrate a short URL service like bit.ly, this would be a truly killer service. Give it a shot, and see how it stacks up against your favorite service.

Thanks for the tip, Eran!

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Filed under: Competitive strategy, Wal-Mart (WMT), Amazon.com (AMZN), Stocks to Sell

The Wall Street Journal reports (subscription required) of upcoming releases this summer such as Andrew Davidson’s The Gargoyle, New York Times reporter David Carr’s memoir The Night of the Gun, and Ron Suskind’s The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism.

There’s a separate article on the release of Stephenie Meyer’s book Breaking Dawn, which The Journal calls a “vampire romance novel.” Borders Group (NYSE: BGP) stated it has sold 250,000 copies in the first 24 hours following the book’s release.

That’s an impressive number, and it may be some cause for hope for shareholders who have taken a beating in booksellers like Borders, Barnes and Noble (NYSE: BKS) and Books-a-Million (NASDAQ: BAMM).

But don’t get too excited. Since the first American edition of the first Harry Potter book in October of 1998, shares of Scholastic (NASDAQ: SCHL), a specialty publisher of children’s books, have gone from around $20 per share to their current price of $26 — a gain of 30% over the course of a decade. Not exactly something to get excited about, especially considering it’s for the bestselling books of all time, ever.

The bookstores might get a temporary jolt from late sumer and fall hits, but the long-term fundamentals of the industry will drive results. A new CD from Eminem — or even The Beatles for that matter — wouldn’t be enough to save a company like Trans World Entertainment (NASDAQ: TWMC). For bookstores, that means the lower prices and wider selection of Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN), or conveniences of stores like Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT), as well as the onset of digital delivery are the factors investors have to look at.

And even vampire romance novels can’t compete with those.

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Filed under: Forecasts, Launches, Industry, Competitive strategy, Intel (INTC), Advanced Micro Dev (AMD)

Intel (NASDAQ: INTC) knows that the market for basic server and Personal computer chips won’t grow as fast over the next five years as it did over the last five. The economy plus high market penetration will see to that.

So, Intel is looking to new markets to save its bacon. It has already entered the segment for relatively low-powered chips for handheld “computers.” Whether that business will ultimately be huge is anyone’s guess.

According to The Wall Street Journal, the world’s largest chip company “is providing the first details of a chip technology that is designed to help break into new markets, starting with high-end graphics used for personal games and animation.” This technology will help higher end Personal computers run games and video content.

With Intel’s balance sheet and big share of the current PC market, the announcement could spell gigantic trouble for AMD (NYSE: AMD) and Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA). A little over two years ago AMD bought graphics chip company ATI. So far, the deal has been a bust.

Concerns that the graphics chip market could get crowded and that margins could be under pressure have already driven AMD and Nvidia to current 52-week lows. Over the last year, Intel shares are off about 5%. Shares in the other two companies are down over 60%. With Intel coming into the market, that could actually get worse.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com

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Filed under: Competitive strategy, Wal-Mart (WMT), Amazon.com (AMZN), Stocks to Sell

The Wall Street Journal reports (subscription required) of upcoming releases this summer such as Andrew Davidson’s The Gargoyle, New York Times reporter David Carr’s memoir The Night of the Gun, and Ron Suskind’s The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism.

There’s a separate article on the release of Stephenie Meyer’s book Breaking Dawn, which The Journal calls a “vampire romance novel.” Borders Group (NYSE: BGP) stated it has sold 250,000 copies in the first 24 hours following the book’s release.

That’s an impressive number, and it might be some cause for hope for shareholders who have taken a beating in booksellers like Borders, Barnes and Noble (NYSE: BKS) and Books-a-Million (NASDAQ: BAMM).

But don’t get too excited. Since the first American edition of the first Harry Potter book in October of 1998, shares of Scholastic (NASDAQ: SCHL), a specialty publisher of children’s books, have gone from around $20 per share to their current price of $26 — a gain of 30% over the course of a decade. Not exactly something to get excited about, especially considering it’s for the bestselling books of all time, ever.

The bookstores might get a temporary jolt from late sumer and fall hits, but the long-term fundamentals of the industry will drive results. A new CD from Eminem — or even The Beatles for that matter — wouldn’t be enough to save a company like Trans World Entertainment (NASDAQ: TWMC). For bookstores, that means the lower prices and wider selection of Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN), or conveniences of stores like Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT), as well as the onset of digital delivery are the factors investors have to look at.

And even vampire romance novels can’t compete with those.

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