Do Microsoft’s EULAs have any real legal basis?
An interesting commentary about the way Microsoft’s contract is given to you after the sale of the product, which is in clear violation of Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations 1999. So do these long winded EULA’s have any real binding?
Project Honey Pot Files $1B+ Lawsuit Against Spammers
News Flash: Project Honey Pot Files $1B+ Lawsuit Against Spammers
Alexandria, VA April 26, 2007 — Project Honey Pot filed suit in the Eastern District of Virginia seeking damages for spam and email address harvesting targeting the Project’s members. The suit was filed against the entire universe of John Doe defendants using any of the 2,593,657 IP addresses captured by Project Honey Pot over the past two years, and seeks potentially more than $1 billion in statutory damages under the U.S. CAN-SPAM Act and the State of Virginia’s Anti-Spam statute.
Good luck with that. Seriously, even if one tenth of one percent of the spammers are caught and punished – it would be considered a victory.
I donated a domain to this project and route its mx record to them for the sake of capturing spam. It’s good to know they’re doing something with it! So if you’d like to be added to the list, or you’re just a stupid bot harvesting email addresses, here’s a great one for you:
joe@exchange.binaryspiral.com, enjoy!
DRM’s Disappearance May Spur Amazon Music Store
DRM’s Disappearance May Spur Amazon Music Store so says ecommercetimes.com. Amazon, one of the 800 pound e commerce gorillas has been quietly hedging its bets that DRM free music downloads are worth waiting for.
Watching WalMart, Napster, and Microsoft get their proverbial asses handed to them by Apple’s iTunes music store and wildly popular iPods has been refreshing and ironically saddening for me. I cheer when a small company like Apple can hit the market so hard, everyone else stops what their doing – looks around – and exclaims “where the hell did that come from?!”. But there is a slight evil attached to the iall current legal music downloads from the major labels… imposed by the mafiaa (RIAA and MPAA folks…) that prevent copying the music freely.
And while preventing copying – the manufactures took the opportunity to lock buyers into their own hardware. So Microsoft’s Play-for-sure encrypted media would never be played on an iPod. Likewise Apple’s FairPlay music format would never work on a Microsoft Zune.
Well, time has come and the market has spoken. People with iPods don’t want to have to buy another one just to continue playing the music they paid for – if something should happen. And folks with Zunes want to be able to jump ship and take their tunes with them. So EMI has taken the first step, with some prodding from major market players like Steve Jobs, and announced they will allow people to download their music without DRM – for a slight higher price.
Amazon is betting on that popularity and is rumored to have a music store in the works to pounce on this new offering. No longer will retailers have to pick one platform to support – with DRM free music – there are no barriers.
Now, if the rest of the mafiaa would pay attention.
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Update: I was right.
Palm distances itself from Windows
Palm distances itself from Windows with its upcoming newest operating system based on Linux. I, for one, welcome this change – because I experience the gracefulness and stability of Windows Mobile every day… I seriously could not recommend the Treo’s from Palm that run Windows. There’s nothing more frustrating than getting home or in the office to a message “why didn’t you answer your cell phone?” And find it locked up, frozen, or just plain unresponsive.
One saving grace – it doesn’t rely on the RIM network for email.
