The chair of the European Game Developers Federation has said that determining which development projects should be given tax breaks off the back of a cultural test is a flawed system.
France's tax breaks were given the go ahead at the end of 2007, and like a proposed system for the UK, rely on passing a test to determine if they are culturally significant.
"The cultural test is a problem," said Guillaume de Fondaumiere, who is also co-CEO of Heavy Rain developer Quantic Dream.
"It's definitely a problem, and when I negotiated both with the French government and the European Commission I had to give in on a number of criteria - because state aids are only allowed under EU law under the famous cultural exception.
"When you look at EU rules, you have to ask: 'Actually, what is culture?' It's a national decision, so it's kind of weird that we, as the videogame industry, have to work with standards that other cultural areas don't have to follow."
The UK's Digital Britain report has prompted the Department of Culture, Media and Sport to ask the UK industry for evidence for a culturally-based tax break for the sector, but de Fondaumiere is concerned that by the time its accepted that videogames have cultural relevance, it could be too late for a weakening European development community.
"To me, all games are cultural. Videogames aren't just a form of entertainment, but a true form of cultural expression, and I think that in twenty years' time this will be a given. No one will dispute that any more.
"So we've got a rocky twenty years in front of us, and we have to make sure this recognition doesn't happen when we no longer have an industry in Europe."
de Fondaumiere also points to Canadian evidence that investment in tax breaks is not dead money, are are vital to stimulating business.
"We know that tax breaks are extremely effective in stimulating an industry, and I think again that Montreal and Quebec have shown us the way. If you listen to representatives of Invest in Quebec, they'll tell you that they've invested hundreds of million of dollars in the industry. I think the last time I was presented the numbers they'd invested CAD 400 million, with a return on that investment of CAD 600 million.
"So I think it's high time for governments, and the EU, to understand that money given in the form of tax breaks to the industry is not money thrown away. It's an investment with a very high return, so it's time that we had those breaks."
The social networking site Facebook has come under fire for planned changes to its privacy settings.
It wants to "simplify" the process so users only have to set them once, instead of for each individual feature.
Facebook says the change will help people share more information with one another.
However, critics argue the new set up could lead to members being persuaded to share too many personal details - their date of birth for example.
Tom Royal is from Computeractive magazine.
He said: "I'm a little bit worried about the settings recommended by Facebook because as far as I can see it's actually sharing quite a lot of information with quite a few people.
"That's not something we'd advise people to do. We'd very much recommend people choose the 'limited' option instead.
'One size fits all'
"For example, just your date of birth can be a security question for lots of internet applications."
Facebook argues a 'one size fits all' approach will make things more straightforward for users.
"The effect of more and more settings has made controlling privacy on Facebook too complicated," according to the site's chief privacy officer Chris Kelly.
It's also phasing out regional networks like London and Manchester because Kelly says "they don't adequately reflect a world where people choose the audience they want to share with".
The number of people using Facebook has risen above the 20 million mark this year in the UK.
It is the most popular social networking site in the world, with 200 million members globally.
Serco Games Research now PlayableGames
London-based game testing group Serco Games Research has rebranded itself PlayableGames to reflect how “user testing can help to improve the game experience for players and, as a result, title sales and customer satisfaction.”
PlayableGames recently worked with Sony and Sucker Punch in providing user-experience feedback for the recently released action title infamous.
“Playable games are what the market wants, and the new name highlights how our proven approach to user testing can make games more engaging and playable,” said Ben Weedon, manager of PlayableGames.
Space trading game Eve Online has suffered a virtual version of the credit crunch.
One of the game's biggest financial institutions lost a significant chunk of its deposits as a huge theft started a run on the bank.
One of the bank's controllers stole about 200bn kredits and swapped them for real world cash of £3,115.
As news of the theft spread, many of the bank's customers rushed to remove their virtual cash.
Space scandal
The theft from EBank took place in early June but only now have details emerged about the amount of money stolen and why it was taken.
The theft was carried out by EBank's chief executive, a player known as Ricdic, now known to be a 27-year-old Australian who works in the technology industry. His full identity has not been revealed save that his first name is Richard.
The stolen kredits amounted to 8% of the 2.6tn that Ebank had in its virtual vaults.
"Basically this character was one of the people who had been running EBank for a while. He took a bunch of (virtual) money out of the bank, and traded it away for real money," Ned Coker, of Icelandic company CCP which runs Eve, told the Reuters news agency.
Eve Online has about 300,000 players all of whom inhabit the same online universe. The game revolves around trade, mining asteroids and the efforts of different player-controlled corporations to take control of swathes of virtual space.
It has now emerged that Ricdic used the cash to put down a deposit on a house and to pay medical bills.
"I'm not proud of it at all, that's why I didn't brag about it," Ricdic told Reuters. "But you know, if I had to do it again, I probably would've chosen the same path based on the same situation."
Ricdic has now been thrown out of the game as trading in-game cash for real money is against Eve Online's terms and conditions.
The rules governing play within Eve would not have sanctioned Ricdic if he had simply stolen the cash and used it in the game, nor if he had bought kredits with real dollars.
The scandal is not the first to play out in Eve Online. In early 2009 one of the game's biggest corporations, called Band of Brothers, was brought down by industrial espionage.
Widespread naivety on the true value of social network integration, says Mika
The game industry fails to understand the core properties and potential of social networks such as Facebook and Twitter.
That was the view offered by Mike Mika, an industry veteran of twenty years having been involved in over 120 game projects.
“In boardrooms across the world, people are using Facebook and Twitter as a buzzword rather than really understanding why they work so well and what they offer to enhance a game,” he told Develop in an interview published today.
“In the last three years, people have been pitching the same thing: Post highscores on Facebook or Twitter for a viral reaction that increases your potential user base. This is well and good, but it hasn't made anyone rich yet (Well, not many people rich).”
Mika currently stands as head of development at Other Ocean, developer of XBLA title Castlevania: Symphony of the Night and the iPhone version of Sega’s Super Monkey Ball. He’s also worked at iPhone specialist dev ngmoco.
“In many ways, the games industry is waking up to what the web has offered for so long,” he added, “and in doing so, it's following some of the classic misconceptions. Just being where the action is doesn't make you succeed. You need to integrate, understand, dissect. There's no magic bullet.”
The number of people visiting Twitter increased 22-fold in the last twelve months, according to an internet monitoring company.
According to Hitwise, the site is now the fifth most viewed social networking site compared with the 84th last year.
Ninety-three per cent of Twitter's growth has happened in 2009.
Director of Research at Hitwise Robin Goad said: "If people accessing their Twitter accounts via mobile phones and third party applications were included, numbers could be higher."
Another measure of Twitter's popularity is its jump in the overall internet rankings.
Last year it was the 969th most visited site on the web. It's now the 38th most visited website.
Events like the protests in Iran have gone global via Twitter
Twitter is popular with celebrities like Jonathan Ross and Stephen Fry.
"If anything, the service is even more popular than our numbers imply," said Robin Goad.
"We are only measuring traffic to the main Twitter website.
"If people accessing their Twitter accounts via mobile phones and third party applications like Twitterific or Tweetdeck were included, the numbers could be even higher.
"Media coverage of the site has escalated significantly this year and high profile celebrity endorsements likes Ashton Kutcher have come rolling in."
Micro-blogging site Twitter has also had a major impact on so-called 'citizen journalism', when members of the public use the site to break major news stories or updates such as the terror attacks in Mumbai or the recent protests in Iran.
But the social networking website still has some work to do to catch the likes of MySpace, Bebo and Facebook.
The number of people using Facebook has risen above the 20 million mark this year in the UK and 200 million around the world.
A few new Harry Potter construction pictures can be found at Florida Thrills. Meanwhile one of our sources claims to have gotten an up-close look inside one of the Hogwarts building doors and reports that all they could really see installed so far inside the building was ride track on the ground and several large curved projection screens.
No, it's okay. You can read that again. According to a report released by Wedbush Morgan's Michael Pachter, the company was given a demo of streaming game service OnLive this past March. Pachter states that latency between the user and OnLive's servers is supposed to be no more than 80 milliseconds, while the games he demoed were running at 25 milliseconds. While Pachter isn't certain if OnLive will "dominate any time soon" he believes that the micro console's video conferencing feature "will likely attract widespread demand." (Wait, it plays Crysis like a gaming PC and it's video conferencing that will sell this thing?)
Pachter states that OnLive should appeal to families that have yet to buy into the current generation of consoles, especially if the service is priced right. The sweet spot, apparently, is right around $5 a month. A higher price could be met with "consumer resistance," says Pachter. Furthermore, Pachter is already predicting that OnLive may not last long as a standalone service, suggesting that it might be purchased by another company and offered as "part of an expanded service offering."
For example, Microsoft could purchase the company to further expand the Xbox as an entertainment hub -- Pachter notes Microsoft's previous acquisition of WebTV, which was co-founded by OnLive CEO Steve Perlman. That's assuming neither Apple nor Verizon beat Microsoft to the punch, of course.
It's too early for us to say if any of this will come to pass -- we're not analysts, after all -- but we were certainly impressed with our own OnLive experience. Still, until we can plug OnLive into our internet and play Crysis for ourselves, we're a bit skeptical. That's okay though, because we're supposed to be.
Despite a bump or two along the way, it seemed that compulsory ID cards were a done deal in the UK. Now, the Financial Times is reporting that the scheme has been shelved. Unfortunately, it seems that this was more a matter of convenience than of concern for citizens' privacy.
We see so many flash drives around these parts, it is truly, truly hard for any to distinguish themselves in our eyes. These ones? Well, we'll admit it: we have a giant soft spot for their massive noggins. Not the first Star Wars flash drives we've seen -- this newest set store up to 2GB per drive -- which isn't anything to throw a party over, but they're really cute, right? The set, which includes Darth Vader, Yoda (look at his toes!), a Stormtrooper and Boba Fett, will be available starting in October for $25 each.
Sentencing will take place this week in the first federal cyber bullying case in the US which was brought to trial after a teenage girl took her own life.
Lori Drew, 50, pretended to be a boy on the MySpace website to befriend Megan Meier, who hanged herself after the virtual friendship ended.
A California judge postponed sentencing until 2 July to review testimony from two witnesses.
Ms Drew's landmark case concerning internet law made worldwide headlines.
Megan, a neighbour of Ms Drew's in St Louis, Missouri, and a former friend of her daughter, took her own life in October 2006.
The court was told that Megan killed herself after receiving several cruel messages from a fictitious 16-year-old boy named Josh Evans.
One post said the world would be better off without her.
Prosecutors said that Ms Drew and several others created the fake online page on MySpace, the social networking site, to find out what Megan was saying about her daughter after they had fallen out.
"Bad law"
Ms Drew was charged under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, which is normally used against computer hackers. Prosecutors were unable to find any existing laws within the state of Missouri under which she could be tried.
They had alleged that Ms Drew had violated MySpace's terms of service by using false information to set up an account so she and others could "harass, abuse or harm" Megan Meier.
Drew's trial was the first legal case in the US relating to cyber-bullying
The case was tried in California where MySpace is headquartered.
Last November a jury found Ms Drew guilty of three minor counts of violating MySpace's terms of use, but cleared her of the more serious charges that carried a maximum of 20 years in jail.
"There is a saying in the law that hard cases make bad law and that compelling facts lead courts and prosecutors to pursue cases that are ill advised and that's what we have seen right here with this case," said Andrew Grossman, who is a senior legal analyst with the Heritage Foundation, a conservative public policy research institute.
"What happened to Megan is truly a tragedy and no one wishes to downplay that. Ms Drew didn't do anything that was against the law. She did some things that were unkind, that were rude and not becoming of an adult but not against the law.
"The messages she sent were not criminal had she said them face to face or on the phone. She did not threaten harm or violence. The prosecutors have twisted the law and that should concern everyone who uses the internet," Mr Grossman told BBC News.
"Serious crime"
In the aftermath of the Megan Meier case a number of states and communities drew up cyber bullying laws.
This includes Megan's home state of Missouri where it is now a crime punishable by a fine of up to $500 (£300) or 90 days in jail, to harass someone over the internet.
Efforts are also underway to pass a federal law. California Congresswoman Linda Sanchez is behind the Megan Meier Cyber bullying Prevention Act which has been referred to a judiciary committee for legal review.
A recent study said over 40% of children have been bullied online
This law aims to make it a crime punishable by a fine or up to two years of prison to communicate online with "the intent to coerce, intimidate, harass, or cause substantial emotional distress to a person."
"We need to make new laws in response to these new crimes. Sexting and textual harassment are only a couple of new tactics used by bullies who don't think they'll get caught because there are no bystanders in cyberspace," said Ms Sanchez in an email to the BBC.
"What they need to know is that cyber bullying is a serious crime, and is no less harmful than in-person threats, stalking, and harassment.
"If federal law recognises this new form of bullying, police and prosecutors will be better equipped and educated to deal with this problem. Prosecutors, more importantly, will then have the ability to punish this behaviour in court," said Ms Sanchez.
Some legal experts worry about a law that specifically targets online behaviour.
"These types of matters are better decided in sober moments where they are not driven by a single set of facts," said Professor John Palfrey of the Berkman Centre for Internet & Society at Harvard University.
"One of the big questions we have to grapple with is whether or not bullying done online makes us feel any differently than bullying in the old fashioned way. If it doesn't then its not clear we need a new law in this context.
"Generally speaking it's a bad idea to make cyber specific laws. We don't need a cyber law for stealing, we have a law for theft. We don't need a cyber law for fraud, we have basic laws for that. And the question now should be do we want to outlaw bullying and not just cyber bullying?" questioned Professor Palfrey.
"Devastating"
The US National Crime Prevention Council in a report last year found that 43% of teens are exposed to cyber bullying in one form or another yet only one in 10 kids told their parents.
"Cyber bullying can have such a devastating effect on our young people from depression to falling grades and low self esteem. This case shows however that cyber bullying is not something that just young people commit but we as adults can also be at fault," said the council's Michelle Boykin.
"The issue of how you deal with cyber bullying from a legislative perspective is a tough one and we are glad people are looking at the issue seriously."
Cati said she was a victim of cyber-bullying for nearly three years
Cyber bullying was just one of the topics covered by the Internet Safety Technical Task Force, a group of 29 internet businesses, non-profit organisations, academics and technology companies.
The body was set up by the Attorneys General and chaired by Professor Palfrey.
He told the BBC he believed this is an "extremely important case" and that "one of the challenges with cyber bullying is that there has been a sharp increase over the years. The big question on the data is whether there is actually an increase of bullying across the board.
"The difference with cyber bullying over regular bullying is that its recorded and it's not just someone saying something on the playground."
Support website
15 year old Catherine 'Cati' Grant was a victim of cyber bullying from the age of twelve. The cause she said was a misunderstanding with a friend who accused Cati of stealing something.
"She sent me mean messages on MySpace and blamed me for things I didn't do. After a while I got really sad and worried about what people thought of me."
In the end Cati said the bullying stopped when the other girl went to the school principal. He told her to stay away from Cati or "suffer the consequences."
That experience, coupled with the death of Megan Meier, prompted Cati to take action.
She set up a website for teens to get help, support and advice and is planning a tour across America to raise awareness about internet safety and join one million teens together against cyber bullying.
"Megan's death was one of the reasons I set up my website. It was just so shocking and upsetting and I want to do what I can to prevent cyber bullying in general and help teenagers who feel they have no where to turn to," Ms Grant told BBC News.
Veteran gaming man Dave Perry has shown off his OnLive-rivalling, cloud gaming service called Gaikai in a new video that is drawing a lot of attention. As you can see from the video, Perry plays World of Warcraft, EVE Online, Mario Kart 64, Spore and more — all running on a bog-standard computer through the Gaikai website, itself running in a normal version of Firefox."
More details about the service are available at Perry's website. He spoke about Gaikai in an interview a few months ago, and he seems confident that this will work better than OnLive (which we've discussed in the past).
Designers James Auger and Jimmy Loizeau have created a clock that is powered by "eating" bugs. The clock traps insects on flypaper stretched across a roller system and then drops them into a vat of bacteria. The insects are then "digested" and the ensuing chemical reaction is transformed into power that keeps the rollers moving and the LCD clock working. The two offer another version that is powered by mice and an even cooler machine that picks insect fuel from spiderwebs with the help of a robotic arm and a video camera.
MPs sitting on the Commons Business and Enterprise Committee are to open an inquiry into broadband speeds in the UK.
It follows the publication of the Digital Britain report, which lays out government strategy for the internet.
The committee will look at whether the promise to hook all homes up to a minimum 2Mbps (megabits per second) speed is "ambitious enough".
It will also discuss whether the proposed broadband tax is fair.
The so-called broadband tax will mean anyone in the UK with a fixed line telephone will have to pay an extra 50p a month on their telephone bill.
The money raised will fund next-generation broadband rollout to areas that traditionally have been bypassed by broadband providers.
READ THE DIGITAL BRITAIN REPORT
Digital Britain report(3MB)
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Download the reader here
Some experts have questioned whether the amount raised by such a tax will be enough to fund next-generation rollouts to the 30% of the country estimated to be left in the slow lane.
More controversial is the government's commitment to provide all homes with a minimum speed of 2Mbps by 2012.
While few doubt such an ambition is achievable, many think the government should be aiming for a higher speed.
In South Korea, for example, the government has set a minimum 1Gbps (gigabit per second) target for all homes.
Committee syndrome
Alex Salter, co-founder of broadband comparison site SamKnows, thinks it is important to remember that the 2Mbps target is "the very least the government wants us to have".
In terms of the broadband tax it could be the only way to get faster speeds to rural areas, he thinks.
"There are no other obvious options. This is one of the few valid ways that the government can intervene," he said.
The bigger question, according to Mr Salter, is whether the recommendations of the report can survive a change in government.
"It may be future-proofed in terms of the technology but will it be in terms of the politics?" he asked.
Others questioned the need for another inquiry into the state of broadband in the UK.
"The direction of broadband in the UK is running a real risk of suffering a death by committee syndrome, when other countries have set their countries and working towards actual network builds," said Andrew Ferguson, editor of broadband site ThinkBroadband.
"An unpopular truth is that if we as a nation want faster broadband, we will have to pay for it somehow, either via a levy, tax or through the bills we pay to firms for our broadband," he added.
The Digital Britain report, drawn up by Communications minister Lord Carter, took eight months to write and covered a wide range of issues, including copyright law, the future of public service broadcasting and digital radio.
The MPs have called for written evidence from interested parties by Friday 25 September and will publish a report shortly afterwards.
It's true, The Pirate Bay has agreed to being purchased by Global Gaming Factory (owner of a network of Internet cafes and gaming centers) for 60 million Swedish Krona or roughly $7.8 million. According to a press release, "GGF intends to launch new business models that allow compensation to the content providers and copyright owners." In a post on TPB's blog, the rogue file sharing site says that the project has been in the works for many years and should help evolve the site while trying to stay the same. Here's how they put it:
If the new owners will screw around with the site, nobody will keep using it. That's the biggest insurance one can have that the site will be run in the way that we all want to. And - you can now not only share files but shares with people. Everybody can indeed be the owner of The Pirate Bay now. That's awesome and will take the heat of us.
We'll have to wait and see how this pans out but it certainly smacks of a Napster v2 like situation at first blush. Assuming of course the deal closes by August as anticipated.
Farhad Manjoo has a review of Firefox 3.5 at Slate.com this week. From the article: 'Lately I've been worried about Firefox. Ever since its debut in 2004, the open-source Web browser has won acclaim for its speed, stability, and customizability. It eventually captured nearly a quarter of the market, an astonishing achievement for a project run by a nonprofit foundation. But recently Firefox seemed to go soft.' The worried tone in the beginning of the review gives way to excitement over the HTML5 features being implemented, saying that thus far Firefox 3.5 'offers the best implementation of the standard — and because it's the second-most-popular Web browser in the world, the new release is sure to prompt Web designers to create pages tailored to the Web's new language.'"
The final version could be here at any time; Firefox 3.5 is still shown as a release candidate at Mozilla's home page. Update: 06/30 15:31 GMT by T : No longer marked as RC; the Firefox upgrade page now says 3.5 has arrived.
A minor mishap took place during the testing for the Hollywood Rockit this weekend as one train decided to valley between the non-inverting loop and the midcourse brake that follows. A good picture of this can be seen posted to IOA Central, while a good article that talks about the impact the delayed launch of the coaster could be having on the park has been posted at the Orlando Sentinel.
Advertising networks are being cited as the major bottlenecks in performance woes experienced by major news sites during the crush of Internet traffic Thursday as news broke about the death of pop star Michael Jackson. An analysis by Keynote found that many news sites delivered their own content promptly, only to find their page delivery delayed by slow-loading ads. The inclusion of third-party content on high-traffic pages is a growing challenge for site operators. It's not just ads, as social media widgets are also seeing wider usage on commercial sites. How best to balance the content vs. performance tradeoffs?
Another new video of the Rockit making test runs has been added to Orlando Rocks this week. Here you can hear what has got to be the loudest part of the ride… the new anti-rollback system the installed on the lift hill. Otherwise this thing runs wickedly silent. Speaking of test runs… a couple of readers also claim to have heard an employee mention to them that the Rockit most likely wont open for another 3 weeks, and will likely miss that July 3rd preview date that was leaked out on a local radio station website, but has since been removed. Bottom line though, they’ll open it when it is ready to be opened…
(6/24/09) Universal Orlando was kind enough to send me a really good picture showing off one of the new Hollywood Rip Ride Rockit trains, where you can not only see the speakers in each seatback, but you can also make out the colored light panels on the sidepanels near the floor (lit up Red in the photo). Oh, and in case you forgot… notice that this sweet ride only has a lap-bar to hold you in. Universal also shared a bit about the audio and video technology involved in this new ride that have never really been put together in this way before.
The first thing you’ll notice when you plop down in the seat is likely that large lapbar clamping down, because embedded in here is your touch-pad panel where you can pick the exact soundtrack you want to hear during the ride. This is a Florida theme park after all, so these panels have been designed to meet the same durability and weatherproof requirements as military equipment, so it’s got to be damn near bullet proof. It’s also a wireless system that once you make your select, your track will be wirelessly uploaded into your stunt chair that is loaded with a 165-watt sound system, blasting your song up 90 decibels… and yet they promise you will never hear the song playing for the other rides nearby.
Next up, lets talk about the video recording system, which is made up of 14 different cameras. Six of those cameras will be installed onto your coaster train (1 per row) to capture your screaming mugg during the ride itself, while 8 more cameras are hard-mounted along the ride’s route to capture the highlights. These aren’t cheap little security camera units or web-cams… but production quality cameras designed for use under intense conditions, normally used on high-speed trains. Overseeing it all is a system of laser triggers that will time everything together to ensure that your music and video are always in sync.
At the end of your ride, each riders experience will be wirelessly downloaded to a kiosk system in just 25 seconds. Here you can check out, edit and purchase your own personalized Rockit experience video.
What else is different about the Rockit trains? They’ve are the only coaster trains to be covered with daylight LED color-changing lights. Each vehicle has 36 different lights that can stay solid, strobe, twinkle, race or pulse. Universal has also confirmed that the Rockit will feature the only “moving roller coaster load platform” that will use a peoplemover conveyor belt system in the station so that the trains (and guests) will never stop moving during the unload/load process. This will allow for a train to dispatch every 23 seconds at maximum capacity. It’s during this slow crawl through the station that the onboard systems (audio, video and lighting) will also receive a quick battery charge.
So there you have it… in a nutshell, the answers to almost any question you might have about this unique new coaster experience. Currently the long testing process has begun as we’ve heard that the park needs to log about 100 hours of operation time on each of the trains before they can put human riders to the test. Of course early word has also gone out to the Universal Orlando staff to prepare themselves, as full scale human testing on the employees will begin as soon as they are able.
CNet has a series of interviews with former hackers who ran afoul of the law in their youth, but later turned their skills toward a profession in security consulting. Adrian Lamo discusses taking "normal every day information resources and [arranging] them in improbable ways," describing a time when he broke into Excite@Home's system and ended up answering help desk questions from their users. Kevin Mitnick, famous for gaining access to many high-profile systems, warns today's young hackers not to follow in his footsteps, saying, "A lot of pen testers today have done unethical things in their past during their learning process, especially the older ones because there was no opportunity to learn about security. Back in the '70s and '80s, it was all self-taught. So a lot of the old-school hackers really learned on other people's systems. And at the time, I couldn't even afford my own computer." Mark Abene explains how he got interested in phone phreaking, and how it led to a prison term and a career in computer security. Like Mitnick, he says that easy access to powerful modern computers removes part of the motivation for breaking into other systems.
A story at Wired delves into the ongoing struggle between Google and Facebook to establish their competing visions for the future of the internet. "For the last decade or so, the Web has been defined by Google's algorithms — rigorous and efficient equations that parse practically every byte of online activity to build a dispassionate atlas of the online world. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg envisions a more personalized, humanized Web, where our network of friends, colleagues, peers, and family is our primary source of information, just as it is offline. In Zuckerberg's vision, users will query this 'social graph' to find a doctor, the best camera, or someone to hire — rather than tapping the cold mathematics of a Google search. It is a complete rethinking of how we navigate the online world, one that places Facebook right at the center. In other words, right where Google is now." A related article at ReadWriteWeb suggests that while Facebook's member base is enormous, the company hasn't taken advantage of its influence as well as it should have, though the capability for it to do so still exists.
A Swedish court has thrown out a request for a retrial by the four men behind The Pirate Bay website.
The four were found guilty of promoting copyright infringement in April and face jail sentences and hefty claims for damages.
The Pirate Bay's lawyers called for a retrial when it emerged that one of the judges in the case belonged to several copyright protection groups.
The Swedish court said the judge's affiliations did not bias the case.
The Svea Court of Appeal said Judge Tomas Norstrom should have declared that he was a member of the Swedish Association for the Protection of Industrial Property and the Swedish Copyright Association before the case went to trial.
"The fact that he failed to shed light on this does not however mean that there was any wrongdoing during the proceedings that would require a retrial," said the court in a statement.
"This was not a case of bias," concluded the court.
No appeal is allowed against the judgement.
The Pirate Bay is well-known for hosting lists of websites where people can get pirated copies of movies, music, software and TV shows.
The Pirate Bay defended itself saying that it did not infringe copyright because none of the pirated material is stored on its servers.
The court found them guilty because, it said, they continued to operate the service even when they knew users were being pointed to pirated material.
The four men behind The Pirate Bay, Frederik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Carl Lundstrom and Peter Sunde, were sentenced to one year in jail and told to pay damages of 30m Swedish kronor (£2.3m, 2.7m euros) to entertainment companies such as Warner Bros and Sony Music Entertainment.
In response to the ruling Peter Sunde said The Pirate Bay would now file charges against Sweden for violating the human rights of the defendants.
The Australian government could enforce its age classification laws on downloadable and flash-based web games if a current web censorship trial proves successful.
Implementation could have severe consequences for games such as World of Warcraft and Second Life, which currently remain unclassified in the country due to their online nature, as well as user-generated content deemed unacceptable.
Speaking to TheAge.com, internet filtering critic Mark Newton said: "It'd only take one game user anywhere in the world to produce objectionable content in the game environment to make the Australian government ban the game for everyone."
Such online filtering measures would have a massive impact on Australian gamers in part because of the unique age classification laws they're burdened with. Australia stands alone among the developed countries as the only one without an 18+ rating for games, meaning that any title failing to meet the MA15+ standard - containing excessive violence or sexual content - is banned from sale. It's a system that's historically forced game developers such as Rockstar to edit their titles in order to be granted release.
However, to date these rules have only applied to physical copies of games. Should the web censorship scheme, backed by Australia's Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digitial Economy Stephen Conroy and currently being trailed by nine ISPs, be introduced they would extend to flash-based web games, downloadable games and also websites selling games that don't meet the MA15+ standard.
Colin Jacobs, spokesman for online users' lobby group Electronic Frontiers Australia said the government is going too far in its quest to help parents deal with cyber-safety.
"Far from being the ultimate weapon against child abuse, it now will officially censor content deemed too controversial for a 15-year-old. In a free country like ours, do we really need the government to step in and save us from racy web games?"
A spokesperson for the IEAA - the Interactive Entertainment Association of Australia - said the move highlighted the "unacceptable situation" of not having an 18+ age rating for videogames.
The association, representing the videogame industry in Australia, has long been campaigning for a change in the current laws.
Another question of search engine "legality" is being addressed with a recent court case in the UK over a video search engine. Techdirt's coverage questions the long-standing tradition of how to evaluate contributory infringement claims for sites like search engines based on the highly subjective "I know it when I see it" test.
"Take for example, the situation going on in the UK, where Anton Benjamin Vickerman and his wife Kelly-Anne Vickerman decided to do something that makes a lot of sense: create a search engine for videos online, indexing a variety of different sites. This was as a part of their company Scopelight, and the search engine itself was called Surfthechannel. This is certainly a useful product. But, of course, the search engine's algorithm has no way of knowing if that video has been put up by the copyright holder on purpose or if it's unauthorized. Even more tricky, how does it determine fair use? So, it did the reasonable thing: it includes everything. Lots of the videos are legal. Plenty are potentially unauthorized. Apparently that wasn't good enough for a UK-based anti-piracy group UK-FACT, who had Scopelight's premises raided, claiming the site is illegal, since people can find unauthorized content via it. Of course, you can find unauthorized content on Google as well. But you know who's liable for that? Whoever actually put it online. Not the search engine that pointed you to it."
When FreeLegoPorn.com began publishing pornographic images created with Lego toys, Lego acted quickly. "The content available on the site consisted of animated mini-figures doing very explicit things. We were not amused," says Peter Kjaer, an attorney for Denmark-based Lego. Lego didn't go to court. Instead it filed a complaint with the World Intellectual Property Organization, which ruled in its favor. The domain registrar for FreeLegoPorn.com, GoDaddy.com, eventually shut down the site and transferred the domain name to Lego under ICANN rules. But it's not just Lego and Verizon that are suffering. Green energy is a hot topic, so cybersquatters have been targeting wind and solar energy start-ups. And malicious sites can create havoc with a brand's reputation. Cybersquatting activity rose by 18% last year, with a documented 440,584 cybersquatting sites in the fourth quarter of last year alone, according to MarkMonitor's annual Brandjacking Index report. And WIPO cited an 8% jump in dispute filings in 2008, to 2,329 complaints — a new record. Now, ICANN is preparing to open a potentially unlimited number of new top-level domains as early as the first quarter of 2010.
We've just learned Michael Jackson has died. He was 50.
Michael suffered a cardiac arrest earlier this afternoon at his Holmby Hills home and paramedics were unable to revive him. We're told when paramedics arrived Jackson had no pulse and they never got a pulse back. A source tells us Jackson was dead when paramedics arrived. Once at the hospital, the staff tried to resuscitate him but he was completely unresponsive. We're told one of the staff members at Jackson's home called 911. La Toya ran in the hospital sobbing after Jackson was pronounced dead.
Michael is survived by three children: Michael Joseph Jackson, Jr., Paris Michael Katherine Jackson and Prince "Blanket" Michael Jackson II.
Yeah, the PSPgo made the rounds at a little show you might've heard of called E3, but we tracked the thing down in the wilds of NY the other day, and thought you might like to see the wild slider action for yourself. We have to admit, the handheld looks better in person than it does in press shots, but only just barely. It's perfectly playable and comfortable to hold, but it almost seems a regression in design sense for Sony. In comparison to the PSP-3000, the PSPgo feels just a teensy bit lighter, but that's to be expected with the UMD drive kicked to the curb. At least it doesn't feel cheap. Because it isn't cheap. Video is after the break.
Although initially shocked by ZeniMax's acquisition of id Software, John Romero, one of the founders of the developer has said it's a positive move for the company.
"I guess I was shocked and sad to see the id Software of old changed forever today. It's a new day and a new id," he wrote via his Twitter account.
Romero had initially called the deal "disgusting" before admitting, "My initial reaction was harsh. Sorry. I am positive about the ZeniMax deal."
ZeniMax announced yesterday that it had acquired the Doom and Quake developer, adding those titles to an impress Bethesda portfolio which includes Fallout and The Elder Scrolls.
John Romero founded id Software back in 1991 with John Carmack, Tom Hall and Adrian Carmack.
John Carmack has said that part of the attraction of merging with ZeniMax was that he was tired of working with different publishing partners.
Square Enix is being sued by a Final Fantasy XI player for not being open about fees and late payment penalties for the online title.
According to the Courthouse News Service, Esther Leong from San Francisco has brought a class lawsuit against the US division of the RPG publisher for allegedly deceiving as many as 100,000 customers.
The suit alleges fraudulent concealment and unfair practices relating to monthly fees, penalties for late payment, interest charges on late payment, charges for a suspended account and licensing the game disguised as a sale.
The suit is seeking USD 5 million on behalf of players for "unfair business practices, false advertising, and unjust enrichment".
New website features full range of consumer electronics, including PCs, TVs and cameras
Shop Direct has reopened Woolworths as an online store with a wide range of consumer electronics, 20 weeks after buying the brand for between £5m and £10m.
According to the BBC, the website recorded over 20,000 hits within the first few hours of reopening.
The new Woolworths website stocks a large array of consumer electronics, including PCs, televisions and cameras, as well as toys, clothing and its iconic pick and mix.
Amongst the names being sold online are Acer, Asus, HP, Microsoft and Sony.
"Families wanted us to bring back Woolies as soon as possible, so that's what we've done," said Shop Direct chief executive, Mark Newton-Jones told the BBC.
"From acquiring the brand to launching it has only been 20 weeks; something you could never achieve with a High Street business but can do online.
"We're aiming to create a fun, family web experience which keeps on getting better and better."
The UK government is launching an office dedicated to cyber attack and defence. The Office of Cyber Security will focus on protecting Britain's IT infrastructure, and will be similar to the US Cyber Command model. While the Pentagon Cyber Command will be lead by the NSA, the UK Cyber Security Operations Centre, which will coordinate UK cyber efforts, will be based at GCHQ in Cheltenham
The organisers of the GamesCom trade fair are already claiming the event is going to be massive, with more than 300 exhibitors from 25 countries signed up.
They'll occupy 120,000 square metres of space at the event, which is being held in Cologne from 19th to 23rd August. Attendees will include the big three along with EA, Activision, Ubisoft, Square Enix and the other usual suspects.
Highlights will include the German Case Modding Championship, a cosplay world record attempt and some exciting happenings at the Job & Career Centre: "Here companies will present themselves and interact with potential applicants. In the meantime, daring motorcyclists will be chasing each other around on their bullets on a freestyle course."
The organisers are listing "youth protection" as a top priority at GamesCom, and there are plans to educate parents about games and host political debates. All attendees will be given coloured armbands to ensure they are only allowed access to age-appropriate games.
We're all going on a summer holiday, pardon, we'll all be working day and night at GamesCom to bring you all the news as it happens, or at least with only a slight delay.
Head of Vin Diesel's Tigon Studio, Ian Stevens, has said that Hollywood only takes games seriously when it realises the financial survival of the film-making business depends on it.
And equally, he thinks developers are ignorant to the depths of story-telling techniques employed by the best writers in Hollywood.
"There's certainly no shortage of guys that look at games and see them as toys, and meaningless bullsh*t, and now look at revenue - and for their own survival's sake have to care, and have to get involved," said Stevens of the Hollywood community.
"I think a lot of it has changed because we're making so much more money than they are."
He added that Hollywood struggles to understand the creative process of videogames, and those in the movie business who haven't picked up a controller wouldn't be able to comprehend why some games are much more engaging than others.
"Hollywood and games, over the next decade, you'll see some really interesting things happen. My curiosity is always about the execution of those things, because we don't speak the same language.
"Oftentimes people in Hollywood struggle to understand the creative decisions that we make - they don't get why something is more fun than something else, or why a character would need to be changed completely to work as a videogame character," he offered. "I think that's probably really hard to get unless you play games. I don't know there's an academic way to understand why Mario is fun, or what's fun about a raid in World of Warcraft, or why it's cool to shiv people in the neck when you're playing Dark Athena - I don't know there's an abstract way of explaining that."
While games developers continue to look up to Hollywood for its storytelling, Stevens said the games community should work harder to blend games and movies more seamlessly rather than simply trying to share ideas from two different mediums.
"The thing I've realised the most over the last couple of years, now being a lot closer to people in Hollywood and seeing some of their process, is just how little I - or anybody else around games - know about storytelling," he added. "I give a lot of people respect for their effort, and a lot of the time they can do some really good things, but there's such a depth and vocabulary involved in film-making that we're just completely ignorant of."
"Try as we might, we're not film-makers - and those are the collaborations that are the most interesting to me, to get some of those people working together to bleed and blend those lines, and get some of the expertise into a game... as opposed to an abstract sharing of ideas, which is what we do," he said.
ZeniMax Media Inc., parent company of noted game publisher Bethesda Softworks, today announced it has completed the acquisition of legendary game studio id Software, creators of world-renowned games such as Doom, Quake, Wolfenstein, and its upcoming title, Rage. In an interview with Kotaku, John Carmack said, 'We're really getting kind of tired competing with our own publishers in terms of how our titles will be featured. And we've really gotten more IPs than we've been able to take advantage of. And working with other companies hasn't been working out as spectacularly as it could. So the idea of actually becoming a publisher and merging Bethesda and ZeniMax on there [is ideal.] It would be hard to imagine a more complementary relationship. They are triple A, top-of-the-line in what they do in the RPGs. And they have no overlap with all the things we do in the FPSes.' The press release confirmed that id's projects will remain under Carmack's control.
Google has created a Web site for developers that is focused exclusively on making Web applications, sites and browsers faster. The site will allow developers to submit ideas, suggestions and questions via a discussion forum and by using Google's Moderator tool. Google hopes developers will join it in improving core online technologies such as HTML and TCP/IP. For Google, a prime example of how Web performance can be enhanced is the development of HTML 5, which provides a major improvement in how Web applications process Javascript, Google believes. 'We're hoping the community will spend some time on the basic protocols of the Internet,' Google product manager Richard Rabbat said. 'There's quite a bit of optimization that can be done [in that area].
