The New Nation - Internet Edition

YouTube law fight 'threatens net’

IT REPORT

A one billion dollar lawsuit against YouTube threatens internet freedom, according to its owner Google.

Google's claim follows Viacom's move to sue the video sharing service for its inability to keep copyrighted material off its site.

Viacom says it has identified 150,000 unauthorised clips on YouTube.

In court documents Google's lawyers say the action "threatens the way hundreds of millions of people legitimately exchange information" over the web.

The search giant's legal team also maintained that YouTube had been faithful to the requirements of the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act and that they responded properly to claims of infringement.

In papers submitted to a Manhattan court, Google said it and YouTube "goes far beyond its legal obligations in assisting content owners to protect their works".

Viacom disagreed that either firm had lived up to that standard and said that they had done "little or nothing" to stop infringement.

In a rewritten lawsuit filed last month, Viacom claimed YouTube consistently allowed unauthorised copies of popular television programming and movies to be posted on its website and viewed tens of thousands of times.

It said it had identified more than 150,000 such abuses which included clips from shows such as South Park, SpongeBob SquarePants and MTV Unplugged.

The company says the infringement also included the documentary An Inconvenient Truth which had been viewed "an astounding 1.5 billion times".

Viacom, which is asking for damages for the unauthorised viewing of its programming, said its tally represented only a fraction of the content on YouTube that violates its copyrights.

"The availability on the YouTube site of a vast library of the copyrighted works of plaintiffs and others is the cornerstone of defendants' business plan," Viacom said.

Viacom originally started legal action last year and filed an amended version last month. Earlier this month Viacom chairman Sumner Redstone told Dow Jones: "When we filed this lawsuit, we not only served our own interests, we served the interests of everyone who owns copyrights they want protected."

He added: "We cannot tolerate any form of piracy by anyone, including YouTubetthey cannot get away with stealing our products."

For its part, Google said the only way the legal action would be resolved was in court.

Google's vice president of content partnerships David Eun has said: "We're going all the way to the Supreme Court. We've been very clear about it."

After the legal action was first started, YouTube launched an anti-piracy tool that checks uploaded videos against the original content in an effort to flag piracy.

OracleâCBRM and CSM win Award

IT Desk Report

Oracleâ has been awarded two Billing & OSS World 2008 Excellence Awards recently at the Billing & OSS World Conference and Expo in Chicago.

The annual awards have recognized Oracle's Communications Billing and Revenue Management (CBRM) as the Best Revenue Management Solution. It has also recognized the Oracle Communication and Mobility Server (CMS) as the best new product.

Oracle CBRM provides a single platform to manage revenue in real time across any customer type, network service, payment method, business model or geography. It helps rapid conversion of transactions into revenue. "Oracle is honored to receive the Billing & OSS World Excellence Awards for Oracle CBRM and CMS, said Bhaskar Gorti, senior vice president and general manager, Oracle Communications.

These prestigious awards are a testament to Oracle's commitment to developing the industry's most compelling and fully featured communications application suite, he added added.

The multi-service, real-time nature of the platform enables communications service providers (CSPs) to quickly roll out cutting-edge next-generation services to the market, and to reduce revenue leakage by helping ensure all usage and charges are rated and recorded properly. Billing & OSS World received more than 90 submissions for the awards, and a select judging panel of experts from the billing and OSS community narrowed the field to three finalists for each of eight categories.

Oracle is number one in communications globally with 20 of the world's top 20 communications companies running Oracle applications. Oracle Communications integrates industry-specific BSS and OSS solutions with the capabilities of Oracle's industry-leading enterprise applications, business intelligence tools. For more information, visit .

City IT Fair in full swing

IT Reporter

City IT Fair-2008 has started swinging with its full speed on the third day of inauguration. Huge number of visitors turned out in all three day in its 157 stalls, as reported.

Organizers and sellers showed their satisfaction over the customer attendance and expecting a tremendous business success this year in the fair.

According to the stall owners, mostly visitors come to the computer fair just to enjoy or do window shopping on the first couple of days, instead of buying. "But this year, we have experienced significant customer turnout in most stalls," said a stall owner.

It was also reported that, visitors are showing keen interest towards the stalls of computer accessories and gaming software.

The 7th City IT fair- 2008 was inaugurated last Friday, organised by the Bangladesh Computer Society (BCS) at IDB Bhaban.

The fair would open for visitors from 10 am to 7 pm every day and would be concluded on May 30. Different organisations are taking part in the fair, which would conclude on May 30. During the fair City IT would award celebrities for their outstanding contribution on different fields.

Google’s more success in Ed Tech

IT DESK REPORT

While Google has committed to continuing its partnership with Harvard University, the New York Public Library, various publishers, and a variety of groups to scan and digitize their books, Microsoft has bowed out of this market. The Los Angeles Times reported that

Microsoft Corp. is ending a program that lets Web users search through digital versions of books, ceding the market to Google Inc.

The move will allow Microsoft to focus on other types of Internet searches, such as travel listings, Senior Vice President Satya Nadella said in a blog posting Friday. Spokesman Scott Trepanier declined to say how much Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft had spent on the book project.

The Microsoft effort has already digitized three quarters of a million books and several million journal articles.

This is still a maturing breed of web content, regardless of the players. A search on Google Books for an English version of Newton's Principia Mathematica left me empty-handed. I did find an Old English version of Opticks, however, much to the delight of my physics class (*sarcasm here*).

The site is searchable by books available for preview only (and contains links to actually purchase the books) as well as books that are available electronically for free. If I read Latin, Principia could be mine for just a few seconds of download time.

The Times article questions exactly how search engines like Google can monetize such an effort. This remains to be seen, but I have little doubt that a click through to Amazon to buy Stephen King's Duma Key after I was hooked by the preview pages nets Google a bit of money.

Microsoft launches new games

IT Desk Report

Electronic Arts Inc. and Steven Spielberg have joined forces in a multi-year collaboration that is to bring about three new original franchise properties. One of which launched Boom Blox, is a casual game that will be available in Europe, May 13th on Asia and in Japan on the 22nd.

On top of the 400 levels that come with the game comes a level creator allowing players to create their own levels. Basically Boom Blox is a strategy game where players solve single and multiplayer puzzles where the players can interact with more than 30 different characters such as block-laying chickens, or baseball-throwing monkeys in four themed environments - Tiki, Medieval, Frontier, and Haunted.

According to EA Games, Boom Blox is a perfect game for the Nintendo console as it leverages the Wii's Remote features. But this also gives EA a chance to see what kind of value Mr. Spielberg brings to the table when marketing a new game. Spielberg has been the man behind games before but this is the first time he has partnered with a company behind an all new title without being preceded by a series of blockbuster films.

256GB SSD coming soon

SAMSUNG, The greatest Chaebol that ever was, has announced it has developed a next-gen 256GB SSD drive based on MLC technology. Built on a SATA II interface, it also claims to be the fastest SSD on the block, with a blazing 200MBps read and 160MBps write speed.

The press literature further claims that the drive will feature "a sophisticated data encryption process that prevents data stored on the SSD from being accessed in an unauthorized manner, even after the drive is removed from the PC."

If all goes according to the master plan, customer samples should be shipping by September, with a 1.8-incher coming by the last quarter.