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Domain: afterdawn.com

Stories and comments across the archive that link to afterdawn.com.

Stories · 16

  1. Finnish IT Retailer Reveals Most Returned Products

    Hardware · Xmas · · posted by timothy · from the finland's-least-wanted dept. · 108 comments
    jones_supa writes: The largest computer gear retailer in Finland, Verkkokauppa.com, has unveiled top 20 lists of most returned and most serviced equipment in 2015 (Google translation). To offer an alternative to Black Friday, the company is going with a theme called "Sustainable Christmas". They want to guide shoppers to make good choices, as product returns always create extra burden for the distribution chain. Is there anything that catches your eye in the lists, or something else that you would like to warn about?

  2. Finnish Minister Wants To Expand Pornography Censorship

    Yro · Censorship · · posted by timothy · from the nose-under-tent dept. · 270 comments
    New submitter jdela writes "Finnish Minister for Justice Anna-Maja Henriksson backs expanding FInland's child pornography blocklist to also include websites with animal porn and largely-undefined 'violent pornography.' Her proposal does not have the unanimous backing of the Finnish government, with Minister of Interior Päivi Räsänen doubting the need to expand pornography blocks. Under current law, adopted in 2006, the Finnish NBI maintains a blocklist of foreign sites linked to child pornography. This blocklist is enforced on Finnish Internet users."

  3. Finnish ISP Forced To Block the Pirate Bay

    Yro · Censorship · · posted by Unknown · from the if-you-can't-beat-them-ban-them dept. · 168 comments
    Apotekaren writes "The Finnish ISP Elisa has been forced to block several domains leading to the infamous torrent-tracker site The Pirate Bay following a court case initiated by IFPI Finland... The Helsinki District Court ruled in favor of IFPI Finland in October, but the ISP resisted implementing the block until today because of the terms of the block not being specific enough. The ISP is calling the block 'temporary' and is appealing the court decision." Analysis from Torrent Freak shows that the block is probably easily circumvented.

  4. Sony Should Pay For OtherOS Removal, Says Finnish Board

    Games · Sony · · posted by timothy · from the seems-only-fair dept. · 319 comments
    x*yy*x writes "According to Consumer Board in Finland, Sony should pay up 100 euros to a console owner for OtherOS removal. The board said that the removal of OtherOS crippled console features that were present at the time of purchase and agreed that consumers should be compensated. Sony tried to point out that the user agreed to the PS3 EULA, but the consumer board noted that such agreements can't go around consumer laws."

  5. Google Adds Licensing Server DRM To Android Market

    Yro · Cellphones · · posted by Soulskill · from the do-androids-dream-of-electric-rights dept. · 184 comments
    eldavojohn writes "According to AfterDawn, Google has given app makers the option to use a license server as DRM to ensure the user has paid for an app before they can download it. Reportedly, the Market app will communicate with a Google license server using RSA encryption. It is important to note this is only available for non-free apps (built with SDK 1.5 and later), and it was instituted to provide a better solution to the old and widely criticized copy protection scheme that was susceptible to Android app piracy (like sideloading). For better or for worse, Android's Marketplace appears to now have an optional, phone-home form of DRM." Following news of the new licensing service, Hexage Ltd, makers of a popular Android game called Radiant, released the data they had collected on piracy of Radiant over a 10-month period beginning last October. A series of charts shows total users, paid users and the piracy rate, by region.

  6. Italian Court Rules ISPs Must Block Access To Pirate Bay

    Yro · Censorship · · posted by timothy · from the triremes-on-patrol dept. · 208 comments
    introt writes "After first being blocked in 2008, an Italian court has once again ruled that ISPs in the nation must block access to the infamous torrent tracker The Pirate Bay, leaving millions of users without access to one of the most popular sites on the planet. In the original case, after an appeal by the Pirate Bay, the Court of Bergamo ruled that foreign websites cannot be blocked over alleged copyright infringement. Fast forward until today and the Supreme Court has ruled that ISPs can indeed be forced to block torrent sites, even if they are foreign-based."

  7. The Pirate Bay to Become a Distributed Storage Cloud?

    Hardware · Storage · · posted by ScuttleMonkey · from the volunteer-to-make-your-computer-run-slower dept. · 131 comments
    eldavojohn writes "After announcing the sale of The Pirate Bay to Global Gaming Factory X, it was unknown what would become of TPB. Details of the future plans have been released. 'According to Rosso, GGF plans to build a massive "storage cloud" on top of TPB that would use individual users as storage system's nodes. Apparently users can opt out for being part of the decentralized storage system, but then they'd have to pay a monthly fee for the service. More resources the user is willing to commit for the service, the cheaper the monthly subscription fee will be ... GGF's plan is to harness the resources users are willing to allocate to the cloud service and sell that computing power and bandwidth to 3rd party companies, essentially creating a service that could be used as a content delivery network (system that most large sites — including ours — use to deliver static content, such as images, software downloads and stylesheets, faster to the end user) or even as a web hosting cloud. As the service would use P2P technology, it could bring massive savings to ISPs, as the delivery of content to an end user would be provided from the closest possible "node," most likely from an user within the same ISP network.'"

  8. Copyright Lobby Targets "Pirate Bay For Books"

    News · Books · · posted by samzenpus · from the what-about-the-library dept. · 356 comments
    An anonymous reader writes "TTVK, a Finnish national copyright lobby, is threatening a book rental service called Bookabooka for allegedly running the 'Pirate Bay for Books.' Bookabooka however does not offer a torrent tracker service, nor does it enable a user in any way to download eBooks; it simply provides a place for book owners to rent textbooks to each other via the traditional mail service. It is mandatory that all textbooks must be originals. The service is used by a lot of School and University students, and it does not handle the shipping or returns of the textbooks. Nevertheless, the Finnish book publishers' association (Suomen Kustannusyhdistys) is convinced the service is breaching the copyright laws and threatening their business. TTVK has given Bookabooka until Friday to cease operations or face a lawsuit. Bookabooka's founders have vowed to keep the service online and ignore the threat."

  9. Sweden Sees Boom In Legal Downloading

    Tech · Internet · · posted by kdawson · from the encouraging-them dept. · 121 comments
    Quantos writes with word that in Sweden, in addition to a drop in traffic following the introduction of the IPRED anti-file sharing law, the country also saw a doubling of legal downloads. "The sale of music via the Internet and mobile phones has increased by 100 percent since the Swedish anti-file sharing IPRED law entered into force last week, according to digital content provider InProdicon. '...I don't know if this is only because of IPRED, but it is definitely a sign of a major change,' said managing director Klas Brännström. InProdicon provides half of the downloaded tunes in Sweden via several online and mobile music services." Meanwhile The Pirate Bay's anticipated VPN service has seen over 113,000 requests for beta invitations since late last month; 80% are from Sweden. Traffic numbers may begin to rise again once the service goes live.

  10. RIAA v. Santangelo Default Judgment Vacated

    News · Court · · posted by Zonk · from the fight-never-ends dept. · 56 comments
    NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "It was reported last week that at the July 13th status conference in Elektra v. Santangelo II, the default judgment taken by the RIAA against Patti Santangelo's daughter, Michelle, was vacated by Judge Stephen C. Robinson. This has now been confirmed in papers filed by the RIAA's lawyers in which they indicated that the Judge vacated the default judgment because he prefers cases to be decided on their merits, rather than by default (pdf). The papers sought $513 in attorneys fees for (a) procuring the default judgment and (b) preparing judgment enforcement documents. Patti Santangelo is the first RIAA defendant known to have moved to dismiss the RIAA complaint. After two years of litigation, the RIAA dropped its case against Patti Santangelo, leaving open only the question of whether the RIAA will be ordered to pay her attorneys fees."

  11. Finland Adopts New Copyright Legislation

    Yro · Politics · · posted by ScuttleMonkey · from the killing-my-eyes-kill-danny dept. · 323 comments
    Anonymous Coward writes "Finland has adopted European Union Copyright Directive with new changes to its national legislation, giving Finland one of the most record label friendly pieces of legislation in Europe. The article has a good summary of the new law's changes to the old, rather flexible legislation."

  12. Chinese DVD Makers Sue Over Royalties

    Yro · Patents · · posted by timothy · from the drain-on-society dept. · 208 comments
    Viceice writes "Afterdawn.com and DigiTimes are among many other news outlets reporting that DVD player makers from China are suing the 3C DVD Patent Group over royalties on patents held by the consortium. The suit accuses 3C alliance for price-fixing, unlawful tying of essential and non-essential patents together, group boycott and conspiracy to monopolize. According to the Chinese companies, typically U.S. patent licensing fees for other products are between 3 and 5 percent of the item's wholesale price, compared to the 50 percent for DVD players."

  13. Chinese DVD Makers Sue Over Royalties

    Yro · Patents · · posted by timothy · from the drain-on-society dept. · 208 comments
    Viceice writes "Afterdawn.com and DigiTimes are among many other news outlets reporting that DVD player makers from China are suing the 3C DVD Patent Group over royalties on patents held by the consortium. The suit accuses 3C alliance for price-fixing, unlawful tying of essential and non-essential patents together, group boycott and conspiracy to monopolize. According to the Chinese companies, typically U.S. patent licensing fees for other products are between 3 and 5 percent of the item's wholesale price, compared to the 50 percent for DVD players."

  14. Sweden To Outlaw File Sharing, Crypto Breaking?

    Yro · Censorship · · posted by simoniker · from the bad-things-afoot-in-scandinavia dept. · 578 comments
    Martin Kallisti writes "The Swedish Department of Justice has today proposed a bill to be put into effect, if it passes Parliament, on the 1st of January, 2004. It is in accordance to EU directives, but will also criminalize the downloading of material from the Internet without the explicit permission of the copyright holder. Furthermore, it will become illegal to break cryptos, circumvent copy protection (mod chips et al), copy books, and as I understand it, use software that is designed to help with any of these tasks, and many other things." An anonymous reader points to an English-language article about this Swedish EUCD proposal, which also mentions a hefty $4 levy on blank digital media such as CD-ROMs.

  15. Slashback: Bankruptcy, SUVdiving, Singalongs

    Slashback · · posted by ryuzaki0 · from the chilly-down-here dept. · 448 comments
    Slashback updates tonight on sky-diving cars, Microsoft's new code Glasnost (guess who's signed up to see the code?), the fate of the PCI-SIG list, the SCO and Linux licensing brouhaha, music royalties in Finland, and more. Read on for the details.

    Not like that un-American GPL. agentZ writes "The first Microsoft government customer to buy access to the Windows source code is Russia according to this CNet story. Interesting to note FAPSI, one of their intelligence agencies, authorized the purchase. Perhaps they're looking for vulnerabilities in the U.S. Government's dependence on Microsoft?"

    The difference between Chapter 11 and The End. prostoalex writes "In regards to a recent heated discussion on whether tech companies can make it out of Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, XO Communications, the telecom company of the dot-com era, seems to be doing quite well after filing Chapter 11. The article on Internet.com also mentions another company, Covad Communications, picking up customers and more business after filing for Chapter 11."

    There's hope in PCI Land. Regarding the Slashdot post of a few days ago about the PCI-SIG ("The End of the Free PCI Device List"), PCI-SIG Chairman Tony Pierce writes

    "YourVote.com Supporters:

    Thank you for making us aware of your concerns regarding Jim Boemler's online Vendor and Device Lists for the PCI technology.

    There has been a misunderstanding between PCI-SIG and Jim - PCI-SIG officers are currently working with Jim to resolve the issues as quickly as possible. We respect Jim Boemler's work and are committed to support the PCI specification efforts industry-wide. We are confident that we will come to an amicable resolution.

    We are pleased to see the strong industry support for PCI technologies and value your response to the issues. We understand this site has been a very valuable tool and are working together to find a solution to make sure that the tool is available to the public in some way.

    Thank you for your support over the years. We will be sure to keep you informed as we come to resolution in this situation."

    This lowers Finland on my list of vacation spots. E-Tray writes "It seems that Finnish equivalents of American RIAA, Teosto, which represents songwriters and publishers, and Gramex, which represents music producers and artists, want to force Finnish day nurseries to pay royalties every time nursery staff sings along with kids. Previously Teosto enforced a law that taxi drivers have to pay royalties if they play music while a customer is in the backseat."

    Would still rather see a statement signed in blood. Error27 writes "Earlier this week, Slashdot linked to a Maureen O'Gara article that claimed SCO was probably going to try charge Linux users $96 per CPU. More than one person thought SCO's denial was, "Awfully ambiguous". Hopefully this article clears up any doubts. Essentially, SCO will continue to charge IBM but not RedHat or SCO's UnitedLinux partners."

    Perhaps I can volunteer my dad's Suburbans? Finally, joe jennings writes

    "A few months ago you ran a story about the cars my team and I skydived with and crashed into the desert. This is a bit of an update.

    Next month, we're going to blow up my Nissan Pathfinder. Its twisted remains will be welded to a steel beam and planted on a plot of land in the mojave desert. We're starting "suv ranch," a tribute to gas guzzlers, a dying trend (we hope).

    I intend to thoroughly document the project and will post images and quicktime videos on gaspig.com."

  16. Xbox Price Drops For Australia And Europe

    Games · Games · · posted by timothy · from the wottaboggin dept. · 560 comments
    wallitron writes: "Due to slow sales in Australia, Microsoft is looking to drop the price of it's XBox to $399 (around $200US). With a fast CPU, wizzy graphics card, ethernet, DVD and TV out, it would be a handy thing in the living room if it ran a real OS. At that price it seems good value. Check out the article on the price drop." There are price drops in Europe, too.