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The murky world of Mozilla and Google
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Andrew Orlowski
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When the Mozilla Foundation turns to the public for money, it happily assumes the mantle of a penniless public institution asking for charity. Over 10,000 FireFox fans drew deep into their own pockets to place an expensive two-page advertisement for the browser in the New York Times 15 months ago. But the Mozilla Foundation’s commercial…
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Blanket digital licence fails in France
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Andrew Orlowski
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Under heavy pressure from the French government, the country’s parliament has voted against introducing the world’s first blanket licence for sharing digital media. A section that would have permitted internet users to freely exchange copyrighted material, effectively legitimizing file sharing, and hastening the demise of digital rights management (DRM) software, had passed an earlier reading…
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‘Lightweight, high-velocity and very connected’
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Andrew Orlowski
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At ZDNet, it’s Microsoft’s “Pearl Harbor”! Forbes screams, “Google’s office invasion is on!” Only it isn’t – and we have the founder’s word for it. As we reported yesterday, Google has paid an undisclosed sum for a web-based document editor, Writely. It’s a product that seems as mature as the company which produced it, Upstartle.…
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Google offers MS-style Seattlement for click fraud suit
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Andrew Orlowski
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Google will pay $90 million to settle a class action click fraud lawsuit. Any web site operator who was also a Google ad network partner who can show improper charges over the past four years will be eligible for damages. Google announced the news on a part of its site devoted to trivia, such as…
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Google outspooks the spooks with Total Information Awareness plan
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Andrew Orlowski
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Google wants to mirror and index every byte of your hard drive, relegating your PC to a “cache”, notes on a company PowerPoint presentation reveal. The file accompanied part of Google’s analyst day last week. Google has since withdrawn the file, telling the BBC that the information was not intended for publication. The justification for…
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How the digital revolution screwed songwriters. Twice.
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Andrew Orlowski
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This may not be news to most of you, but in light of DiMA’s Jonathan Potter blaming music publishers for the sorry state of digital downloads, it’s a topical reminder. Music companies – and we blur the distinction deliberately for the moment, for the sake of simplicity – paid songwriters in two ways. For what…