Crave

Psystar's Mac clones are unavailable after Tuesday's settlement with Apple.

(Credit: Screenshot by Erica Ogg/CNET)

As part of Psystar's partial settlement with Apple, all models of the company's Open Computer featuring preinstalled Mac OS have been removed from its Web site.

A quick visit to Psystar.com Wednesday morning reveals all five products the Mac clone maker had been selling since 2008 are suddenly "out of stock." It follows Tuesday's partial settlement, in which the Florida-based Psystar agreed to pay $2.65 million to Apple for copyright infringement, in exchange for Apple dropping the other claims of trademark infringement and unfair competition.

Though Psystar has agreed to a settlement payment amount already, and is done selling Mac OS preinstalled on hardware, it doesn't mean the company is done fighting. Part of the agreement included that Apple will not get paid until "any and all appeals in this matter are concluded or the time for filing any such appeal has lapsed," according to the court documents.

Psystar still intends to appeal to a higher court the November 13 ruling of U.S. District Judge William Alsup, in which he said Psystar violated Apple's copyright and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. It's a process that could stretch on for years.

Until then, if Psystar wants to stay in business, it's going to have to figure out another way of selling hardware and Mac software.

Parental Advisory: Explicit Content!

(Credit: Jeff Bakalar/The 404)

If you've ever sat around with friends and mourned the death of the mixtape, you'll certainly appreciate the first half of today's episode of CNET's The 404 Podcast. While Jeff was at home for the break, he stumbled upon a a collection of old cassette tapes including the Cool Side/Awesome Side mix you see up there. It's got a solid collection of '90s hits including "Mr. Jones" by Counting Crows, Soundgarden's "Black Hole Sun," and, of course, "Smells Like Teen Spirit."

I spy "Crazy" and something that starts with "Livin...," which I can only assume to be Britney Spears and Ricky Martin. Just kidding, Jeff, but seriously--we've all pulled some pretty embarrassing stunts in a pathetic attempt to win a girl's heart, so stick around to witness the humiliation.

(Credit: Tech Crunch)

Speaking of death, we're (kind of) sad to see the demise of the CrunchPad. The brainchild of TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington and Fusion Garage, the CrunchPad was supposed to be an aluminum tablet computer with a 12-inch LCD screen running Ubuntu Linux and Webkit browser. Unfortunately, Arrington reported today that the CrunchPad project is officially dead. We're disappointed that we'll never be able to test the product ourselves, but we're sure that Arrington has something else up his sleeve.

We imagine that a lot of you guys will be traveling by plane for the holiday season, but what if you were forced to hand over your iPod to security agents to check it for pirated music at the airport? Sounds like a nightmare, but Wilson tells us that the Australian government is apparently proposing a plan to search iPods and other MP3 players for illegally downloaded songs, punishable by heavy fines or even jail time!

From a technological stand point, we're not even sure how the government plans on checking for purchased vs. bootlegged music. At the end of the day, it's always comforting to know that you'll NEVER get busted for listening to The 404, and isn't that the most important thing?

Let's say you're interested in getting together with a few people and creating a video game. Now let's say said game is a sequel to a known, copyrighted property and you'd be using assets from the original game. Logic dictates at this point that you'd get permission from the copyright owner doesn't it?

A screen from the original Chrono Trigger, developers of a sequel have gotten a cease-and-desist letter.

(Credit: GameSpot)

Last week, Square Enix, maker of the original Chrono Trigger--an RPG originally released for the SNES in 1995 that garnered a huge cult following--sent a cease-and-desist letter (PDF) to a team of developers who'd been working on a "true" sequel to the game dubbed Chrono Trigger: Crimson Echoes. (The followup to the first game, called Chrono Cross, did not continue the storyline from the original game; thus the general consensus among fans was that it was not a true sequel).

The letter was sent just a few weeks before Chrono Trigger: Crimson Echoes was to be released.

In the letter, the team is instructed to stop all development and destroy all materials relating to Crimson Echoes, and not to release the ROM.

Created by a team of fans using Chrono Trigger sprites (2D graphics), Crimson Echoes has been in development for four and a half years.

I know I have the advantage of 20/20 hindsight here, but really, in all probability, this had to be one of the more likely scenarios, right? I'm sure the team made the game out of love for the property and knew there was a chance this could happen. Similar projects, however have been completed and released, so why not this one? Who knows really, but I'm sure every company would have their own reaction to something like this. Just sad to see four and a half years of work go spinning down the drain.

I hope the developers can take what they've learned while developing their title and apply it elsewhere--hopefully an original property or something they get permission to make beforehand.

I feel for the fans who were anticipating this, though. Seriously, if there was a fan-made true sequel to the first Phantasy Star that got canceled weeks before release, I'd be pretty irked too.

This was originally posted at ZDNet's Between the Lines.

Roy Blount Jr., president of the Author's Guild, argues that the Kindle 2's ability to read text aloud like one of those automated customer service robots is a substitute for audio books. Blount also adds that Amazon should be paying audio rights for the Kindle 2's text-to-audio feature.

In The New York Times, Blount writes:

The Kindle 2 is a portable, wireless, paperback-size device onto which people can download a virtual library of digitalized titles. Amazon sells these downloads, and where the books are under copyright, it pays royalties to the authors and publishers.

... Read more

Updated 9:30 a.m. PDT with details on MPAA plans.

Well, that didn't take long. Within an hour of making its new RealDVD software available for sale on its Web site, RealNetworks has filed suit against all the major movie studios and the DVD Copy Control Association. According to Real's press release, the lawsuit "asks the court to rule that RealNetworks Home Entertainment Inc.'s RealDVD software...fully complies with the DVD Copy Control Association's license agreement." Real feels it has a strong case because its software does not break the DVD's encryption when copying it to the hard drive (and, according to the company, even adds a second layer of DRM). Real claims this method is similar to that used by Kaleidescape, a provider of high-end home media servers. (Kaleidescape's 2007 courtroom victory over the DVD Copy Control Association is cited by Real as the precedent for the RealDVD software.)

A spokesman for Real confirmed that the suit was pre-emptive, but that the company expects that "the studios will be taking action later today."

Indeed, Hollywood sources confirmed that the Motion Picture Association of America plans to file a lawsuit later Tuesday morning asking a federal court to stop RealNetworks from distributing the company's RealDVD software, which the MPAA alleges allows for the illegal copying of films and violates the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The studios plan to request a restraining order.

Related coverage: DVD ripping goes legit with RealDVD

CNET News' Greg Sandoval contributed to this story.

The FBI on Wednesday arrested a Los Angeles-area blogger on suspicion of violating federal copyright laws after he allegedly streamed tracks of the unreleased Guns N' Roses album Chinese Democracy on his Web site.

Kevin Cogill, 27, caused quite a stir earlier this summer when he allegedly began streaming nine songs from the album, which has been 15 years in the making, on his blog Antiquiet. The traffic crashed his site almost immediately, and shortly afterward the songs were removed at the band's request. But users who recorded the streams quickly made the songs available on file-sharing sites. It's unknown how Cogill allegedly acquired the material.

The FBI began investigating the incident in late June, and earlier this week Cogill posted a plea for legal help on his blog, writing that, "more and more each day, it looks like I may be indicted."

The Family Entertainment and Copyright Act of 2005 makes the sharing of pre-release copyright material a felony punishable by up to three years in prison and up to $250,000 in fines. According to his arrest affidavit, Cogill admitted to posting the songs, reports the Los Angeles Times.

Cogill was due to appear in the Los Angeles District Court Wednesday afternoon.

UPDATE: According to a post on Antiquiet, Cogill was released under a $10,000 signature bond and is scheduled to appear at a preliminary hearing on September 17.

DeviantArt gets 1.5 billion page views a month, making it one of the most popular Web sites that many people have never even heard of.

Despite the name, only a fraction of the art on the site is what might be labeled deviant. In reality, the site boasts millions of user-uploaded works of art, everything from photography to 3D digital conceptual art to old-fashioned canvas-and-paint portraits.

Think of it as a YouTube for artists trying to show their own work. Pieces can be viewed, commented on, even added to a user's own gallery of favorites. The range of work defies characterization, but there is a heavy dose of cartooning and fantasy art as well as some adult content, which is blocked for unregistered users.

In some cases, artists have posted their digital leftovers in a "stock" pile that other artists can use as the genesis for their own work.

The site's goal, in a nutshell, is to democratize and inspire art.

British photographer and art student Lara Jade said it's the community of artists and diversity of artwork that drew her to the site back in 2004.

"Everyone can post their work, no matter what medium they work in," Jade said in an e-mail interview. "There's also the opportunity to get feedback and suggestions on your work from peers."

In a few cases, she said, she's worked in collaboration with other DeviantArt creators.

The downside, she said, is sometimes she finds that her work is being used by someone else without her permission and in ways she never intended. In the worst case, she said, she found her work used as the cover for a porn DVD. (She's suing over that one.)

Despite that, Jade continues to post on the site, particularly because of the feedback she gets from the large community of artists and art devotees.

"When I first started out, my work was very amateurish as I was just beginning to experiment with photography and Adobe Photoshop," she said. "Most of the helpful critiques I've received from other artists on DeviantArt have made me want to try new things and continue to improve the quality of my work," she said.

DeviantArt is itself at a crossroads.

Growing to millions of artists has meant that the company and its site has had to find ways to scale its community, a challenge to the way it has done business.

"We love the way that deviantART has grown organically; artists telling artists, art lovers telling art lovers, for 7 and a half years, he said. "We grow internally in a very organic manner as well. Much of our team comes directly to us from within our (now rather huge) community."

The site has largely relied on the honor system and self-policing to ensure that artwork is used in the way it was intended. Often, though, artists put high-resolution images of their work on the site, leaving plenty of opportunity for the unscrupulous.

The site doesn't go in to details on its finances, but it is a for-profit entity that generates significant revenue--"Meeeeelllllliiiiooooonnnnnnnns!," according to co-founder and CEO Angelo Sotira.

The site is owned largely by current and former staffers--there are close to 50 full-time employees, with much of its sales reinvested in growth and new developments.

Sotira said he had been hoping the site could keep its workforce to fewer than 65 employees.

"We've been hoping to keep it under 65, but I'm afraid we're in need of quite a few more of the best and brightest this year," he said. "We'll be growing to 80."

Last week, the 8-year-old site announced that it had received its 50 millionth artist-generated submission. In January, the site had 23 million unique visitors. It also launched a feature that allows non-artists to start their own art "collection" of others' works and share it with friends.

Conceptual artist Daniel LuVisi said he has gotten a lot of work through the site, including some freelance work for some pretty big companies.

Much of his art stems from the worlds of movies and computer games, two of his other passions. "My work is mostly inspired by those...because they're the reason I'm here in the first place," he said. "Art was brought out of me from comics, cartoons, films, and games. It's definitely a huge inspiration."

LuVisi likes the exposure he gets from posting on the site, but most values the tight-knit artist community feeling.

"I just pray it never turns into a popularity contest or the likes of MySpace or Facebook," he said.

The Bush administration has officially entered the file-sharing lawsuit pitting the major record labels against a Minnesota woman named Jammie Thomas. And it's siding with the record labels.

In legal documents filed in federal court in Minnesota on Monday, the U.S. Department of Justice said it wants to defend the constitutionality of the copyright law that a jury decided Thomas violated.

"Copyrights are of great value, not just to their owners, but to the American public as well," the Justice Department's brief said. "Congress has recognized this value from the first days of the republic. The federal copyright statute...has consistently included special provisions to ensure significant monetary awards in copyright infringement suits that will make copyright owners whole and deter further infringement. "

Translation: It was perfectly reasonable for a jury to slap Thomas with a $222,000 penalty for making 24 songs available on Kazaa.

The Justice Department's move is not exactly unexpected. The department is charged with defending the constitutionality of statutes that Congress enacts, even ones (like the Communications Decency Act) that are unlikely to survive judicial scrutiny. In addition, as I noted in October, the Justice Department has already sided with the RIAA in a New York file-sharing case.

Thomas' argument seems to be this: Fining someone $222,000--and in fact the damages could have been far higher--for sharing songs that could be bought for $24 on iTunes is oppressive and objectively unreasonable. It therefore necessarily violates Supreme Court precedent, which prohibits fines that are "so severe and oppressive as to be wholly disproportioned to the offense or obviously unreasonable."

Here are two more excerpts from the Justice Department's brief, which echoes the Recording Industry Association of America's own arguments:

Although defendant claims that plaintiffs' damages are 70 cents per infringing copy, it is unknown how many other users--"potentially millions"--committed subsequent acts of infringement with the illegal copies of works that the defendant infringed. Accordingly, it is impossible to calculate the damages caused by a single infringement, particularly for infringement that occurs over the Internet. Furthermore, plaintiffs contend that their witnesses "testified to the substantial harm caused by the massive distribution of their copyrighted sound recordings over the Internet, including lost revenues, layoffs, and a diminished capability to identify and promote new talent..."

Most recently, Congress has crafted a statute that serves as a deterrent to those infringing parties who think they will go undetected in committing this great public wrong, as well as providing compensation to copyright owners who have to invest resources into protecting property that is often unquantifiable. Accordingly, given the findings of copyright infringement in this case, the damages awarded under the Copyright Act's statutory damages provision did not violate the due process clause...

Prince is close to making up with three fan sites that spent the past week trading nasty publicity releases with the purple music king.

Prince Fans United (PFU), a group formed by three fan sites dedicated to Prince; Housequake.com, Prince.org, and Princefams.com, was trying to hammer out an agreement with the artist's representatives on Wednesday, according to Gavin McLaughlin, a spokesman for the group.

PFU was formed after Prince allegedly demanded that the sites remove all "photographs, images, lyrics, album covers and anything linked to Prince's likeness," the site operators claimed.

"We're in the process of agreeing to terms with Prince and hope to have a statement out by (Thursday) morning," McLaughlin said in an e-mail.

Last week, the fan sites said that Prince's demands were unlawful and maintained they had the right to post images of him under the law. Much of the media slammed Prince for appearing to sue his fans, but his representatives denied that this was his intent.

In what was apparently a peace offering, Prince gave permission to the fan sites to post a new song of his called "PFUnk." The song is available on PrinceFansUnited.com.

The cease-and-desist letters sent to the fan sites are believed to be part of a a two-month old campaign Prince launched to protect his copyright on the Web.