Week in review: Apple thinks differently about iPhone

(continued from previous page)

While Ballmer was surprisingly frank about Microsoft's expansion plans, he carefully juked his way past a question put to him from conference co-host John Battelle about his company's relationship with Facebook. Last year, Microsoft landed a deal to provide Facebook with search and advertising listings. When Battelle asked "how the financing's going," Ballmer smiled but demurred.

Indeed, no one is resting at Microsoft, not even Gates, who's soon to become more of a part-timer at the software giant. For years, the Microsoft chairman has been a fiery advocate, inside the company and out, for the notion that computers should be controlled, not just by mouse and keyboard, but also by more natural means, such as voice, touch and digital ink.

But, as Gates prepares his shift to part-timer, his vision is still closer to reality inside the company's research labs than inside the typical home or office. Unbowed, Gates said he expects to keep plugging away as he takes on his more limited role at the company.

"Big screens, touch, ink, speech, that's something that I think, along with cloud computing, is the next big change in how we think about software," Gates told News.com.

Gates sat down with News.com to discuss a variety of subjects, including why the business phone remained the same for so long and how much it can change once it is made part of the same network as the PC. Gates also talked about the possibilities of touch-screen computing, noting how popular the idea of multitouch has been, both on Microsoft's tabletop computer, Surface, and on the iPhone.

RIAA steps up legal attacks
The Recording Industry Association of America has found a new target for one of its copyright lawsuits: the Usenet network communications system. In a complaint filed on October 12, the RIAA says that Usenet newsgroups contain "millions of copyrighted sound recordings" in violation of federal law.

Only Usenet.com is named as a defendant for now, but the same logic would let the RIAA sue hundreds of universities, Internet service providers, and other newsgroup archives. AT&T offers Usenet, as does Verizon, Stanford University and other companies including Giganews.

What makes this lawsuit important is that if the RIAA can win against Usenet.com, other Usenet providers are at legal risk, too.

Meanwhile, 19 students at George Washington University are about to become the next targets of the recording industry's wrath. A federal judge on October 11 approved subpoenas to uncover the identity of the 19 "John Does" listed as defendants by the RIAA.

U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly granted the RIAA's request to serve the university with an immediate subpoena. She required that George Washington University tell its students--or faculty or staff, if they're the ones behind the IP addresses in question--about the existence of the subpoenas in five business days.

She also gave the school and any of the John Does 25 days to respond with a legal motion opposing the subpoena. The RIAA had suggested only 15 days.

However, if GWU has deleted its logs of who was using what IP address back then, the RIAA is going to be out of luck. So this becomes an important question: how long do universities keep logs showing who's been assigned a particular IP address? And why won't they say what the duration is?

The RIAA seems to be stepping up its campus crusade of late, dispatching a new round of "prelitigation" letters--411 in all--to 19 U.S. universities this week from coast to coast, alleging that campus networks are being used to commit copyright infringement. The RIAA sent more than 400 letters to 22 universities last month.

As usual, each of the 411 letters reveals that a student or employee of the school is about to be sued for copyright infringement. The letters also offer the opportunity for those targeted to settle out of court at a "discounted rate," touting a special Web site that allows targets to settle their claims online.

Here's a sample letter sent to an alleged illegal file-sharer (PDF), courtesy of Educause, a nonprofit group that represents higher-education institutions and oversees the .edu domain.

The RIAA has come under a great deal of criticism following the verdict against Jammie Thomas, a single mother of two who was ordered to pay the RIAA $222,000 for making songs available for download. Cary Sherman, the president of the RIAA, responded by trying to explain the recording industry's side.

"This was never a step we wanted to take, and we recognized that it would generate criticism in some quarters," Sherman wrote in a perspective piece published by News.com. "It's tough love--for the first time, despite years of educational efforts and the availability of plentiful legal alternatives, we are holding people personally and financially accountable for the theft of creative works."

Also of note
Google unveiled a new system for identifying pirated video on YouTube as it gets uploaded, but the system puts the burden on movie studios and other content owners to provide YouTube copies of the content first...Best Buy stopped selling analog TVs at the beginning of the month...Most Americans should see tax-free Internet access bills for another four years if a proposal overwhelmingly approved by the U.S. House of Representatives becomes law.

[nicmart]

Achilles heel

Apple's strength is that it leads consumers to new innovations. It's
weakness is that it does a poor job of listening when customers
complain. In the first case the management might be described as
gutsy; and in the second as bullheaded. It should address the
second without compromising the first.

[ewelch]

Get your facts straight - for once

If you actually payed attention, you would have noted Steve Jobs
NEVER said Appel was not going to welcome third party
developers to work on the iPhone. At the All Things Digital
Conference (C|Net too cheap to go? The buffet at the Four
Season is worth the money alone!) Steve Jobs made it clear with
a promise that in the long run "Everybody would get what they
want..."

That contradicts the claim made in the lede fo this article, and
the implication in the headline. In Journalism 101 at Mizzou, one
of the first things I learned was "You mother said she loves you?
Check it out!" Do some basic research before spreading half-
truths - for a change.

[stevenmusil]

Thanks

I fixed the article to make it a little more clear.

[ehfla]

Ho Hum

We've been able to use Visual Studio for years to develop for Windows phones. Glad to see Apple finally letting us develop for their platform too.

[scweezil]

hos hummm

Ho Hummm...what is there that is exciting about that.

[J.G.]

Biased and unprofessional

The hissy fit this 'reporter' has thrown regarding prosecutions for illegal file sharing disqualifies this article as journalism. No effort has been made to be objective whatsoever. Another C/Net embarrassment.