The Electronic Frontier Foundation has begun investigating why Microsoft Vista Media Centers were blocked from recording two NBC Universal shows Monday night.
The group, which advocates for Internet users, said indications are that NBC sent a "broadcast flag" that triggered the block. But Danny O'Brien, EFF's international outreach coordinator, said the block couldn't have occurred unless hardware and software makers honored the network's request to prevent users from recording the shows. It appears Microsoft may have obeyed NBC Universal's broadcast flag.
NBC Universal and Microsoft said they need time to look into the matter.
The incident began when several dozen users of Vista Media Centers from across the country gathered online at a message board, The Green Button, to complain about being prevented from recording NBC shows American Gladiator and Medium. As they tried to record, a prompt informed them that the copyright holder prohibited recording.
Initially, the problem seemed to affect only users of Vista Media Centers who were recording from digital cable. Since then, there has been a report that a user of a Toshiba-made digital video recorder suffered the problem. In addition, O'Brien said Thursday that he has also interviewed someone who was blocked and was recording over-the-air digital.
O'Brien said he spoke to a Vista user who said he was trying to record Raleigh, N.C.'s HDTV channel WNCN-DT1 when the prompt appeared.
"(He) was attempting to record the program using Silicon Dust's HDHomeRun external tuner," O'Brien said in an e-mail. "(This) decodes the digital TV signal, and sends it over Ethernet to many digital TV receivers, such as MythTV or Windows Media Center. As Silicon Dust says on its Web site, their decoder merely passes on the data stream, and does not interpret the broadcast flag field itself."
O'Brien is concerned that Microsoft could have obeyed the broadcast flag, "despite the successful work of thousands of users to defend Microsoft's right to innovate and our right to fair use."
What he's referring to, of course, was the FCC's attempt to make software and hardware makers obey broadcast flags. The courts overturned the requirement, and now software and hardware makers are free to honor the flag or not.
O'Brien said the EFF is looking into the matter because it believes consumers should know before buying a DVR or recording system like Microsoft's Media Center whether they will help block shows.
Jammie Thomas
UPDATE: Jammie Thomas is going to have to sell a lot more thongs.
Thomas, the woman ordered by a federal court in October to pay the recording industry $222,000 for pirating music, doesn't have enough money to fund an upcoming appeal and has been forced to look for a new lawyer, according to her current attorney, Brian Toder.
Thomas was the first person sued by the recording industry for copyright violations to argue a case before a jury and was found to have illegally shared 24 digital-music files.
Toder, who represented Thomas in the civil case, told CNET News.com on Wednesday that handling her appeal on a pro bono basis would be too expensive. Thomas has been selling merchandise, such as T-shirts, coffee mugs, and women's underwear, as well as accepting donations, to help raise money for her defense. But the fund-raising efforts have "actually raised very little," Toder said.
"I'm very confident she will find representation," Toder added. "There are many passionate organizations, such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), chomping on the bit to help her."
The other good news for Thomas is that the music labels have agreed to waive their lawyer fees, Toder said. After winning a judgment against Thomas, the record companies could have required her to pay their legal costs.
Toder said that because one of the plaintiffs, Virgin Records, was forced to dismiss its part of the case on the day of trial, Thomas was therefore entitled to attorneys fees from Virgin. Toder used that to negotiate with the rest of the plaintiffs and they agreed not to seek fees.
That Toder was not going to handle Thomas' appeal came as news to Fred von Lohmann, senior staff attorney for the EFF, which advocates for the rights of Internet users and has offered support to Thomas in the past. He said the group would most certainly try to help Thomas when the time came but that he couldn't guarantee anything.
"We've helped lots of people caught in the music industry's litigation campaign to find counsel," von Lohmann said. "But I can't say we've succeeded in every case. It's easier for me to find lawyers in San Francisco and New York than it is in Minnesota...If people think we're out there backstopping every lawsuit, they need to donate a lot more money."
Thomas' case, however, has several things going for it, von Lohmann said.
"There is a strong basis for an appeal based on the jury instruction," von Lohmann said. "There's been a lot of speculation that (Thomas) is guilty, but the thing to keep in mind on appeal is that it's not whether the jury got the facts right. It's about whether the right legal standards were applied. A lot of copyright attorneys think the jury instructions were erroneous."
Thomas won't be able to file her appeal until a federal district judge in Minnesota decides on a motion to reduce the jury award. The $222,000 award violates the Constitution, Toder said.
The blog TorrentFreak was first to report that Thomas is looking for a new attorney.
Think Secret, the Apple rumor Web site, will no longer be published, under the terms of an undisclosed settlelment with Apple Inc. The site issued a small press release on the matter late last night, with Think Secret's publisher Nick Ciarelli noting, "I'm pleased to have reached this amicable settlement, and will now be able to move forward with my college studies and broader journalistic pursuits."
The site was sued by Apple in 2005 regarding leaks about upcoming hardware and software products that later came to fruition, including an updated iLife software suite and the Mac mini desktop computers that were showcased at the Macworld Expo in 2005.
Think Secret was being represented by attorneys in conjunction with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and in March, the site had attempted to get Apple's lawsuit dismissed on the grounds of it being a First Amendment violation, although to no avail.
The news is certainly a big hit to other large Apple rumor sites including 9to5Mac, Mac Rumors and AppleInsider. Sites like these encourage news tips and leaks about upcoming or unannounced Apple products, which is what got Think Secret into trouble in the first place.
One of the side issues of the Jammie Thomas controversy is whether someone may have steered her into taking on the recording industry.
The question came up last week shortly after Thomas was ordered by a federal jury to pay the record industry more than $220,000 for violating copyright law. Why would a 30-year-old mother of two, who makes $36,000 a year, want to go toe-to-toe with the recording industry, asks Chris Castle, an attorney, former music executive and owner of a small record label.
Jammie Thomas
Castle, who routinely appears at conferences to debate the morality and legality of file sharing, is skeptical that Thomas, who said this week she intends to appeal the jury's decision, decided all by herself to confront the music sector. He suspects she is being used by anti-copyright proponents in a public-relations struggle against the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).
"The situation makes you wonder why she went through all this," Castle said. "Particularly because she is a person of little means, and knows what the potential downside is. It's a little bit amazing."
Last week, Castle pointed a finger at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a group that advocates for the rights of Internet users, and other notable figures who have spoken out against copyright law. He accused them of trying to turn Thomas into the "Joan of Arc of illegal downloading." He said that such a strategy is unfair because it could lead to Thomas' financial downfall.
After reading Castle's comments, Thomas wanted a chance to reply.
Chris Castle
"My comment to him is that this was all my decision," she said. "From the get go, my attorney has pointed out to me what could happen. We knew (losing the copyright trial) was a possibility. I am no puppet. That he is insinuating that I'm being led around is very insulting to me. I refused to settle with the RIAA because I didn't do anything wrong."
Cindy Cohn, EFF's legal director also denied that anyone associated with that organization tried to influence Thomas. But EFF is also planning to support Thomas' appeal by filing a friend-of-the-court brief, according to a story in Wired.com
Should Thomas lose her appeal, she may not face a $220,000 bill alone. Supporters have begun sending her donations at freejammie.com.
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