Tag Archives: illegal

Best Buy Selling Napster? To Rhapsody?

October 3, 2011MusicBest Buy, Facebook, illegal, marriage, Music, napster, Rhapsody, roxio, shawn fanning, Spotify, streamingJ Powers

Rhapsody

The details are not disclosed, but it looks like Rhapsody has come to an agreement with Best Buy to take over Napster service. Of course, this is Rhapsody’s attempt to counter the surge of users on Spotify.

Napster was founded in 1999 by John and Shawn Fanning. Of course, issues arose with the downloading of illegal music, which was brought to the forefront by the band Metallica. The peer-to-peer sharing site went bankrupt in 2002, then sold their assets to Roxio, who then sold the company to Best Buy.

Rhapsody has also been in the music space since 2001. Their music streaming service has gone through a few changes, but survived for over ten years. So when Spotify brought a surge to the online streaming service category, it would make sense that Rhapsody would want to counter.

“This deal will further extend Rhapsody’s lead over our competitors in the growing on-demand music market,” said Jon Irwin, president, Rhapsody. “There’s substantial value in bringing Napster’s subscribers and robust IP portfolio to Rhapsody as we execute on our strategy to expand our business via direct acquisition of members and distribution deals.”

The only thing we know from the details is that Best Buy will still keep a stake in the company. That could become a great marriage for Rhapsody, because Best Buy has been known for putting bundles into their product sales. Getting someone on a service for a couple free months and hope they don’t cancel the membership when the time comes.

Currently, Rhapsody and Napster are the two largest on-demand music services. With the acquisition, they will be able to run against Spotify and the Facebook integration.

The deal will be finalized on November 30th.

Google Acted Illegally in UK

November 3, 2010google, Law, Legal, Privacydata protection, google, illegal, Law, Privacy, ukAndrew

The UK’s Information Commissioner today confirmed that Google breached UK’s Data Protection Act when the Street View cars captured personal data while collecting wi-fi network information.

As a result of this, Google will be required to sign an undertaking to take steps to ensure that breaches of the Act don’t re-occur. Google will then be audited in nine month’s time to confirm that the required policies and training has taken place. Finally, once any legal obstacles have been cleared, Google will have to delete the personal data from the UK.

Currently, the Information Commissioner does not intend to fine Google, but will take further action if necessary

The Commissioner, Christopher Graham said, “It is my view that the collection of this information was not fair or lawful and constitutes a significant breach of the first principle of the Data Protection Act. The most appropriate and proportionate regulatory action in these circumstances is to get written legal assurance from Google that this will not happen again – and to follow this up with an ICO audit.”

What’s interesting about this is that the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) had previously decided not to take action against Google because the sample data shown to the ICO was considered to be fragmentary and therefore unlikely to constitute personal data.

However, Google’s Alan Eustace admitted on Google’s own blog that, “A number of external regulators have inspected the data as part of their investigations (seven of which have now been concluded). It’s clear from those inspections that whilst most of the data is fragmentary, in some instances entire emails and URLs were captured, as well as passwords.”

The Commissioner then infers that because this happened in other countries, it happened in the UK, even if most of the data was fragmentary. You can read the Commissioner’s letter to Google Inc here.

Personally, I’m pleased that Google is being held to account. Far too often it seems that big business gets away with abusing our personal information.

FTC Offers Bounty to Name Spammers

September 18, 2004Commerce, Crime, Dave's Muse, Information, Security, Services, Software, Technicalarrest, bounty, conviction, illegal, Law, reward, snitches, spam, spammers, spamming, whistleblowersTodd Cochrane

The United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced, in a public report, that a system of monetary rewards would help improve the enforcement of the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act of 2002 (CAN-SPAM Act.) That Act, which became effective on January 1, 2004, required the FTC to conduct a study and provide a report to Congress on a CAN-SPAM “bounty system.” While the fact that bounties may be offered to those who help authorities in nabbing spammers doesn’t unusual, what is very much out of the ordinary is the projected bounty amounts necessary to make them effective.

The FTC reports three hurdles exist in enforcing the CAN-SPAM Act: 1) identifying and locating the spammer, 2) developing sufficient evidence to prove the spammer is legally responsible for sending the spam, and 3) obtaining the source of funding for the bounties. The report states that those with the information most helpful to authorities are whistleblowers and insiders: those who have had personal or business contact with the spammers, themselves. Because of the real possibility of retaliation, the monetary awards encourage the whistleblowers to come forward. The FTC thinks that awards of about $100,000, upward to $250,000, are reasonable, with funding for the bounty program to come from federal taxes.

Dave’s Opinion
I wish I knew a spammer; for a quarter of a million, I could by RV my kids are clamoring for and go on the road for a few months. Why do we need an incentive to do the right thing. Turning in details of bona fide spammers is just a good thing to do. Why should we expect to be bribed by the government?

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References
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