The funds generated from the suit are reportedly going to social services, health care, and other alcohol-related rehabilitation programs aimed at bettering the community. No mention has been made about what particular breweries are named in the lawsuit, but I think we can probably guess who they might be.

It will be interesting to see how far this case gets in court and what evidence the tribe has to substanciate their claims. Depending on the outcome, I would be interested in filing a grievance over some hangovers I have suffered through.

Liuxia Wong received a letter last year from Hard Drive Productions claiming that she had used her IP address last year to share “Amateur Allure Jen” on BitTorrent. The porn studio told her that they would take her to court for $150,000 but she could settle for only $3,400. Wong didn’t take the bait and is taking the porn producer to court according to TorrentFreak.

Wong is fighting back and has hired Steven Yuen, an experienced IP litigator from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, to sue Hard Drive Productions. In the lawsuit, Wong alleges that she did not download the work in question and attacks the porn studio on multiple accounts.

Hard Drive claims that the infringement took place on March 28, 2011. Wong did her research and found out that the film didn’t release until April 22, 2011. She claims that the letters “were designed to coerce her into settling the case despite the absence of any facts supporting liability against her.”

The lawsuit also claims that the letter from Hard Drive says that Wong could be indicted even if her router was unsecured and somebody else uploaded it. An assertion she dismisses as “erroneous.”

The best part is that she even throws up the opinion that you can’t copyright porn:

“Article 1, Section 8, Clause 8 of the United States Constitution, known as the Copyright Clause, empowers the United States Congress: ‘To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries,” the lawsuit details, adding:

“Early Circuit law in California held that obscene works did not promote the progress of science and the useful arts, and thus cannot be protected by copyright.”

Wong is asking the court to declare that she is not liable for infringement. She is also asking that the court to declare the company’s movie as not copyrightable and is illegal due to Hard Drive engaging in “solicitation, conspiracy to commit prostitution, pimping and/or pandering” during the making of the film.

Hard Drive Productions, all in all, seems to be pretty bad at this claiming damages over copyright infringement thing. They failed to mitigate alleged damages since they didn’t use the DMCA to have offending torrents removed.

They also hired non-California licensed investigators to monitor torrents which is in violation of the California Business and Professions Code.

We have the entire lawsuit for your perusal. It’s a fascinating read and if it goes in Wong’s favor, it could change the porn industry, at least in California.

Gov.uscourts.cand.250725.4.0

The suit alleges that Gingrich is knowledgable about copyright issues and that the violation is therefore knowledgable. Sullivan requests a court order requiring Gingrich stop playing the song at rallies and award damages.

The song is closely associated with the movie Rocky III (and the Rocky franchise in general), and was originally written in 1982 at the request of Sylvester Stallone for the movie. It was the number one song of 1982, and won a Grammy for Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal. And now, because I’m sure we could all stand an afternoon pick-me-up, here’s the music video:

According to Stein, the bad news came after reps for the agency asked him his views on global warming. Stein says he told them he was not certain that global warming was a man-made phenomenon. He also told them that, as a matter of religious belief, he believed that God, not man, controlled the weather.

Stein says that Kyocera soon withdrew its offer and got someone else to play a Stein-ish character in its commercials instead.

Some folks think Stein got a raw deal.

In a Reuters/Ipsos poll [PDF] conducted in September of last year, it was revealed that more Americans than ever believe the planet is warming. In 2010, 75% of Americans said they thought the world’s temperature had been going up in the past 100 years. In 2011, 82.5% said they thought it had. And, it’s a bipartisan stance. The number of Democrat converts went from 87% to 91%. But Republicans went from 60% to 66%. That’s a 1% higher increase than Democrats.

The big question, of course, is, “Why?”

In that same poll, an interesting thing happened. Overall, belief that global warming is human-caused only went down 4% (6.5% among Dems; 0.3% among Repubs). Belief in “natural causes” went up 3% in the year the poll covered, mostly due to Republicans. They had an 11% increase in the “natural causes” category. Democrats, on the other hand, swung to the “both equally” category by almost 10%. 5% of Independents left the “human causes” and went almost exclusively to the “natural causes” camp.

Of course, this is a study of the Average Joe’s opinions, and the fact that they change. According to Wikipedia scientists overwhelmingly believe that the globe is warming and that it is caused mainly by human activity. On the other hand Petition.org has 31,000 scientists who have signed a petition saying that they don’t believe in manmade global warming. And then there are the “climategate” emails which made public manipulation of the data by the scientists credited with creating the infamous controversial “hocky stick” graph. That’s the graph that was pointed to as proving man caused global warming. There are scientific opinions on both sides of the issue of whether man has actually caused global warming and even whether global warming is still occurring. This certainly indicates that the science isn’t settled as some have claimed and that an opinion on either side should not be the basis of employment.

But, Ben Stein is not a scientist. He is pretty much an Average Joe (albeit an actor) and he is entitled to his opinion just like anyone else. The biggest disturbing thing was that such an opinion question was asked, and that someone had the temerity to fire him after he couched his answer in terms of his faith.

If the whole thing came down to whether Kyocera and its representatives thought someone who did not believe climate change was exclusively man-made was worthy of being associated with their name, then they are going to have a real problem with 71.66% of their customer base.

Willie Kavanagh, head of EMI in Ireland, said yesterday that the government had ignored a request from EMI to produce the law it was preparing, and that he suspected that the measure would not “satisfy the music industry’s requirement for injunctive relief.”

EMI filed the suit with Ireland’s High Court. The suit is the second EMI has filed in recent years concerning music piracy in Ireland. In 2010 the High Court shot down an attempt by EMI to enforce a 3 strikes rule on internet service providers in the country.

[Source: Irish Times]

Apparently, when users typed in the name of the firm, “Lyonnaise de Garantie”, into Google, AutoComplete offered the term “escroc” associated with the term. “Escroc” means “swindler” or “crook”.

Google explained to the court that it did not influence the results of its AutoComplete technology, but rather the suggestions were the result of other users’ searches. That is to say, other people were searching for results about that insurance company being crooked. Google makes no representation as to whether the statement implied is true, accurate, etc. It simply is there because other people put it there.

As reported on Fierce Government IT:

“The French court in its ruling said Google can, or should, exercise “human control over the functionality” adding that absent a delegation of powers, every company head “is personally responsible for the information content that the company, according to his purpose, issues to the public.” The fine amounts to approximately $65,000.”

The notion of a party trying to hold Google responsible for simply impersonally reflecting the state of things on the Internet is not unfamiliar to Americans. Former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum, now a Republican Candidate for President, has tried to do that himself, with no success.

As Josh Wolford reported last week, Rick Santorum has had a “Google problem“. And, as is the nature of things online, when he tried to fight it directly, it only got worse. Finally he approached Google as a corporation and demanded that the offensive search results be removed. Google refused.

Smartphone Technologies, the plaintiff in the suit, accused Amazon of violating patents that it holds. Upon closer examination, these patents are more for “methods” rather than devices. One patent, for example, was for:

“A method for software control using a user-interactive display screen feature is disclosed that reduces stylus or other manipulations necessary to invoke software functionality from the display screen… [A] graphical feature having a surface area is displayed on a touch-sensitive screen. The touch-sensitive screen is coupled to at least one processor and the graphical feature is generated by an operating system and uniquely associated with a particular software program by the operating system.”

See? This “patent” could apply to any number of devices that have come about in the past few years. Hardly seems like something that any knowledgeable Patent Office official would have let pass. It was filed in May of 2000, back when all this hocus-pocus probably seemed very “Minority Report” and likely to be controlled by one manufacturer in the future.

Which is probably why this Smartphone Technologies company bought the patent. Not to use it for invention or manufacture, but for lawsuit fodder.

So, for reasons unknown to the public, Amazon and Smartphone have somehow come to an agreement that keeps the whole thing out of court. Speculation abounds. Maybe Amazon bought the patent, or partnered with Smartphone to go after other tablet makers. Maybe they paid them to go away. Maybe someone found a horses head in… never mind.

Point is: There was a lawsuit. Now there isn’t. Carry on.

Elan, a tech company that focuses on touchscreen technology, sued Apple in 2009 for violation of two of the company’s patents. In June of last year, the U.S. International Trade Commission ruled that Apple had not violated any American laws.

Settling this suit lightens Apple’s legal load by only a small amount. The company is currently embroiled in a number of patent infringement actions with Samsung, HTC, and others. Samsung is accused of copying Apple’s phone and tablet designs in its Galaxy line. HTC, meanwhile, was just on the losing side of a ruling by the ITC, which held that the smartphone manufacturer had violated one of Apple’s patents.

[Source: Taiwan News]

While preparing the story this morning, I attempted to contact representatives of both Microsoft and Comet. I was unable to get in touch with anyone from Comet, however a representative from Microsoft replied via email earlier this afternoon. They sent me the following statement, attributed to David Finn, Associate General Council, Worldwide Anti-Piracy and Anti-Counterfeiting at Microsoft:

Today, Microsoft filed a legal action against UK retailer Comet in the High Court in London. This action focuses on Comet’s unauthorized production of recovery discs, which are one type of recovery solution. Recovery solutions allow customers to repair an operating system, or to reinstall it in the rare event of a system failure.

In 2008 and 2009, Comet approached tens of thousands of customers who had bought PCs with the necessary recovery software already on the hard drive, and offered to sell them unnecessary recovery discs for £14.99. Not only was the recovery software already provided on the hard drive by the computer manufacturer but, if the customer so desired, a recovery disc could also have been obtained by the customer from the PC manufacturer for free or a minimal amount.

Illegally replicating software and then selling it is counterfeiting. We’ve often encouraged our customers to buy from a trusted retailer. In this case, it is disappointing that a well-known retailer created so many unwitting victims of counterfeiting.

To sum up, then, Comet has been copying Microsoft’s software without permission, and using it to sell consumers recovery discs they either don’t need, or could obtain for less money directly from their computer’s manufacturer. All in all, it looks like Microsoft has a pretty good point on this one.

Microsoft announced this morning that they have filed suit against Comet, a British retailer that specializes in electronics and appliances. The suit accuses Comet of “creating and selling more than 94,000 sets of counterfeit Windows Vista and Windows XP recovery CDs.” The recovery discs were sold to customers who bought Windows PCs. In years past, Microsoft supplied such discs itself, but has stopped doing so.

In their statement, Microsoft insists that “Comet’s actions were unfair to customers,” and emphasized their concern to “ensure people get what they pay for,” and to shield customers from pirated versions of their software.

Meanwhile, Comet have issued a statement of their own. In it they insist that they are the ones who acting in the consumers’ best interests, based on their belief that “customers had been adversely affected by the decision to stop supplying recovery discs with each new Microsoft Operating System based computer.” Comet also asserted that their actions do not constitute infringement, and stated their intention to defend against the suit “vigorously.”

A request for comment from Microsoft has not yet been answered. This situation presents an interesting problem, in that both companies claim to be acting in the best interest of consumers. Moreover, Comet does not appear to be selling the discs to consumers independently. The only way to get them is to purchase a Windows-based PC from Comet. Which means that in effect, Comet’s customers are only receiving a product that they have already paid for. This is definitely a story worth watching. Check back for updates as it unfolds.

What do you think? Should Comet be allowed to make Windows recovery discs for customers who have bought Windows computers? Let us know in the comments.

[Sources: Microsoft Press Release; Comet Statement]