Control Freaks

Dear Microsoft,

Please stop doing what you're doing.

I hate the restrictions you plan to introduce to gaming and I prefer things the way they are.

I feel so strongly, that I hereby confirm that I will not buy an Xbox One while these restrictions are in place .

Specifically, please action the following:

• Remove the need to check in every 24 hours
• Let me trade my games, as I do now
• Let me sell my games, as I do now
• Let me rent games, as I do now
• Let me lend my games, as I do now
• Let me own my games
• Oh, and let me unplug Kinect - it's creepy

I hope that you will one day allow me the piece of mind required to buy your console.

See petition

Offsite: U Turn, apart from the creepy spycam, always on and watching your living room

20th June 2013. See  Microsoft Dumps (Most) Bad Xbox One Policies from  gamepolitics.com

Update: Kinect May Run Afoul of Proposed We Are Watching You Act

20th June 2013. See  article from  gamepolitics.com

The newly designed Kinect for Xbox One may run afoul of a bill called the We Are Watching You Act, if it becomes law. The law sponsored by Congressmen Michael Capuano and Walter Jones, requires companies to explicitly ask consumers for permission to store their data. The device would also have to inform the user how the data is collected and who will see it after it is collected. If the user declines to allow the device to record and share data the company would have to offer a new service that is the same as the existing one save for its ability to record. For Kinect, this would force Microsoft to add a whole new level of disclosure.

Capuano said:

Think about what you do in the privacy of your own home and then think about how you would feel sharing that information with your cable company, their advertisers and your government.

Surely a listening spycam in your living room is a far too tempting a facility for secretive spooks. They will surely try for remote access. Hopefully turning off the box at the mains should be enough to put the Trojan horse to sleep, but you never know. Quite sizeable batteries could easily be hidden in the electronics. Perhaps best to invest in some sort of muffle/cover when not in use.

Update: Even Forbes has its say on Microsoft control freakery

20th June 2013. See  article from  forbes.com

Even better, Microsoft have done away with region locking.

The High Court in Ireland has made its decision in a copyright infringement case brought by the major recording labels against several top ranking ISPs. The labels said that the service providers should be prohibited from facilitating subscriber access to The Pirate Bay and the Court agreed. UPC, Imagine, Vodafone, Digiweb, Hutchison 3G and Telefonica O2 now have 30 days in which to block the infamous torrent site.

In court at the end of May the labels argued that as many as 200,000 Irish ISP users access TPB every month, causing losses to the labels of around 20 million euros a year. This situation, they said, required a court order to force the ISPs to take action within 30 days.

The application by IRMA was the first of its kind since Ireland's signing into law of the European Union (Copyright and Related Rights) Regulations 2012. Described by some as Ireland's SOPA , the legislation was penned to make it easier for rightsholders to have sites such as The Pirate Bay blocked by court order. It appears to have done its job.

The biggest global threat to the Internet. That's how legal experts describe the controversial international agreement known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). The TPP agreement threatens to criminalize the use of your favourite websites -- including YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, your favourite blog -- and even your online comments.

Provisions in leaked drafts of the TPP could prohibit use of temporary copies , which according to policy experts at InternetNZ, are crucial to how the Internet works. As the EFF explains, this means that, anyone who ever views content on their device could potentially be found liable of [copyright] infringement . Legal experts are now warning that under the TPP, normal online activities could lead you to be cut off from the Internet, have your computer seized, be fined up to $150,000, or even land you in prison.

Norway is taking steps against online copyright infringement by amending the Copyright Act. The revisions are popular in parliament and if passed will grant authorities the right to block sites at the ISP level.

The proposed amendments also will require ISPs to hand over information to identify both website owners and end-users of unauthorized material online.

The new legislation would allow rights-holders to take to court site owners involved in illegal content sharing and order the internet service providers (ISPs) to prevent or impede access to sites that have extensively made available material that clearly violates copyrights , Torrenfreak quotes the amendments.

Norwegian internet campaigners have said that the draconian measures would lead to widespread censorship. Blogger Morten told Bikyanews.com:

It is simply wrong and we will not put up with this and if that means holding massive protests to do so it will happen.

We understand that there is tension right now in the government, but action must be taken by us young people to make certain our freedom of speech is not attacked.

The supreme court has thankfully ruled that opening newspaper articles in a browser via a website link is not somehow a breach of the newspaper's copyright.

The ruling comes after a three-year legal between the Newspaper Licensing Agency and a media monitoring company, Meltwater, which charges PR companies for alerts about their clients. After a dispute over fees that has already been through the high court and court of appeal, the supreme court was asked to look at the narrow question of whether the copyright of newspapers was infringed when a user browses content online.

Five supreme court judges led by the president, Lord Neuberger, found against the NLA's arguments that browsing would constitute a breach of copyright because the newspaper article would be temporarily stored in the users' computer.

The supreme court said it could not be a breach of copyright as it was a temporary page and the European Court of Justice had already ruled this would be an exception to copyright law, because it was a necessary part of the technical process supporting the internet experience. The supreme court said if it had found otherwise, it would have been:

An unacceptable result, which would make infringers of many millions of ordinary users of the internet across the EU who use browsers and search engines for private as well as commercial purposes.

But the supreme court has decided that the copyright issues surrounding web browsing are so important that it has referred the case it was examining to the European Court of Justice to ensure that the ruling applies uniformly across the EU.

Jorn Lyssegen, chief executive of Meltwater, said he was

Very pleased that the supreme court over-ruled the previous rulings by the court of appeals and the high court that the simple act of browsing the internet could be copyright infringement.

Andhra Pradesh Film Chamber of Commerce (APFCC), the body that represents the Telugu Film Industry, has launched a mobile app, Indian Movie Cop (IMC), to spread awareness about movie piracy, reports The Economic Times. The application is available for download from the Google Play Store.

Users can make use of the app without any registrations but it offers points to registered users to report on piracy. However, it's not clear whether those points could be converted into any offline incentive or the points are just to gamify the app.

The report piracy tab asks users to manually enter the shop name, address, movie title and other useful description to report about the piracy.