The Silicon Valley Watcher blog has a really interesting post today giving “7 reasons
The Register reveals that “[a] Dutch online reseller who promised customers simlock-free iPhones has apparently gone missing, leaving coworkers bemused and hundreds of consumers a total of €700,000 in the hole. The owner of the website iPhonehelpdesk.nl has allegedly emptied his offices in Amsterdam and disappeared without a word to his colleagues.”
According to another Register article, “[t]he [UK] government has launched a consultation on plans to increase the maximum fine for traders in copyright-infringing material from £5,000 to £50,000 as part of a plan to protect ‘creative Britain.’ The change would bring the financial punishment for online copyright infringement for commercial purposes in line with the penalty for physical infringement. The Intellectual Property Office (IPO) is proposing the massive increase as part of its response to the Treasury’s wide-ranging Gowers Review of intellectual property, which reported in 2006. Submissions to the review from music, film, software and other rights holders urged for an increase of deterrents against large scale commercial infringement.
The New York Times writes that “[b]esides the bloody shooting war going on between Georgia and Russia, there’s another, quieter battle going on in cyberspace. The Georgian government is accusing Russia of disabling Georgian Web sites, including the site for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Because of the disruption, the Georgian government began posting the Foreign Ministry’s press dispatches on a public blog-hosting site owned by Google (georgiamfa.blogspot.com) and on the Web site of Poland’s president, Lech Kaczynski. Separately, there were reports that Estonia, which was embroiled in an electronic battle with Russia in May of last year, was sending technical assistance to the Georgian government.”
CNetNews.com reports that “AOL’s Platform-A subsidiary is now bringing affiliate marketing to widget ads. If that sounds like a lot of media speak, that’s because it is. To power widget ads, AOL acquired start-up Goowy in February, and it has already worked the acquisition into Platform-A. As part of Tuesday’s announcement, Goowy’s technology has been officially incorporated into Buy.at, an affiliate network that AOL also acquired earlier this year. ‘Once a publisher places a widget on their Web site, consumers can grab it and distribute the widget to other locations on the Web, including social-network pages, desktops, and blogs,’ a release from AOL explained. ‘The publisher earns revenue for each sale driven by the widget, even if it’s several download generations away from the publisher’s site.’”