Lycos anti-spam screensaver proves too effective for target websites

The anti-spam action pioneered by Lycos and its 'make love not spam' campaign has been all-too successful and could make the company vulnerable to legal attack. The screensaver, which has been downloaded 90,000 times, enables disgruntled users to contribute to denial of service attacks on identified spammers, the idea being to clog up their server's bandwidth and limit, but not fully disable, the problem at source. The Internet monitoring firm Netcraft reports, however, that two of the targets (bokwhdok. ...more

Credit card companies not responsible for content on websites

Credit card companies are not liable for damages if they process transactions from a website in breach of copyright a Californian court has ruled. An adult website 'Perfect 10' had sued Mastercard and Visa because they provided credit card services for websites which, it claimed, had stolen and reproduced its copyrighted material. In dismissing the case, Judge James Ware, ruled that whilst the credit card companies assisted in the business they weren't helping the site to infringe copyright in any way. ...more

Gowers considered cutting copyright lifespan

Andrew Gowers has revealed that he considered cutting the 50-year copyright limit on sound recordings in his government-sponsored review of UK intellectual property laws and only decided to recommend that the status quo be retained because it was 'politically prudent' to do so. Gowers told the Out-law podcast that, rather than concede the music industry's demand for longer protection up to 95 years, evidence submitted to the review suggested that there was a strong case for deciding that 50 years is too long. 'We certainly considered it, and if you look at the report that came from the academics that we commissioned to examine the arguments and examine the evidence they also argued very robustly that 50 years could be arguably more than enough,' Gowers said. ...more

ISPs see pay as you go broadband as solution to bandwidth hogging

NTL is playing down talks that it is testing pay-as-you-go broadband services. Various newsgroups, including hthell:world, are claiming that the cable provider is testing two potential services: pay-as-you-go (PAYG) and pre-pay. However an NTL spokesperson told us that it is merely an 'infrastructure and technology trial'. ...more

X-Men transformed into computer game

If you enjoyed the exploits of Wolverine, Storm and the Cyclops in last summer's movie blockbuster X-Men, you will be happy to hear that their uncanny superhuman abilities are being turned into a new computer game. "So what?" I hear you cry, "The X-Men have already appeared in computer games for the PlayStation and the Gameboy." To which I reply, "hush your beak", as this new X-Men game will be appearing on the next-generation consoles such as the PlayStation 2 and the Xbox. ...more