News summary for October 9th by Ivan Hernández. 1. Their Crime: Playing iTunes On Devices Not Named iPod, NYT C4 Summary: ========= French law strengthened the hand of studios and record labels by prohibiting a person's ability to circumvent protection measures. The process of switching the music from the Apple or Microsoft formats to the MP3 format removes all copyright restrictions. Transferring the DVD also requires bypassing protection measures. Protection measures, often called digital rights management, are supposed to prevent piracy. Observation: ============= To my knowledge, currently there is no effective mechanism to protect digital media content, the most recent failure Sonys Spyware Scandal (http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?id=16812&ch=biztech) Idea: ====== Build effective digital protection measures that prevent piracy, using unique identifiers provided by the media player. 2. Tellme and Cingular Plan Broader Directory Service, NYT C8 Summary: ========= Tellme, based on Mountain View, Calif., a major provider of automated directory service to cellphone carriers, find itself in an increasingly crucial position as both cell carriers and Web portals like Google, Microsoft and Yahoo start to explore the lucrative market for mobile search. Ideas: ====== Develop automatic location awareness systems on cellphones to get better search results and advertisements Work on content adaptation to provide a better experience in smalldevices. 3. A Slippery Slope of Censorship at YouTube, NYT C5 YouTube users can flag any video as containing pornography, mature content or graphic violence, depicting illegal acts or being racially or ethnically offensive. A video is removed only if a review by the company's customer support department agrees that it is inappropriate, or that the video is on its face in violation of the site's terms of use. Observation: ============= The problem with censorship in YouTube is a minor problem. Nevertheless, it is a major problemn when the censorship comes from the government, where they can ban any content or even complete sites. Idea: ====== Build a distributed and anonymous web server.