Phoenix, AZ – On Wednesday, March 5 at 2 p.m., the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) will urge a federal judge in Phoenix to block the recording industry’s effort to sue two Arizona residents for simply having music files in a “shared” folder on their computer.

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is seeking thousands of dollars in damages from the defendants in the case, Pamela and Jeffery Howell, for alleged unauthorized distribution of copyrighted digital music. However, instead of proving that the Howells actually distributed music files, the RIAA claims only that they had songs in the “shared” folder of peer-to-peer file-sharing software Kazaa — without any proof that anyone other than their own investigators actually downloaded the songs from them.

EFF’s Senior Staff Attorney Fred von Lohmann will argue at Wednesday’s hearing that the RIAA cannot take this shortcut in its lawsuit campaign.

“This amounts to suing someone for attempted copyright infringement — something the Copyright Act simply does not allow,” said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Fred von Lohmann. “If the RIAA wants to keep bringing these suits and collecting big settlements, then they have to follow the law and prove their case. It’s not enough to say the law could have been broken. The RIAA must prove it actually was broken.”

For more about the case:
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/01/eff-files-brief-atlantic-v-howell-r…http://www.eff.org/press/archives/2008/03/03

I read this and I just had to post this. For my love of legos as a kid and love of mp3 players, this just awesome.  I just love the idea of this. You can buy the lego mp3 player, lego ipod dock, or lego ipod speakers athttp://www.homeloo.com/shop/index.php?cPath=31

Although not officially licensed, there’s little doubt where this little player got it’s design from. Most people have played with LEGOs at one point or another in their life, and with this player you can take it one step further and rock the streets with a player which brings new meaning to the word “bricked“.

Available in a variety of colors, the player seem to have no internal memory and rely on microSD (not microSDHC) cards to provide storage. Controls are hidden as raised dots on the front of the player, and there is no screen or other visible controls, so chances are that means no hold or shuffle mode etc. That and the fact the internal rechargeable battery will only give you about 6 hours on a charge makes this more of a novelty than a useful player, and with a price of $46 it’s not something you would buy for it’s music playback capabilities alone in any case.

http://www.anythingbutipod.com/archives/2008/02/lego-lookalike-player-brings-back-childhood-memories.php

If this as good as the article says that this is, then the big companies trying to get in the way and not letting us do what we want with the content we own are over and DRM will be dead. 

Firmafest writes to let us know that ‘DVD Jon’ Lech Johansen’s company has released an open beta of DoubleTwist, a desktop application that allows the user to copy media to any device. There’s a Facebook app too. The software is available for download at Doubletwistventures.com. Currently only Windows is supported, but a Macintosh version is on the way.

http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/02/19/2022246&from=rss

Apple just announced a price drop on the screenless iPod Shuffle. So with this news, I thought that this would be the best time to put the iPod in the ring with a smarter choice and show you that despite the price cut, the iPod Shuffle is still an overprice shinny object.

read more | digg story

 This is just to sweet to pass up so I had to post this. Operantly the University of Mich. created the most powerful laser EVER!

Rest assured, we’ve seen some wicked frickin’ lasers in our day, but apparently, even the two-kilowatt rendition that heats coffee in mere seconds can’t hold a candle ray of light to HERCULES. Intentionally named in all caps by University of Michigan gurus in order to highlight its awesomeness, said laser contains 300 terawatts of power (or 300 times the capacity of the entire US electricity grid) and could “help scientists develop better proton and electron beams for radiation treatment of cancer.” Still, we can’t help but conclude with UMich’s own description of this masterpiece: “If you could hold a giant magnifying glass in space and focus all the sunlight shining toward Earth onto one grain of sand, that concentrated ray would approach the intensity of [HERCULES].” Damn.

 http://www.engadget.com/2008/02/16/university-of-michigan-creates-most-intense-laser-in-the-univers/