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Pink Floyd won a legal battle Thursday against EMI that prevents the band's long-time record label from selling individual songs online. Sir Andrew Morritt, chancellor of Britain's High Court, ruled that Pink Floyd's contract forbids EMI from breaking up the band's albums without its permission, according to a spokeswoman for the British judicial system. EMI had argued that the stipulation only applied to physical albums, not online sales.

Five giant billboards have been removed from buildings in Hollywood near the site of the Academy Awards after Los Angeles prosecutors charged four people and four companies with hanging the so-called supergraphics illegally.

Last week, the UK LibDem party was thrown into scandal when two of its Lords proposed an amendment to the Digital Economy Bill that would allow for national web-censorship, particularly aimed at "web-lockers" like Google Docs and YouSendIt. Now a leaked document from the British Phonographic Institute suggests that the amendment was basically written by the record industry lobby and entered into law on their behalf by representatives of the "party of liberty." This weekend, LibDem members who attend the national convention in Birmingham will have the chance to vote on an emergency measure affirming the party's commitment to an open and just Internet, repudiating this disastrous measure. If you (or someone you know) is attending the convention, please support the "Save the Net" emergency measure and help rehabilitate the party's reputation on fundamental freedoms in the information society.

Proving once again that special interests can "buy" the "support" of politicians of any stripe! And they can do so regardless of the "best interests" of the "majority of the people", who those politicians are supposedly morally (by honor) and legally (by oath) bound to represent!

A coalition of security experts from more than 30 organizations is urging enterprises to exert more pressure on software vendors to ensure that they use secure code development practices. The group, led by the SANS Institute and Mitre Corp., offered enterprises recent hacks of Google draft contract language that would require vendors to adhere to a strict set of security standards for software development. In essence, the terms would make vendors liable for software defects that lead to security breaches. "Nearly every attack is enabled by [programming] mistakes that provide a handhold for attackers," said Alan Paller, director of research at SANS, a security training and certification group.

Of course, a more general way to address this and other "business" generated problems / abuses (like expensive required "arbitration" by companies owned and in bed with the companies requiring the arbitration!), is to FORBID contract elements that effectively strip any party of certain "rights" (like the right to sue for defectives; the right to freedom of speech; the right to warranty protections; the right to hold either party to public or published promises / representations, etc.). Basically, by making LYING and DECEIT and NEGLIGENCE liability and culpability unrestricted. Or will we hear / be told that being honest and producing a quality product is "anti-business"? What!? Is this like, if I can't lie and cheat being in business isn't worth it!? If that is true, then those parties and businesses could just as well "go away"! Just as "conservatives" say other criminals like that should. One may have argued that the software industry would never have "gotten off the ground" (at least, as fast as it did) if such strict liability had been enforced (as say, was eventually and is more often applied to physical building and their defects / collapses). That is, that the EULAs and contracts typically accompanying software ("not represented as fit for any purpose" more or less!) had been restricted. On the other hand, we might have gotten software somewhat slower but BETTER - NOT being associated with or causing the BILLIONS of dollars in losses due to bugs, security holes, etc. Others will rail that this will merely "make lawyers richer". So what if it will? As long as government isn't primarily "on the side" of the majority of the people (you know, like a "democracy" should be), then being able to get a individual "hired gun" is one of the only ways for the "little guy" to effectively defend themselves from corporate criminals and other "special interest" elites.

Office employees are loath to give up the vast amount of paper stored in their filing cabinets, much to the chagrin of companies that sell scanners and electronic document management systems. A recent survey by AIIM, an industry association representing vendors of such products, found that 62% of important documents are still archived in paper form. Even when documents are sent off to be scanned for archiving, 25% are photocopied beforehand "just in case," the survey found.

And no wonder. We know that "quality" paper will last for hundreds of years through a wide variety of conditions. Even "cheap" and/or abused paper can still be marginally useful (or have information from it recovered with extreme means). Generally NOT so with electronic media. Remember NASA's sad loss of terabytes of space data stored on tape? And then there is the real (as little as 2 years) verses the touted (20 to 100 years) lifetime of optical disks of various sorts. From http://www.archives.gov/records-mgmt/initiatives/temp-opmedia-faq.html - CD/DVD experiential life expectancy is 2 to 5 years even though published life expectancies are often cited as 10 years, 25 years, or longer. However, a variety of factors discussed in the sources cited in FAQ 15, below, may result in a much shorter life span for CDs/DVDs. Life expectancies are statistically based; any specific medium may experience a critical failure before its life expectancy is reached. Additionally, the quality of your storage environment may increase or decrease the life expectancy of the media. We recommend testing your media at least every two years to assure your records are still readable.