MS hits out at Google over copyright

Google has rejected accusations that it had a "cavalier" attitude to copyright, after a scathing attack by Microsoft, reports the Guardian.

Microsoft's lawyer Tom Rubin claimed Google was unfairly profiting from other people's work and taking a loose approach to the legal rights of copyright holders. "Companies that create no content of their own, and make money solely on the backs of other people's content, are raking in billions through advertising revenue and IPOs," he said in a speech.

"Google takes the position that everything may be freely copied unless the copyright owner notifies Google and tells it to stop." Rubin, who oversees copyright and intellectual property issues for the world's largest software company, said that a number of Google's services showed a disregard for rights owners.

Google is developing a program to help academics around the world exchange huge amounts of data, reports BBC News.

The firm's open source team is working on ways to physically transfer huge data sets up to 120 terabytes in size. "We have started collecting these data sets and shipping them out to other scientists who want them," said Google's Chris DiBona.

Google sends scientists a hard drive system and then copies it before passing it on to other researchers. It hopes that one day the data it helps to swap will be available to the public.

More than two months after breaching eBay's employee servers, a hacker, who calls himself Vladuz, remains at large, despite the best efforts of the online auctioneer's security team and officials with law enforcement agencies in the US and eastern Europe, reports The Register.

So far, little public information is known for sure about Vladuz, who on at least two occasions has logged into eBay forums as an official customer service representative and then mocked the company's security.

But the net is covered with bread crumbs left by a hacker who goes by that name, brazenly advertises cracking software and talks up his programming prowess.

Intel is facing legal problems in its two-year-old legal tussle with a major competitor AMD, largely because its own internal e-mail archiving system apparently isn't doing the job, reports eWeek.

A US federal judge, on 7 March, gave the world's largest microprocessor maker 30 days to try to recover about 1 000 lost e-mails that it was required to keep for an antitrust lawsuit filed by its biggest competitor, AMD, in 2005.

Judge Joseph Farnan of the US District Court in Delaware referred the lost e-mail matter to the so-called special master - a court official who follows up such orders for the judge. The judge also ordered Intel to file a detailed report on how it will try to recover the e-mail evidence.

Sony game chief Phil Harrison says a Second Life-style persistent online world could become the PlayStation 3's killer application, reports Wired.

Harrison, head of Sony's worldwide game development studios, was set to kick off the Game Developers Conference this week with a keynote speech unveiling two pieces of PlayStation 3 software, both designed to let users create content and socialise online.

At a media preview event, Harrison said that the future of games lay in "emergent entertainment, where we don't define the rules as game designers. We're putting the power back into the hands of the users."

Intel Corporation and the BMW Group have teamed up to offer in-car open systems based infotainment, says Intel.

The companies entered into a partnership in December 2005 and have now specified an Intel architecture-based integrated infotainment head-unit reference platform. The platform will provide a connected, rich, multimedia experience, in a way that is safe, reliable, and with appropriate interfaces for both the driver and passengers.

Both companies see opportunities to improve the consumer's entertainment, communication, and information on-the-go experiences by implementing in-car systems based on standards-based hardware and software building blocks.