E Buzz - 19 July 2010

Solicitors for dance music label Ministry of Sound have sent letters to thousands of internet users it believes have illegally downloaded music and says it is determined to take them to court – and extract substantial damages – unless they immediately pay compensation, typically around £350. Ministry of Sound's move marks an intensification of the legal battle against file sharers, which is seeing more and more lawyers send out what critics call speculative invoicing of downloaders suspected of pirating anything from music tracks to films and games.

The use of contracts and technologies to bypass copyright law and users' rights must be investigated by academics, a review of contract and copyright law by a government advisory body has said. The Strategic Advisory Board for Intellectual Property (SABIP) is an independent but publicly funded body overseen by the Intellectual Property Office. It was set up in 2008 to give the government independent, evidence-based advice on intellectual property issues. A report produced for SABIP has examined the relationship between contract law and copyright law and has said that some areas should be investigated by academics.

Speaking exclusively to The Telegraph, Dennis Crowley, Foursquare’s co-founder, said that his company was in talks with “everyone” in the search space – including all three major players: Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft about a data partnership. “Our data generates hugely interesting trends which would enrich search,” Crowley said. “We can anonymise data and use it to show venues which are trending at that moment. Twitter helped the world and the search engines know what people are talking about. Foursquare would allow people to search for the types of place people are going to – and where is trending – not what.” All three search engines failed to deny the talks were happening, but refused to comment or divulge any more detail when approached for statements.

Apple was a key player in the race to snap up ailing smartphone maker Palm earlier this year, but was outbid by HP's $1.2 billion offer, Business Insider reports. Citing an unnamed source familiar with the matter, Business Insider disclosed that search giant Google and Blackberry maker Research in Motion were also looking to purchase the company. The Business Insider source claims that Apple was very interested in acquiring Palm's library of intellectual property, which comprised more than 450 patents and 400 pending patent applications. Despite its apparently low bid, Apple was willing to fund Palm's smartphone operations to challenge RIM's dominance.

Sony Ericsson posted a second consecutive quarterly profit in the three months to June 30 based on strong sales of its Android-powered handsets, according to the company. The €12m (£10m) profit in Q2 compared to a loss of €213m during the same period a year earlier. Bert Nordberg, Sony Ericsson CEO, attributed the result to the company’s increased shipments of Android handsets. “I want us to have the biggest share of Android phone sales in the world. If you look globally, the competition is really between Android and iPhone. We currently have three operating systems that we use and I would like that to go down to two, with most of our activity going on Android,” he said.

Intel's decision to re-organise its efforts on WiMAX have prompted the Taiwanese government to reconsider its stance on LTE (long term evolution) as a future 4G standard. According to the Taipei Times, a government official told a reporter that the administration is investigating what effect the Intel move will have on both local WiMAX equipment manufacturers and on its own strategy on LTE. Intel has insisted that the re-organisation of its WiMAX unit does not mean that it is backing off its support for WiMAX. An Intel representative told TechEye two weeks ago that the company was still committed to the wireless broadband standard.

TechEye 

Scammers are calling people up pretending to work for Microsoft in the latest social engineering hack. According to the Guardian, the scam is really simple the phone rings at someone's home, and the caller, usually with an Indian accent, asks for the householder, quoting their name and address before saying "I'm calling from Microsoft". The caller claims that Redmond has had a report from their ISP of “serious virus problems” from your computer.

Microsoft said it is investigating reports of targeted attacks exploiting a vulnerability in Windows Shell, a component of Microsoft Windows. The critical, unpatched vulnerability is being exploited through infected USB flash drives. Microsoft said the vulnerability exists because Windows incorrectly parses shortcuts in such a way that malicious code may be executed when the user clicks the displayed icon of a specially crafted shortcut. The vulnerability is most likely to be exploited through removable drives, Microsoft said.

Thinq 

NASA and Rackspace have joined forces to open source a new platform for building so-called infrastructure clouds. Known as OpenStach, the platform is available under an Apache license, and when completed – possibly by the end of the year – NASA and Rackspace will ditch their current infrastructure cloud platforms, which don't scale as they would like.

The Register 

Juniper Research has released its report, Mobile Commerce Strategies: Prospects for Payments, Ticketing, Coupons & Banking 2010-2014. The study forecasts that rapidly increasing usage of mobile devices for tickets for all kinds of travel and entertainment, plus sports events, will be one of the main factors driving the growth of mobile commerce. Mobile ticketing transactions are forecast to exceed $100bn (£65bn), based on gross transaction value, as early as 2012. This is more than double the market in 2010.