A satellite TV hacker has testified in court that he was paid for 10 years by HarperCollins, a publishing company owned by Rupert Murdoch. The hacker’s job, according to the prosecution, was to break DISH network’s cryptographic security and flood the market with pirate DISH satellite cards. The idea was that this would cost DISH nearly a billion dollars in lost revenue, perhaps putting them out of business or weakening them ready for a takeover.
Apparently MySpace has jumped the shark, with the number of page hits dropping 4% in September. News Corp say it’s a normal seasonal variation. I’m skeptical of that explanation, as us old-timers know that September is when all the students go to college, jump on their fast college-provided Internet connections, and post tons of crap on the net. Of course, now we have Eternal September, but many sites still see a noticeable uptick in traffic that month.
As of January 15th, the Supreme Court has ruled that it is legal for copyright to be extended indefinitely, and retroactively. It is likely that no work created after 1920 will ever enter the public domain. Justice Clarence Thomas was amongst those voting in favor of Disney in Eldred vs Ashcroft. In totally unrelated news, on January 9th Clarence Thomas was offered a book publishing deal worth $1 million from HarperCollins, a division of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation.