Newswatch 6.20.07: Lessig moves on from copyright battle
Murdoch talking with Yahoo about handing over MySpace(!) Lessig leaving copyright to attack 'corruption' Richmond schools put IBM in $5 million bind GOOG to lobby for carbon reduction IP won't kill social media Leaked story: Yahoo buys Rivals.com Judge deals blow to RIAA MSFT agrees to change Vista virtualization SueTube: sex, copyright and rock 'n' roll
[Washington Post] News Corp.'s Rupert Murdoch has been discussing a deal to swap his MySpace social-networking site with Yahoo for a one-quarter stake in the Internet-portal company, even as he pursues his $5 billion offer for Dow Jones. The talks with Yahoo are preliminary and began before chief executive Terry S. Semel resigned Monday. It is unclear whether the talks will move forward under Semel's successor, Jerry Yang.
[Lessig blog] I am not (as one friend wrote) "leaving the movement." "The movement" has my loyalty as much today as ever. But I have come to believe that until a more fundamental problem is fixed, "the movement" can't succeed either. Compare: Imagine someone devoted to free culture coming to believe that until free software supports free culture, free culture can't succeed. So he devotes himself to building software. I am someone who believes that a free society -- free of the "corruption" that defines our current society -- is necessary for free culture, and much more. For that reason, I turn my energy elsewhere for now.
[AP] District puts IBM Corp. in a tough spot by asking the company to forgive a $5 million debt that began when educators bought computers from Big Blue way back in 1989.
[FT] Google is starting to throw its political weight around by looking to persuade politicians, energy companies and PC users to work together to reduce carbon emissions.
[Denise Howell] On the panel I moderated this morning, captioned Will Intellectual Property Kill Social Media? The answer was resoundingly “no,” and the converse also held true: social media won’t kill IP, either. Instead, they’ll find a way to productively co-exist, or so we all seemed to think.
[GigaOM] Yahoo will announce tomorrow it has bought collegiate sports site Rivals.com. The news is available due to what seems to be a publishing timing error on an Associated Press story by an Austrian web publication. Yahoo is describing the deal as Jerry Yang’s first as CEO, though recently ousted CEO Terry Semel’s regime had initiated discussions.
[Slashdot] A federal judge in New Mexico has put the brakes on the RIAA's lawsuit train, at least in the US District Court for New Mexico. Judge Lorenzo F. Garcia denied the RIAA's motion to engage in discovery. This means that the RIAA will not be able to easily get subpoenas to obtain identifying information from the University.
[Washington Post] Microsoft has agreed to revise its Vista operating system under a compromise with federal and state officials monitoring the company's compliance with a five-year-old antitrust decree, according to a court filing last night.
[Ars Technica] "A victory for Viacom could potentially have enormous implications for Yahoo, eBay, Amazon, MySpace, and many other Internet companies, because they all rely on the same DMCA Safe Harbors to protect many facets of their businesses, as well. The stakes are high all around."
