A Finnish court has ruled that merely operating an open WiFi access point does not make you liable for copyright infringements committed on your network. From the defense attorney’s press release:

This alleged copyright infringement had taken place in a specific 12-minute
period in July 14 2010, a date when a summer theater play with an audience
of around hundred people was held at the premises of the former school
owned and resided by the lady.

The applicants were unable to provide any evidence that the
connection-owner herself had been involved in the file-sharing. The court
thus examined whether the mere act of providing a WiFi connection not
protected with a password can be deemed to constitute a
copyright-infringing act.

Crucially, the applicants also sought an injunction to prevent the
defendant for committing any similar acts in the future. Had the injunction
been granted, the legal status of various open WiFi providers would have
turned out extremely difficult, as rights-owners would have been provided
with a powerful legal weapon to shut them down in cases of similar,
arguably insignificant infringements by incidental visitors and customers…

Finally, the court concluded that the WiFi owner cannot be deemed liable
for the infringements actually committed by third parties.

Finnish court rules open WiFi network owner not liable for infringement

(Image: Warchalking, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from isaacmao’s photostream)

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Finnish court: open WiFi owners not responsible for copyright infringement

Last we heard of the federal government’s Wireless Emergency Alert system, only Sprint had signed on to deliver the SMS warnings. Now, with the secured participation of all four major carriers and smaller regional operators, that gratis service is set to go live this month, covering nearly 97 percent of active mobile users. Using a “point-to-multipoint system” that targets at-risk subscribers, the National Weather Service, FEMA, FCC and Department of Homeland Security-backed initiative works by sending location-based messages of 90 characters or less to nearby handsets in the event of an imminent meteorological threat. The mostly opt-out service will also accommodate AMBER and Presidential alerts, although you won’t have that flexibility for missives sent from our head of state. So, the next time your phone gives off a strange auditory tone, you’ll know to head for shelter.

Wireless Emergency Alert system goes live this month, delivers location-based SMS warnings originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 14 May 2012 17:37:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Wireless Emergency Alert system goes live this month, delivers location-based SMS warnings

In need of a new computer, but holding out because you don’t want to be saddled with a last-gen OS when Windows 8 lands? Worry not potential consumers, Microsoft plans to offer a cheap upgrade path to its latest and greatest if you buy in now. Well, not now, but soon. Starting June 2nd Redmond will offer a $15 upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows 8 Pro. Mary Jo Foley first reported the deal last week, but wasn’t able to put a price on the offer. Now, Paul Thurrott is filling in those blanks. For $14.99 any new PC purchaser will be insured against the coming Metro revolution. This is hardly a new tactic for Microsoft, which has used similar deals to try and stave off steep drops in computer sales as the release of a new OS approaches. The only question we have left is, why the push to Pro? Though, far be it for us to look a gift horse in the mouth.

Microsoft to offer $15 Windows 8 upgrade, when you buy a Win7 PC originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 14 May 2012 13:31:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple is drawing upon the expertise of security researchers from Kaspersky Lab when it comes to security on OS X, according to Kaspersky CTO Nikolai Grebennikov. In an interview with Computing News, Grebennikov revealed that Apple had asked his firm to begin analyzing OS X in order to help improve its security. The request follows the recent high-profile Flashback scare, and shows that Apple is beginning to take steps to take OS X security more seriously.

“Mac OS is really vulnerable, and Apple recently invited us to improve its security. We’ve begun an analysis of its vulnerabilities, and the malware targeting it,” Grebennikov told Computing News. “Our first investigations show Apple doesn’t pay enough attention to security. For example, Oracle closed a vulnerability in Java, which was a target for a major botnet several months ago.”

Following reports that more than a half-million Macs were infected by Flashback thanks to a then-unpatched Java vulnerability in OS X, Kaspersky Lab boldly told members of the media that “Mac OS X invulnerability” to malware is a myth. Although the statement generated grousing among the Mac-using community, it’s true—security researchers have been arguing for years that Macs were only perceptibly “safer” because of their relatively low market share. It would only be a matter of time before attackers began focusing on the Mac, and Kaspersky argued last month that we have officially reached that point. “Market share brings attacker motivation,” the firm said in April. “Expect more drive-by downloads, more Mac OS X mass-malware. Expect cross-platform exploit kits with Mac-specific exploits.”

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Kaspersky performing independent security analysis on OS X (Updated)

High-power wireless maven Amped Wireless has finally filled that conspicuous dual-band gap in its lineup with the R20000G router. Promising to cover the same 10,000 square feet that its predecessor, it’ll flit between the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands to ensure you can catch unbroken video around your house on the go. Beside the five ethernet jacks you’ll find a USB 2.0 port for adding some network storage and the company’s usual raft of features. It’s available for $180 on Amped’s website from today, and should be arriving on store shelves shortly.

Continue reading Amped Wireless launches dual-band 10,000 square feet router, now no wall is safe

Amped Wireless launches dual-band 10,000 square feet router, now no wall is safe originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 14 May 2012 12:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Enlarge / Buffalo’s 802.11ac router is the first you can actually buy.

Texas-based networking company Buffalo announced its first 802.11ac wireless router and wireless media bridge are available today for retail purchase. The two networking products are backwards compatible with 802.11n devices, but also feature the latest ac wireless standard.

Earlier this year, Buffalo promised the arrival of this next-generation router in the summer, but last month Netgear announced its similar router would be arriving in May. Today, it looks like Buffalo hustled enough to be able to call “first.”

The 802.11ac standard has not yet been ratified by the IEEE, so none of your current phones, tablets, or laptops will be able to automatically benefit from the 1.3 Gpbs wireless promised in this router. But as dongles and devices with compatible WiFi chips become available over the next year, your 802.11n router gets an automatic upgrade to an 802.11ac router, so to speak.

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Dawn of a new wireless: first 802.11ac router available today

Ivy Bridge, Intel’s first generation of chips to use the 22nm fabrication process, is hardly out of the gate, and yet talk has already turned to the company’s next manufacturing technologies. According to Xbit Labs, which got its hands on some telltale slides, Paul Otellini et al. have the roadmap for 10nm, 7nm and 5nm processes locked down, and the company is preparing fabs in the states and Ireland to make chips using the 14nm fabrication method. Given that timeframe, Intel says 10nm chips will ship in 2015, with work on 5nm technology beginning that same year. While the slides in question look legit — and that timeline matches previous reports — we’re not sure just when these mystery slides first made the rounds. Alas, we’ll have a good few years to sort 5nm fact from fiction.

Intel sets sights on 5nm chip; already gearing up fabs for 14nm production originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 14 May 2012 10:12:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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For all the good stuff it brings, Ivy Bridge has also been running a little hotter than reviewers and overclockers might have liked — and that’s putting it mildly. A few weeks back, Overclockers discovered a possible culprit: regular thermal paste that sits between the CPU die and the outwardly-visible heatspreader plate. By contrast, Intel splashed out on fluxless solder in this position in its Sandy Bridge processors, which is known have much greater thermal conductivity. Now, Japanese site PC Watch has taken the next logical step, by replacing the stock thermal paste in a Core i7-3770K with a pricier aftermarket alternative to see what would happen. Just like that, stock clock temperatures dropped by 18 percent, while overclocked temperatures (4GHz at 1.2V) fell by 23 percent. Better thermals allowed the chip to sustain higher core voltages and core clock speeds and thereby deliver greater performance. It goes to show, you can’t cut corners — even 22nm ones — without someone noticing, but then Apple could have told you that.

Intel caught out using cheap thermal paste in Ivy Bridge? originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 14 May 2012 05:03:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Yup, Apples are bound to flow beneath the Ivy Bridge at some point, but how much of a performance boost will they deliver? If you’re happy to hold onto a little skepticism, then two unexpected appearances on the Geekbench site could offer some early answers. The first purports to be an unknown ‘MacBookPro9,1’ laptop powered by an Ivy Bridge Core i7-3820QM running at 2.7GHz, which achieved a benchmark of 12252 — that’s around 17 percent better than a current equivalent Core i7 15-inch or 17-inch MacBook Pro. The second benchmark comes from an ‘iMac13,2’ running off Intel’s next-gen Core i7-3770 desktop chip clocked at 3.4GHz, which only merits a score of 12183 because it’s hobbled by 4GB of RAM. If you exclude memory and compare only the CPU integer and floating point scores, then you’re looking at a roughly nine percent gain over a current 27-inch iMac with a 3.4Ghz Core i7-2600 processor. Now, these benchmarks could be faked, or represent non-final hardware, but the motherboard codes look valid (see the source links) and they generally tally with what we’ve come to expect from Ivy Bridge: a healthy oar-stroke forwards, but nothing that would frighten the fish.

Update: 9to5Mac has done some digging and come up with a few more interesting tidbits about the upcoming MacBook Pro refresh. For one, code pulled from the Mountain Lion beta appears to indicate that the Ivy Bridge machines will boast USB 3.0 and a new GPU in the NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M. The site also claims that the laptops will be slimmer than the current gen, a rumor that’s we’ve been hearing for quite some time now.

MacBook Pro and iMac with next-gen Ivy Bridge processors crop up on benchmarks (update) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 14 May 2012 08:49:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The California office of In-Home Supportive Services, which provides health support to elderly and disabled people, reported on Friday that the personal records of some 700,000 caregivers and care recipients were either lost or stolen.

But this data loss was not due to a server breach, or some complex phishing attack—instead, the Social Services office said that Hewlett Packard, which manages the data controlled by the office, notified the IHSS of the breach after a physical package containing microfiche with thousands of entries of payroll data went missing from a damaged package shipped by U.S. Postal Service to the State Compensation Insurance Fund in Riverside, CA.

As the package arrived damaged and incomplete, it’s unclear whether the information was lost or stolen, but the state has launched an internal investigation and notified law enforcement in the hopes of resolving the issue, according to the Los Angeles Times. “The possibly compromised information, dating from October to December 2011, for 375,000 workers included names, Social Security numbers and wages. For 326,000 recipients, state identification numbers may be at risk,” the LA Times reports. The In-Home Supportive Services office is also sending out hundreds of thousands of letters to potentially affected parties.

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700,000 CA social services records lost—on microfiche