UPDATE: Stroppy Apple threatens to close iTunes in MASSIVE SULK over royalty payments

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There are two very important financial rulings being voted on today. One is something to do with banks and mortgages and the world not ending, which we couldn’t care less about and certainly don’t intend trying to understand.

The other is to do with Apple and the amount of royalties it pays to record labels in return for selling their music on iTunes. Three Copyright Royalty Board judges are meeting in Washington today, to decide if Apple should be forced to boost its royalty payments from 9 cents a song to 15 cents a song for each track sold via iTunes – a 66% increase.

Apple has, incredibly, threatened to CLOSE iTunes…

Oyster card hacked – details being published in October. Free travel for all!

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The Oyster system could go into meltdown this October, after a court ruling found it’s OK for details of its security failures to be made public.

NXP, the company behind the Oyster technology, had applied for an injunction against a group of Dutch technology experts, who worked out how to hack Oyster cards back in June. The judge has now overturned this injunction, so the Dutch hacking masters (Prof Bart Jacobs and his team…

eBay not to blame for that fake memory card you bought off some bloke in Hong Kong

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eBay has won its long-running legal battle with expensive necklace make Tiffany’s – and been found not responsible for the piles and piles of fake tat that clogs up its virtual shelves.

A judge found that protecting their products is the responsibility of the brand owners, not the seller. So eBay’s off the hook, thanks to a ruling that’s also rather bad news…

Viacom wins right to sift through YouTube user data, all four terabytes of it

viacomyoutube.gifIn the long running battle between Viacom and Google over YouTube hosting copyrighted videos, Viacom has now won a ruling to allow it to access a complete set of video viewing records, totalling some four terabytes of data.

Google argues that the data, which lists every IP address and the videos watched, would infringe on its users’ privacy. The judge used Google’s own argument — that IP addresses don’t personally identify an individual — to throw out that objection.