Lawyer Ray Beckerman is pointing to the defense used by someone in Texas accused by the RIAA of sharing unauthorized music files. While the defendant is making the same claim as others that the $750/song amount is unconstitutional, they've also made a different, but interesting defense, saying that they should be covered by Kazaa's settlement with the recording industry.

They ended up paying about $115 million to settle the claims. Since the accused person was using Kazaa, they feel that Kazaa's payment covers their activity, and to be forced to pay again would be double counting on the part of the recording industry.

According to a report on the university's Daily Bruin, the incident occured at around 11.30 pm on Tuesday when security officers at the Powell Library CLICC computer lab "asked a male student using a computer in the back of the room to leave when he was unable to produce a BruinCard during a random check".

When he didn't immediately vacate the building, the security operatives returned with police officers to escort him from the premises. The Daily Bruin continues: "By this time the student had begun to walk toward the door with his backpack when an officer approached him and grabbed his arm, at which point the student told the officer to let him go. A second officer then approached the student as well."

"It was at this point that the officers shot the student with a Taser for the first time, causing him to fall to the floor and cry out in pain. The student also told the officers he had a medical condition."

The video shows the tasered ne'er-do-well shouting "Here's your Patriot Act, here's your fucking abuse of power", while refusing to get up. Shortly thereafter, the cops tasered him a second time for his trouble.

Students who protested at the treatment were themselves threatened to keep their distance or cop a tasering. Laila Gordy, "a fourth-year economics student who was present in the library during the incident", claimed officers threatened to zap her "when she asked an officer for his name and his badge number".

Eyewitness David Remesnitsky said of the incident: "It was the most disgusting and vile act I had ever seen in my life."

Despite Microsoft's anti-piracy measures, cracked copies of its Vista operating system are already available on torrent sites, it's claimed.

One cracked version is called VistaBillGates and comes with a product key, and an "activation crack" that bypasses Vole's activation process.

Apparently Microsoft Office 2007 Enterprise Edition has also been cracked. So far Microsoft has refused to comment about hacks, but claims it is working hard to stop pirates.

Apparently the weapon it will use is software that deactivates pirated copies of Windows Vista by sending a patch through Windows Update that can invalidate certain product keys.

No doubt the pirates have already worked their way around that one and it will only be countless legitimate Vista users who will find themselves suffering in the crossfire between Vole and the pirates.

A confidential analysis of Internet search queries and a random sample of Web pages taken from Google and Micrsoft's giant Internet indexes showed that only about 1 percent of all Web pages contain sexually explicit material.

The ACLU said the analysis, by Philip B. Stark, a professor of statistics at the University of California-Berkeley, did not appear to substantially help the Justice Department in its effort to prove that criminal penalties are necessary to protect minors from exposure to sexually explicit information on the Internet.

Touted as being backward compatible with older models, it turns out the machine can't run about 200 PS and PS2 games.

Sony's complaints department, which is probably the busiest part of Sony these days, has admitted that audio features do not work on some software titles when played on the PS3 and other games just do not work at all. A spokesSony said that the unit will fix the PS3 problems by offering online upgrades for system software.

No-one is wondering why, when the console was delayed so long, that no one spent a weekend going through the Playstation back catalogue seeing if the games worked.

It looks like Europe, which has been told it can't have any PS3s till March, will really miss much. It might take that long to sort out all the glitches.

A Singapore teenager charged with hopping onto his neighbour's wireless internet connection faces charges punishable by up the three years imprisonment.

The teenager also faces a possible fine of up to 10,000 Singapore dollars ($6,425) if convicted despite the lack of aggravating factors to his alleged crimes.

There's no suggestion he did any mischief beyond allegedly freeloading his neighbour's net connection without permission.

Investigators looking into Hollywood Commissioner Keith Wasserstrom's role in helping a company win an $18 million sludge-handling contract peeked into his computer in 2005 and saw nothing.

According to reports released this week, the Broward State Attorney's Office ordered a search of Wasserstrom's computer seeking any information about his alleged involvement in helping Schwing Bioset win the contract with the city.

But Wasserstrom's Maxtor 40GB hard-drive inside his law firm's computer was apparently wiped clean, according to a U.S. Treasury investigator who checked the computer on April 29, 2005.

"[Hard-drive] appeared wiped and does not contain any data," wrote the investigator, Jim Greene.

Paul Henry, senior vice president of Secure Computing, an international computer safety firm based in San Jose, Calif., said information could still be extracted even after a crash.

"When [the Treasury Department] says a hard-drive was wiped, it usually means a wiping utility program was used several times," he said.

It appears to have been leaked ahead of the downloadable MSDN release and can be found on various torrent sites and the FTPs of unscrupulous individuals.

Also to note is that installing from a previous version of Windows will not work stating a read error, suggesting that the release is far from perfect.

We certainly don't condone the download or use of pirated software, but it is interesting this download has come prior to any actual official release from Microsoft.

British gambling site BetOnSports has agreed to cease accepting wagers from U.S. customers, closing the civil component of the feds' battle against the operation.

Under a settlement entered Thursday by a federal judge in St. Louis, the company must also return all wagers received from U.S. customers as of July 17, 2006, to the appropriate account holders and set up a toll-free telephone hotline that gives U.S. members instructions on how to obtain their refunds.

The court instructed BetOnSports to cancel its U.S. trademarks to the name Betonsports.com, among others, and to cease advertising its properties inside the United States. The company must also place prominent markers on its sites to alert potential gamblers that "it is a violation of U.S. law to transmit sports wagers or betting information" on international telephone lines.

A US court is forcing the Recording Industry of America to explain why it charges people it catches pirating $750 a single rather than the 70 cents they flog them to retailers for.

If the RIAA was forced to claim back the real market value of the music that was nicked by pirates it probably would not be worth the effort. It also looks better on a press release if they can claim that a pirate stole $7,000 worth of music when they actually only stole $7.

Judge Trager was not buying it either he said that the RIAA lawyers could not cite any case law to justify its position whereas Lindor could.

Lindor could also prove that the RIAA was only out of pocket by 70 cents a single and not $750.

Now it was up to the RIAA to show m'learned friend how it came up with its $750 figure. If it can't manage the task then it is pretty likely that the robed but not wigged one will rule that the amount of damages the RIAA is seeking is unconstitutional.