Elliott C. Back: In Aere Aedificare

The following remark was made by Marie. L. van Uitert, MPAA attorney in the Jammie Thomas trial. She wrote in a brief:

It is often very difficult, and in some cases, impossible, to provide such direct proof when confronting modern forms of copyright infringement, whether over P2P networks or otherwise; understandably, copyright infringers typically do not keep records of infringement. Mandating that proof could thus have the pernicious effect of depriving copyright owners of a practical remedy against massive copyright infringement in many cases.

The rest of the brief goes on to list the reasons why the MPAA feels it should not have to meet the full burden of proof in its case (i.e. proving actual distribution). For them, the existence of a location where the copyright material could be copied is sufficient grounds for prosecution. When you take this off the internet, this is equivalent to suing some for 12 * $150,00 for loaning someone a CD they later copied.

For more coverage, see Wired and TorrentFreak.

RIMM’s newly announced Blackberry Bold 9000 looks like a promising refresh of their basic design. Their slogan, “Be Bold”, and the newly designed website bring back hints of Motorola in its prime, when it released the metro-styled Razor phone:

The phone itself is little changed from its predecessors. It still has a full keyboard, GPS, and a bulky look. It is the first blackberry to support both GSM networks and the new HSDPA/UMTS (850/1900/2100). It also has a new half-VGA screen, at 480×320 with 64k color. A CNet reviewer said about the screen, “I was absolutely blown away. I can pretty much say I’ve never seen a better-looking display on a smartphone.”

Unfortunately, it’s still playing catchup to the iPhone. For Blackberry lovers, that might be enough. The new media player, the 3.5mm headphone jack bring it into iPhone’s territory. But, the thicker Blackberry Bold has significant battery problems, compared to the iPhone, and holds 8 times less media than the cheapest iPhone on the market. Will you be buying it?

If your iPhone is broken and won’t turn on because you dropped it in water, got it wet in the rain, or spilled your favorite drink on it, don’t worry it may be repairable. The first thing to try is drying it out. Don’t try to turn it on, don’t plug it into anything, that may only increase the damage, or damage another component, or electrocute yourself. Instead, dry it out with a hairdryer for a while, and then spray compressed air into the earphone hole at the top, and the dock-adapter hole at the bottom. If you’re lucky, at this point it will turn itself on automatically!

If this doesn’t work, follow the instructions here to open the base of the iPhone and proceed to dry out your internals. Note that this is a dangerous procedure and will void your warranty. Please don’t open up your iPhone! It’s probably a better idea to just take into the Apple store and let their geniuses figure things out.

(Note: the iPhone can be “reset” by holding the top power button and the circular “home” button at the same time for a while)

Today at work I found myself reading Mac Rumours Live for the latest iPhone news from Steve Jobs’ 2008 WWDC Keynote, and as expected, he announced the iPhone 2.0, with a huge number of new features:

• 3G network and GPS support
• Improved battery life and performance
• Applications via iTunes (including Spore, Monkey Ball)
• Chinese language input and handwriting recognition
• Support for opening Microsoft Office files
• Enterprise features, including encryption, authentication, email, activesync, exchange, and remote-kill
• The previously announced iPhone API stack
• Improved audio, flush headphone jack
• $199 for 8GB, $299 for 16GB

The Apple Store is touting the iPhone 2.0 as “Twice as Fast at Half the Price,” with an expected release date of July 11th. Also note that if you bought an iPhone after May 27th you can exchange it for an iPhone3G for free!

This is pretty impressive news; except for MMS support, video chat, a red iPhone, 32GB of storage, and a better digital camera, it seems like Apple has incorporated all of its consumers feedback into making a better and more appealing product.

The iPodObserver is claiming that the new iPhone 3G will have a uniform, glossy back surface. As this proved to be true with iPods as they evolved and became sleeker, single-piece-construction units, there’s no reason why it is not also true for the iPhone 2.0:

If this photo is real, it wouldn’t be the first time a photo leaked of a new Apple product. We’ll wait for the lawyers to come knocking, at which point we will all know.

Update:

Wow, Engadget has some more photos of a white 3G iPhone; they’re blurry but in line with the black one I posted weeks ago: