itunes

Feds seize MegaUpload; Anonymous retaliates

In one of the largest criminal copyright cases ever brought, the U.S. Justice Department and Federal Bureau of Investigation have seized and shutdown popular file-sharing site MegaUpload. With 150 million registered users and nearly 50 million hits daily, MegaUpload was among the world’s biggest file-sharing sites. The so-called locker site allowed users to transfer large files like movies and music anonymously. The movie industry has long hurled copyright infringement allegations at the site and complained that it was profiting off pirated material. In a grand jury indictment, MegaUpload is accused of causing $500 million in damages to copyright owners and of making $175 million by selling ads and premium subscriptions. Though, with the site being based in Hong Kong and MegaUpload operators living in New Zealand, jurisdiction was a tricky issue. However, the revelation that some of the alleged pirated content was being hosted stateside on leased servers in Virginia was enough for U.S. prosecutors to act.

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Feds seize MegaUpload; Anonymous retaliates

itunes

Apple unveils new and improved iTunes U

Apple unveiled its new and improved iTunes U – along with iBooks 2 for textbooks – at its education event in New York. What started as a largely overlooked collection of video lectures and podcasts created by university professors has been redeveloped and re-launched. Now, users can subscribe to courses on iTunes U, with a single course icon appearing on the iTunes U bookshelf. All the course information – videos, books, documents, course materials and even space for note-taking – are contained in once place, with check boxes so virtual students can check their own progress. “The all new iTunes U app enables students anywhere to tap into entire courses from the world’s most prestigious universities,” senior vice president of Internet Software and Services, Eddie Cue said . “Never before have educators been able to offer their full courses in such an innovative way, allowing anyone who’s interested in a particular topic to learn from anywhere in the world, not just the classroom.” Lecturers can also host their own materials for the course outside iBooks – course specific lecture notes and study sheets can all be collated and linked to the iTunes U course binder. Currently, most of the courses on iTunes U are available for free – with materials from Yale, Stanford, and the Open University all available for download. “Education is deep in Apple’s DNA and iPad may be our most exciting education product yet. With 1.5 million iPads already in use in education institutions, including over 1,000 one-to-one deployments, iPad is rapidly being adopted by schools across the US and around the world,” senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing Philip Schiller said in a press release .

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Apple unveils new and improved iTunes U