Devices

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http://www.wirelessweek.com/News/2010/06/ATT-launching-Brew-on-QMP-Lineup/

SAN DIEGO— AT&T will be launching Qualcomm’s Brew MP operating system across its upcoming lineup of quick messaging devices, AT&T Mobility Chief Marketing Officer David Christopher said today at the Uplinq conference in San Diego.

Christopher said AT&T’s next generation of quick messaging phones using Brew will include higher-end features like feature-rich graphics, accelerometers, GPS and capacitive touch screens.

Calling Brew a “super important” part of AT&T’s mobile strategy, Christopher touted the technology as an “apps for all” platform. In January, AT&T said it intended to make Brew the primary operating system for its quick messaging devices, which comprise one-third of the phones on its network.

AT&T estimates 833 million apps were downloaded in the United States in 2009 and expects that number to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 26 percent through 2014. “Applications have simply redefined the game,” Christopher said.

AT&T is also launching Brew across a “nearly identical” lineup of devices carried by America Movil, which is partially owned by AT&T. The deployment will happen some time next year and will be aligned with AT&T’s Brew rollout. America Movil currently has about 206 million wireless subscribers across its properties in Latin America.

Apple bans 'fraudulent' developer from iTunes

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/10535703.stm

Page last updated at 10:36 GMT, Wednesday, 7 July 2010 11:36 UK

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An iPad and an iPhone 400 of the 150 million iTunes accounts were hacked.

Apple has banned a Vietnamese developer from its app store after he was implicated in fraudulently pushing his titles to its best-seller list.

According to Apple, Thuat Nguyen hacked around 400 iTunes accounts, in order to use their credit card details to boost sales of his comic book apps.

Apple said it had tightened its security as a result of the hack.

It has put fraudulent activity on iTunes into the spotlight.
Small percentage

At one point Mr Nguyen's apps occupied 42 of the top 50 book apps sold.

In a statement Apple said that the developer and his apps have been removed from the iTunes store "for violating the developer Program License Agreement including fraudulent purchase patterns".

"The iTunes servers were not compromised. An extremely small percentage of users, 400 of the 150 million iTunes users, were impacted," it said.

It recommended that people worried that their credit card had been stolen should contact their financial institution and change their account password.

Apple said that its iTunes servers were not compromised but it has stepped up security.
Bogus book

It will now ask users to enter their credit card security code more frequently when making purchases on iTunes.

It is not the first time that users have complained about their iTunes accounts being hacked but it is one of the first that an app bought using compromised accounts has dominated the charts.

Amichai Shulman, chief technology officer of security firm Imperva, believes this was Mr Nguyen's biggest mistake.

"It was probably a bogus book and it was just a way to take money from one account and put it in another. If he had kept it out of the top 50 the scam may never have been detected," he said.

It is likely the details of iTunes accounts were acquired via a phishing attack or from other compromised accounts such as web mail, said Mr Shulman.

"We are seeing a trend for hackers targetting accounts such as iTunes, online poker accounts. You can monetise this kind of account very quickly," he said.

Amit Klein, the chief technology officer of Trusteer, a company which provides security for online payments, thinks Apple could do more to prevent such breaches.

"Hacks on iTunes are not so rare, there is a constant stream of reports even though they don't make the headlines. Apple could have better fraud detection and interact with iTune users better," he said.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/07/26/BUMV1EK31O.DTL

Owners of Apple's  iPhone and other smart phones who unlock the devices to run unauthorized applications are not violating copyright laws, a federal agency ruled Monday.

The decision on a practice known as "jailbreaking" was one of several key changes in U.S. copyright law filed by the head of the Library of Congress, which also ruled that short clips can be legally copied from movie DVDs to make videos for purposes of comment or criticism.

The rulings were "a major victory for consumers," said Corynne McSherry, senior staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco digital rights organization that pushed for the clarifications. "Copyright law should be supporting fair use and not getting in the way of it."

Apple Inc., which has sold more than 60 million iPhones and offers 225,000 approved apps, maintains that the Cupertino company is only trying to protect its customers from third-party applications that contain technical problems or inappropriate material such as pornography.

"Apple's goal has always been to ensure that our customers have a great experience with their iPhone and we know that jailbreaking can severely degrade the experience," said spokeswoman Natalie Kerris. "As we've said before, the vast majority of customers do not jailbreak their iPhones. This can violate the warranty and can cause the iPhone to become unstable and not work reliably."
Every 3 years

The revisions to copyright law, part of a review done every three years, were posted Monday by Librarian of Congress James H. Billington, whose office oversees the U.S. Copyright Office.

Billington said that jailbreaking does not harm Apple in ways that copyright laws are intended to protect, but makes the iPhone more interoperable, like adding a printer driver application to a computer's operating system.

"Apple is not concerned that the practice of jailbreaking will displace sales of its firmware or of iPhones," he wrote. "Indeed, since one cannot engage in that practice unless one has acquired an iPhone, it would be difficult to make that argument. Rather, the harm that Apple fears is harm to its reputation."

The decision uses iPhones as the prime example, but encompasses all smart phones and could lead the way for a future copyright law revision that protects the unlocking of other devices that use restricted formats, like Amazon's Kindle e-reader or Microsoft's Xbox 360 video game console, said Jason Schultz, co-director of the Samuelson Law, Technology & Public Policy Clinic at the UC Berkeley School of Law.

"This ruling is quite important because we're seeing more and more of these kinds of embedded systems," Schultz said. "It opens the way to more competition and more innovation. It's a groundbreaking ruling from the U.S. Copyright Office, which has not always been as permissive."

He said the ruling could also spur "a whole business ecosystem formed around jailbreaking." Although enforcing copyright law is no longer an option, he said Apple could still use other methods such as declining to offer software upgrades or repairs to phones that are jailbroken.

In another ruling, Billington renewed a 2006 decision that allowed mobile phone owners to unlock their devices to switch wireless carriers.

Three years ago, the issue didn't have much opposition, Schultz said. But this time, because the entire wireless industry opposed the renewal, the latest ruling is a stronger statement that "the carriers have lost this battle," he said.

And in another key ruling, Billington said there are instances when university educators, students and documentary filmmakers can legally copy short clips taken from movie DVDs to create new, non-commercial videos meant to show comment or criticism. The movie industry has long argued that "ripping" a copyright-protected DVD was illegal under the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, or DMCA.

"The librarian's decision unnecessarily blurs the bright line established in the DMCA against circumvention of technical protection measures and undermines the DMCA, which has fostered greater access to more works by more people than at any time in our history," said Elizabeth Kaltman, vice president of corporate communications for the Motion Picture Association of America.
Video victory

But Schultz called the ruling a victory for all amateur video content makers, like the creators of thousands of Hitler parodies made from clips from the European film "Downfall."

"This ruling really shows the power of that movement, that the kind of YouTube, amateur, self-creative movement has really come of age," he said. "What the copyright office is really saying is that they have the same standing as any Hollywood studio."

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/07/26/BUMV1EK31O.DTL#ixzz0uzqIraN8