Mac News: The Apple Television Is Coming, And This Is Why It’s Going To Be Revolutionary
Apple analyst Gene Munster of Piper Jaffray has a big report on Apple’s plans for the TV industry. He says it’s a question of “when” Apple releases its television, not “if” now.
Read full story => Business Insider
Technology News: DirecTV: Apple TV won’t “obsolete our technology”
While we in tech and gadget land are trying to read the tea leaves of Apple CEO Tim Cook’s recent cryptic comments on the future of Apple TV, for the media world the uncertainty “is causing a boatload of angst and anticipation,” according to Variety. And after the latest rumor — that Apple is working on a new operating system for its set-top box and plans to preview it at WWDC in two weeks — power players in the TV content delivery business are starting to speak out about it.
Read full story => gigaom
Programming News: APIs Cannot be Copyrighted
In a decisive legal ruling yesterday, the judge in the Oracle vs Google case declared that APIs are not copyrightable, and Oracle cannot claim anything for the SSO – structure, sequence and organisation of those methods, classes and packages. From the summary judgement:
The overall name tree, of course, has creative elements but it is also a precise command structure – a utilitarian and functional set of symbols, each to carry out a pre-assigned function. This command structure is a system or method of operation under Section 102(b) of the Copyright Act and, therefore, cannot be copyrighted. Duplication of the command structure is necessary for interoperability…
Contrary to Oracle, copyright law does not confer ownership over any and all ways to implement a function or specification, no matter how creative the copyrighted implementation or specification may be. The Act confers ownership only over the specific way in which the author wrote out his version. Others are free to write their own implementation to accomplish the identical function, for, importantly, ideas, concepts and functions cannot be monopolized by copyright.
Read full story => InfoQ
Other News: Facebook opens public vote on privacy changes
Facebook has agreed to hold a public vote on its proposed new privacy policy, following pressure from activists on the social networking site. The Facebook Site Governance Vote, as its being called, is now open for one week only and gives users the option of adopting the changes to its Statement of Rights and Responsibilities and its Data Use Policy. The Facebook vs Europe group wants huge changes to both, and is encouraging users to shoot down these slight revisions, saying it wants Facebook to do more.
Read full story => techradar
