New internet piracy law comes into effect in France

The first effects of France's new law against internet piracy will begin to be felt as the new year begins.

The law was passed after a long struggle in parliament, and in the teeth of bitter opposition from groups opposed to internet restrictions.

Illegal downloaders will be sent a warning e-mail, then a letter if they continue, and finally must appear before a judge if they offend again.

The judge can impose a fine, or suspend their access to the internet.

The Creation and Internet Bill set up a new state agency - the Higher Authority for the Distribution of Works and the Protection of Copyright on the Internet (Hadopi).

The law was backed by President Nicolas Sarkozy and the entertainment industry.

Many opponents

Its supporters say it is a model for other countries around the world that want to protect their creative industries and make clear to ordinary web-users that not everything is for free.

Michel Thiolliere, a French senator and member of the Hadopi, says that if the law is explained properly, then people understand it.

"The internet is a fabulous world, but it needs rules, if you want to get cinema, music or video games in the future.

"What we think is that after the first message... about two-thirds of the people (will) stop their illegal usages of the internet.

"After the second message more than 95% will finish with that bad usage."

The law has many opponents, who say either that it is too draconian, or that it has already been overtaken by technology and that serious downloaders will simply sidestep it.

But for supporters, it is a long-overdue necessity.

For them, it is a way of reminding law-abiding citizens who have been tempted by an abundance of apparently free material available on the web, that it does come at a price.

By : BBC New

Impact of ‘iSlate’ Could Rival iPhone

LONDON — You don’t need a crystal ball, seer stone, scrying pool or any other spooky stuff to guess what one of the most talked-about design projects of 2010 will be. The tech blogs have been buzzing about it for months. It’s the iSlate, iTablet, iProd, Magic Slate, or whatever else Apple finally decides to call its new tablet computer.

We’ve been here before: three years ago, to be exact. The drill was the same. Months of frenzied blogging culminated in ecstatic cheers on Jan. 9, 2007, when Apple’s co-founder, Steve Jobs, brandished a prototype iPhone before an adoring audience of Apple nuts at a convention in San Francisco.

What’s happened since? Not only has Apple sold tens of millions of iPhones, it has pulled off a stunningly successful exercise in design democracy whereby thousands of D.I.Y. designers have developed applications, or programs, for them. Some 100,000 “apps” have been invented, and more than two billion downloaded from Apple’s App Store. What’s almost more impressive is that Apple has achieved this despite its own history — and instincts — as the consummate corporate control freak.

Mr. Jobs is expected to show off the iSlate (as we’ll call it, if only because that’s the latest rumor) in San Francisco later this month. If the bloggers are right, it will hit the stores in March. At the risk of party-pooping, we should note that not every new Apple product has been a hit. Remember the Newton PDA? Or the G4 Cube computer? But if the iSlate is another of the company’s successes, it promises to have as much impact as the iPhone, if not more.

It’s that tantalizing possibility of “more” that puts it on the top of the design agenda for 2010. There are other contenders, despite the recession. The automotive industry will discover whether its investment in electric cars has paid off when the Nissan LEAF and other zero-emissions vehicles go on sale. Vitra, the Swiss furniture group, will experiment with new ways of designing the home in the VitraHaus, a model modern house built by the architects Herzog & de Meuron at Vitra’s headquarters in Weil am Rhein, Germany. And a proposal to help consumers monitor their environmental impact by introducing a global system of identifying the carbon and water footprints of products and their packaging is to be discussed at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, later this month.

Even so, the iSlate is particularly interesting, not only because of that promise of “more,” but because it sums up so much of what’s happening in design now.

The iSlate would probably be successful simply by dint of being Apple’s first tablet computer. Ever since the non-profit organization One Laptop Per Child showed how cute a small version of the laptop could be when it unveiled the first prototype of its XO machine in 2005, tablet computers have been one of the fastest growing areas of the computer market. That wasn’t OLPC’s intention. Fuseproject, the San Francisco design group that develops its hardware, reduced the computer’s size in the hope of making it cheap enough for developing countries to buy for their schools. Spawning a profitable new product category for the I.T. industry wasn’t part of the idealistic agenda.

Accidental though it was, consumers have leapt at the chance to buy computers that are not only smaller than laptops, but lighter and cheaper too. Apple may be a late entrant to the market, but there is no reason to believe that its designers won’t be able to replicate their past success at battling against the laws of physics to produce a tablet that’s sleeker, lighter and generally hotter than anyone else’s, so much so that people will be willing to pay more for it.

The outcome of that battle will be even more important when it comes to the “more” element of the iSlate. Like many new digital devices, it will combine several products in one. An extreme example is the iPhone. It fulfills the functions of dozens of products including a watch, diary, alarm clock, barometer, satellite navigation system, Internet browser, dictionary, DVD player and MP3 player as well as a phone, and that’s before we come on to those 100,000 apps. The iSlate will do lots of that stuff too, as well as basic computing. Critically it will also act as an electronic reader, like Amazon’s Kindle and Sony’s Reader.

Many people like their e-readers (not least because they save them from having to haul around books, newspapers and magazines) but I’ve yet to meet anyone who loves them. That’s the key. If a really great e-reader appeared, the market would explode. The e-reader is waiting for a killer product, just as the MP3 player was before Apple’s iPod. Apple didn’t invent the MP3 player, it made such a sexy one that many more people wanted to buy it. That’s what it is promising to do again.

By : nytimes.com

New visa proposal to help create the next big thing

A proposal that will make it easier for foreign entrepreneurs in the US to start the next Google or Yahoo will be debated in the new year.

Congressman Jared Polis has proposed a start-up visa to entice "foreigners with good ideas" to stay in the US.

The issue has been gathering steam in Silicon Valley where half of all tech company founders are immigrants, according to Duke University research.

The idea is part of a proposed overhaul of the US immigration system.

"Every day the American economy is losing ground - not to mention high-tech jobs and technologies - to India and China because foreign-born entrepreneurs cannot secure a visa to stay in the US," he said.

Lost opportunity

Eric Diep, who has just turned 22, could be regarded as one entrepreneur who got away.

He came to Silicon Valley as a student like many immigrant founders who have helped start companies such as Google and PayPal.

Mr Diep was one of the first developers to get into social games with his application called Quizzes, initially launched on the social networking site Facebook.

Google, Pfizer, Yahoo and eBay were in-part founded by immigrants

Over a year ago he started to apply for a visa to allow him to carry on working in the Valley, but he soon encountered problems.

"The reason it was so difficult for me was because I dropped out of university and the stipulation for a lot of visas is undergraduate experience. My age also seemed to be an issue for the attorneys

"At the beginning it wasn't the expense in terms of legal fees but the big problem soon became one of distraction. I was trying to spend as much time working on perfecting my product but then I would have to go away and figure out the legalities of applying for the visa," Mr Diep told BBC News.

In the end, Mr Diep decided to base himself in his native Canada and travel back and forth to Silicon Valley.

"The flying is so tiring between the two places and it's expensive. At one point, I had no money left in my bank account but at the last minute money came in and now I feel pretty fortunate that I can still do this.

"It was a pretty close call," he added.

He backs a start-up visa because, for him, being in Silicon Valley is where he needs to be.

"Being there at the time really launched me. I would never have spotted the social gaming opportunity had I not been there."

Visa details

The start-up visa is aimed at streamlining the country's EB-5 visa system which was initially introduced in 1990 to attract foreign capital to the US.

Each year 10,000 EB-5 visas are available but to get one, applicants need to invest $1m and create 10 full-time jobs.

Mr Polis said he wants "a new class of eligibility" with the start-up visa.

The new visa would require $100k-$250k in venture capital funding

It would be granted to foreign entrepreneurs if their business plan attracts either $250,000 from a venture capital operating company that is primarily US based or $100,000 from an angel investor.

They must also show that the business will create five to ten jobs or generate a profit and at least $1m in revenue.

Some of these requirements may well be changed when the bill goes to committee in the new year.

"Immigration reform is a big discussion in Washington," said supporter Brad Feld, who is also a managing director with venture company the Foundry Group.

"We think the start-up visa is an easy thing to talk about and get consensus around in terms of having a positive spin on entrepreneurship and creating jobs."

Job creation

Some critics fear that making it easier for entrepreneurs to set up shop will hurt Americans by taking jobs away from them.

"I feel incredibly strongly that that is a misinterpretation of the proposal," said Eric Ries a venture advisor and author.

Start-up companies are needed to boost the economy say backer of the visa

"Some people have called those opposed to new immigration reform xenophobes and that is why I think it is important we craft this proposal so it addresses those concerns. This is not a new visa category but reform of an existing but flawed category," he told BBC News.

The proposal's backers say that far from taking away jobs, new jobs will emerge that were never there in the first place.

"If the capital is available for the market, we should jump to bring those people here. Those jobs only get created once the founders get funded. This is a market driven decision," said Dave McClure, an internet entrepreneur, investor and start-up advisor.

YouNoodle is a start-up company founded by two British entrepreneurs. It tracks the start-up sector and said the figures speak for themselves.

"If just ten thousand start-up visas were made available this would mean over 3000 additional new innovative and funded companies would be based in the US every year," said Kirill Makharinsky, YouNoodle co-founder.

"They would generate more than 10,000 jobs on average every year. In the first 10 years that would add up to over 500,000 highly-skilled new jobs

"So the upside is huge and the downside is negligible because no jobs are being taken away from US citizens," Mr Makharinsky told BBC News.

And for Mr McClure, the consequences of not establishing a start-up visa class are obvious.

"We will lose out because we are not being competitive with the rest of the world," he said.

"There are similar programmes in Canada, the UK and Australia. They are all vying for the top entrepreneurs and if we only look at our own citizens, we are only taking 10-20% of the world's talent into consideration here. That would be short-sighted in the extreme."

by : BBC