Up Front: Should broadband providers offer customers tiered service?
Thursday's tech headlines
ReadWriteWeb
• Two economists -- one from Harvard, one from the University of Kansas -- have jointly released results of a study that indicate that weaker copyright protections do more good than harm to society. In fact, though 65% of respondents said they'd passed on buying a CD because they'd downloaded a free copy of the desired song, 80% bought a CD because they'd gotten a taste. Frederic Lardinois does a nice summary and links to the study itself (in PDF format).
• Facebook's working on a real-time search for the site, says Sarah Perez, and she repeats the VentureBeat rumor that the site's backing off the March site redesign as well.
Ars Technica
• Jacqui Cheng reports on a successful effort to have a foolishly issued software patent revoked. The Hoshinko patent has been under review since 2007, but the EFF's Patent Busting Project dredged up prior art dating back to 1998.
• The Las Vegas Review-Journal is dealing with a federal grand-jury subpoena thanks to unruly commenters, who posted threatening remarks concerning the prosecutor and jury in a federal tax-fraud case. The original request asked for identification info on everyone who commented on the article, but prosecutors will settle for two. The paper's ready to cooperate; the ACLU of Nevada would rather have the request declared unconstitutional.
New York Times
• Ashlee Vance accurately describes the ongoing struggle for laptop manufacturers to get a reliable, trustworthy battery-life test in place as "equal parts encouraging and sad."
• Brad Stone has an article on domain squatting, and yet my calendar still says 2009. Twitter and Facebook, of course, provide the new angle.
Chicago Tribune
• Here's a file-sharing dustup you don't see every day: It's over a book, specifically the latest Dungeons & Dragons handbook, released in March. Three suits name eight defendants in the matter.
• Jon Yates, the paper's consumer-watchdog guy, describes what happened when Google incorrectly listed an ordinary citizen's mobile-phone number as the line for an office at the Illinois Secretary of State.
Los Angeles Times
• Ben Fritz and Dawn Chmielewski examine Hollywood's failure to get Web-video studios up and running. Disney, HBO, NBC, AOL and Turner Entertainment have all pulled the plug on projects to produce ads-supported original shows for the Web. (This reporter suggests a consultation with Dr. Horrible. And, naturally, more cowbell.)
• More than a third of teenagers surveyed recently by Common Sense Media say they've used a mobile phone to cheat in school; about 38% say they've plagiarized material from the Web.