According to China’s official state news agency Xinhua, China’s ministry of culture plans to “punish” more than a dozen Web sites—including China’s leading Internet portal and search engine Baidu—for providing illegal music downloads to site visitors. According to Xinhua, the sites continued to provide access to illegal downloads even after repeated warnings from the culture ministry. The nature of the government’s “punishment” was not specified.
Baidu has indicated it will quickly remove links to the files specified by the ministry. However, the company noted that search engine indexing is a ongoing process, and files previously removed from Baidu’s index may have been uploaded to new locations where they were discovered and indexed by Baidu.
Earlier this month, Baidu announced it is planning to pay royalties on songs downloaded from a soon-to-be-launched ad-supported licensed music service that would apply to every piece of music downloaded via its site. The company plans to position the paid music service as an alternative to illegal downloads, which currently dominate the Chinese online music market. For years, Baidu has been described as a mecca for illegal music and video downloading, with the company’s indexes often featuring “deep links” to illegally shared material hosted elsewhere. Baidu’s traditional explanation has been analogous to The Pirate Bay—we aren’t hosting the infringing material, just linking to where it’s hosted elsewhere. However, as Baidu’s position in the Chinese market has grown—and its services have increasingly been used to host illegally distributed content—the company has come under increasing pressure from publishers, rights holders, and even the Chinese government to curtail digital piracy.
The Chinese cultural ministry’s current announcement of pending “punishment” stems from a a warning issued to Baidu and other Internet companies more than a year ago.
Xinhua also reported the ministry is punishing 20 online gaming companies for using “vulgar” promotions for their games, and has censured four other companies for operating unlicensed online gaming venues.
In 1950, Alan Turing asked whether machines can think. Rather than argue over definitions, he turned the question into a party game, where an interrogator trades typed messages with hidden players and tries to work out who is who. Since then, chatbots have gotten so good that they have already fooled humans in modern versions of the test.
So, four researchers from Paris Cité University asked the obvious follow-up question in a new study published in Computers in Human Behavior Reports: can AI at least catch its own kind?
Mozilla is giving Firefox’s Smart Window two new tricks. If you haven’t tried it yet, Smart Window is an optional AI mode in Firefox with a built-in chat that helps you get things done while you browse. With this update, it can fill out online forms using details from your tabs and keep an eye on websites for you.
Tired of typing the same details into every form?
The absolutely absurd idea of putting a touchscreen display on a mouse isn't exactly new. Turtle Beach already did it with its Command Series MC7, which features a 2.25-inch control screen. But apparently, even that wasn't ridiculous enough for Arctic Fox Technologies. Its new Super Mouse looks like someone took the chunky old Atari ST mouse, slapped a touchscreen and scroll wheel on it, and called it an upgrade.
The result is a rather unusual-looking mouse that is now on Kickstarter, starting at $199. And as ridiculous as it looks, some of its features are genuinely intriguing.