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ExtraBITS for 26 February 2018

In ExtraBITS this week, Apple is ending iTunes Store access for the first-generation Apple TV, Tim Cook is positive about his time at Apple, and a federal judge has ruled that embedded tweets can infringe copyright.

Apple to End iTunes Store Access for First-Generation Apple TV — If you’re still using a first-generation Apple TV, be aware that Apple will cut off its access to the iTunes Store on 25 May 2018 due to security changes. These security changes will also prevent PCs running Windows XP and Windows Vista from accessing the iTunes Store. The hard-drive equipped first-generation Apple TV shipped in January 2007 and was available through September 2010. The second-generation Apple TV and later will continue being able to get content from the iTunes Store.

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Tim Cook: “I’ve only had good years” — Apple CEO Tim Cook sat down for a wide-ranging interview with Fast Company’s Robert Safian. Cook is feeling pretty good about his tenure at Apple, saying up front that he has “only had good years.” Despite the excellent performance of Apple stock, Cook expresses misgivings about the stock market and discusses Apple’s patience in developing products (“Because we don’t believe in using our customers as a laboratory.”), how he reads customer feedback (“I tend to weight the ones that are most thoughtful.”), and how
Apple wants to help its customers do the right thing (such as with Do Not Disturb While Driving).

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Federal Judge Rules Embedded Tweets May Infringe Copyright — If you thought the U.S. legal concept of copyright had caught up with the Internet, you’d be wrong. District Court Judge Katherine B. Forrest has ruled that you could infringe copyright by embedding someone else’s tweet on a Web page. The case in question involves a photo of New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady that the photographer, Justin Goldman, posted to a Snapchat Story. Others then tweeted the photograph, and those tweets were embedded by various publications, which
Goldman is suing. The problem is that in-line linking is one of the core capabilities of the Internet, and if the logic surrounding this ruling were extended more broadly, it would have a chilling effect on common Internet behavior. (Too bad no one listened to Ted Nelson in the pre-Web days, since his Xanadu hypertext system understood the importance of maintaining — and paying for, with micropayments — ownership of embedded content.)

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