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Eyes on Iran, lines for iPhone, jury award

19.06.2009
The re-election of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad over challenger Mir Hussein Moussavi sparked demonstrations, and coverage of the protests led to the ouster of Western journalists. Twitter users stepped into the information gap, providing real-time updates. But the popular microblogging site also became a vehicle for protesters to launch denial-of-service attacks. While the conflict in Iran and the role of technology in keeping the world informed about it is our top story, for a whole lot of people the focus of the week was on -- what else? -- Apple's new iPhone 3G S, which went on sale Friday. We confess to momentary early morning confusion about the line on Boston's Boylston Street until we realized it was outside of an AT&T store. D'oh.

1. , , and : The Internet has become a prominent aspect of all important news stories, of course, but it has played a particularly vital role in helping to keep the world informed about what's going on in Iran in the wake of the contentious presidential election.

2. : We're not sure what more there is to say about the new iPhone 3G S, other than that a lot of people decided to forgo sleep to be among the first to buy one.

3. : We reckon that Jammie Thomas-Rasset wishes she had stuck with the US$220,000 fine after she was found guilty of online music trading and copyright infringement at her first trial. The Minnesota jury that heard the retrial of her case ordered her to pay a whopping $1.92 million, or $80,000 for each of the 24 songs she was found to have illegally traded over the Kazaa online service. The ruling undoubtedly bolsters the efforts of the Recording Industry Association of America, which has gone after thousands of people in an effort to stop such music trading.

4. and : U.S. senators questioned exclusive deals between mobile handset makers and carriers, notably AT&T's deal as the sole iPhone provider in the U.S. By week's end the U.S. Federal Communications Commission's acting chairman said he ordered staff there to look into the deals and whether they stifle innovation or (and?) harm consumers.

5. : The once high-flying MySpace, which has been dethroned by Facebook as the top U.S. social-networking site, axed almost 30 percent of its employees.