Recent Posts
Paying for content from TPB would be like buying a pound of apples at the market when you could walk down the road, and pick the apples from a tree, that are of the same quality.Of better quality in many cases. It's as though the apples down the road were organic, and the kind you buy were sprayed daily with pesticides, and you were a pest. No matter, eventually the content-controlling corporations will realize that if they don't adapt they will go out of business.-Loki15 (July 01, 2009, 01:26 PM)
Good News Week, but beyond that you're absolutely correct.I'm impressed.Oh good lord no Hertz Man, those aren't mine, those are just my favorite tunes :S Was just spreading the chip love, sorry for the confusion. Like I said, my attempts at tracking were just embarrassing. I can certainly see where you got that impression, so I edited the post.
Maybe you can do up a theme for DoCo's podcast if they ever start it up again.-40hz (June 30, 2009, 08:59 PM)
On the other hand, it's satisfying knowing that the guys who bought it probably have less of clue than your average internet user about how to accomplish what they intend to, so the site will end up being nothing more than a fond memory for the people who used it in its heyday.| Hi all. Enjoy As usual, you can find last week's news here. |
Social networking sites are legally responsible for their users' privacy, Europe's privacy watchdogs have confirmed. A committee of data protection regulators has said that the sites are 'data controllers', with all the legal obligations that brings.
Users of the sites are also data controllers with legal obligations when they are posting on behalf of a club, society or company, the opinion said.
The committee of Europe's data protection regulators, the Article 29 Working Party, has published its opinion on the legal status of social networking operators such as Facebook and MySpace.
Search giant Google confirmed to the BBC that when the news first broke it feared it was under attack.
Millions of people who searched for the star's name on Google News were greeted with an error page.
It warned users "your query looks similar to automated requests from a computer virus or spyware application".
"It's true that between approximately 2.40PM Pacific and 3.15PM Pacific, some Google News users experienced difficulty accessing search results for queries related to Michael Jackson and saw the error page," said Google spokesman Gabriel Stricker.
The four were found guilty of promoting copyright infringement in April and face jail sentences and hefty claims for damages.
The Pirate Bay's lawyers called for a retrial when it emerged that one of the judges in the case belonged to several copyright protection groups.
The Swedish court said the judge's affiliations did not bias the case.
The Svea Court of Appeal said Judge Tomas Norstrom should have declared that he was a member of the Swedish Association for the Protection of Industrial Property and the Swedish Copyright Association before the case went to trial.
Undisclosed "sponsored" blogging may soon go the way of the dodo, the T. Rex, or the quagga under some strict new guidelines under consideration by the Federal Trade Commission. The FTC says it is looking at bloggers who write about certain products or services in exchange for money or favors from the companies behind them, potentially misleading the Internet-reading public about an apparent conflict of interest. The Commission hopes to introduce new guidelines this summer to better define how bloggers can write about these products.
In case you're not familiar with the practice of "sponsored blogging," imagine that Your Favorite Blog written by Joe Schmoe of Little Rock, Arkansas often gives rave reviews of certain home appliances that he allegedly uses. Joe might have purchased those things himself, and he might really love them—but he might be getting paid by GE to push the company's new washer and dryer. Or, if he's not receiving money, Joe might be the recipient of paid trips to Hawaii or prepaid gift cards. All of these things can and do happen in the blogosphere, and there are no rules on disclosure.
China is filtering out criticism and diving in headfirst with its plan to roll out controversial filtering software on all PCs sold in China. The Chinese media quoted an unnamed source inside the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, saying that the software will still come with all computers as of July 1 despite the discovery of massive security holes and vulnerabilities by security researchers.
News came out about China's plan to implement Internet access control software, called the "Green Dam Youth Escort" earlier this month. The Windows-only software provides a mix of features, including whitelists, blacklists, and on-the-fly content-based filtering. The blacklists can be updated remotely, however, making Green Dam quite an attractive option for a government that likes to keep tight control over what kind of content its citizens are exposed to.
German music trade group GEMA has won a court judgment against one-click file-sharing service RapidShare, and the Hamburg Regional Court has confirmed that services like RapidShare must implement proactive content filtering to avoid liability.
The decision has been building for more than a year. GEMA went after RapidShare after it became a popular hub for sharing albums online, and in relative safety. In January 2008, another regional court in Düsseldorf found that RapidShare was responsible for what its users uploaded to the service.
So RapidShare implemented a screening process—six full-time staff members vetted content and dealt with infringement complaints, and RapidShare maintained hashes of all files that were pulled down for infringement. Using the hashes, the site would prevent repeat uploads of identical content, though any alteration in the file would render the hash technique useless.
Quick, name the country that plans to impose a mandatory Internet censoring regime that will, among other things, block access to all video games intended for anyone over the age of 15?
Answer: Australia.
The Australian government has pressed ahead with a trial of its proposed Internet filtering system, this despite the fact that—by its own admission—"there are no success criteria as such."
The scheme would involve a mandatory filtering service that would block access to all material "refused classification" by Australia's government-run ratings agency. This includes child pornography, bestiality, truly deviant/abusive sexual behavior... and plenty of video games!
Users reported they could not access either Google's search engine or its Chinese-language version.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang accused Google of spreading pornography and breaking Chinese law.
The move came as the US called on China to scrap its plan to put net-filtering software on all new computers.
| Hi all. Be sure to watch the vid guys, whether you're a jock or a nerd  As usual, you can find last week's news here. |
Canada is considering legislation allowing the country's police and national security agency to readily access the online communications and the personal information of ISP subscribers.
"We must ensure that law enforcement has the necessary tools to catch up to the bad guys and ultimately bring them to justice. Twenty-first century technology calls for 21st-century tools," Justice Minister Rob Nicholson said in announcing two new bills at a press conference in Ottawa, the CBC has reported.
The Technical Assistance for Law Enforcement in the 21st Century Act would require ISPs to install "intercept-capable" equipment on their networks and provide police with "timely access" to subscribers' personal information, including names, street addresses, and IP addresses.
A new lawyer, a new jury, and a new trial were not enough to save Jammie Thomas-Rasset. In a repeat of the verdict from her first federal trial, Thomas-Rasset was found liable for willfully infringing all 24 copyrights controlled by the four major record labels at issue in the case. The jury awarded the labels damages totaling a whopping $1.92 million. As the dollar amount was read in court, Thomas-Rasset gasped and her eyes widened.
Kiwi Camara, Thomas-Rasset's lead attorney, spoke briefly after the trial. He told reporters that when he first heard the $80,000 per song damage award, he was "angry about it" and said he had been convinced that any liability finding would have been for the minimum amount of $750 per song.
Universal Music Group has entered into a deal with Virgin Media to offer an unlimited music download subscription service to Virgin's broadband customers in the UK. You read that right—this is a subscription service that lets you download unprotected MP3s that you can keep forever, even after you cancel your subscription. The idea is to lure customers away from pirating music over P2P networks by letting them download legal music to their heart's content, though Virgin is still planning to adopt a system to deal with pirates.
The two companies described the deal as the "world's first" unlimited download subscription service, and said that Virgin Media broadband customers will be able to stream and download as many tracks and albums as they want from Universal's extensive catalog. There will, of course, be a monthly fee (that neither company has chosen to disclose at the time of this writing), but customers will be able to keep their music forever once it's downloaded. There will also be an "entry level" tier for customers who still want in on the action but don't want or need unlimited music.
Congressman Eric Massa represents a district in western New York that's exquisitely sensitive to the current US broadband market. On the phone side, the area, which includes the city of Rochester, is served by Frontier Communications, which shows no indication that it will follow Verizon in offering fiber to the home, while its DSL terms of service suggest that 5GB per month is appropriate usage. On the cable side of the service duopoly, Time Warner used the area as a test market for its brief flirtation with widespread usage caps. At the time, Massa promised to respond to his constituents' outrage by introducing legislation that would regulate the imposition of usage caps; that bill is now ready. It would treat ISPs like utilities, and put the Federal Trade Commission in the role of Public Utilities Commission, ensuring that the service providers had an economic case for imposing usage-based fees.
In making the case for regulation, the bill brings together a few strands of thought that are becoming increasingly common in discussions of the role of government in fostering the development of the Internet. In short, the Internet has become essential for a variety of basic functions—the bill specifically mentions its use for "agricultural, medical, educational, environmental, library, and nonprofit purposes"—making access part of the basic infrastructure. There's also an economic case to be made for broadband, since it allows more sophisticated services and commerce to take place online.
One of the things people tend to forget when posting pictures and personal information online is that a lot of it is only a short Internet search away from their current or potential employers (not to mention their parents). It has now become standard procedure for many employers to sit down with Google and cyberstalk potential employees, while the more savvy hunt down Facebook profiles and Twitter feeds. The city of Bozeman Montana, however, has decided that all of that is too much work—it's now requesting that potential employees hand over the login credentials for any social networking sites they frequent.
Background checks are standard procedure for many jobs, as it allows employers to identify problematic legal histories and things of that nature. Bozeman is no exception, as it uses a waiver form to obtain an applicant's consent to use their Social Security and driver's license numbers to dig into their past. But the form is notable in that about a third of area that needs to be filled out by an applicant is devoted to website information.
A pair of researchers has discovered a way to use modern browsers to more easily build darknets -- those underground, private Internet communities where users can share content and ideas securely and anonymously.
Billy Hoffman, manager for HP Security Labs at HP Software, and Matt Wood, senior security researcher in HP's Web Security Research Group, will demonstrate a proof-of-concept for Veiled, a new type of darknet, at the Black Hat USA conference in Las Vegas next month. Darknets, themselves, are nothing new; networks like Tor, FreeNet, and Gnutella are well-established. The HP researchers say Veiled is the same idea, only much simpler: It doesn't require any software to participate, just an HTML 5-based browser. "We've implemented a simple, new darknet in the browser," Wood says. "There are no supporting [software] programs."
A URL-shortening service that condenses long Web addresses for use on micro-blogging sites like Twitter was hacked over the weekend, sending millions of users to an unintended destination, a security researcher said today.
After Cligs, a rival to the better known TinyURL and bit.ly shortening services, was attacked Sunday, more than 2.2 million Web addresses were redirected to Kevin Saban's blog, which appears on the Orange County Register's Web site. Noticing a dramatic upswing in traffic, Saban -- who uses Cligs in his Twitter messages to shorten URLs -- contacted Pierre Far, the creator of Cligs.
Microsoft has fired a warning shot at online advertising fraudsters with a $750,000 lawsuit against three individuals who allegedly directly bilked advertisers and indirectly deprived Microsoft of potential online advertising revenue through click fraud.
In a June 15 blog post, Tim Cranton, associate general counsel at Microsoft, said the click fraud attacks occurred on online advertisements related to auto insurance and the World of Warcraft online role-playing game.
In his post, Cranton said: "Earlier today, after a thorough investigation, Microsoft filed a civil lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for Western Washington outlining a massive click fraud scheme believed to have impacted Microsoft’s advertising platform and potentially other networks. The case is Microsoft v. Lam, et. al., case number 09-cv-0815."
| Hi all. As usual, you can find last week's news here. |
Cryptographers have found new chinks in a widely-used digital-signature algorithm that have serious consequences for applications that sign email, validate websites, and carry out dozens of other online authentication functions.
The researchers, from Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, found a way to break the SHA-1 algorithm in significantly fewer tries than previously required. Although the hash function was previously believed to withstand attempts numbering 263, the researchers have been able to whittle that down to 252, a number that puts practical attacks well within grasp of well-funded organizations.
Global Language Monitor (GLM) searches the internet for newly coined terms, and once a word or phrase has been used 25,000 times, it recognises it.
GLM said Web 2.0 beat out the terms Jai ho, N00b and slumdog to take top spot.
However, traditional dictionary makers are casting doubt on the claim and the methods behind it.
The French Constitutional Council has ripped into the new Création et Internet law which would disconnect repeat online copyright infringers, calling the basic premise unconstitutional. "Innocent until proven guilty" remains a central principle of French law, and it cannot be bypassed simply by creating a new nonjudicial authority.
Better known as the "three strikes" law, Création et Internet set up a High Authority in France that would oversee a graduated response program designed to curb online piracy. Rightsholders would investigate, submit complaints to the High Authority (called HADOPI, after its French acronym), and the Authority would take action. Warnings would be passed to ISPs, who would forward them to customers; after two such warnings, the subscriber could be disconnected and placed on a nationwide "no Internet" blacklist.
European buyers of Windows 7 will have to download and install a web browser for themselves.
Bowing to European competition rules, Microsoft Windows 7 will ship without Internet Explorer.
The company said it would make it easy for PC makers and users to get at and install the web browsing program.
In response the European Commission expressed scepticism over the move and whether it would allay accusations of Microsoft abusing its market position.
The final returns are still being counted, but Sweden's Pirate Party (Piratpartiet) has secured at least one seat in today's elections for the European Parliament. According to Sweden's election authority, the Pirate Party has crossed the four percent threshold needed for a seat and currently has 7.1 percent of the vote.
"We have just written political history," said Swedish Pirate Party leader Rick Falkvinge. "Tonight, politicians have learned that doing what the lobby asks will cost them their jobs. We're the largest party in the segment below 30 years of age. That's building the future of liberties."
With more than 700 legislators in the European Parliament (see the complete breakdown), a vote or two won't do much to set the agenda. But for a party formed only a few years ago with a narrow set of concerns, this is an excellent showing.
On Monday, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger promoted his state's recently announced initiative, which would see it adopt free, digital textbooks in time for the next school year. The state's current fiscal crisis is an obvious motivating factor, as Schwarzenegger said that the state's share of textbook spending comes in at $350 million a year. But the crisis may simply be accelerating a process that was already under way. For the past several years, the state has run a program designed to evaluate online educational resources and certify that they can be used in a way that is compliant with state educational standards.
In a speech and editorial in which he pushed the program, Schwarzenegger didn't shy from making financial arguments. He suggested that the shift would help both the state and local school districts, which spend their own money for textbook purchases. Once the program is in full swing, a school district with 10,000 high school students could end up with savings in the area of $2 million a year. For now, however, the certification of digital texts will focus on various areas of math and science: Geometry, Algebra, Trigonometry, Calculus, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, and Earth Sciences.
A large internet service provider said data for as many as 100,000 websites was destroyed by attackers who targeted a zero-day vulnerability in a widely-used virtualization application.
Technicians at UK-based Vaserv.com were still scrambling to recover data on Monday evening UK time, more than 24 hours after unknown hackers were able to gain root access to the company's system, Rus Foster, the company's director told The Register. He said the attackers were able to penetrate his servers by exploiting a critical vulnerability in HyperVM, a virtualization application made by a company called LXLabs.
"We were hit by a zero-day exploit" in version 2.0.7992 of the application, he said. "I've heard from other people they've been hit by the same thing."
For 15 years, scientists have benefited from data gleaned by U.S. classified satellites of natural fireball events in Earth's atmosphere – but no longer.
A recent U.S. military policy decision now explicitly states that observations by hush-hush government spacecraft of incoming bolides and fireballs are classified secret and are not to be released, SPACE.com has learned.
The satellites' main objectives include detecting nuclear bomb tests, and their characterizations of asteroids and lesser meteoroids as they crash through the atmosphere has been a byproduct data bonanza for scientists.