After an earlier decision failed to reach its objective, this week a Brazilian court made an unprecedented ruling against file-sharing clients. Following legal action by anti-piracy groups against a website offering a file-sharing client for download, the court decided that software which allows users to share music via P2P is illegal
Microsoft has filed five civil lawsuits in King County Superior Court in Seattle against alleged malvertisers. Malvertising camouflages malicious code, and Microsoft wants to stop it
After Australia’s Senator Stephen Conroy’s plans to filter the Internet earned him the title of Internet Villain of the Year, today there is more chin-scratching over the plans. Speaking yesterday, the Senator Conroy said there has never been any suggestion that the government could or would block P2P traffic
Using Google to research a news story is easy on your iPhone. Which is why one lawyer wants jurors to stop doing it
Porcupine quills and cactus spines are among the tools used to prepare a £1m hoard of Viking treasure to go on public show in York on 17 September
The use of checks on web sites before comments, forum posts, or registrations, are allowed to happen are commonplace with probably the best known being the CAPTCHA test. CAPTCHAs present users with characters that are obscured in some way and presented as an image making it very difficult for anything other than a human to decipher. Those tests are quite effective, but one company called reCAPTCHA had a better idea: use the CAPTCHA tests to serve another purpose by helping to digitise books. When you solve a reCAPTCHA you are actually turning a reference from one of those digital book projects into text. This is necessary because the optical character recognition software used to scan those books can’t always figure out what some of the words are, especially in older books, or when copies exist that have some damage. Now the use of reCAPTCHA is set to expand as Google has announced it has acquired the company
Mobile technology specialist Myriad Group has acquired Xumii, a mobile social networking and instant messaging start-up with roots in Australia that also operates in the United States
Adobe Systems said it would buy the Web analytics software company Omniture for about $1.8 billion, giving the maker of content-creation software a way to let marketers monitor the effectiveness of such content
Panasonic has launched a new household LED lightbulb in Japan that it says lasts 40 times longer than incandescent bulbs. The screw-in bulbs are part of the EverLed line, and they’re scheduled to hit stores in Japan on 21 October, with monthly production at 50,000 units. No changes to lighting equipment used for incandescents are required. If used an average of five and a half hours per day, the new bulbs can last up to 19 years, according to Panasonic. That’s 40 times longer than incandescent bulbs
Thousands of businesses and homes in Sydney’s CBD could be without phone, internet and mobile phone coverage for up to a week after a contractor accidentally severed crucial cables. Contractors working for Energy Australia cut through a bundle of 10,000 Telstra copper wires and some multiple-fibre optical cables near the corner of York and Erskine streets about 9.30pm yesterday
Male masturbation and extreme anal fisting are now PG, as far as the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) are concerned. However, mainstream films such as V for Vendetta and American Gangster are prohibited content — at least if they happen to be distributed through the iTunes Store Gift this movie
menu. This would appear to be the latest peculiar twist to the censorship debate in Australia, and is in part a direct consequence of the Australian government pressing ahead with plans for its super-hi-tech firewall — without first sorting out the law that the firewall is meant to embody
After its initial adoption in May, the original version of the 3 strikes
Hadopi anti-piracy legislation was struck down by France’s highest legal authority after declaring the proposals unconstitutional. A modified version of the bill was accepted in July by the Senate and today it was passed in the National Assembly
A Maori legend about a giant, man-eating bird has been confirmed by scientists. Te Hokioi was a huge black-and-white predator with a red crest and yellow-green tinged wingtips, in an account given to Sir George Gray, an early governor of New Zealand. It was said to be named after its cry and to have raced the hawk to the heavens
. Scientists now think the stories handed down by word of mouth and depicted in rock drawings refer to Haast’s eagle, a raptor that became extinct just 500 years ago
Google is unlocking its data door by launching a new initiative called Data Liberation, an approach to engineering that allows users to move their data — be it pictures, mail or documents — from Google’s servers to any other location
The Internet Industry Association (IIA) has drafted a new code of conduct that suggests ISPs contact, and in some cases disconnect, customers that have malware-infected computers
Australian internet users now consume twice as much data than they did a year ago, but figures by Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) reveal there are still over 200,000 businesses and government agencies on a dial-up connection. Last June, over a three-month period, Australia downloaded around 55.4 terabytes (TB). This year the figure almost doubled to 99.9TB as more subscribers ditched dial-up for faster ADSL-style fixed line connections or wireless broadband
The Rudd government has announced a package of reforms to telecommunications regulations that will pave the way for a break-up of Telstra. Communications Minister Stephen Conroy said the reforms would address the telco’s high level of integration with the aim of promoting greater competition and consumer benefits
Pioneering Australian documentary filmmaker and one half of the Leyland Brothers, Mike Leyland, has died aged 68 from Parkinson’s disease-related complications. The Leyland Brothers rose to fame as explorers and documentary filmmakers, best known for their popular Channel Nine television show Ask The Leyland Brothers
Think you can be anonymous online? Most people simply have no idea how easy it is for law enforcement officials — and other litigants, like someone suing you — to gain access to personal email, Google searches, and other online information users think is theirs
. The latest ominous evidence of this fact comes from our friends to the north. A Canadian court has ordered Google to turn over the identities of anonymous Gmail users who had accused York University faculty members of fraud and dishonesty. Like similar cases in the US, the York incident shows just how easy it is for courts to allow authorities to gain access to our
personal information
ALIS, Israel’s answer to the MPAA, has moved aggressively against a site which provides translated subtitles for movies and TV shows. Three individuals who work to provide free subtitles on Qsubs, one of Israel’s most prominent subtitle providers, have been ordered by ALIS to pay $264,000 each in damages and issue a public apology
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