Man who created own credit card sues bank for not sticking to terms

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11 August 2013
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When Dmitry Argarkov was sent a letter offering him a credit card, he found the rates not to his liking. But he didn’t throw the contract away or shred it. Instead, the 42-year-old from Voronezh, Russia, scanned it into his computer, altered the terms and sent it back to Tinkoff Credit Systems.

Mr Argarkov’s version of the contract contained a 0pc interest rate, no fees and no credit limit. Every time the bank failed to comply with the rules, he would fine them 3m rubles (£58,716). If Tinkoff tried to cancel the contract, it would have to pay him 6m rubles.

Tinkoff apparently failed to read the amendments, signed the contract and sent Mr Argakov a credit card.

The Bank confirmed its agreement to the client’s terms and sent him a credit card and a copy of the approved application form, his lawyer Dmitry Mikhalevich told Kommersant. The opened credit line was unlimited. He could afford to buy an island somewhere in Malaysia, and the bank would have to pay for it by law.

However, Tinkoff attempted to close the account due to overdue payments. It sued Mr Argakov for 45,000 rubles for fees and charges that were not in his altered version of the contract.

Earlier this week a Russian judge ruled in Mr Argakov’s favour. Tinkoff had signed the contract and was legally bound to it. Mr Argakov was only ordered to pay an outstanding balance of 19,000 rubles (£371) — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Email service thought used by Edward Snowden shuts down amid fight over customer information

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9 August 2013
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An encrypted email service believed to have been used by American fugitive Edward Snowden has shut down abruptly, amid a legal fight that appeared to involve US government attempts to win access to customer information.

I have been forced to make a difficult decision: to become complicit in crimes against the American people, or walk away from nearly 10 years of hard work by shutting down Lavabit, Lavabit owner Ladar Levison wrote in a letter posted on the Texas-based company’s website.

Mr Levison said he has decided to suspend operations but was barred from discussing the events over the past six weeks that led to his decision.

That matches the period since Snowden went public as the source of media reports detailing secret electronic spying operations by the US National Security Agency.

This experience has taught me one very important lesson: without congressional action or a strong judicial precedent, I would strongly recommend against anyone trusting their private data to a company with physical ties to the United States, Mr Levison wrote — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Amazon.com Founder to Buy The Washington Post

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6 August 2013
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The Washington Post, the venerable newspaper whose reporting ended a presidency and inspired a generation of journalists, is being sold to the founder of Amazon.com, Jeffrey P Bezos, in a surprise deal that has shocked the industry.

Donald E Graham, chairman and chief executive of The Washington Post Company, told the newspaper’s staff about the sale late Monday afternoon. They had gathered together in the newspaper’s auditorium at the behest of the publisher, Katharine Weymouth.

I, along with Katharine Weymouth and our board of directors, decided to sell only after years of familiar newspaper-industry challenges made us wonder if there might be another owner who would be better for the Post (after a transaction that would be in the best interest of our shareholders), Mr Graham said.

The announcement stressed that Mr Bezos would purchase The Post in a personal capacity, and not on behalf of Amazon, the Internet retailer. The deal includes all of the publishing businesses owned by The Washington Post Company, including the Express newspaper, The Gazette Newspapers, Southern Maryland Newspapers, Fairfax County Times, El Tiempo Latino and Greater Washington Publishing.

The Washington Post company plans to hold onto Slate magazine, The Root.com and Foreign Policy. According to the release, Mr Bezos has asked Ms. Weymouth to remain at The Post along with Stephen P Hills, president and general manager; Martin Baron, executive editor; and Fred Hiatt, editor of the editorial page — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Rupert Murdoch Wants To Destroy Australia’s National Broadband Network

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5 August 2013
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With the Australian Federal Election looming, Rupert Murdoch, the owner of Australia’s biggest newspapers, is looking to unseat the incumbent Labor government over its centerpiece National Broadband Network policy. The media mogul sees the NBN as a threat to his media empire and has ordered newspapers to attack the project at every opportunity. The NBN seeks to bring 100Mbps Fibre-To-The-Premises internet to 93% of the country with wireless and satellite for the remainder. It currently reaches 4% of the population and is slated to complete in 2021. The conservative opposition has promised to dramatically scale back the project — via Slashdot

Drastic govt measures needed: IT price hike report pulls no punches

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29 July 2013
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The Federal Parliament committee examining IT price hikes in Australia has published an extensive report recommending a raft of drastic measures to deal with current practices in the area, which, the report says, are seeing Australians unfairly slugged with price increases of up to 50 percent on key technology goods and services.

In mid-2012, spurred by the campaigning efforts of then-Labor backbencher Ed Husic, who has since been promoted to the dual roles of Parliamentary Secretary for Broadband and Parliamentary Secretary to Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Infrastructure and Communications kicked off hearings into the Australian cost of popular technology goods and services, as well as some forms of content, with reference to the issue of unfair price increases by international vendors.

Late last week, the committee handed down its report on the issue to Parliament, and this morning it was made available in full on the committee’s website.

In the foreword to the report, Committee chair Nick Champion noted that the importance of IT products to every sector of Australian society can hardly be overstated. IT products are woven into the fabric of our economy and society, and have driven rapid change in the way Australians communicate, the way we work, and the way we live, the Labor MP noted.

However, Champion added, the committee hearings held over the past year had found that Australian consumers and businesses must often pay between 50 and 100 percent more than those residing in other countries for the same products — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Court Says Broadcasters Can’t Use Copyright To Block Commercial Skipping

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27 July 2013
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This morning there was a huge victory for common sense in the Ninth Circuit appeals court ruling in the Fox v Dish case over Dish’s AutoHopper technology. As you may recall, pretty much all the major broadcasters sued Dish a year ago, claiming that its AutoHopper technology with the PrimeTime Anytime feature — which would record the entire primetime lineup, and allow Dish customers to watch everything (starting the next day) while automatically skipping the commercials — was infringement (and breach of contract). As we noted at the time, the broadcasters’ arguments made very little sense. The basis of the argument was that skipping commercials is a form of copyright infringement. We couldn’t see how skipping commercials violated the copyright in any way at all, and while Fox pretended it won the initial ruling at the district court level, the reality was that Dish won big.

Fox immediately appealed, and Dish has won big yet again with this latest ruling, which is a huge victory for common sense. The court makes a number of important findings, nearly all of them good and sensible. To be specific, the nature of this ruling was over whether or not the broadcasters could get an injunction to block Dish from offering this technology while the case was ongoing, but the court rejected it, saying that the broadcasters did not demonstrate a likelihood of success. This means the full trial can still go forward, but the technology can still be offered during that trial. However, the fact that both the district court and the appeals court have clearly stated that they don’t see a likelihood of the broadcasters succeeding shows that the broadcasters are likely to be wasting a lot of time and money only to lose.

The key point in this case: skipping commercials is not copyright infringement. For years, Hollywood has tried to claim that skipping commercials is a form of copyright infringement. All the way back in 2002, a TV exec claimed that skipping commercials was a theft (even merely going to the bathroom during a commercial). A couple years later they even tried to get Congress to pass a law explicitly banning commercial skipping (sponsored by Orrin Hatch, of course). Without that, they’ve just been pretending that commercial skipping must be illegal. In court, the TV networks have argued that anything that hurts their business model must be illegal — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Exposed: Telstra’s secret FBI spy deal

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15 July 2013
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Telstra signed a secret agreement a decade ago with US Government agencies such as the FBI and the Department of Justice that provided American law enforcement and national security organisations with an extremely broad level of access to all of the telco’s telecommunications passing in and out of the US, it was revealed late last week.

On Friday independent media outlet Crikey published what what appeared to be the text of the agreement. It notes that it was signed in November 2001 between Telstra and its Hong Kong partner telco PCCW, and the US Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Justice.

The document cites principles such as the US Government’s need to preserve the national security of the US and to ensure that US communications were secure in order to protect the privacy of US persons. It notes that the stimulus for the agreement to be signed was the application of Telstra/PCCW submarine cable joint venture Reach — which operates major underwater fibre links between a number of Asian countries, as well as Australia and the US — to provide telecommunications services from the US back in 2001, shortly after it was formed by Telstra and PCCW.

The agreement states that all telcos operating in the US must maintain facilities that were compliant with US law enforcement regulations in that country, such as the ability to hand over details, including calling data but not the content of communications, of all communications received or which originated in the US.

Data to be stored by Reach for two years included identifying information relating to telephone calls, such as telephone numbers, Internet addressed used, the time, date, size and duration of a communication, any information relating specifically to the identity and physical address of those communicating, and a host of other information, especially billing records, which typically show details of all telephone calls made by telephone service subscribers — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Planting mangrove trees pays off for coastal communities in Kenya

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14 July 2013
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When Kahindi Charo gathered 30 of his friends to replant mangroves in the 32 square kilometre (12 square mile) Mida Creek area, people in his village of Dabaso in Kilifi County dismissed them as crazy idlers.

Charo recalls that back then, in 2000, the creek had suffered badly from unregulated harvesting that had left the area bare, with rotting stumps and patches of old mangrove trees.

Today, Mida Creek, about 60 km (38 miles) north of Mombasa, flourishes with dense mangrove plantations that provide a habitat for birds, fish, and crabs. There is also a boardwalk leading to a 12-seat eco-restaurant perched beside the Indian Ocean — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Google accused of shameful hypocrisy in helping re-elect anti-global warming senator

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11 July 2013
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Google’s PR machine has this week been trumpeting its wind and sun energy ventures.

But you’ll have to go elsewhere to hear about its support for Senator James Inhofe, described by a San Francisco Chronicle columnist as the delusional or dishonest Oklahoma Republican who has called global warming the greatest hoax.

The “Green” giant is helping to raise lots of green for his re-election by hosting a lunch at its Washington office on July 11, costing as much as $2,500 per plate.

James Temple, writing in the San Francisco Chronicle, called it a shameful act of corporate hypocrisy — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Samsung buys set top box maker Boxee

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4 July 2013
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Samsung is buying Boxee — an Israeli firm that makes media streaming devices.

The South Korean electronics giant said it had acquired key talent and assets from the company.

This will help us continue to improve the overall user experience across our connected devices, it added.

Boxee’s latest product lets subscribers record TV shows onto its servers and then stream them to TVs, computers and smart devices from the cloud — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Stratasys to Acquire MakerBot for About $403 Million

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20 June 2013
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Stratasys Ltd unveiled plans to buy privately held MakerBot in a stock-for-stock transaction valued at $403 million, a deal that expands Stratasys’ position in the three-dimensional printer market.

Stratasys said the merger is poised to drive faster adoption of 3D printing for multiple applications and industries.

After the deal closes, which is expected to occur in the third quarter, MakerBot will operate as a separate subsidiary of Stratasys. MakerBot Chief Executive and co-founder Bre Pettis will continue to lead the business, Stratasys said — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Twitter buys Spindle to thread in location discovery tools

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20 June 2013
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Twitter has bought Spindle, a search technology company that informs users about what’s happening with local businesses and organisations around them.

The deal, the terms of which were not disclosed, could help Twitter beef up its efforts to keep users in the loop. The company has been rumoured to be working on its own location discovery feature to surface certain tweets posted by people nearby.

Spindle’s technology was based on delivering social updates from businesses and other sources to users. For example, Spindle users could use interactive maps to see where things were happening nearby and also set alerts to receive notifications from specific places — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Cashout Service for Ransomware Scammers

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4 June 2013
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There are 1,001 ways to swindle people online, but the hardest part for crooks is converting those ill-gotten gains into cash. A new service catering to purveyors of ransomware — malware that hijacks PCs until victims pay a ransom — levees a hefty fee for laundering funds from these scams, and it does so by abusing a legitimate Web site that allows betting on dog and horse races in the United States.

Ransomware is most often distributed via hacked or malicious sites that exploit browser vulnerabilities. Typically, these scams impersonate the Department of Homeland Security or the FBI (or the equivalent federal investigative authority in the victim’s country) and try to frighten people into paying fines to avoid prosecution for supposedly downloading child pornography and pirated content.

Ransomware locks the victim’s PC until he either pays the ransom or finds a way to remove the malware. Victims are instructed to pay the ransom by purchasing a prepaid MoneyPak card, sold at everything from Walgreens to Wal-Mart (some scams tell victims to pay using a PaySafe or Ukash card). Victims are then told to send the attackers a 14-digit voucher code that allows the bad guys to redeem those MoneyPak vouchers for cash.

Trouble is, taking funds off of a MoneyPak requires either spending it at stores that accept it, or hooking it up to a US bank account, to PayPal, or to a prepaid Visa or Mastercard. What’s more, most miscreants who are even halfway competent at spreading ransomware can expect to collect dozens of MoneyPak codes per day, so cashing out via the above-mentioned methods simply does not scale well for successful bad guys (particularly those who live outside of the United States) — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Australia’s de-facto net filter has zero regulation

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30 May 2013
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A couple of weeks back, Australia’s Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC) made a mistake: by trying to take down a Website promoting an investment scam, it accidentally blocked 1,200 sites using the same IP address as the scammer.

ASIC was able to attempt the take down thanks to a Section 313 Notice, a legislative instrument that instructs telcos and ISPs to block sites that break Australian laws.

It has now emerged that there is little or no oversight or transparency in how such notices are issued, who’s allowed to request one or when they’re permitted to make such requests. That means, as a Senate Estimates hearing was told, that nobody really knows exactly how many agencies might have the right to use the notices to, as Greens Senator Scott Ludlam put it, knock a site off the Internet.

A Section 313 notice refers to this section of the Telecommunications Act. The act requires carriers to try and prevent their networks being used to commit offenses, and requires them to assist an undefined list of officers and authorities of the Commonwealth, states and territories in preventing crimes using their networks.

Unfortunately, when the legislation was framed, the legislators had in mind telephones and fax machines, not the Internet. Its application to the Internet was the brainchild of Senator Stephen Conroy, as a way to implement the Interpol worst of the worst Internet blacklist (which mainly concerns child pornography) without having to pass new legislation — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Contributor Sues Newsvine For Failing To Share Ad Revenue

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30 May 2013
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A Web user who contributed to NBCNews.com’s citizen journalism site Newsvine has sued the company for allegedly depriving her of money she earned through a revenue share program.

Kathleen Wilkes of Wisconsin says in her lawsuit that she earned around $180 from Newsvine’s prior business model, which paid users 90% of ad revenue associated with material they posted to the site. Wilkes says she requested payment in February, but that the company refused to pay her.

Newsvine quietly revised its revenue-sharing program late last year, and as part of that shift, required contributors to claim any proceeds they were owed by the end of the year, Wilkes alleges. Newsvine informed users about the change by posting an article to its home page, according to the complaint.

But Wilkes says that like many other users, she never saw that article, which ran in November and carried the headline Newsvine Now Supports Google AdSense. She also says the company buried the most critical information at the end of the article. The last two sentences of the article said that November was the last month that users would receive 90% of ad revenue. Newsviners must cash out — or donate — their earnings Monday, December 31st, the article ended — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Nick Cave to sing Barossa’s praises

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24 May 2013
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A $6 million tourism campaign has been launched to promote the Barossa Valley as the nation’s top food and wine destination.
The advertisement features a soundtrack by Australian singer Nick Cave and will appear on television networks around Australia from 2 June 2.

There will also be a digital and print media campaign, in an effort to attract interstate visitors.

Tourism Barossa chairman Chris Pfeiffer said there was more to the Barossa Valley than wine production — via redwolf.newsvine.com

IRS sued for seizing 60 million medical records

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22 May 2013
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A healthcare provider has sued the Internal Revenue Service and 15 of its agents, charging they wrongfully seized 60 million medical records from 10 million Americans.

The name of the provider is not yet known, United Press International said. But Courthouse News Service said the suit claims the agency violated the Fourth Amendment in 2011, when agents executed a search warrant for financial data on one employee — and that led to the seizure of information on 10 million, including state judges.

The search warrant did not specify that the IRS could take medical information, UPI said. And information technology officials warned the IRS about the potential to violate medical privacy laws before agents executed the warrant, the complaint said, as reported by UPI.

Despite knowing that these medical records were not within the scope of the warrant, defendants threatened to ‘rip’ the servers containing the medical data out of the building if IT personnel would not voluntarily hand them over, the complaint states, UPI reported.

The suit also says IRS agents seized workers’ phones and telephone data — more violations of the warrant, UPI reported — via redwolf.newsvine.com

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