The results of a new poll reveal the extent of opposition to Lord Mandelson’s proposals for tough sanctions against alleged file-sharers. The survey, commissioned by the Open Rights Group, shows that not only is the public in favour of due process, but a third would be much less likely to vote for political parties supporting these proposals
New Canadian anti-spam and anti-spyware legislation is scheduled for a key vote on Monday. Michael Geist reports that the copyright lobby has been pushing to remove parts of the bill that would take away exceptions which currently allow spyware to be installed without authorisation. The copyright lobby is deeply concerned that this change will block attempts to track possible infringement through electronic means.
There have also been proposals to extend the exemptions granted to telecom providers to include the installation of programs without the user’s express consent, which Geist says will ‘leave the door open to private, surreptitious surveillance — via Slashdot
Finland’s Ministry of Transport and Communications has made 1-megabit broadband Web access a legal right. According to the report, every person in Finland (a little over 5 million people, according to a 2009 estimate) will have the right of access to a 1Mb broadband connection starting in July. And they may ultimately gain the right to a 100Mb broadband connection. Just more than a year ago, Finland said it would make a 100Mb broadband connection a legal right by the end of 2015. Wednesday’s announcement is considered an intermediate step
The Guardian newspaper was forbidden by a judge from reporting a question in UK parliament. The press’s freedom to do so has been fought for since at least 1688 and fully acknowledged since the 19th century. At issue was a matter of public record — but the country’s libel laws meant that the newspaper could not inform the public of what parliament was up to. The question concerned the oil trading company Trafigura, the toxic waste scandal they are involved in, and their generous use of libel lawyers to silence those who would report on the whole thing. After tweeters and bloggers shouted about Trafigura all over the Internet, the company’s lawyers agreed to drop the gag request — via Slashdot
Since the financial crisis, Iceland has been forced to retreat back from high octane bubble living to nature. Fortunately, there is a lot of that nature to retreat to. It is a breathtaking world of volcanoes, endless prairies and ethereal winter landscapes. Not, you might think, the most obvious place to stick millions of the world’s computer servers which are, for all their uses, rather less attractive. But the country now wants exactly that — to become home to the world’s computing power. Behind all the large internet companies lurk massive and ever growing data centres chock full of servers churning away. Google for instance is thought to have around a million of the things, but even less IT intensive operations, banks for example, need hundreds of thousands of servers to store all their data
The US House of Representatives has taken its last mainframe offline, signaling the end of a computing era in Washington, DC. The last mainframe supposedly enjoyed quasi-celebrity status
within the House data center, having spent 12 years keeping the House’s inventory control records and financial management data, among other tasks. But it was time for a change, with the House spending $30,000 a year to power the mainframe and another $700,000 each year for maintenance and support
The Pirate Party, which champions issues such as intellectual property rights, free speech and data privacy, is on its way to becoming an official party in Australia. The party is gathering followers with the hope of achieving the 500 exclusive members needed to achieve official registered party status in the eyes of the Australian Electoral Commission
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
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
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
Hackers temporarily shut down Kevin Rudd’s web site last night in an apparent protest at federal government proposals for a mandatory internet filtering system. The web site of the Australian Communications and Media Authority was also taken down by the attack at about 7.20pm, but both sites were reported to be back online an hour later. There was also an apparent attempt to shut down the website of Communications Minister Stephen Conroy
NSW Premier Nathan Rees has announced a data feed for RailCorp information, which he hopes will signal the start of much more government information being made available
At a busy Madison Common Council meeting on Tuesday night, council members voted to make the plastic pink flamingo the official city bird. At Tuesday night’s meeting, the mayor introduced his proposed capital budget and council members discussed funding for the plastic bag recycling program. The new mascot was debated for five minutes, and then the Common Council voted 15-4 to make the plastic pink flamingo the official city bird. The idea was by a 1979 prank on Bascom Hill when the Pail and Shovel Party on campus put out 1,008 of the birds
Lord Mandelson’s plans to cut off the broadband connections of internet users who illegally download copyrighted music and films were attacked by privacy campaigners, internet service providers and Labour MPs yesterday as unworkable, unnecessary and potentially illegal. TalkTalk, Britain’s largest consumer broadband provider, warned that innocent web users could be disconnected after having their connections hijacked by pirates looking to circumvent the new rules. It added that the move will likely breach fundamental human rights
There’s a disturbing new development in Australia. A law proposal was disclosed to the public that would get ISPs to spy on the contents of all communications to monitor for compliance. Presumably, the amendments would get Australian ISPs to monitor their networks for p2p activity and hand all their information to copyright holders
Malaysia is considering the establishment of an Internet filter, similar to China’s abandoned Green Dam
project, a source familiar with the process told Reuters on Thursday. News of the proposal emerged within days of police arresting nearly 600 opposition supporters at a weekend rally denouncing a government that has ruled this Southeast Asian country for 51 years. A vibrant Internet culture has contributed to political challenges facing the government, which tightly controls mainstream media and has used sedition laws and imprisonment without trial to prosecute a blogger
Senator Stephen Conroy is a man on a mission. Undeterred that his absurd plans to filter the Internet have earned him the dubious title of Internet Villain of the Year, he is now promising to find a solution to the file-sharing problem
by bringing parties together who are already at war, or have little respect for him and his plans
Tough new laws aimed at clamping down on identity fraud are being drafted by the NSW government. Almost half a million Australians lost a combined $997 million to personal identity fraud in the last year, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). The ABS attributed the crime wave to the rapid expansion of internet technology, and electronic data sharing and storage
The French Senate has once again approved a reworked version of the country’s controversial three strikes
bill designed to appease the Constitutional Council. Instead of a state-appointed agency cutting off those accused of being repeat offenders, judges will have the final say over punishment. Meanwhile, New Zealand is ready to reintroduce the three-strikes
rule that says that everyone in your household will be denied Internet access (and all that goes with it, from education to civic engagement to health information) if one person is accused of infringing on copyright
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