Stephen Conroy’s mandatory internet filtering plans have earned him the title of Internet Villain of the Year at the 11th annual Internet Industry Awards. The Internet Villain category recognises individuals or organisations that have upset the Internet industry and hampered its development — those whom the industry loves to hate. As Australia’s communications minister, and supporter of one of the world’s most ambitious internet censorship plans, Senator Conroy beat out tough competition from the likes of the European Parliament and French President Nicolas Sarkozy
The surviving workers from the Bletchley Park cryptography unit are to be honoured, nearly 70 years after the unit was formed. The Bletchley Park code breakers, known as Station X during the Second World War, were never officially recognised for their invaluable work in deciphering German, Italian and Japanese military codes — work this is thought to have shortened the war by more than two years and saved millions of lives
Two senators plan to introduce a bill that would bar foreign companies that sell technology to Iran from receiving federal contracts. Senators Charles Schumer, D-NY, and Lindsey Graham, R-SC, said they wrote up the legislation after the Wall Street Journal reported on June 22 that a joint venture of Nokia of Finland and Siemens AG of Germany had sold a sophisticated Internet-monitoring system to Iran in 2008. Schumer and Graham’s bill would require the Obama administration to identify foreign companies that export sensitive technology to Iran and ban them from bidding on federal contracts, or renew expiring ones, unless they first stop exports to Iran
Britain is hiring former computer hackers to join a new security unit aimed at protecting cyberspace from foreign spies, thieves and terrorists, the country’s terrorism minister said. Alan West said the technology-savvy staff would join efforts to trace the source of — and prevent — cyber attacks on Britain’s government, businesses and individuals. The country also will develop its capability to wage cyber warfare against the country’s foes, he said
Just two weeks after the Swedish Pirate Party won a seat in the European Parliament, the German PiratenPartei has gained a seat in the German government. Jörg Tauss has left the Social Democrats Party (SPD) and has joined the Pirate Party
The German lower house of parliament, the Bundestag, has adopted a new set of laws making it possible to block child pornography Web sites. The legislation requires Web hosting companies to post stop
signs when internet users try to access child pornography sites. The bill still has to go through several stages before it becomes law. The motion has been the subject of a protest petition, with opponents claiming it is a first step towards Internet censorship. The petition has gathered 130,000 signatures calling for the bill to be scrapped
Fixed-line telephone users will pay £6 a year to fund the rollout of superfast broadband across the country, the government said today as it launched its Digital Britain report into the future of the media landscape. A 50p-a-month levy on every copper telephone line will help pay for next-generation broadband for 90% of the population
The Constitutionnal Council, highest jurisdiction in France gave its decision1 concerning the HADOPI three strikes
law, final stage before the promulgation of the law. It decided that presumption of innocence is more important than the idiotic schemes from the entertainment industries to artificially prolong their obsolete models. All sanctioning power (ie. disconnecting internet users) has been removed from the HADOPI
Sweden’s Pirate Party has won a seat in the European Parliament. The group — which campaigned on reformation of copyright and patent law — secured 7.1% of the Swedish vote. The result puts the Pirate Party in fifth place, behind the Social Democrats, Greens, Liberals and the Moderate Party
The Pirate Party has won a huge victory in the Swedish elections and is marching on to Brussels. After months of campaigning against well established parties, the Pirate Party has gathered enough votes to be guaranteed a seat in the European Parliament
So where do these notions of so many billions in lost revenue come from? I found the original report. It was written by some academics you can hire in a unit at UCL called Ciber, the Centre for Information Behaviour and the Evaluation of Research (which seeks to inform by countering idle speculation and uninformed opinion with the facts
). The report was commissioned by a government body called Sabip, the Strategic Advisory Board for Intellectual Property. On the billions lost it says: Estimates as to the overall lost revenues if we include all creative industries whose products can be copied digitally, or counterfeited, reach £10bn (IP rights, 2004), conservatively, as our figure is from 2004, and a loss of 4,000 jobs.
What is the origin of this conservative figure? I hunted down the full Ciber documents, found the references section, and followed the web link, which led to a 2004 press release from a private legal firm called Rouse who specialise in intellectual property law. This press release was not about the £10bn figure. It was, in fact, a one-page document, which simply welcomed the government setting up an intellectual property theft strategy. In a short section headed background
, among five other points, it says: Rights owners have estimated that last year alone counterfeiting and piracy cost the UK economy £10bn and 4,000 jobs.
An industry estimate, as an aside, in a press release. Genius
Chinese censors blocked access to Twitter and other popular online services today, two days before the 20th anniversary of the crackdown on democracy protests in Tiananmen Square. The move came amid increasing pressure on dissidents, in a reflection of the authorities’ anxiety ahead of the sensitive date. Hundreds died as the army forced its way through Beijing to clear away demonstrators from the capital’s political heart in June 1989, but the issue is taboo on the mainland. The photo-sharing site Flickr, email service Hotmail and other services were also unavailable this evening
The Rudd Government has indicated that it may back away from its mandatory internet filtering plan. Communications Minister Stephen Conroy today told a Senate estimates committee that the filtering scheme could be implemented by a voluntary industry code. Senator Conroy’s statement is a departure from the internet filtering policy Labor took into the October 2007 election to make it mandatory for ISPs to block offensive and illegal content. Responding to questions from shadow communications minister Nick Minchin on how the government may go about imposing the internet filtering scheme, Senator Conroy said that legislation may not be required and ISPs may adopt an industry consensus to block restricted content on a voluntary basis
The UK government has pushed back on requests that a historic site used by Britain’s top code-breakers during World War II should be elevated to the same status as the Imperial War Museum. Responding to a question from Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall, whose parents met while stationed at the Bletchley Park site during the war, the deputy chief whip of the House of Lords, Lord Davies of Oldham said that while the government was keen to support the site, there would be no moves to link the site to the Imperial War Museum
Allowing ISPs to have too much would drastically hinder the chances of fresh new startups developing into major businesses — as happened with Google
The controversial French HADOPI anti-piracy law was passed by the National Assembly today, one step closer to being signed into action. The new law introduces draconian measures to combat piracy including a three strikes
regime for persistent offenders
A privacy watchdog has banned Google from gathering detailed, street-level images in Greece for a planned expansion of its panoramic Street View mapping service until the company provides additional privacy safeguards. In rejecting Google’s bid to roam Greek streets with cameras mounted on vehicles, Greece’s Data Protection Authority, or DPA, said it wanted clarification from the US Internet company on how it will store and process the original images and safeguard them from privacy abuses
StudiVZ is a Facebook-style operation and is Germany’s largest web-based social networking site. With the European Parliament elections in sight, the web site recently opened up to established political parties for election campaigning. Not for all parties though, as they chose to ban the Pirate Party
The Home Office has been accused of colluding with online ad firm Phorm on informal guidance
to the public on whether the company’s service is legal. E-mails between the ministry and Phorm show the department asking if the firm would be comforted
by its position. The messages show Phorm making changes to the guidance sought by the ministry. Lib Dem Home Affairs spokeswoman Baroness Sue Miller, who has questioned the Home Office about Phorm, said the e-mails were jaw dropping
The island of Taiwan has just approved new legislation which effectively bans the use of P2P technology to facilitate the distribution of copyrighted works online. The legislation also requires ISPs to start a 3 strikes
regime for file-sharers
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