Australia’s biggest technology companies, communications academics and many lobby groups have delivered a withering critique of the government’s plans to censor the internet. The government today published most of the 174 submissions it received relating to improving the transparency and accountability measures of its internet filtering policy. Legislation to force ISPs to implement the policy is expected to be introduced within weeks. The filters will block a blacklist of refused classification
web sites for all Australians on a mandatory basis
The European Court of Justice ruled in favour of Google on Tuesday in a case concerning the use of trademarks in online advertising. French luxury goods maker LVMH took Google to court for using its brand names as keywords to trigger ads. The Court concluded that Google has not infringed trade mark law by allowing advertisers to purchase keywords corresponding to their competitors’ trade marks
. However, advertisers themselves cannot, by using such keywords, arrange for Google to display ads which do not allow Internet users easily to establish from which undertaking the goods or services covered by the ad in question originate,
the court added. The case sets important precedents for e-commerce, by appearing to uphold the right of Internet service providers to protection from liability for the content they carry on their networks
Just a month after the proposals were first outlined in full, the Swiss National Council has now officially passed a law that will ultimately lead to the complete ban of any violent video games in the country
Countries should be judged on their willingness to open up public data to their citizens, the inventor of the world wide web has told the BBC. He said openness of data and the neutrality of the network
should be considered as important as free speech. Sir Tim Berners-Lee is an advisor to a UK project — data.gov.uk — that offers reams of previously hidden public sector data for anyone to use. Open data could now be considered a basic right of citizens, he added
Spain is becoming the last bastion of common sense when it comes to peer-to-peer and file sharing, at least until the big media companies get their own way and change the law in the country altogether. Torrentfreak, the ever-vigilant blog focusing on BitTorrent and file-sharing issues, points to a recent lawsuit in Spain that ended quite favourably for both P2P users and link sites and dedicated search engines, and that found both use-cases to be perfectly legal in the country
MySpace has taken a bold step and allowed a large quantity of bulk user data to be put up for sale on startup data marketplace InfoChimps. Data offered includes user playlists, mood updates, mobile updates, photos, vents, reviews, blog posts, names and zipcodes. Friend lists are not included. Remember, Facebook and Twitter may be the name of the game these days in tech circles, but MySpace still sees 1 billion user status updates posted every month. Those updates will now be available for bulk analysis
In this two-year-old classified Army Counterintelligence Centre report [PDF], American spooks set out to destroy Wikileaks by intimidating its sources. They cite as justification for this the fact that Wikileaks has outed American embarrassments and crimes including US equipment expenditure in Iraq, probable US violations of the Chemical Warfare Convention Treaty in Iraq, the battle over the Iraqi town of Fallujah and human rights violations at Guantanamo Bay
Internet filtering won’t prevent people deliberately looking for inappropriate material from accessing blocked content, according to security vendor, M86 Security. Six of the nine ISP participants in the URL-based Internet filter trial last year used M86’s R3000 filtering kit. The technology was originally developed for the education sector and was then applied to enterprise businesses
The Department of Internal Affairs has admitted that the internet filter is now operational and is already being used by ISPs Maxnet and Watchdog. It appears that Maxnet have not told their customers that they are diverting some of their internet traffic to the government system to be filtered
Google’s chief executive expects the company will soon conclude negotiations with Beijing regarding the fate of its China business. In a related development, the internet search-engine giant told the US Congress that up to 25 countries had censored its services in recent years
A top media rights watchdog has listed Australia along with Iran and North Korea in a report on countries that pose a threat of internet censorship. Paris-based Reporters Without Bordersput Australia and South Korea on its list of countries under surveillance
in its Internet Enemies report. Australia was listed for its government’s plan to block access to websites featuring material such as rape, drug use, bestiality and child sex abuse. Critics say the plan is a misguided measure that will harm civil liberties
Secretary Clinton’s recent speech on Internet Freedom has signalled a strong interest from the US State Department in promoting the use of the internet to promote political reforms in closed societies. It makes sense that the State Department would look to support existing projects to circumvent internet censorship. The New York Times reports that a group of senators is urging the Secretary to apply existing funding to support the development and expansion of censorship circumvention programs, including Tor, Psiphon and Freegate
This is the story of how, in 2004, Mark Zuckerberg hacked into the email accounts of two Harvard Crimson reporters using data obtained from TheFacebook.com’s logs. The details are drawn from a broader investigation of the origins of Facebook, the sourcing of which is described here
Cruelty to animals, it is said, is often a precursor to graver crimes. So would there not be some usefulness to a registry of individuals convicted of felony animal abuse? Legislators in California want the Golden State to be the first to establish such a record — just as California was the first in the nation to create a registry of sex offenders
Some Southern California cities fine residents for watering their lawns too much during droughts. But in Orange, officials are locked in a legal battle with a couple accused of violating city ordinances for removing their lawn in an attempt to save water
The web developer whose code was modified to remove references to internet filtering on a government website has asked for it to be taken down. Aleks Bochniak is the original author of a script on Senator Conroy’s official website that was modified to remove mention of the words ISP Filtering
The Senate has comprehensively defeated a bid to legalise gay marriage, although a third of the senators did not turn up for the vote. Before the gay pride Mardi Gras in Sydney this weekend, the bill was rejected by 45 votes to five, with only the Greens voting to liberalise the marriage laws. But some of the senators who were absent from the chamber are uncomfortable with their party’s official policies opposing a move to let gay couples marry
Following widespread objections, New Zealand’s Section92A guilty upon accusation
anti-piracy law was scrapped last year. Today, The Copyright (Infringing File Sharing) Amendment Bill will be introduced, which repeals Section 92A and replaces it with a three-notice
regime, backed up by $15,000 fines and 6 month Internet suspensions
Early results from broadband information site Whirlpool’s annual survey has found that 91.8 per cent of respondents do not support the idea of mandatory internet filtering, with most believing the government should focus on educating parents and children instead
Several months after a European Union memo discussing the ACTA Internet chapter leaked, the actual chapter itself has now leaked. First covered by PC World, the new leak fully confirms the earlier reports and mirrors the language found in the EU memo. This is the chapter that required non-disclosure agreements last fall. The contents are not particulary surprising given the earlier leaks, but there are three crucial elements: notice-and-takedown, anti-circumvention rules, and ISP liability/three strikes
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