Both the music and movie industries see file-sharing as a very real threat to their livelihood. Their approaches to the problem have differed, however, as the RIAA has targeted individual P2P users with lawsuits while the IFPI and MPAA have chosen to go after BitTorrent sites. The MPAA has scored some high-profile victories against P2P site operators and the men behind The Pirate Bay have been indicted by Swedish prosecutors, but many observers have questioned whether the motion picture industry’s efforts are in fact backfiring, as traffic to popular BitTorrent sites and participation in swarms appears to be on the upswing
About one percent of the Web pages being delivered on the Internet are being changed in transit, sometimes in a harmful way, according to researchers at the University of Washington
Companies will be able to intercept the emails and internet communications of their employees without their consent under new laws being considered by the Federal Government to protect the nation’s critical infrastructure from a cyber attack
The Greens and privacy advocates have hit back against proposed laws which could allow companies to snoop on their workers’ e-mails, but Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard has said the laws are needed to protect vital electronic infrastructure from terrorist attacks
The Federal Trade Commission has proposed self-regulatory guidelines for companies that do behavioural targeting. That’s good, but self-regulation is not enough. One idea starting to gain traction in Congress is a do-not-track list, similar to the federal do-not-call list, which would allow Internet users to opt out of being spied on
The United Nations refugee agency has unveiled a new partnership with Google to help track refugees from Iraq to Darfur and raise public awareness of its work. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) launched its new service using the Google Earth Outreach
programme, which allows organisations to add their own data and information as a layer
on top of the existing Google Earth service
Hundreds of police officers across South Australia caught using their work computers to illegally copy movie DVDs will escape prosecution. The activity — strictly banned under federal copyright laws — was detected during an audit conducted by the information technology branch of SA Police
Chinese authorities appear to have lifted a block on the English-language version of online encyclopedia Wikipedia, but politically sensitive topics such as Tibet and Tiananmen Square are still off limits. Internet users in Beijing and Shanghai confirmed on Saturday that they could access the English-language version of one of the world’s most popular websites, but the Chinese language version was still restricted
A lawyer who sent out hundreds of thousands of threatening letters demanding that alleged file-sharers pay 400 euros, has been banned from operating for 6 months. Elizabeth Martin, who had been working with Swiss anti-piracy outfit, Logistep, was condemned by the Paris Bar Council
The head of one of Britain’s biggest internet providers has criticised the music industry for demanding that he act against pirates. The trade body for UK music, the BPI, asked internet service providers to disconnect people who ignore requests to stop sharing music. But Charles Dunstone of Carphone Warehouse, which runs the TalkTalk broadband service, is refusing. He said it is not his job to be an internet policeman
Virgin Media in the UK has announced that it is working with the music industry to chase down its file-sharing customers and disconnect them from the internet. At the same time, it will offer an enhanced service which will see its customers get free Usenet binaries access, untraceable by the music industry
Whilst one site may have closed its doors thanks to the MPAA, after continuous legal pressure, another has prevailed today in court. Torrent.is has won in court over the Association of film rights-holder in Iceland (SMÁÍS)
There’s unrest on the streets of Tibet — clashes between Tibetians and the Chinese military. However, there’s unrest also on the net. Groups supporting freedom of Tibet have been attacked with highly targeted and technically advanced attacks. Quoting an Asia Free Press news report: AFP received an email Tuesday from someone claiming to be in Denmark, who had attached a file they said were pictures of Tibetans shot by the Chinese army. When AFP tried to open the attachment, a virus warning appeared
If you buy a regular old book, CD or DVD, you can turn around and loan it to a friend, or sell it again. The right to pass it along is called the first sale
doctrine. Digital books, music and movies are a different story though. Four students at Columbia Law School’s Science and Technology Law Review looked at the particular issue of reselling and copying e-books downloaded to Amazon’s Kindle or the Sony Reader, and came up with answers to a fundamental question: Are you buying a crippled license to intellectual property when you download, or are you buying an honest-to-God book?
The Federal Constitutional Court in Germany has ruled that the identities of file-sharers must remain private and can no longer be revealed to media companies who accuse them of copyright infringement. In future, only those accused of heavy
crimes such as murder, child pornography or kidnapping will be revealed
Someone has posted a profile loaded with vicious accusations against a Brisbane teenager on a US website which wants to charge her a fee to remove the slurs. Samantha Fletcher, 15, says the cyber attack is the result of a schoolyard feud and wants the US website Dating Psychos to take down her profile
, which accuses her of racially taunting classmates and insulting an anorexic student. She said the site had refused to remove the material unless she paid it $20
China has blocked access to Google News and YouTube in an apparent attempt to stop the spread of video footage related the rioting going on in several cities in Tibet, including the capital Lhasa. Demonstrations in the city started on March 10, a day commemorating the anniversary of a 1959 uprising against Chinese rule after which the spiritual leader of the country, the Dalai Lama, fled to India
Swedish courts will soon be able to force the country’s Internet providers to produce information on suspected file-sharers in a move to crackdown on piracy
Wikileaks has 208 scanned pages (in one PDF) relating to the Church of Scientology and its former Office of Special Affairs
employee (and subsequent apostate) Frank Oliver. The documents are dated between 1986 and 1992 inclusive, when, according to the file, Frank Oliver was declared a suppressive person
and excommunicated. Frank Oliver should be able to verify the material and has appeared in the media before on subjects relating to the church. Starting on page 107, the document shows that at the time of writing the Church of Scientology was still actively engaged in black propaganda (especially concerning psychiatry), fair game
and infiltration
Some of the largest book publishers in the world are stripping away the anticopying software on digital downloads of audio books
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