Kentucky Representative Tim Couch filed a bill this week to make anonymous posting online illegal. The bill would require anyone who contributes to a website to register their real name, address and e-mail address with that site. Their full name would be used anytime a comment is posted
The BBC appears to have inadvertently removed the controversial DRM from its iPlayer video-on-demand service. Now, all BBC programmes are broadcast across the country in digital form without DRM, literally diffused at the speed of light in all directions without any restrictions, but the Beeb somehow believes that there’s a new risk of piracy created by letting those same digital files out on the net
The FBI acknowledged Wednesday it improperly accessed Americans’ telephone records, credit reports and internet traffic in 2006, the fourth straight year of privacy abuses resulting from investigations aimed at tracking terrorists and spies. The breach occurred before the FBI enacted broad new reforms in March 2007 to prevent future lapses, FBI Director Robert Mueller said. And it was caused, in part, by banks, telecommunication companies and other private businesses giving the FBI more personal client data than was requested
Jeffrey White of Federal District Court in San Francisco, on Friday withdrew his earlier order disabling, Wikileaks.org, a web site that allows the anonymous posting of documents to discourage unethical behaviour in governments and corporations
A company trying to pass itself off as vendors of the open-source file-sharing software Shareaza, has set the legal dogs on the real Shareaza forum. Discordia Ltd, who earlier turned Bearshare and iMesh into pay services, demanded action after a member of the real Shareaza forum suggested a DOS attack on the site
Former Dead Kennedys vocalist Jello Biafra has torn into the RIAA, likening them to the mafia, threatening to leave a horse’s head in the beds of old women and children alike, whilst destroying the education of student file-sharers. Don’t even get him started on the media: Goebbels would be proud,
he said
Reporters Without Borders condemns the decision by the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) to block access YouTube. Claiming that the proportion of non-Islamic objectionable video
had increased on YouTube, the PTA, the official Internet regulatory body, ordered all Pakistani ISPs to block access to the web site until further notice
The British Government is considering a proposal to end the automatic right of Commonwealth nationals to live in the UK using ancestry visas
Google will begin storing the medical records of a few thousand people as it tests a long-awaited health service that’s likely to raise more concerns about the volume of sensitive information entrusted to the internet search leader
The Church of Scientology can delete auctions from eBay with no supervision under the VeRO program, and has used this to delete all resale of the e-meters Scientologists use. This is to stop members from buying used units from ex-members instead of buying from the official (and very expensive) source. Given Scientology’s record of fraud and abuse, should eBay give them this level of trust? Will this set a precedent for other companies that want to stop the aftermarket resale of their products? — via Slashdot
Jon DVD Jon
Johansen and friends launched doubleTwist today — a project that removes DRM from music and allows it to be synched to a variety of devices — via Boing Boing
As the internet threatens to kill the established music industry, the Rudd Government is considering a three-strikes policy against computer users who download songs illegally. The Government will examine new legislative proposals being unveiled in Britain this week to target people who download films and music illegally. ISPs there might be legally required to take action against users who access pirated material. Under the three-strikes policy, a warning would be first issued to offenders who illegally share files using peer-to-peer technology to access music, TV shows and movies free of charge. The second strike would lead to the offender’s internet access being suspended; the third would cancel the offender’s internet access
When you’re dealing with a flooding emergency in the middle of the worst drought for many years, the last thing you need is barriers to the sharing of geographical and meteorological information. Yet that’s the situation faced by Australia. The authorities’ response is to consider the widespread adoption of Creative Commons licences for public-sector information
The European Union Commissioner for the Internal Market has today proposed extending the copyright term for musical recordings to 95 years. He also wishes to investigate options for new levies on blank discs, data storage and music and video players to compensate artists and copyright holders for legal copying when listeners burn an extra version of an album to play one at home and one in the car — via Slashdot
ISPs are calling on the record industry to put its money where its mouth is on illegal file-sharing, by underwriting the cost of lawsuits brought by people who are wrongly accused of downloading or uploading music
SCO Group, which for years has claimed that Linux infringes on its Unix intellectual property, has received new funding and seems set to continue its battle against the open source operating system
Last week a Danish court ordered the ISP Tele2 to block its customers access to The Pirate Bay. The decision heated the debate on ISPs Internet filtering, and it now turns out that filtering traffic to The Pirate Bay is actually illegal according to European law
A deal has been struck between the major media companies and the Writers Guild of America to end the writers’ strike, former Walt Disney chief executive Michael Eisner revealed on CNBC
Two Victorian real estate agents have launched a defamation action against Google. Counsel for agents Mark Forytarz and Paul Castran of Castran Gilbert, appeared in the Supreme Court today for a directions hearing, alleging their clients have been defamed by articles found via Google searches
A journalism student in Afghanistan has been sentenced to death by a Sharia court for downloading and sharing a report criticising the treatment of women in some Islamic countries. The student was accused of blasphemy and tried without representation — via Slashdot
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