Access to YouTube has been suspended in Turkey following a court order. The ban was imposed after prosecutors told the court that clips insulting former Turkish leader Mustafa Kemal Ataturk had appeared on the site. According to Turkish media, there has been a virtual war
between Greek and Turkish users of the site, with both sides posting insulting videos
The French Constitutional Council has approved a law that criminalises the filming or broadcasting of acts of violence by people other than professional journalists. The law could lead to the imprisonment of eyewitnesses who film acts of police violence, or operators of Web sites publishing the images, one French civil liberties group warned
The Chinese government began blocking access to the popular blogging site LiveJournal on Friday, cutting off its citizens from the roughly 1.8 million blogs the service hosts. SixApart, the company behind LiveJournal, says there are 8,692 self-reported Chinese bloggers on the site, a number that’s likely low since it’s based on information volunteered in user profiles. China has blocked the site before, for no clear reason — then unblocked it again just as mysteriously, without any concessions from the company. The timing of the block coincides with the National People’s Congress meeting in Beijing, says Xiao Qiang, a Chinese dissident and founder of the China Digital Times. According to Xiao, the event is often accompanied by stepped up security and a worsening of China’s notorious internet censorship policies
The Canadian parliament has voted against renewing anti-terror laws that had been introduced after 11 September 2001. The rejected laws included provisions to hold terror suspects indefinitely, and to compel witnesses to testify, and were in some sense Canada’s version fo the Patriot Act. The laws were voted down in the face of claims from the minority Conservative government that the Liberal Party was soft on terror, and despite the fact that Canada has faced active terrorist cells in their own country. The anti-terror laws have never been used, and it was viewed that they are neither relevant, nor needed, in dealing with terrorist plots. Hopefully more countries will come to the same conclusion — via Slashdot
A US federal appeals court noted that a federal law was designed to ensure that within broad limits, message board operators would not be held responsible for the postings made by others on that board
, adding that, were the law otherwise, it would have an obvious chilling effect
on blogger speech
The latest breed of surveillance cameras, known as intelligent video
, could transform cameras from passive observers to eyes with brains, able to detect suspicious behavior and potentially prevent crime before it occurs
Official figures reveal that UK agencies monitored 439,000 telephones and email addresses in a 15 month period between 2005 and 2006. The Interception of Communications Commissioner is seeking the right for agencies to be allowed to monitor the communications of Members of Parliament as well, something which has been forbidden since the 1960s
The media industry is clashing with YouTube over its proposal to offer anti-piracy tools only to companies that have distribution deals with the top online video-sharing service. YouTube, owned by Google, plans to introduce technology to help media companies identify pirated videos uploaded by users. But the tools are currently being offered as part of broader negotiations on licensing deals
Daring Fireball has posted a humorous, and accurate PR-speak to Plain English translation of Macrovision’s CEO’s response to Steve Jobs’ Open Letter on DRM
Almost two-thirds of music industry executives think removing digital locks from downloadable music would make more people buy the tracks. The Jupiter Research study looked at attitudes to Digital Rights Management (DRM) systems in Europe music firms. Many of those responding said current DRM systems were not fit for purpose
and got in the way of what consumers wanted to do. Despite this few respondents said DRM would disappear in the near future
Dan Heller, author of the Photography Business Blog and a longtime watcher of the idea of selling photos on the Internet, observed Tuesday that there’s low-level buzz about Flickr possibly getting into the stock photo business
. He concludes, For Flickr to do it is obvious. Not doing so while they are on top of the game would be suicide.
It’s an interesting possibility. With some tweaks to the Web site and an opt-in check box on the image upload page, Yahoo and Flickr photographers could begin selling images to the sorts of folks who need to buy stock art — via CNET
Google’s YouTube and a company called Live Digital will offer no refuge to users who uploaded pirated copies of Fox Television’s 24
and The Simpsons
onto their video platforms. A 20th Century Fox Television spokesperson said that Google and Live Digital complied with subpoenas issued by the US District Court in Northern California and disclosed to Fox the identities of two individuals who illegally uploaded entire episodes of 24
prior to its broadcast and DVD release
While the US continues to hash out concerns over the Real ID Act, which aims to create a national ID by standardising state driver’s licenses, China has already implemented a massive online ID database, which they say will help prevent fraud. Anyone can now send a text message or visit the country’s population information centre’s web site, to check if the name and the ID number of a person’s identity card match. If they do match the ID card-holder’s picture also appears, said the Ministry, adding that no other information is available to ensure a citizen’s privacy is protected. Completed at the end of 2006, China’s population information database, the world’s largest, contains personal information on 1.3 billion citizens. Giving public accessing to the database is also designed to correct mistakes if an individual discovers that their name, number and picture don’t match — via Slashdot
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has filed a lawsuit against the Department of Defence and the Army that seeks more information on a military web censorship unit called the Army Web Risk Assessment Cell (AWRAC) after the DOD failed to answer the EFF’s Freedom of Information Act request in an expedited fashion. AWRAC’s existence was revealed last October in an Army News Service piece that described the unit. The AWRAC team monitors hundreds of thousands of web sites each month and contacts webmasters and bloggers about any security concerns
Reports are surfacing that EMI is in negotiations with some of the leading music stores to offer a substantial portion of its music catalogue without DRM, with an announcement due as early as today. Under one scenario, music stores like Napster, Real Rhapsody, and others would fork over sizable advance payments in exchange for the right to sell music as unprotected MP3s. Another industry source reports that EMI was also discussing the possibility of selling MP3s on MySpace
If you’re worried about what your neighbours think of you why not follow Malaysia’s lead and ban the journalists who are intent on asking those tricky questions
Steve Jobs has written an essay on the Apple site about DRM, iTunes and the iPod. Perhaps it was prompted by the uncomfortable pressure the EU has been putting on Apple to open up the iPod. Jobs places the blame for the existence and continuing reliance on DRM squarely on the music companies. Quoting: Much of the concern over DRM systems has arisen in European countries. Perhaps those unhappy with the current situation should redirect their energies towards persuading the music companies to sell their music DRM-free. For Europeans, two and a half of the big four music companies are located right in their backyard. The largest, Universal, is 100% owned by Vivendi, a French company. EMI is a British company, and Sony BMG is 50% owned by Bertelsmann, a German company. Convincing them to license their music to Apple and others DRM-free will create a truly interoperable music marketplace. Apple will embrace this wholeheartedly
— via Slashdot
A German court on Monday ruled that police cannot remotely search criminal suspects’ computer hard drives over the Internet without their knowledge. The decision of the Federal Court of Justice in Karlsruhe bars police from using the online Trojan horse
method, which involves using a computer program to search through remote hard drives over an Internet connection, unless parliament passes a law explicitly allowing it. Police will still be allowed to seize evidence from computer hard drives when conducting searches in person
Almost all printers secretly print dots without your consent which are invisible to the naked eye and apparently Xerox and possibly others have included this technology which FBI is using to keep an eye even on groups such as Greenpeace and United for Peace and Justice. The EFF has released a guide explaining how to read the date time, and printer serial number from forensic tracking codes in a Xerox DocuColor color laser printout
Germany has ordered the arrest of 13 suspected CIA agents over the alleged kidnapping of one of its citizens. Munich prosecutors confirmed that the warrants were linked to the case of Khaled al-Masri, a German national of Lebanese descent. Mr Masri says his case is an example of the US policy of extraordinary rendition
— a practice whereby the US government flies foreign terror suspects to third countries without judicial process for interrogation or detention — via Warren Ellis
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