The Senate has passed a Bill that will allow network operators — including ISPs — to intercept traffic as part of network protection activities
disregarding the Greens Party efforts to amend it. The Bill, the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Amendment Bill 2009, aims to help network operators to understand what they can and cannot do in terms of interception. It will allow, for example, an ISP network engineer to intercept a customer’s connection when undertaking activities to operate, maintain and protect
their network
The South Australian Government passed a Bill late last year which makes it illegal during election time to post political views on a blog or comment without also including a name and address. The bill came into effect on 6 January, but only governs the weeks after a writ has been issued authorising an election, and only content affecting South Australian politicians. It attempts to stop people from not taking responsibility for posts which could sway public opinions on the election. And it lasted until Attorney-General Michael Atkinson moved to immediately repeal the controversial laws which sparked an outcry over censorship of the internet
Spray-on liquid glass is transparent, non-toxic, and can protect virtually any surface against almost any damage from hazards such as water, UV radiation, dirt, heat, and bacterial infections. The coating is also flexible and breathable, which makes it suitable for use on an enormous array of products
Facebook and Twitter users are under attack by cybercriminals — and the incidents are rising, Sophos says in its its 2010 Security Threat Report released Monday. In the past 12 months, Sophos says, cybercriminals have focused more attacks on social-network users. Spam and malware are leading the charge. Fifty-seven percent of users surveyed reported getting spammed via social-networking sites — an increase of 70.6 percent from 2008. And 36 percent say they have been sent malware via social-networking sites, a 69.8 percent increase
Single sided deafness affects around 200 out of every million people the world over. The loss of stereo hearing can prove dangerous when crossing the street, or other mobile environments. Sonitus Medical has developed a new device, SoundBite, that uses the natural conduction of teeth and bone to transmit sound to the inner ear even after the outer and middle ear are damaged
Australians are leading the world when it comes to time spent on social media sites, with a new survey showing we spend on average almost seven hours a month on sites such as Twitter and Facebook. The poll, which surveyed audience use in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Brazil, Japan, Switzerland, Germany, France, Spain and Italy, has Australian users topping the stats at six hours and 52 minutes, followed by the US and the UK
It has never been a secret that the majority of files being shared over BitTorrent are movies and music that are likely being shared illegally. Princeton senior Sauhard Sahi confirmed this recently after setting out to survey the content available on BitTorrent and, although there are caveats to his findings, they highlight the relationship DRM has with illegal file sharing. As in: the more DRM there is on the legit versions of the content, the more popular it is on P2P
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation has signed up with iCopyright, the American copyright bounty hunters used by the Associated Press, to offer ridiculous licenses for the quotation of CBC articles on the web. These are the same jokers who sell you a license
to quote 5 words from the AP —via Boing Boing
No more leaks, at least not for a while. The website WikiLeaks, known for breaking numerous news stories — ranging from publishing secret documents on Guantanamo Bay to corruption in Kenya — has shut down due to a lack of funds. In a statement posted on its website, WikiLeaks parent, The Sunshine Press, a non-profit organisation funded by human rights campaigners, investigative journalists and the general public, explained that the site needed $600,000 in order to survive 2010 and pay their employees. Since the December launch of their funding drive, the organisation has managed to raise just $130,000 in donations, far short of the amount required
Google has begun to phase out support for Internet Explorer 6, the browser identified as the weak link in a cyber attack on the search engine. The firm said from 1 March some of its services, such as Google Docs, would not work properly
with the browser. It recommended individuals and firms upgrade as soon as possible
The Central Intelligence Agency, PayPal, and hundreds of other organisations are under an unexplained assault that’s bombarding their web sites with millions of compute-intensive requests. The massive
flood of requests is made over the web sites’ SSL, or secure-sockets layer, port, causing them to consume more resources than normal connections, according to researchers at Shadowserver Foundation, a volunteer security collective. The torrent started about a week ago and appears to be caused by recent changes made to a botnet known as Pushdo
3 Strikes
is a regime being introduced in various countries around the world to try to deal with illicit file-sharing. Already Taiwan, South Korea and France are putting their versions of the plan into action and other countries have similar proposals under discussion. In one form or another, could the same be coming to the United States?
As Steve Jobs and Apple prepared to announce their new tablet device, activists opposed to Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) from the group Defective by Design were on hand to draw the media’s attention to the increasing restrictions that Apple is placing on general purpose computers. The group set up Apple Restriction Zones
along the approaches to the Yerba Buena Centre for the Arts in San Francisco, informing journalists of the rights they would have to give up to Apple before proceeding inside
Micro-blogging site Twitter is developing technology that will prevent government censorship after Iran and China moved to censor its users. Speaking at the World Economic Forum, Twitter CEO and co-founder Evan Williams said the company was working on hacks
to stop any blocking by foreign governments
Apple has put an end to weeks of speculation by unveiling its tablet device, which it has called the iPad. Steve Jobs, Apple’s chief executive described the tablet, which will cost between $499 and $829 in the US, as a third category
between smartphones and laptops. The device, which looks like a large iPhone, can be used to watch films, play games and browse the web. Apple has declined to reveal whether the iPad 3G model would be available in Australia, but confirmed that the Wi-Fi-only version would be available in March
In late October, Newsday, the Long Island daily that the Dolans bought for $650 million, put its web site, newsday.com, behind a pay wall. The paper was one of the first non-business newspapers to take the plunge by putting up a pay wall, so in media circles it has been followed with interest. Could its fate be a sign of what others, including The New York Times, might expect? So, three months later, how many people have signed up to pay $5 a week, or $260 a year, to get unfettered access to newsday.com? The answer: 35 people. As in fewer than three dozen. As in a decent-sized elementary-school class
More than 150 people have approached consumer publication Which? Computing claiming to have been wrongly targeted in crackdowns on illegal file-sharing. ACS:Law has sent thousands of letters to people claiming they have illegally downloaded material and offers them a chance to settle by paying around £500. Which? says it has been approached by some — including a 78 year-old accused of downloading pornography — who have no knowledge of the alleged offence
Computers infected with viruses could be expelled
from the internet under a new industry code to control Australia’s plague of contaminated PCs. The federal government has given the internet industry an operate-or-legislate ultimatum to identify zombie
computers involved in cyber-crime. The Internet Industry Association — whose members include major internet service providers Optus, Telstra, Vodafone, AAPT, Virgin and Hutchison 3G, as well as industry giants Facebook, Google and Microsoft — is preparing a voluntary industry code to come into force this year. The move follows industry intelligence that Australia now hosts the world’s third-highest number of zombie
computers infected with malicious software that can attack other PCs, send spam, store child pornography or steal the user’s identity
Five Web sites run by Chinese human rights activists were attacked by hackers over the weekend, as a separate row continued between Google and China over political cyberattacks. The Web site of Chinese Human Rights Defenders, an advocacy group, was hit by a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack that lasted 16 hours starting Saturday afternoon, the group said in an e-mailed statement on Monday. A DDoS attack involves the attacker ordering a legion of compromised computers all to visit a certain Web site at once, overwhelming its server with requests for communication and leaving the site inaccessible to normal visitors. The group said it could not confirm the origin of the attackers but called the Chinese government the most likely suspect
Condemning a $US2 million fine meted out to a Minnesota woman for illegally downloading music over the internet as monstrous and shocking
, a judge has slashed the penalty to $US54,000 ($59,800). US District Court Michael Davis said the fine imposed by a jury on Jammie Thomas-Rasset, a single mother of four from the town of Brainerd, veered into the realm of gross injustice
. In a high-profile music piracy case, Thomas-Rasset was found liable in June of violating music copyrights for using the Kazaa peer-to-peer file-sharing network to download 24 songs. A jury ordered her to pay $US1.92 million or $US80,000 per song to six record companies: Capitol Records, Sony BMG Music, Arista Records, Interscope Records, Warner Bros Records and UMG Recordings. The judge slashed the fine to $US54,000, or $US2250 per recording, and complained in his ruling on Friday, a copy of which was obtained by AFP on Monday, that he was constrained from reducing it even further
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