After recent setbacks in the RIAA’s lawsuits, the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft (AFACT) has decided to try a different approach in Australia — they want ISPs to do their dirty work for them. Australian ISPs, though, have soundly rejected calls from AFACT to slow down or terminate user accounts that AFACT has determined are being used to distribute copyrighted works. Telstra had this to say: We do not believe it is up to the ISPs to be judge, jury and executioner in relation to the issue when the content owners have any number of legal avenues to pursue infringements
— via Slashdot
You might remember the previous story about LiveJournal erroneously deleting hundreds of users as suspected paedophiles, spurred on by pressure from a group of bampots. Since then, they’ve been taking action against users hosting material on their servers that they believe to be illegal. Today, LiveJournal management have demonstrated a serious lack of understanding in how the internet works, declaring that users are responsible for the content of the web pages that they link to in their blog entries. A user points out the obvious flaw: I get ToS’d because the link’s been redirected to a page full o’ porn, even though context clearly shows that when I originally put up the link that it didn’t actually land on a page of porn?
One wonders how such a long-established blogging company can be so ignorant about the nature of the world wide web — via Slashdot
A small US startup has announced it has created a system for running Wi-Fi routers in remote places using only the power of the sun. Among the first round of products from Solis Energy is the Solar Power Plant, touted as being capable of supplying 12, 24 and 48 Volts DC for use in stand-alone applications such as surveillance cameras and outdoor Wi-Fi
Internet bandwidth could become a global currency under a new model of e-commerce developed by researchers from Delt University of Technology, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam and Harvard’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. The application, available for free download, is an enhanced version of a program called Tribler, originally created by the Dutch collaborators to study video file sharing. Successful peer-to-peer systems rely on designing rules that promote fair sharing of resources amongst users. Thus, they are both efficient and powerful computational and economic systems. The researchers were inspired to use a version of the Tribler video sharing software as a model for an e-commerce system because of such flexibility, speed, and reliability — Slashdot
The actor who plays the time-and-space warping Hiro Nakamura
in the hit US TV show Heroes
has made some positive comments about file-sharing after it became evident that French fans had either teleported into the future and watched the show before it aired on TV, or maybe downloaded it using BitTorrent
Building off the design mandates of CALEA, the FBI has constructed a point-and-click surveillance system that creates instant wiretaps on almost any communications device. A thousand pages of restricted documents released under the Freedom of Information Act were required to determine the veracity of this clandestine project. Called the Digital Collection System Network, it connects FBI wiretapping rooms to switches controlled by traditional land-line operators, internet-telephony providers and cellular companies. It is intricately woven into the nation’s telecom infrastructure — via Slashdot
Australia anti-spyware maker PC Tools, home of the great Spyware Doctor, has won
their long running battle with adware publisher Zango, who today conceded defeat by voluntarily withdrawing its proceedings against them. Seems once they couldn’t get a court to grant a Temporary Restraining Order, they saw they were screwed
The internet should not be used as a scapegoat for society’s ills, said Vint Cerf, Google’s net evangelist and a founding father of the network. He said the net was just a reflection of the society in which we live. Anyone regulating beyond what was clearly illegal put themselves on a slippery slope
that could limit freedom of expression, he said. If it’s not illegal, it raises a rather interesting question about where you do draw the line
The contentious Russian music download site allofmp3.com looks set to resume business after a Moscow court ruled it was legal under the country’s law. A statement on the website, shut down in July, said the service would resume in the foreseeable future
. Before it closed, the cut-price music site claimed to be the second biggest seller of downloads after iTunes. It was the subject of countless lawsuits from UK and US record labels that claimed it violated copyright law. A representative of the music industry said if it started trading again it would still be in clear violation of copyright laws
Torrent indexing site Torrentspy.com appears to have disabled torrent searches for IPs that originate in the United States. Instead of a results page, users are directed to this page, which states: Torrentspy Acts to Protect Privacy. Sorry, but because you are located in the USA you cannot use the search features of the Torrentspy.com website.
Torrentspy’s decision to stop accepting US visitors was not compelled by any Court but rather an uncertain legal climate in the US regarding user privacy and an apparent tension between US and European Union privacy laws. The action is in response to a federal judge has ordering TorrentSpy to begin keeping server logs as it defends itself against an MPAA lawsuit. In her opinion, Judge Florence-Marie Cooper interpreted federal discovery rules broadly. She noted RAM’s function as primary storage and that the storage of data in RAM — even if not permanently archived — makes it electronically stored information governed by federal discovery rules — via Slashdot
Yahoo expands the Web mail service into a social communication
tool — adding the ability to send text messages to mobile phones directly from e-mail. The Yahoo Mail update also adds more sophisticated capabilities to check maps, directions, hotel and travel information directly from the e-mail itself. You can forget about getting the SMS feature in Australia in the near future
Vint Cerf — one of the handful of researchers who helped build the internet in the 1970s — said that the television industry would change rapidly as it approached its iPod moment
. The 64-year-old, who is now a vice-president of the web giant Google and chairman of the organisation that administrates the internet, told an audience of media moguls that TV was rapidly approaching the same kind of crunch moment that the music industry faced with the arrival of the MP3 player. 85% of all video we watch is pre-recorded, so you can set your system to download it all the time,
he said. You’re still going to need live television for certain things — like news, sporting events and emergencies — but increasingly it is going to be almost like the iPod, where you download content to look at later
Taiwan’s leading computer seller Acer is to take over US PC maker Gateway in a US$710m deal. The takeover will create the world’s third largest producer of personal computers, with shipments of more than 20 million PCs and sales of $15bn. The deal may also see Acer try to block Chinese rival Lenovo from buying Packard Bell’s operations in Europe
Tom Wood, a Year 10 Australian student has cracked the federal government’s $84-million Internet porn filter in just 30 minutes. He can deactivate the filter in several clicks in such a way that the software’s icon is not deleted which will make his parents believe the filter is still working. Tom says it is a matter of time before some computer-savvy kid puts the bypass on the Internet for others to use
With a 50-year collection of photos, videos, films and other material, NASA’s archives from manned and unmanned space missions is almost as vast as outer space. And now, NASA is undertaking a project to put all of that material into a central archive that can be searched by space flight aficionados. NASA said it has reached a deal with the nonprofit, San Francisco-based Internet Archive to scan, archive and manage the agency’s vast collection. The effort will be paid for solely through grants, foundations and individual contributions received by the Internet Archive
Reforms to the WHOIS database in order to address growing privacy concerns have once again come to a halt, leaving a seven-year-old debate to continue on how much personal information should be displayed to the public. WHOIS Working Group was pulled in two directions: one by those who want increased privacy protections for individuals registering domains and another by those who want easier and quicker access to WHOIS contact information in order to keep an eye on bad apples.But privacy advocates say that customers shouldn’t have to pay to keep their information private — the WHOIS database should offer some level of privacy by default while still offering up enough information to be helpful
A teenager in New Jersey has broken the lock that ties Apple’s iPhone to AT&T’s wireless network, freeing the most hyped mobile phone ever for use on the networks of other carriers, including overseas ones. George Hotz, 17, confirmed Friday that he had unlocked an iPhone and was using it on T-Mobile’s network, the only major US carrier apart from AT&T that is compatible with the iPhone’s cellular technology. The howto has be posted
Mempile, an Israeli storage technology company, is working on TeraDisc which is designed to fit 1TB on a single disk. The current prototypes can store 600-800GB per disk which is a lot of data. However Mempile boffins think that they can get this to a 1TB per 1.2mm thick disk soon. The company claims the disks can last 50 years and should be very reliable. However initial media and hardware will be quite expensive, with the drive setting you back $3,000 and the 600GB disk around $30-50
Staff in the Australian prime minister’s department have been accused of editing potentially damaging entries in online encyclopaedia Wikipedia. Workers made 126 edits on subjects such as immigration policy and Treasurer Peter Costello. Amongst the changes was the eloquent Poo bum dicky wee wee
, which gives an idea of the rocket scientists that Howard employees as minions. The details came from a new web site that tracks those who make edits. Staff from the CIA and the BBC among others have also made changes
The Bush administration has confirmed for the first time that American telecommunications companies played a key role in the NSA’s domestic eavesdropping program after asserting for nearly two years that any role played by the companies was a state secret
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