Pro-copyright lobbyists and anti-piracy outfits have a clear idea of what is needed to manipulate the minds of the younger generations. The MPAA most famously handed out a merit patch in respecting copyright
to LA Boy Scouts, and now the Copyright Alliance has entered US classrooms in an attempt to educate today’s youth about the benefits of copyright
The Federal Government will introduce legislation to make torture a specific offence in Australia. It says the move will send a strong message to the international community that Australia will not tolerate the practice. The Government has also signed a United Nations protocol against torture which will allow international inspectors to check Australian detention centres
Police surveillance of a peaceful protester was ruled unlawful today in a decison that lawyers say will change the way demonstrations and protests are policed. Judges ruled that specialist surveillance units from the Metropolitan police had breached the human rights of Andrew Wood, an arms trade campaigner, when they photographed him and stored the pictures on a police database
To determine if the verdict in the Pirate Bay case was biased, the connections of Judge Tomas Norström to national and international pro-copyright lobby groups will be reviewed by another judge. However, the judge that was initially appointed has already been replaced because she was linked to the same organisations as Norström, and her replacement is not exactly unbiased either
Dell has announced its Latitude 2100, a netbook designed specifically for school children. It is also the first Dell product in Australia to offer the Ubuntu operating system pre-installed. Dell’s US operation has been selling Ubuntu-based products since May 2007, but had said previously that its local operation had not seen enough demand to justify the Linux-based OS. The Latitude 2100, which features a rubberised exterior and an activity light to notify teachers when a student is using the wireless network, is the first product Dell has offered in the country featuring the alternative operating system
Technical protocols to support the extension of the internet address system to languages such as Chinese and Arabic should be finalised this year, ICANN boss Paul Twomey says. Resolution of the difficulties will mean millions of new users can come online using phone books
in their own languages, with internationalised domain names spelling the end of English-speaking domination of the world wide web. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers has been wrestling with the technical difficulties involved in integrating non-Roman character sets into the uniform domain name system (DNS) technology — the .com and .net address hierarchy that uniquely identifies all computers and resources attached to the global network
The UK Technology Strategy Board, an executive non-departmental public body established by the UK Government in 2007 and sponsored by the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills, has invested £1M into over a dozen research projects for the development of ULTRA Fast up to 10Gbps broadband technologies. The ultimate aim, the development of pan-European Ultra Fast Broadband, could give EU companies a massive competitive advantage on a global scale — via Slashdot
A controversial database which holds the details of every child in England has become available to childcare professionals for the first time. ContactPoint, a response to Lord Laming’s report following the death of Victoria Climbie, is beginning its national roll-out in the north west. But the system, costing £224m, has been delayed twice amid data security fears
Pirate Bay judge Tomas Norström’s objectivity has already been called into doubt because of his ties to national and international pro-copyright lobby groups. Now, one of the defence lawyers says he has uncovered another scandal and claims to have evidence that Norström wasn’t assigned to the case randomly, as should be the case according to court procedure
The controversial French HADOPI anti-piracy law was passed by the National Assembly today, one step closer to being signed into action. The new law introduces draconian measures to combat piracy including a three strikes
regime for persistent offenders
PC maker Dell has formally banned the export of broken computers, monitors and parts to developing countries amid complaints that lax enforcement of environmental and worker-safety regulations have allowed an informal and often hazardous electronic-waste recycling industry to emerge. Although Dell’s announcement does not mark a significant change in the PC maker’s behaviour, environmental groups hope that by making its standards public, Dell will raise the bar for other electronics makers
A privacy watchdog has banned Google from gathering detailed, street-level images in Greece for a planned expansion of its panoramic Street View mapping service until the company provides additional privacy safeguards. In rejecting Google’s bid to roam Greek streets with cameras mounted on vehicles, Greece’s Data Protection Authority, or DPA, said it wanted clarification from the US Internet company on how it will store and process the original images and safeguard them from privacy abuses
Lyse has become the largest fibre-to-the-home provider in Norway thanks to an innovative business model that asks customers to preregister before any fibre is dug, then offers them a $400 savings if they dig their own trench from the street to the home. So far, 80 percent of Lyse’s customers have broken out the shovels
Austria is pulling out of the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN), Science Minister Johannes Hahn announced Thursday, citing budget concerns. The 20-million-euro (26.9-million-dollar) yearly membership in CERN — which is responsible for Europe’s Big Bang atom-smasher — makes up 70 percent of the money available in Austria for participation in international institutes and could be better used to fund other European projects, he said
Hackers last week broke into a Virginia state web site used by pharmacists to track prescription drug abuse. They deleted records on more than 8 million patients and replaced the site’s homepage with a ransom note demanding $10 million for the return of the records
Highlighting a vast underestimation
of Madagascar’s natural riches, up to 221 new species of amphibians have been found on the island country. The find nearly doubles the number of known amphibians in Madagascar. An international team of scientists discovered the new species after collecting 2,850 specimens from more than 170 sites, including the country’s most visited and studied national parks
In 1969, an aeronautical engineer at North American Rockwell http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30456930/: Every hour, he was being overpaid by roughly 2 cents, or one-third of 1 percent of his pay. Spurred by an incentive program that rewarded employees for finding wasteful spending, Walter T Davey submitted the discovery to his superiors and suggested a simple fix. It was so simple to correct,
said Davey, a 79-year-old retired Air Force colonel now living in Newport Coast, California, just change a few digits in the coding software
. A surreal experience followed: For decades, Davey has attempted to correct a calculation that he believes has cost taxpayers several billion dollars. He has alerted contractors, legislators, and federal auditors — all to no avail, even though a 1981 federal report seemed to confirm his calculations. Through it all, he said, no one has challenged the numbers
From the end of May, eBay Australia is trimming the time you have to complain if goods don’t match their description from 60 days to 45 days. Granted, if you did receive goods that didn’t match what you’d seen described online, you probably shouldn’t wait two months to make a complaint. Nonetheless, it still seems a less-than-generous move, especially given that you have to wait 10 days to lodge a complaint anyway
The Iranian government, more than almost any other, censors what citizens can read online, using elaborate technology to block millions of Web sites offering news, commentary, videos, music and, until recently, Facebook and YouTube. Search for women
in Persian and you’re told, Dear Subscriber, access to this site is not possible.
Last July, on popular sites that offer free downloads of various software, an escape hatch appeared. The computer program allowed Iranian Internet users to evade government censorship. College students discovered the key first, then spread it through e-mail messages and file-sharing. By late autumn more than 400,000 Iranians were surfing the uncensored Web. The software was created not by Iranians, but by Chinese computer experts volunteering for the Falun Gong, a spiritual movement that has beem suppressed by the Chinese government since 1999. They maintain a series of computers in data centers around the world to route Web users’ requests around censors’ firewalls
The Justice Department has begun an inquiry into the antitrust implications of Google’s settlement with authors and publishers over its Google Book Search service
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