An Italian court has convicted three Google executives in a trial over a video showing an autistic teenager being bullied. The Google employees were accused of breaking Italian law by allowing the video to be posted online. Judge Oscar Magi absolved the three of defamation but convicted them of privacy violations. The UK’s former Information Commissioner Richard Thomas said the case gave privacy laws a bad name
The Tasmanian Greens Party has announced a $300,000 pilot of Wi-Fi on Launceston’s Metro bus fleet. The trial will last 18 months and will evaluate the viability of wireless technology on public transport in Tasmania
The fossilised remains of a gigantic 10m-long predatory shark have been unearthed in Kansas, US. Scientists dug up a gigantic jawbone, teeth and scales belonging to the shark which lived 89 million years ago. The bottom-dwelling predator had huge tooth plates, which it likely used to crush large shelled animals such as giant clams. Palaeontologists already knew about the shark, but the new specimen suggests it was far bigger than previously thought
According to the New South Wales state government, the Sydney Morning Herald, a local newspaper, attacked the government’s web site firewall security
for two days to research a recent story. The affected government minister said that the website was accessed 3,727 times, and that this is akin to 3,727 attempts to pick the lock of a secure office and take highly confidential documents
. The matter has been referred to the police, who are now investigating. But how did the paper hack
the web site? They entered the unannounced URL. Security by obscurity at its finest — via Slashdot
Small dogs may all originate from the Middle East, according to research from the University of California. A study published in the journal BioMed Central found a gene found in small dogs, IGF1, is closely related to one found in Middle Eastern wolves. Archaeologists have found the remains of small dogs dating back 12,000 years in the region. In Europe, older remains have been uncovered, dating from 31,000 years ago, but these are from larger dogs
Sperm whales may team up and hunt collaboratively, scientists have suggested. A US research team used hi-tech tags to glimpse some of the giant marine mammals’ remarkable hunting behaviour. This tracking showed how the whales travelled together in groups, but when they hunted, each whale varied its role
within the group
Following widespread objections, New Zealand’s Section92A guilty upon accusation
anti-piracy law was scrapped last year. Today, The Copyright (Infringing File Sharing) Amendment Bill will be introduced, which repeals Section 92A and replaces it with a three-notice
regime, backed up by $15,000 fines and 6 month Internet suspensions
Amazon.com has agreed to pay Microsoft an undisclosed sum as part of a patent cross-licensing deal between the companies announced on Monday. The agreement gives each company access to the other’s patent portfolio and covers a wide range of products and technologies, Microsoft said in a statement
While the communications networks that aid groups set up quickly following the earthquake in Haiti were surely critical to rescue efforts, the new networks have had some negative effects on the local ISP community. Now, more than a month after the earthquake devastated the island nation, local ISPs (Internet service providers) in Haiti are starting to grumble about being left out of business opportunities and about how some of the temporary equipment — using spectrum without proper authorization — is interfering with their own expensive networks, causing a degradation of their services
Early results from broadband information site Whirlpool’s annual survey has found that 91.8 per cent of respondents do not support the idea of mandatory internet filtering, with most believing the government should focus on educating parents and children instead
The Web-Sheriff has made quite a name for himself, targeting dozens of torrent sites in recent years for clients such as Prince, Michael Jackson and The Village People. This week, however, a painful mistake was made when the anti-pirate tried to take down a torrent from Legit Torrents
Several months after a European Union memo discussing the ACTA Internet chapter leaked, the actual chapter itself has now leaked. First covered by PC World, the new leak fully confirms the earlier reports and mirrors the language found in the EU memo. This is the chapter that required non-disclosure agreements last fall. The contents are not particulary surprising given the earlier leaks, but there are three crucial elements: notice-and-takedown, anti-circumvention rules, and ISP liability/three strikes
In the continuing saga of the Interzone debacle, Interzone employees have just released footage of a former Interzone manager attempting to unlawfully retrieve IP from the Perth game studio containing the Interzone Futebol content and assets that the employees had worked on, the previous 18 months of which were completed without payment. Last week, Mike Turner flew in from the US with the aim of obtaining the Interzone Futebol content and bringing it back home. He attempted to sneak into the offices at night expecting little to no confrontation, however, it seems he was caught red handed by staff
If you haven’t changed the default password on your home router, you may be in for an unwanted visit from Chuck Norris — the Chuck Norris botnet, that is. Discovered by Czech researchers, the botnet has been spreading by taking advantage of poorly configured routers and DSL modems, according to Jan Vykopal, the head of the network security department with Masaryk University’s Institute of Computer Science in Brno, Czech Republic. The malware got the Chuck Norris moniker from a programmer’s Italian comment in its source code: in nome di Chuck Norris
, which means in the name of Chuck Norris
ebay urged European regulators to drop a requirement for Internet retailers to have bricks-and-mortar
shops, warning it would hurt small firms, keep prices high and stifle e-commerce. According to a draft regulation drawn up by the European Commission and seen by Reuters, suppliers may be allowed to require that distributors have a brick-and-mortar
shop before they can sell online. The proposed rules would replace existing guidelines exempting companies from strict EU competition rules under certain circumstances. Those rules expire at the end of May
French lawmakers voted Tuesday to approve a draft law to filter Internet traffic, a measure the government says is intended to catch child pornographers. The bill will now go on for a second and final reading. Critics of the catch-all Bill on direction and planning for the performance of domestic security
say that filtering won’t stop the spread of child pornography — but could allow the government to censor other materials. The bill, known as Loppsi II in French, was approved by 312 votes to 214 in a vote in the National Assembly on Tuesday. The government has a large majority in the Assembly; two of its deputies abstained, with the others all voting in favour of the bill
According to the filings in Blake J Robbins v Lower Merion School District (PA) et al, the laptops issued to high-school students in the well-heeled Philly suburb have webcams that can be covertly activated by the schools’ administrators, who have used this facility to spy on students and even their families. The issue came to light when the Robbins’s child was disciplined for improper behaviour in his home
and the Vice Principal used a photo taken by the webcam as evidence. The suit is a class action, brought on behalf of all students issued with these machines
Google has received federal approval to buy and sell energy on the open market, giving it more options for the way it powers its data centres and opening the door to a potential move into the energy-trading business. Google applied for the authorization last December through a wholly owned subsidiary called Google Energy. The US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) approved its application Thursday, granting Google market-based rate authorisation
, or the authority to buy and sell energy on a wholesale basis
An Australian distributor has been ordered to pay Nintendo over half a million dollars for selling video game piracy tool, the R4 mod chip. The Federal Court ordered that RSJ IT Solutions cease to sell the chip through its gadgetgear.com.au site and any other sites it controlled, as well as paying Nintendo $520,000 in damages. The chip allows users to circumvent the technology protection measures Nintendo has built into its DS handheld consoles, enabling illegally pirated games to be downloaded online
Google has opened up its charity wallet once again. This time, the search giant has donated $2,000,000 to the Wikimedia Foundation, the organization that runs and maintains Wikipedia. The donation, in true social media fashion, was announced via tweets from Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales and Wikimedia Foundation advisory board member Mitch Kapor. Neither Google nor the Wikimedia Foundation have made an official announcement yet — it’s supposed to come tomorrow
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