The Computer and Communications Industry Association — a trade group representing Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo, among others — has issued a report [PDF] that finds fair use exceptions add more than $4.5 trillion in revenue to the US economy and add more value to the US economy than copyright industries contribute. Recent studies indicate that the value added to the US economy by copyright industries amounts to $1.3 trillion,
said CCIA President and CEO Ed Black. The value added to the US economy by the fair use amounts to $2.2 trillion — via Slashdot
Google is calling on businesses and regulators throughout the world to set international standards for protecting consumer privacy online and offline
First drug companies were caught deleting side effects about drugs on Wikipedia, now the big law firms working for the drug companies are getting caught deleting what they don’t want people to know about them
Fark.com has
sued a man
it accuses of attempting to hack into the e-mail and computers of its staff members. The lawsuit says an unknown computer hacker sent e-mails 8 imploring Fark staff members to visit a particular Web site. For the next four days, Fark staff received forged e-mails that appeared to come from other staff members, containing links to three Web sites. The links contained Trojan horse programs, malicious software that allows secret unauthorised remote access to computers
Microsoft has been granted a patent for stealthy audio watermarking
, which is just a slick way of saying inaudible digital watermarks directly embedded in the audio of a file, allowing the owner to be traced. Apparently, in their version of the tech, the watermark’s scattered throughout the file so it’s more difficult to pull out or tweak and it’s able to be compressed while remaining intact — via Gizmodo Australia
The National Science Foundation has announced a new University of Arizona project, which they call the Dark Web, intended to monitor all terrorist activity on the Internet. The project relies on advanced techniques such as Web spidering, link analysis, content analysis, authorship analysis, sentiment analysis and multimedia analysis [to] find, catalog and analyse extremist activities online
. The coolest part of the project is a tool called Writeprint, which automatically extracts thousands of multilingual, structural, and semantic features to determine who is creating ‘anonymous’ content
with an accuracy of 95%, according to the release — via Slashdot
In a recent announcement on the Whirlpool front page, it appears that accounting software maker 2clix is suing the founder of the forums as the founder allowed statements relating to the Plaintiff and its software product that are both false and malicious
to be published on the Whirlpool forums — via Slashdot
For obvious reasons, scientists long have thought that salt water couldn’t be burned. So when an Erie man announced he’d ignited salt water with the radio-frequency generator he’d invented, some thought it a was a hoax. John Kanzius, a Washington County native, tried to desalinate seawater with a generator he developed to treat cancer, and it caused a flash in the test tube. Within days, he had the salt water in the test tube burning like a candle, as long as it was exposed to radio frequencies. His discovery has spawned scientific interest in using the world’s most abundant substance as clean fuel, among other uses
Virginia’s law banning the massive distribution of junk e-mail is an unconstitutional barrier to free speech, a lawyer for a former spammer told the state’s highest court
A Las Vegas man faces about 20 years in prison after pleading guilty in a case where he impersonated intellectual property lawyers and tried to bully owners out of their domain names. According to the FBI, David Scali is charged with registering an e-mail account under an alias and then sending e-mails in which he claimed to be the intellectual property lawyer. In the e-mails, which were sent in late June and early July of 2006, Scali threatened to file $100,000 trademark infringement lawsuits against the owners of various Internet website names unless they gave up their domain name registrations within two days
Google claims to rank search results by relevance, but the search engine engages in deceptive conduct by selling off the top positions to commercial partners, a Sydney court has heard. The Australian Consumer and Competition Commission (ACCC) is taking world-first legal action in the Federal Court against Google Inc over allegedly deceptive conduct related to sponsored links on its websites. The ACCC has brought a two-pronged case against Trading Post and Google — including subsidiaries Google Australia and Google Ireland — for potentially misleading consumers. The consumer watchdog alleges Google does not do enough to differentiate organic
search results — those ranked by relevance — from sponsored links which appear at the top of the results page — via Slashdot
Hewlett-Packard is licensing a medical patch it has developed to Ireland’s Crospon that potentially can replace hypodermic needles or pills for delivering vaccines or other types of medication to patients. The patch contains up to 90,000 microneedles per square inch, microprocessors and a thermal unit. Medications contained in the patch are heated and then injected through the needles. Processors can monitor drug delivery, deliver doses over extended periods of time or deliver drugs in response to a patient’s vital signs (eg, blood pressure or heart rate), depending on how it is programmed
A solar-powered, unmanned craft has flown for 54 hours — a record for both unmanned aerial vehicles and solar craft. None before has managed to store enough solar energy to fly through more than one night — via Slashdot
The Mozilla Foundation last week released the first beta version, 8.0.0b1, of the revised Eudora e-mail application since Qualcomm stopped developing it commercially and turned it over to the open-source community in 2006. Mozilla already has an open-source e-mail program, Thunderbird, and the new Eudora will be a branded offshoot, with some new features, according to the release site. In addition, a related extension called Penelope
will provide some extra features to both Eudora and Thunderbird
Indian journalist Amit Varma reports that Mumbai’s police are requiring the city’s 500 Internet cafes to install keystroke loggers, which will capture every keystroke by users and turn that information over to the government — nearly in realtime by the sound of it. Buy things online, and the underpaid Indian police will have your credit card number. Will these end up getting sold in a black market somewhere? Not unlikely
— via Slashdot
It looks like the efforts of the anti-scammers at sites like 419eater, Scamwarners, Artists Against 419 and possibly others have become the target of the Storm botnet. Spamnation has a post about it, and as of this writing none of the above listed sites are responding. Spamnation reports that CastleCops and other anti-spam forums are being DDoSed as well. Sounds like a massive, concerted effort against the folks who are fighting the good fight. If the scammers have gone to these lengths, perhaps the efforts of the anti-scam groups are working — via Slashdot
Microchip implants have induced cancer in laboratory animals and dogs. A series of research articles spanning more than a decade found that mice and rats injected with glass-encapsulated RFID transponders developed malignant, fast-growing, lethal cancers in up to 1% to 10% of cases. The tumours originated in the tissue surrounding the microchips and often grew to completely surround the devices. To date, about 2,000 RFID devices have been implanted in humans worldwide, according to VeriChip — via Slashdot
A police operation to covertly follow a Central Otago man came to an abrupt halt this week when the man found tracking devices planted in his car, ripped them out and listed them for sale on Trade Me. Police have neither confirmed nor denied they placed the devices, yet they demanded Trade Me yank the auctions
Organisers of a duathlon in Scotland have taken out a one million pound (nearly AU$2.5 million) insurance policy against attack by or sighting of the fabled Loch Ness monster. First Monster Duathlon race director Malcolm Sutherland said they were planning for all eventualities. Transport operator FirstGroup said in a statement its policy with insurers Royal and Sun Alliance would pay out should Nessie
emerge from the murky depths of the vast watercourse and/or attack one of the competitors — via Ben Templesmith
US District Judge Victor Marrero ruled in favor of the ACLU and struck down a portion of the revised USA PATRIOT Act this morning, forcing investigators to go through the courts to obtain approval before ordering ISPs to give up information on customers, instead of just sending them a National Security Letter. In the words of Judge Marrero, this use of National Security Letters offends the fundamental constitutional principles of checks and balances and separation of powers
— via Slashdot
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