Archive for 2010/09/15

German government launches anti-botnet campaign in cooperation with German providers and Symantec

Posted: 2010/09/15 in Blocking, Cybercrime, Education / Awareness, Filtering, Privacy / Data Protection, Public Policy

Botnetfrei.de (Botnetfree) is a campaign aimed at German citizens warning them about the dangers of administering infected PCs that are part of a botnet. The German government also provides advice on how to prevent or remedy infections.

Botnetfrei.de is an initiative of the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the “Bundesamt für Sicherheit in der Informationstechnik”.

Security companies and Internet Service Providers are also cooperating. Symantec is providing a special decontamination tool called DE-Cleaner.

The government has also introduced a special phone number for people to call when they’re in need of more information.

German language article: http://www.eco.de/verband/202_8187.htm

Reducing the rate of software theft by just 10 percentage points over the next two years could boost the global economy by nearly $200 billion and generate almost half a million tech-related jobs

Posted: 2010/09/15 in Education / Awareness, Public Policy, Stats / reports

Software Industry Tells Governments That Piracy Doesn’t Pay

http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20100915-700002.html

E.U. to Back Plan for Pan-European Mobile Market

Posted: 2010/09/15 in Mobile tech, Public Policy, Tech Evolution

The European Commission is poised this week to back a plan that would divert a portion of the valuable broadcast spectrum used by television stations to mobile operators by 2013, in a bid to create an European Union-wide market for wireless broadband services.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/13/technology/13spectrum.htm

Curious kids: 3,000 attempts to visit porn sites every minute

Posted: 2010/09/15 in Cybercrime, Education / Awareness, Stats / reports

The Pornography category in the Parental Control system of Kaspersky Lab’s home user products is triggered over 4 million times a day. In other words, there are about 3,000 attempts to access adult content sites by minors every minute. This is confirmed by data collected worldwide using Kaspersky Security Network technology.

More: http://tinyurl.com/2wkqbro

Dutch Forensic lab develops tool that allows law enforcement officers to scan confiscated media remotely using their webbrowser

Posted: 2010/09/15 in Education / Awareness, Enforcement, New Business Models, Tech Evolution

First prototyped in 2006, the system has now successfully been deployed at law enforcement agencies in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. The system now allows non-technical staff to search and analyze large quantities of data on a variety of information carriers.

Dutch language article: http://www.nfi-info.nl/artikelen/artikelen_item/t/nieuwe_tool_maakt_aanpak_cybercrime_makkelijker

English language tech info: http://www.holmes.nl/NFIlabs/XIRAF/index.html

Digital Agenda: EU grid project unlocks processing power of 200,000 desktop computers for European researchers

Posted: 2010/09/15 in Education / Awareness, New Business Models, Public Policy

EU researchers will have sustainable and continuous access to the combined processing power of over 200,000 desktop computers in more than 30 European countries thanks to the European Commission funded European Grid Infrastructure (EGI) project launched today. The Commission is contributing €25 million over four years to the EGI-InSPIRE project to link the processing capacity of desktop computers when they would otherwise be idle and so give researchers the processing power needed to tackle complex problems in environment, energy or health. The EGI, the largest collaborative production grid infrastructure for e-Science ever created, will enable teams of researchers in different geographical locations to work on a problem as if they were in the same laboratory. Reinforcing research infrastructures such as EGI forms part of the Digital Agenda for Europe, the Commission’s strategy to maximise the social and economic potential of information and communication technologies (see IP/10/581, MEMO/10/199 and MEMO/10/200).

More: http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=IP/10/1119&format=HTML&aged=0&language=EN&guiLanguage=en

Putting Multiple Credit Card Accounts On the Same Plastic

Posted: 2010/09/15 in New Business Models, Tech Evolution

http://gizmodo.com/5637752/putting-multiple-credit-card-accounts-on-the-same-plastic

Comment Tools: Now We Can Warn, Suspend, and Move Threads Instead of Banning

Posted: 2010/09/15 in Blocking

http://gizmodo.com/5637770/comment-tools-now-we-can-warn-suspend-move-threads-instead-of-banning

Google’s Ginormity Expressed Two Dozen Ways

Posted: 2010/09/15 in Education / Awareness, Google, Stats / reports

Full article: http://gizmodo.com/5637887/googles-ginormity-expressed-two-dozen-ways

Microsoft Backs Down: Will No Longer Help Russian Gov’t Use Copyright To Suppress Dissent

Posted: 2010/09/15 in Education / Awareness, Enforcement, Illegal File Sharing, Public Policy

Microsoft announced on Monday that it would essentially prohibit its Russian division from taking part in software piracy cases against government opponents, responding to criticism that it was assisting the authorities in a crackdown on dissent.

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100913/12414610991.shtml

Is Google’s Closed Nature Its Achilles Heel?

Posted: 2010/09/15 in Education / Awareness, Google

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100902/03351910875.shtml

HDCP ‘Master Key’ Found? Another Form Of DRM Drops Dead

Posted: 2010/09/15 in Education / Awareness

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100913/22322710997.shtml

See also:

HDCP, the copy protection intended to keep HDMI-beamed content on lockdown, was recently cracked. The new “master key” might not be very useful to John Q. Gizmo, but it will keep torrenters frustrating the hell out of the MPAA.

http://gizmodo.com/5638085/hdcp-copy-protection-unlocked-by-master-key

Director Jean-Luc Godard Says ‘There’s No Such Thing As Intellectual Property,’ Donates To MP3 Downloader’s Defense

Posted: 2010/09/15 in Education / Awareness

I am against Hadopi [the French internet-copyright law, or its attendant agency], of course. There is no such thing as intellectual property. I’m against the inheritance [of works], for example. An artist’s children could benefit from the copyright of their parents’ works, say, until they reach the age of majority… But afterward, it’s not clear to me why Ravel’s children should get any income from Bolero…

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100913/20474410994.shtml

Why It’s Important Not To Call Copyright Infringement Theft

Posted: 2010/09/15 in Copyright, Education / Awareness

infringement and theft are two different things

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100913/22513210998.shtml

Consumer Group Points Out That IP Laws Are Often Anti-Consumer And Need To Be Fixed

Posted: 2010/09/15 in Education / Awareness

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100914/08343211003.shtml

Film Archives Being Eaten Away; Would Be Nice If People Could Make Copies To Preserve

Posted: 2010/09/15 in Education / Awareness

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100909/20294910958.shtml

Microsoft ’shoulder to shoulder’ with AFACT

Posted: 2010/09/15 in Enforcement, Illegal File Sharing

Microsoft and the Business Software Alliance, of which Microsoft is a founding member, have openly come out in support of Hollywood and Big Music in their efforts to gain control of the Internet as their exclusive distribution and marketing and vehicle, and the castigation of their own customers.

http://www.p2pnet.net/story/43736

Google dismisses engineer who violated privacy policy

Posted: 2010/09/15 in Education / Awareness, Google, Privacy / Data Protection

He accessed at least four user accounts

http://tinyurl.com/345mbbm

See also:

GCreep: Google Engineer Stalked Teens, Spied on Chats (Updated)

http://gawker.com/5637234/gcreep-google-engineer-stalked-teens-spied-on-chats

Yahoo! economist rebuilds ad empire with ‘Magic Formula’

Posted: 2010/09/15 in Education / Awareness, Online advertising

“Economics as engineering discipline is all about building things with economics that are positive — as opposed to stopping things, things that won’t work.”

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/09/14/preston_mcafee/

Privacy tool for Iranians withdrawn amid security concerns

Posted: 2010/09/15 in Education / Awareness, Privacy / Data Protection, Public Policy

‘Haystack’ could out dissident needles

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/09/14/haystack_privacy_debacle/

See also:

Haystack Situation Looking Worse And Worse: Why Did The State Dept. Endorse This Mess?

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100914/15553611015.shtml

Vodafone promises more tiers for data hungry customers

Posted: 2010/09/15 in Bandwidth Management, Education / Awareness, New Business Models

Because some contracts are more equal than others

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/09/14/voda_pricing/

Czechs tell Google to stop StreetView

Posted: 2010/09/15 in Education / Awareness, Google, Privacy / Data Protection, Public Policy

Another dissident against Schmidt’s glorious privacy-free future

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/09/14/czech_privacy/

UK plans increased spending on cyber-security

Posted: 2010/09/15 in Cybercrime, Education / Awareness, Enforcement, Network Security, Privacy / Data Protection, Public Policy

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/09/14/cyber_security_defense/

Chinese cybercrooks offer DDoS-for-hire

Posted: 2010/09/15 in Cybercrime, Education / Awareness

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/09/14/hosted_ddos_botnet/

Intel’s walled garden plan to put A/V vendors out of business

Posted: 2010/09/15 in Blocking, Tech Evolution

Plans to turn the x86 ecosystem from an open free-for-all into a world where code must first get permission from someone other than you before it can run on your machine.

http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2010/09/intels-walled-garden-plan-to-put-av-vendors-out-of-business.ars

Hey, Capitol Hill: who’s your daddy? AT&T

Posted: 2010/09/15 in Education / Awareness, Public Policy

In Washington, DC, nobody throws around money like AT&T. We’re talking hundreds of millions of bucks over the last two decades. Who gets it? And what does AT&T want in return? We crunch the numbers.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/09/hey-capitol-hill—whose-your-daddy-att.ars

Appeals court guts landmark computer privacy ruling

Posted: 2010/09/15 in Education / Awareness, Enforcement, Jurisprudence, Privacy / Data Protection

An appeals court has rejected Miranda-style guidelines put in place in an attempt to protect the Fourth Amendment privacy rights of people whose computers are searched by law enforcement.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/09/appeals-court-guts-landmark-computer-privacy-ruling.ars

Broadband duopoly leaves ISPs competing on speed, not price

Posted: 2010/09/15 in Education / Awareness, New Business Models, Stats / reports

A Northwestern University professor finds that broadband pricing largely held steady between 2004 and 2009. ISPs are content to compete on features but not on price, usually a feature of a less-than-fully-competitive market.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/09/broadband-duopoly-leaves-isps-competing-on-speed-not-price.ars

ICANN boss: international domain system in peril

Posted: 2010/09/15 in Education / Awareness, Public Policy

If governance of ICANN, “were to become the exclusive province of nation states or [be] captured by any other interests, we would lose the foundation of the Internet’s long-term potential and transformative value,” Rod Beckstrom warned an audience in Vilnius, Lithuania.

http://arstechnica.com/web/news/2010/09/icann-boss-international-domain-system-in-peril.ars