Archive for 2011/01/13

A European Internet study has an instant message for parents who want to control their children’s online habits: client based web filters are not 100 percent foolproof against harmful sites

Posted: 2011/01/13 in Education / Awareness, Filtering, Stats / reports

A solid 84 percent of programmes restrict access to websites such as porn pages, according to a study released by the European Commission on Thursday. But they still leave a 20 percent chance for sites with content unsuitable for children — webpages promoting anorexia, suicide and self-mutilation — to escape the filters.

The study also found that few Internet filters can block “Web 2.0″ content including blogs, forums and social networking sites such as Facebook or Twitter, or filter out instant messaging services. A survey released in parallel to the study found that only a quarter of parents in the European Union use parental control software to monitor, track or filter online content.

The EUKidsOnline survey was conducted in 25 countries with more than 25,000 children and one of their parents between April and August 2010.

The list and full report are available at http://www.yprt.eu/sip/

More: http://tinyurl.com/4h7vjzw

Huge BitTorrent Porn Sites Permanently Shut Down

Posted: 2011/01/13 in Education / Awareness

Reasons unknown

http://torrentfreak.com/huge-bittorrent-porn-sites-permanently-shut-down-110113/

RapidShare: “This defamation of RapidShare as a digital piracy site is absurd and we reserve the right to take legal action against MarkMonitor”

Posted: 2011/01/13 in Education / Awareness

http://torrentfreak.com/rapidshare-defamation-110112/

Megaupload: “If the content industry would like to take advantage of our popularity, we are happy to enter into a dialogue. We have some good ideas. Please get in touch.”

Posted: 2011/01/13 in Education / Awareness

http://torrentfreak.com/megaupload-fights-back-against-mpaa-and-riaa-propaganda-110113/

On Monday, WikiLeaks fulfilled its pledge to contribute toward the legal defense of accused whistleblower Bradley Manning by transferring $15,100 to the legal trust account of Manning’s attorney

Posted: 2011/01/13 in Education / Awareness

http://cryptome.org/0003/wikileaks-15100.htm

It seems to me that the great social network is perhaps not so social at all. Instead of having real conversations and meeting others, people now devote their time to “feeding the hens” or whatever else they are up to on F. Someone writes a status and all the others respond with “like”

Posted: 2011/01/13 in Education / Awareness, New Business Models, Privacy / Data Protection

The need to share information about your life that does not matter at all to others.

I’ve seen pictures of myself on F that I most certainly would have deleted. And guess who has the right to these pictures? Yes, you guessed right. The big F. It’s almost like you are forced to live your live in public. And you can’t really be the bore to nag every time a photo is taken. “I don’t want that on F.”

It’s like Big Brother’s dream come true. All done in the name of social networking and entertainment. It’s not like you are forced to do anything, you hand over the information freely, like a little pig sitting there smiling in a trap, waiting to be shot at. By an angry bird.

More: http://www.icelandreview.com/icelandreview/daily_life/?cat_id=16568&ew_0_a_id=372513

The South Korean police said on Thursday that they have filed charges against the global Internet giant, Google Inc. for its allegedly collecting private information

Posted: 2011/01/13 in Education / Awareness, Enforcement, Google, Litigation, Privacy / Data Protection, Public Policy

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/world/2011-01/13/c_13689543.htm

EU proposes seven-year limit on Google scanning agreements

Posted: 2011/01/13 in Education / Awareness, Public Policy

Independent advisers to the European Union are recommending legislation changes to force Google to allow other companies to commercialise the public domain works it has digitised after seven years.  A report, ‘Comité des sages’, concluded that digitising Europe`s cultural works would cost €100bn, a figure that has focused minds on getting more commercial enterprises to help with the digitisation process.

The report also calls for all member states to ensure that by 2016 they have brought all their public domain masterpieces into Europeana, the European digital library, and that public digitisation allows free access.The costs of digitising material from libraries was put at close to €20bn.

The report also argued that a European legal instrument for orphan works needs to be adopted as soon as possible, and that future orphan works must be avoided. 

The report says that the “involvement of private partners should be encouraged”, but said the primary responsibility was with the public sector. Nevertheless, it calls on policy makers at European and national level to create favourable conditions for the involvement of European players.

http://www.thebookseller.com/news/143634-eu-proposes-seven-year-limit-on-google-scanning-agreements.html

With technological advances leading to vast increases in information, international publics have generally become more sensitive to “spin” and propaganda. Here, governments must not just compete for credibility vis a vis their foreign counterparts, but also with new actors such as Al-Jazeera and indeed WikiLeaks

Posted: 2011/01/13 in Education / Awareness, Public Policy

It is true that some countries will continue to assist Washington because of factors such as self interest and/or fundamental agreement with U.S. strategy and policy. However, the degree to which other states do so, especially in critical theatres like the Middle East and Asia, will often depend heavily upon a mixture of the attractiveness amongst foreign publics, and the degree of trust within national elites, of the United States in general and the Obama administration in particular.

http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate-uk/2011/01/12/what-wikileaks-reveals-about-the-changing-map-of-global-power/

Visa beefs up fraud detection technology – detecting over twice as much fraud on the riskiest transactions using the new systems. It can also detect more than three times the amount of fraudulent cross-border fraud

Posted: 2011/01/13 in Education / Awareness, Tech Evolution

http://www.computerworlduk.com/news/applications/3256392/visa-beefs-up-fraud-detection-technology/

“I’m just saying that it is very important, if you’re preaching for freedom of information, then you really can’t complain that somebody leaked your police report,” said Birgitta Jonsdottir

Posted: 2011/01/13 in Education / Awareness

http://www.nationalpost.com/news/world/Former+supporter+chides+Assange/4100924/story.html

Lawyer for Assange’s Sex Accusers Helped In CIA Torture Rendition

Posted: 2011/01/13 in Education / Awareness

http://ctwatchdog.com/2011/01/12/how-much-did-lawyer-for-wikileaks-accusers-help-cia-in-torture-rendition