Archive for 2011/02/01
Three of the nation’s biggest technology companies — Intel, Hewlett-Packard and IBM — are committing hundreds of millions of dollars to an initiative backed by President Barack Obama to encourage job creation and economic growth by supporting small businesses
Posted: 2011/02/01 in Education / Awareness, Public PolicyGoogle’s Art Project: Tour the World’s Finest Paintings In Eye-Blasting Resolution
Posted: 2011/02/01 in Education / Awareness, Google, New Business ModelsGoogle has taken its street view cameras inside some of the world’s most famous museums. The result? A stunningly high-resolution trove of paintings that would otherwise be an ocean away. And here’s how they did it.
Hadopi Wants To Kick People Offline For Watching Unauthorized Streams As Well
Posted: 2011/02/01 in UncategorizedThere are some crazy people in the entertainment industries who think that some day it will be possible, given enough force, aggression, technical measures and political pressure, to force everyone to pay for every single last piece of media, not just once, but time and again
Posted: 2011/02/01 in Education / AwarenessEmule Paradise owner Vincent Valade is accused by entertainment companies of profiting heavily from the unauthorized distribution of more than 7,000 movies. If convicted he faces up to 3 years in jail, 300,000 euros in fines and compensation settlements running to millions of euros
Posted: 2011/02/01 in Education / Awareness, LitigationU.S. Resume Controversial File-Sharing Domain Seizures
Posted: 2011/02/01 in Blocking, Education / Awareness, Enforcement, Public PolicyUS authorities have seized the domain of the hugely popular sports streaming and P2P download site Rojadirecta. The site, which is one of the most visited sites on the Internet, lost its .org domain which now redirects to a notice from DOJ/ICE. Rojadirecta is an unusual target because two courts in Spain have ruled that the site operates legally, and other than the .org domain the site has no links to the US.
Rojadirecta is known as one of the world’s major Internet sports broadcast indexes. The site links to broadcasts of many popular soccer matches plus other sporting events including NBA, MLB, NFL, NPB, IPL.
More: http://torrentfreak.com/us-resume-file-sharing-domain-seizures-110201/
Chinese search giant Baidu has almost doubled its income over the last year and made more than half a billion dollars in profit
Posted: 2011/02/01 in Education / Awareness, Stats / reportsEric Schmidt described Google’s departure last year from China as a gift to Robin
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/02/01/baidu_earns_millions/
Cisco chairman and CEO John Chambers met UK Prime minister David Cameron yesterday, pledging half a billion dollars over five years to help the UK private sector solve the unemployment problem, and avoid the Olympic legacy being more about white elephants than east London renewal
Posted: 2011/02/01 in Education / Awareness, Public PolicyNewest PS3 firmware hacked less than 24 hours
Posted: 2011/02/01 in Cybercrime, Education / AwarenessOfcom to review Digital Economy Act site-blocking measures
Posted: 2011/02/01 in Blocking, Education / Awareness, Public Policy, Tech Evolution“I have no problem with the principle of blocking access to websites used exclusively for facilitating illegal downloading of content. But it is not clear whether the site-blocking provisions in the Act could work in practice, so I have asked Ofcom to address this question,” said Hunt.
“Before we consider introducing site-blocking, we need to know whether these measures are possible.”
UK.gov said that if such measures were brought in, secondary legislation would need to be introduced, hence the added scrutiny.
More: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/02/01/ofcom_reviews_digital_economy_act/
See also: http://vrritti.com/category/blocking/
Apple responds: we want a cut of Amazon, Sony e-book sales
Posted: 2011/02/01 in Education / AwarenessThe conversation began: “OK, here’s PJ Crowley. I just want you to know in this phone call we’ve got Secretary of State Clinton’s private secretary, we have representatives of the DoD [department of defence], the intelligence communities, and the national security council.” All Rusbridger could offer in reply was: “We have our managing editor here”
Posted: 2011/02/01 in Education / Awareness, Public PolicyA few days before the cables’ release, two senior figures from the US embassy called in to the Guardian’s offices for a chat
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/jan/31/wikileaks-washingtons-call-direct-talk
http://www.businessinsider.com/julian-assange-60-minutes-kroft-palin-2011-1
See also:
WikiLeaks’ Principles Are Like U.S. Founding Values, Assange Tells 60 Minutes
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2378954,00.asp
EFF Uncovers Widespread FBI Intelligence Violations
Posted: 2011/02/01 in Education / Awareness, Enforcement, Public PolicyEFF has uncovered widespread violations stemming from FBI intelligence investigations from 2001 – 2008. In a report released today, EFF documents alarming trends in the Bureau’s intelligence investigation practices, suggesting that FBI intelligence investigations have compromised the civil liberties of American citizens far more frequently, and to a greater extent, than was previously assumed.
More: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/01/eff-releases-report-detailing-fbi-intelligence
It is no longer acceptable to rely solely on preventive measures. Combating targeted threats requires a sustained effort and the capability to perform rapid threat detection and response
Posted: 2011/02/01 in Education / Awareness, Network Security, Privacy / Data Protection, Stats / reportsEnglish language report: http://www.security.nl/files/M-trends2.pdf
Could a U.S. government crackdown take America off the internet?
Posted: 2011/02/01 in Education / AwarenessThe government certainly could force AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile to turn off wireless IP routing and for Comcast, AT&T, Verizon, Charter, Time Warner and the other consumer ISPs to basically shut down their networks or at least their edge routers.
http://io9.com/5746338/could-a-us-government-crackdown-take-america-off-the-internet
23.8 percent of all global Internet traffic involves digital theft with BitTorrent accounting for 11.4 percent
Posted: 2011/02/01 in Education / Awareness, Illegal File Sharing, Stats / reportsThe numbers in the U.S. aren’t much better. More than 17 percent of domestic Internet traffic infringes on copyrights, with BitTorrent responsible for 9 percent of that traffic.
These numbers come from a company called Envisional, which monitors brand infringement and counterfeiting—it was hired by NBC Universal to investigate this very issue. These numbers were released today to coincide with a panel sponsored by the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation.
Entanet UK Slams Digital Economy Act as Rights Holders Join ISPs in Judicial Review
Posted: 2011/02/01 in Education / Awareness, Enforcement, Public PolicyEntanet’s Head of Marketing, Darren Farnden, said (Opinion Blog):
“The government’s requirements penalise us for simply providing a service. As we have said many times before, ISPs are conduits of information, not the owners and certainly not the Internet police. In our opinion, rights holders should concentrate on how they need to adjust their business models to more effectively use the Internet for commercial gain, at the same time considering the steps they need to take to protect their assets.
I am so keen to understand what benefits the ISPs are getting in return for shelling out for 25% of the costs. Perhaps Vaizey thinks it’s the satisfaction of knowing we’ve helped make the world a better place. Wake up! It’s getting tougher to succeed in our economy as it is! The last thing ISPs need to be told is they now have to be penalised for providing access to the Internet, especially at a time when the government wants ‘the market’ to bring faster access to everyone in the next few years.”
The WSJ is reporting that NBC management is upset with the way Hulu is undercutting its current business model, and is now pushing to change Hulu entirely into an “online cable channel”…
Posted: 2011/02/01 in Education / Awareness, New Business Models, Tech Evolution…rather than an aggregator and service for watching television shows. Of course, as many are pointing out, this would almost certainly kill off Hulu
