Archive for 2012/01/25

Leaseweb’s Security Officer: 540 Servers Leased By MegaUpload Have Not Been Seized By Authorities

Posted: 2012/01/25 in Copyright, Education / Awareness, Enforcement, Illegal File Sharing

Leaseweb’s Alex de Joode is again making note of the fact that hundreds of servers are still at Leaseweb and that the provider is still unable to get in touch with MegaUpload’s executives.

Dutch language news article:
http://www.telegraaf.nl/digitaal/11362898/__Fotoalbums_kwijt_door_sluiting_MegaUpload__.html

Previously:

Dutch Newspaper ‘De Telegraaf’ Wants To Hear From Victims Of The MegaUpload Shutdown
http://vrritti.com/2012/01/23/dutch-newspaper-de-telegraaf-wants-to-hear-from-victims-of-the-megaupload-shutdown/

US has already flexed cyberwar muscle, says former NSA director

Posted: 2012/01/25 in Cybercrime, Education / Awareness, Enforcement, Public Policy

In an interview with Reuters, former National Security Agency Director Mike McConnell claimed that the US has already used cyber attacks against an adversary successfully. And it’s just a matter of time before someone unleashes cyber attacks on US critical infrastructure, he warned.

http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2012/01/us-has-already-flexed-cyberwar-muscle-says-former-nsa-director.ars

How the Government Used a Con Artist to Catch Google’s Criminal Activities

Posted: 2012/01/25 in Education / Awareness, Enforcement, Google

http://gizmodo.com/5879207/how-the-government-hired-a-con-artist-to-catch-googles-criminal-activities

Dutch Consumer Authority & Retail Netherlands: Computer Systems At Banks Are Not Reliable

Posted: 2012/01/25 in Education / Awareness, Network Security

Multiple outages at Dutch banks have caused millions of euros in damages

Dutch language news article:
http://www.nu.nl/internet/2724070/systemen-bij-banken-niet-betrouwbaar.html

Facebook released a bookmarklet called ‘don’t be evil’ that tweaks Google’s newly launched Search plus Your World feature to surface results from all social networks, not just Google+

Posted: 2012/01/25 in Blocking, Education / Awareness, Google, Tech Evolution

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/facebook/facebooks-8216dont-be-evil-google-fix-now-a-firefox-add-on/8031

O2 mobile users in the UK are venting on Twitter today, fuming at their discovery that their phone number is being shared with every website that they visit over the network

Posted: 2012/01/25 in Education / Awareness, Privacy / Data Protection, Stats / reports

http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2012/01/25/smartphone-website-telephone-number/

Euronet faces first criminal computer breach of secure payment data

Posted: 2012/01/25 in Cybercrime, Education / Awareness, Network Security, Privacy / Data Protection

http://www.bizjournals.com/kansascity/news/2012/01/23/euronet-faces-first-criminal-computer.html?page=all

Paramount opens Cloud-based movie shop

Posted: 2012/01/25 in Education / Awareness, New Business Models

aramount has opened the door of the the first Ultraviolet-based film rental and download service.

The studio said it is offering 60-odd titles initially, though there seem rather fewer when you look at the website. Films are priced at $20 (£13) for an HD copy and $13 (£8) for an SD version. Rent SD titles for $3 (£2.60) or view in HD for $4 (£1.90).

You can pay by credit card or PayPal, and seemingly the latter method makes the US-centric service open to Brits.

More:
http://www.reghardware.com/2012/01/25/paramonunt_pictures_opens_ultraviolet_cloud_based_movie_download_rental_service/

Dutch Entertainment Industry Trade Association: ‘We Simply HAVE To Be Able To Fight Illegal Offering’

Posted: 2012/01/25 in Copyright, Education / Awareness, Enforcement, Illegal File Sharing, Public Policy

‘It Is Sad That Some Politicians Do Not Want To Get That And Allow Themselves To Be Guided By False Arguments And Emotions’, Says Paul Solleveld, Director of the NVPI

Dutch language news article:
http://webwereld.nl/nieuws/109301/nederland-lelijk-eendje-van-digitale-muziekmarkt.html

 

EU Citizens Will Have The Right To Remove Their Personal Details From The Internet

Posted: 2012/01/25 in Education / Awareness, Legislation, Privacy / Data Protection, Public Policy

The European Commission has introduced new and more strict data privacy regulations.

  • There will be one pan-European Data Protection Authority.
  • Consumers will have ‘the right to be forgotten’.
  • Consumers will have the right to move their data from one online location to the other without loss of data.
  • Consumers will be allowed to ask online businesses to remove any personal details or stored data. This will not be considered ‘a right’.
  • Personal data belongs to persons, it does not belong to companies (as well).
  • Explicit permission from the user is needed before personal data can be used at all.
  • Companies will be obligated to notify authorities of serious security and data breaches: within 24 hrs after discovery.
  • EU Member States need fully independent data protection authorities. These will become data privacy one-stop-shops for businesses and consumers in those countries.

Dutch language news article:
http://www.nu.nl/internet/2723895/eu-burgers-krijgen-recht-online-data-laten-verwijderen.html

What Google and Facebook Have in Common With Megaupload

Posted: 2012/01/25 in Copyright, Education / Awareness, Enforcement, Illegal File Sharing

http://www.forbes.com/sites/eliseackerman/2012/01/25/what-google-and-facebook-have-in-common-with-megaupload/

In Many Cases, More Than 80% of an Artist’s Search Results are Still Infringing…

Posted: 2012/01/25 in Copyright, Education / Awareness, Enforcement, Illegal File Sharing, Stats / reports

http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/permalink/2012/120124search

The situation took a sinister turn with the arrival of two sea containers full of Mr Dotcom’s belongings (MegaUpload)

Posted: 2012/01/25 in Copyright, Education / Awareness, Enforcement, Illegal File Sharing

Before he would consider selling the property, which he bought from the family of the late entrepreneur Paul Terry, Dr Fenny stipulated that Mr Dotcom should stay there first.

Mr Dotcom, a dual German and Finnish citizen, agreed and a three-week booking was made for November that year.

“I wanted to get to know who the person was because I feel a responsibility for the place, which in a sense I’ve inherited,” he said.

Dr Fenny, whose real-life exploits as a veterinarian were featured in last year’s hit movie Red Dog, said things quickly deteriorated when Mr Dotcom repeatedly failed to pay the deposit for his stay.

The 62-year-old said the situation took a sinister turn with the arrival of two sea containers full of Mr Dotcom’s belongings.

Shortly afterwards, Mr Dotcom’s agents cancelled the booking, citing difficulties with Australian immigration.

“I rang one of his PAs who happened to be his bodyguard and who’s pretty scary and he made a bit of a threat to me when I said ‘Look, we want our deposit’,” he said. “He said “If you’ve got any thought of hanging on to those containers you’ll have me to deal with and I don’t take any prisoners’.”

More than a year after Mr Dotcom’s abortive bid for Maitraya, Dr Fenny said he his feelings were largely of relief.

“He is probably a megalomaniac and he thinks he deserves the best, this is the best and he’s going to have it,” he said.

More:
http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/-/breaking/12725007/net-pirate-sought-wa-retreat/

Is it possible that we have lost control of the Internet?

Posted: 2012/01/25 in Education / Awareness

The best comparison might be to the financial markets, where the major banks and financial intermediaries simply lost control of a system that rapidly spun out of control. Complex new derivative products made it impossible to understand how much money was at risk, and even with whom you were doing business. Massive hedge funds and investment bank trading desks created “dark pools” of liquidity where they can buy and sell large blocks of stock anonymously using computerized trading programs. A new “shadow banking system” developed, making it easier to put money to work without being subject to regulatory oversight or capital guidelines. The result was a dramatic increase in trading volatility, the collapse of entire markets and freakish events like the Flash Crash of 2010, when the market lost nearly 10 percent of its value in just minutes.

The major Internet players have lulled us into thinking that the Internet is a cute, friendly place where LOLcats hang out on our screens, our personal social networking profiles are safe from prying eyes and we’re able to download all the music and watch all the videos we want, as long as we get it from the same place every time. Just as we ignored Wall Street’s “shadow banking system” and “dark pools” until it was too late because we were too busy thinking how great it was to take out a half-million-dollar mortgage with no down payment, we risk ignoring the warning signals of an Internet that is slipping out of our control.

Much more:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/innovations/post/have-we-lost-control-of-the-internet/2010/12/20/gIQApRPgQQ_blog.html

Dutch arrest Megaupload suspect at US request. Awaits extradition

Posted: 2012/01/25 in Copyright, Education / Awareness, Enforcement, Illegal File Sharing

A prosecutor’s office spokeswoman says an Estonian citizen has been jailed for 60 days after being arrested by Dutch police at the request of American authorities investigating file-sharing website Megaupload.

Spokeswoman Marieke van der Molen declined Wednesday to release the man’s name in line with Dutch privacy rules, but a U.S. Justice Department official identified him as software programmer Andrus Nomm, 32, a citizen of Estonia and a resident of both Turkey and Estonia.

Van der Molen says the suspect was arrested last Friday and appeared before a judge Monday who ordered him detained for 60 days pending an American extradition request.

New Zealand police arrested four other suspects last week, including Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom.

Along with Megaupload, which ranks 70th on Alexa’s latest global list, the biggest ones are Mediafire (at 66th) and 4shared (88th)

Posted: 2012/01/25 in Copyright, Education / Awareness, Enforcement, Illegal File Sharing, Stats / reports

To give you a sense of their scale, these three get the same general volume of traffic as AOL, CNN, and eBay. (And, um, Xhamster.com, which is also in the business of sharing video.) Reports vary, but this Ars Technica story says that the cyberlocker sites account for 7 percent of Web traffic worldwide. (Megaupload itself claimed 4 percent in a defiant YouTube video; more on that below.) They have one other thing in common, too: They are all based overseas, making it difficult for the U.S. media industries to attack them, though it seems like they managed it this time. (That in itself seems a good argument against the draconian remedies of SOPA, which were predicated on the contention that these “rogue sites” were outside the reach of American law enforcement.)

There’s no honor among illegal file-sharing sites: Instead of directing me to the Filesonic site, Filestube was in essence lifting the link—the file-sharing equivalent of republishing copy wholesale from another website. But worry not for Megaupload and the other cyberlockers. According to the Megaupload indictment, that operation also ran third-party search engines that directed searchers to their site.

More:
http://www.slate.com/articles/business/technology/2012/01/megaupload_shutdown_what_the_site_s_departure_means_for_other_traffic_hogging_cyberlockers_.html

Toonzaki: Traffic Up 20% Since Megaupload’s Closure

Posted: 2012/01/25 in Copyright, Education / Awareness, Enforcement, Illegal File Sharing, New Business Models, Stats / reports

4Kids Entertainment‘s Toonzaki site reported via its Facebook page on Tuesday that traffic to the site has risen 20% in the days following the United States government’sclosure of the Megaupload file-sharing service.

A Toonzaki representative added in a follow-up comment, “I would suspect that many of the legitimate site have seen increases. Our Hulu views are also up over this time frame.”

More:
http://www.animenewsnetwork.co.uk/news/2012-01-24/toonzaki/traffic-up-20-percent-since-megaupload-closure

French legal VOD platform Imineo has hailed the Megaupload closure as it announced traffic and sales up 50%

Posted: 2012/01/25 in Copyright, Education / Awareness, Enforcement, Illegal File Sharing, New Business Models, Stats / reports

“Deprived with films and series and now informed about the illicit use of that kind of online-file-sharing platforms, internauts now turn massively towards legal offers,” the French website proclaimed.

Run by Richard Huin, this legal download platform offers a selection of 11,000 titles including exclusivities coming from 300 producers, independent content suppliers and big groups such as Gaumont, Pathé, France Télévisions, Dupuis, EuropaCorp, M6 Films, Bac Films.

Until now, Imineo was suffering from what it called “unfair competition coming from Megaupload that deprived it with a large share of its audience”.

http://www.rapidtvnews.com/index.php/2012012519072/imineocom-hails-megaupload-closure-sales-up-50.html

U.S. President Barack Obama: ‘It’s not right when another country lets our movies, music, and software be pirated’

Posted: 2012/01/25 in Copyright, Education / Awareness, Enforcement, Illegal File Sharing, Public Policy

It’s not fair when foreign manufacturers have a leg up on ours only because they’re heavily subsidized.

Tonight, I’m announcing the creation of a Trade Enforcement Unit that will be charged with investigating unfair trade practices in countries like China. There will be more inspections to prevent counterfeit or unsafe goods from crossing our borders.

STATE OF THE UNION FULL TEXT:
http://www.freep.com/article/20120124/NEWS15/120124075/White-House-releases-full-text-Obama-s-State-Union-speech 

The data from the things you search for, the emails you send, the places you look up on Google Maps, the videos you watch in YouTube, the discussions you have on Google+ will all be collected in one place

Posted: 2012/01/25 in Education / Awareness, Google, New Business Models, Privacy / Data Protection

It seems like it will particularly affect Android users, whose real-time location (if they are Latitude users), Google Wallet data and much more will be up for grabs. And if you have signed up for Google+, odds are the company even knows your real name, as it still places hurdles in front of using a pseudonym (although it no longer explicitly requires users to go by their real names).

All of that data history will now be explicitly cross-referenced. Although it refers to providing users a better experience (read: more highly tailored results), presumably it is so that Google can deliver more highly targeted ads.

So why are we calling this evil? Because Google changed the rules that it defined itself. Google promised us it wouldn’t be evil. Of course, everyone has a different definition of “evil.” But for better or worse, people bought into the “don’t be evil” philosophy and largely seemed to interpret it to mean that Google will always put its users first. Google has built a very lucrative business on the reputation of user respect. It has made billions of dollars in that effort to get us all under its feel-good tent. And now it’s pulling the stakes out, collapsing it. It gives you a few weeks to pull your data out, using its data-liberation service, but if you want to use Google services, you have to agree to these rules.

More:

http://gizmodo.com/5878987/its-official-google-is-evil-now

RapidShare Attorney: If We’re Shut Down Like Megaupload, Then YouTube, Dropbox, Apple’s iCloud Are Next – Admits RapidShare Is Using An Upload Filter

Posted: 2012/01/25 in Copyright, Education / Awareness, Enforcement, Illegal File Sharing, Stats / reports

RapidShare is one of the world’s most popular file-hosting sites, and many have wondered whether the site could be next on the feds’ list of targets after Megaupload.

On Tuesday, we caught up with RapidShare attorney and spokesman Daniel Raimer.

FAST COMPANY: Do you think Megaupload was fairly or unfairly targeted?

DANIEL RAIMER: I guess that’s up to a jury to decide. I’m not a judge, and I don’t want to make any verdict. I’ve seen doing Megaupload doing things that we wouldn’t do, and that we strongly discourage, such as their heavy rewards program. But I don’t want to say that they’re guilty. It’s not up to us to decide that.

Do you think federal prosecutors will target RapidShare next?

I don’t think so.

Why not?

Let me put it like this. The technology behind Megaupload and RapidShare may be similar, but this is also true for the technology of Microsoft’s SkyDrive or Apple’s iCloud, which is not too different from what RapidShare is. It’s uploading a file, and accessing it over the Internet, or even sharing at certain times with friends. The business from an ethical standpoint is really similar. The main difference is, what exactly is your business model? Are you aiding piracy? Is your intent to make money by attracting pirates and getting attention from copyright pirates? Or do you want to have serious customers and long-time relationships with satisfied people from all over the world, who trust you? That’s exactly what we do.

Do you check uploaded files against pirated content?

Yes and no. We have a very strict filter that recognizes content that is 100% identical to content that has already been taken down. So a file that is uploaded has to be the exact same file up to a single bit. It cannot be different, even by one bit. If it’s different, the filter will not recognize it. So, yes, we do have such a filter, but it’s not the type of filter that the content industry is asking for. They’re asking for filters such as the ones used for YouTube, where software tries to recognize a certain movie by certain characteristics. Our filter works differently.

There are RapidShare search engines devoted to helping users find links on forums and websites to pirated content on RapidShare. Do you try to stop them?

We do quite a lot. We have filed more than 50 lawsuits in order to shut these websites down. We have been pretty effective doing that. Out of those 50 cases, I would say we’ve won roughly 45 of them. The problem is that legal actions are tough. We have to prove their are trademark infringement. What we do right now is try to prove these websites are infringing with the help of some software we’ve developed ourselves to gather information on the content that is published on these systems. So right now, we’re taking a software approach, too.

Do you have any connections to Kim Dotcom?

No, I have never talked to him. I’ve never met him. I have never sent an email to him. I can’t speak for the whole company, but I’ve never had any ties to him. I’ve seen the guy in German television before he was doing Megaupload because he was notorious in Germany. But I don’t have any personal relationship with him, or even talk with him.

Much more:

http://www.fastcompany.com/1810967/rapidshare-lawyer-if-were-shut-down-like-megaupload-then-youtube-dropbox-and-apples-icloud-a

Staff at Kim Dotcom Schmitz’s $30 million mansion had been told only days before last week’s police raid that their boss was planning to travel overseas, and most of the staff would be made redundant (MegaUpload)

Posted: 2012/01/25 in Copyright, Education / Awareness, Enforcement, Illegal File Sharing

A domestic employee says Schmitz indicated the trip was planned for mid February, and staff were sworn to secrecy.

http://www.investigatemagazine.co.nz/Investigate/?p=2286

RIAA Release Statement On MegaUpload Case – ‘Why Closing Megaupload Matters’

Posted: 2012/01/25 in Copyright, Education / Awareness, Enforcement, Illegal File Sharing, New Business Models

The shutdown of illegal sites helps create a thriving and diverse digital marketplace. It encourages users to go to legitimate sites, and enables great new services to be launched – like Spotify, which launched in the US last year and quickly signed up millions of new users. It’s always reassuring when the data we see in the market reflects what we thought was just common sense.

Joshua P. Friedlander
Vice President, Strategic Data Analysis, RIAA

More:
http://musicfeeds.com.au/news/riaa-release-statement-on-megaupload-case/

Megaupload founder denied bail in NZ – Will be remanded in custody until February 22

Posted: 2012/01/25 in Copyright, Education / Awareness, Enforcement, Illegal File Sharing, Jurisprudence

Judge David McNaughton said he was concerned that Dotcom, who US authorities allege received $US42 million ($40 million) from his internet empire in 2010 alone, would flee the country if released on bail.

“With sufficient determination and financial resources, flight risk remains a real and serious possibility which I cannot discount,” he said in a written judgement.

The US charges Dotcom faces include money laundering and racketeering, which carries a potential 20-year jail term.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-01-25/megaupload-founder-denied-bail-in-nz/3792150/

Google announces privacy changes across products; users can’t opt out

Posted: 2012/01/25 in Education / Awareness, Google, New Business Models, Privacy / Data Protection

Google said Tuesday it will follow the activities of users across e-mail, search, YouTube and other services, a shift in strategy that is expected to invite greater scrutiny of its privacy and competitive practices.

The information will enable Google to develop a fuller picture of how people use its growing empire of Web sites. Consumers will have no choice but to accept the changes.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/google-tracks-consumers-across-products-users-cant-opt-out/2012/01/24/gIQArgJHOQ_story.html