“There is not the footfall any more. People are not now going into bookshops. If they want the latest fiction they will buy it at the supermarket or go online or use a Kindle.
“Overall, the future of the high street bookshop is pretty grim. They are closing at an alarming rate”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/9131135/Printed-book-sales-slump.html
What Industries Contributed the Most to Google’s Earnings in 2011?
And they may seek to train their own recruits or hire outsiders, with an eye toward pursuing cyber attacks. These adaptations of the terrorist threat make the FBI’s counterterrorism mission that much more difficult and challenging.
The basis from which acts of terrorism are committed—from organizations to affiliates/surrogates to self-radicalized individuals—continue to evolve and expand. Of particular note is al Qaeda’s use of online chat rooms and websites to recruit and radicalize followers to commit acts of terrorism. And they are not hiding in the shadows of cyber space: al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has produced a full-color, English-language online magazine. Terrorists are not only sharing ideas; they are soliciting information and inviting communication. Al Shabaab, the al Qaeda affiliate in Somalia, uses Twitter to taunt its enemies—in English—and encourage terrorist activity.
Much more:
http://www.fbi.gov/news/testimony/fbi-budget-request-for-fiscal-year-2013
U.S. authorities are following the Europeans’ lead by paving the way to sue Apple and other big publishing names, after they were found to be ‘fixing’ e-book prices.
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/justice-dept-to-sue-apple-other-publishers-over-e-book-cartel/71135
“I’ve recruited like nine active informants on my own, so who knows how many there are really,” she said.
She used to be part of Anonymous herself, back in 2008 and 2009, specifically for the group’s Church of Scientology protests. “We went to Scientology pickets,” she said. “It was a part of the group that was funny and tongue-in-cheek. At the time there was not hacktivism…It was a generally law-abiding thing. You had to be because it was a religious cult that would take you to court.”
But Emick, who was writing about religion for About.com at the time, got disillusioned with Anonymous when the group began aligning itself with WikiLeaks and hacking into networks. “I was being naive at the time,” she said. “I was asking, ‘why are people who built their reputations on credit card fraud hanging out?’ At the time I thought script kiddies and hackers in the soup, and they have access to peoples’ details! This is not good.”
She says to expect more arrests.
“There’s going to be more to the story,” she said. “There’s stuff I can’t talk about right now. People come to me and probably some people came out on their own and they’ll be OK. A lot of these people who got involved are kids who didn’t know what they got into.”
Facebook has admitted that some of its 845 million accounts might be fake or duplicated user identities, but that doesn’t seem to be worrying the banks since they have doubled the social network’s loans to $8bn to take care of its market debut.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/03/08/facebook_ipo_fake_users/
Freedom of infrastructure
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/03/08/white_spaces/
Previously:
The Cambridge TV White Spaces Consortium is made up of the BBC, BSkyB, BT, Cambridge Consultants, Microsoft, Nokia, and Samsung, along with TTP, Spectrum Bridge, and Neul. A similar group – called the White Spaces Coalition, and including Microsoft, Dell, and Google among its members – was set up in the US two years ago.
“White spaces networks work in much the same way as Wi-Fi, but because TV spectrum signals travel farther and penetrate walls better, they may require fewer access points,” the consortium says in a statement. “[The technology has] the potential to help bring mobile broadband to areas not well served by existing connections.”
http://eandt.theiet.org/news/2011/jul/white-space.cfm
As one of the ten largest file-sharing sites on the Internet, Hotfile has become a prime target for Hollywood.
“Hotfile is responsible for billions of infringing downloads of copyrighted works, including plaintiffs’ valuable motion picture and television properties. As with other adjudicated pirate services that came before it, from Napster and Grokster to Isohunt and Limewire, Hotfile exists to profit from copyright infringement,” they write.
“More than 90% of the files downloaded from Hotfile are copyright infringing, and nearly every Hotfile user is engaged in copyright infringement.”
The latter statistic comes from research conducted by University of Pennsylvania professor Richard Waterman on behalf of the movie studios. Waterman concluded that 90.2% of all daily downloads on Hotfile are infringing, opposed to 5.3% that are clearly non-infringing.
Aside from pointing out the massive infringement on Hotfile, the crux of the case is whether the file-hoster is protected under the DMCA’s safe-harbor provision. According to the MPAA this is not the case.
Among other things, the studios point out that Hotfile previously failed to disconnect repeat infringers and that Hotfile employees actively induced copyright infringement. Not meeting these requirements means they have no right to safe-harbor protection.
The MPAA’s motion is supported by a slew of exhibits ranging from internal emails where Hotfile staff assist users with downloading infringing files, to forum discussions about the affiliate program, and testimonies from anti-piracy chiefs at the movie studios.
Much more:
http://torrentfreak.com/hotfile-as-bad-megaupload-mpaa-tells-court-120307/
Previously:
While there can be no doubt that some users of The Pirate Bay are indeed engaging in copyright infringement, for others the site is their gateway to the world, the mechanism by which their own work can be distributed – for free – to the masses.
http://vrritti.com/2012/03/04/pirate-bay-block-inspires-crowdsourced-song-bye-bye-bpi/
This cooperation by Connexxion with the Dutch Immigration Service IND was officially confirmed in one of the verdicts of the Dutch Council Of State.
Dutch language news article:
http://www.nu.nl/internet/2758218/big-brother-award-minister-schippers.html
The last time when Connexxion made the news this positively was when it became known that one of its bus drivers called Richard van Olffen – the husband of Robert Mikelsons the Dutch pedophile who has abused 87 toddlers in a daycare center in Amsterdam – had used a website built by and for Connexxion’s employees to distribute the photographs taken of the large scale child abuse.
Dutch language news article:
http://www.elsevier.nl/web/Nieuws/Nederland/284024/Kinderporno-op-medewerkerswebsite-Connexxion.htm
