http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-57412498-1/amazon-to-take-your-old-cds-for-trade-in/
Archive for 2012/04/11
Amazon to take your old CDs for trade-in
Posted: 2012/04/11 in Education / Awareness, New Business ModelsGroups critical of Apple and its manufacturing partner Foxconn say Apple can afford to pay suppliers more
Posted: 2012/04/11 in Education / Awareness, New Business Models, Stats / reportsThat, in turn, could lead to improved working conditions at factories in China
There’s a perception among consumers that an e-book should cost very little or next to nothing because there is no paper, printing, and shipping involved
Posted: 2012/04/11 in Education / Awareness, New Business Models, Stats / reports, Tech EvolutionBut in fact, for a new best-selling hardcover, all of the costs associated with print, from the printing to the shipping to the distribution to the warehousing to returns, amount to a mere few dollars per copy, depending on the size of the print run.
The vast majority of a publisher’s costs come from expenses that still exist in an e-book world: Author advances, design, marketing, publicity, office space, and staff.
You can therefore imagine the fear that e-book prices instill in publishing executives’ hearts. They’re only saving a few dollars per copy in the switch to the e-book world, but the prices of books were slashed more than half: from $24.99 to $9.99 and even lower.
That begins to explain why publishers are trying to keep e-book prices high. But it doesn’t tell the whole story.
More:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57412587-93/why-e-books-cost-so-much/
Carpathia blasts U.S. government for hypocrisy on Megaupload servers
Posted: 2012/04/11 in Copyright, Education / Awareness, Enforcement, File Sharing, Illegal File Sharing, Litigation, Public PolicyUntil January, Carpathia Hosting counted Megaupload as a major customer, leasing 1103 servers to the storage locker site. But after the government shut down Megaupload and froze its assets, the servers became an albatross. They contained evidence in a major criminal copyright case, so Carpathia couldn’t just re-format them for other customers. But the government and the MPAA objected to selling them to Megaupload.
The filing did reveal a bit of good news for Carpathia. It had previously reported that storing the servers was costing it $9000 per day. Carpathia says that lease expired on April 6, and the servers have now been transferred to a storage facility. The hosting company says transferring the servers cost $65,000, and that the servers are occupying storage space valued at tens of thousands of dollars per month. The servers have a book value of $1.25 million, so their depreciation is a significant loss to Carpathia, but this is much less than the $9000 per day it had been paying previously.
“If the data is to be maintained, the government or one or all of the other parties seeking access to or making use of the data should bear the burden of maintaining the servers,” Carpathia writes. The firm says it “would be equally content to sell the servers to Mega, reprovision them for use by other customers, or sell them on the secondary market.” But it’s not happy about being forced to bear the costs of storage and depreciation itself.
More:
Local Dutch Vodafone Disruption Even Affects International Roaming
Posted: 2012/04/11 in Education / Awareness, Mobile tech, Stats / reportsEven when customers are outside of The Netherlands, Vodafone requires them to connect to one of the servers located at a Dutch datacenter that burned to the ground
Dutch language news article:
http://www.geenstijl.nl/mt/archieven/2012/04/belazert_vodafone_klanten_met.html
Previously:
http://vrritti.com/?s=vodafone
Amnesty International, Oxfam, Reporters without Borders as well as internet rights groups and the Council of Europe all spoke out against the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) at a European Parliament hearing on Wednesday
Posted: 2012/04/11 in Copyright, Education / Awareness, Enforcement, Illegal File Sharing, Legislation, Public Policy, Stats / reportsExperts at Wednesday’s parliament hearing, organised by Dutch Liberal MEP Marietje Schaake and Bulgarian Socialist MEP Ivailo Kalfin, all refuted the commission’s claims, arguing instead that there is a clear imbalance in the favour of intellectual property rights rather than natural rights.
Mike Masnick presented a study he conducted which infers that the commission’s argument that Acta is needed to safeguard and promote such sectors is not based on fact.
“More content is being produced than ever before,” he said. “More content is available to the public than ever before. In short, we found that the overall industry is thriving.”
More:
Police Make Arrest, Hunt Admins Of 500,000 Member File-Sharing Site GreekDDL
Posted: 2012/04/11 in Copyright, Education / Awareness, Enforcement, Illegal File Sharing, Public Policy, Stats / reportsFollowing a key arrest on Monday, authorities say they have charged three individuals said to be the administrators of a very large file-sharing site. The Greek forum, which carried links to material hosted on cyberlocker sites including Megaupload, had more than half a million members. According to the police the suspects generated substantial revenue from donations and gambling ads and cost copyright holders more than $85 million.
Police say they want to detain two other site admins, one of whom is reportedly being tracked with the help of Swedish authorities and Interpol.
Much more:
http://torrentfreak.com/police-make-arrest-hunt-admins-of-500000-member-file-sharing-site-120411/
BT Vision IPTV Service Adds Top American TV Shows via FX UK
Posted: 2012/04/11 in Education / Awareness, New Business ModelsAdd the Spotify Play Button to your blog, website or social page and light it up with music! Putting a soundtrack to your website has never been this easy, and you can feature any song, album or playlist
Posted: 2012/04/11 in Education / Awareness, New Business Models, Tech Evolutionll your fans have to do is hit play to enjoy the music.
Follow the simple steps below and you’ll have your site singing in seconds.
https://developer.spotify.com/technologies/spotify-play-button/
Adrian Aoun wants to build a system that instantly understands everything posted to the internet
Posted: 2012/04/11 in Education / Awareness, Filtering, New Business Models, Privacy / Data Protection, Stats / reports, Tech EvolutionAs it stands, Wavii’s online service is a Facebook-like newsfeed for everything other than Facebook. It feeds you news about what’s going on in the world at large, not just random thoughts from your friends and family. But in building this service, Aoun and company are tackling a much larger problem. They’re trying to organize the internet’s information in ways that machines can understand it.
“There’s a world of untapped information out there, in news articles and blogs and tweets,” Aoun says. “What we’ve done is we’ve taught our machines to read those articles, blogs, and tweets, and we extract the concepts that are being talked about. We’re watching the web in real time, what everyone is writing about and talking about, and we’re building structured data that can then be used by automated applications.”
Much more:
http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/04/wavii/
A new privacy-protecting Internet service and telephone provider still in the planning stages could become the ACLU’s dream and the FBI’s worst nightmare
Posted: 2012/04/11 in Education / Awareness, Network Security, New Business Models, Privacy / Data Protection, Tech EvolutionThe official beginning of the end for ‘mere conduits‘? At least you’ll be able to submit your data to Facebook via an encrypted tunnel
Nicholas Merrill is planning to revolutionize online privacy with a concept as simple as it is ingenious: a telecommunications provider designed from its inception to shield its customers from surveillance.
Merrill, 39, who previously ran a New York-based Internet provider, told CNET that he’s raising funds to launch a national “non-profit telecommunications provider dedicated to privacy, using ubiquitous encryption” that will sell mobile phone service, for as little as $20 a month, and Internet connectivity.
The ISP would not merely employ every technological means at its disposal, including encryption and limited logging, to protect its customers. It would also — and in practice this is likely more important — challenge government surveillance demands of dubious legality or constitutionality.
Merrill has formed an advisory board with members including Sascha Meinrath from the New America Foundation; former NSA technical director Brian Snow; and Jacob Appelbaum from the Tor Project.
More:
Dutch Green MP Mariko Peters Hit An Open Nerve By Demanding Transparency Regarding The Secret Dutch Bouterse Dossiers
Posted: 2012/04/11 in Education / Awareness, Public Policy, Stats / reportsThe Dutch Socialist Party is supporting parliament member Peters in her quest for the truth. Ever since the coup d’état many are wondering whether Bouterse received support from the Dutch government at the time. Another taboo is the notion that The Netherlands may have facilitated or even profited from drug trafficking to and from Suriname.
Regardless of the immediate criticism by political parties D66, PvdA and VVD, Mariko Peters does have a point: the Dutch government has ‘frozen’ the Bouterse dossiers for 60 years, denying anybody access to the files. It almost seems as if the December murders were more traumatic for the Dutch government than they were for the families of the victims.
Dutch language news article:
http://www.nu.nl/politiek/2784839/nederland-moet-openheid-suriname-dossier-geven.html
See also:
Dutch Public Prosecutor’s Office Aiming For 18 Month Prison Sentence In Relation To Carousel Fraud By John Deuss
Posted: 2012/04/11 in Education / Awareness, Enforcement, Litigation, Public Policy, Stats / reportsIn relation to the prison sentence, a 6 month probation term may apply and the time Deuss spent in custody may also be deducted
Prosecutors allege that Deuss’ First Curaçao International Bank was at the centre of a complicated tax swindle known as carousel fraud, which loses the UK billions of euros in tax every year.
They have told the trial that Mr Deuss was arrested in 2006 based on British intelligence reports showing that FCIB’s turnover grew from 180 million to 653 million euros in one month and that some of its clients were involved in carousel fraud.
Lawyers for Mr Deuss say FCIB’s activities took place in the Dutch Antilles, where he had a banking licence. But the prosecutors allege that almost all activities came from his castle in Berg en Dal, The Netherlands.
John Deuss and his First Curaçao International Bank were catering to clients such as the government of Oman, Boris Berezovsky and his daughter Ekaterina Berezovskaya, soccer club FC Dynamo Tblisi, 11 Dutch companies such as Adele Trading, Oliocin, B4 International and Comica as well as at least 200 British companies. Deuss was also chairman of the Bermuda Commercial Bank.
An international warrant had been issued for Mr Deuss’s arrest after his bank was closed in 2006 during an Anglo-Dutch investigation into carousel fraud.
British Customs officials had discovered that every individual arrested and charged with the fraud in the UK in the previous two years had an account at the First Curaçao International Bank.
After raiding its headquarters and freezing its assets, investigators discovered that about 2,500 British citizens, suspected of carousel fraud, held accounts there.
At the time FCIB, wholly owned by Mr. Deuss, was BCB’s biggest shareholder, with a 47 per cent stake. His sister, Tineke Deuss, was a director of FCIB.
Mr. Deuss, who had a home in Bermuda for 30 years and ran his TransWorld Oil company from the island, was once one of the world’s best-known oil dealers. His Dutch Wiki page mentions that his personal assets could be worth 1 Billion euros and that he is the Non-Executive Director and one of the biggest shareholders of Australian Worldwide Exploration Limited.
He came to prominence in the 1980s when he supplied the South African apartheid regime with oil, defying United Nations embargoes.
Since then he has also traded in Russian oil; in the 1990s, he became president of the Oman Oil Company.
English language news articles:
http://www.royalgazette.com/article/20120322/NEWS02/703229931/-1
http://bernews.com/2012/03/john-deuss-goes-on-trial-in-holland/
Dutch language news articles:
http://fd.nl/beleggen/147136-1203/john-deuss-bediende-een-bijzondere-kring-miljonairs-en-bedrijven
http://webwereld.nl/nieuws/110133/bank-opgerold-vanwege-btw-fraude-met-it-onderdelen.html
http://www.gelderlander.nl/voorpagina/10812470/Forse-straffen-geeist-tegen-Deuss.ece
Pirate Parties On Course for Historic Election Wins
Posted: 2012/04/11 in Education / Awareness, Public PolicyMicrosoft has built a little Facebook tool for you to enjoy
Posted: 2012/04/11 in Education / Awareness, Privacy / Data Protection, Stats / reportsJust login with your Facebook account, and Microsoft will put together a beautiful timeline of your Facebook activity during the last year
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/facebook/microsoft-facebook-a-year-in-the-like/11626
E-commerce driving up prepaid card use, report says
Posted: 2012/04/11 in Education / Awareness, New Business Models, Stats / reportsFor “underbanked” customers, or those who don’t have access to payment (credit or debit) cards or checking accounts, prepaid cards fill a void
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/e-commerce-driving-up-prepaid-card-use-report-says/73346
It Takes One Effort On Facebook To “DoS” A Controversial Online Complaint Center
Posted: 2012/04/11 in Education / Awareness, Public PolicyBelgian far-right political party Vlaams Belang thought it would be nice to open up an online complaint center similar to the one launched by the Dutch Freedom Party and aimed at collecting complaints about illegal immigrants. Not everyone agreed with the need for such a center and some took to Facebook to call on people to massively submit bogus information to the complaint center. As a result, the website went down…
Dutch language news article:
http://www.nu.nl/tech/2784283/meldpunt-vlaams-belang-plat-onzinmeldingen.html
DHS wants to extract evidence from foreign game consoles
Posted: 2012/04/11 in Education / Awareness, Enforcement, Public Policy, Tech EvolutionEmployees may not be prosecuted under a federal anti-hacking statute for simply violating their employer’s computer use policy, a federal appeals court ruled
Posted: 2012/04/11 in Cybercrime, Education / Awareness, Enforcement, Jurisprudence, Public Policy, Stats / reportsDealing a blow to the Obama administration’s Justice Department, which is trying to use the same theory to prosecute alleged Wikileaks leaker Bradley Manning.
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/04/computer-fraud-and-abuse-act/
Facebook (The Hacker Company) Supporting CISPA? 28 companies sign up for new ‘SOPA,’ CISPA
Posted: 2012/04/11 in Cybercrime, Education / Awareness, Enforcement, Legislation, Public Policy, Stats / reportsThe 28 companies are:
AT&T
Boeing
BSA
Business Roundtable
CSC
COMPTEL
CTIA - The Wireless Association
Cyber, Space & Intelligence Association
Edison Electric
EMC
Exelon
The Financial Services Roundtable
IBM
Independent Telephone & Telecommunications Alliance
Information Technology Industry Council
Intel
Internet Security Alliance
Lockheed Martin
Microsoft
National Cable & Telecommunications Association
NDIA
Oracle
Symantec
TechAmerica
US Chamber of Commerce
US Telecom – The Broadband Association
Verizon
More:
http://www.afterdawn.com/news/article.cfm/2012/04/10/28_companies_sign_up_for_new_sopa_cispa
Previously:
Facebook says it is a company made up of hackers. In fact, the social networking giant now has a ‘The Hacker Company’ sign
http://vrritti.com/2012/04/10/facebook-says-it-is-a-company-made-up-of-hackers-in-fact-the-social-networking-giant-now-has-a-the-hacker-company-sign/
