In 2010 damages amounted to 10 Million EUR.
Dutch language news article:
http://www.telegraaf.nl/digitaal/12111537/__Fraude_internetbankieren_verdrievoudigd__.html
Archive for 2012/05/11
Online Banking Fraud In The Netherlands Caused 35 Million EUR In Damages In 2011
Posted: 2012/05/11 in Cybercrime, Education / Awareness, Stats / reportsOne Of The Most Wanted Dutch Cyber Criminals Arrested In Venezuela
Posted: 2012/05/11 in Cybercrime, Education / Awareness, Enforcement, Public Policy, Stats / reportsThis is Robert Jan van der Zwaan (35) and he would have countless internet users pay for goods he would never deliver.
The criminal has been exposed by Dutch news media previously, but he managed to disappear before authorities could act. A global manhunt has now resulted in his arrest on the island Isla Margarita, where he went into hiding. He had selected Venezuela because the country has no extradition treaty with The Netherlands. That does not however, prevent enforcement authorities from taking action.
Van der Zwaan appears to have continued his criminal behavior, using the island as his lair.
Dutch language news article:
http://www.telegraaf.nl/binnenland/12107860/__Cybercrimineel_gepakt__.html
ISP kills off country-ban dodge after just 48 hours
Posted: 2012/05/11 in Blocking, Education / Awareness, Filtering, New Business Models, Stats / reportsChief FYX’er Andrew Schick has posted a statement that his company “has a made a decision to withdraw its popular ‘global mode’ service from the market for the time being”.
The service shuts down at 11.59pm on Friday night, New Zealand time.
FYX “sincerely apologises to our customers and the New Zealand internet community for putting a halt to ‘global mode’,” Schick writes, adding that while Kiwi lawyers felt the service was legal it seems a good idea to pull the product for now.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/05/11/fyx_geo_blocking/
Previously:
New Zealand ISP, FYX, promises to try and avoid geo-blocking regimes that restrict access to certain content
http://vrritti.com/2012/05/10/new-zealand-isp-fyx-promises-to-try-and-avoid-geo-blocking-regimes-that-restrict-access-to-certain-content/
British cyber-cops have arrested a third suspected member of the infamous TeaMp0isoN hacker crew
Posted: 2012/05/11 in Cybercrime, Education / Awareness, Enforcement, Network Security, Privacy / Data Protection, Public Policy, Stats / reportsThe unnamed 17-year-old was cuffed in Newcastle on suspicion of breaking the Computer Misuse Act. Detectives seized computer equipment for forensic analysis, and quizzed the youngster on Wednesday at a nearby cop shop. Met Police said enquiries are ongoing and no charges have been brought.
The suspect, who is believed to use the online nickname ‘MLT’, is allegedly a member of and spokesperson for TeaMp0isoN (‘TeamPoison’) – a group which has claimed responsibility for more than 1,400 offences including denial of service and network intrusions where personal and private information has been illegally extracted from victims in the UK and around the world.
More:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/05/11/third_teamp0ison_hack_suspect_arrest/
The Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde has asked the Swedish government for clemency citing health and business concerns
Posted: 2012/05/11 in Copyright, Education / Awareness, Enforcement, Illegal File Sharing, Jurisprudence, Public Policy, Stats / reportsPeter Sunde was scheduled to begin his 8 month jail sentence in the Västervik Norra facility Wednesday, but at least for now that won’t be going ahead. Sunde has filed a plea with the Swedish government requesting clemency, citing health concerns and fears for his fledgling micro-payment business, Flattr.
Blast From The Past:
Mr Sunde has managed to convince investors that the idea is sound, both ideologically and financially. Flattr has angel backing from Stefan Glaenzer, Last.fm’s first investor and chairman, and Eileen Burbidge, formerly of Skype. The pair run White Bear Yard, a hub for tech-startups in central London.
“When we invested, it was in Linus and Peter,” says Ms Burbidge, who says she’s unconcerned by Mr Sunde’s conviction in the Swedish courts in the Pirate Bay case (he says the appeal process will take so long he is unlikely ever to have to serve his jail sentence).
“These guys were in the team that was involved in carrying 48 per cent of the world’s internet traffic,” says Ms Burbidge. “They know how to scale.”
http://vrritti.com/2010/07/06/pirate-bay-founder-aims-to-make-a-flattr-world/
Sunde adds that if the authorities can’t see their way to a full pardon, a delay before he has to serve his sentence would be the next best thing. The specific nature of his health concerns have not been detailed publicly.
In addition to prison sentences there is also the outstanding issues of damages. Recently it was revealed that the compensation amount the Pirate Bay founders are required to hand over to the movie and recording company plaintiffs has been growing steadily. Due to interest being added since May 2006, as of February 2012 the amount owed had jumped from roughly $6.9 million dollars to nearly $11 million.
http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-bay-founder-peter-sunde-requests-pardon-120511/
See also:
WikiLeaks continues to fund itself via tech startup Flattr
WikiLeaks, which publishes anonymous leaks of secret material (most recently 250,000 previously secret US embassy cables) still has a trick up its sleeve. In the last few days its sources of funding have been gradually cut off. MasterCard, PayPal and now Visa have all suspended payments to the organsation and founder Julian Assange has been remanded in custody in London without bail (so far).
However there remains one source of funding so far untouched, and that is a small startup, Flattr, created by Peter Sunde, co-founder of torrent site Pirate Bay, who has been reminding Twitter users today via his personal Twitter account that it’s still possible to “help” Wikileaks.
http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/08/wikileaks-continues-to-fund-itself-via-tech-startup-flattr/
A peek at ‘Cisco TV’ and the Silicon Valley TV battle lines…
Posted: 2012/05/11 in Education / Awareness, New Business Models, Stats / reports, Tech EvolutionClearly, there’s a deep split forming in Silicon Valley between the tech companies that want the TV industry disrupted and those that want to keep them in business. Will it become a battle that’s won by the best technologies? …or best business models?
Probably the most profitable technologies or business models
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/foremski/a-peek-at-cisco-tv-and-the-silicon-valley-tv-battle-lines/2249
Governments around the world continue to ignore the extremely perilous situation in Japan
Posted: 2012/05/11 in Education / Awareness, Public Policy, Stats / reportsCesium in Fukushima Prefecture 122 Times Higher than in Belarus Evacuation Zone
“Virtually nothing is happening. All the governments involved (Japan and USA, primarily) are playing a ridiculously stupid game of pretending there is no problem. The Japanese government, for its part, has decided that instead of admitted to a radiation problem, it’s easier to just tell Japanese citizens they have a mental disorder if they’re concerned about radiation,” writes Mike Adams for Natural News.
“The U.S. government plays a similar mind game, raising the allowable levels of radiation exposure by thousands of times and then declaring Fukushima fallout to be suddenly safe,” Adams continues. “Governments, in other words, are in denial mode even while Fukushima smolders and hurls us all toward irreversible global disaster.”
Bankruptcy will not protect MP3tunes.com or founder Michael Robertson from answering for the copyright violations they allegedly committed
Posted: 2012/05/11 in Copyright, Education / Awareness, Enforcement, Litigation, Stats / reportsCNET broke the news today that MP3tunes.com, a music locker service that let users store songs on the company’s servers and then access them from Web-connected devices, filed for bankruptcy protection.
The service was noteworthy for being one of the first unlicensed music locker services and helping to pave the way for similar services offered by Google and Amazon. But MP3tunes.com was probably best known for the copyright fight it waged with EMI.
The Year Of The Ecosystems: My own private Internet: .secure TLD floated as bad-guy-free zone
Posted: 2012/05/11 in Education / Awareness, Network Security, New Business Models, Privacy / Data Protection, Stats / reportsA venture with $9 million in backing wants to establish a locked-down domain
Anonymity and the Internet’s free-wheeling ways have been great for free speech and innovation, but they also open the door to impostors and website operators with poor security hygiene. With plans by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers to vastly expand the availability of top-level domains, security advocates have an opportunity to build the type of global network they’ve long dreamed of.
“This is our opportunity to make our mark and do something to improve the security of the Internet permanently while it’s still a bit malleable,” Stamos told Ars. “We have a chance to create a neighborhood on the Internet where security is required, and users know that. We have the ability since we’re starting from scratch to have a floor.”
Israel requires advertisers to disclose Photoshopping of models
Posted: 2012/05/11 in Education / Awareness, Legislation, Public Policy, Stats / reportsThe legislation requires all models to maintain a certain BMI, and all designers to disclose when they’ve photoshopped their models. Today, The Atlantic posted a thorough look into the making of the laws, and whether governments can intervene in a creative process that doubles as the root of disease for many teenagers and adults alike.
Facebook deliberately bans Grooveshark from its services
Posted: 2012/05/11 in Blocking, Copyright, Education / Awareness, Enforcement, Stats / reportsAn anonymous copyright infringement complaint against Grooveshark is the cause
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/05/facebook-deliberately-bans-grooveshark-from-its-services/
Scholar: regulating Google results would violate First Amendment. Did he tell Google?
Posted: 2012/05/11 in Blocking, Education / Awareness, Filtering, Google, Stats / reportsYes, because Google commissioned the paper, presumably to help ward off calls for government regulation of its search results. And as such, Google itself can do with the results whatever it wants. If others want to do something to the results, they’re violating the First Amendment
The new Google-commissioned paper, written by well-known UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh and attorney Donald Falk, argues that such regulations would be preempted by the First Amendment. Google’s search engine, they write, “uses sophisticated computerized algorithms, but those algorithms themselves inherently incorporate the search engine company engineers’ judgments about what material users are likely to find responsive to these queries.”
The authors argue that this selection process is no different, constitutionally speaking, from a newspaper editor selecting wire stories to run, a guidebook deciding which attractions to feature, or a parade organizer choosing which floats to include. The courts have ruled that all of these editorial processes are fully protected by the First Amendment.
Moreover, the paper argues, the courts have held that First Amendment rights generally trump antitrust law—something of increasing concern to a dominant company like Google. “Antitrust law cannot be used to require a speaker to include certain material in its speech product,” Volokh and Falk write. They point to a 1945 case in which the courts found the Associated Press had violated antitrust laws, but stressed that its ruling did not “compel AP or its members to permit publication of anything which their ‘reason’ tells them should not be published.” Newspaper editors have the right to decide which stories should be included in their newspapers and which ones make the front page.
This suggests that Google has similarly wide discretion to decide which links and other content will appear, and in which order, in response to any given search query.
Isn’t a newspaper also publishing original stories, opinions and reviews when compared to a “crawl all, copy all” search engine?
