Archive for 2012/08/11

Pirates Always Forget That Their ‘Colleagues’ Truly Are Pirates. TVShack Staff in U.S. Worked With Feds To Nail Richard O’Dwyer

Posted: 2012/08/11 in Copyright, Education / Awareness, Enforcement, Illegal File Sharing, Litigation, Public Policy, Stats / reports

Two individuals who worked with former TVShack admin Richard O’Dwyer on his now-defunct streaming links site helped ICE Homeland Security Investigations to identify him. The dealings of the unnamed individuals, one who did technical work on the site and the other who acted as a moderator, are listed in U.S. court documents obtained by TorrentFreak.

Perhaps unsurprisingly considering the developments in the SurfTheChannel case, two people O’Dwyer appears to have trusted were working with ICE Homeland Security Investigations in the United States prior to the British student’s arrest.

Much more:
http://torrentfreak.com/tvshack-staff-in-u-s-worked-with-feds-to-nail-richard-odwyer-120811/

The earliest known use of “computer hacker” described a criminal act

Posted: 2012/08/11 in Cybercrime, Education / Awareness, Network Security, Privacy / Data Protection, Stats / reports

This isn’t new information (other references from 2008 here and here), but I thought I’d point it out again since people continue to claim that “hacker doesn’t mean criminal — use cracker instead”. There is no justification for that claim. Yes, “computer hacker” has always had the non-pejorative meaning “enthusiastic nerd”, but it’s also always been used to connote something nefarious; it’s never been true that the prejorative sense is “wrong”.

More:
http://erratasec.blogspot.nl/2012/08/no-hacker-really-does-mean-hacker.html

Executives from the likes of Netflix and StubHub discuss how using big data in the sports and entertainment industries can add value to their businesses

Posted: 2012/08/11 in Education / Awareness, New Business Models, Stats / reports, Tech Evolution

http://www.zdnet.com/panel-netflix-stubhub-ibm-execs-discuss-value-of-big-data-7000002470/

Bradley Manning treatment in ‘flagrant violation’ of military code – lawyer (WikiLeaks)

Posted: 2012/08/11 in Education / Awareness, Enforcement, Public Policy, Stats / reports

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/aug/10/bradley-manning-military-code-lawyer

Boy Whose Hot Dog Cart Was Shut Down by the City of Holland Now Homeless

Posted: 2012/08/11 in Education / Awareness, Enforcement, Public Policy, Stats / reports

http://www.infowars.com/boy-whose-hot-dog-cart-was-shut-down-by-the-city-of-holland-now-homeless/

Stratfor emails reveal secret, widespread TrapWire surveillance system

Posted: 2012/08/11 in Education / Awareness, Enforcement, New Business Models, Privacy / Data Protection, Public Policy, Stats / reports, Tech Evolution

http://www.infowars.com/stratfor-emails-reveal-secret-widespread-trapwire-surveillance-system/

New York’s top Department of Homeland Security cop is suing Department of Homeland Security Chief Janet Napolitano

Posted: 2012/08/11 in Education / Awareness, Litigation, Public Policy, Stats / reports

http://www.infowars.com/department-of-homeland-security-goes-wild-dhs-chief-favored-lesbo-pal/

DoJ a bullet: Goldman Sachs escapes lawsuit in fraud inquiry

Posted: 2012/08/11 in Education / Awareness, Enforcement, New Business Models, Public Policy, Stats / reports

http://www.infowars.com/doj-a-bullet-goldman-sachs-escapes-lawsuit-in-fraud-inquiry/

JPMorgan Chase & Co won a federal judge’s preliminary approval of a $100 million class-action settlement

Posted: 2012/08/11 in Education / Awareness, Enforcement, New Business Models, Public Policy, Stats / reports

http://www.infowars.com/judge-oks-jpmorgan-100-million-credit-card-settlement/

This See-Through Microchip Can Mimic an Actual Human Organ

Posted: 2012/08/11 in Education / Awareness, Stats / reports, Tech Evolution

http://gizmodo.com/5933718/this-see+through-microchip-can-mimic-an-actual-human-organ

Google’s Giving YouTube a Pass With Its New Piracy Provisions

Posted: 2012/08/11 in Copyright, Education / Awareness, Enforcement, Illegal File Sharing, New Business Models, Stats / reports, Tech Evolution

Google is implementing a new policy that will smack down search results from sites that get a lot of DMCA requests. That must affect Google’s own YouTube, which must get slammed with them all the time, right? Not exactly.

Search Engine Land provides an in-depth explanation of exactly what is going on, but it comes down to one major detail: YouTube video takedowns aren’t necessarily DMCA takedowns. In fact, that usually aren’t. You see, YouTube has this “nice” feature called Content ID which allows rightsholders to automatically police YouTube content, complain about possible infringement, and have videos taken down. None of this, however, involves the DMCA. This is just handy YouTube functionality.

More:
http://gizmodo.com/5933915/googles-giving-youtube-a-pass-with-its-new-piracy-provisions

The FBI Thought Kim Dotcom Had a ‘Doomsday’ Device That Could Wipe Away All Evidence of Piracy

Posted: 2012/08/11 in Copyright, Education / Awareness, Enforcement, Illegal File Sharing, Privacy / Data Protection, Public Policy, Stats / reports, Tech Evolution

http://gizmodo.com/5933870/the-fbi-thought-kim-dotcom-had-a-doomsday-device-that-could-wipe-away-all-evidence-of-piracy

Porn copyright troll sues AT&T and Comcast, says they side with pirates

Posted: 2012/08/11 in Education / Awareness, Litigation, Stats / reports

Proactive and preventative litigation

Now, with the ISPs as named defendants, the ISPs will be strongly motivated to win the case and ensure that no one tries this tactic again

More:
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/08/porn-copyright-troll-sues-att-and-comcast-says-they-side-with-pirates/

Google’s Support Of The Fight Against Online Piracy Is Against The EFF’s Religion

Posted: 2012/08/11 in Copyright, Education / Awareness, Enforcement, Filtering, Google, Illegal File Sharing, New Business Models, Stats / reports, Tech Evolution

Because online piracy is free speech…and sending e-mails (anti-spam), malware (anti-virus/anti-spyware/anti-malware), creating and controlling botnets (blocking IP addresses, cleaning end-user’s PCs) and conducting phishing activities (anti-phishing) is not?

Because Google’s fight against online piracy may create false positives…and anti-spam measures, anti-virus/anti-spyware/anti-malware measures, blocking a botnet’s IP addresses & cleaning or disconnecting infected end-user’s PCs and the implementation of anti-phishing measures do not?

If takedown requests are nothing more than accusations of copyright infringement, and the EFF considers it a problem that no court or other umpire confirms that the accusations are valid, then how about automated spam/phishing/malware removal tools? Or automated walled gardens for that matter?

EFF’s response to anti-piracy measures announced by Google:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/08/googles-opaque-new-policy-lets-rightsholders-dictate-search-results

Previously:

Historic Moment. Google To Support Fight Against Online Piracy And Is Even Willing To Change Its Search Algorithm
http://vrritti.com/2012/08/11/historic-moment-google-to-support-fight-against-online-piracy-and-is-even-willing-to-change-its-search-algorithm/

 

Historic Moment. Google To Support Fight Against Online Piracy And Is Even Willing To Change Its Search Algorithm

Posted: 2012/08/11 in Copyright, Education / Awareness, Enforcement, Filtering, Google, Illegal File Sharing, New Business Models, Stats / reports, Tech Evolution

The measure proposed below should also affect a pirate site’s advertising revenue or ‘online brand value’

An update to our search algorithms

8/10/12 | 10:30:00 AM

We aim to provide a great experience for our users and have developed over 200 signals to ensure our search algorithms deliver the best possible results. Starting next week, we will begin taking into account a new signal in our rankings: the number of valid copyright removal notices we receive for any given site. Sites with high numbers of removal notices may appear lower in our results. This ranking change should help users find legitimate, quality sources of content more easily—whether it’s a song previewed on NPR’s music website, a TV show on Hulu or new music streamed from Spotify.

Since we re-booted our copyright removals over two years ago, we’ve been given much more data by copyright owners about infringing content online. In fact, we’re now receiving and processing more copyright removal notices every day than we did in all of 2009—more than 4.3 million URLs in the last 30 days alone. We will now be using this data as a signal in our search rankings.

Only copyright holders know if something is authorized, and only courts can decide if a copyright has been infringed; Google cannot determine whether a particular webpage does or does not violate copyright law. So while this new signal will influence the ranking of some search results, we won’t be removing any pages from search results unless we receive a valid copyright removal notice from the rights owner. And we’ll continue to provide “counter-notice” tools so that those who believe their content has been wrongly removed can get it reinstated. We’ll also continue to betransparent about copyright removals.

Posted by Amit Singhal, SVP, Engineering

http://insidesearch.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/an-update-to-our-search-algorithms.html