Leaked letter from Little, Brown UK CEO asks Tor authors to protect IP abroad
Archive for 2012/08/14
Hachette UK tries to pressure Tor Books into reintroducing e-book DRM
Posted: 2012/08/14 in Education / Awareness, Privacy / Data Protection, Stats / reportsThe Invisible Bicycle Helmet
Posted: 2012/08/14 in Education / Awareness, New Business Models, Stats / reports, Tech Evolution“If people say it’s impossible we have to prove them wrong.”
Design students Anna and Terese took on a giant challenge as an exam project. Something no one had done before. If they could swing it, it would for sure be revolutionary. The bicycle is a tool to change the world. If we use bikes AND travel safe: Life will be better for all.
Ecuador’s president Rafael Correa has agreed to give the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange asylum
Posted: 2012/08/14 in Education / Awareness, Public Policy, Stats / reportsThe WikiLeaks founder has been holed up at Ecuador’s London embassy since 19 June, when he officially requested political asylum.
“Ecuador will grant asylum to Julian Assange,” said an official in the Ecuadorean capital Quito, who is familiar with the government discussions.
On Monday, Correa told state-run ECTV that he would decide this week whether to grant asylum to Assange. Correa said a large amount of material about international law had to be examined to make a responsible informed decision.
Ecuador’s foreign minister Ricardo Patiño indicated that the president would reveal his answer once the Olympic Games were over. But it remains unclear if giving Assange asylum will allow him to leave Britain and fly to Ecuador, or amounts to little more than a symbolic gesture. At the moment he faces the prospect of arrest as soon as he leaves the embassy for breaching his bail conditions.
“For Mr Assange to leave England, he should have a safe pass from the British [government]. Will that be possible? That’s an issue we have to take into account,” Patino told Reuters on Tuesday.
More:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/aug/14/julian-assange-asylum-ecuador-wikileaks
Over two years Surfthechannel.com turned over £1million with a profit of £250,000
Posted: 2012/08/14 in Copyright, Education / Awareness, Enforcement, Illegal File Sharing, Jurisprudence, Litigation, Public Policy, Stats / reportsAnton Vickerman‘s surfthechannel.com website attracted 400,000 visitors a day at its peak and was close to the top 500 most popular websites on the World Wide Web.
But it cost the film industry tens of millions of pounds in lost revenue, and ultimately huge losses to the Inland Revenue, the prosecution alleged.
Over two years the site, run by the former DJ and BT employee’s firm Scopelight, turned over £1million with a profit of £250,000, Newcastle Crown Court heard.
In July 2008 surfthechannel.com was listed 514 in an index of most popular websites, Mr Alibhai said, which at the time made it more popular than social network Facebook.
He added that the losses the site caused to the film industry were impossible to calculate.
It was revealed that surfthechannel.com allowed access to more than 5,600 films and TV shows. Experts have estimated the damages to be between £52million and £198million, depending on how lost sales are estimated.
‘Once one reaches figures of tens of millions of pounds of loss it becomes irrelevant what the figure is,’ Mr Alibhai said. ‘The scale of loss was immense and it does run to tens of millions of pounds.
‘Due to the number of films available and the frequency they were downloaded the scale of loss is considerable.
‘And the losses should not just be seen as a loss to moguls in Hollywood but to hundreds of people in the industry.’
Judge Evans said the losses would have also stretched beyond the film and music industry.
He said: ‘The loss is considerable but also there is here the loss of tax revenue because if the industry was generating this kind of revenue then it would have been shared with a net benefit to the taxpayer.’
The owner of Surfthechannel.com has been sentenced to four years in jail – the site had provided links to illegally copied TV shows and films
Posted: 2012/08/14 in Copyright, Education / Awareness, Enforcement, Illegal File Sharing, Jurisprudence, Litigation, Online advertising, Organized Crime, Public Policy, Stats / reportsAnton Vickerman, from Gateshead, had designed the service’s pages, hiring others to source material and carry out other back-end functions.
The 38-year-old was found guilty of conspiracy to defraud in June for “facilitating” copyright infringement.
Surfthechannel.com had acted as an index of professionally made online videos – both legal and illegal – encouraging its users to send in new links and check that they worked.
However, it did not host the video files itself, but instead pointed visitors to other sites including Megavideo and China’s Tudou.
The Federation Against Copyright Theft (Fact) said that at its height in 2009 the site attracted more than 400,000 visitors a day, generating more than £35,000 in advertising revenue a month.
The maximum sentence that could have been given at Newcastle Crown Court would have been 10 years.
Mr Vickerman ran the site through a limited company, called Scopelight, which sent earnings to a bank account in Latvia.
Hollywood Director Bruce Leddy to Kim Dotcom: Hey, if you’re not available for a while, would you mind if I borrowed one of your super-luxury cars? (MegaUpload)
Posted: 2012/08/14 in Copyright, Education / Awareness, Enforcement, Illegal File Sharing, Litigation, New Business Models, Stats / reportsI mean, when you think about it, they kind of belong to all of us writers, producers, directors, cast and crew who work hard every day to make movies and TV shows but are clearly not as clever as you are about landing the big money by posting other people’s products online. I’ve been working here for 20 years, but I still don’t have even one Lamborghini! (I know, embarrassing, right?) It would really mean a lot to me and my family if I could drive around town in one of those bad boys.
Your story is so inspiring. To earn hundreds of millions of dollars without actually ever making anything is just so cutting-edge and futuristic! Hollywood is so “dark ages.” In the future, everyone should be like Megaupload: free to profit from what anyone makes, writes, creates, designs or owns in whatever way they can. I say, if Hollywood is going to spend all this time and effort making these movies and TV shows, employing hundreds of thousands of hardworking Americans and union members and then letting a guy like you become a multimillionaire off its work, it’s our own damn fault! Holy cow, are we dumb! LOL.
More:
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/kim-dotcom-megaupload-cougar-town-bruce-leddy-353780
Activists, bloggers, and politicians alike in Malaysia have blacked out their pages
Posted: 2012/08/14 in Blocking, Education / Awareness, Public Policy, Stats / reportsPart of a one-day protest against changes to a law that they say would restrict online freedom of speech
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57492596-38/malaysian-law-stirs-online-blackout-protest/
Kaspersky researchers have released the first 32 bytes of encrypted data and hashes from four Gauss variants in the hopes that a “world-class cryptographer” will be able to decrypt them
Posted: 2012/08/14 in Cybercrime, Education / Awareness, Enforcement, Network Security, Privacy / Data Protection, Public Policy, Stats / reportsMPA Wins Court Case: Virgin Media To Block File-Sharing Site NewzBin2. Every ISP Wants Its Own Court Order. Makes Them Feel Special
Posted: 2012/08/14 in Blocking, Copyright, Education / Awareness, Enforcement, Filtering, Illegal File Sharing, Litigation, Stats / reportsAfter holding out on a Hollywood request to block a file-sharing site, Virgin Media has finally been forced to comply. The UK ISP said it would only block the Newzbin2 Usenet indexing site if ordered to do so by a court. Now, more than a year after the High Court told ISP BT to initiate a blockade against the movie industry target, Virgin Media has been ordered to do the same.
More:
http://torrentfreak.com/virgin-media-blocks-file-sharing-site-after-receiving-court-order-120814/
Network sniffing algorithm could have fingered 9/11 suspects. Can spot who’s talking about you on Facebook, too
Posted: 2012/08/14 in Education / Awareness, New Business Models, Privacy / Data Protection, Stats / reports, Tech EvolutionA group of researchers has come up with a new algorithm that they say can be used to snoop information networks to trace rumor leaks, locate the source of disease epidemics, and even potentially stop terror attacks.
More:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/08/13/swiss_network_trace_algorithm/
Facebook Must Obtain Consumers’ Consent Before Sharing Their Information Beyond Established Privacy Settings
Posted: 2012/08/14 in Education / Awareness, Enforcement, New Business Models, Privacy / Data Protection, Public Policy, Stats / reportsFollowing a public comment period, the FTC has accepted as final a settlement with Facebookresolving charges that Facebook deceived consumers by telling them they could keep their information on Facebook private, and then repeatedly allowing it to be shared and made public.
The settlement requires Facebook to take several steps to make sure it lives up to its promises in the future, including by giving consumers clear and prominent notice and obtaining their express consent before sharing their information beyond their privacy settings, by maintaining a comprehensive privacy program to protect consumers’ information, and by obtaining biennial privacy audits from an independent third party.
The Commission vote to approve the final order and letters to members of the public whocommented on it was 3-1-1 with Commissioner J. Thomas Rosch dissenting and Commissioner Maureen K. Ohlhausen not participating. The Commission issued a statement authored by Chairman Jon D. Leibowitz and Commissioners Edith Ramirez and Julie Brill. TheCommission statement affirmed that, based on the extensive investigation of the staff, there is a strong reason to believe that the settlement is in the public interest, and that the Order’s provisions make clear that Facebook will be liable for a broad range of deceptive conduct.
