I find it hard to understand why honest people think illegally downloading movies is acceptable. With the introduction of the National Broadband Network, high-speed broadband will bring a dramatic increase in the illegal downloading of movies, TV shows and sporting events; it will become endemic. I recently read a shocking article in which a couple in Brunswick in Victoria already connected to the NBN were delighted they could now download movies illegally in 15 minutes.
Archive for 2012/09/21
Piracy will affect Australian artists, musicians, performing artists, publishers and authors, craftspeople, designers, fashion labels, researchers and R&D developers, software designers, video-game developers and sportspeople. In other words, some of our best innovators
Posted: 2012/09/21 in Copyright, Education / Awareness, Illegal File Sharing, Stats / reports, Tech EvolutionABC chief executive Mark Scott says illegal downloads are responsible for some of Channel Ten’s disappointing ratings this year
Posted: 2012/09/21 in Copyright, Education / Awareness, Illegal File Sharing, Stats / reportsMr Scott’s comments echo those of News Limited chief executive Kim Williams, who recently called for new online copyright laws to protect content owners from online piracy. Mr Williams is the former chief executive of Foxtel, in which News Limited has a 25 per cent stake.
Mr Scott agreed that rights holders need to be protected. The ABC recently negotiated a deal with the BBC to show the new series of Dr Who as soon as it finished screening for the first time in the UK — at 5.10am on Sunday mornings in Australia.
Mr Scott said 80,000 people streamed the show from iView on the first Sunday. “But if we hadn’t put it up on iView, the ratings would have been down anyway – because it is reasonable to assume that many of those 180,000 would have found another way to watch the program before it was shown on ABC Television.”
What the New Internet Lobby Looks Like: An Interview with Internet Association’s Michael Beckerman
Posted: 2012/09/21 in Education / Awareness, Public Policy, Stats / reportsA measure of our success is going to be to educate regulators and legislators and even the media on how the Internet works, and how the Internet economy impacts the broader U.S. and global economy, and the brick and mortar businesses, and how people are finding new and creative ways to use the Internet, just so the next SOPA never comes up. If SOPA 2.0 arises, we’ll be ready, and we’ll be ready to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with users to win that battle again, but I think a real measure of our success is to educate folks enough, so that we never have to have that battle, so that policymakers are mindful enough that they realize the great economic and social value that comes from the Internet.
Much more:
http://techpresident.com/news/22877/mashup-community-gets-voice
From the more geeky crowd to the people who love a good story, they’re all interested in Dotcom’s story. We also don’t want to let Americans tell us Kiwis what to do (MegaUpload)
Posted: 2012/09/21 in Copyright, Education / Awareness, Enforcement, Illegal File Sharing, Litigation, Public Policy, Stats / reportsNZ falls for showmanship and loveable character of cuddly Dotcom
Internet millionaire Kim Dotcom has praised New Zealand’s justice system (MegaUpload)
Posted: 2012/09/21 in Copyright, Education / Awareness, Enforcement, Illegal File Sharing, Litigation, Stats / reports“I think the judicial system in New Zealand has shown that it is independent and fair and I think it was an interesting hearing today and now we have to see what the judges decide”
More:
http://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/auckland/news/regwn/917865290-judges-reserve-dotcom-decision
Internet mogul and Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom has visited Parliament
Posted: 2012/09/21 in Copyright, Education / Awareness, Enforcement, Illegal File Sharing, Litigation, New Business Models, Public Policy, Stats / reportsUpon arrival, he was rushed upstairs by security to the Debating Chamber’s public gallery and told not to stop for the crowd of media.
Prime Minister John Key was asked about Mr Dotcom’s presence at Parliament but would not comment because Mr Dotcom’s piracy case is before the courts.
Internet mogul and Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom says it has nothing to do with John Banks’ donations saga.
Mr Banks received two $25,000 donations from Mr Dotcom in 2010 which were declared as anonymous.
An investigation by police concluded that although laws were broken, there was not enough evidence for charges to be laid against Mr Banks.
“He certainly knew about the donations,” Mr Dotcom says. “He confirmed it to me in a phone call so he knew.”
He questions Mr Key’s ethical standards and says his Government is under threat by the saga
“It’s a very fragile majority. The balance of power is threatened by this whole John Banks affair.
“If you ask around, there are not many people who think John Banks did the right thing. He should have been upfront and tell people the truth and he didn’t do that,” he says.
Mr Dotcom finished by saying the whole topic needed to be put to bed.
Yesterday, Mr Banks refused to answer questions about the affidavits in the police file.
He says the closed police investigation speaks for itself.
“A team of the very best police officers this country could assemble went through this intensively and extensively.
“They weighed every word of every witness, every sentence of every witness, every paragraph of every witness and they concluded no charges. We’ve moved on.”
More:
http://www.3news.co.nz/Kim-Dotcom-visits-Parliament/tabid/1607/articleID/269863/Default.aspx
Internet pioneer William Schrader joins LeaseWeb USA as CEO
Posted: 2012/09/21 in Education / Awareness, New Business Models, Stats / reportsLeaseWeb USA, a leading global hosting provider, has appointed William Schrader as Chief Executive Officer effective immediately. An internet pioneer and co-founder of the world’s first commercial Internet Service Provider, Schrader will be chartered with building on the company’s brisk growth to further expand the customer base and oversee the roll out of new products and services in the massive US market.
In 1989, Schrader co-founded and grew PSINet into a $16 billion company at its peak, serving 60% of the Fortune 500 in 30 countries. LeaseWeb entered the North American market in 2011, with the opening of an office and datacenter near Washington, DC in Northern Virginia. Since then the company has experienced rapid take-up of its highly reliable hosting solutions, gaining customers across several industries including online gaming, streaming video and advertising networks.
Schrader said, “We are at a tipping point in hosting and networking, as a plethora of companies strive to adapt their practices and incorporate cloud-based elements as an integral part of their core business. With a highly knowledgeable and dedicated team, LeaseWeb USA is the first provider in the market to offer quality global hosting solutions at an extremely competitive price point.”
“By joining LeaseWeb I have returned to the most exciting and rapidly evolving part of the IT landscape: delivering hosting services and solutions to one of the fastest growing markets on the globe,” continues Schrader. “I have had the good luck to work with some of the most brilliant people in the technology industry and LeaseWeb USA continues that run. The executive team is supremely dedicated and capable of thinking outside of the box allowing me to feel at home.”
Con Zwinkels, LeaseWeb’s Founder, commented, “We are committed to investing in and accelerating the considerable success that LeaseWeb USA has had to date, and we are delighted to have Bill Schrader, with his depth of experience and market understanding, join us and spearhead the next phase of LeaseWeb’s development.”
In addition to his role at PSINet, Schrader has previously held CEO positions at Neutral Net, a fiber-to-the-home-company and provider of Smart Grid services; and at Synchris, a project collaboration and content management software tool. Schrader joins LeaseWeb USA, coming from an advisory role at AIS Network, the managed, cloud and applications hosting provider.
The world of tomorrow is going to be a dark and sinister place, according to a group of Air Force futurists. One reason why it’ll be so scary: Facebook
Posted: 2012/09/21 in Education / Awareness, Future Developments?, Stats / reports, Tech EvolutionIn an foreboding web video entitled “Welcome to 2035…the Age of Surprise,” produced by the U.S. Air Force’s Center for Strategy and Technology, the pace of human advancement races forward ever faster until the distinction between man and machine all but disappears and the dangers to those cyborgs are omnipresent. Social media, apparently, is a major step on the road to this dystopia.
More:
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/09/usaf-predicts-the-future-welcome-to-the-age-of-surprise/
Facebook’s $9.5 Million ‘Beacon’ Settlement Approved
Posted: 2012/09/21 in Education / Awareness, Jurisprudence, Litigation, Privacy / Data Protection, Public Policy, Stats / reportsA divided federal appeals court is approving a $9.5 million settlement to a class-action lawsuit challenging Facebook’s program that monitored and published what users of the social networking site were buying or renting from Blockbuster, Overstock and other locations.
The case concerned allegations Facebook’s now-defunct “Beacon” program breached federal wiretap and video-rental privacy laws. Terms of the settlement, in which Facebook denied any wrongdoing, require the site to finance what the deal calls a “Digital Trust Fund” that would issue more than $6 million in so-called cy pres grants to organizations to study online privacy.
The settlement, in which a lower court judge signed off on in 2010, was challenged by some of the 3.6 million class members, who argued that the deal was underfunded, and that Facebook should not get a seat on the trust fund’s board (.pdf) to help decide where the money would go.
A dissenting judge on the three-judge panel agreed, but could not shore up a majority Thursday.
“I respectfully dissent. This settlement perverts the class action into a device for depriving victims of remedies for wrongs, while enriching both the wrongdoers and the lawyers purporting to represent the class,” Judge Andrew Kleinfeld wrote in a blistering dissent.
But the majority on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals didn’t see it that way.
More:
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/09/beacon-settlement-approved/
Hostage-Taker Updates Facebook During Police Standoff
Posted: 2012/09/21 in Education / Awareness, Enforcement, Public Policy, Stats / reportsNew cameras identify you by your walk
Posted: 2012/09/21 in Education / Awareness, New Business Models, Stats / reports, Tech EvolutionPharmaceutical companies have been fined a record $11 billion over the past 3 years for unethical and illegal practices
Posted: 2012/09/21 in Education / Awareness, Enforcement, New Business Models, Public Policy, Stats / reportsBut leading researchers says companies will carry on breaking the law, regarding fines as “the cost of doing business
More:
http://rt.com/news/drugs-fines-corporations-crime-671/
In New York, the local constabulary will be encouraging new iPhone 5 owners to register their phones’ serial numbers with them
Posted: 2012/09/21 in Education / Awareness, Enforcement, New Business Models, Public Policy, Stats / reportsIt’s an excellent example of law enforcement embracing the extra anti-theft capabilities offered by today’s smartphones
More:
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/09/the-new-york-pd-wants-to-help-find-your-iphone/
If you’re looking for something that will both let you use your own server for storage and looks and acts pretty much like Dropbox, AeroFS might be for you
Posted: 2012/09/21 in Education / Awareness, File Sharing, New Business Models, Stats / reports, Tech EvolutionThe service is still in an invite-only beta as of this writing, but with just a few additions it could be the locally-hosted Dropbox that some Windows, OS X, and Linux users have waited for.
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/09/create-your-own-local-dropbox-with-aerofs/
EU’s Almunia sees no solution yet to Google antitrust case
Posted: 2012/09/21 in Education / Awareness, Google, Public Policy, Stats / reportsEU regulators could charge Google with breaching EU laws if it does not offer satisfactory concessions to ease competition concerns, the EU’s antitrust chief said.
“If effective solutions were found quickly and tested successfully, competition could be restored at an early stage by means of a commitment decision,” EU Competition Commissioner Joaquin Almunia said in the text of a speech to be delivered at Fordham University in New York.
“However, we are not there yet, and it must be clear that – in the absence of satisfactory proposals in the short term – I will be obliged to continue with our formal proceedings,” he said.
More:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/09/20/us-eu-google-universal-idUSBRE88J0QJ20120920
Document Of ‘Clean IT’ EU Anti-Terrorism Project Leaked Onto The Internets. Will Hyperlinks To Terrorist Material Become Illegal?
Posted: 2012/09/21 in Blocking, Education / Awareness, Filtering, New Business Models, Public Policy, Stats / reportsSource of English language document:
http://www.edri.org/files/cleanIT_sept2012.pdf
Dutch language news article:
http://webwereld.nl/nieuws/111869/vergaand-plan-voor-bestrijding-cyberterrorisme-lekt-uit—update.html
See also:
However EDRI suggests otherwise, a posted document on their website does not provide concrete proposal to tackle terrorism on the internet. The document is food for discussion only, and summarizes possible solutions and ideas that have to be evaluated by all partners, public and private. While taking into account that any measure taken should not affect our online freedom, the advantages and disadvantages of the possible measures will be discussed in next meetings.
As soon as the plans will be more concrete and supported by all participants, they will be published on the Clean IT website. When the project ends at the beginning of 2013, all plans and documents will be published.
http://www.cleanitproject.eu/edri-publishes-clean-it-discussion-document/
Dutch Copyright Law May Be In Conflict With EU Law. European Court Of Justice Will Go And Have A Look
Posted: 2012/09/21 in Copyright, Education / Awareness, Illegal File Sharing, Jurisprudence, Litigation, New Business Models, Public Policy, Stats / reportsECJ will scrutinize both the private copy exception and the right to download from an illegal source. In The Netherlands, only uploading a pirated work can get you in trouble. But then again, nobody is enforcing that one either.
Dutch language news article:
http://tweakers.net/nieuws/84518/europese-hof-gaat-zich-buigen-over-nederlandse-downloadwetgeving.html
Warner Bros, Hotfile and EFF Fight Over Bogus Automated Takedown Requests
Posted: 2012/09/21 in Copyright, Education / Awareness, Enforcement, Illegal File Sharing, Litigation, Stats / reportsThe dispute between file-hosting service Hotfile and Warner Bros, where the latter is accused of taking down content they don’t hold the copyrights to, is heating up. The court has accepted a brief filed by the EFF who argue that the automated takedown requests of the movie company represent a threat to free speech. Warner Bros quickly replied and disputes that computers are more accurate than humans, arguing that broad automated takedown systems are not incompatible with the DMCA law.
More:
http://torrentfreak.com/warner-bros-defends-bogus-automated-takedown-requests-120920/
YouTube Video Questions Editor Beta
Posted: 2012/09/21 in Education / Awareness, Google, New Business Models, Stats / reports, Tech EvolutionThis is an opt-in beta for a simple Video Questions Editor on YouTube. Through this editor you can setup multiple questions to be displayed on top of your video during playback that a viewer can answer.
