p2pnet headline roundup, September 4, 2008
Thai government tries to shut down 400 websites – The Guardian
Thailand’s Information and Communications Technology Ministry sought court orders yesterday to shut down about 400 websites and advised internet service providers to block 1,200 sites it considers are disturbing the social order or are a danger to national security. ICT minister Mun Patanotai said the department had advised ISPs to immediately block these websites, which it claimed were detected between March and August this year, and had sought court actions against them under article 20 of Thailand’s Computer Crime Act. The Bangkok Post reported yesterday that the ministry claimed the sites “disturbed the peaceful social order and morality of the people, and/or which were considered detrimental to national security”.
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Europe Weighs Caps on Roaming Fees for Text Messages – New York Times
The European Union’s telecommunications minister will propose price controls that would substantially reduce the roaming fees that individuals are charged to send text messages and limits that could reduce the cost of using the Internet. Details of the proposal, obtained Wednesday by The International Herald Tribune, show that the minister, Viviane Reding, will seek to cap retail roaming fees for short text messages, or S.M.S., within the European Union at 11 euro cents, or 16 American cents, a message.
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Amazon flicks on its streaming-video service – CNET News
Amazon.com on Thursday made available to the general public its video-on-demand service, through which ad-free movies and TV shows can be streamed on Macs, PCs, and Sony Bravia flat-screen TVs. The broader release of the Amazon Video on Demand service comes two months after the online-retailing giant began offering the service to a limited number of its users. Amazon’s service aims to enable users to instantly watch movies or TV shows via a Web browser on their Mac OS or Windows machine. The online retailer is also teaming up with Sony to enable users to purchase or rent movies and TV shows directly through Sony’s Bravia Internet Video Link device on the Bravia TV sets.
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Germany to tighten data protection laws after scandals – Deutsche Welle
At an emergency summit in Berlin, German ministers have agreed to update data protection laws for the digital age in the wake of scandals that showed how easily personal details can be bought on the Internet. Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble called the meeting of political and business leaders Thursday, Sept. 4, to bring Germany’s data-protection regulations up to date for the digital age and to reassure consumers that their details were safe. The conference comes in the wake of a series of privacy scandals. In mid-August, a former call center worker gave authorities a CD containing the bank details of 17,000 people whom he said his employer had procured from a lottery firm.
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Red Hat acquires Qumranet – Heise Online
Red Hat Inc has acquired Qumranet Inc, the makers of SolidIce. The acquisition of Israel-based company adds a virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) product to Red Hat’s product portfolio. Red Hat paid $107 million for Qumranet. Qumranet’s SolidICE product provides a kernel based virtual machine based around the open source KVM project which they also sponsor. The KVM project has been incorporated into the mainstream Linux kernel since version 2.6.20.
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