Danish ISPs to Fight the Pirate Bay Block TorrentFreak

A Danish court has ruled that all Danish ISPs have to deny their users access to The Pirate Bay. Most broadband providers are not too happy with this unbalanced decision, and three of them have already announced that they will take it to the Supreme Court.

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Hey baby, what’s your blood type? Montreal Gazette

Japan is a delightful country for bizarre medical crazes. The latest mania sweeping the country may be the strangest of all. It’s called “blood type humanics,” and it’s the subject of several of the best selling books in Japan. In fact, many Japanese take this so seriously that you’re liable to be asked for your blood type when you go on a date or apply for a job.

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WhalerGate-Japanese whalers in intense clash and crash News AU

A PROTEST ship in the Southern Ocean has rammed a Japanese whaling vessel in what protesters say is the most intense clash the two groups have ever had. Mr Watson has accused Japan of using a Long Range Acoustical Device (LRAD) weapon, which fires loud bursts of sound, at his crew and a helicopter. Captain Paul Watson, from the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, said his ship, the Steve Irwin, was forced to hit the Japanese ship Yushin Maru No. 2 about 8.30am (AEDT). “This has certainly been the most intense confrontation we have had with the Japanese whalers over the last five campaigns we have had down here,” Mr Watson said. “We have never seen them this aggressive. They are obviously frustrated at the money they are losing and they have been ordered to do whatever needs to be done in order to prevent us from preventing them from killing whales.”

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RIM executives slapped with $77 million in fines CTV

The leading executives who helped create the internationally renowned maker of the BlackBerry smartphone will pay the brunt of about $77 million in fines and restitution to settle allegations they participated in a practice known as stock option backdating.

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Teens who ’sext’ racy photos charged with porn CTV

Though youth is fleeting, images sent on a cell phone or posted online may not be, especially if they’re naughty. Teenagers’ habit of distributing nude self-portraits electronically — often called “sexting” if it’s done by cell phone — has parents and school administrators worried. Some prosecutors have begun charging teens who send and receive such images with child pornography and other serious felonies. But is that the best way to handle it?

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Rogue sysadmin sues SF for $3m The Register

Terry Childs, the ex-network admin accused of holding San Francisco’s computer network to ransom, is suing the city for $3m. Childs, who has been in prison since July and is still awaiting trial, wants compensation for lost wages, damages and emotional distress caused by what he claims was his wrongful arrest and imprisonment.

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US bandwidth gets new caps The Register

More Americans will soon be fitted with bandwidth caps. Yesterday, Time Warner trumpeted plans to expand its “consumption based billing” brainstorm beyond the tiny Gulf Coast town of Beaumont, Texas and into a few other unnamed cities. And just hours later, fellow cableco Charter Communications confirmed it will soon put caps on users across the country.

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Norway drops complaint against Apple’s iTunes AFP

Norway’s consumer watchdog said Wednesday it had dropped a complaint against Apple’s iTunes after the company said songs sold via its music service would be compatible with all MP3 players, not just the iPod. “We have no reason to pursue them anymore,” consumer mediator Bjoern Erik Thon told AFP.

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CNN Uses P2P Video & Adds Terrible EULA Slashdot

“CNN’s use of software called Octoshape presents an incredibly abusive EULA. If you agree to the EULA, you agree that CNN can use your bandwidth, and that you will pay any costs. Also, you lose the right to monitor your own network traffic.
[Comment: Will BayTSP sue you if you look at your firewall logs? :p]

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Young Finns demonstrate against law on data retention Terra

Some 200 Finns protested Thursday against a proposed law supported by Nokia and other companies that would give employers the right to monitor workers’ emails if wrongdoing is suspected. “Down with Big Brother. Lex Nokia, full of mistakes,” the demonstrators — mostly young adults — chanted outside parliament where the law will be voted on later this month. The new data retention law has been hotly debated in Finland, in particular after the Helsingin Sanomat newspaper reported Sunday that mobile phone giant Nokia had threatened to leave Finland unless the law was introduced.

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Microsoft-backed celebrity news website unveiled Terra

Microsoft plunged into the crowded field of online entertainment and celebrity news on Thursday, taking the wraps off a new website known as Wonderwall. Wonderwall.com is a joint venture between MSN, the Internet arm of the US software giant, and Berman Braun Interactive, a media company based in Santa Monica, California. “Wonderwall offers people an engaging and visually dynamic perspective on the day’s hottest pop culture stories, personalities and trends,” MSN and Berman Braun said in a statement.

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Australian telecom Telstra workers to stop work AustralianIT

UNIONISED Telstra workers will camp outside chief executive Sol Trujillo’s office next week to fight for better pay and union-negotiated employment agreements. The Communications, Electrical and Plumbing Union (CEPU) is calling on its members to protest in Sydney and Melbourne on February 9. The strikes will be preceded with overtime bans on Saturday and Sunday, while rolling 24-hour stoppages will commence over the coming week.

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Star Trek VoIP Communicator Is Unfortunately Not Wireless uberreview

The Star Trek VoIP Communicator from Dream Cheeky has all the makings of a great product, it is shaped like a communicator from Star Trek and it actually lets you communicate. Unfortunately, the experience will be tarnished by the USB cord that you must connect to the computer. If they could eliminate that, then this would be awesome (and a whole lot more expensive).

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Man ends six-year marriage on Facebook China Daily

A woman discovered that her six-year marriage was over through a Facebook posting purportedly made by her husband.

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Thai website to protect the king BBC

The government in Thailand has set up a special website urging people to inform on anyone criticising the monarchy. It has also established an internet security centre to co-ordinate the blocking of websites deemed offensive to the monarchy. On its first day of operation the centre banned nearly 5,000 websites.

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Thai group encourages use of VPNs to bypass state censorship betanews

In light of the Thai government’s strict censorship rules, anti-censorship group Freedom Against Censorship Thailand (FACT) released information yesterday that it describes as “easy, legal tools for circumventing Internet censorship.” The government of Thailand has repeatedly come to blows with Web sites both domestic and foreign over free speech issues. YouTube, for example, was banned for four months in 2007 for hosting content deemed offensive to Thais, and a reported 4,800 sites were blocked by the Information and Communication Technology Ministry (ICT) in March 2008.

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iiNet VS the movie studios court date set for October Australian IT

THE court showdown between internet service provider iiNet and movie studios has been set for October 5 in the Federal Court. The Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft (AFACT), on behalf of seven leading film companies and their affiliates and licensees, sued iiNet last November on copyright infringements claims. AFACT alleges that despite being warned on 18 occasions over a five month period, iiNet didn’t stop its customers from illegally downloading and exchanging movies and TV programs. It is seeking a ruling that iiNet infringed copyright by virtue of not taking reasonable steps to prevent its customers from allegedly dabbling in the illegal activity. iiNet has said it would vigorously defend itself against the lawsuit.

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Pentagon propaganda machine gets $4.7 billion to win public opinion MSNBC

As it fights two wars, the Pentagon is steadily and dramatically increasing the money it spends to win what it calls “the human terrain” of world public opinion. In the process, it is raising concerns of spreading propaganda at home in violation of federal law. An Associated Press investigation found that over the past five years, the money the military spends on winning hearts and minds at home and abroad has grown by 63 percent, to at least $4.7 billion this year, according to Department of Defense budgets and other documents. That’s almost as much as it spent on body armor for troops in Iraq and Afghanistan between 2004 and 2006.

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Stabbed student shows up for job interview The Star

A 16-year-old student went to a job interview instead of the hospital after he and a schoolmate were stabbed yesterday.

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Free speech, for some The Star

University campuses are supposed to be havens of free speech, where no opinion is too outlandish to be aired. Unfortunately, this time-honoured campus principle sometimes comes in conflict with political correctness, which deems some opinions to be out of bounds. Take, for example, the current fuss over pro-life groups on campus. Student councils at various Canadian universities – including York, Guelph, and Carleton in Ontario – have taken it upon themselves to ban pro-life groups from access to meeting rooms, assembly halls and display space in student union buildings. These bans have been endorsed by the Canadian Federation of Students, the umbrella group for student unions.

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Guys LOOK OUT-Hang ‘em high Globe and Mail

Guys, you’d better be nice to your date, or else the excruciating details – and your face – might appear online for all the world to see. Bad boyfriends are under attack. A new website for women scorned, called Sorry-Mom.com (a.k.a. I Bang the Worst Dudes), has upped the anti-ex factor: Alongside vicious descriptions of lovers past are their photos, prominently featured with just a thin black bar over the eyes. Launched last month on a whim by Jeanne, a 25-year-old Brooklyn woman who did not want her full name published, the site gets more than 40,000 unique page views a day. It follows in the tradition of other morning-after websites such as DontDateHimGirl.com and WomanSavers.com. But Sorry-Mom is extra nasty.

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Google and Amazon to Put More Books on Cellphones New York Times

More electronic books are coming to mobile phones. In a move that could bolster the growing popularity of e-books, Google said Thursday that the 1.5 million public domain books it had scanned and made available free on PCs were now accessible on mobile devices like the iPhone and the T-Mobile G1. Also Thursday, Amazon said that it was working on making the titles for its popular e-book reader, the Kindle, available on a variety of mobile phones. The company, which is expected to unveil a new version of the Kindle next week, did not say when Kindle titles would be available on mobile phones.

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Scientist who criticised DJ for vaccination scare talk gets copyright threat BoingBoing

Dr Ben Goldacre, who writes the Guardian’s “Bad Science” column, blogged about a UK radio DJ’s irresponsible reporting on vaccination, including the 44 minute radio show in audio form (he could have edited down, but he didn’t want to be accused of selective editing). In response, the radio station, LBC 97.3, sent lawyers after him, threatening to sue him for copyright infringement.

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House of Lords damns British surveillance society BoingBoing

Lord Goodlad, the former Tory chief whip and committee chairman, said there could be no justification for this gradual but incessant creep towards every detail about an individual being recorded and pored over by the state. “The huge rise in surveillance and data collection by the state and other organisations risks undermining the long-standing traditions of privacy and individual freedom which are vital for democracy,” he said. “If the public are to trust that information about them is not being improperly used there should be much more openness about what data is collected, by whom and how it is used.”  Also see: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/7872425.stm for more

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Shoe thrown at Israeli ambassador in Sweden ynetnews

Apparently only the latest victim in a growing trend, Israel’s ambassador to Sweden, Benny Dagan, had a shoe thrown at him, while giving a lecture at the University of Stockholm on Wednesday.

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U.K. resident held at Gitmo alleges Canadian involvement in torture CBC

Allegations are emerging that a Canadian might have been involved in the torture of one of Britain’s last remaining residents at Guantanamo Bay. Binyam Mohamed, 31, claims to have been tortured after being arrested in Pakistan in 2002. And he alleges that Britain was complicit in the torture and Canada may have also had a role in his rendition.

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ISPs Play Dumb In NebuAD Lawsuit DSLreports

The broadband providers argue that they can’t be sued for violating federal or state privacy laws if they didn’t intercept any subscribers. In court papers filed late last week, they argue that NebuAd alone allegedly intercepted traffic, while they were merely passive participants in the plan. By “passive participants,” they mean they took (or planned to take) money from NebuAD in exchange for allowing NebuAD to place deep packet inspection hardware on their networks. That hardware collected all browsing activity for all users, including what pages were visited, and how long each user stayed there. It’s true many of the the carriers were rather passive in failing to inform customers these trials were occurring — several simply tried to slip this through fine print in their terms of service or acceptable use policies.

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Bell Canada increases modem rental cost 97.5% Digital Home

In the “certain conditions may apply” section of its website, Bell Internet (formerly Bell Sympatico) notified its subscribers that beginning March 29, 2009, the monthly cost of renting a high speed internet modem will rise a whopping 97.5%. The modem rental price increase is in addition to a $5 price increase to Bell’s most popular high speed internet (HSI) package which took effect this month.

February , 2009

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This entry was posted on Friday, February 6th, 2009 at 3:52 pm and is filed under P2P. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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