M&M’s World Headlines: Feb 13, 2009
CTIA: All Your Cell Phones are Belong To Us! EFF
Beware, iPhone unlockers who defected from AT&T to T-Mobile, because America’s wireless phone giants think you’re a copyright infringer, a DMCA circumventor, a contract breacher, and a trademark violator. You committed all these offenses simply because you want to use your phone (yes, the one you own) on another network or with other software applications. That’s what CTIA – The Wireless Association, speaking for America’s largest wireless carriers, told the Copyright Office in its February 2 filing opposing the DMCA exemptions that EFF and phone recyclers like The Wireless Alliance proposed in the latest DMCA triennial rulemaking. This is yet another example of the DMCA being invoked not to stop “piracy,” but to hinder competition and innovation, reminiscent of Lexmark’s DMCA lawsuit to stop people from refilling laser printer toner cartridges (Lexmark ultimately lost that one). It’s also one more effort by some technology companies to curtail our “freedom to tinker,” a freedom that has been an engine of innovation in our economy. [Comment: Worth the read to anyone in any country. This almost happened in Canada last year with the proposed copyright changes, and which is coming up again this fall 2009.]
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Charter Cable To File For Bankruptcy Protection DSLreports
Just as we were wondering why Charter Communications hadn’t filed for bankruptcy yet after months of rumors — Charter this afternoon said they would be filing for bankruptcy. According to a statement released by the company, they’ll be filing by April 1 as part of a restructuring aimed at reducing the company’s $23 billion debt load by around $8 billion. Charter insists that the reorganization won’t impact customers.
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MS puts up $250K bounty for Conficker author The Register
Zombie masterminds wanted undead or alive. Microsoft is offering a $250,000 reward for information that leads to the arrest and conviction of the virus writers behind the infamous Conficker (Downadup) worm. The bounty, announced Thursday, represents a revival of Microsoft’s mothballed Anti-virus Reward Program, launched in 2003 and virtually moribund since 2004.
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Facebook hits back at Italian ban The Register
Facebook has responded to a proposed Italian law that could see the social networking site forced to censor its members’ postings and groups. The row started when Italian media noticed fan groups for convicted mafia members on Facebook. Although these are heavily outnumbered by groups of fans supporting prosecutors, the rumpus led Italian senator Gianpiero D’Alia to draft a law which would give the Interior Ministry the power to order internet service providers to remove web pages it doesn’t like.
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NSA offering ‘billions’ for Skype eavesdrop solution The Register
Counter Terror Expo News of a possible viable business model for P2P VoIP network Skype emerged today, at the Counter Terror Expo in London. An industry source disclosed that America’s supersecret National Security Agency (NSA) is offering “billions” to any firm which can offer reliable eavesdropping on Skype IM and voice traffic.
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Sniffing Out Illicit BitTorrent Files Technology Review
A new technique has been developed for detecting and tracking illegal content transferred using the BitTorrent file-trading protocol. According to its creators, the approach can monitor networks without interrupting the flow of data and provides investigators with hard evidence of illicit file transfers.
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Microsoft to open retail stores. Yeah, good luck with that ZDnet
Buried in a late-in-the-day press release announcing a new executive, Microsoft revealed plans to open branded retail stores as part of its effort to raise awareness surrounding Windows 7, Windows Mobile and Windows Live. The time frame for opening the stores, as well as locations, will be the first order of business for David Porter, the company’s new corporate vice president of Retail Stores, who was a 25-year Wal-Mart executive before his most recent stint with DreamWorks Animation SKG.
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Did YouTube just find some monetization help? zdnet
http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=12841
“We’re also testing an option that gives video owners the ability to permit downloading of their videos from YouTube. Partners could choose to offer their video downloads for free or for a small fee paid through Google Checkout”.
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Judges plead guilty in sending kids to lockup MSNBC
Pair accused of taking $2.6 million in payoff to put away young offenders. Two Pennsylvania judges charged with taking millions of dollars in kickbacks to send youth offenders to privately run detention centers pleaded guilty to fraud Thursday in one of the most stunning cases of judicial corruption on record.
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Claiming the Arctic top priority for Russia Canoe
Russia will modernize its icebreaker fleet and station more researchers in the Arctic as part of its push to stake its claim to the vast resources of the disputed polar region, a presidential envoy said Thursday. Canada, Russia, the United States and other northern countries are trying to assert jurisdiction over the Arctic, whose oil, gas and minerals until recently have been considered too difficult to recover. The race has intensified with growing evidence that global warming is shrinking polar ice, opening up new shipping lanes and resource development possibilities. Chilingarov told reporters that Russia is also preparing to send a team of some 50 polar scientists to the island of Spitsbergen, where Norway claims exclusive rights. He said an advance team will leave Saturday to chose the place for the station.
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Eight beheaded in India after pair elope The Star
Eight members of a man’s poverty-ridden family were shot and beheaded and their bodies were thrown into a river in eastern India after he secretly married a wealthy girl, police said yesterday. Police in the eastern state of Bihar found the eight bodies floating in a river and have charged 15 people, mostly from the girl’s family, with the killings.
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Heart and Stroke group wants trans fats regulated Healthzone
The Heart and Stroke Foundation wants Ottawa to regulate the amount of trans fats that producers can include in foods, instead of relying on companies’ voluntary compliance to meet low trans fat targets. “So our view is this data seems to be suggesting quite strongly that it’s not going to happen without regulation,” Brown said in an interview. High consumption of trans fats can triple the risk of heart disease and is responsible for at least 3,000 cardiac deaths every year in Canada, the foundation says. Food producers were given two years to reach those targets, but were told that if significant progress were not made in that period, Health Canada would develop regulations to ensure lower trans fat levels are met. Health Canada spokesman John Tessier said Thursday no decision has been made on whether legislation will be required to cut trans fat levels in food products.
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Former EMI Boss: Fight Against Illicit P2P is “Useless” TorrentFreak
At least on the surface, most in the mainstream music industry agree: illicit file-sharing is evil. However, when you aren’t getting paid to have a certain opinion, things can change. No longer taking a salary from his former company, Ex-IFPI chairman and EMI director Per Eirik Johansen speaks freely.
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Primus compares compulsory web filtering to China NewsAU
THE Federal Government’s internet filtering plan has been compared to censorship in China by one of the participants in its blacklist trials. Primus Telecom is the largest internet service provider of six announced to take part in the trial by Communications Minister Stephen Conroy. General manager of marketing and products Andrew Sims said while web filtering services suited some families, they should not be made compulsory. “We’ve got instances of that around the world, particularly in China where the government forces filtering upon their population,” he said. “My professional opinion is I don’t really believe that forced filtering is a good option.” Under the Government’s plan, all Australian internet providers will be forced to block a secret blacklist of websites maintained by the media watchdog.
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Chinese hackers attacking U.S. computers daily, congressman says Bloomberg News
Chinese government and freelance hackers are the primary culprits behind as many as several hundred daily attacks against U.S. government, electric-utility and financial computer networks, a senior congressman said. “Sophisticated hackers could really wreak havoc on our financial systems if they were successful,” House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson said in an interview. The threat is “primarily from China.” While cyber plots to disrupt U.S. computer networks have been thwarted, significant vulnerabilities exist, said Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat.
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Taxman must pay $1.3M for breaching privacy right Canwest News Service
In a groundbreaking case, a B.C. Supreme Court jury has awarded a B.C. businessman $1.3 million in damages after finding a Canada Revenue Agency search violated his privacy.The jury also recommended the government agency apologize to Hal Neumann of Saanich for the September 2005 search of his home by five CRA agents and two armed and uniformed police officers for documents he had already given the government.”This jury has told government agencies, ‘Be careful,’” said Neumann’s lawyer Steven Kelliher.”It’s earth-shattering,” said Richard Neary, part of the legal team. “It’s a landmark in law in terms of the recognition of the vital importance that the charter plays and the respect with which it needs to be upheld.”
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Where you’ve been on Net not private, judge rules National Post
An Ontario Superior Court ruling could allow police to routinely use Internet protocol addresses to find out the names of people online, without any need for a search warrant. Justice Lynne Leitch found that there is “no reasonable expectation of privacy” in subscriber information kept by Internet service providers, in a decision issued this week. The decision is binding on lower courts in Ontario, and it is the first time a Superior Court level judge in Canada has ruled on whether there are privacy rights in this information that are protected by the Charter. (Cheers, Robert)
February , 2009
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