p2pnet World Headlines: Sept 3, 2010
Hi All:
Sorry about the dearth of posts. But it’s all about keeping p2pnet afloat, and with a bit of luck, I’ll have more time next week.
Cheers!
Jon
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French ISPs and French Government Locking Horns Over HADOPI Costs Zeropaid
There’s a major battle brewing between the French government and the French ISPs. A line is being drawn and it’s about the money. While this was foreseeable thanks to our earlier reports, it will be very interesting to see how far the battle will escalate. One report suggests that ISPs may even opt to not honor their end of the anti-piracy effort. HADOPI, the three strikes law in France, may have been passed nearly a year ago, the war is far from over and it could very well be one of the several smaller battles that could be the downfall of the law. Earlier this month, we learned that a battle was brewing between French ISPs and the government. The issue that has caused a thick line in the sand between the two? Compensation of ISPs. In our earlier report, the French government wanted to just let ISPs receive an invoice of the cost to enforce the three strikes law – and yes, it is very expensive to do thousands of IP look-ups per month thanks to things like labor. After doing some research, we discovered that the cost of the three strikes law would be around 50 million Euros per year which translates to about 64 million US dollars. All this evidence to come up with the figure was based on government statements and legal documents. This is why the negotiations are huge and the stakes are so high. How much of the costs should ISPs absorb? Do ISPs expect compensation on a per IP look-up basis or do they absorb that cost for a period of time and send an invoice to the government, hoping to receive reimbursement after? A lot of hot questions indeed.
The Hadopi warns against the circulation of fake e-mails warning Agence France-Press (Google translation)
The Hadopi warned Tuesday against the traffic on Internet fake e-mails posing as warnings of the High Authority to users and hackers claiming personal or banking details. “As we expected, the internet is classic. Fraudsters try to profit by circulating spam messages and files that ask for money,” he told AFP Eric Walter, Secretary General the High Authority for the Protection of Rights on the Internet (Hadopi), confirming comments broadcast on the website of La Tribune.
Govt wants Google, Skype to set up local servers Economic Times
The [Indian] government on Wednesday said BlackBerry, Google, Skype and other communications providers must set up servers in India to allow security forces to intercept Internet data. G K Pillai, the chief bureaucrat in the Home Ministry, said “all people who operate communication services in India should have a server in India” to aid in monitoring encrypted data. The government has already asked BlackBerry to set up a server in India to track the smartphone’s secure messaging system and “we have made this clear to other companies” that they must do the same, he told a news conference. Finnish mobile phone giant Nokia said earlier in the week it would set up a server in the country by early November to ensure that the government had access to data carried by its smartphones.
PS3 hack ban upheld by court as free version released BBC
Sony’s battle to block the distribution of a hack for its PlayStation 3 (PS3) has been won in an Australian court but lost on the internet. The court ruled on Friday that a ban on distribution of the PSJailbreak “dongle”, first issued on 27 August, would be made permanent. However, on Thursday the software code behind a similar hack was released free on the internet as PSGroove. The hacks allow homemade games to be played on the console. While the PSGroove software was specifically designed not to allow the playing of pirated games, as PSJailbreak does, it has already been modified by other hackers to permit the practice.
US told EU to hide ACTA from public euractiv.com
The United States is behind the wall of secrecy surrounding global trade talks to combat counterfeiting, say EU policy sources, who claim that American officials are refusing to let their European counterparts publish the draft agreement online. The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), which began in Geneva two years ago, is a multilateral trade agreement to establish international standards on intellectual property rights. [...] In March, the European Parliament defied the EU executive on 10 March, casting a vote against an agreement between the EU, the US and other major powers on combating online piracy and threatening to take legal action at the European Court of Justice. An overwhelming majority of MEPs (663 in favour and 13 against) passed in March a resolution criticising the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), arguing that it flouts agreed EU laws on piracy online. American officials blocked European attempts to publish the latest draft of the global Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) on an EU website after a Washington-based round of negotiations in August.
An ISP that knows nothing of “data hogs” Ars Technica
Pop quiz—which US Internet service provider made the following statement about a network upgrade? “During the construction of this network we have given a lot of thought… to the business model in the US, and how we could do things in a different and more interesting way. The natural model when you have a simple duopoly capturing the majority of the market is segmentation: maximize ARPU [average revenue per user] by artificially limiting service in order to drive additional monthly spending. But fundamentally this is the wrong model for a service provider like us, and we have looked to Europe for inspiration. The model pioneered by Iliad under the Free brand is a better fit, both for us and for our customers. As the marginal cost of providing more bandwidth or less, and providing POTS voice or not are both minimal, we have adopted a simple flat rate model instead of the more typical US model of ‘$5 more goes faster’… I believe that removing the artificial limits on speed, and including home phone with the product are both very exciting.” Yeah… it wasn’t one of the major ISPs. Instead, it was Sonic.net, California’s largest indie ISP.
Nude photos raise questions about private lives of judges Toronto Star
Allegations that nude photographs of a senior Manitoba judge in bondage, chains and performing oral sex were posted on an Internet porn site have kindled debate about how much of a judge’s private life is private. The Canadian Judicial Council’s Ethical Principles for Judges — which judges are encouraged but not required to follow — say they should strive to conduct themselves with integrity and avoid conduct that would diminish public respect for the judiciary. Can someone who poses naked with a whip be considered a person of integrity, or does the question open the door to inappropriate moral judgments about an individual’s personal life? ‘Do we imagine that judges never disrobe or that judges never have sex lives? Of course they do,’ said Bruce Ryder, an Osgoode Hall Law School professor who teaches in the area of judicial independence and ethics. Ryder worries that ‘prurience’ and ‘moral prudery’ will drive the debate over whether Associate Chief Justice Lori Douglas of the Court of Queen’s Bench of Manitoba should be removed from office.
YouTube Ads Turn Videos Into Revenue New York Times
Last month, a YouTube user, TomR35, uploaded a clip from the AMC series “Mad Men” in which Don Draper makes a heartfelt speech about the importance of nostalgia in advertising. Viewers wouldn’t notice, but that clip also makes an important point about modern advertising — YouTube is an increasingly fruitful place for advertisers. In the past, Lions Gate, which owns the rights to the “Mad Men” clip, might have requested that TomR35’s version be taken down. But it has decided to leave clips like this up, and in return, YouTube runs ads with the video and splits the revenue with Lions Gate. Remarkably, more than one-third of the two billion views of YouTube videos with ads each week are like TomR35’s “Mad Men” clip — uploaded without the copyright owner’s permission but left up by the owner’s choice. They are automatically recognized by YouTube, using a system called Content ID that scans videos and compares them to material provided by copyright owners.
Africans have ‘child rape gene’: Sweden Democrat The Local
A blog post by a local Sweden Democrat politician, Per T K Wahlberg, in which he claims that black Africans are genetically programmed to rape children, has raised questions about the party’s attempts to distance itself from open racism. Wahlberg occupies 26th place on the Sweden Democrats list for municipal elections in Landskrona in southern Sweden and he currently sits on the culture committee and election commission. The party claimed 11 seats in Landskrona municipality at the last election in 2006. On his blog “Landskronabackspegel” (Literally: Landskrona rearview mirror) Wahlberg, a 76-year-old retiree and one of the party’s more experienced members, published a post on the genetic characteristics of black Africans: “For many thousands of years, the Negro could chill out in the heat, eat some bananas, rape some passing woman or child, fight with other negro males and eat them up, play the drums a little, run around a bit, catch an antelope, eat a few bananas, fuck a bit, get drunk on fermented fruits or herbs, and so on. This has been going on for millennia without any evolutionary pressure in the form of environmental factors forcing the negro to develop in another direction.” Wahlberg told The Local on Friday that the quotes are all taken from the provocative Swedish political and media discussion forum Flashback, and are written “ironically”.
… and identi.ca
September, 2010
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September 3rd, 2010 at 3:21 pm
“How much of the costs should ISPs absorb?”
The HADOPI law as voted say that it is the responsibility of the government to absorb the cost.
So now that these sarkozysts morons realize how much it is going to cost the tax payer, particularly given the huge deficit, they don’t want to pay. The problem is that if they don’t pay they can not force the ISP to release any information without breaking the law they just passed.
Beside that the ISPs can drag their feet since they can always claim that the information is not available at this time or at all.
I believe that they are going to discretely forget about HADOPI just like DADVSI.
So far only one ISP have declared that they will work with HADOPI. It is Orange owned by guess who? -Vivendique Univers-Sale.
They are already losing customers over this. If they start to research and release IP addresses there is no doubt that this customer lost will become hemorrhagic.
September 3rd, 2010 at 4:41 pm
“The HADOPI law as voted say that it is the responsibility of the government to absorb the cost.”
Talk about shooting yourself in the foot. Politicians don’t care, it’s not their money.
Maybe someone will realize that they should have put that burden on the IP Owner who is complaining. Then the law will fall apart.
September 3rd, 2010 at 5:57 pm
“Nude photos raise questions about private lives of judges Toronto Star”
Where i live, the judicial rules of ethics for judges prohibits that judges go to places of ill repute.
According to this rule, a judge cannot go to court, as few places have a worse reputation than the courts here.
Well, the judicial system is a joke.
September 3rd, 2010 at 11:49 pm
“Sorry about the dearth of posts”
Damn journalist type people from England. What’s a dearth?
September 4th, 2010 at 12:21 am
Google settles Buzz privacy lawsuit
http://www.pogowasright.org/?p=13390
AFP provides some of the financial details on the settlement, here. Google reportedly paid $8.5 million. …