The Indian government is telling its cell phone providers to restrict mass cell phone texting, so that text messages can be sent to a few people at a time, and scan social media sites for inflammatory content, mainly content coming from Pakistan. This was because of rumors spread on the Internet about the ethnic unrest in the country.
Al Jazeera video on this story:
After recording a case of police brutality at a New Hampshire high school, Adam Mueller, a journalist, was sentenced to three months for wiretapping. A huge personal risk for documenting an incident involving a school student. A website called CopBlock.org is taking the lead in this case.
See RT America’s video on the case, with footage from the New Hampshire school.
There’s a chance that online social networks may be constructing "deep packet inspection" technologies to retain data on users, which can be forwarded to law enforcement, government, copyright owners, etc. With this, Internet data can be tracked or recorded without a user’s knowledge in real-time, and perhaps learn more about us as online users.
This does not just involves social networks - ISPs are getting in on this too, thanks to the entertainment industry going after online pirates, and dozens of other countries, not just limited to the United States.
Source: Russia Today
To stop cybercriminals, one should become a cybercriminal. That’s Britain’s response in dealing with cybercrime or cyber terrorists in the country, by pitting hackers against their own.
To make this even possible, the UK would need to create spying technologies such as the Stuxnet and Flame, aimed at most Middle Eastern countries like Iran, or launch a cyber attack to destroy or corrupt data of foreign enemies. Will this kind of cyber defense pay off, or provoke cybercriminals even further?
Source: Russia Today
Score one for Hollywood and other intellectual property owners putting more pressure on Google to handle websites in their search engine that promote piracy online – Google is now planning to decrease the ranking of websites based on valid DMCA takedown requests on suspected infringing sites, such as file-sharing sites, and blogs, forums, and others that link to pirated materials, by changing their search algorithm.
It’s been said that YouTube may not get caught in the search algorithm change, since the site already has the Content ID system, which is still active in spotting and blocking video and audio material being used by other people.
As of this post, the RIAA and their associates are leading the copyright battle on Google search with over 800,000 links queued to be de-listed, with Microsoft coming in second with about 400,000 links. Based on Google’s Transparency report, the links to infringing sites to be removed tops over a million, with about 1,500 copyright owners leading the copyright fight. The obvious main targets in the report were mainly file-sharing networks.
This may cause legitimate websites to get caught in the mix, so take note of many trusted websites as you can.
Source: ZDNet
A leak in the Trans-Pacific Partnership copyright agreement says that fair use or fair dealing in the US and Australia is subject to be limited, while the other nations like New Zealand, Malaysia and others have an option on limiting fair use in those countries.
Sadly, this does put the practice of making fair use of copyrighted materials in jeopardy, especially on sites like YouTube and Blogger.
In Japan, this fall (2012) their revision of copyright law may not take fair use into account, and will likely treat all infringement cases as criminal cases rather then civil, and convict those who uses the country’s intellectual properties without consent. So far Japan has gotten more brazen in their copyright/piracy fight on the Internet and in their streets and cities. The country may or may not be a part of the TPP, but it may serve as an example of things to come to the other nations.
