A photographer who set up a load of cameras in the wild can’t get pictures of a monkey removed from Wikipedia, as the monkey pressed the shutter. Wikipedia argues that this means that nobody owns the copyright. I wonder what the BBC series Earth has to say about this?
Wikipedia refuses to delete photo as 'monkey owns it' – Telegraph.
With privacy concerns being raised more and more about the use of cloud storage, tech giants are turning to the age old scare tactic of using child porn as an excuse to burrow through users data.
Microsoft tip leads to child porn arrest in Pennsylvania.
Twitch TV – a gaming TV channel with billions of watchers – will attempt to detect music playing in the background. If a 10 second spell seems to be copyrighted, they will remove the sound for half an hour.
I suppose the rationale is that the music companies and the RIAA think this is a potentially lost sale or something? It’s not surprising the users are up in arms about this.
Twitch Cracks Down On Music In Videos, Users Freak Out.
“to ensure users’ rights to privacy of their personal data and personal information, and information security for government agencies and corporate clients”
US State Department database used to process passports and visas still hasn’t recovered from a crash last week — leaving tens of thousands of people stranded overseas.
via Passport Database Outage: 'We Regret The Inconvenience' – InformationWeek.
Yep, the power of big centralised databases!
A Minnesota man and his two sons were asked to leave a Southwest Airlines flight after the man sent a tweet complaining about being treated rudely by a gate agent.
[…] a tweet that read “RUDEST AGENT IN DENVER. KIMBERLY S. GATE C39. NOT HAPPY @SWA.” […] after he boarded, an announcement came over the plane asking his family to exit the aircraft. Once at the gate, the agent said that unless the tweet was deleted, police would be called and the family would not be allowed back onboard.
via Minnesota man asked to leave Southwest flight after critical tweet | Reuters.
Little Nazi flight people. I think stewards feel self entitled and forget that their job is to actually help people.
In a court case in which the government (mr Plasterk) was taken to task for using NSA data – private information gotten through illegal means according to Dutch law – the NL courts have ruled that secret services can use this data freely, because “it’s important”. This is a bit like allowing evidence gained under torture. It may be illegal in NL, but hey – another person gave it to us and it’s really important, so let’s use it!
Another real problem is that this ruling allows the NL secret service to circumvent the checks and balances applying to the Dutch democracy by sending data to the US, or allowing the US to capture it, have it be analysed there and then returned to NL. In this way the AIVD can perform illegal data mining “legally”.
Rechter: Nederland mag NSA-data blijven gebruiken – IT Pro – Nieuws – Tweakers.
The Dutch organisation for small / medium sized businesses (MKB Nederland) has set up a quick scan for companies dealing with private data, to have a look at the risks of using this kind of data.
invisible.im is backed by some pretty big names in IT security. It’s not foolproof and it’s in the first stages, but it’s a start with great potential.
New Instant Messenger Plans to Leave No Metadata Worth Harvesting.
Millions of legitimate servers that rely on dynamic domain name services from No-IP.com suffered outages on Monday after Microsoft seized 22 domain names it said were being abused in malware-related crimes against Windows users.
Microsoft enforced a federal court order making the company the domain IP resolver for the No-IP domains. Microsoft said the objective of the seizure was to identify and reroute traffic associated with two malware families that abused No-IP services. Almost immediately, end users, some of which were actively involved in Internet security, castigated the move as heavy handed, since there was no evidence No-IP officially sanctioned or actively facilitated the malware campaign, which went by the names Bladabindi (aka NJrat) and Jenxcus (aka NJw0rm).
"By becoming the DNS authority for those free dynamic DNS domains, Microsoft is now effectively in a position of complete control and is now able to dictate their configuration," Claudio Guarnieri, co-founder of Radically Open Security, wrote in an e-mail to Ars Technica. "Microsoft fundamentally swept away No-IP, which has seen parts of its own DNS infrastructure legally taken away."
via Millions of dynamic DNS users suffer after Microsoft seizes No-IP domains | Ars Technica.
Wait – what? There’s a court order that allows MS to technically do this?!
Yup, read, write, compose, delete all messages!
This isn’t going to be abused at all! Not!
Google geeft derden toegang tot je Gmail-account – Webwereld.
Basically the interpretation is that since the servers on which these services are hosted are in foreign countries, they are classed as “external communications”, which allows them to intercept them indiscriminately as opposed to needing a warrant. This also applies to webmail services and Google searches.
Tesla Motors was created to accelerate the advent of sustainable transport. If we clear a path to the creation of compelling electric vehicles, but then lay intellectual property landmines behind us to inhibit others, we are acting in a manner contrary to that goal. Tesla will not initiate patent lawsuits against anyone who, in good faith, wants to use our technology
Tesla Motors was created to accelerate the advent of sustainable transport. If we clear a path to the creation of compelling electric vehicles, but then lay intellectual property landmines behind us to inhibit others, we are acting in a manner contrary to that goal. Tesla will not initiate patent lawsuits against anyone who, in good faith, wants to use our technology
via All Our Patent Are Belong To You | Blog | Tesla Motors.
Agreed entirely – patents are bludgeoning tools in the hands of the only ones who can afford them: big companies. They stop progress, kill innovation. Well done Tesla!
“the evidence on which the crown relied to argue for the secret trial could not be presented in open court”
“This appeal raises important issues relating to the constitutional principle of open justice but also the equally important principle of fairness and natural justice,” Hudson told the court.”
This culture of secrecy and non-accountability towards the public is a hugely growing and worrying Orwellian trend.
for such a phone [$400 RRP], the potential patent royalties could exceed US$120 per device. This brings the licensing fees per device close to the cost of components, which on the US$400 phone would be somewhere between US$120 and US$150.
"… those costs may be undermining industry profitability—and, in turn, diminishing incentives to invest and compete
Again and again this shows what a ridiculous system patents are and how they hurt our society. Fair enough that patents protect the inventor for a few years – enough to get a competitive advantage – but ridiculous that people keep earning for ever without lifting a finger. Then of course it’s usually not the inventor that makes the money as they can’t afford the patent process, but patent trolls or large companies who extort the patents off the inventor. And there are the patents that are disallowed to certain companies, meaning they can’t use a widely known system. Or are taken of the market entirely until someone else manages to circumvent an old patent and equal the old technology.
When you ask them for your own details, you also get all the personal details of the people who have interacted with your account!
This data should be anonymised.
Mag niet: Marktplaats deelt IP-adressen en NAW-gegevens – Webwereld.
A recent ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union found that certain users can ask search engines to remove results for queries that include their name where those results are inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant, or excessive in relation to the purposes for which they were processed.
In implementing this decision, we will assess each individual request and attempt to balance the privacy rights of the individual with the public’s right to know and distribute information. When evaluating your request, we will look at whether the results include outdated information about you, as well as whether there’s a public interest in the information—for example, information about financial scams, professional malpractice, criminal convictions, or public conduct of government officials.
The form in the link below starts out the process of removing links
via Legal Help.
Because NVidia has a program called Gameworks, which developers can sign up for to optimise their game for NVidia cards – 60% of the market. The closed and proprietary Gameworks makes it almost impossible to optimse for AMD, which means that $500,- AMD cards perform worse than $300,- NVidia cards, unless the developer has spent a huge time and investment from the start of the project to optimise for both brands. AMD can’t fix this with a driver update, because reverse engineering the NVidia Gamesworks is difficult and the system is filled with obscure cruft and worthless junk, making it difficult to find out how to optimise the driver for it.
Why 'Watch Dogs' Is Bad News For AMD Users — And Potentially The Entire PC Gaming Ecosystem – Forbes.
This looks like a major new release of the search algorythm
Google Begins Rolling Out Panda 4.0 Now.
If you have over 3000 daily visits, you have to register. You remove anonymity and you have to keep all your data in Russia for at least 6 months.
This after a few laws that ban 4 words from being used in the arts and allow the state to shut down websites – promptly used to silence state critics.
Well done freedom!
Russia Quietly Tightens Reins on Web With ‘Bloggers Law’ – NYTimes.com.
The Dutch courts have decided that re-using publically available data is illegal in accordance with the database laws. This means that Gaspedaal, a website that aggregates second hand car data from a number of other websites (and is therefore the most used car searching site!) is no longer allowed to aggregate the data from sites that tell it not to.
Goes to show you how out of touch from reality judges really are.
Gaspedaal mag geen advertenties meer doorplaatsen – Emerce.
Afterburner Inc sued the Corps Group – ex military pilots – for using pictures of fighter aircraft and cockpits, wearing flight suits and using fighter pilot parlance. Not only does this show that the CEO of Afterburner Inc, Jim Murphy, is a dick, but it also shows how broken these laws are in the USA.
Former Fighter Pilots Fight Over Flight Suits | Military.com.
We crawl the web to find the companies that track people, then Disconnect blocks those companies’ tracking requests in your browser. Click the items below to learn more about Disconnect’s features.
via Private Browsing.
