Articles by date
26 May 2012
Film company Gaumont says Hadopi eradicated illegal downloads of French films (Ars Technica)
In a statement of bravado that bordered on delusion, the president of French film and production company Gaumont announced that, "between the 15th of May and the 15th of December 2011, not a single French film was downloaded on the Web," due to France's strict anti-piracy law Hadopi.
Mobile Devices Now Make Up About 20 Percent of US Web Traffic (AllThingsD)
Mobile Web browsing continues to take off, with smartphones and tablets accounting for 20 percent of Web traffic in the U.S. and Canada, according to a new report.
Cookie law: UK websites must seek consent from this weekend (BBC News)
Friday marks the last working day for UK businesses to prepare their websites for a new law governing the use of cookies.
Google's tiny tax bill in Australia alarms Opposition (Sydney Morning Herald)
Google has refused to explain why it paid just $74,176 in Australian tax last year, despite making an estimated $1 billion in revenue from the Australian market.
Telcos told to differentiate on service, not on speed (Computerworld)
In Singapore 83 percent of buildings have fibre to the home, but only eight percent of customers have adopted it - why?
25 May 2012
Vint Cerf Calls For ITU To Be Kept Away From Internet Governance, Including ICANN (New York Times)
Vint Cerf is critical of plans by various countries over a battle for the internet that is opening at the International Telecommunications Union in this opinion piece in the New York Times.
Buffett Says Free News Unsustainable, May Add More Papers (Bloomberg)
Warren Buffett, whose Berkshire Hathaway struck a deal this month to acquire 63 newspapers, says he may buy more publications as the industry rethinks whether to offer free content on the internet.
Yahoo launches Axis browser (Washington Post)
Yahoo has launched a new browser for Apple's mobile devices called Axis. The browser, which is also available on desktops through plug-ins for the four major browsers, is designed to let you move between your devices and look at the same searches.
Going Beyond Search, Into Fetch (New York Times)
You whippersnappers might not remember, but libraries used to have something called card catalogs. Each book's index card told you which shelf housed the corresponding volume. You had to go fetch it on foot.
Russian spam mastermind jailed for creating botnet (BBC News)
A cybercrime mastermind who hijacked the PCs of more than 30 million people has been jailed for four years.
Google names names on copyright takedowns; Microsoft is #1 (Ars Technica)
Who complains loudest about Google linking to infringing content in its search results? The movie and music industries, of course, who absolutely delight in taking whacks at the search engine. But thanks to a huge new trove of data released today by Google, we know that the worldwide top takedown requestor -- by far -- is actually Microsoft.
US State Department Report Highlights Limits Of Technology (Tech Daily Dose)
Last year technology helped more people exercise their rights, but in 2011 more countries restricted access to the Internet or used technology to repress, according to the State Department's annual human rights report released on Thursday.
24 May 2012
London .NXT Conference Postponed
The London .NXT conference to be held from 20-22 June has been postponed indefinitely "due to ongoing uncertainty over ICANN's application process for new gTLDs".
Technology Reaches Remote Tibetan Corners, Fanning Unrest (New York Times)
The young Buddhist monk, his voice hushed and nervous, was discussing the self-immolations and protests that have swept Tibetan regions of China when the insistent rap of knuckle on wood sounded behind him.
Mobile Phones Offer Indian Women a Better Life (New York Times)
In the months after Garima Gupta's wedding, she cherished one of her presents above all -- the mobile phone given to her by an older brother.
'The Demise of Guys': How video games and porn are ruining a generation (CNN)
Is the overuse of video games and pervasiveness of online porn causing the demise of guys?
How Men and Women Manage Their Social Networks Differently (MIT Technology Review)
In the past, behavioural differences have been hard to measure. Experiments could only be done on limited numbers of individuals and even then, the process of measurement often distorted people's behaviour.
Google rejects UK government automatic pornography block rules (BBC News)
Proposals to force users to opt-in to access adult content would be "a mistake", Google has said.
New Pirate Bay site skirts standard ISP blocks (CNET)
File-sharing specialist The Pirate Bay has launched a site that appears to be designed to help subscribers get around court-mandated blockades in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Italy.
IBM's Siri ban highlights companies' privacy, trade secret challenges (Ars Technica)
Apple's digital "assistant" Siri isn't welcome at IBM; neither are Apple's voice dictation features in the iPhone and iPad. IBM CIO Jeanette Horan revealed in an interview with Technology Review that the company turns off Siri on employees' iPhones for fear that the service stores employees' queries somewhere outside of IBM's control. The move highlights some of the problems large enterprises face when employees begin using their own devices at work.
Google did not breach Oracle patents, a court has found (BBC News)
Google did not infringe patents owned by software developer Oracle, a jury in a California court found on Wednesday.
Google's Eric Schmidt refuses to back down over antitrust accusations (The Guardian)
Google's executive chairman Eric Schmidt on Tuesday is set for a showdown with the European Commission's antitrust commissioner when he rejected suggestions the search giant will have to change how it presents search results in Europe.
FBI quietly forms secretive Net-surveillance unit (Nextgov)
The FBI has recently formed a secretive surveillance unit with an ambitious goal: to invent technology that will let police more readily eavesdrop on Internet and wireless communications.
23 May 2012
Google Privacy Inquiries Get Little Cooperation (New York Times)
Secrets spilled across the computer screen. After months of negotiation, Johannes Caspar, a German data protection official, forced Google to show him exactly what its Street View cars had been collecting from potentially millions of his fellow citizens. Snippets of e-mails, photographs, passwords, chat messages, postings on Web sites and social networks -- all sorts of private Internet communications -- were casually scooped up as the specially equipped cars photographed the world's streets.
Internet Politics Now Integral To The United States' International Affairs: Study (News Room America)
A new Rice University study says Internet governance policy has rapidly risen from a relatively marginal issue for the United States' foreign policy establishment to a significant component of the country's international affairs and national security strategy.
