In an attempt to make headway against rampant film piracy, Warner Bros. will distribute newly released films online in China. The studio struck a deal with Union Voole Technology in China to offer new movies, as well as those that have never been seen in Chinese theaters, at rental prices ranging from 60 cents to $1.
Mozilla Testing Private Browsing Mode in Firefox
A small, yet big Firefox feature was released to testers of Minefield, Mozilla's testbed application for new browser innovations. The new feature is private browsing, which, When toggled, takes your Web history, user names, passwords, searches, and cookies and bins them the second you close out the window, effectively making it appear that the session never existed.
MPs Want Hacker to Service Time in British Jail
UK MPs are calling for hacker Gary McKinnon to serve any sentence he receives in a British jail. McKinnon faces extradition to the US for breaking into American military networks between February 2001 and March 2002.
Yahoo, Google Revise Ad Deal to Avoid Lawsuit
Yahoo Inc. and Google Inc. have sent the Justice Department a revised version of their search-advertising agreement, shrinking its scope as regulators prepare to bring suit against the agreement if a deal isn't reached, according to people familiar with the matter. The new plan, which the online-ad giants submitted over the weekend, comes as the companies face mounting pressure to ditch or revise the pact.
MySpace Offers Legal System for Online Videos
Similar to YouTube's most recent proposition to copyright holders, News Corp-owned MySpace is offering to identify pirated content uploaded by users, insert advertising and share the subsequent fruits with the content's owner. The first benefactor of the new offering, which leverages 'finger printing' technology from Auditude, is Viacom-owned MTV Networks, a noteworthy partner since Viacom is currently involved in a one billion dollar copyright lawsuit with MySpace Video rival, YouTube.
U.S. Official Urges Work to Combat Cyberspace Woes
In two recent speeches that have attracted little notice, Donald Kerr, principal deputy director of national intelligence, has called for a radical new relationship between government and the private sector to counter what he called the "malicious activity in cyberspace [that] is a growing threat to everyone." Kerr said the most serious challenge to the nation's economy and security is protecting the intellectual property of government and the private sector that is the basis for advancements in science and technology.
State Department Warns of Passport Breaches
The State Department said it has warned nearly 400 passport applicants of a security breach in its records system that may have left them open to identity theft. The department has so far notified 383 people -- most of them in the Washington, D.C. area -- that their passport applications containing personal information, including Social Security numbers, may have been illegally accessed and used to open fraudulent credit card accounts, spokesman Sean McCormack said.
French Senate Approves Plan to Kick Pirates Offline
French plans to throw persistent pirates off the net have got closer to becoming law. The French Senate voted overwhelmingly in favour of the law, which aims to tackle ongoing piracy of music, movies, and games online.
Former eBay CEO Meg Whitman Fighting Cybersquatter
Meg Whitman, the former CEO of eBay, hasn't said whether she will run for governor of California in 2010. But the woman who guided the growth of one of the Internet's biggest success stories has run into an early online stumbling block: a cybersquatter has snatched up a series of potentially valuable domains such as whitmanforgovernor.com, meg2010.com and whitman2010.com.
Google's Growth Fuels New Concerns About Privacy
Perhaps the biggest threat to Google Inc.'s increasing dominance of Internet search and advertising is the rising fear, justified or not, that Google's broadening reach is giving it unchecked power. Increasingly, as Google burrows deeper into everyday computing, its product announcements are prompting questions about its ability to gather more potentially sensitive personal information from users.
Illegal Copies of Microsoft Windows 7 Put Online
The pre-beta version of Microsoft's Windows 7 operating system released to developers at the Professional Developers Conference has already made it onto prominent BitTorrent sites, where thousands of enthusiasts around the world are currently downloading it. Well-known BitTorrent sites such as The Pirate Bay and Mininova were at the time of publication Friday hosting multiple downloads of the newly aired operating system -- both the 32-bit and 64-bit versions.
Suit Claims RIM's BlackBerry Software Infringes
Mformation, a maker of mobile device management software, said that it has sued Research In Motion for patent infringement. According to the lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Northern California, RIM is infringing on two of Mformation's patents, U.S. Patent Nos. 6,970,917 and 7,343,408, by making, using, and selling RIM's BlackBerry devices and their management software.
Amnesty Criticizes Tech-Backed Human Rights Group
Human rights campaign group Amnesty International has criticised a new human rights organisation backed by technology giants Google, Microsoft and Yahoo. The attack comes after the formal launch of the Global Network Initiative, a scheme to bring the technology industry together with human rights campaigners to help protect free speech in repressive countries.
Professor Challenges Copyright Law in RIAA Cases
A Harvard law professor has opened a new front in the battle between the Recording Industry Association of America and alleged music pirates by challenging the constitutionality of a statute being used by the industry group to bring lawsuits against alleged copyright violators. The case involves an individual named Joel Tenenbaum, who was sued by the RIAA for allegedly illegally copying and distributing copyrighted songs belonging to several music labels.
Google Changes Privacy Settings on JotSpot
Google said that it was modifying the privacy settings on its JotSpot online collaboration service after a researcher discovered that user e-mail addresses and names were being exposed to the Web without user consent. Ben Edelman, Harvard Business School professor and security researcher, posted a blog entry on Thursday showing how JotSpot user names and e-mail addresses were easily accessible on Google search.
Spammers Getting Better at Overcoming Obstacles
With new automated tools to help them, spammers are getting better at cracking CAPTCHA -- a program that protects Web sites by generating and grading tests that humans can pass but computers cannot, according to the MessageLabs Intelligence Report. One breach has resulted in fake blogs on Google's Blogger division, which may contain malicious code.
Consumer Group Opposes Google Ad Deal with Yahoo
U.S. Public Interest Group, a consumer organization, is opposing Google's plan to share advertising with rival Yahoo, saying it could harm consumer privacy, according to a letter sent to the U.S. attorney general, a copy of which was given to Reuters. U.S. PIRG argued that advertisers who try to compete with Google and Yahoo, which together have more than 80 percent of the search advertising market, will be forced to collect more information on Internet users because they would not be able to compete with the market leaders on price.
Russian Hackers Said to Earn $5 Million a Year
How much money can criminals make scaring naive computer users? Try $5 million a year. That is how much a marketing associate of one Russian operation appears to be earning from its sales of fake antivirus software through an elaborate scheme that relies on e-mail spam and indirectly controlling thousands of unprotected PCs, according to internal company files posted online by a Russian hacker.
Game Firms Accused of Wrongly Targeting File-Sharers
Games firms are accusing innocent people of file-sharing as they crack down on pirates, a Which? Computing investigation has claimed.
Israeli Hacker Indicted by Brooklyn Grand Jury
Israeli hacker Ehud "The Analyzer" Tenenbaum was indicted by a federal grand jury in Brooklyn on felony charges of conspiracy and fraud. Between Feb. 2008 and May 2008 Tenenbaum and others engaged in a scheme to initiate transactions on account numbers belonging to other people, "to receive payment and other things" with an aggregate value of more than $1,000, the indictment charges.
