computers
Copyright lobby spyware amendments dumped
p2pnet news view P2P | Politics:- With the Industry Committee now scheduled to contact its final clause-by-clause review of Bill C-27 on Wednesday , sources in the Liberal Party advise that its MPs plan to withdraw several controversial copyright lobby-inspired amendments to the computer program and spyware provisions. Since first reported on Friday, thousands of emails and letters protesting the proposals have been sent to Industry committee MPs from all parties. Sources indicate that the Liberals will withdraw three motions actively promoted by the copyright lobby: a new definition of computer program that would have excluded surreptitiously installed DRM from the ambit of the bill an exception to a ban on the “collection of personal information through any means of telecommunication, if the collection is made by accessing a computer system or causing a computer system to be accessed without authorization” in cases related to investigations of breach of agreements or laws an exception for telecom providers to the requirement to obtain express consent before users install programs on their computers While anything can be happen over the next 24 hours, the decision to withdraw the motions – in combination with the Conservatives reversal on several exceptions that watered down the bill – should mean that the Electronic Commerce Protection Act is preserved as a consumer protection bill as it gets through committee.
Continue reading »The Internet is about to die. Literally die!
In 2007, Nemertes Research released a dire report on Internet traffic. By 2010, it said, the “exponential” growth in demand for bandwidth will butt up against the “linear” investment in networking technology, and that whole Internet thing you’ve come to know and love will start experiencing “brownouts or snow days, during which performance will (seemingly inexplicably) degrade.” By mid-2009, this certainly seemed implausible. Millions of people now stream Netflix on-demand video to their computers and TV sets, YouTube has added high-quality options to its videos, and Hulu’s launch showed that ad-supported Web video could be hugely popular.
Continue reading »Report: 41 Percent of Personal Computing Software Is Pirated
The Business Software Alliance is taking the offensive, sending out millions of takedown notices the first six months of the year in a bid to combat piracy. Reason: if the BSA is to believed, about 41 percent of all software on personal computers is pirated – socking the industry with some $53 billion in losses. That’s the size of the proposed 2010 budget for the state of Illinois.
Continue reading »Bank Botnet Serves Fake Info to Thwart Researchers
Researchers tracking a gang of online bank thieves found that the criminals have deployed a devious means to thwart law enforcement and anyone else trying to monitor their activities. The gang behind the URLZone trojan, which siphons money from online bank accounts and then alters a victim’s online bank statement to hide the fraud, have also devised a method to hide the accounts of mules they use to launder the siphoned funds. Researchers at RSA’s FraudAction Research Labs say the gang was aware that their malware was being tracked by investigators, so they programmed their command and control server to generate non-mule accounts to make it more difficult for law enforcement and fraud investigators to halt laundering through the real accounts.
Continue reading »Small biz told to sort TV licences for PCs
Online or on the box UK businesses are being warned that they need a TV licence if staff watch live TV broadcasts whether they do so on a TV or via their computers.… ?
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