guardian
Body Scanners Might Violate U.K. Child Protection Laws
The deployment of body scanning x-ray machines could violate child protection laws in the United Kingdom and prevent their implementation, according to the Guardian . British officials were forced to exempt the scanning of anyone under 18 during a year-long test of the machines at Manchester airport until legal questions could be worked out, the newspaper said. There are also concerns that images of nude celebrities could be posted online or sold to tabloids.
Continue reading »Cellphones don’t cause cancer: report
If you’re worried that cellphone use can lead to cancer, worry no more – if you believe a new Danish Cancer Society study, that is. A project which ran for almost 30 years surveyed cancers reported among 16 million adults in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden and “found no related, observable change in the incidence of cases up until 2003,” says the Guardian , going on: “Published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, the research covers a more recent period than previous studies. It suggests that if there is any risk from regular use of mobile phones, it would take more than five to 10 years for the tumours to appear.” The study covered 59,984 brain tumour cases diagnosed between 1974 and 2003, but “The only well-established risk factors — ionizing radiation and rare hereditary syndromes — account for a small proportion of brain tumour cases,” it found.
Continue reading »Google: make GooTube pay with DRM
p2pnet news view DRM | Advertising:- Google wants to “drag YouTube into profit” with yet another DRM (Digital Restrictions Management) consumer control programme. It wants to convince “music and film footage rights owners to make advertising revenue from their content rather than remove it from the video-sharing site for breach of copyright,” says the Guardian . And it hopes to do that with ContentID, a “fingerprinting system for rights holders that means YouTube can identify their material even when it has been altered and made part of user-generated content such as wedding videos or satirical clips”.
Continue reading »Schwarzenegger Flips Off Lawmakers in Hidden Message
California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is ticked off. He’s tired of signing bills that don’t address the pet causes he deems important. So when another unworthy bill crossed his desk recently for signing — addressing funding issues for the Port of San Francisco — the guv vetoed it and sent lawmakers a little note saying why.
Continue reading »Most Britons against P2P file share ban
Most people in Britain believe anyone accused of sharing entertainment cartel ‘product’ online without permission deserves the right to go to trial. The movie and music studios, with the labels to the fore, are trying to browbeat governments around the world in to implementing a 3 strikes policy under which alleged copyright transgressors received two warnings and if they fail to stop whatever it is they’re said to be doing, they’re thrown off the net. Furthermore, the entertainment industry wants governments to act as taxpayer-funded agents, with local ISPs performing duties as copyright cops with their own clients as the targets.
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