One of the lawyers involved in defending cases bought against people by the RIAA claims that if the music industry wins a crucial case, the Internet will have to be switched off.

Speaking on the DefectiveByDesign anti-DRM campaign site, Ray Beckerman said the case of Electro vs. Barker has become very important for the web’s future.

Barker was being defended by Beckerman who made a motion to dismiss the case because the RIAA had forgot to provide any acts or dates or times of copyright infringement as the law normally requires.

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Telstra has scrapped plans to build a new $4 billion fibre optic network after negotiations with the competition watchdog over regulatory issues broke down.

Telstra said the talks with the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) about the so-called fibre to the node network (FTTN) had reached an impasse over costs.

“Until Telstra’s actual costs are recognised and the ACCC’s regulatory practices change, Telstra will not invest in a fibre-to-the-node broadband network,” the company said.

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AOL just released the logs of all searches done by 500,000 of their users over the course of three months earlier this year. That means that if you happened to be randomly chosen as one of these users, everything you searched for from March to May (2006) is now public information on the internet.

This was not a leak - it was intentional. In their desperation to gain recognition from the research community, AOL decided they would compromise their integrity to provide a data set that might become often-cited in research papers: “Please reference the following publication when using this collection…” is the message before the download.

This is a blatant violation of users’ privacy. The data is “anonymized”, which to AOL means that each screenname was replaced with a unique number. “It is still a research question how much information needs to be anonymized to protect users,” says Abdur from AOL. Here are some examples of what you can find in the data:

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A predictable new MySpace-alike has been launched, this time targeting the adult market.

The company behind Utherverse.com is trumpeting that only those over 18 will be allowed to sign up, side-stepping increasing concerns from parents about their offspring being exposed to lurking paedophiles on the popular Murdoch-owned social network.

Purely in the cause of investigation, we checked out the sign up process for Utherverse. The T&Cs check-box links to a page which says you should be 18+ - and that’s it.

Chief executive Brian Shuster said the firm would use credit card age verification for its paid services - although the social networking side of the site is free. He said the company employs site monitors who scour the site for posts from minors.

The owners hope to have one million signed up by the end of the year.

Source: The Register

40,282,366,920,938,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 new web addresses created by internet chiefs… so we won’t run out of space soon.

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A local telecom consortium has announced plans to go ahead with a high-speed broadband network even if Telstra chooses not to join them.

Dubbed G9, the consortium of nine companies, including Optus, PowerTel and Primus, announced further details of their rival proposal to Telstra’s fibre-to-the-node (FTTN) network.

The consortium plans to set up an independent company to run the network, called SpeedReach, which will have an independent board of directors charged with maximising use of the network in return for a management fee.

According to a report on the proposal from the Allen Consulting Group, the investment is expected to generate an economic return that will attract professional investors such as infrastructure funds, not just telcos.

Keeping with this theme, G9 rejected any proposal that would lead to Telstra keeping operational control of the FTTN which “effectively creates a monopoly around the local loop”, Optus chief executive Paul O’Sullivan said.

G9 plans to commence talks with the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission to get approval of the governance and access regime, which are crucial to the proposal going ahead.

G9 said its proposal would service 5 million homes - 1 million more than Telstra’s proposal - for an extra $1 billion but only if the ACCC gave its approval and Telstra joined the party.

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On the 14th of June 2006, Microsoft shuts down Vistatorrent.com because of “infringment activity”. The tracker has been shut down. The entire ordeal can be read here.

View: VistaTorrent
Source: WinBeta

Starting June 20, Microsoft customers will be able to sign up for a new e-mail address from the company under the @live.com and @windowslive.com domain names. The address will be associated with Windows Live ID, formerly known as Passport, and will work with any MSN or Windows Live service.

View: Full Story
Source: BetaNews via Flexbeta

Will social networking sites such as MySpace and LiveJournal one day help governments keep better tabs on us? According to a report in New Scientist, The Pentagon’s National Security Agency is helping to fund research to explore this very question as it seeks new ways of harvesting information from the internet.

The NSA is responsible for surveillance and code breaking operations intended to protect national security in the US, and is now believed to be seeking new ways to monitor activities of its citizens.

Last month it was widely reported that the organisation had been performing “social network analysis” of telephone records in the US in order to detect patterns of terrorist activity.

Experts believe that such surveillance will not end with landline phone records, given the proliferation of mobile phones, e-mail and instant messaging networks.

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As expected, The Pirate Bay is back online - in the Netherlands. An IP check shows it’s hosted at Leaseweb, the same server Newnava and Torrentspy use. This provider doesn’t easily move when threatened with law which is probably the reason for the choice.

Appearantly the owners of the Pirate Bay had a full backup of the servers, because all the torrents are back online. Not all functions are fully functional yet, but that’s only a matter of time.

The MPAA who was cheering loudly last week when the servers where confiscated won’t be so happy now. An image of the Pirate Bay logo has a small change in it, saying the movie industry can well…. that.

Because the Pirate Bay isn’t afraid of legal actions, these actions will probably come. Meaning for the Netherlands it’s going to be made clear if torrentsites are legal or not.

Source: The Pirate Bay via Flexbeta