A new law proposed by the Italian Government could see the citizens of Italy requiring a licence to upload videos to the Internet from the Communications Ministry, which could reduce the freedom of communications, according to lawmakers opposed to the new law.
If the law passes, this would make Italy the only country in Europe and the Western world to require government approval to upload videos -- even as simple as a cat playing a piano or sharing video recorded on a holiday to share with friends.
"Italy joins the club of the censors, together with China, Iran and North Korea," said Vincenzo Vita from the Democratic Party.
NEWS IN BRIEF: The big four record labels are seeking one million Swedish kronor from two of the Pirate Bay founders, Gottfird and Fredrik; claiming that they have failed to comply with a court order by the Stockholm District Court to cease operating the site. Despite an appeal granted; Universal Music, EMI Music, Sony Music and Warner Music argue that the since that the site is operational, the two must still be involved one way or another and intend to get their fine of 500,000 kroner each for failing to comply with the court, which was the fine outlined in the court ruling.
According to TorrentFreak, the two currently live outside of Sweden, and proving that either one is still involved in an active role on the site will be difficult without monitoring every step they make.
Two call centre operators have been given the sack as an investigation gets under way on why a commuter's Go card, Queensland government's paperless ticketing system for its public transport network, was stripped of funds and the money transferred to another account belonging to a different commute. The commuter that was affected was Nick Smith, who works as a cameraman for Channel Nine.
This incident has now raised questions on how secure the system is, which contains information of linked bank accounts and credit card details.
While acting Queensland Premier Paul Lucas has said that security protocols were not followed, he tried to ease concerns.
"People have raised a number of concerns about how the Go Card was rolled out in the last week or so and I've got to say we have to do better with that and Translink has got to make sure that it is doing everything in its power to make sure that people get appropriate and proper levels of service," he told the ABC.
The Go Card, like the myki card system implemented in Victoria, has been marred in controversy, including forcing commuters to pay higher fares because of the lack of availability - upping the fares by 40 percent for those who don't have a Go card, and 20 percent for those who have. As well, there were a lack of places to actually get the card, with only 34 of the 144 train stations around Queensland sell the Go card.
For me, however, it does raise questions on the security of the myki system.
First Kevin Rudd, then Barack Obama and now Yukio Hatoyama? Hatoyama, who is the current Japanese Prime Minister, has decided to join a long list of politicians who are hoping to gain some youth creditability by launching a blog and tweeting - especially when his government's support rating has dipped after taking control from the long-running Liberal Democratic Party of Japan in September last year.
His blog, titled Hato cafe, aims to "burying the gap between people and politics as well as changing this country together," according to Hatoyama. He even uploaded a picture of his office roof from his mobile phone camera, and promises to tweet once a day to get the hang of it (though, we are highly sceptical that he will be doing so and maybe get an aide to do it for him).
One little problem - it looks like it may be in hiatus for a couple of months sometime in the year because it is an election year for its upper house, as laws currently prohibit internet political campaigning; though they are considering in lifting the ban as many young politicians start using the Internet to campaign, following in the footsteps of Barack Obama - including Twitter, which has gain in popularity in the country after the microblogging site opened a localised version in April 2008.
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NEWS IN BRIEF: President Barack Obama has chosen Howard Schmidt to take up the role as the national cybersecurity coordinator, according to an “administration official” talking to the Washington Post. The role will coordinate cybersecurity policy across the federal government – including the military agencies.
Schmidt, who is the president of the not-for-profit consortium Information Security Forum and was a cyber-adviser to the former Bush administration, will report to the national security advisor. Schmidt was also the chief security officer at Microsoft and the chief information security officer at auction site eBay.
The position is said to be announced on Wednesday (Tuesday in Washington DC), and does not require the Senate to confirm his role.
Google has today written a scathing blog post on the Australian Government’s plan on bringing mandatory ISP level filtering to millions of internet users in Australia, citing a report by three professors that found a wide scope of content that could be blocked under “Refused Classification”.
The report claims that because the RC classification is so broad, content that are socially and politically controversial – like education content on safe drug use – and instructions of crimes, including euthanasia, could be blocked alongside child sexual abuse material.
The Federal Government has today announced that it will give the green light to the compulsory internet filtering plan, after a controversial trial to filter the internet was conducted earlier in the year, with the legislation being introduced in Parliament next year.
“ISP filtering reduces the risk of Australians being inadvertently exposed to RC-rated material when they are online,” Senator Stephen Conroy, the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, said in a media release.
“The report into the pilot trial of ISP-level filtering demonstrates that blocking RC-rated material can be done with 100% accuracy and negligible impact on internet speed.”
Remember in October when Nokia filed a lawsuit against Apple for patent violations that relate to wireless handsets? Well, we are never going to hear the end of this since Apple has filed a countersuit against Nokia for basically the same thing, but this relates to a range of patents that include scaling and rotation on a touchscreen. Apple is also asking for monetary damages and legal fees.
According to Reuters, Nokia starting to focus on its patent portfolio after it lost a lawsuit to Motorola in 1989 for breaching its patents, with the Finnish phone maker – which was a newcomer to the market at that time – paying $10 million to settle.
As well, it is said that virtually all of the mobile manufacturers, with the exception of Apple, that have signed license arrangements with Nokia.
In the lawsuit filing, Apple also claimed that Nokia wanted unreasonable licensing terms for their patents, including a cross-license for Apple’s patents on various patents relating to the iPhone – something that Apple was not going to give; though, Engadget also points out that Nokia asks the court to make Apple pay the due license fees on its patents.
If you search on Google, or any other search engine for that matter, for “Ron Livingston” (the guy on the right), you would be given his IMDB page, where it states he starred in Office Spaces and Sex and the City. Also, the second result would be his Wikipedia page, but it might be a tad bit inaccurate about his personal life.
Livingston, tired of having his Wikipedia page being edited (starting in May of this year) to say he is in a gay relationship with Lee Dennison, has decided to sue the anonymous trouble maker. It should be noted that he is married to a female, Rosemary De Witt.
Currently, his Wikipedia page mentions no references to his ‘relationship’ with Dennison, but previous entries – including one on December 5, has this line:
Livingston lives in Los Angeles with his life partner Lee Dennison. Livingston and Dennison married November 2nd, 2009 in San Francisco.
According to TMZ, this has also continued on Facebook, where the anon created fake profiles of both Livingston and Dennison and list their relationship status with each other.
The lawsuit, filed in the Los Angeles County Superior Court yesterday, seeks unspecified damages for libel, invasion of privacy, and using his name and likeness without permission. While details are minimal, this could be interesting since it would require Wikipedia to reveal the identity of the poster.
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A new law proposed by the Italian Government could see the citizens of Italy requiring a licence to upload videos to the Internet from the Communications Ministry, which could reduce the freedom of communications, according to lawmakers opposed to the new law.
