arrrrrrrrr

Torrent files are also used for legit purposes as well. i won’t list them all here, but you can find more info on legit torrents here.

Popular Swedish file-sharing hub The Pirate Bay has been blocked by most of the major Italian Internet service providers, the company said in a note on its blog.

The action follows Italian law enforcement’s actions in last month to shut down Colombo-BT.org, which the IFPI called the largest BitTorrent site in the country and which offered links to 390,000 music and 500,000 movie files.

For its part, The Pirate Bay said it has already changed IP for the site, which the group said should return access to half of the ISPs.

It also recommended Italians switch their DNS to OpenDNS, “so they can bypass their ISP filters,” and directed users to LaBaia.org (Italian for “The Bay”), which is operational.

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Tags: p2p,the pirate bay,torrents
Categories: Censorship, Electronic Communication Technologies
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There is a great article in PC magazine about the death of Usenet.  Started in 1980, usenet was essential in both introducing young boys to porn and creating vibrant online communities.  Usenet has essentially died due to social networking (I mean usenet is so hard to USE right?) and child porn fears.  sad so sad.

via /.

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Tags: death,usenet
Categories: Electronic Communication Technologies
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Perspctv is a new way to look at how people are talking about the presidential election in the USA. I don’t see how this is useful, but hey, maybe someone out there can use this information in some way.

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Tags: election,USA
Categories: Electronic Communication Technologies
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Another week and another accusation that Facebook destroys people’s privacy. However, this accusation could end up changing Facebook in Canada. The Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC), run out of the University of Ottawa, has filed a complaint with the Privacy Commissioner of Canada that outlines 22 problems with Facebook.

The complaint that CIPPIC sent in lists the points succinctly:

We submit that Facebook is violating Principles 4.1, 4.2, 4.3, 4.4, 4.5, 4.7, and 4.8 of PIPEDA,
Schedule 1 by failing to:
• Identify all the purposes for which it collects Users’ personal information (Principle 4.2);
• Obtain informed consent from Users and non-Users to all uses and disclosures of their
personal information (Principle 4.3);
• Allow Users to use its service without consenting to supply unnecessary personal
information (Principle 4.3.3);
• Obtain express consent to share Users’ sensitive information (Principle 4.3.6);
• Allow Users who have deactivated their accounts to easily withdraw consent to share
information (Principle 4.3.8);
• Limit the collection of personal information to that which is necessary for its stated
purposes (Principle 4.4);
• Be upfront about its advertisers’ use of personal information and the level of Users’
control over their privacy settings (Principle 4.4.2);
• Destroy personal information of Users who terminate their use of Facebook services
(Principle 4.5);
• Safeguard Users’ personal information from unauthorized access (Principle 4.7); and
• Explain policies and procedures on the range of personal information that is disclosed to
third party advertisers and application developers (Principle 4.8).

Ars Technica has an article summarizing CIPPIC’s stance:

CIPPIC points out a number of other violations that have raised the eyebrows of users for some time now. Facebook fails to disclose why every third-party Facebook application must have access to every bit of a user’s personal data (this is something that annoys me, personally), and requires the submission of a user’s date of birth upon registration even though there are no age guidelines for using the service. Facebook also fails to obtain express consent to share users’ personal information by making all information partially public by default (users can change privacy settings after saving the information first). The same goes for photographs uploaded by the user, or photos uploaded and tagged by others that then show up on the user’s profile by default—whether they like it or not.

Read the report from CIPPIC (PDF)

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Tags: Canada,facebook,privacy,social networking
Categories: Electronic Communication Technologies
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“I was able to gain access to a world that most middle-aged academics never get to,” University of Toronto researcher said after following thousands of teen texting conversations. Texting, according to research, is not a harbinger of linguistic decline but much more like the telegraph before it: Another facet in the constant evolution of language.According to the editor-in-chief of the Canadian Oxford Dictionary, “(m)any people have this black-and-white view of language, that some things are always right and wrong,” she said. “That’s not how it works.” Instead of the end of the English language, teen texters of today are in fact innovators for the future.

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Tags: english,im,language,linguist,lol,texting,university of toronto
Categories: Electronic Communication Technologies
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Wired:  A study, written for U.S. Special Operations Command, suggested “clandestinely recruiting or hiring prominent bloggers.”Since the start of the Iraq war, there’s been a raucous debate in military circles over how to handle blogs — and the servicemembers who want to keep them. One faction sees blogs as security risks, and a collective waste of troops’ time. The other (which includes top officers, like Gen. David Petraeus and Lt. Gen. William Caldwell) considers blogs to be a valuable source of information, and a way for ordinary troops to shape opinions, both at home and abroad.

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Tags: american military,military,wired
Categories: Electronic Communication Technologies
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Slashdot: The SANS Internet Storm Center reports about an increasing number of sophisticated and targeted cyber attacks against Tibetan NGOs. These attacks appear to be related to attacks against other anti-chinese groups like Falun Gong. ‘There is lots of media coverage on the protests in Tibet. Something that lies under the surface, and rarely gets a blip in the press, are the various targeted cyber attacks that have been taking place against these various communities recently.

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Tags: china,cyber attack,tibetan
Categories: Electronic Communication Technologies
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Siva Vaidhyanathan in connection with the Institute for the Future of the Book is writing a book “ dedicated to exploring the process of writing a critical interpretation of the actions and intentions behind the cultural behemoth that is Google, Inc. The book will answer three key questions: What does the world look like through the lens of Google?; How is Google’s ubiquity affecting the production and dissemination of knowledge?; and how has the corporation altered the rules and practices that govern other companies, institutions, and states?”

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Tags: googlization,institute for the future of the book,monopoly,vaidhyanathan
Categories: Electronic Communication Technologies
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