http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20090309054924787
NZ: Invasion of Privacy:Penalties and Remedies
Monday, March 09 2009 @ 05:49 AM EDT Contributed by: PrivacyNews
Invasion of Privacy:Penalties and Remedies NZLC IP14, Wellington 2009, is an issues paper which reviews the adequacy of New Zealand's civil, criminal and regulatory law to deal with invasions of privacy. In particular, it looks at the tort of privacy and surveillance. The paper raises questions and options for discussion and comment. The Commission welcomes any comments or submissions on the Issues Paper, which is available by clicking on the heading above. The closing date for submissions is Friday 29 May 2009. Submissions should be directed to General Manager, Law Commission, PO Box 2590, Wellington 6140, or by email to privacy@lawcom.govt.nz. The paper can be downloaded free from this website. Related to the Review of Privacy project.
Source - Law Commission
You can “prove” anything if you offer enough cash. This is so “last century.” Why bother when you can tap into financial service computers directly?
http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/03/08/140216&from=rss
Film Piracy, Organized Crime and Terrorism
Posted by Soulskill on Sunday March 08, @09:51AM from the fair-and-balanced dept. Movies The Almighty Buck News
flip-flop writes
"The RAND Corporation has just released a lengthy report titled "Film Piracy, Organized Crime, and Terrorism" which attempts to link all three. The authors suggest that organized crime might be financing itself in part through movie piracy (PDF) — and in three out of 14 of their international case studies, they claim that profits from piracy end up with suspected terrorist organizations. But now for the interesting part! Quote from the preface: 'The study was made possible by a grant from the Motion Picture Association (MPA).' Ah, what a surprise..."
The RAND Corporation has made a video summary of the report as well. TorrentFreak has an article disputing some of the report's claims, focusing criticism on RAND's interchangeable use of the terms "piracy" and "counterfeiting" — the report deals with the physical distribution of DVDs, making only brief mention of digital downloads. The MPAA and others have barked up this tree before.
[From the article:
And though it could point to only a handful of examples where the profits from piracy have been used to support terrorist activities, the report warns that the terrorist connection could increase in the future.
Related Another “Be sure not to use this or you will be breaking the law (and making accessing your books much easier.)” tool
http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/03/09/063243&from=rss
Adobe's ADEPT DRM Broken
Posted by timothy on Monday March 09, @07:39AM from the it-was-just-all-caps dept. Security Books
An anonymous reader writes
"I love cabbages has reverse-engineered Adobe's ADEPT DRM (e-book protection). On February 18, I love cabbages released code that decrypts EPUB e-books protected with ADEPT and followed that up on February 25, with code that decrypts PDF e-books protected with ADEPT. On March 4, I love cabbages was given a DMCA take down notice. And there's plenty of evidence he got it right. DS:TNG (Dmitry Sklyarov: The Next Generation)?"
[From the EPUB article:
Unfortunately for Adobe, this isn't a crypto system, but a DRM system. DRM systems ultimately depend not on the strength of their cryptography, but the complexity of their obfuscation. There is very little obfuscation in how Adobe Digital Editions hides and encrypts the per-user RSA key, allowing fairly simple duplication of exactly the same process Digital Editions uses to retrieve it.
Interesting conclusion! Why would anyone steal content that is easier to obtain from the source?
http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/03/08/2129255&from=rss
Norwegian Broadcasting Sets Up Its Own Tracker
Posted by timothy on Sunday March 08, @04:50PM from the some-things-are-neutral dept.
eirikso writes with an interesting story from Norway; the state broadcaster there has decided to put up some of its content on BitTorrent.
"The tracker is based on the same OpenTracker software that the Pirate Bay has been using for the last couple of years. By using BitTorrent we can reach our audience with full quality, unencrypted media files. Experience from our early tests show that if we're the best provider of our own content we also gain control of it."
Something to keep librarians busy? (Large paper on what may come follows the article.) Perhaps even a chance to “Small Brother” Big Brother's data?
http://howto.wired.com/wiki/Open_Up_Government_Data
Open Up Government Data
Barack Obama rode into office with a high-tech, open source campaign that digitized the book on campaigning.
Now, with his selection of a celebrated open data advocate as his Chief Information Officer, Obama appears serious about bringing those same principles to the executive branch's treasure trove of data.
… Data.gov is coming: Let's help build it.
Geeky Stuff You can ask Google questions (How is PI calculated?) and sometimes you get funny answers like: “How to Calculate Pi by Throwing Frozen Hot Dogs”
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/03/08/2155216&from=rss
Wolfram Promises Computing That Answers Questions
Posted by timothy on Sunday March 08, @05:56PM from the he's-feeling-lucky-you-feel-lucky-too dept. The Internet Science Technology
An anonymous reader writes
"Computer scientist Stephen Wolfram feels that he has put together at least the initial version of a computer that actually answers factual questions, a la Star Trek's ship computers. His version will be found on their Web-based application, Wolfram Alpha. What does this mean? Well, instead of returning links to pages that may (or may not) contain the answer to your questions, Wolfram will respond with the actual answer. Just imagine typing in 'How many bones are in the human body?' and getting the answer."
Right now, though the search entry field is in place, Alpha is not yet generally available -- only "to a few select individuals."
[Calculating PI: http://www.wikihow.com/Calculate-Pi-by-Throwing-Frozen-Hot-Dogs
For those rare times when my students don't understand that I'm joking.
No comments:
Post a Comment