The Irish Independent has reported on new revelations by the Irish government that 80 unencrypted laptops along with USB sticks and blackberries were either lost or stolen in the last five years. 5 of these laptops were lost by the Department of Social and Family Affairs alone. Digital Rights Ireland has responded to the incident. [...]

An interesting article over at the New York Times sheds light on the Warner Bros Entertainment and Rowling vs RDR Books. It raises the question whether or not someone can publish an Encyclopedia on a fictional world and possibly make a profit. The author of the Harry Potter series, J.K. Rowling, didn’t mind fan sites [...]

Russell McOrmond yesterday pointed to the fact that the Canadian Copyright Bill has been put on the notice paper, but there appears to be no sign of a copyright bill today. With the latest political shake-up in Canada, it could cause the Jim Prentice copyright reform bill to never see the light of day. There [...]

Says will eliminate any benefit from encryption while “protecting” users. There’s an interesting new video from the recent State of the Net Conference up on Public Knowledge, in which the RIAA’s Cary Sherman discusses ISP content filtering, encryption, fair use, and what role govt should play in it all. The video is an abridged version [...]

Although official release has been delayed until March, BitTorrent users can now download it from tracker sites like The Pirate Bay. Regular people may not be able to get their hands on Windows Vista Service Pack 1 for weeks, but BitTorrent users can currently download a copy on public BitTorrent tracker sites everywhere. Microsoft delayed [...]

Tele 2 will meet next week with other ISPs to decide whether or not to appeal the case. This past Monday I reported how the Danish ISP Tele 2 lost a case brought against it by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry(IFPI) after it refused to prevent its customers from accessing The Pirate Bay [...]

Proposition S expands city’s current telephone tax from simple land-line and most cell-phone calls to include the routing of voice, audio, video, data or other communication information transmitted through fiber-optic coaxial cables, power lines, broadband, DSL or wireless systems. This past “Super Tuesday” election day some 66% of voters in Los Angeles decided to vote [...]

Refuses to take on the role of traffic cop, and says that it generally sees increased traffic as a “good thing.” In a recent interview, Tom Tauke, Verizon’s executive vice president for public affairs, criticizes Hollywood’s efforts to get ISPs like AT&T to begin identifying and preventing copyrighted material from being illegally shared on its [...]

UK police need more time for its computer forensics team to dig up enough evidence for trial. It’s been almost 4 long months now that the BitTorrent world watched in horror as the venerable music tracker site OiNK was shut down by UK and Dutch authorities. After the dust settled the site’s admin, Alan Ellis, [...]

Proves it doesn’t care about music artists and petitions copyright judges to lower rate from 9 cents per song, about 13% of the wholesale price, down to 8% of the wholesale price, or around 5 1/2 cents per song. There is an interesting report via the Hollywood Reporter from early last week that proves once [...]

IFPI wins against case “Tele2,” forcing it to prevent its internet subscribers from accessing the Swedish BitTorrent tracker site. In a remarkably odd and hollow victory for the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry(IFPI), a Danish court has ordered ISP Tele2 Denmark to begin blocking subscribers from accessing The Pirate Bay. According to the Danish [...]

New copyright law allows users to share "degraded" music for "scientific or educational use." The Italian parliament recently passed a new copyright law that interestingly legalizes the file-sharing of MP3s. It allows individuals to publish and freely share "music at low resolution or degraded for scientific or educational use." The kicker comes with the use [...]

Selling phone numbers, among other personal data information, has just gotten legally more difficult recently. The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) has successfully sued a website that sells personal information to marketers without the consent of affected consumers. It seems like such a simple, yet effective scheme. Build a business that collects personal information on people [...]