geekwench - Slashdot User

Submission + - Marvel / DC Shut Down Comic Torrents on ZCultFM

Submitted by

trekbody

on Thursday November 22, 2007 @11:07AM

trekbody writes: "After getting into the digital comics business themselves, Marvel along with marketplace rival DC have contacted the proprietory of www.zcultfm.com, a comic community and torrent sharing site. ZCult has taken their tracker down to assess the problem, after receiving e-mail letters from both companies. Marvel apparently had asked for the entire site to be taken down, but ZCult owner "Serj" vows to keep the site alive, even without torrents. More information is available in zCultFM forums... http://zcultfm.com/~comic/ or this page from TorrentFreak... http://torrentfreak.com/marvel-dc-comics-target-bittorrent-071122/"

Submission + - Japan Immigration directed to forcibly take prints (yahoo.co.jp)

Submitted by CB-in-Tokyo on Wednesday November 21, 2007 @05:09PM

CB-in-Tokyo writes: In reaction to the protests caused by Japan's new fingerprinting system, the Ministry of Justice has issued a directive (English Translation) that all foreigners that do not agree to give their fingerprints be incarcerated and "pursuaded" to give their prints, immediately to be followed by deportation. Immigration officials state that during the period of incarceration, "We will sufficiently persuade the refuser to cooperate, and endeavor not to do this by force."

The new fingerprinting and photographing system is under a lot of fire by the foreign community in Japan as it targets not only tourists, but also permanent residents. The system is being presented outwardly as a way to counter terrorism, but is being touted internally by celebrity spokespeople as a way to cut down on foreign crime in Japan. It is illegal under Japanese law to fingerprint citizens, unless they have been accused of a crime, however foreign residents have no such protection, and now under the new directive foreigners who refuse will no longer not just be refused entry, but also coerced into providing personal biometric data.

Submission + - Divorce PC-Style

Submitted by

Hugh Pickens

on Monday September 17, 2007 @01:49PM

Hugh Pickens writes: "The New York Times is running a story on how traces of Web site visits, mobile telephone records, and hacked e-mail accounts are becoming the fodder of many divorce proceedings. "Google and Yahoo may know everything, but they don't really care about you," says one attorney but "no one cares more about the things you do than the person that used to be married to you." One lawyer says three-quarters of her cases now involve some kind of electronic communications and that she routinely asks judges for court orders to seize and copy the hard drives of her clients' spouses. Although lawyers must navigate a complex legal landscape governing the admissibility of electronic evidence, if the computer in question is shared by the whole family, or couples have revealed their passwords to each other, reading a spouse's e-mail messages and introducing them as evidence in a divorce case is often allowed. "The only thing you can truly erase these things with is a specialty Smith & Wesson product," says one investigator. "Throw your computer into the air and play skeet with it.""

Submission + - Fantasy Author Robert Jordan Dead at 58 (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by on Monday September 17, 2007 @01:35PM

An anonymous reader writes: Author Robert Jordan, whose was best known for the Wheel of Time series of fantasy novels has died of a rare blood disease aged 58.

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