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Submission + - Judge tires of mass P2P filing (arstechnica.com)

Locke2005 writes: Judge Milton Shadur threw out Copyright Lawyer John Steele's 300 count copyright infringement case filed in Illinois based on the simple observation that the lawyer should have known from the IP addresses that the majority of IP addresses accused of infringing were not in fact in Illinois...
Security

Submission + - London Stock Exchange Web Site Serving Malware (securityweek.com) 1

wiredmikey writes: The Web Site for the London Stock Exchange (LondonStockExchange.Com) has apparenty been serving up malware to some users very recently, according to a current Google Safe Browsing Report. Currently Google has identified the site as unsafe, and trying to visit the site using Firefox, Safari, or Chrome will result in a warning to the user. As of 7:32PM PST on Sunday, February 27th, the warnings were still being displayed.

The site has NOT been hacked, and there is a big difference. The alert is likely a result of "Malvertising",, a growing method for attackers to distribute malware via advertising tags

Comment Nowhere near as bad as the headline makes it sound (Score 4, Informative) 131

While it might give AFACT a better description of what it would potentially need to disconnect people, there are a few things in the summary by Judge Cowdroy which suggest even if they did, it still wouldn't happen.

13. Secondly, I find that a scheme for notification, suspension and termination of customer accounts is not, in this instance, a relevant power to prevent copyright infringement pursuant to s 101(1A)(a) of the Copyright Act, nor in the circumstances of this case is it a reasonable step pursuant to s 101(1A)(c) of the Copyright Act.

I find that iiNet did have a repeat infringer policy which was reasonably implemented and that iiNet would therefore have been entitled to take advantage of the safe harbour provisions in Division 2AA of Part V of the Copyright Act if it needed to do so. ... While iiNet did not have a policy of the kind that the applicants believed was required, it does not follow that iiNet did not have a policy which complied with the safe harbour provisions. However, as I have not found that iiNet authorised copyright infringement, there is no need for iiNet to take advantage of the protection provided by such provisions.

20. The law recognises no positive obligation on any person to protect the copyright of another. The law only recognises a prohibition on the doing of copyright acts without the licence of the copyright owner or exclusive licensee, or the authorisation of those acts.

The above taken from the judge's summary of the findings

426. There can be no doubt that the respondent has the contractual right to warn and terminate its subscribers pursuant to its CRA if a breach of its terms occurs. However, that does not, of itself, make termination a reasonable step or a relevant power to prevent infringement in all circumstances. It must be remembered that absent those contractual provisions, the respondent would have had no power to terminate subscribers even if they were found by a Court to have infringed copyright. The CRA constitutes the respondent’s standard contractual terms used by a wide variety of subscribers. Consequently, and unsurprisingly, the CRA seeks to provide sufficient contractual terms to cover all eventualities, both existing at the time of the writing of the CRA and into the future. That does not mean that such terms should or would always be exercised even if a contractual right to exercise them arises. 427. Further, the right to do something does not create an obligation to do something. The doctrine of privity of contract provides that the only two parties relevant to the enforcement of the CRA are the respondent and the subscriber. Should the contract be breached by the subscriber, it is entirely a matter for the respondent to decide whether to act on the contract. Had the respondent taken action against its subscribers based on an AFACT Notice and it was subsequently found that the allegation was unfounded, the respondent would have committed a breach of its contract with the subscriber and been made potentially liable for damages without any indemnity from the applicants or AFACT. In such circumstance it was not unreasonable that the respondent should have sought to be cautious before acting on information provided by a party unrelated to the CRA.

436. The Court does not consider that warning and termination of subscriber accounts on the basis of AFACT Notices is a reasonable step...

The above taken from the full findings available at: http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/cases/cth/FCA/2010/24.html

Australia

Submission + - Film studios lose appeal against Aussie ISP (computerworld.com.au)

angry tapir writes: "The Federal Court has dismissed an appeal by Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft (AFACT) in its claim that Perth-based internet service provider iiNet had infringed on the copyrights of the film studios the body represents. A further hearing to determine costs has been set for 11 March. It is widely expected that AFACT will further appeal the hearing in the High Court. Slashdot has previously discussed AFACT's appeal."
Security

Submission + - Attack Extracts SSL Key From Phone Signal (threatpost.com)

Trailrunner7 writes: Researchers have discovered that some of the more popular smartphone platforms leak sensitive data during payment transactions that could allow criminals to spoof a victim's phone and make purchases with the victim's account.

The conditions that enable this kind of attack are not the result of any vulnerability in a specific phone or application or cryptographic algorithm. Instead, they derive from the fact that smartphones and other devices use more power during certain operations, including cryptographic computations. As a result, researchers at Cryptography Research have developed an attack that enables them to monitor the wireless signal of a smartphone, map the variations in the signal and then identify the part of the signal that includes the cryptographic key that's used during a secure mobile payment operation.

"In general, if you can extract the key from a payment device, you can clone it and you can control the balance. You can mimic the user," said Ben Yun, vice president of technology at Cryptography Research. "It's not that the system itself is flawed, it's that the implementation of the crypto needs to be done very carefully."

Security

Submission + - The anonymous-HBGary story: How it happened (arstechnica.com)

metalcup writes: Ars technica has a wonderful article on how Barr tried to track anonymous, his apparent hubris, and how anonymous 'bitch-slapped' him at the end.
Nate Anderson (the author) doesn't go into the technical details of how the servers for HBGary Federal were compromised, but he pieces together a nice chain of events and conversations between Gary and his programmer (who keeps saying Gary is being stupid), and the rest of the company from the emails and other stuff that anonymous posted on piratebay.

  Thought it might interest the crowd here..

Games

Submission + - Activition Cancels Guitar Hero (gamepro.com) 1

jtillots writes: Activision Blizzard cancels Guitar Hero citing "decling revenue of the music game genre". Also on the chopping block was DJ Hero and True Crime. Fat_bot put it best — it's the new Day the Music Died.
Science

Submission + - Researchers boast first programmable nanoprocessor (itnews.com.au)

schliz writes: Harvard University researchers have assembled nanowires into tiny 'logic tiles' that can perform adder, subtractor, multiplexer, demultiplexer and clocked D-latch functions. While the 960-square-micrometre chips are not currently as dense as 32nm CMOS technology, the researchers say future versions could be up to 100 times more efficient than current electronics, and could yield low-power, application-specific 'nanocontrollers' for use in tiny embedded systems and biomedical devices.
Businesses

Submission + - Music royalty society shown to be complete farce (torrentfreak.com)

euphemistic writes: The Belgian music royalty society SABAM (Société d’Auteurs Belge – Belgische Auteurs Maatschappij) which represents authors, composers and publishers has been targeted by an investigative and satirical show called Basta after receiving complaints about their business practices; such practices include suing a business owner because the TV in his private room could be overheard by public in his shop. Basta decided to test the boundaries of how far SABAM would go to squeeze a buck from those "publically performing" copyrighted works with tragically ludicrous results. English description of the piece can be found here, and the video except from the show (in Belgian) here. Well worth a read for all those who have suspected some music royalty societies have no shame.

Submission + - House Fails to Extend Patriot Act Spy Powers (wired.com)

schwit1 writes: The House failed to extend three key expiring provisions of the Patriot Act on Tuesday, elements granting the government broad and nearly unchecked surveillance power on its own public.

  The “roving wiretap” provision allows the FBI to obtain wiretaps from a secret intelligence court, known as the FISA court, without identifying the target or what method of communication is to be tapped.

  The “lone wolf” measure allows FISA court warrants for the electronic monitoring of a person for whatever reason — even without showing that the suspect is an agent of a foreign power or a terrorist. The government has said it has never invoked that provision, but the Obama administration said it wanted to retain the authority to do so.

  The “business records” provision allows FISA court warrants for any type of record, from banking to library to medical, without the government having to declare that the information sought is connected to a terrorism or espionage investigation.

The failure of the bill, sponsored by Rep. James F. Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis), for the time being is likely to give airtime to competing measures in the Senate that would place limited checks on the act's broad surveillance powers. The White House, meanwhile, said it wanted the expiring measures extended through 2013.

Electronic Frontier Foundation

Submission + - EFF Makes Lawyer Drop the P2P Porn Lawsuit (arstechnica.com)

suraj.sun writes: An angry Texas lawyer Evan Stone has dismissed a file-sharing lawsuit on behalf of a pornographic German film called Der Gute Onkel, all thanks to the EFF and Public Citizen.

When file-sharing attorneys file lawsuits against anonymous defendants, they initially face no opposition—their targets are unknown, so no lawyers speak up for their interests until after the subpoenas have been filed and their names are revealed. The EFF and Public Citizen are out to change that, as they did in the Gute Onkel case. The two groups asked the judge to appoint them as attorneys ad litem to speak up for the 670 unknown defendants—and the court agreed.

A few weeks later, Stone asked the court to dismiss the case.

ARSTechnica: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/02/lawyers-cant-handle-opposition-give-up-on-p2p-porn-lawsuit.ars

Australia

Submission + - Aussie pubs beat bar fights with biometrics (zdnet.com.au) 1

mask.of.sanity writes: Pubs and clubs in Australia are signing up in droves to national and state biometrics databases that capture patron fingerprints, photos, and scanned driver licenses in efforts to curb violence.

The databases of captured patron information mean that individuals banned at one location could be refused entry across a string of venues. Particularly violent individuals could be banned for years.

The databases are virtually free from government regulation as biometrics are not covered by privacy laws, meaning that the handling of details are left to the discretion of technology vendors.

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