Articles by date
08 May 2013
DNS What? Celebrating 30 Years of a Technology That You Use Every Day and Don't Know It by Paul Mockapetris (Huffington Post)
When the domain name system (DNS) was developed in 1983 it was viewed as a way of "making it possible for people to create and use domain names for the things they wanted to access instead of numerical addresses," writes Paul Mockapetris, Chief Scientist and Chairman, Board at Nominum.
Google under pressure to cut $5bn valuation of smartphone patents (The Guardian)
Google could face pressure to write down the $5bn (£3.2bn) value of the patents in its Motorola subsidiary, as the mobile arm faces fines from Europe's antitrust commissioner for trying to use them to block sales of Apple's iPhone in Germany.
China calls U.S. the "real hacking empire" after Pentagon report (Reuters)
China on Wednesday accused the United States of sowing discord between China and its neighbours after the Pentagon said Beijing is using espionage to fuel its military modernisation, branding Washington the "real hacking empire".
US Senators propose law to go after foreign cybercriminals (CNET)
After a slew of U.S. companies' Web sites were hacked, a group of bi-partisan senators is looking at getting a new law passed that combats cyber-theft by foreign governments and hackers.
Apple ordered by German court to change its privacy rules (CNET)
The iPhone maker can no longer ask for "global consent" to use customer information or tap in to location-based data. But the court ruling applies only to Germany.
French, German politicians to pressure Google on tax (Reuters)
Politicians in Germany and France say they will press for Google Inc to be quizzed on corporate income tax after a Reuters report highlighted how the company employs sales staff in the UK while telling the tax authorities that sales are made from Ireland.
U.S. Is Weighing Wide Overhaul of Wiretap Laws (New York Times)
The Obama administration, resolving years of internal debate, is on the verge of backing a Federal Bureau of Investigation plan for a sweeping overhaul of surveillance laws that would make it easier to wiretap people who communicate using the Internet rather than by traditional phone services, according to officials familiar with the deliberations.
Syria cut off from global Internet as civil war rages (Reuters)
Internet connections between Syria and the outside world were cut off on Tuesday, according to data from Google Inc and other global Internet companies.
07 May 2013
Online Pornography's Effects, and a New Way to Fight Them (Wall Street Journal)
It was suspiciously warm, the reception given to a study published a week ago in the Journal of Sexual Medicine. A survey of 4,600 young people in the Netherlands, aged 15 to 25, found the behavioral impact of pornography -- most of it online now -- to be surprisingly small. Reaction to the news? People didn't whoop exactly. But you know they wanted to.
China's Changing Internet Landscape (New York Times)
China was on vacation much of last week for the May 1 Worker's Day holiday, but executives at two of China's most important online companies were busy completing a deal that could reshape the country's Internet.
YouTube Is Said to Plan a Subscription Option (New York Times)
Newspapers have digital subscriptions. Record labels have iTunes and Spotify. And YouTube is about to have special programming for paying customers.
E.U. Rules Against Patent Move by Google's Motorola Unit (New York Times)
The European Commission on Monday made a preliminary antitrust finding against Google's mobile communications unit, Motorola Mobility, for seeking and enforcing an injunction against Apple in Germany over patents essential to smartphones and tablets.
U.S. Says China's Government, Military Used Cyberespionage (Wall Street Journal)
The Chinese government has targeted U.S. government computer systems for intrusion, the Pentagon said Monday in a more direct accusation of cyberespionage than the U.S. has made in the past.
Google Glass Picks Up Early Signal: Keep Out (New York Times)
Google's wearable computer, the most anticipated piece of electronic wizardry since the iPad and iPhone, will not go on sale for many months.
US Senate passes bill letting states tax Internet purchases, siding with traditional retailers (Washington Post)
The Senate sided with traditional retailers and financially strapped state and local governments Monday by passing a bill that would widely subject online shopping -- for many a largely tax-free frontier -- to state sales taxes.
German court convicts, sentences BitTorrent site operator to nearly 4 years (Ars Technica)
A German district court in the western city of Aachen has handed down one of the harshest sentences for abetting copyright infringement: three years and 10 months in prison.
Israel says Google 'Palestine' page damages prospects for peace (The Guardian)
Israeli officials have reacted sternly to Google's decision last week to change the label on its home page in the occupied territories from "Palestinian territories" to "Palestine".
Google Aims To Patent Policy Violation Checker, Potentially Revolutionizing Email Snooping (The Guardian)
We've all come to rely on spell-checkers that correct misspellings as we type. Now, Google has filed a patent for a tool that seems like an evil-checker: a software system that could prevent people from writing out, in electronic correspondence and documents, phrases that run afoul of policies or laws.
EU regulator takes aim at Google over Apple mobile patent lawsuit (Reuters)
The European Commission said it believed Motorola Mobility, a unit of Google, was abusing its market position by seeking and enforcing an injunction against Apple in Germany over patents essential to mobile phone standards.
06 May 2013
Queen's speech: UK consumer bill of rights to cover faulty apps or downloads (The Guardian)
Consumer rights covering products such as cars and white goods are to be extended to apps and music downloads in a consumer bill of rights to be unveiled in the Queen's speech on Wednesday.
On the frontline of the fight against cybercrime (The Guardian)
Inside the tightly controlled security area of Symantec's Dublin headquarters, a screen on the wall flashes up hacking hotspots as they are detected around the world. Last year the company estimated it blocked nearly 250,000 cyber-attacks. One out of every 532 websites was infected with viruses, it said, and 1.6 million instances of malware were detected.
05 May 2013
Privacy in Cyberworld: Why Lock the Gate After the Horse Has Bolted? by Lisa Hannah Collingwood (European Journal of Law and Technology)
Abstract: In this paper, the author sets out to critique the way in which the principles of off-line privacy protection apply in an on-line environment. The UK approach will be focused upon, the objective being to consider what (non-celebrity) on-line claimants might expect in bringing a privacy violation claim through the domestic courts. The essential characteristics of communicating on-line will be examined so as to explore the nature of an action in misuse of private information and the potential hurdles that require to be overcome before a claim in privacy violation can be remedied at common law.
Tax in cyberspace: Online retailers may soon have to collect sales tax. Amazon, oddly, is gloating (The Economist)
Amazon, which became America's biggest internet retailer by selling things more cheaply than anyone else, used to go to great lengths to avoid collecting sales tax from its customers. It issued a map showing employees which states to avoid lest they give the authorities a target for enforcement (some of the biggest states were coded red). In 2011 it shut down a warehouse in Texas after the state's government demanded $270m in back taxes.
04 May 2013
New Zealand's internet bad boy wants to see top U.S. lawman (Reuters)
A trip to New Zealand will put America's chief prosecutor on the same soil as a flashy internet mogul who is fighting extradition to the United States on charges he assisted massive piracy of copyrighted movies and music.
Dark web drugs site Silk Road knocked offline by hacker (BBC News)
An "underground" website famed for selling drugs and other illegal items has been targeted in a cyberattack.
