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Pirated copies of a Windows 7 build pegged by many as the beta Microsoft will release next month have leaked to the Internet, according to searches at several BitTorrent sites.  [click to continue...]

Censorship/security via filtering is a growing commercial opportunity that certain big IT companies are eager to get a piece of and, many are already actively lobbying for or privately supporting the government plans to legislate mandatory ISP-level filtering.  [click to continue...]

Full credit to Senator Stephen Conroy for being the bravest man on the Internet, declaring BitTorrent filtering a possibility.Say what you will about Senator Conroy’s Internet filtering plans – described by some as like trying to “boil the ocean” – but the man has Cajon’s.  [click to continue...]

Chinese authorities have begun blocking access from mainland China to the Web site of The New York Times even while lifting some of the restrictions they had recently imposed on the Web sites of other media outlets.  Access to the Web site was not restricted on Friday in Hong Kong, which Britain returned to Chinese rule in 1997 but which still allows freedom of speech, including on the Internet.
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The issue  The music industry reports a reduction in CD profits over recent years, which has motivated them to push for control over how consumers access and store music. One proposal made by the Music Industry Piracy Investigations (MIPI) has proposed that Australian ISPs adopt a ‘three strikes and you’re out’ notice and disconnection scheme.  Copyright holders, including the music industry, have already benefited from substantial changes to copyright laws, such as lengthening terms of protection by 20 years and increased civil and criminal penalties for copyright infringements.

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Bloggers cry “foul” as web censor ring tightens  IT has been dubbed the Great Barrier — a vast ring of censorship that the Government wants to wrap around the internet, ostensibly to protect the young from child pornography.  If the Great Barrier is erected, opponents say, internet censorship will be as draconian in Australia as in China, and perhaps worse.

www.theaustralian.news.com.au

Nepomuk’s software is available for several computer platforms and now comes as a standard component of the K Desktop Environment (KDE), a popular graphical interface for the Linux operating system.   Nepomuk is distinguished by a more practical vision, says Ansgar Bernardi, deputy head of knowledge management research at DFKI. The software adds a lot of semantic information automatically and encourages users to add more by making annotated data more useful.

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And the Communications Minister, Stephen Conroy, has written to critics saying that the so-called “live” trials would be “a closed network test and will not involve actual customers”.  [click to continue...]

The company’s goal was to develop new products that would reduce its nearly total reliance on selling ads connected to Internet searches. Products such as Google Checkout, a Web payment service, and Google TV Ads, which sells television advertising time, haven’t generated significant revenue, leaving online ads still accounting for 97% of revenue. This month, it plans to do the same with Lively, a “virtual world” launched this summer where online users can create characters and rooms for them to hang out in. Google explained that it wants to “prioritize our resources and focus more on our core search, ads and apps business.”  Google is also rethinking its practice of providing some Web services without ads, so that it can generate more revenue.

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