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Some Big Providers To Quietly Begin Monitoring Users
The people who want control over the Internet are nothing if not persistent. They are quite capable of learning from their mistakes, too. So it should perhaps come as no surprise that they have licked their wounds and regathered their forces after the resounding defeat of SOPA. They’ve come up with a new scheme to protect their precious copyrights; a kinder, gentler version of SOPA that, while it enables spying, supposedly has education more in mind than punishment. Continue reading
Posted in News, Security
Tagged CAS, DMCA, file sharing, Net neutrality, peer-to-peer, privacy, Protect IP Act, SOPA
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Good News that Nobody Noticed: IPv6 Launched
The world passed a significant milestone on June 6, and no one noticed the great sigh of relief that went up around the world. And that’s just the way it should be. On that day, World IPv6 Launch Day, the new Internet addressing system, was successfully put to work. We know that it was successful because it did not break the Internet. IPv6 is the successor to IPv4, the numerical addressing system used by the Internet up until now. But IPv4 is running out of numbers, though still being issued. But with enough addresses to cover a bit more than half the population of the planet (“only” 4.3 billion addresses), the Internet’s continued growth depends on rolling out a new system before the crunch came. However, there were some real uncertainties involved, as this turnover is historically unique. Nothing like this has never been done before nor will be again. The problem is that IPv6, while similar to IPv4 in structure and function, is not actually compatible with the older system. Like the Y2K scare, fixes involving new software had to be inserted into existing servers and gateways to make it work. Happily, that, and all the other challenges, were overcome in time. IPv6 seems to function without a hitch. Here are some of the major players who have turned on their IPv6 connections: Akamai ATT&T Bing Cisco Comcast Facebook Google Limelight Time Warner Yahoo! etc. Unlike the old, the … Continue reading
CISPA: The Fight for Privacy Continues
The price of freedom, it is said, is eternal vigilance. That has been demonstrated once again in the ongoing legal struggle over privacy on the Internet. The celebration and congratulations among the people who united to defeat SOPA, the “Stop Online Piracy Act“, the last proposed draconian legislation aimed at protecting copyright and intellectual property, had not even ended before another such bill was proposed. This one is called CISPA, the “Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act“, which indicates it’s a somewhat different beast than SOPA, directed against hackers rather than file-sharers. (You can download a PDF of the actual bill, H.R. 3523, here.) It’s not quite SOPA risen like a zombie from the grave, but it is written in such ambiguous language that many privacy advocates consider it even more insidious and potentially harmful. CISPA, opponents claim, allow “cyber entities” such as ISPs, social networks, and cell phone and other service providers, to circumvent Internet privacy laws. It allows the government to monitor online communications if it suspects any kind of cybersecurity threat to be involved. And since the bill does not really define cybersecurity, that leaves the door wide open, allowing virtually anyone to be spied on for any reason. Not only the government is given this power. If a cyber entity thinks a threat is involved, it can take action. The only safeguard built in is that it cannot be done for “unfair competitive advantage”. All that’s … Continue reading
Posted in News, Security
Tagged CISPA, copyright, cybercrime, EFF, file sharing, Protect IP Act, security, SOPA
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