Archive for June, 2010

Further penalties for illegal file sharing in NZ

Tuesday, June 22nd, 2010

The Copyright (Infringement File Sharing) Amendment Bill introduces a three-notice process so that illegal file sharers are given adequate warning of their activity, as well as providing additional assurances to owners of copyright.

Digital sales in Australia and NZ has increased by 41.4 percent, and performance rights returns are up 8.6 percent (International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) figures), and this rise in the industry figures mean intellectual property needs to be adequately protected.

Commerce Minister Simon Power says “Online copyright infringement has been especially damaging for the creative industry, which has experienced significant declines in revenue as file sharing has become more prevalent”.

To read the full article, click here.

Microsoft treads into privacy mindfield

Friday, June 11th, 2010

Microsoft has bravely decided to go where Google and Facebook have tread before….

Microsoft’s bing.com social networking site also searches other websites including Twitter and Facebook for users’ information, thereby increasing the amount of potentially private information which is available about a user.

It has been careful to blog, however, that “For non-fan pages, we only surface popular shared links from Facebook users in the aggregate form, and only from users who have set their status updates to be shared with ‘everyone.’ No names or photos, or even the text in the update associated with the link are published — just the link in aggregate.”

To see the full article, click here.