Very interesting analysis by Jeremy Wagstaff on Google search trends for "commit suicide painlessly", "how to commit suicide", and suicide statistics. He questions the possible correlation of this to economic climate.

We found it rather ironic that, just as French President Nicolas Sarkozy was so adamant about passing a three strikes law to kick file sharers off the internet, he was being accused of copyright infringement himself, specifically for using music from the US band MGMT at an event and in two online videos without securing a license. Now, you might hope that this would cause Sarkozy to rethink his stance on copyright infringement. Instead, it looks like his political party has simply agreed to pay up and make the issue go away, while still pushing for the three strikes law. It sounds like they paid about 30,000 euros, which is a lot more than the single euro that Sarkozy's party initially offered (yes, seriously). No word on whether or not this counts towards the number of strikes on Sarkozy's internet connection.

As an experiment, we geolocated a list of about 2,000 web proxies (unique IP addresses and port numbers) that were shared on Twitter and other web sites over the course of the last week, to see if we could discern patterns in the places that are hosting them.

The global software piracy rate rose to 41% in 2008 from 38% in 2007, costing rights owners an exchange-rate adjusted $50 billion, according to a joint study between the Business Software Alliance (BSA) and IDC released last week. One of the factors driving greater piracy is increased high-speed Internet access, particularly in emerging markets where piracy rates are the highest. Software piracy is rampant on many Internet channels, including peer-to-peer (P2P) networks, auctions sites and websites. On auction sites alone, software piracy is estimated to be between 50% and 90%, according to an earlier BSA report. Other key findings from the May 2009 joint study include: * Even though global software piracy increased overall in 2008, the piracy rate actually dropped in 52% of the 110 countries studied and stayed the same in 35% of them * The impact of the global economic recession on software piracy is so far mixed, as reduced buying power is just one of many factors affecting piracy * Sites offering access to pirated software also spread malware. According to a 2006 IDC study, 29% of websites and 61% of P2P sites offering pirated software attempt to distribute malware. * While the US has the lowest piracy rate in the world-20%-it suffered the largest revenue loss in 2008 due to piracy given its leadership position in the global software industry

Anti-piracy groups and lawyers across Europe are unmovable - they say that since they logged a copyright infringement from a particular IP address, the bill payer is responsible. Now a court in Rome has decided that on the contrary, an IP address does not identify an infringer, only a particular connection.

Zainab Bawa: "It is presumed that providing such information will encourage people to engage with the state and participate in monitoring its activities. My aim in this post is to dissect this logic somewhat further and to highlight some of the political dynamics which complicate any simple understandings of transparency and information access. I will conclude this post by making some tentative remarks on the possible ways in which information access can be configured in order to serve certain local needs."

Infosys blog repost of CIS workshop

How many children today are becoming Socrates' nightmare, decoders of information who have neither the time nor the motivation to think beneath or beyond their googled universes? Will they become so accustomed to immediate access to escalating on-screen information that they will fail to probe beyond the information given to the deeper layers of insight, imagination, and knowledge that have led us to this stage of human thought? Or, will the new demands of information technologies to multitask, integrate, and prioritize vast amounts of information help to develop equally, if not more valuable, skills that will increase human intellectual capacities, quality of life, and collective wisdom as a species?

Google has banned subscribers to its Korean blogging platform, Textcube (www.textcube.org), from uploading songs onto their blogs, citing the country's new anti-file sharing provisions aimed at thwarting online piracy. This is the first time that the U.S. giant has disabled its bloggers from posting music files on their personal Web pages. Last month, Google blocked users from posting videos and comments on the Korean site of YouTube (kr.youtube.com), its online video service. This was to avoid the new regulations that mandate Internet users to make verifiable real-name registrations on all Web sites with more than 100,000 daily visitors, which means they have to submit their resident registration codes, the Korean equivalent of social security numbers.

The government recently released Decree 47, raising the maximum fine for copyright infringement from 70 million to 500 million dong. The highest fine will be imposed in the following cases: appropriating copyrights, directly or indirectly copying shows, directly or indirectly copying visual and audio recording works, copying broadcasting programmes, appropriating related rights. The decree also stipulates supplementary forms of punishment and measures to repair damages. Vietnam Literary Copyright Centre Director Doan Thi Lam Luyen said: "The new decree is harsher but it is insufficient if only a fine is applied. While someone who steals a chicken or a cow faces imprisonment, stealing intellectual products only results in a fine." The new decree will take effect on June 30, 2009.

But, where PRS really shines is in threatening tons of small businesses. Over the years, we've had stories on PRS threatening car repair shops, because mechanics in the garage were playing their radios loud enough that customers in the waiting room could hear them. That's a public performance, according to PRS. Then they went after a police station because some cops were listening to radios. Then they went after a children's charity for singing Christmas carols without paying up. The group has even been known to call up small businesses and if they hear music in the background, demand payment, including one case involving a guy working at home with his dog. Apparently, that constitutes a "public performance." The latest (sent in by a few folks) is that PRS has now threatened a woman who plays classical music to her horses in her stable to keep them calm. She had been turning on the local classical music station, saying that it helped keep the horse calm -- but PRS is demanding £99 if she wants to keep providing such a "public performance." And it's not just a one-off. Apparently a bunch of stables have been receiving such calls.

The Information Technology (Amendment) Act, 2008 was passed by both the Houses of Parliament on 23.12.08. The Act was notified after the assent of the Hon'ble President on 5.2.2009. The Depertment has prepared following draft rules under the IT(Amendment) Act., 2009 : 1. Section 52 - Salary, allowances and other terms and conditions of service of Chairperson and Members. 2. Section 54 - Procedure for investigation of misbehaviour or incapacity of Chairperson and Members. 3. Section 69 - Directions for Interception, Monitoring and Decryption of Information 4. Section 69A - Blocking for public access of any information generated, transmitted, received, stored or hosted in a computer resource 5. Section 69B - Monitoring and Collecting Traffic Data or information 6. Section 70B(1) - Appoint an agency of the Government to be called the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team 7. Section 70B(5) - The manner in which the functions and duties of agency shall be performed. Your comments/feedback may be forwarded to Dr. Gulshan Rai at grai@mit.gov.in

By the end of last year, China's internet penetration rate - roughly, the percentage of the country that has access to the Internet - had surpassed the global average, according to the China Internet Network Information Center's latest report. They counted 298 million users, 88 million more than at the end of 2007, mostly because of the huge increase in Internet usage in rural parts of the country. As of last month, there were a total of 13,594,604 domain names registered under ".cn."

China's largest Internet search engine, Baidu, was said to be "responsible for the vast majority of illegal downloading of music in China, deriving significant advertising revenue." But last month China issued an IPR protection plan involving 28 ministries and organizations that had 170 concrete measures to fight copyright infringement. Also, the Supreme People's Court raised compensation for victims from 500,000 yuan ($73,000) to more than 1 million yuan ($146,000). Last year, China closed 192 websites that profited from copyright infringement and uncovered 5719 cases of copyright infringement, Commissioner of the State Intellectual Property Office Tian Lipu said.

The Long Tail was a response to an essay by Clay Shirky, a prominent technology writer who also teaches at New York University. Shirky's argument dampened much of the nascent utopianism about blogs, pointing out that the readership of early blogs followed what economists call a Pareto curve, or "power curve": a small number of sites (the "head") attracted a huge number of readers, but most (the "tail") had few or none. This jarred with the utopian notion of the internet as a new kind of democracy. Why bother to participate if our fates were decided for us by a few block votes? So Anderson turned the notion upside down. The blockbuster was over, he proclaimed, and, like a man possessed, he began to see long tails everywhere. It was the Guardian that lauded this logic by comparing Anderson to Copernicus. The implicit message was that the little people would win. Many people were so keen to believe that Web 2.0 would make the world fairer that they rejected any evidence to the contrary. It was only last year, with an exhaustive study of online music sales by the economist Will Page and an experienced digital retailer, Andrew Bud, that a more useful picture of digital markets begin to emerge. Page and Bud found that most of the songs available for purchase had never been downloaded, and that the concentration of hits was more pronounced than ever before. On the file-sharing networks, the same pattern emerged. So, carrying a huge retail inventory, though cheaper than before, was of little or no value. Now, with Free, Anderson has turned to the criticism that the internet destroyed the value of movies, newspapers and music. Firms could, and now should, cross-subsidise this unprofitable activity, he argues. But cross-subsidies aren't new: they have been the subject of decades of observation by economists. Nor are they a panacea. Alan Patrick, co-founder of the Broadsight media and technology consultancy, points out that despite falling marginal costs, th

"I think we should permanently cut off the internet access of any company that sends out three erroneous copyright notices. Three strikes and you're out, mate."

"This [three-strikes law] is such a good idea that it should be applied to other media as well. Here is my modest proposal to extend three-strikes to the medium of print, that is, to words on paper. My proposed system is simplicity itself. The government sets up a registry of accused infringers. Anybody can send a complaint to the registry, asserting that someone is infringing their copyright in the print medium. If the government registry receives three complaints about a person, that person is banned for a year from using print. As in the Internet case, the ban applies to both reading and writing, and to all uses of print, including informal ones. In short, a banned person may not write or read anything for a year."

The whole proposal is worth reading. But we think Prof. Felten hasn't gone far enough. As Cory Doctorow has suggested, this wonderful idea should also be applied to corporations -- if the Walt Disney Company is accused of copyright infringement 3 times, it should also be banned from the Internet, don't you think?

At the Governor's request, Secretary Thomas will work with State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell and State Board of Education President Ted Mitchell to develop a state approved list of standards-aligned, open-source digital textbooks for high school math and science. This list will be compiled after content developers across the country are asked to and have submitted digital material for review.

The Centre for Internet and Society filed an RTI application to Visvesvaraya Technological University asking it to provide details about its curriculum design, and its tie-ups with various software vendors. (The Microsoft DreamSparkProgram is an initiative by Microsoft where all the students of the VTU would be allowed to download free versions of Microsoft original software and portraying an act of benignity from Microsoft for the student community. Microsoft through this program (with the real intention of suppressing any development of intellectual self reliance of the students), was able to make a deal with the VTU.)