ARIN6902 Internet Cultures and Governance

This report is about the errors the filtering software might make. Briefly, there are two kinds of misktakes, over-blocking and underblocking. The effects of each kind of errors are evaluated.

google revealed information about government agencies' requests for removing searched contents from google, Australia is the ninth.

A mapping data base of bloggers who have been threatened, arrested or killed around the world. This initiative gives names, location, actual status and draw attention to the campaigns to free them. Until now it reports 230 cases of threatened or arrested bloggers.

A document that explores the difficulties of Iranian Cyber Activist to fight against the regime. Explain how Web Pages, Blogs and other internet initiatives like Radio Zamaneh, Jaras and Kalameh have been victims of persecution, filtering, and jail.

Adobe is to stop making software tools that allow Apple's IPhone to run Flash. A decision made after months of discussions between the companies. Mike Chambers, Adobe's principal product manager wrote in his blog "Fortunately, the iPhone isn't the only game in town."

Austin Heap, Director of the San Francisco Based Censorship Research Center, explained the development of "HAYSTACK" a software that has been distributed to Iranians since last March to beat internet censorship. "we can through technology allow people to have their basic human right of free speech without fear of retaliation." Austin Heap.

Looks like Facebook has figured out a way to tell other companies more about us at the click of a 'Like' button. On the one hand, it's personalisation at its best, having content served up to a user based on what they like on the sites they visit. But on the other hand, users are unknowingly sharing a lot of personal information about themselves to their networks on Facebook and, inadvertently, the company they just visited via a website.

This is a story not so much about hackers bringing down an organisation's network, but about a virus software breaking down and attacking its own operating system. Just thought it would be interesting to share a story about what could go wrong even when you're trying to protect yourself against viruses. In this case, Coles was affected, with point of sale terminals shutting down as a result of the software bug.

A small video on how text in this visual and digital age, far from disappearing, is becoming a verb... going away from its former linearity, becoming hypertext!  Saw it a few years back, however is still worth sharing!

The University of Sydney's IT Alumni Association will next week bring together IT experts in networking, industry, law, child welfare and ethics to discuss the Federal Government's plans to introduce compulsory internet filtering by Internet Service Providers. Forum details When 6.30pm for a 7pm start, Wednesday 28 April 2010 Where Boardroom (Room 124), School of IT Building, 1 Cleveland Street, The University of Sydney How Entry is free and open to the public but online registration by 23 April is essential. For more information http://www.it.usyd.edu.au/alumni/discussion_forum.shtml

Ridiculous to see that the 'control by confiscation' approach is being adopted by some schools. Refusing to allow kids to engage in technology by way of whatever device is a somewhat naive approach by educational facilities. Are these schools thinking that technology will just go away?!

The year was 2008. The person was Dan Kaminsky. The discovery: DNS has security flaws. Translation: the website you are visiting may not actually be the genuine site. This might take you 15 minutes to read through, and perhaps longer to absorb....but I highly recommend spending time on learning about the technicalities of DNS and the vulnerabilities of its functionality. The discovery of its weak points is what DNS security is addressing. Briefly, it covers the distributed nature of DNS, how cache poisoning occurs and patch recommendations to provide a 'fix'.

Google shows in this maps the requests that different governments have done to remove contents from their services, including the Australian government. A more than respectable effort on transparency.

Google says that this is very much a trial and they don't give details about the requests, mainly all 'legitimate', in the interests of maintaining debate out about internet governance. The site however is launched the same day that 10 governments officially complain to Google about privacy breaches and lack of general accountability, mainly in relation to maps and buzz. I feel there's less transparency than there is positioning!

A group of independent film producers have initiated court actions against over 20,000 Bit Torrent users, through an organisation of their own design, a group of lawyers known as the U.S Copyright Group. This group are demanding users to either defend themselves in court or alternatively, to settle outside of court for downloading particular movie titles. Most accused will settle to avoid the costs of litigation. Actions such as this are worrying as may give rise to a standard in which large numbers of corporates, not only in film but in all types of media, may start bringing forth unrelenting actions against individual users- holding them personally accountable. This is problematic (amongst a variety of reasons) that in the identification process through IP addresses is not 100% accurate, leaving room to wrongly accuse some users.

Gamers in South Korea have been accused of match fixing. It's interesting to see how "real world" problems have entered cyberspace. It raises questions as to what the scope of internet governance should cover, in this case games governance. Should there be rules to govern this kind of act or should a "name and shame" method be introduced?

WHAT? YouTube IS A PARODY ITSELF!

Now I'm waiting for the video: "Hitler founds out that Hitler videos are being taken out of YouTube"

An insightful episode- which speaks about the cyber-crime/espionage and privacy issues which have been linked back to China.

The search giant has hit back at state requests (or court orders) to censor content on YouTube or in Google search by releasing a map showing the number of requests for censorship by country. Google has stated this move is "part of its continuing championing of openness of information" and insists the timing is purely coincidental regarding the complaint from 10 nations that Google releases new products without due consideration for privacy implications (as posted by Liz Gan), Reading the comments in these articles is always insightful. Someone points out that a lot of the requests may simply relate to slanderous items requested by courts to be removed (rather than evil government censorship requests).