The Aliens Have Spoken?

Google Asked to Censor Bad Press

The Church of Scientology, known in Germany as a kind of sect exploiting vulnerable people for profit and based on the sci-fi novels of Ron Hubbard, was reported to have a crack at getting the search giant to censor bad press.

Scientologists pointed out that over the years their cyber-footprint is a bit off with the worldwide web full of negative publications about the cult. Today, Geir Isene, formerly a top level Scientologist turned whistleblower, has announced that the leaders of the Church met with Google’s Sergey Brin and asked him whether it were possible for Google to censor search results so that only positive posts about the Church would be returned on the query “Scientology”.

Well, a rational person would understand what the answer of Sergey Brin was like. Of course, Google’s founder couldn’t agree to do what the sect asked for, but the Scientologists weren’t discouraged and went as far as to try their luck meeting the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) – although the latter had regularly criticized the Church for its stands against online freedoms. Geir Isene begged the Church’s officials to give him a full day to explain the worldwide web to them before having the meeting. Nevertheless, the Electronic Frontier Foundation still put the Church of Scientology into its “Takedown Hall of Shame” which indicates that for a sci-fi based “religion” the latter experiences troubles understanding technology. In his book, titled “From Independent Scientologist to Just Me”, Geir Isene was telling how he tried his best to explain how the worldwide web works.

Spies Are Us??

WikiLeaks Volunteer Appeared FBI Spook

WikiLeaks worker known as “Siggi” Thordarson has recently outted himself as a double agent for the FBI. Media reports said that Thordarson was a long time volunteer for the whistleblowing service having direct access to Assange and a key organizer. Siggi had the role of double agent for 3 months, while earning $5,000 for his trouble, because the FBI flew him internationally 4 times for debriefings.

The guy was only 17 when he joined WikiLeaks three years ago. Thordarson joined after the service published internal bank documents connected to the local financial crisis. So, when the local staff revolted over what they considered Assange’s self-promotion, Julian put Thordarson in charge of the WikiLeaks chat room, making him the initial point of contact for new volunteers, journalists, potential sources, and outside groups.

Thordarson was also the intermediary in the negotiations with the Bradley Manning Defense Fund which led to WikiLeaks donating $15,000 to the defense of its alleged prime source. Two years ago, Thordarson was implicated in a political scandal where a laptop with spying gear was found running unattended in an empty office of the Parliament.

It was reported that Julian Assange promised to back Thordarson in return for total loyalty, and the latter visited Ellingham Hall where Assange was under house arrest while fighting extradition to Sweden. Thordarson is known for his attempts to get Lulzsec to hack Iceland’s government systems. He created and uploaded a 40-second mobile phone video which opened on the IRC screen with the chat in progress and floated across the room to show Assange at work with an associate.

FBI got this video right after they arrested Lulzsec’s leader, Hector Xavier Monsegur (also known as Sabu). The Bureau warned Iceland, and its own huge team came to the country, asking for help of authorities. Although they failed to catch Thordarson, he approached the FBI in two months.

In the interview, he said that he cooperated because he didn’t want to be a part of Anonymous and Lulzsec hack for WikiLeaks. However, the press admitted that the more likely reason was the adventure. In order to prove that he did have an adventure, he showed emails between him and the FBI, flight records for his travels, and an FBI receipt proving that he gave them 8 hard

Here’s A Surprise!

Adobe Will Turn Infringers into Customers

Adobe seems to believe that instead of blaming file-sharers for infringing copyright, the content creators should find a way to make them paying customers. This is why Adobe has developed a plan, and they’re not the only ones to do so.

Anti-Piracy and Content Protection Summit 2013 revealed an astonishing surprise: the Anti-Piracy Operations section at Warner Bros announced the company’s intention to reconsider its position on piracy. Apparently, Warner Bros realized that piracy works as an agent for consumers’ needs. This is why the studio started to adjust its marketing plan to attract people to legitimate material. In addition, the company considers that copyright owners might give consumers exactly what they want and when they want it. Everyone knows why people pirate content instead of buying it – hopefully, the industry is also getting the point.

Adobe has the same idea, saying that the strategy and concept of moving from common “enforcement-led anti piracy” to a “business-focused pirate-to-pay conversion program” is a great change, which involves changes in operational and cultural elements. Today, everyone seems tired of the overall concept and term “anti-piracy” along with the term “content protection”. In other words, the situation feels like an ongoing war which has been going on for more than two decades with the same old “good-guy vs bad-guy” battles.

Adobe went on by saying that while the problem of Internet piracy can’t be ignored, the solution to it can be achieved only by the businesses who are trying to fight against it. The company points out that the core fundamental aspect is not technology, but rather understanding of what is really happening. Within the last 20 years, Adobe has consistently found that very few people actually have real facts about what is happening. But once you have the facts, it will change both beliefs and actions. The company is now taking a new approach – Adobe shifts its focus from boxed products to cloud-based subscriptions. Thus far, the company has already launched Creative Cloud, regarded as a solution to better the prices of Photoshop and a number of other software products.

The representatives of the company admit they don’t think users who pirate their software do it because they are bad or like to steal things. These people must have decided that they just can’t afford it.

Three Strikes & Not Out?

Fate of French Anti-Piracy Law

Four years ago, France implemented the toughest anti-piracy legislation in the world. However, today things may change due to the France’s new government. At the moment, the country’s anti-piracy legislation states that repeat offenders will have their Internet account suspended, but these drastic measures were regarded as unconstitutional and abrasive from the very beginning.

Despite claims of the ex-president Nicolas Sarkozy that the “graduated response system” was a good idea, it turned out that the legislation was too expensive to justify the effort. After so many years and millions of euros spent on manpower and e-mail notices, HADOPI agency may go offline forever. Indeed, 12 million euros annually and 60 officers is quite an expensive way to send out e-mails. Now ADOPI is said t stifle the growth of digital economy. There were proposals to switch from disconnection to fines of 60-80 euros for repeat offenders. The recent reports favored the disbandment of HADOPI, but not before transferring some of its prerogatives to the France’s media regulator.

These ideas proved to gain the support of governmental officials, despite other reports, showing that disconnecting repeat infringers pushed others towards legitimate alternatives. At the same time, a French recording company group revealed that the music industry’s revenues decreased by 6.7% in the first quarter of 2013, with France’s population preferring unauthorized alternatives. Indeed, the number of people visiting “rogue websites” has increased by 7% within the last 3 years. The recording company admitted that disconnecting people from the web is not a solution. The better option is e-mail notification system and bigger fines for repeat infringers. In the meanwhile, HADOPI supporters claim that disconnecting subscribers from the web was never the point of the legislation. Instead, it was meant to be an educational and deterrent measure.

France’s “three-strikes” system was later adopted by other countries, including South Korea and the United States. But the entertainment industry is still recommended to focus more on blocking infringing portals rather than on individuals. It is still to be seen what France will do next and how these changes will affect the entertainment industry.

It’s All A Game?

Apple Forced Amazon to Raise Prices

It turned out that Apple’s price cartel with publishers forced the online retailer to raise the prices of its e-books and enter into similar deals with its publishers. According to Russell Grandinetti, the company’s vice president for Kindle content, strengthened by an agreement with Apple which fixed the prices for their respective e-books higher, the publishers strong-armed online retailer into offering them similar terms.

As you might know, the US Department of Justice has taken Apple to court over price-fixing after reaching out-of-court settlements with a number of major publishers, including MacMillan, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, Hachette Books and Penguin. Actually, Apple’s Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs even bragged about the deal in his biography, where he admitted that the deal meant higher e-book prices.

Press reports say that Russell Grandinetti sat down with Macmillan CEO Jon Sargent. The latter offered a stark choice: it could face a months-long delay between the hardcover release of a book and its appearance on Kindle. The other option was to convert from the reseller to agency model, where publishers have a heavier hand in setting retail pricing. Finally, Macmillan and Amazon ended up in conflict. In result, Amazon yanked the publisher's e-books from its digital shelves, but in the end the company backed down and allowed customers to decide whether they believe it's reasonable to pay $14.99 for a bestselling e-book. The emails emerged where Apple CEO Steve Jobs insisted to News Corp executive James Murdoch that the retailer’s pricing was ultimately unsustainable, but experts believe that it’s mostly because he said so.

Tallyho!

Let's have fox hunting in London, says Boris

Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, has said he would like to introduce fox hunting in London to deal with the growing problem.

The Mayor of London said he knew the idea would cause "massive unpopularity" among animal lovers but said "I don't care".

He described how he had recently been left so angry after his cat was attacked that he was tempted to go out and "blaze away" with his air rifle.

He said: "This will cause massive unpopularity and I don't care. I'm pro liberty and individual freedom. If people want to get together to form the fox hounds of Islington I'm all for it.

"I got wild with anger not so long ago because I thought our cat had been mauled by a fox. I wanted to go out with my 2.2 and blaze away.

"After I had felt these feelings of blind anger to the fox population I started to wonder if his injuries were compatible with cat on cat. It is all too easy to stigmatise people."

He recommended, however, that people with fox problems should call pest control.

Movie Buffs??

New Anti-Piracy Device Developed for Cinemas

Anti-piracy groups may be interested in using a new tool developed by a 30-year-old Indian software engineer. The innovative device meant to spot when people are using their cutting-edge smartphones or handy cameras to record video in theatres.

The developer, Varghese Babu, spent 3 years on creating his invention. However, the price of the device ($27,000) wouldn’t necessarily mean the end of piracy. Though, it can of course mean the end of Babu’s poverty. The developer called the tool “Demolish Duplica”. Basically, it is a hardware unit located in movie theatres. Once anyone tries to camcord a movie, the hardware unit recognizes the equipment used and stops the recording. In the meanwhile, an alert is sent to a server and the anti-piracy cell of police.

The developer explained that his tool can record the serial number of the smartphone or the handycam, along with the details of the location from where the recording was being done. This information can then be accessed by the authorities. The abilities of the new tool also include track tampering of the film during the editing process.

When the developer was asked whether there are any other similar products on the market, he claimed that had there been any other similar tool available, there would have been no pirated versions available of new movies. Varghese Babu also claimed that he had been receiving inquiries from the entertainment industry and now he was completing the formalities for getting the tool patented. In the meanwhile, the US industry experts express doubts in efficiency of such devices in American theatres. Well, it all depends on the MPAA’s decision, of course.

A Dead Loss?

Burglar rings police after bumping into dead body while robbing house

A terrified burglar in New Zealand called police after he bumped into a hanged body while prowling around a darkened house.

The burglar's screams awoke neighbours as he fled the property he had broken into, just after midnight in the North Island city of Hamilton.

He ran home and telephoned police to report the grisly find and turn himself in.

Hamilton-based Senior Sergeant Freda Grace said:"He got a heck of fright, that's for sure.

"It would have been terrible for anyone."

The body in the house was that of a man who is believed to have committed suicide.

Officers who were trying to contact the man's relatives confirmed that his death was not considered suspicious, and said the case would be handed over to the coroner.

Sgt Grace said that in the circumstances it is unlikely the 21-year-old burglar will be charged, but he would be given a stern warning.

Inspector Greg Nicholls, the area commander, said officers were investigating the "most unusual" case, which was unlike anything he had encountered in 28 years in the police force.

"I'm hopeful that this may be a career-changing moment for that burglar," he told the New Zealand Herald.

"I dare say for the burglar, if we remove the criminality of what he was doing, it would be really shocking.

"Can you imagine what that would be like in the dark?" Another police source said the burglar might have decided to turn himself in because he feared he would become implicated in a more serious criminal investigation when the body was eventually discovered.

Caught?

Thief covered face with clear plastic bag

Police caught a thief after CCTV footage showed him with a clear plastic bag on his face.

A drunk thief covered his face with a transparent plastic big as he robbed a Co-Op petrol station in St Austell, Cornwall.

Jamie Neil, 41, was caught on the shop’s CCTV camera and later recognised by an off duty police officer.

During the robbery, he tried to pretend his mobile phone was a gun but was caught out when the screen lit up.

Truro Crown Court heard how Neil and his accomplice Gareth Tilley, 20, were drunk on alcohol and stolen medication when they robbed the shop on September 27 last year.

Neil was sentenced to two years in prison last week. Tilley had previously received his two year sentence.

Speaking after the hearing Detective Constable Steve White said Neil's disguise was the most "ridiculous" he had ever come across.

He said: "Before arriving at the location Tilley disguised his face using a scarf and Neil, being less resourceful, put a plastic bag on his head.

"I investigated the case with CCTV and forensic evidence used to identify the assailants."

The court heard how Tilley pointed his phone at lone shop assistant Kim Clowes, 20, and demanded cash when she realised it was not a gun and pressed an alarm.

Neil then wrestled with her before head butting her and fleeing with several bottles of spirits.

His face was easily visible through the plastic bag and a CCTV image was distributed among the police.

Two days later off-duty detective constable Lauren Holley was driving her mother home when she recognised Neil and called for backup.

Neil, of Bethel, Cornwall, was convicted of robbery last Friday and sentenced by Judge John Neligan, who praised the shop assistant's courage.

Tilley, of no fixed abode, pleaded guilty last November.