TorrentSpy Shuts Down for US Residents

According to cnet news, TorrentSpy, one of the largest BitTorrent trackers has been shut down in the USA. This is what they say about it themselves:

TorrentSpy's decision to stop accepting U.S. visitors was not compelled by any court. Rather, it arises out of an uncertain legal climate in the United States regarding user privacy and the apparent tension between U.S. and European Union Internet privacy laws.

I'm not so concerned about TorrentSpy shutting down, but at the same time they are under a judge's order to hand over user data from their servers. That should not happen. Hopefully their appeal is approved.

'Fake Steve's' Identity Revealed

The blogger, who purported to be Apple's Steve Jobs is unmasked.

Teachers Demand YouTube Closure; PPC Demands PS3 Destruction

Calls for YouTube Closure by Teachers

Teachers have called for websites like YouTube to close because of teacher and pupil bullying according to BBC News. A motion claims videos of pupils and teachers being attacked have been posted on YouTube. "Nobody should be subjected to such humiliation anywhere, let alone in their place of work."

This shows how little privacy can there be in the world, when most have a cell phone capable of taking photos and video. I don't see a change in this development any time soon, unless there are some serious legal changes. And they would have to apply in most of the world for them to affect anything. Maybe this is just something we have to get used to.

Parallel Processing Corporation Files Suit Against Sony

PPC claims Sony has breached their parallel processing patent 5,056,000 "Synchronized parallel processing with shared memory". They seek damages and attorney fees with interests, and call for "the impounding and destruction" of Play Station 3 products.

I doubt the suit will hold, but at least they get some publicity...

Vulnerabilities in Vista, Leopard, and iPhone

Here's the news:

Malaysia Cracks Down on Bloggers

According to BBC news, they threaten to use their anti-terror laws against bloggers who insult either the king, or Islam. This is after 11 years of avoiding online censorship altogether.

Developments like this are why I support privacy software and anonymous browsing. One of Internet's most important uses is in my opinion free speech in places it is otherwise difficult. I'll continue to support Tor and Freenet.

Search Sites Care About Privacy?

After Google began to improve its ranking as the worst web site with respect to privacy, other search engines quickly followed.

Yahoo! only cut a few months from Google's expiration times to get ahead. Microsoft, on the other hand, joined hands with Ask in calling for a standard in privacy policies. Ask went even further with their own policy, announcing a tool that will let users have almost complete control over what data is gathered about them (AskEraser press release).

Wow, I wouldn't have believed this would happen, had someone predicted it a few months ago. I wish other web industries would follow, but this is a start, certainly.