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News Bytes Tuesday, March 9th 2010, 11:46am EST 'I'm not Jon Venables' News Article Tuesday, March 9th 2010, 11:44am EST More states propose Internet sales taxes. Jeremy Bray received an e-mail message this morning with an unwelcome surprise: Amazon.com told him it had canceled its affiliate program, which provides small payments for referring customers, for everyone in the state of Colorado. The reason? A state law, which Democratic Gov. Bill Ritter signed last week, slaps onerous new restrictions on large out-of-state sellers like Amazon, which said it has no choice but to end its marketing program in response. Bray, a blogger who has lived in Pueblo, Colo., for more than 20 years, told CNET on Monday that he's now trying to "bring as much attention to the issue as possible in hopes of getting Colorado to repeal" the new law. Colorado is not alone. Fifteen other states have considered or are considering enacting laws targeting Amazon and other e-commerce companies that typically do not charge sales tax for shipments sent outside their home state, according to a report released Monday. Four states including Colorado have already enacted them. News Article Tuesday, March 9th 2010, 11:42am EST Girls Gone Wild associate fined $5,000; no prison. A Hollywood associate of Girls Gone Wild founder Joe Francis was fined $5,000 Monday but spared prison time for his role as the "bag man" in the bribery of jail guards to help Francis when he was held in Reno on tax evasion charges in 2007. Aaron Weinstein, 45, originally faced a felony bribery charge but agreed to plead guilty to a misdemeanor of providing contraband in prison. U.S. District Judge Larry Hicks said Weinstein avoided up to six months in prison because he cooperated with authorities in prosecuting Francis and two former guards at the Washoe County jail who acknowledged accepting thousands of dollars in cash and gifts. "One could easily say there should be a short prison sentence here," Hicks said Monday in federal court in Reno. "His cooperation and straight forward demeanor spared him that." News Article Tuesday, March 9th 2010, 11:41am EST EFF Weighs In on FSC's 2257 Lawsuit and Privacy Rights. In the modern age of digital cameras, cell phones and the internet, sometimes it's easy to lose sight of how far sexual content has come, and how ubiquitous it's become, since Congress passed its first version of 18 U.S.C. §2257, the federal recordkeeping and labeling law, in the late 1980s. Fortunately, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) remembers. "At some point in the past, the kind of sexual content that Section 2257 regulates may not have been typically created by the average American," the introduction to EFF's amicus brief in support of Free Speech Coalition's anti-2257 lawsuit states. "But times have changed, with respect to both social mores and technical abilities. Digital cameras and videocameras and the Internet have combined to make it easy and inexpensive for people to take photos and videos of themselves while nude or in sexual situations and to share those images with others ina wide variety of ways." News Article Tuesday, March 9th 2010, 11:40am EST Don't Over Optimize Your Site. A little SEO knowledge can be dangerous. In fact, it can be disastrous for publishers who learn their first few tidbits of information, and then begin to apply it to their sites. The problem it can lead to is known as "over optimization." Search engines look at a variety of signals for ranking purposes, as well as spam detection purposes. This includes a site review to determine if it's over optimized, and can result in the rankings for a site being dropped to a lower position than they may otherwise occupy. Unnatural behavior of any kind can lead to a site being flagged for over optimization. Here are some examples: News Article Tuesday, March 9th 2010, 11:38am EST Minn. Law Would Deny Funds to Hotels That Allow Edgy Porn. Minnesota Sen. Tarryl Clark (D-St. Cloud) has introduced a bill to prevent state employees from spending state funds at hotels or meeting rooms in the state that offer guests adult videos that are deemed too violent. The language of the legislation, which was introduced in February, is somewhat vague on what constitutes restricted content, however. News Article Tuesday, March 9th 2010, 11:37am EST Gay Porn Actor Dies on Camera After Being Tased During Reality Show. Police arrested Andrew Grande (porn name Dustin Michaels) with a bag of weed in his possession, which he apparently tried to swallow. When he resisted arrest, they tased him, and he choked on the bag. A reality cameraman filmed it. This long, difficult-to-watch clip from a Panama City Beach, FL news report shows the 23-year-old's struggle and eventual death. By itself, the pot would have warranted misdemeanor possession. News Article Tuesday, March 9th 2010, 11:36am EST Sen. Tarryl Clark seeks to crack down on ‘violent’ pornography. An anti-pornography bill authored by state Sen. Tarryl Clark, DFL-St. Cloud, and scheduled to be heard this week by a Senate committee earned a lot of attention today — both locally and nationally. The legislation, SF 2861, would forbid all state employees, constitutional officers and legislators from using state money to pay for lodging, training or “any other use” of a facility that “makes pornographic images or performances available to its patrons.”A “pornographic image or performance” is further defined as one that objectifies or exploits its subjects by “eroticizing domination, degradation or violence.” News Article Tuesday, March 9th 2010, 11:35am EST Art or porn? New laws to paint clearer picture. The New South Wales Government says it will introduce laws into Parliament this week to clarify what is art and what is child pornography. The issue was highlighted nearly two years ago in the case of artist Bill Henson, whose photographic exhibition of naked children sparked intense community debate.Opponents of Henson's work described his images as offensive and pornographic, but supporters said the police raid on his exhibition was a case of extreme censorship. The classification board later ruled the photographs were not pornographic. NSW Attorney-General John Hatzistergos says the laws being introduced tomorrow will clear up any confusion. News Article Tuesday, March 9th 2010, 11:34am EST Did The Rozlyn Papa Sex Tape Finally Hit The Web? TMZ is reporting Rozlyn Papa a “Bachelor” castaway now has her 16th minute of fame. During this season of The Bachelor Rozlyn was kicked off the show for allegedly having a sexual relationship with a show producer. That scandal seems minor compared to today’s news. A sex tape starring the blonde bombshell has now made it’s way onto the Internet, that’s if it is her. We here at TMRzoo are always skeptical, typically these tapes are bogus ploys to drive traffic to porn sites. If the tape is Roslyn Papa, Jake Pavelka really screwed up. The woman in the tape is very talented. She handles her gifted lover in every way possible. The clip ends with her ultimately swallowing more than her pride.  News Article Tuesday, March 9th 2010, 11:34am EST Bing ‘censors gay and lesbian searches in Arabic countries’. Microsoft’s Bing search engine has been accused of censoring non-pornographic gay and lesbian searches in Arabic countries. Technology website The Register reports that testing of the search engine in January found it filtered out English and Arabic words related to homosexuality. The test was carried out by Open Net Initiative, which said that people using the Arabic version of Bing in Arabic countries saw a pop-up message when they searched for certain words. News Bytes Monday, March 8th 2010, 9:57am EST James Bulger's mother calls for answers over Venables. News Article Monday, March 8th 2010, 9:52am EST Domain Name Czar Seeks .OnlineUnity. For the last few years, policy makers and netizens have been battling over net neutrality — the idea that the net is and should remain an open, fair platform where packets flow freely and web services just work, everywhere and without favoritism. And they’re trying to find the best way to guarantee that. The problem is hardly new. ICANN, the little-understood, policy-setting body that’s in charge of the net’s address system, has grappled with it, mostly successfully, for years. Now the agency — and its energetic new leader, Rod Beckstrom — is gearing up for some of its biggest challenges yet, as new powers such as China come online in force, and the U.S. cedes some of its historical control. News Article Monday, March 8th 2010, 9:52am EST Duluth willing to name children "Google" in order to get broadband internet. It's an arms race around the country's quieter quarters to get Google to bring broadband Internet to their parts. Topeka, Kansas is so desperate, they are willing to rename the city "Google, Kansas." Gag. But not so fast! Duluth is in on the gimmick too! The city that can waste the most time making fake cheesy videos ripping on each other wins! Duluth has a running start. They are willing to name their children "Google Fiber" just so local creeps can download more porn on the fastest fiber optic connection they can get their hands on. Ick. News Article Monday, March 8th 2010, 9:51am EST Scareware sellers fool Google with file switch. Cybercrooks have developed a new technique for manipulating search engine results in order to promote the crud they sell, such as scareware packages. Hackers first place benign pdf files on web pages they are seeking to promote, before replacing these documents with booby-trapped Flash files once a new site has been indexed. The ruse, which featured in a recent attack themed around ice hockey players and the Winter Olympics, is illustrated in a blog post by Finnish security firm F-Secure. News Article Monday, March 8th 2010, 9:50am EST Patchy Windows patching leaves users insecure. Windows users need to patch their systems an average of every five days to stay ahead of security vulnerabilities, according to a study this week. The numbers come from a company called Secunia which just happens to be developing an all-in-one patching tool to reduce update headaches for consumers. Stats from the two million existing users of Secunia's free Personal Software Inspector tool show the average home user needs an average of 75 patches from 22 different vendors to be fully secure. The complexity of patching means that most users are not even in the race, meaning that hackers hoping to exploit software vulnerabilities to infect vulnerable systems stay well ahead of the game. News Article Monday, March 8th 2010, 9:49am EST ACLU Brief Supports Free Speech's 2257 Fight. The American Civil Liberties Union, long an ally of the adult industry as far as First Amendment issues are concerned, has filed an amicus ("friend of the court") brief in Free Speech Coalition's bid to overturn 18 U.S.C. §§2257 and 2257A, the federal recordkeeping and labeling laws. "The purpose of this brief," writes the ACLU's Mary Catherine Roper, with prominent Philadelphia area attorneys Fred T. Magaziner and Kristina C. Evans, "is to expose how the Statute affects the lives of the millions of adult Americans who create or enjoy sexual images as part of intimacy, in communicating with others, to celebrate beauty, or for a host of other reasons. The burdens that the Statute places on these expressions are not narrowly tailored to prevent child pornography." News Article Monday, March 8th 2010, 9:48am EST Mozilla lays foundation for web's next 100 years. The Mozilla Foundation is best known for Firefox, but as Foundation head Mitchell Baker recently told us, the group's mission is not merely to produce a browser that kills Internet Explorer. "The mission is to build certain qualities into the human experience of the internet. We are in a reasonable spot with the browser, and Firefox is important for the immediate future. But we've barely started in user control," Baker said. What exactly was Baker talking about? According to executive director Mark Surman, that mission involves efforts to make the web more open by removing the web's technological, corporate, and cultural choke points and getting more regular people to give a damn about where the internet will be in the next 100 years - not just those already working in tech. News Article Monday, March 8th 2010, 9:48am EST EU ministers want new life for IP enforcement. European Union minsters have told EU governing bodies to revive plans to create a pan-EU law criminalising intellectual property infringement, and to make more use of a new body to cooperate on the enforcement of intellectual property rights. They have also asked the European Commission to create new laws if cooperation does not work. The Competitiveness Council, which is part of the EU Council of Ministers, has published a Resolution on the enforcement of intellectual property rights. It says that the European Commission should consider reviving a previously-proposed and much-amended Directive that sought to harmonise criminal sanctions for IP infringement across Europe. News Article Monday, March 8th 2010, 9:47am EST 100Mbps broadband closer than you think. If you're looking forward to a future of streaming movies, gargantuan Internet file exchanges, and other high-bandwidth activities, cheer up. Broadband service providers in most of the major markets around the country will soon be able to deliver 100 Mbps broadband service with no problem. That's enough to download a music album in as little as 5 seconds, an hour-long TV show in about 30 seconds, and a high-definition movie in roughly 7 minutes 25 seconds. But it's going to cost you.This should make the Federal Communications Commission's goal of getting 100Mbps service to 100 million homes by 2020 an easily achievable goal. Several weeks ago, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said he is making the 100 Mbps to 100 million homes goal a part of the National Broadband Plan that will be presented to Congress next month.  News Article Monday, March 8th 2010, 9:46am EST Jetton: "Happy" to testify on porn bill controversy. Former Missouri House Speaker Rod Jetton plans to defend himself before a federal grand jury. Jetton says he'll be happy to tell the grand jury about a 2005 bill to regulate sex shops in the state. State Senator Matt Bartle testified last month before the Kansas City grand jury and told reporters that he believes there's a link between a $35,000 campaign contribution from the Missouri porn industry to a political committee. Jetton referred Bartle's bill to a House committee whose chairman opposed it and the bill died. A similar bill did eventually pass that year but it was thrown out by a court on a technicality. News Article Monday, March 8th 2010, 9:45am EST Record Internet Crime In Japan: Child Porn, Suicide, Fraud. China may have been under the microscope for human rights and internet abuses, but Japan is facing its own record cyber crime issues. Internet crime has reached record levels in Japan, with child porn and identity theft driving the illegal activity off the charts. Sadly, efforts to stop child porn internationally have failed to stop the underground drive to provide images of children being helplessly subjected to adult abuse. Cases of child porn online have doubled. Database attacks and copyright violations have also helped push Japan's internet crime stats through the roof, along with bank fraud. News Bytes Friday, March 5th 2010, 8:59am EST Gunman killed after shooting 2 Pentagon police. News Article Friday, March 5th 2010, 8:58am EST Google Research head dubs holy PageRank 'over-hyped'. Google research head Peter Norvig says that the search giant's hallowed PageRank link-analysis algorithm is overrated. And always has been. "One thing that I think is still over-hyped is PageRank," Norvig said this morning during a question and answer keynote at the search-obsessed SMX West conference in Santa Clara, California. "People think we just do this computation on the web graph and order all the pages and that's it. That computation is important, but it's just one thing that we do. "People [webmasters and SEOs] always said, 'We're stuck if we don't have [a high PageRank].' But we never felt that way. We never felt that it was such a big factor." PageRank attempts to measure the relative importance of a website based on what other sites it's linked to. Named for Google co-founder Larry Page - who developed the idea while at Stanford University - the patented technology is a central pillar in the Google Mythology, receiving much of the credit for the Mountain View search engine's rise to world dominance. The PageRank patent actually belongs to Stanford, with Google owning exclusive license rights. News Article Friday, March 5th 2010, 8:56am EST AU Judge Separates 'Anime' Child Porn, But Says It Is Illegal. The Queensland Times newspaper reports on Friday on a conviction of an Ipswich, Australia man who pleaded guilty to "using a carriage service to access child exploitation material." Officials found that Brentford Paul Higgins had viewed 178 child pornography images on his computer between October 2006 and May 2008. According to the newspaper, the defense attorney Bradley Farr said that 32 of those 178 images were "cartoon anime child porn" in which actual children were not harmed. During the trial, Judge Sarah Bradley said that while cartoon child porn was abhorrent and accessing it should remain illegal, it was not as serious as material involving actual children. Bradley added that it was important for the courts to recognize that some of the material viewed involved actual victims. Higgins was sentenced to 12 months in jail and two years probation, but he was released immediately on a AU$1,000 (US$900) good-behavior bond for three years. News Article Friday, March 5th 2010, 8:56am EST Aristocrat disinherits 'porn baron' son from £46 million fortune. The late Lord Feversham, who died in March last year, has disinherited his eldest son Jasper and instead shared his estate with his remaining three children and second wife. His second son Jake, 37, is living in the family home Duncombe Park in North Yorkshire with his wife, two children and Lord Feversham's widow Lady Feversham, an 18th century stately home set in 14,000 acres, which would ordinarily have been left to the eldest male heir. The sixth Lord Feversham, 64, had been estranged from his son for some years and was known to dislike his reputation as one of Britain's leading pornographers. The extent of the family feud was disclosed in newly released documents to the high court. News Article Friday, March 5th 2010, 8:55am EST Internet Explorer 8 still not mingling well with 2,000 highly-visited sites. Microsoft confessed yesterday that over 2,000 well-known websites still remained incompatible with Internet Explorer 8. The software vendor said that the number had dropped by about 1,000 sites compared with figures Microsoft spat out a year ago when more than 3,000 web portals needed “Compatibility View” support to show up on an IE 8 user’s screen. When IE 8 landed in March 2009, Microsoft confirmed that the current version of its browser didn’t sit pretty with sites including the BBC, Royal Mail, Apple, PayPal, Amazon and even its own MSN portal. News Article Friday, March 5th 2010, 8:54am EST MS confirms 'F1 to pwn' IE bug. Microsoft has confirmed that an unpatched Internet Explorer vulnerability makes it potentially dangerous to press F1 if you are running earlier versions of Windows. A security bug in the VBScript technology bundled with Internet Explorer means that it might be possible to create a web site that displays a specially crafted dialog box that pushes malware providing a victim is tricked into pressing the F1 (help menu) key while viewing a booby-trapped site using Internet Explorer. The novel exploit technique works on older versions of Windows (Win 2000, XP and Server 2003). As previously reported, Vista, Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 are immune. News Article Friday, March 5th 2010, 8:53am EST Google says desktop PC is three years from 'irrelevance'. Google's European sales chief says that desktop PCs will be "irrelevant" in three years. This week, as reported by Silicon Republic, Google Europe boss John Herlihy told a "baffled" conference audience that very soon the smartphone will completely eclipse the desktop. "In three years time, desktops will be irrelevant," he said. "In Japan, most research is done today on smart phones, not PCs."Like Eric Schmidt at last month's Mobile World Conference in Barcelona, Herlihy was trying to say that Google's number one concern is now the mobile market. "Mobile makes the world’s information universally accessible. Because there’s more information and because it will be hard to sift through it all, that’s why search will become more and more important. This will create new opportunities for new entrepreneurs to create new business models – ubiquity first, revenue later.” News Article Friday, March 5th 2010, 8:53am EST Daily editor defends porn web publisher exposé. A row has erupted after a regional daily revealed the background of a web manager who runs a community news website on its patch. Yesterday's Hull Daily Mail carried a front page piece about Paul Smith, a digital publisher who runs a website featuring photos and news from the nearby town of Beverley. Following a tip-off that his company Smiths Media Solutions had also designed pornography websites, a Mail reporter posing as an escort girl arranged a meeting with him about building a site for her. The paper's page one splash drew links between Mr Smith and local civic leaders, who had given their backing to him and his Beverley project HU17.net, and the paper also carried a stinging comment piece. "Readers of this newspaper will be understandably alarmed to learn that a man running a community website focused on Beverley is linked to a host of hardcore pornography sites," it said.  News Article Friday, March 5th 2010, 8:52am EST Microsoft to fix eight Windows and Office holes Microsoft will issue two bulletins fixing eight vulnerabilities rated "important" in Windows and Microsoft Office products on Tuesday, the company announced on Thursday. This represents a light Patch Tuesday, a contrast to last month when the company patched 26 holes with 13 bulletins, including critical vulnerabilities for Windows. Meanwhile, Microsoft is continuing to monitor the situation with a VBScript vulnerability that was disclosed on Monday, Jerry Bryant, senior security communications manager lead at the company, wrote in a blog post. Proof-of-concept code has been published on the Internet that exploits that vulnerability, which affects older Windows systems running Internet Explorer. Microsoft suggested several workarounds until it releases a patch, including avoiding pressing the F1 key when prompted by a Web site. News Article Friday, March 5th 2010, 8:49am EST Get Your Search Campaigns Ready for the Yahoo/MSN Merger. Now that all the regulating bodies have approved the Yahoo and MSN search merger, the official waiting begins. Nothing is happening immediately; actually, there are more unanswered questions about the intimate details. Not to worry. We have at least until Q3 before some top advertisers will be migrated, assuming things go well. Even the official press release notes that they will wait until after Q4 and the retail holiday season if things aren't smooth. While all the technical and practical details are being worked out, here are a few things you may want to think about. News Article Friday, March 5th 2010, 8:49am EST Penetrate porn secrets with a USB drive. A security outfit has produced a tool which is designed for parents who run their families like police states. Instead of going to the computer to see if your kid has porn on it, you can stick a USB drive into the machine and it will look for all likely porn pictures on the drive. You may then waterboard the brat, keep him on bread and water, or pack him off for further religious brainwashing. The Porn Detection Stick is the invention of Paraben Corporation, a digital forensic technology provider. According to the press release the stick is a tool that “empowers parents” with the ability to find risks to their children. We would have thought that the sort of parents who would want this sort of thing would have no problem finding risks to their precious snowflakes. They see risks every time he or she moves or breathes. News Article Friday, March 5th 2010, 8:48am EST Google pumps out Chrome build which knows where you are. Google yesterday released a dev-only build of Chrome for Mac OS, Linux and Windows which comes loaded with rough-round-the-edges versions of the Geolocation API. The latest update comes a few days after Google pushed out a Windows-only beta of its open source Chrome browser to its users. Google Chrome wonk Karen Grunberg wrote on the company’s blog that geolocation was switched off by default in the 5.0.342.1 build. Testers happy to reveal their exact whereabouts to websites they visit will first need to enable the API, said Grunberg. Both Windows and all versions of Mac OS X (with the exception of Mac10.6) support Wi-Fi-based location. News Article Friday, March 5th 2010, 8:47am EST FT shock discovery: EU Google probe has MS link. Top sleuths from the Financial Times have uncovered the shock information that Foundem, the minnow that filed a complaint against Google with the European Commission two weeks ago, is in league with Microsoft-funded Brussels lobbying outfit ICOMP, and known Microsoft lobbyist Burson-Marsteller. Heavens! They must have had to read most of the way down the page to unearth that bombshell.According to the pink 'un, this puts Microsoft in the spotlight over the Commission's investigation. "The Microsoft connection has become the focus of intense interest in Brussels," it tells us, quoting anti-Borg Brussels lobbyist ECIS as saying some in the Commission will be sceptical of complaints "that look like they are fomented by Microsoft," and part of an attempt by the company to deflect attention from itself. News Bytes Wednesday, March 3rd 2010, 12:09pm EST Austerity steps to ease, not end Greek crisis. News Article Wednesday, March 3rd 2010, 12:08pm EST Time for porn stars to self-organise. I have been working in the British gay porn industry for almost two years now. On average, we earn £300 for a scene, which may seem a lot based on other jobs' hourly rates, but given that you're not shooting films often, you can't really make porn your main occupation. Unless they are famous and popular, most porn actors have to do other jobs within or outside the sex industry. The money you earn is actually half what it used to be. Productions still make a lot of money, but producers use the democratisation of porn on the internet as an excuse to decrease rates. You are paid in cash and the papers you sign give productions the legal authorisation to use your image. You have to prove you are over 18, but there is no proper contract providing labour rights. Our images may be used over months or years, but we don't receive royalties as those working in the "conventional" cinema industry do. I would like to see the means of production shift to the workers. I wish us porn actors were able to organise ourselves collectively and produce our own films. We could not only film each other, but have control over our own images and improve the quality of our work, because we could spend more and better time doing it. We would be more interested in creating a beautiful and arousing film, rather than just earning money. The workers could share the revenues between ourselves and perhaps porn could be recognised at last as what it should be – an art. News Article Wednesday, March 3rd 2010, 12:07pm EST N.J. appeals court hears arguments over whether blogger is protected by shield laws. In the ongoing dispute between a Freehold-based company and a blogger sued for writing about the online pornography industry, a state appeals panel heard arguments today over whether she should be considered a member of the media and protected by New Jersey’s shield laws. In their questioning of the attorneys for blogger Shellee Hale and Too Much Media LLC, the trio of appellate judges acknowledged they were treading into largely uncharted territory in determining what type of comments on the internet can be considered slander or libel. The appellate panel, sitting at Rutgers Law School in Camden today, is trying to determine whether Hale, a mother of five and a blogger from Washington State, is considered a journalist and a member of the media when she was gathering information in 2009 about an internet security breach at TMM. At issue are comments she posted on a message board of an adult entertainment website accusing the principals of TMM of threatening her life. After court today, TMM attorney Joel Kreizman said Hale may have been acting as a journalist when she was preparing an article for her own website, but he contended she was nothing more than an irresponsible member of the public posting libelous or slanderous comments when she wrote on the message board. Traditionally, slander has been defined as spoken defamation and libel as written defamation. However, Kreizman contends the internet changes that because its contents can be accessed indefinitely. News Article Wednesday, March 3rd 2010, 12:05pm EST Handley's Attorney Comments on Obscene Manga Case On February 11, 2010, Christopher Handley was sentenced in Iowa for possession of Manga books and magazines. The prosecution, which began in 2006, was based on the notion that the cartoon images were obscene. My name is Eric Chase, and I am Chris Handley's attorney. I have been reading some of the comments about Chris' case and have noted some considerable confusion about the process that Chris went through as well as the state of obscenity law in the United States. In the hope that it will help others avoid Chris' situation and aid the understanding of those outraged by the outcome, I feel it appropriate to now explain the case from our perspective. News Article Wednesday, March 3rd 2010, 12:03pm EST Attack On Google And Co. - German Minister Warns Against Power Of Internet Giants. German Consumer Protection Minister Ilse Aigner has launched an attack on the Internet economy, warning that the likes of Google, Microsoft and Apple store vast amounts of personal information on Web users that can be used for financial gain, and can hurt people's chances of getting jobs or bank loans. German Consumer Affairs Minister Ilse Aigner warned in an interview published on Monday that Internet giants like Google and Microsoft hold extensive amounts of personal data on Web users and said the firms should reveal what they know about people. Speaking ahead of the opening of Germany's annual CeBIT, the Hanover-based digital industry trade fair starting on Tuesday, Aigner said some IT companies had built up gigantic databases on their customers and that nobody knew how they were using the wealth of names, addresses and pictures at their disposal. "Sector giants like Facebook, Apple, Google or Microsoft can compile entire personal profiles in the Internet," Aigner told the German daily Suddeutsche Zeitung. "They know what we're interested in, what we buy, where we travel to and who we're friends with. Some consumers become really interesting for businesses as a result, while others may end up blacklisted and have problems finding work."  News Article Wednesday, March 3rd 2010, 12:02pm EST Free porn on 'tube sites' sending adult industry into tailspin. Porn related sales were said to be recording new lows, thanks to the growing popularity of so-called tube sites. Around 1,000 tube sites, offering snippets of free explicit material, have apparently jolted the estimated 13 billion dollar porn industry, unleashing a flurry of copyright-infringement lawsuits. And technology such as video streaming and webcameras, that previously boosted the figures for the adult entertainment industry, was now observed to be working against it by making wide range of free content, including pirated video content or amateur-shot footage, easily available, the USA Today reported. News Article Wednesday, March 3rd 2010, 12:01pm EST Man with the largest penis in the world appears on “The Daily Show” Jonah Falcon, famous for being the guy with the world’s largest penis today, was featured on tonight’s The Daily Show. Falcon gained a lot of attention from the media when he appeared in an HBO Documentary called “Private Dicks: Men Exposed” in 1999. In 2006, he was in another documentary, this time produced by UK Channel 4, entitled “The World’s Biggest Penis.” According to reports, Falcon’s penis measures 24 cm (9.5 inches) long under normal circumstances, and 34 cm (13.5 inches) when erect. Although well-endowed and broke, Falcon has never appeared in any porn movies. He prefers to be taken seriously as a screen actor and writer. News Article Wednesday, March 3rd 2010, 12:00pm EST New Law Would Reveal Porn Stars' HIV Status A proposed amendment to California's Health and Safety Code, sponsored by Assembly Member Bonnie Lowenthal (D-Long Beach, Rancho Palos Verdes), would have serious consequences for adult industry performers. AB 2590, which was introduced on Feb. 19, would amend California Health and Safety Code Sec. 121010, which is the section which sets forth various exceptions to the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), whose purpose is to insure the privacy of Americans' health status, including whether they are HIV-positive, by preventing unauthorized disclosure of such medical information. News Article Wednesday, March 3rd 2010, 12:00pm EST Search Around the World: Italy. In a country known for fashion, cars, and pasta, search engines are taken about as seriously as anything else in Italy. The Italians like to say, "La pratica vale più della grammatica" – in other words, "Experience is the best teacher." Like Google, which endured a media nightmare with the recent Italian verdict holding the search giant criminally responsible for a video that was posted through YouTube, search engine experts need to experience the Italians more to really understand how to operate a search campaign targeted to this country. News Article Wednesday, March 3rd 2010, 11:59am EST DStv's research into the addition of a porn channel has caused a huge amount of controversy. Responses have been mixed, with even some of South Africa's biggest celebrities throwing in their opinions. Ultimately, whether or not there is a porn-only channel should be up to the consumer to decide for his- or herself. The channel can be locked by the subscriber, so parents won't need to worry about Junior stumbling across 'Nasty Naughty Nurses IV'. So the question is: Would you pay for an optional DStv channel airing only pornography? News Article Wednesday, March 3rd 2010, 11:58am EST Spain arrests three accused of running huge botnet. Authorities in Spain have arrested three men accused of operating a massive botnet composed of 12.7 million PCs that stole credit card and bank log-in data and infected computers in half of the Fortune 1,000 companies and more than 40 banks, according to published reports. The botnet "Mariposa," which means butterfly in Spanish, first appeared in December 2008 and grew to be one of the largest botnets ever, The Associated Press reported. It spread the Butterfly worm via removable drives, MSN Messenger, and peer-to-peer programs and targets Windows XP and older systems. Unlike many underground hackers, the alleged ringleaders of the operation were not skilled programmers, but had contacts who were, authorities said. News Bytes Tuesday, March 2nd 2010, 12:22pm EST Head of 'Climategate' research unit admits he hid data - because it was 'standard practice'. News Article Tuesday, March 2nd 2010, 12:21pm EST A Porn King Tells How to Turn Porn Around. As the co-chair of one of the industry’s leading adult film studios and producers, Vivid’s Steven Hirsch brought a strict studio system approach to what was once the Wild West Coast of skin flicks. Unlike many in the industry, the Vivid (www.vivid.com) boss, as he made clear to TheWrap, isn’t about to singularly blame the internet, the economy or anything else for the profit problems porn is encountering. Hirsch is determined to take the bull by the horns, even if that means embracing some very new ways of doing business. The common assumption is that porn is recession-proof -- so why is the industry in such rough shape? News Article Tuesday, March 2nd 2010, 12:20pm EST Court Says Domain Name Is Located Where Its Registrar Is Located. It's been nearly a decade since we first heard about John Zuccarini -- an internet character who made his name by registering a ton of typosquatting domain names, and was sued a bunch of times for it, but avoided dealing with things for a while by being impossible to find. And, even when he was found, he was notoriously vague in answering questions. From a bit of testimony from back in the day: Question: What is your current address? Zuccarini: 957 Bristol Pike, Apartment D-6, Andalusia, Pennsylvania, 19020. Q: Is that where you currently reside? Zuccarini: Not necessarily. Q: Where do you currently reside? Zuccarini: I don't have - that's my legal address. I really don't have a permanent address at this time. Q: Where do you currently reside? Zuccarini: Right now, I am staying at the Millennium Hotel in New York. Q: When you are not in New York for a deposition, where do you live? Where have you lived in the past two weeks? Zuccarini: I have been living in various places. Q. What are the various places that you have been living? Zuccarini: Friends' places. You know, that type of thing. Different hotels. Q. 957 Bristol Pike is not your residence? Zuccarini: No, it's not. It's my legal address. I have a lease on the apartment and that's where I have - some things are sent there which I get. Q: Do you live in Pennsylvania? Zuccarini: I don't know. I don't have a permanent address so I can live anywhere. I don't live anywhere right now. I can't give you a permanent address. Eventually, the FTC ordered that thousands of his sites should be shut down. And then it fined Zuccarini $1.9 million. But, still no one could find him. A year and a half later, he was finally found and arrested leading to an eventual guilty plea. News Article Tuesday, March 2nd 2010, 12:18pm EST Your Locations are Your Biggest Digital Assets. Your site's digital assets -- the images, videos, documents, and other snippets -- come together to make up your site, your brand, and your business. The importance of these easily forgotten files has been growing exponentially over the years with the advent of universal search, and should factor heavily into your 2010 plans with Google's planned Caffeine update. News Article Tuesday, March 2nd 2010, 12:18pm EST Anti-Piracy Lawyers “An Embarrassment To Creative Rights Industry” After mountains of controversy built up in the wake of the ‘pay up or else’ letters sent to thousands of alleged file-sharers, one would think other lawyers might be put off following the same track, but not so. Tilly Bailey & Irvine are the new kids on the block and have just been labeled by a Lord as an “embarrassment to the rest of the creative rights industry.” “I’ve been sent a letter from Tilly Bailey & Irvine, they say i’ve been downloading porn and want £800 or they’re going to take me to court,” said an email to TorrentFreak early February, which was quickly followed by another – and another.We’re used to receiving these type of emails – we’ve been having them in one shape or another since Davenport Lyons (DL) started sending them out in 2007, and more recently from recipients of letters from ACS:Law. News Article Tuesday, March 2nd 2010, 12:17pm EST I've often said that social networking can take up your entire day, if you allow it. You sit down at your desk in the morning, and you see several Facebook event invites and friend requests. As you log into your account, someone's Facebook status update catches your eye, and before you know it, 3 hours have passed while you're reading and responding to social networking messages. How can you possibly get any work done in your business or for your clients at this rate? Facebook doesn't have to be a time hog. As a matter of fact, you can actually handle most of your Facebook tasks in as little as 15 minutes per day. Here's what I do when I log into my account each morning (thanks for wonderful training I've received from Facebook guru Mari Smith for these great tips): News Article Tuesday, March 2nd 2010, 12:16pm EST Cambodia's Great Internet Firewall? The plan of the Cambodian government to have a state-run exchange point to control all local internet service providers in order to strengthen internet security against pornography, theft and cyber crime is finally underway. However, there seems to be no clear-cut policy on the extent to which Telecom Cambodia, a state-owned company granted with powers to control the internet exchange point, would be able to block access to individual websites. According the the latest report by Phnom Penh Post, there have been mixed assertions on the authority of the TC. There is also a question whether Cambodia will follow its neighboring countries where internet censorship is being practiced. While the TC's deputy director reportedly claimed that the body can control internet sites, other ministers including the Minister of Information does not endorse this assumption. News Article Tuesday, March 2nd 2010, 12:15pm EST How to write about the adult movie industry. Lately, a Guardian story offering “Ten Rules for Writing Fiction,” has been making the rounds online. “Write,” Neil Gaiman advises. “Do back exercises,” Margaret Atwood nods sympathetically. “Pain is distracting.” And Richard Ford decrees: “Don’t have children.” But what if what you’re writing isn’t fiction, and what if what you’re writing about is the adult movie industry? I spent a good portion of my journalism career covering the adult movie industry for mainstream outlets, and it is an undeniably unique beat. Access is complicated and getting the truth is like pulling teeth. News Article Tuesday, March 2nd 2010, 12:14pm EST Opera 10.5 brings new JavaScript engine. With Tuesday's release of Opera 10.5 for Windows, it's time for a new JavaScript engine. Opera's new Carakan engine is much faster than Futhark, an important consideration given the increasing demands Web applications put on the Web-based programming language. My earlier tests on a dual-core Windows XP machine showed Google's V8 JavaScript engine still ahead of the Opera 10.5 beta, but Opera won out in several others' testing. Other rivals in JavaScript are Safari's Nitro, nee Squirrel Extreme, and Firefox's new JaegerMonkey, which combines Nitro with its earlier TraceMonkey JavaScript Engine. News Article Tuesday, March 2nd 2010, 12:13pm EST Microsoft warns of zero-day hole for older Windows. Microsoft warned of a new hole on Monday that could be exploited by attackers to take control of older Windows systems running Internet Explorer and for which proof-of-concept exploit code has been released publicly. The vulnerability affects Windows 2000-, XP- and Server 2003-based systems. It exists in the way that Visual Basic Scripting, or VBScript, interacts with Windows Help files, Microsoft said in its security advisory. VBScript is an Active Scripting language for executing functions embedded in Web pages. News Article Tuesday, March 2nd 2010, 12:12pm EST CEO: Playboy Could Shrink by Half. Playboy Enterprises hired Scott Flanders in June of last year to help the struggling company stay afloat in the middle of a recession in the economy and a depression in publishing. In the eight months since he assumed the CEO position, Flanders has begun to address the company’s ills by striking outsourcing deals and cutting in-house operations, and he has no plans to stop. According to Greg Burns, writing Monday in the Chicago Tribune, by the time Flanders is done, the company could be reduced to half the size it is today. News Bytes Monday, March 1st 2010, 11:59am EST 'Emergency without parallel in Chile's history'. News Article Monday, March 1st 2010, 11:58am EST Adult Industry Heads Down Under for Adultex in March. Vineyards, rolling hills and kangaroos will form the backdrop for Australia’s sixth Adultex, the Southern Hemisphere's largest adult B2B trade fair and conference, held March 12-14 in the Hunter Valley wine-growing district, two and a half hours out of Sydney. Founded and managed by Australian adult distributor Calvista Australia, the commercial event allows adult industry retailers to meet with company owners and sales representatives from more than 40 leading adult manufacturers and media producers, including California Exotic Novelties, Doc Johnson, Topco Sales, Pipedream Products, Pjur and Sportsheets. News Article Monday, March 1st 2010, 11:57am EST Herding Web Traffic Through Direct Domain Navigation. Small businesses need to be smart and creative in order to gain more visibility on the Web and simultaneously increase traffic. Taking advantage of direct domain navigation is one way to do it. A surprising number of Web surfers type generic words into the URL field as a way to find products, services or information on the Internet in one step. News Article Monday, March 1st 2010, 11:56am EST Measuring Social Media with Web Analytics, Part 1 Social media is increasingly becoming a measurable medium. However, many companies have yet to develop a social media measurement strategy, or they're struggling to get theirs properly implemented. This doesn't need to be the case, but unfortunately many companies aren't aware of the options that are available to monitor, measure, and track social media. News Article Monday, March 1st 2010, 11:55am EST PayPal India to resume fund withdrawals. PayPal has received the green light from the Reserve Bank of India to resume bank withdrawals for settlements involving exports of goods and services, but personal payments remains suspended. In a blog post Friday, Farhad Irani, head of PayPal Asia-Pacific wrote that RBI has allowed PayPal to resume bank withdrawals for the exports of goods and services. The company is now making changes to comply with Indian regulations and "anticipates" it will be able to resume bank withdrawal service for settlements effective March 3. However, personal payments remain suspended as PayPal still needs specific government approval to allow personal-inward remittances to India. News Article Monday, March 1st 2010, 11:54am EST Porn prosecution low, parental intervention crucial. A pro-family activist finds it alarming that so few resources are allocated by authorities to prosecute obscenity. Donna Rice Hughes, president of Enough is Enough (EIE), a non-profit organization dedicated to making the Internet safer for children and families, says although authorities routinely prosecute child porn and sexual predators, other forms of pornography -- while illegal -- are not prosecuted. She laments that prosecution of pornography on a federal level has not been priority for years. "A lot of people think, 'Well, if something is prosecutable or illegal, then why is it out there?' Well it's very simple: If the laws are not being aggressively prosecuted, then people like the pornographers...will continue to push the envelope as long and far as they can, as long as they do not have the fear of prosecution," Hughes explains. News Article Monday, March 1st 2010, 11:53am EST Brothers Jimmy and Larry Flynt caught in family feud over porn empire. The first time Jimmy Flynt read the letter from his brother last June, he thought it might be some kind of mistake."Recent events have clearly placed you in conflict with the interests of Mr. Larry C. Flynt and his companies," the letter said, referring to Jimmy's famous brother. The letter went on to say his brother's company, which includes Hustler magazine, would eliminate Jimmy's job, cancel his benefits and confiscate his company-owned Lincoln Town Car. Jimmy was stunned. He'd just been fired by his big brother. News Article Monday, March 1st 2010, 11:52am EST iBill Says it Will Pay Off Previous Company's Promissory Notes. What's in a name? Everything, if you're iBill. Saturday, nearly eight months after the sudden appearence of an online billing company sporting the same name—and employing some of the same people—as the third-party processor that went belly up in 2006, leaving in its wake innumerable unpaid accounts and an industry seething in outrage, the reincarnated company says that it will honor "valid" promissory notes received by merchants of the previous iBill. A statement by iBill issued Saturday and posted Sunday morning to GFY (registration required) says that a payback option for former iBill merchants will be included in a new 2.0 version of the payment processor's system, slated to be released April 7. Details of the payback option were not included in the statement but will be released April 2, said iBill President and CEO Jonas Brown. News Article Monday, March 1st 2010, 11:51am EST ICM Calls on ICANN to Execute Dot-XXX Contract Immediately. ICM Registry LLC President Stuart Lawley is a patient man. He has waited seven years for ICANN to breathe life into the dot-xxx sponsored Top-Level Domain ICM wants to manage. And seven years is long enough, he said Thursday in a letter to the chairman of the board of directors for the International Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. In essence, the firm-but-polite missive warned ICANN further stalling by the internet’s governing body may lead to unpleasant legal repercussions. News Article Monday, March 1st 2010, 11:50am EST 3 Tools for Optimizing Page Speed. For the past couple of months, Google has been telling the world that page speed is an increasingly important aspect of Web sites. The Google Speed site – which has the laudable goal of making Web browsing as fast as turning the pages of a magazine – has been featured in several posts on their Webmaster blog, and features links to various free tools that they, and others, have made available for the masses. News Article Monday, March 1st 2010, 11:49am EST Gay site says bank shut account over 'objectionable' blog. Citibank - the third largest holding bank in the US - has apologized to a gay social networking website after its founder claimed the bank had blocked his account due to "objectionable content" on the site's blog. Known as Fabulis, the site bills itself as "network that connects gay men with amazing experiences down the block and around the world." It has yet to officially launch, but it's currently populated by videos of gay men explaining why they're "fabulis."On Wednesday, with a blog post entitled "Citibank is not so fabulis," company founder Jason Goldberg said that the bank had blocked his recently opened account after a review of the site. |
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