YouTube Improving Its Takedown Requests Process

The most popular streaming service across the globe has been using Content ID – a kind of software that contributes to the website’s attempts to stay within the legal boundaries and remove illegal content under takedown requests.

The portal has been using Content ID for 4 years now, and it figured out that it’s time for a change. The service made a decision to improve the appeals process in order to help the users who upload content fight gratuitous requests. In addition, YouTube believes that this software should be able to detect false takedown requests, which would help minimize the risk of massive takedowns.

US Politicians Spy on Each Other in WoW

The US Democratic Party was noticed doing crazy things recently – it went as far as to start a witch hunt into how the candidates play the World of Warcraft.

In the State of Maine, one of the Democratic candidates was told she can’t be stand for office only because she played an Orc assassination rogue. She was attacked for a “bizarre double life”, since in World of Warcraft her character is “Santiaga” – an “orc assassination rogue” that features green skin, fangs, a Mohawk and pointy ears.

Online Killer – a 77-Year-Old Woman

A 77-year-old pensioner, known for using Internet dating agencies in order to lure rich men into marriage contracts and killing them, was arrested once again.

Nova Scotia police dubbed Millie Weeks “Black Widow” not without a cause. The woman, also known as Melissa Friedrich, was arrested again and accused of the attempted murder of her husband of a fortnight.

Music Star Violated Children’s Privacy

Justin Bieber was accused of violating the privacy of the girls who visited his official site. Actually, all of his victims wouldn’t mind to hand over their personal data, especially those who believed that Justin might really know who they were. However, the privacy watchdogs were furious.

The local newspapers report that the firm involved into making official fan websites for Justin and his representatives have reached an agreement with the authorities to pay $1,000,000 in order to settle charges that they illegally collected personal details about over 100,000 kids.

Swedish Police Seized WikiLeaks’ Hosting Company Servers

PeRiQuito AB, better known as PRQ, hosts some of WikiLeaks’ servers and also offered its hosting services to the world’s largest BitTorrent tracker The Pirate Bay. A few days ago the Swedish police showed up to seize its servers.

This Monday, Stockholm police came to PRQ to seize 4 of its servers. At the same day, PRQ’s own official site and The Pirate Bay’s website went down. However, the company’s representatives denied that these events had anything to do with the raid. PRQ insisted that the power shortages were due to some technical problems.

Virgin Media Misinformed Its Clients

Eighteen people have submitted complaints with the Advertising Standards Authority that a TV advertisement claiming that the ISP offered a broadband service without buffering was misleading.

The complainants claimed that they could still experience buffering. In response, the service provider argued that although there was a technical definition of the term “buffering”, the consumers misunderstood it and believed it was synonymous with terms “interruptions” and “delays” accompanied by the buffering symbol appearing on the screen.

Foreign Music Sites Scoped by Music Industry

The RIAA was granted subpoenas in the case involving 3 foreign file-sharing portals. The next step of the outfit will be to get the IP addresses and personal data of the websites’ operators.

Despite the fact that the budget of Recording Industry Association of America has suffered dramatic changes recently, it had no impact on the outfit’s intention to stop piracy. This September, for example, it has sent more than 800,000 takedown requests to Google.

Google Won't Allow the Author to Give Away His Book

Industry observers often call Google’s customer service a “massive failure”, and now they can say the same about the company’s overzealous attempts to fight piracy. The experts point to an example of Cody Jackson – an author who decided to make his book available for free.

Jackson’s book is titled “Start Programming with Python”, and he decided to give it away for free in consideration of all the benefits offered by the open-source community. Internet users could find links to download this work for free, but the writer also asked everyone to support his work through donations. Cody Jackson

Phone Snooping Law Vetoed in California

Jerry Brown, a Californian governor, believes that people are better off with the law enforcement authorities knowing what they are doing all the time.

The Californian governor vetoed SB 1434 – the bill which required police to apply for a search warrant to obtain location tracking data. The governor is expected to explain his decision, because the bill passed through the state legislature with overwhelming bipartisan support. Even the local media believed that it was a great idea and there was extensive support for the bill.

Private Data Traded Online

Almost 20,000,000 pieces of private data have been illegally bought and sold on the Internet in the beginning of 2012, which allowed fraudsters opening new accounts.

The statistics was provided by the latest results of Experian’s “Life in a Box” experiment. The latter has found that almost 20 million pieces of private data were traded illegitimately in the first 6 months of 2012. This is more than in the whole of 2011.