CyberLaw Blog

Archive for December, 2009

Microsoft Tackles the Child Pornography Problem: (New York imes)
The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children assists law-enforcement authorities by culling through 250,000 images a week, looking for illegal material, and sends daily alerts to 68 Internet service providers worldwide. It is difficult, labor-intensive work for all. But Microsoft is contributing new image-matching software, PhotoDNA, that promises to automate and streamline online child-pornography monitoring. The new software is the result of two years of collaboration by a team at Microsoft Research, led by Larry Zitnick, and a group at Dartmouth College. In test runs, PhotoDNA has processed images in less than five milliseconds each and accurately detected target images 98 percent of the time.

(Via QuickLinks Update.)

'Iranian cyber army' hits Twitter: (BBC)
A group claiming to be the Iranian Cyber Army managed to redirect Twitter users to its own site displaying a political message. Twitter said the attack had been carried out by getting at the servers that tell web browsers where to find particular sites. The site said it would start an investigation into what allowed the ‘unplanned downtime’ to take place. see also Twitter hack by ‘Iranian Cyber Army’ is really just misdirection (Guardian).

(Via QuickLinks Update.)

AU – could soon have the most restrictive internet regime in the Western world: (Sydney Morning Herald)
Senator Stephen Conroy’s consultation paper on mandating the filtering of internet sites by Australian internet service providers suggests that Australia could soon have the most restrictive internet regime in the Western world. The incorporation of international lists of overseas-hosted child sexual abuse material would be sufficient to align mandatory Australian practices with the voluntary practices of most liberal democracies. Indeed, the implication is that it might total the sum of all other jurisdictions’ voluntary filter lists. However, the commitment to add other content that is only prohibited in Australia will mean that the scope of the content to be captured will be much more extensively drawn than in equivalent nation.

(Via QuickLinks Update.)

The truth behind Punternet.com, 2009 – Wikileaks: Punternet.com is a website for those who use prostitutes to write about their experiences in the similar manner to product review sites — price, location, features and quality.

This document is an activist ‘intelligence report’ on Punternet.com, mainly gathered from open sources. Punternet is published in the US, but covers the United Kingdom. The issue is controversial due to Punternet allegedly carrying reviews of under-aged or illegally trafficked prostitutes in the UK, although as of writing Punternet explicitly encourages ‘punters’ to report such abuses to the police.

On 30 Sep 2009, Harriet Harman, MP, in a speech to the British Labour Party, called for the site to be closed. The existence of Punternet was referred to the Governor of California, although the site is, probably correctly, protected by the US 1st Amendment.

BPI: Growing Threat From Illegal Web Downloads: “Growing Threat From Illegal Web Downloads, 18 December 2009.

Survey Shows Peer-to-peer use remains level, but other methods of illegal downloading on the rise

• Levels of illegal filesharing are not declining, despite significant media coverage on the issue.

• Use of non-P2P methods to acquire music illegally have grown significantly in last six months, and are expected to keep growing.

• Nonetheless, P2P still remains most important source for illegal downloads in the UK.

Levels of illegal peer-to-peer (P2P) filesharing in the UK have remained steady during 2009, but usage of web-based, non-P2P methods of downloading music illegally – such as from overseas MP3 pay sites and from newsgroups, blogs and forums linking to cyberlockers – are growing considerably, a major new survey carried out by Harris Interactive on behalf of BPI has revealed.

Harris Interactive conducted a quantitative online survey during November 2009, interviewing a total of 3,442 UK respondents aged 16-54. This survey included 1,012 respondents who stated they were downloading or filesharing music on peer-to-peer networks or from other web sources.

The survey showed a net increase in the use of web-based or ‘non-P2P’ methods during the last six months, with the biggest increases in use coming from overseas unlicensed MP3 pay sites (47%) and newsgroups (42%). Other significant rises included MP3 search engines (28%) and forum, blog and board links to cyberlockers (18%).

Geoff Taylor, BPI Chief Executive, said, ‘There are now more than thirty-five legal digital music services in the UK, offering music fans a great choice of ways to get music legally. It’s disappointing that levels of illegal P2P use remain high despite this and the publicity surrounding imminent measures to address the problem. It’s vital that those measures come into force as quickly as possible.

‘The growth in other, non-P2P methods of downloading music illegally is a concern, and highlights the importance of including a mechanism in the Digital Economy Bill to deal with threats other than P2P.’

Other findings highlighted that nearly half (47%) of users of P2P sites and software used them as a source for acquiring music on at least a weekly basis, with a third (31%) of respondents who obtain music illegally doing so on a daily basis. Whilst some other sources – such as overseas MP3 pay sites (72%), newsgroups (70%) and forums / blogs (54%) – are used more frequently, P2P accounts for a much higher volume of illegal downloading with an average of nine tracks per month, compared to 4.9 for overseas MP3 pay sites, 5.3 for newsgroups and 6.0 for forums / blogs.

When questioned on their future plans, current users of unauthorised services reported that they actually intended to increase their illegal activities in the coming six months. Use of P2P sites and software showed a modest predicted net increase of 5%, but this paled compared to a significant upswing across the board in the future usage of alternatives to P2P, with overseas MP3 pay sites (+40% net) and newsgroups (+32% net) showing the highest increases of all.

ENDS

For further information
Please contact Adam Liversage on 0207 803 1326 or e-mail adam.liversage@bpi.co.uk.

Notes for editors
Harris Interactive conducted an earlier quantitative online survey during February 2009, interviewing a total of 5,218 UK respondents aged 16-54. 23% of these respondents confirmed they were current filesharers – the same percentage as the survey carried out during November 2009.

P2P sites and software – P2P networks including BitTorrent and Limewire enable users to search for and upload or download media files, including music. The BitTorrent protocol requires users to search for files by visiting websites listing ‘torrents’, such as The Pirate Bay.

Overseas MP3 pay sites – websites based overseas, typically in Eastern European countries, selling copyrighted music without permission from, or financial recompense to, the rights holders.

Cyberlockers – online digital storage services which enable users to upload and store files, including copyrighted material. Users can and then instantly publish a specific link to those files on blogs, forums and other public websites. Examples of popular cyberlocker services include Rapidshare, Megaupload, Mediafire and zShare.

MP3 search engines – Search websites wholly dedicated to finding illegal MP3 files

About BPI
The BPI is the representative voice of the UK recorded music business. We are a trade organisation funded by our members – which include the UK’s four major record labels and hundreds of independent music companies. BPI members account for approximately 90% of all recorded music sold in the UK, and globally the UK’s recorded music market is the third biggest.

The BPI also organises the annual BRIT Awards show as well as the Classical BRIT Awards show. The organising company BRIT Awards limited, is a fully owned subsidiary of the BPI. Substantial proceeds from both shows go to the BRIT Trust, the charitable arm of the BPI that has donated almost £15m to charitable causes nationwide, since its foundation in 1989.

Iranian hackers ‘hijack’ Twitter:

Popular online messaging service Twitter was left reeling overnight, after Iranian hackers appeared to break into the site and deface it.

The strike left the site completely unavailable for several hours in the early hours of Friday morning, with the site’s estimated 30m users unable to access the service or send messages to each other online.

The incident took place some time around 6am in the UK, when the main Twitter page suddenly seemed to disappear – instead replaced with a stark black and red screen featuring an image of a flag.

The page, which carried a mixture of English and Farsi slogans, appeared to name the group behind the attack and offer a call to arms.

‘This site has been hacked by the Iranian Cyber Army,’ said the message.

‘The USA thinks they control and manage internet access, but they don’t. We control and manage the internet with our power, so do not try to the incite Iranian people.’

The site returned to normal functions around two hours later, with staff telling users that it had suffered from ‘unplanned downtime’.

Although early reports suggested the site itself had been breached by attackers, it now seems that the strike was actually a crude form of assault known as a DNS hijack.

The DNS, or Domain Name System, is effectively a telephone directory of the internet – connecting the name of a website, such as twitter.com or guardian.co.uk, to the web servers that hold its contents.

In hijacking cases, computer criminals effectively redirect the traffic intended for a particular website, sending users to a page of their own choice rather than the planned destination.

Around two and half hours after the outage occurred, Twitter staff issued a short statement on the company’s blog confirming the style of the attack it had suffered.

‘Twitter’s DNS records were temporarily compromised but have now been fixed,’ said the post. ‘We are looking into the underlying cause and will update with more information soon.’

It is not the first time that Twitter has found itself subject to attention due to its links with Iranian activists.

During the uprising that followed the elections in June this year, in which incumbent president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad eventually triumphed, the US state department urged the site to remain online to allow more information about the protests to spread online.

Little is known, however, about the group who appeared to claim responsibility for hacking Twitter. But the nature of the messages they left appears somewhat confusing.

Though the text left by the hackers appeared to be anti-American, they also used the image of a green flag – the colour connected to the election protesters, and to Mir-Hossein Mousavi, the main challenger to President Ahmadinejad.

(Via Latest news, sport, business, comment and reviews from the Guardian | guardian.co.uk.)

Britain, Long a Libel Mecca, Reviews Laws: “England’s libel laws, which favor complainants, are under attack from publishers, scientists and others.”

(Via NYT > Freedom of Speech and Expression.)

China Imposes New Internet Controls: “The new measures limit ordinary citizens’ ability to set up personal Web sites and to view hundreds of other sites.”

(Via NYT > Freedom of Speech and Expression.)

Libel laws stifle jokes by Alexei Sayle and Ricky Gervais: Top comedians and wits, including Alexei Sayle, Ricky Gervais and Stephen Fry, say Britain is being turned into a ‘global laughing stock’ because of its draconian libel laws. They are the latest critics to call for reform of the legislation which is stifling free speech.

(Via Law News from Times Online.)

Sexual offenders are using the internet to fast-track abuse: “(Daily Telegraph)
Sexual offenders are using the internet to fast-track abuse, according to new research. Previous studies into child sexual abuse had shown that offenders spent months befriending a young person, and in some cases their family, to prepare for the abuse. But latest research, from the European Online Grooming Project, shows that the grooming process by offenders using the internet is much faster. Rather than selecting one vulnerable child to abuse, some offenders also appear to target numerous young people until they find someone willing to meet them.
They are increasingly using social networking sites such as MSN and Facebook and are becoming technologically-advanced, often operating in communities sharing indecent images between countries, according to the research conducted by NatCen (National Centre for Social Research), Kingston University and Royal Holloway, University of London – which was presented at the UK Council for Child Internet Safety’s (UKCCIS) first annual summit. Prof Julia Davidson, from Kingston University, said. ‘The research shows that the grooming period has been speeded up with chat room communication becoming almost immediately sexualised’.

(Via QuickLinks Update.)