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SAN FRANCISCO, US - DEFENDANTS and plaintiffs in two related copyright infringement lawsuits against YouTube have reached a deal to protect the privacy of millions of YouTube watchers during evidence discovery, a spokesman for Google Inc said on Monday. Earlier in July, a New York federal judge ordered Google to turn over YouTube user data to Viacom Inc and other plaintiffs to help them to prepare a confidential study of what they argue are vast piracy violations on the video-sharing site. Google said it had agreed to provide plaintiffs' attorneys for Viacom and a class action group led by the...

So who cares if my Internet service provider tracks my Web surfing behavior or e-mailing to better target advertising? After all, won't that result in a more relevant user experience? Well, not exactly and here's why. The lines between content, context and advertising are becoming increasingly blurred, and as a result the consumer is caught dead in the middle with increasingly less and less control over the Internet's most prized commodity: his own information. I'm referring to the growing reality that a process called deep packet inspection (DPI) is being used to build revenue streams based on your discreet —...

The Illinois State Police are using vans with cameras and radar guns to photograph motorists and other drivers who speed through highway construction zones, and are enforcing strict penalties for alleged offenders. Citations for a first offense are $375, and a second offense can cost $1,000 and a 90-day suspension of driver’s license. State Police officials said four white vans, which are equipped with radar guns, cameras and a monitor to show drivers their speed, have been deployed at different construction zones in the state. As of Thursday, June 5, those vans are deployed at the widening project on the...

Utah Internet service providers could earn a state-approved "G-rating" for filtering content and insuring that users could not access pornography under provisions in a bill heard by a House committee on Monday.

Paul McGuinness, long-time manager of rock band U2, on Monday launched a verbal attack against illegal music downloaders, as well as internet service providers, device makers, Silicon Valley and even hippies in a speech at a conference in France. McGuinness blamed these forces for "destroying the recorded music industry," with illegal downloading through peer-to-peer file-sharing networks the single biggest reason for why the business is in decline. ISPs have for years profited from that illegal downloading, which occurs on their networks, and their arguments that it isn't their job to police the internet are no longer valid, he said. The...

SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) - Increasingly worried over Internet providers' behavior, a nonprofit has released software that helps determine whether online glitches are innocent hiccups or evidence of deliberate traffic tampering. The San Francisco-based digital rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation hopes the program, released Wednesday, will help uncover "data discrimination" - efforts by Internet providers to disrupt some uses of their services - in addition to the cases reported separately by EFF, The Associated Press and other sources. "People have all sorts of problems, and they don't know whether to attribute that to some sort of misconfiguration, or deliberate behavior...

ISPs in the U.S. experienced a service slowdown Monday after fiber-optic cables near Cleveland were apparently sabotaged by gunfire. TeliaSonera, which lost the northern leg of its U.S. network to the cut, said that the outage began around 7 p.m. Pacific Time on Sunday night. When technicians pulled up the affected cable, it appeared to have been shot. "Somebody had been shooting with a gun or a shotgun into the cable," said Anders Olausson, a TeliaSonera spokesman. The damage affected a large span of cable, more than two-thirds of a mile [1.1 km] long, near Cleveland, TeliaSonera said. The company...

Rudy Giuliani quit an elite Iraq study panel last spring after he failed to show up for a single official group meeting, citing "previous time commitments” – a speaking tour that brought in $11.4 million in 14 months. The 10-member panel, known as the Baker-Hamilton commission, was chartered by Congress and encouraged by President Bush to explore U.S. policy in Iraq. On May 18, 2006, when the panel gathered in Washington, Giuliani gave a $100,000 speech on leadership at a business awards breakfast in Atlanta, Newsday reports. The month before, he skipped another panel session to deliver the keynote speech...

SAN FRANCISCO (UPI) -- A court in San Francisco ruled that a roommate-matching Web site may be held accountable for what users say about their preferences. A three-judge panel of the federal appeals court ruled in favor of two California fair housing groups that brought the complaint against Roommate.com, saying the Web site violates the Fair Housing Act by allowing users to specify roommate preferences based on sex, race, religion and sexual orientation, The New York Times reported Wednesday. The ruling took away the main argument of the defense: that a 1996 ruling granting immunity to Internet service providers that...

I have posted several times in the past about this topic, this is just an update for you techheads who might be interesetd...oh, and anyone who uses the internet... which is...everyone. Most people have no idea what CALEA is. It is a law to assist law enforcement's ability to intercept phone calls. It was written and passed and signed into law in 1994 by Congress. It mandated that digital switching equipment technology be required to have certain specific capabilities which would make tapping a person's phone calls, and making the call history easier to get. Congress ante'd up millions to...

Test your internet connection speed and post it here, for fun, bragging rights and to see if you are getting the speed you really pay for.

SAN FRANCISCO — Cellular subscribers are paying hundreds of millions of dollars each year to subsidize landline telephone service, enriching big telecommunications companies while providing little or no benefit to cell phone users. The subsidies are intended to reimburse the companies for providing traditional phone service in rough terrain and rural areas where stringing lines can be costly. But rampant development has transformed some of these backwaters into booming subdivisions, with no real adjustment to the distribution formula; others, like the oceanfront celebrity playground of Malibu, are receiving subsidies simply because of their difficult topography. Outdated formulas for tabulating the...

FBI Director Robert Mueller on Tuesday called on Internet service providers to record their customers' online activities, a move that anticipates a fierce debate over privacy and law enforcement in Washington next year. "Terrorists coordinate their plans cloaked in the anonymity of the Internet, as do violent sexual predators prowling chat rooms," Mueller said in a speech at the International Association of Chiefs of Police conference in Boston. "All too often, we find that before we can catch these offenders, Internet service providers have unwittingly deleted the very records that would help us identify these offenders and protect future victims,"...

FBI Director Robert Mueller on Tuesday called on Internet service providers to record their customers' online activities, a move that anticipates a fierce debate over privacy and law enforcement in Washington next year. "Terrorists coordinate their plans cloaked in the anonymity of the Internet, as do violent sexual predators prowling chat rooms," Mueller said in a speech at the International Association of Chiefs of Police conference in Boston. "All too often, we find that before we can catch these offenders, Internet service providers have unwittingly deleted the very records that would help us identify these offenders and protect future victims,"...

I've searched extensively online for a new ISP. No luck. I think I'll have better luck with recommendations from my FReeper FRiends. Requirements: 1) It must be cheap. No more than $140-$180 a year ($15 a month max) or not much higher. 2)It must be faster than 46.6 kbps. (That's the fastest speed I can log on at now.) Would prefer 50.6 kbps or higher. Thank you for any recommendations.

In a radical departure from earlier statements, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has said that requiring Internet service providers to save records of their customers' online activities is necessary in the fight against terrorism, CNET News.com has learned. Gonzales and FBI Director Robert Mueller privately met with representatives of AOL, Comcast, Google, Microsoft and Verizon last week and said that Internet providers--and perhaps search engines--must retain data for two years to aid in anti-terrorism prosecutions, according to multiple sources familiar with the discussion who spoke on condition of anonymity on Tuesday. "We want this for terrorism," Gonzales said, according to one...

A BigMac and large chocolate shake will cost you more than $5.00.Two gallons of gas will cost you more than $5.00.A pack of cigarettes, around $5.00A movie tickets will cost more than $5.00 Most of us blow five bucks on crap several times a month.If everyone gave 5.00 a month to FR, we wouldn't need Freepathons any longer.Heck, it's worth five bucks a month just to be IBTZ.Help keep FR up and running.

The U.S. Department of Justice has gone far beyond Google, MSN, and AOL in its quest to justify the anti-pornography Child Online Protection Act: The DOJ actually subpoenaed at least 34 Internet service providers, search companies, and security software firms. InformationWeek obtained copies of the subpoenas, replies, and other supporting documents through a Freedom of Information Act request. (You can download the subpoenas here at Information Week)

AOL filed three civil lawsuits yesterday against "several major phishing gangs". The lawsuits are the first by a major ISP to cite Virginia's anti-phishing statute, the first in the US, adopted in July 2005. The suits also cite applicable Federal laws, including the Lanham (Trademark) Act, and the Computer Fraud & Abuse Act. AOL is seeking total damages of $18m in the series of lawsuits which allege that the phishing gangs victimised AOL and CompuServe members through emails that attempted to drive them to bogus websites. The three lawsuits, filed in the US Court for the Eastern District of Virginia,...

After many months of not being able to login to FR from my west Texas server, everything now seems to be okay. For many months, whenever I typed in my user name and password at FR and clicked on the "Log In" button, I got only a "dead" response from the server. After trying MANY things, i.e., reformatting, changing my op system, and even changing PCs, I finally wrote to my ISP asking if they had the FR site blocked. After checking, my ISP decided the problem was their "Intrusion Detection" (software?) which was blocking perl script access. The problem...

No way? Really? Who'd have imagined. Sometimes I just have to check the date on a news story to make sure it's even the correct decade! Israeli Defense Officials Say US Internet Providers Hosting Islamic Jihad Sites Report by Hagay Huberman: "US Internet Providers Host Islamic Jihad Websites" Hatzofe Monday, January 2, 2006 The terrorist organization Islamic Jihad, which was responsible for most of the recent terrorist attacks, and which figures on the lists of terrorist organizations compiled by the United States and the EU, runs Internet sites that are hosted by US-based Internet service providers (ISPs). This was disclosed...

Murder 'infidels', Mukhlas urgesSian Powell,  The Australian, December 19, 2005BALI bombings commander Mukhlas has written a fanatical call-to-arms from his death-row prison cell, exhorting Muslims to kill Westerners. Published on a website on the orders of notorious terror chief Noordin Mohammed Top, the polemic demonstrates the undiminished fervour of Mukhlas, who has been sentenced to death for commanding the Bali bomb blasts in 2002 that killed 202 people, including 88 Australians. "You who still have a shred of faith in your hearts, have you forgotten that to kill infidels and the enemies of Islam is a deed that has a...

A senior telecommunications executive said yesterday that Internet service providers should be allowed to strike deals to give certain Web sites or services priority in reaching computer users, a controversial system that would significantly change how the Internet operates. William L. Smith, chief technology officer for Atlanta-based BellSouth Corp., told reporters and analysts that an Internet service provider such as his firm should be able, for example, to charge Yahoo Inc. for the opportunity to have its search site load faster than that of Google Inc.

An Online "University" for Jihad By Stephen Ulph In an interesting new development, the al-Qaeda network is making strides to present itself as a permanent cultural--as well as military--phenomenon. An October 7 posting on the al-Farouq jihadi forum (www.al-farouq.com) by Ahmad al-Wathiq bi-Llah, the "deputy general emir" of the Global Islamic Media Front, announced what it referred to as an "al-Qaeda University of Jihad Studies." The accompanying statement explained that "al-Qaeda is an organization, a state and a university, this is a fact which cannot be denied." Readers, it noted, might be amused by the headline, but the writer simply...

Thousands of Internet users struggled to send e-mail and keep their Web sites running Thursday after a dispute between two service providers left large portions of the Internet unable to talk to each other. Computer technicians scrambled to shore up their networks after Level 3 Communications Inc. refused to accept traffic from rival Cogent Communications Group Inc., rendering large portions of the Internet unreachable by others.

These French Jehadist sites, inciting thousands of Muslims around the world to jehad and murder, actually could be considered American Web sites: stcom.net is hosted in Jacksonville Florida at DNS Services. The registrant and administrator is in London but its technical contact is in Virginia, USA.ribaat.com is hosted in Loveland Colorado at WeHostWebSites.com It's Administrator is in Paris, France -- Johnathan R. Galt __________________________________________________ Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center THE PROJECT FOR THE RESEARCH OF ISLAMIST MOVEMENTS (PRISM) OCCASIONAL PAPERS Volume 3 (2005), Number 6 (September 2005), Director and Editor: Reuven Paz. French Islamist Web Sites FRANCOPHONE INTERNET...

LaPorte County, IN - About 3,000 to 5,000 marijuana plants, some the size of Christmas trees, have been found about a half mile north of State Road 4 between 600 and 700 East in LaPorte County, just west of Fish Lake. Officials are calling it the largest outdoor marijuana bust in Indiana since the 1980s. The plants are growing in three to five clusters, hidden on the ground in a two-acre plot full of trees. Police discovered the hidden plants over a week ago but it wasn’t until yesterday that they decided to bust up the drug ring. Police say...

Enemy at the door ... al-Muhajiroun propaganda   Hackers fight terrorists By PETE BELL Sun OnlineTHE INTERNET has become the latest frontline in the war against terror. With the world wide web increasingly used as the main instrument of propaganda and communication for extreme religious groups like al-Qaeda, MI5 and patriotic hackers have formed an unlikely alliance to close down their sites.Prime Minister Tony Blair announced this morning the Government would be looking at options to tackle the problem.Alarmingly, experts believe al-Qaeda’s master hacker is running the terrorist group’s central communications hub from the UK.Impressionable youngsters are targeted through...

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Monday that cable companies are under no legal obligation to share their lines with smaller Internet service providers, dealing a major blow to independent ISPs, extending the power of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission, and opening up the possibility of extensive deregulation in the telecommunications world. The Court's 6-3 ruling in Federal Communications Commission vs. Brand X Internet upheld an earlier FCC decision saying cable operators were exempt from common-carrier regulations that apply to phone companies. Because their transmissions are classified as "telecommunications services," phone companies such as SBC Communications (nyse: SBC - news -...

HOUSTON BASED INTERNET SERVICE PROVIDER TOUTS COMMUNITY INVOLVEMENT WHILE APPARENTLY HOSTING TERROR, PORN, AND SPAM SITES  Jeremy Reynalds, June  20, 2005, JoyJunction.com __________ Houston-based Internet service provider Everyone's Internet could be regarded as an example of the American dream come true.        Founded by brothers Robert Marsh and Roy Marsh III, and Randy Williams, EV1 began operating on Dec.1 1998. By 2002 the company was bringing in over $32.2 million. Current income was not immediately available.        However, it appears that EV1, which touts its community generosity, has a darker side. It seems that the company is hosting terror,...

Comcast, the top U.S. cable TV network operator, is being sued by a Seattle-area woman for disclosing her name and contact information, court records showed Thursday. In a lawsuit filed in King County, Wash., Dawnell Leadbetter said that she was contacted by a debt collection agency in January and told to pay a $4,500 for downloading copyright-protected music or face a lawsuit for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Leadbetter, a mother of two teenage children, was a customer of Comcast's high-speed Internet access service. The company, Settlement Support Center, based in Washington state, was using information that the Recording Industry...

Bellevue firm tied to pro-Hamas Web siteBy Peter LewisSeattle Times staff reporter, April 23, 2005 A Bellevue company has helped support a Web site dedicated to advancing Hamas, an Islamic organization the U.S. government considers a terrorist group. The site features videos of Humvees blowing up and U.S. soldiers being killed. The site was down temporarily yesterday but was working again last evening. Content included a training video of the "Mujahideen Army" and a message to the American people that said in part they had "elected criminals and are responsible for their actions." The Bellevue company, eNom, apparently is...

COMPUTER criminals are coming up with ever stealthier ways to make money. Rather than attack PCs or email inboxes, their latest trick is to subvert the very infrastructure of the internet, the domain name system (DNS) that routes all net traffic. In doing so, they redirect internet users to bogus websites, where visitors could have their passwords and credit details stolen, be forced to download malicious software, or be directed to links to pay-per-click adverts. This kind of attack is called DNS cache poisoning or polluting. It was first done by pranksters in the early years of the internet, but...

During the past year, investigators in America and Europe watched as a business called 357Hosting, based near Utrecht, the Netherlands, became the officially registered Internet host for several notorious militant Islamic Web pages and bulletin boards, including sites that disseminated videos of beheadings of foreign hostages in Iraq and messages from Qaeda leader Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi. The public prosecutor's office in Utrecht tells NEWSWEEK that it has opened a criminal investigation into possible Internet hate crimes. One site hosted by 357, Albasrah.net, today features what purport to be daily news bulletins from Iraqi terrorists; other sites 357 has hosted include...

White Supremacist Group Offers Friendship & Support To Terror GroupsBy Jeremy Reynalds (03/09/05) In a letter posted on its Web site the head of the white supremacist group Aryan Nations offers his thanks to radical Islamic terrorists and extends the group's hand of friendship. Aryan Nations National Director August Kreis writes (www.aryan-nations.org), "We as an organization will also endeavor to aid all those who subvert, disrupt and are (sic) malignant in nature to our enemies. Therefore I offer my most sincere best-wishes to those who wage holy Jihad against the infrastructure of the decadent, weak and Judaic-influenced societal infrastructure...

<p>America Online, Inc. has quietly updated the terms of service for its AIM instant messaging application, making several changes that is sure to raise the hackles of Internet privacy advocates.</p> <p>The revamped terms of service, which apply only to users who downloaded the free AIM software on or after Feb. 5, 2004, gives AOL the right to "reproduce, display, perform, distribute, adapt and promote" all content distributed across the chat network by users.</p>

INTERNET TERROR FROM HOUSTON BY WAY OF SAPULPA OK?And Watch Out for a whole New Meaning to Identity Theft! Your Name May Be Listed as Hosting an Internet Terror Site Without You Ever Knowing It  Jeremy Reynalds, March 5, 2005      A few months ago I conducted a small one-man sting investigation hoping to find the individuals apparently formerly behind a mysterious and elusive free Internet service provider –  that at one time was hosting as many as 15 to 20 al Qaeda affiliated and other well known terror sites.        Hosting Anime (formerly hosted by the Houston-based...

SAN FRANCISCO -- He calls himself Abu Maysara al Iraqi, or father of Maysara the Iraqi, and he's a master at being everywhere and nowhere in the virtual world, constantly switching his online accounts and taking advantage of new technologies to issue his communiqués to the world. American Internet sleuths know next to nothing about him, whether Abu Maysara is his real name, whether he's an Iraqi or even whether he's in Iraq. What is clear is that he is one of the most important sources of information from the country's insurgency, getting his message out through the Internet, and...

Jihad websites removed from computer By PAUL LUNGEN Staff Reporter RackForce Wholesale Hosting Solutions, an Internet company in Kelowna, B.C., has removed six sites from its computers that promoted jihad and vilified Jews. One of the websites, www.shareeah.org, had connections to Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist organization and was being investigated by the RCMP. Operated by Abu Hamza Al-Misri, a terrorism suspect in prison in Britain and waiting deportation to the United States, the site promoted and supported suicide bombing. Once the company determined it violated its acceptable use policy, RackForce decided to remove it along with five other sites...

[Technology News]: Spam fighters are cheering from the sidelines a recent US court decision that dovetails with their technological efforts to turn the tidal wave of spam that threatens to drown the world's computer networks. Jeremy Jaynes was found guilty last November by a state court in Leesburg, Virginia, of sending more than 10 million unsolicited emails a day. He was hawking pornography, work-at-home schemes and stock-picking software. The spams are estimated to have earned him about $750,000 a month. He is now on $1 million bail, forbidden from using the internet and will be sentenced this month. The jury...

Jeremy Reynalds on Fox's O'Reilly Factor Tonight (Feb.16). Joy Junction Director Jeremy Reynalds -- Scheduled for Fox News' OReilly Factor -- after Death Threat Following Attempts to Bring Down Terrorist Web Sites     ______________        Long time Albuquerque resident Jeremy Reynalds is best known for his work with Joy Junction, the shelter for homeless families he founded in 1986 and continues to direct.        However, there's another side of Reynalds that is not quite as well known -- as a  terrorist hunter.        For almost the last three years Reynalds has investigating a number of Islamic...

Internet phone provider Vonage said it's asked U.S. utility regulators to investigate allegations that a "major" broadband operator is deliberately blocking Internet phone calls. Any investigation and its findings will add more tension to the relationships between providers of high-speed Internet and voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), software that lets Internet connections double as inexpensive phone lines. Vonage recently met with Federal Communications Commission representatives, said Vonage spokeswoman Brooke Schulz, to discuss an instance of "egregious, alarming and harmful port blocking." Port blocking is when Internet providers prevent traffic of certain kinds from traveling through their Internet Protocol (IP) networks....

FOLLOWING DEATH THREAT AGAINST CHRISTIAN WRITER, TERROR SITE GETS RUN OUT OF HOUSTON AND MOVES TO CHICAGO Death Threat Remains on Lineby Jeremy Reynalds Executive Director Following extensive media coverage regarding the death threat (http://haganah.org.il/harchives/003608.html) against me posted on a radical Islamic bulletin board service (which remains on line), www.ansarnet.ws has now changed its Internet Service Provider. After being suspended, it has moved from the Houston-based Everyone's Internet (www.ev1.net) to the Chicago-based www.hostforweb.com Notice of Suspension of www.ansar.ws by its former Internet Service Provider www.ev1.net An e-mail to the company asking why they were hosting a well-known terror friendly site...

Violence-Preaching Web Magazine Linked To N. Texas Brothers Feb 7, 2005 9:00 pm US/Central By Todd Bensman and Robert Riggs The Investigators CBS-11 News (KTVT, Dallas)BIRMINGHAM, ENGLAND - A radical Islamist web magazine published here, which has encouraged suicide attacks against American forces in Iraq, is hosted by a North Texas Internet company linked to three Palestinian brothers about to be tried on federal terrorism charges in Dallas, CBS-11 News has learned.The monthly journal and its publisher in Birmingham, England, the Centre for Islamic Studies, have come under international condemnation and investigation for allegedly soliciting suicide bombers to attack American...

Islamists target Christian journalist on website Christian journalist and long-time friend of Internet Haganah, Jeremy Reynalds has been targeted for killing by Islamists on the Al Ansar forum (ansarnet.ws).The thread:www.ansarnet.ws/vb/showthread.php?t=27276In a thread on the Houston-based site, the person who ran the now-defunct mawsuat.com site starts by blaming Reynalds for the site's demise, posts a POBox address for Reynalds, and asks if anyone else has more information about him.In the discussion that follows, the Islamists first post Reynald's home address so that he might be "visited", then a picture of him and a wish that his ribs should be broken, and...

JERSEY CITY, N.J. -- The FBI is trying to determine whether an Islamic Web site that tracked users of an online chat room had anything to do with the killings of a Christian Egyptian family. The site, barsomyat.com, is no longer online. But before it was shut down by its Minnesota hosting company, it reportedly featured photos of Hossam Armanious and his wife, Amal Garas, referring to him as a "filthy dog" and "his filthy wife," according to the New York Sun.

The New Jersey man brutally murdered with his family was just one of a number of Christians systematically tracked by a radical Islamic website because they debate Muslims on the popular Internet chat service PalTalk.com. The password-protected Arabic website www.barsomyat.com, includes the kind of death threat received by Hossam Armanious, a Coptic Christian from Jersey City, N.J., who was found Jan. 14 with his wife and two daughters, bound and gagged with their throats slashed, the New York Sun reports. Two months before his murder, according to authorities, Armanious received a death threat from a Muslim PalTalk user: "You'd better...

PBS Frontline Special on "Al-Qaeda's New Front" beginning Friday, Jan 28th in many areas.  Visit http://www.pbs.org/ insert your ZIP in the 'When to Watch' box on the left side and search for the 'Frontline' schedule in your area. For all the fear that cyber terrorists will turn the Internet into a weapon of mass disruption, many intelligence experts contend the Web is most effective (or detrimental) as it was designed to be -- as a way to communicate and create community. This essay explores how jihadis are using the Web, plus some of the cyber "tricks" used by terrorists to...

US accused after Iran site closed The row has prompted calls for Iran to develop its own internet servers BBC - Monday, 24 January, 2005, 17:07 GMT Iran has accused the US government of ordering an American internet service provider to stop hosting the website of an official Iranian news agency. The Iranian Student News Agency said no explanation had been given by the server, called The Planet, for its abrupt move to terminate the contract. Isna, which is widely read in Iran, says it has moved to another server, which it did not name. The Planet was unable...

Atriks claims it's innocent, but company shows up on independent spam monitor list. A company reported to an ISP for sending bulk spam is replying by suing the individual who made the allegation. The sued party, Jay Stuler, reported New Hampshire-based Atriks, otherwise known as Distributed Mail, to his ISP after receiving unsolicited bulk e-mail over a period from April 2003 onward. According to court papers, Atriks then lost its account with its ISPs, Lightship Telecom, Spectra Access, and North Atlantic Internet, resulting in the legal action against Stuler. The writ issued by the company denies the allegations, stating that...