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Under the radar -- week ending June 12
12 Jun 2009 | 22.50 Europe/London
Ar, it's been a good week for pirates, is 'as. Not only did Sweden's Pirate Party manage to get one of its own in amongst the crew of the European Parliament by winning a ship-shape seat (not literally) but one of the landlubbers who fought the Pirate Bay in court has been rewarded with a new name for his efforts. Avast yet, Pirate Pontén (formerly the talented Mr. Henrik Pontén).
It's been a bad week for Chinese citizens, whose government's not only been blocking everything from Twitter to Hotmail - as if they didn't have enough to worry about with the Great Firewall of China. But even they might spare a thought for those loveable copyright-holding movie and music firms: pirates in the UK are ignoring their letters to stop downloading illegally.
It turns out that us normal people aren't the only ones targeted by cyber-criminals, with the likes of love-him-or-hate-him funny man Ricky Gervais amongst the subjects of attempted scams (I know what you're thinking, why would anyone want to impersonate him? Thankfully online identity theft doesn't require anyone to wear a Gervais costume). But at least Twitter is sticking up for him - in the countries it's still available - by starting a new verification service to expose impostors.
Google says Microsoft's advertising campaign to push Bing is playing into their hands, with apparently any mention of search engines at all leading flocks of people to be sheparded by its site. Which is good news considering online advertising revenues are down for the first time since Al Gore invented the Internet - so even they probably wouldn't mind an extra few visitors. In other news that goes Bing, curious people in India can't look up the term "sex" without unlocking their adult content filter. Probably best they just don't even think about it.
Meanwhile, Last.FM is coming to the Xbox - just as its founders decide to head out the door.
That pesky French three-strikes law has been struck out by legislators for the second time (surely it couldn't survive a third for reasons based on Alanis Morissette's First Law of Irony, donchathink).
And for anyone surprised that over forty per cent of people without the net are happy without it, it turns out that less than half of all Britons know where the human heart is located. That certainly puts things in perspective, huh?
It's been a bad week for Chinese citizens, whose government's not only been blocking everything from Twitter to Hotmail - as if they didn't have enough to worry about with the Great Firewall of China. But even they might spare a thought for those loveable copyright-holding movie and music firms: pirates in the UK are ignoring their letters to stop downloading illegally.
It turns out that us normal people aren't the only ones targeted by cyber-criminals, with the likes of love-him-or-hate-him funny man Ricky Gervais amongst the subjects of attempted scams (I know what you're thinking, why would anyone want to impersonate him? Thankfully online identity theft doesn't require anyone to wear a Gervais costume). But at least Twitter is sticking up for him - in the countries it's still available - by starting a new verification service to expose impostors.
Google says Microsoft's advertising campaign to push Bing is playing into their hands, with apparently any mention of search engines at all leading flocks of people to be sheparded by its site. Which is good news considering online advertising revenues are down for the first time since Al Gore invented the Internet - so even they probably wouldn't mind an extra few visitors. In other news that goes Bing, curious people in India can't look up the term "sex" without unlocking their adult content filter. Probably best they just don't even think about it.
Meanwhile, Last.FM is coming to the Xbox - just as its founders decide to head out the door.
That pesky French three-strikes law has been struck out by legislators for the second time (surely it couldn't survive a third for reasons based on Alanis Morissette's First Law of Irony, donchathink).
And for anyone surprised that over forty per cent of people without the net are happy without it, it turns out that less than half of all Britons know where the human heart is located. That certainly puts things in perspective, huh?