Game of Thrones tops TV piracy chart

24 December 2012 Last updated at 07:56 ET

Game of Thrones has emerged as the most-pirated TV show over the internet this year, according to news site Torrentfreak's latest annual survey.

It said one episode of the series had racked up 4,280,000 illegal global downloads - slightly more than than its estimated US television audience.

The site said that overall there had been a "small increase" in the amount of illegal sharing.

That was despite a "levelling out" of the activity the previous two years.

The rise also followed increased efforts to shut down or block websites providing access to copyright infringing material.

Investigations by the US, Mexican and Ukrainian authorities led to two of the best known file-sharing services disappearing earlier this year - digital locker service Megaupload and Bit Torrent link site Demonoid.

The administrators of Newzbin2 - a site which aggregated links to illegally copied material sourced from Usenet forums - also abandoned the operation after the UK courts forced internet service providers (ISPs) to block access.

In addition, UK-based Surfthechannel went offline after its owner went on trial for "facilitating" copyright infringement - a crime which resulted in him receiving a four year prison sentence.

Continue reading the main story

1. Game of Thrones

2. Dexter

3. The Big Bang Theory

4. How I Met Your Mother

5. Breaking Bad

6. The Walking Dead

7. Homeland

8. House

9. Fringe

10. Revolution

(Source: Torrentfreak)

Several countries ISPs have also been ordered to block The Pirate Bay, although political activists at Europe's Pirate Parties continue to offer proxy-based workarounds.

Delayed broadcasts

Despite all the closures, one episode of of Game of Thrones racked up 4,280,000 illegal global downloads, according to Torrentfreak. That was slightly more than than its estimated US television audience.

The level of piracy may be linked to the fact that the TV company behind it - HBO - does not allow Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime or other US streaming services access to its programmes. It instead restricts them to its own HBO Go online product, which is only available to its cable subscribers.

Outside the US, Torrentfreak noted that Australia was responsible for a disproportionate amount of illegal copies of Game of Thrones and suggested this may have been because episodes were broadcast locally a week later than in the US.

Torrentfreak's editor acknowledged that, despite his findings, HBO might still want to keep its current model.

"Not all of the people who pirate do it because it's free - availability is also a big factor," Ernesto Van Der Sar told the BBC.

"Most of the titles in the top 10 list are behind paywalls and are not distributed very widely. If TV companies offered them online to a broader audience, piracy would be lower than it is now.

"But I'm not sure that would be best for their revenues as they rely on expensive subscriptions which they still sell a lot of. If they allowed people to download individual episodes from Netflix, for example, they might not make as much money."

Ditched laws

The latest effort to combat piracy is a newly announced action plan by Russia and the US.

It involves the two countries:

• Co-ordinating efforts with rights holders and law enforcement agencies to force copyright infringing content off the net and take action against those responsible for putting it online.
• Pledging to seize and destroy equipment used to make the pirated files.
• Working together on legislation, including plans for a Russian law to make ISPs liable for piracy carried over their networks.

"Intellectual property rights not only protect our creators and innovators, but also promote foreign investment, economic development, and job creation." said US Trade Representative Ron Kirk.

It follows success at introducing other anti-piracy action over the past year.

A series of website blackouts and protests led to the US's House of Representatives abandoning its Stop Online Piracy Act (Sopa) and the Senate its Protect Intellectual Property Act (Pipa) in January.

An attempt to bring in an international treaty - the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (Acta) - was also derailed after the European Parliament rejected it in July.

However, more recently countries have signalled they intend to press forward with anti-piracy efforts,

In September, Japan changed the law to introduce a maximum two year jail sentence for users found guilty of downloading pirated files.

Major ISPs in the US have announced plans to launch a "six strikes system" early next year, under which suspected pirates would be sent a series of warning letters before facing bandwidth throttling and other punitive measures. And the UK also plans to introduce a letter-writing scheme in 2013.

23.34 | 0 komentar | Read More

Child abuse Twitter accounts closed

24 December 2012 Last updated at 08:10 ET

Several private Twitter accounts have been disabled after they were revealed to contain indecent images of children.

Some hacking groups are claiming to have unmasked them, the NSPCC said.

Members of the public have reported the accounts to Greater Manchester Police and North Yorkshire Police, while Ceop - the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre - says it is "aware".

The NSPCC asked people to "be vigilant" and report such suspicious activity.

Ceop - the policing unit dedicated to eradicating the sexual abuse of children - said it had had 25 to 30 reports of these accounts.

A Ceop spokesman said Twitter had disabled the accounts and would be reporting the find to the National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) - Ceop's US equivalent - which as an American company it was legally required to.

"NCMEC will forward the account details to law enforcement in the countries where the individual concerned is," he said.

It is unclear whether the images were uploaded by a UK user, or a user based abroad.

The NSPCC said the accounts were made public in the early hours of Monday.

"To be honest, it's not a massive surprise. In our experience sex offenders will use whichever mean they can to connect with each other. They are usually quite devious," a spokesman said.

He asked people to be vigilant.

"It you see something, or are aware of something, you should report it."

As for those people storing such content, Professor Alan Woodward, of the University of Surrey's department of computing, said they were increasingly using social media rather than computers.

"If they use the web to keep any pictures then they will be able to claim it wasn't them. The weight of evidence isn't the same."

Twitter is yet to comment.

23.34 | 0 komentar | Read More

Iran 'fends off new cyber attack'

25 December 2012 Last updated at 10:19 ET

A power plant and other industries in southern Iran have been targeted by the Stuxnet computer worm, an Iranian civil defence official says.

But the cyber attack has been successfully rebuffed and prevented from spreading, Iranian media report.

Iran's nuclear enrichment efforts were hit hard in 2010 by the Stuxnet worm, which was also blamed for problems at industrial plants and factories.

Tehran accused Israel and the US of planting the malware.

Provincial civil defence chief Ali Akbar Akhavan said Iranian industry was constantly being targeted by "enemy cyber attacks" and companies in Hormozgan province had recently been infiltrated, the semi-official Isna news agency reported.

"The Bandar Abbas electricity supply company has come under cyber attack," he told a news conference. "But we were able to prevent its expansion owing to our timely measures and the co-operation of skilled hackers."

The Bandar Abbas plant, on Iran's southern coast in the Strait of Hormuz, is said to supply power to neighbouring provinces as well as Hormozgan.

Spyware

Iran has regularly claimed success in defeating computer viruses, such as Stuxnet and Flame, which have affected its industries.

In April, a malware attack on Iran's oil ministry and national oil company forced the government to disconnect key oil facilities, including the Kharg Island oil terminal that handles most of Tehran's exports.

Late last year, Iran said some of its computer systems were infected by the Duqu spyware which was believed to have been designed to steal data to help launch further cyber attacks.

The attacks have affected its energy exports as well as its controversial uranium enrichment programme, which Western countries suspect is aimed at constructing nuclear weapons. Tehran insists it is solely for peaceful purposes.

Continue reading the main story

• Stuxnet worm hits Iranian centrifuges - from mid-2009 to late 2010
• Iran complains facilities hit by Stars malware - April 2011
• Duqu trojan hits Iran's computer systems - November 2011
• Flame virus targets computers in PCs across the Middle East, including Iran and Israel - June 2012
• Iran says Stuxnet worm returns - December 2012

The biggest cyber attack so far was from the Stuxnet worm, believed to be the first known virus specifically targeted at infrastructure such as power stations.

In 2010, Iran accused the West of trying to disrupt its nuclear facilities with the Stuxnet worm.

Researchers estimated that five industrial processing organisations in Iran were hit repeatedly between June 2009 and April 2010 by the worm which they believed had been created by a "nation state" in the West.

Iran said centrifuges used in uranium enrichment had been sabotaged and the UN nuclear watchdog said the enrichment programme had been temporarily brought to a halt.

Reports suggested that the worm had infected the personal computers of staff at Iran's first nuclear power station at Bushehr.

In September this year, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the United Nations General Assembly that time was running out to stop Tehran having enough enriched uranium to build a nuclear bomb.

US President Barack Obama has said the US will do "what we must" to stop Iran acquiring nuclear weapons.

23.34 | 0 komentar | Read More

China opens longest bullet route

25 December 2012 Last updated at 20:24 ET

Please turn on JavaScript. Media requires JavaScript to play.

The BBC's Matthew Stadlen looks ahead to the high speed line's launch

China has officially opened the world's longest high-speed rail route, linking the capital Beijing with the southern commercial hub of Guangzhou.

The first bullet train left Beijing on Wednesday morning. Trains will initially travel at 300km/h (187mph), more than halving travel time.

A Chinese official has described the route - parts of which were already in operation - as "one of the most technically advanced in the world".

The 2,298km route will have 35 stops.

They include such major cities as Wuhan and Changsha.

The previously 22-hour journey will now take less than 10 hours.

The decision was taken to start the passenger service on 26 December to commemorate the birth of former Chinese leader Mao Zedong, state media said.

China is currently expanding its high-speed rail network across the vast country.

But the ambitious project has not been free from controversy.

Forty people died last summer in a crash on a rapid train line in eastern Zhejiang province and the entire high-speed scheme has been dogged with reports of corruption.

23.34 | 0 komentar | Read More

Samsung seeks US ban on Ericsson

26 December 2012 Last updated at 21:59 ET

Samsung Electronics has sought a ban on the import and sales of some Ericsson products in the US which it claims infringe its patents.

In a complaint filed with the US International Trade Commission (ITC), Samsung has accused Ericsson of breaching seven of its patents.

The move counters Ericsson's complaint to the ITC, made in November, seeking a sales ban on some Samsung products.

Ericsson has also claimed that Samsung infringed some of its patents.

The Swedish firm had a licensing deal with Samsung under which the South Korean manufacturer was allowed to use various technologies patented by Ericsson in its products.

However, the two firms have failed to renew the agreement, despite negotiating for almost two years.

Ericsson has claimed that Samsung wants to reduce the fee it pays to license the said patents, while Samsung has argued that the fee demanded by Ericsson is too high.

"We have sought to negotiate with Ericsson in good faith. However, Ericsson has proven unwilling to continue such negotiations by making unreasonable claims, which it is now trying to enforce in court," Samsung said in a statement.

"Under such circumstances, we have no choice but to take the steps necessary to protect our company."

Patent sharing

Ericsson is one of the earliest innovators in the telecommunications field and holds thousands of patents for technologies used in everyday global communication.

Some of these technologies are key to products made by other manufacturers such as Samsung.

Companies which hold patents to such essential technologies enter licensing agreements with other manufacturers allowing them the use of patents under fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory conditions.

Firms pay royalties to the patent holder to use the technology.

Ericsson earned $938m (£585m) last year in revenue from more than 100 licence agreements with companies in the industry.

However, stiff competition has lead to a much more protective stance by many companies over their patents in order to generate revenues.

Earlier this month, European Union competition regulators accused Samsung of abusing its position of holding key patents, while trying to negotiate royalty rates with rival Apple.

Meanwhile, Nokia and Apple have also taken rivals to court over patent infringement.

23.34 | 0 komentar | Read More

Graphene research gets £21.5m fund

27 December 2012 Last updated at 03:22 ET

The Chancellor, George Osborne, has outlined plans to boost development of the "super-material" graphene.

It is one of the lightest, strongest and most conductive materials known, with great commercialisation potential.

Now, £21.5m - £12m from a 2011 funding of £50m and nearly £10m from the science research council EPSRC - will be allocated to specific universities.

In addition, those universities and their industrial partners will commit a total of £14m to the effort.

Mr Osborne said the investment fund would aim to take the technology "from the British laboratory to the British factory floor".

Graphene is sheets of carbon just one atom thick - the very same material making up a pencil's "lead", but with record-breaking mechanical strength and electronic properties.

Manchester University academics Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov won the 2010 physics Nobel Prize in Physics for isolating the material and measuring some of its astounding properties.

Continue reading the main story

Jason Palmer Science and technology reporter, BBC News

---

Graphene has been called a "wonder material" since its discovery in 2005, which led to a comparatively swift Nobel prize for its discoverers in 2010. Gram for gram, it seems to be lighter, stronger and better in every way that nanotechnology experts can measure. It is hundreds of times stronger than steel, and electrons whip through it far faster than through the chips in your computer.

That combination of mechanical and electronic properties make it a "solution looking for a problem". But it is tricky to work with - sheets just an atom thick are difficult to isolate, to manipulate, to reliably connect to other materials. Those are the engineering challenges ahead.

The push is now in getting it out of UK laboratories and into devices, as nations such as South Korea are already doing. That push seems to be one that the UK's government and research base are increasingly invested in.

But since the material's discovery in 2005, scientists have sought to make good use of those attributes - no easy task when working at the atomic scale.

The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) has now identified the most promising graphene-related research projects in British universities to benefit from state funding.

The University of Cambridge has been awarded more than £12m for research into graphene flexible electronics and opto-electronics, which could include things like touch-screens and other display devices.

Imperial College London will receive over £4.5m to investigate aerospace applications of graphene.

The other successful projects are based at Durham University, the University of Manchester, the University of Exeter and Royal Holloway.

The universities will themselves contribute about £2m to the overall effort, and will work with industrial partners including Nokia, BAE Systems, Procter & Gamble, Qinetiq, Rolls-Royce, Dyson, Sharp and Philips Research - which will together bring in a further £12m in investment.

Please turn on JavaScript. Media requires JavaScript to play.

Mr Osborne told BBC Radio 4's Today programme there had been "enormous competition" for the graphene research to be done elsewhere in the world, rather than the UK.

He said: "We had to act very quickly... to step in and say we're going to provide funding here in Britain for that activity. That's an example of actually actively backing a winner to keep it in the UK."

Mr Osborne said there were several ways in which the UK could become an attractive location for scientific research, including more financial backing from the government, protecting spending on science, and more investment in big capital science projects.

He added that Britain's universities - the "jewels in the crown" of the UK economy - needed to be protected.

23.34 | 0 komentar | Read More

US chipmaker faces huge patent fine

27 December 2012 Last updated at 06:51 ET

US chipmaker Marvell Technology faces having to pay one of the biggest ever patent damage awards.

A jury in Pittsburgh found the firm guilty of infringing two hard disk innovations owned by local university Carnegie Mellon.

It said Marvell should pay $1.17bn (£723m) in compensation - however that sum could be multiplied up to three times by the judge because the jury had also said the act had been "wilful".

Marvell's shares fell more than 10%.

The maximum penalty would be close to the $3.96bn value of the company, based on its market capitalisation.

Marvell told the Wall Street Journal it would try to convince the judge to reverse the judgement, and would appeal if that failed.

The university's law firm issued a statement saying it took "pride" in securing the award following Marvell's failure to license the university's intellectual property.

Faster disks

Marvell makes a range of chips which includes processors which power devices including Blackberry smartphones, Sony Google TV internet video boxes and LED lighting controllers, as well as hard disks.

Among the disk makers, Western Digital has been its biggest customer over recent years.

Carnegie Mellon had accused Marvell of including technologies - invented by one of its professors and a student - designed to increase the accuracy disk drives read data at high speeds.

The university told the court the firm had sold 2.3 billion chips incorporating the disputed inventions between 2003 and 2012.

Marvell had argued both that its chips had not used the university's tech, and that the patents should never have been awarded in the first place - but the jury disagreed.

Record award

The damage award has the potential to be the biggest in US patent history.

There have only been two larger previous awards, according to law data provider Lex Machina.

In 2007 Microsoft was ordered to pay Lucent Technologies $1.52bn in damages over disputed MP3 and MPEG video technologies; and in 2009 Abbot Laboratories was ordered to pay Centocor Ortho Biotech $1.67bn for infringing its antibodies biotech patents - however, both judgements were later overturned.

That leaves the recent $1.05bn jury award to Apple in its case versus Samsung as the largest outstanding figure - the judge in the case has yet to finalise the sum.

However, one expert said it would be some time before the details of the disk drive dispute would be finalised.

"It is generally the case that US juries make large awards, and it is generally the case that they get reduced on appeal," Ilya Kazi from the UK's Chartered Institute of Patent Attorneys told the BBC.

"If history repeats itself Marvell could face a smaller sum - but it's still too soon to be sure how the process will play out."

23.34 | 0 komentar | Read More

EA forced to remove gun shop links

27 December 2012 Last updated at 07:06 ET

Links to browse and buy real weapons featured in popular war-based video game Medal of Honor have been removed from the title's website.

It followed pressure from groups suggesting that video games were responsible for inciting real-world violence.

A representative for publisher EA said: "We felt it was inappropriate and took the links down."

Company logos, and descriptions of the weapons, remain on the game's website.

In the wake of the school shootings in Newtown, video game makers were criticised by influential US lobby group the National Rifle Association.

"There exists in this country, sadly, a callous, corrupt and corrupting shadow industry that sells and stows violence against its own people," said NRA vice president Wayne LaPierre at a press conference last week.

A special panel led by US vice president Joe Biden is currently examining potential ways to curb gun violence in the country.

Among proposals under consideration is a study into any possible links between children's exposure to video games and violence.

'Unfair advantage!'

On the website for Medal of Honor, which has for years been a major seller for EA since the first title's release in 1999, news updates on the latest title discuss "partnerships" with weapons manufacturers.

A partners page displays 14 logos of companies producing combat equipment - but no longer link directly to the firms' individual sites.

In a separate news item on EA's main website, Medal of Honor's executive producer Greg Goodrich writes: "So head over to the Magpul website and gain an unfair advantage!". It refers to a Colorado-based firearms firm.

A promotional video showing the Magpul equipment was also released by the companies.

Real-world weapons are commonplace in video games which, like other entertainment forms, strive for accuracy and authenticity.

Earlier this year, CBS News reported that seven US Navy Seals were reprimanded after allegedly sharing classified material with games designers working on Medal of Honor.

One of the Seals took part in the raid which resulted in the death of Osama Bin Laden.

23.34 | 0 komentar | Read More

Huge rise in social media 'crimes'

27 December 2012 Last updated at 07:54 ET

The number of alleged crimes involving Facebook and Twitter has increased nearly eight-fold in four years, according to police figures.

There were 653 people charged in 2012 out of 4,908 offences reported to 29 forces in England, Scotland and Wales.

Police chiefs said the figures demonstrate a new challenge.

Last week, interim guidelines were issued, aimed at reducing the number of charges in England and Wales, after a string of controversial court cases.

The conviction of Paul Chambers in 2010 for joking on Twitter about blowing up Robin Hood Airport in South Yorkshire was widely condemned and eventually quashed.

The latest statistics were released by the police under the Freedom of Information Act.

Continue reading the main story

The guidance means some people could avoid trial if they are sorry for criminal comments posted while drunk"

End Quote Dominic Casciani Home affairs correspondent

In 2008, when the level of social network activity was much lower, there were 556 reports of alleged crimes with 46 people charged.

By this year that figure had risen to 4,908 allegations and 653 charged.

Chief Constable Andy Trotter of the Association of Chief Police Officers said it was important that police prioritised social networking crimes which caused genuine harm.

He said: "We need to accept that people have the right to communicate, even to communicate in an obnoxious or disagreeable way, and there is no desire on the part of the police to get involved in that judgment.

"But equally, there are many offences involving social media such as harassment or genuine threats of violence which cause real harm.

"It is that higher end of offending which forces need to concentrate on."

Police forces were asked to provide the number of crime reports in which either Facebook or Twitter was a key factor, and nearly two-thirds responded.

Offences included those committed on the websites, such as the posting of abusive messages, but also violent attacks committed for real but provoked by these kinds of online postings.

As well as menacing and threatening messages, there were also numerous sexual offences including grooming, complaints of stalking, allegations of racially aggravated conduct and reports of fraud.

Greater Manchester Police charged the highest number of people, at 115. Lancashire Police say they received reports of six threats of murder.

Mr Trotter said some of the offences would have been committed anyway, regardless of the existence of social media.

"We have to respect free speech and cannot have police forces responding simply because of public outcry.

"In many ways, online communities can be self-regulating and good at weeding out unacceptable behaviour. We need to find a way of distinguishing between that type of behaviour and that which requires police intervention."

He welcomed recent guidance from the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), saying it set a "high threshold" for that intervention and represented a first step towards a better co-ordinated approach.

Director of Public Prosecutions Keir Starmer QC has announced new guidelines on how people who post offensive messages on Facebook and Twitter should be dealt with.

He admitted the CPS made the wrong "judgment call" in the case of Mr Chambers.

23.34 | 0 komentar | Read More

China opens GPS-substitute to public

27 December 2012 Last updated at 09:41 ET

China has opened up its domestic sat-nav network to commercial use across the Asia-Pacific region.

Beidou - named after the Chinese word for the Big Dipper constellation - offers an alternative to the US's global positioning system (GPS).

It had previously been restricted to the Chinese military and government.

A spokesman said that Beidou is targeting a 70-80% share of the Chinese market in related location services by 2020.

The China Satellite Navigation Office added that by that time it also intended the service to be available across the globe.

Growth plan

Chinese officials say that Beidou can identify a user's location to 10m (33ft), their velocity to within 0.2 metres per second, and clock synchronisation signals to within 50 nanoseconds.

At present the receiver chips cost several times more than their GPS equivalents.

However - assuming prices fall - the Chinese government believes manufacturers will want to build them into equipment alongside those made for the US system, to offer users improved coverage.

Six satellites are already in orbit, but officials said they planned to add a further 40 to the system over the next decade, according to a report by China Daily.

Satellite launches

Organisers have estimated that the market for transport, weather, and telecom spin-off services from Beidou's signals could be worth 200bn yuan ($32bn; £20bn) by 2015.

However, it is widely thought another motivation for the project is China's desire not to be reliant on a foreign-operated system that could be turned off at a time of conflict,

The country recently showed off domestically-built drone aircraft at the China International Aviation and Aerospace Exhibition, which would be reliant on such location data to operate.

Beidou is one of a growing number of alternatives to GPS under development.

Russia is developing the Glonass system for both civilian and military use.

It has 23 operational satellites in orbit. However, a recent report by Russia Today suggested the country's defence ministry had reservations about the project after a corruption scandal and technical problems.

The EU is also working on its own network - Galileo. It began sending test signals from its third satellite at the beginning of the month - a minimum of four are necessary to lock onto a location.

Meanwhile, UK defence company BAE Systems is working on Navsop - a system that relies on hundreds of existing signals including those used for radio, TV, wi-fi and mobile phones.

It suggests that when completed the system could offer "superior performance" to more expensive dedicated navigation satellite networks. However, it has not announced a launch date.

23.34 | 0 komentar | Read More