Hasta La Gadget!

Chalk another one up for the governments waging this anti-piracy war we keep hearing so much about, as Ukrainian authorities have taken down Demonoid. The raid on Demonoid’s servers comes after the torrent tracking giant suffered a large-scale DDoS attack a few days before, and it seems that the US may have been involved in some way. Reports say that Anti-Cyber ​​Research Affairs of Kiev conducted the raid on Demonoid host ColoCall, copying all of the information on Demonoid’s servers before shutting them down.

“Investigators have copied all the information from the servers Demonoid and sealed them,” an anonymous ColoCall source tells Ukrainian newspaper Kommersant “Some equipment was not seized, but now it does not work, and we were forced to terminate the agreement with the site.” The source said that Demonoid’s owners – who remain unnamed and are thought to be operating out of Mexico – had backups stored with ColoCall, but the fact that they haven’t used any of them yet suggests that Demonoid has been closed for good.

This raid on Demonoid’s servers coincides with a US visit by Deputy Prime Minister Valery Khoroshkovsky. In his first visit to the United States, Khoroshkovsky apparently discussed copyright infringement (among other topics), though USTR spokesperson Carol Guthrie tells Ars Technica that Demonoid wasn’t specifically mentioned during the meeting. Regardless of whether or not it was, the Ukrainian government seems happy to stand by the US as it attempts to bring file sharing sites down.

Demonoid did what it could to avoid prosecution in the Ukraine by denying access to anyone with a Ukrainian IP address, but that doesn’t seem like it was enough. It’s unclear if Demonoid will return eventually, but we have a feeling it will end up much like MegaUpload. To put it simply, don’t expect Demonoid to be up and running again anytime soon, if ever. Stay tuned, because this definitely isn’t the last we’ll hear of governments taking down file sharing sites.

Demonoid taken down by Ukrainian authorities is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Apple’s plans to erect an iCloud data center in Sparks, Reno have gained traction now the local board of economic development have rubber-stamped the deal. While largely ceremonial, it’s given its assent to $89 million in tax breaks to entice the company to break ground on the weirdly-named “Project Jonathan Hub.” The new data center is expected to go live before the end of the year, hopefully ensuring that upgrading to OS 10.9 aren’t as fraught as they were for Mountain Lion last week.

[Image credit: Amy Meredith, Flickr]

Continue reading Apple’s iCloud data center gets green light to come to Reno, be a star

Filed under: Internet

Apple’s iCloud data center gets green light to come to Reno, be a star originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 02 Aug 2012 05:48:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The UK House of Lords’ Communications Committee has suggested that all broadcast TV should be moved to the internet to free up wireless spectrum for cellphones. In its report, the panel found that whilst such a network would be cheaper and more efficient in the long run, it would also require extensive re-building of the country’s archaic communications infrastructure. Given that the analog-to-digital switchover is currently in progress, it seems unlikely that a further transition will be timetabled — especially since there are still concerns over the cost of bringing fiber-optic broadband to rural areas. Any change in the plan will need to be rubber-stamped by Government, but perhaps it’d be more amenable if they saw how good 8K video looks on one of those connections.

Filed under: Cellphones, Home Entertainment, Internet

House of Lords wants UK TV to go fully online and leave airwaves clear for cellphones originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 01 Aug 2012 02:33:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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With privacy being one of those hot-button issues now that we’re living in a post-9/11 world, it can be hard to know who to trust when it comes to whether or not the government is collecting data on you. Take this weekend’s development from the DefCon hacker conference, for instance: on the one hand, we have NSA director Gen. Keith Alexander telling attendees that the agency doesn’t maintain files on American citizens, while on the other hand, we have former NSA official William Binney claiming during a panel discussion that the NSA does. Who do we trust in this case? We’re not positive, but it sure does raise a few questions.

To get a bit more specific, Binney said that the NSA began forming plans to collect data on American citizens before the events of 9/11 even occurred. 9/11, as you might imagine, gave NSA officials the perfect excuse to roll out the program, and it wasn’t long before Binney ended up leaving the agency. “It started in February 2001 when they started asking telecoms for data,” he said. “That to me tells me that the real plan was to spy on Americans from the beginning.” Binney says that the reason he left the agency is because it started “spying on everyone in the country.”

Alexander claims that the NSA only spies on foreign entities, and though he seems to admit that the agency sometimes “incidentally” picks up information on American citizens, that information is restricted – “minimized” is the official word – unless there’s a crime involved. Binney and the other members of the panel, such as ACLU attorney Alex Abdo, pointed out that there are loopholes in the law that essentially allow the NSA to collect information on American citizens while looking into these “foreign entities,” which they can then go back to later if new information on the citizen in question surfaces.

If what Binney and his fellow panel members are saying is true, that’s pretty scary. There are plenty of people out there ready and willing to believe that the government is spying on them, and the NSA doesn’t exactly have the best track record when it comes to stuff like this. Ultimately, Binney says that the the oversight Congress has over the NSA is “dependent” on what the NSA tells them, so there’s no real way of knowing that the agency is telling the truth. Be sure to check out our story timeline below for more information on the NSA.

[via Wired]

Former NSA official blows whistle on agency’s data collection program is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

It’s been a rather bizarre few days. On Sunday, Gordon Crovitz published an opinion article at The Wall Street Journal, claiming that the US government’s involvement in the creation and launch of the Internet was quite a bit more modest than we’ve been led to believe. “It’s an urban legend that the government launched the Internet,” Crovitz wrote, sparking a debate that spans numerous blogs and news sites. Now Vinton Cerf, whose work helped developed TCP/IP networking protocols, has attempted to set the record straight in an interview with CNET, saying that the government was indeed very involved in the creation of the Internet.

In the interview, Cerf says that it was government funding for ARPANET that eventually led to the creation of the Internet. According to him (and it seems like he should know), he says that the ARPANET project was “funded through 1990 by ARPA and other USG agencies” and that work on the Internet was funded from 1978 to 1995 by “ARPA, NSF, DOE, NASA among others.” So, it appears that the government did have quite a big stake in the creation of the Internet since there were so many government agencies providing funding for the development of it.

“The U.S. government, including ARPA, NSF, DOE, NASA among others absolutely facilitated, underwrote, and pioneered the development of the Internet,” Cerf said. “The private sector engaged around 12 years into the program (about 1984-85) and was very much involved in powering the spread of the system. But none of this would have happened without this research support.”

As for Crovitz’s claim that Xerox PARC Labs should get “full credit” for the Internet, Cerf says that while Xerox does deserve some credit for its work on things like Ethernet, the laser printer, the Xerox Network System, and PARC Universal Packet, the credit actually belongs to a larger group of people and organizations that helped make the Internet a reality. “Articles like Crovitz’ distort history for political purposes,” Cerf said, “and I hope people who want to know the real story will discount this kind of revisionist interpretation.”

Even if you already knew all of this stuff, the interview with Cerf is still pretty fascinating, if only because you’re hearing the Internet’s history recounted by a guy who was actually there throughout most of the process. Hopefully Cerf’s interview will help put this silly debate to rest, but many who follow politics know that history is sometimes considered open for interpretation, so we’re not all that confident Cerf’s testimony will be final thing said on the subject.

[Photo via Joi]

Vint Cerf sounds off on who really created the Internet is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.