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independant observatory

[ZeroPaid] Aussie Govt to Filter Online Video Games

Downloadable games, flash-based games, and sites that sell physical copies of games with rating greater than MA15+ (suitable for 15yos) would be blocked, even for adults.

Australia’s ridiculous plan to censor the Internet gets more ridiculous by the day. [...]

[Guardian] Illegal downloads and dodgy figures

You are killing our creative industries. "Downloading costs billions," said the Sun. "MORE than 7 million Brits use illegal downloading sites that cost the economy billions of pounds, government advisers said today. Researchers found more than a million people using a download site in ONE day and estimated that in a year they would use £120bn worth of material." [...]

Now I am always suspicious of this industry, because they have produced a lot of dodgy figures over the years. I also doubt that every download is lost revenue since, for example, people who download more also buy more music. I'd like more details. [...]

[publicaffairs.linx.net] Government backtracks on P2P

Quietly announced alongside today’s Digital Britain report, the government today accepted that its plans to legislate against ISPs in response to copyright infringement for peer-to-peer file-sharing are unworkable.

[ars technica] 37% of P2P users say they'll ignore disconnection threats

ISPs have hoped that 70 percent of file-swappers would pull down the Jolly Roger after they receive a mere notice. New research suggests that only 41 percent will stop; the rest require tough sanctions, and even disconnection won't stop many.

But most Internet users aren't sharing music at all; even the IFPI's own numbers show that only 18 percent of Europeans engage in any file-swapping. So the real question is not how all Internet users will react, but how the file-swappers will react.

How French Presidency Hides a Political Laundering Inside EU Telecoms Package

Everybody agrees that European Union suffers from a democratic deficit which deepens the gap between European institutions and their citizens. What is more unknown is that one of main reasons for this is that Member States often use European Union to achieve what can be spelled as “political laundering”. The “Telecoms Package” gives a perfect example of such a deceptive maneuver, aimed at legalizing an european-wide "graduated response" against citizens, and stretching it even deeper as usual. How does it work?