(Via Greg Lastowka) The Criminal Division of the Supreme Court of the Netherlands has delivered a ground-breaking ruling which declares that virtual goods from the popular online player game Runescape are to be considered goods in accordance to Dutch law, and therefore are subject of theft and criminal enforcement (Google Read more…
Some readers may remember that some time ago I wrote a post about Bitcoin, an interesting online payment experiment in the shape of a cryptographic currency. My conclusion was that the currency was probably illegal in the U.S. and Europe, and left it at that. At the time Bitcoin’s star Read more…
Scotland Yard has caught LulzSec’s Topiary, their biggest scalp to date. Topiary has been identified as Jake Davis, an 18 year-old from the Shetland Islands (pictured here looking like a poster child for teenage hackers, including Neo-wannabe shades). He appeared in court earlier today and was released on bail, under Read more…
After the spectacular hacking of The Sun newspaper and News International websites that took place earlier this week, hacking collectives like Anonymous, LulzSec and AntiSec seem unstoppable. This air of invulnerability was part of LulzSec’s gloating the night the attack on The Sun’s web services took place. [blackbirdpie url=”https://twitter.com/LulzSec/status/93093868379193344″] However, Read more…
There has been a lot said about the PlayStation Network hack, enough to warrant its own Wikipedia page. With a calculated total of 77 million accounts affected, and a breach that has compromised both personal and sensitive financial details, this has been a PR disaster of epic proportions for Sony. Read more…
The use of the loaded question may imply that I believe they should. I shall be frank and admit that this is precisely the intention of this post, but please allow me to explain my reasoning before you dismiss such a ludicrous notion. What inspired me to write this post Read more…
As an observer of that interesting case study in Internet regulation that is Anonymous, recent developments have been quite an eye-opener in the potential long-term survival of the group. When Anonymous coordinated a series of denial-of-service attacks against payment systems and electronic commerce giants in response to the perceived attack Read more…
Following up from the story about the Internet group Anonymous taking itself too seriously, the organisers of the now infamous Operation Payback have issued a statement of intentions. It seems like they were honestly thinking that they would be getting more serious attention by then, given the grandiose claims they Read more…
SocialMediaLand has been flooded in the last couple of days with stories about Firesheep. In case you have not heard about it, Firesheep is a Firefox add-on that allows anyone to hijack other people’s social network accounts in open wifi zones. The way the application works is staggeringly simple. If Read more…
For some time now English law firm ACS:Law has been in the middle of controversy for its use of dubious tactics against copyright infringers. ACS:Law’s cause célèbre is that they became famous when they teamed-up with porn producers and then they started sending cease-and-desist letters to people claiming that they Read more…