In the last year Europe has experienced the greatest influx of people seen since the second world war. The chancellor of Germany offered asylum to Syrians as part of the effort to assist those displaced by war. The number of known people who have entered Europe to claim asylum in 2015 exceeded 2015. With the discovery that a number of people were claiming to be Syrian when entering Europe countries a number of the EU states have started to use biometric technology including face detection software to identify where migrants have come from as part of the asylum claiming process. Sweden expects to deport up to 80,000 people after discovering that their asylum claims are not valid based on this and similar technology. Other European countries are expected to follow suit in 2016. Technology and digital records is advancing to the point where it is now possible to trace where a person has come from originally and where they have been. Sweden has seen the number of new migrants entering the country fall since it brought in systematic photo ID checks on travelers on January 4.

Google has announced that it will cover the legal fees for protecting the Fair use Rights of youTube video Creators. Google started this New Fair Use Protection Program by refusing to remove few youtubes videos that received DMCA take down notices from copyright owners.

Google's this new initiative is part of a growing effort to fight back against DMCA abuse.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jr6gUbQIB_s&list=PLK2ccNIJVPpAlYHL7UaTP5uUs6eux28ZG

A lot of times the systems are politically mandated in the sense that you have somebody on the Hill or Congress who will mandate a system and they'll mandate a particular period of time and they'll mandate the amount of money to spend and they have absolutely no idea what they're talking about. So what happens is, if you're there as a government person, you're trying to translate some political wish into something that's topical and it's not very easy," Bob Charette says. Another problem is that there isn't much accountability when it comes to projects that fail.

One infamous example of government failure is the system that handles disability claims for Social Security. In the early 2000s, Congress spent money to try and reduce the massive backlog in claim processing that had built up. The backlog, however, only grew. Then in 2007, they spent more money - an estimated $381 million - to try and integrate 54 different IT systems that the Social Security Administration uses to process claims in the state. In 2011 they spent another $200 million on the project. "After six years ... they found out that they really didn't have anything." The backlog for Social Security claims continues to grow, and the latest attempt to fix the problem failed again this past summer. "By any stretch of imagination, it's scandalous."

"Websites will not be forced to honor consumers' "Do Not Track" requests as the Federal Communications Commission today dismissed a petition that would have imposed new requirements on companies like Google and Facebook.

Consumer Watchdog had petitioned the FCC to "initiate a rule-making proceeding requiring 'edge providers' (like Google, Facebook, YouTube, Pandora, Netflix, and LinkedIn) to honor 'Do Not Track' Requests from consumers." The group's proposed rule would prevent online services from requiring consumers to consent to tracking in exchange for accessing Web services, preventing online services from sharing personal information of users with third parties when consumers send Do Not Track requests.

The group pointed out that the FCC intends to impose new privacy rules on Internet service providers under Section 222 of the Communications Act, the privacy portion of the Title II common carrier regulations that the FCC is applying to broadband providers such as Comcast and AT&T. But those rules don't apply to websites."

On Friday the Obama administration secured a "cyber theft pledge" from South Korea.

"no country should conduct or knowingly support cyber-enabled theft of intellectual property, trade secrets, or other confidential business information with the intent of providing competitive advantages to its companies or commercial sectors;"

The first of its kind. Whether it will hold is another issue. While South Korean operations are conducted at a fraction of the scale of their Chinese neighbors, ROK spies still remain busy.

From 2007 to 2012, the Justice Department brought charges in at least five major cases involving South Korean corporate espionage against American companies. Among the accused was a leading South Korean manufacturer that engaged in what prosecutors described as a "multi-year campaign" to steal the secret to DuPont's Kevlar, which is used to make bulletproof vests...

All of the cases involved corporate employees, not government officials, but the technologies that were stolen had obvious military applications. South Korean corporate spies have targeted thermal imaging devices and prisms used for guidance systems on drones...

But South Korea has gone after commercial tech, as well. A 2005 report published by Cambridge University Press identified South Korea as one of five countries, along with China and Russia, that had devoted "the most resources to stealing Silicon Valley technology."

http://taosecurity.blogspot.com/2015/10/south-korea-signs-up-to-cyber-theft.html

A federal appeals court ruled Friday in a decadelong dispute that Google digitization of over 20 million books, mostly out-of-print titles, did not violate copyrights because the company only showed short sections of the books in its database, so it would be difficult for anyone to read any of the works in their entirety by repeatedly entering different search requests. "This does not threaten the rights holders with any significant harm to the value of their copyrights or diminish their harvest of copyright revenue."

The Authors Guild and various authors had challenged Google in 2005, contending that the digital book project violated their rights. The appeals court said Google's profit motivation does not justify denial of what is a fair use of the books' content and overall enhances public knowledge.

The appeals panel said it recognized that libraries that had negotiated with Google to receive digital copies from the company might use them in an infringing manner. It said that could expose the libraries and Google to liability but called it "sheer speculation" to raise the issue now.

http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_28979320/appeals-court-rules-favor-googles-online-library

Today, October 13, marks the start of data retention for user internet and phone data in Australia. Many telecommunication providers are not confident that they can record the data as required by the laws passed in March 2015 and only half have lodged their implementation plan with the government. With the public still in the dark about how much this will cost, how effective it will be, how long it will last there are questions abound about the legitimacy of data retention. Thankfully, Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has already weighed in on how Australians should avoid having the government capture their data: Use a VPN.

France's data privacy regulator rejected Google's appeal of an order to remove search results worldwide upon request, saying Monday that companies that operate in Europe need to abide by the prevailing laws. If a French citizen files a request under the "right to be forgotten," CNIL said Google must comply with the order worldwide -- not just on European extensions of its search engine, such as .fr, .es, or .de for example -- or face possible sanctions. The agency denied that it was trying to apply French law on the "right to be forgotten" globally, as Google had accused the watchdog of doing.

Its latest order came in response to the May 2014 ruling from Europe's highest court that people have the right to control what appears when their name is searched online. Google says it has received 318,269 requests for removal, and delisted about 40 percent of the URLs that it evaluated as part of the requests.

Google has argued the precedent would leave it vulnerable to similar orders from any government, democratic or totalitarian. "The Internet would only be as free as the world's least free place," the company wrote in July on its Europe policy blog.

For a long time the copyright held over the song "Happy Birthday to you" has been held up by those opposed to copyright in its current form as a clear example of copyright abuse. The song is based on a tune written before 1893 by Mildred Hill and Patty Hill titles "Good Morning to All". Today the copyright for this song is claimed to be held by Warner/Chappell Music. Two years ago Warner/Chappell Music attempted to collect royalties from a company working on a documentary film. In a judgement handed down by U.S. District Judge George H. King the original copyright only covered the musical arrangement not the lyrics and the Happy Birthday song is now in the public domain.

An Australian court has ruled that people accused of illegally downloading the film Dallas Buyers Club cannot be requested to pay more than the cost of a legitimate copy of the film. As a precaution, Justice Nye Perram will also require the company to pay a AU$600,000 bond before requiring the targeted ISP to release identifying details of the alleged infringing parties, as the company has no presence in Australia.

This is in stark contrast to the abusive copyright trolling/extortion that has become common in the United States, where hundreds of accused individuals are sent letters demanding a fee of up to $5,000 to settle, using the expense of litigation, and the threat of statutory damages, to extract settlements hundreds of times higher than the cost of its movie. Why do we see this difference? The answer is straightforward: Australia does not have statutory damages for copyright infringement. This allowed the court to tie damages to the actual harm suffered. In contrast, U.S. copyright law provides statutory damages of up to $150,000 per work and does not require any showing of harm. Excessive penalties are baked into the U.S. system which encourages trolling and abuse.