Leefe rates the world…

Many Microsoft volume licensees would rather switch than fight, with the big showdown coming in the next two years

Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) is taking a stand as one of Julian Assange’s few defenders in Washington, arguing that the WikiLeaks founder should get the same protections as the media.

Cartoon mashup of the NBN report and the Mandatory Internet filter

OECD researchers have found that piracy, not high speed broadband as is often assumed, explains the prevalence of botnet infections in a country. After analysing 190 billion spam messages from 170 million sources captured between 2005 and 2009, the researchers found high speed broadband was not associated with higher levels of botnet infections.

A senior minister in Thailand's ICT authority, which oversees internet censorship in the country, said that blacklisting has failed and should be dropped. Thongchai Sangsiri, director of computer forensics within Thailand's Ministry of Information and Communication Technology (MICT), told the Asia-Pacific Telecommunity cybersecurity forum in NSW today that its blacklists are verbose and have created onerous management problems for internet service providers.

For 18 minutes in April, China’s state-controlled telecommunications company hijacked 15 percent of the world’s Internet traffic, including data from U.S. military, civilian organizations and those of other U.S. allies.

For 18 minutes in April 2010, China routed 15% of Internet traffic through itself via bogus routing priorities.

In a sign that Righthaven is on the defensive, the controversial copyright enforcement company has offered to permanently drop one of its lawsuits—provided it doesn’t have to pay legal fees to the attorneys defending the website it sued, Democratic Underground. The move shows the startup company’s concerns about the potential for mounting legal bills.

As the afternoon at Newtown Festival progressed a bank of clouds moved over the park. Luckily no rain ensued, but they provided some shade from the hot sun.