Communications Technology

The film industry is using pirate tactics to beat the pirates – by employing “cyber hitmen” to launch attacks that take out websites hosting illegal movies.

Girish Kumar, managing director of Aiplex Software, a firm in India, told this website that his company, which works for the film industry, was being hired - effectively as hitmen - to launch cyber attacks on sites hosting pirated movies that don’t respond to copyright infringement notices sent to them by the film industry.

Kumar said 95 per cent of sites hosting illegal movies co-operated with notices, but a few - mostly sites hosting torrents and used primarily for illegal content - did not.

“Most movies are released on Friday morning at 10am in India,” Kumar said in a telephone interview. “The movie is released in the morning [and] by afternoon it’s on the internet.”

His company trawled the net to find movies uploaded, he said.

“What we do is we see all those links on the net,” he said.

“We find the hosting [computer] server and send them a copyright infringement notice because they’re not meant to have those links. If they don’t remove [the link] we send them a second notice and ask them [again] to remove it.”
In Australia, distrubuted-denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks are an offence under section 477.3 of the Criminal Code Act 1995, according to the Australian Federal Police. As for DoS attacks, which are different, according to Australian law a person is guilty of an offence if the person causes “any unauthorised impairment of electronic communication to or from a computer”.

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Bosnian police have tracked down a Bosnian girl who sparked a worldwide manhunt and international outrage after she was seen in a web video throwing half a dozen puppies into a river.

The girl, who appeared to be in her teens, lives in the central town of Bugojno, police spokesman Sefir Barucija was quoted by SRNA news agency as saying, but officers did not plan to reveal her identity publicly as she is under 18.

The 44-second video shows a blonde girl in a red sweatshirt casually taking the squealing black-and-white puppies out of a white bucket and tossing them into the fast-moving river one by one.

It is believed the online miscreants of the anonymous messageboard 4chan, as well as animal protection groups, played a significant role in identifying the girl, who was the subject of several Facebook groups that were created to track her down.

Only a week ago, members of the website identified a British woman, who was caught on camera dumping a family’s cat in a wheelie bin, within 24 hours of the footage being placed online. The woman, Mary Bale, 44, was placed under police protection after receiving death threats from cat lovers.

Bosnian police launched an investigation into the puppy-throwing incident late last week and several animal rights groups, including SOS and PETA, joined the cause to identify the girl.

Transformers director Michael Bay offered a $US50,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and successful prosecution of the girl. Twilight star Kellan Lutz wrote on Twitter that he had ”never been so digusted before” and that the video was ‘’so incredibly disturbing and plain out wrong”.

Since tracking down the girl, Bosnian police have questioned her and her parents.

Under Bosnian law a person who kills or tortures animals is punishable only with fines ranging from €15 to €5000.

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Samsung’s Apple iPad rival and worst kept secret after it was spotted on a Sydney train, the Samsung Galaxy Tab, was last night unveiled officially by the South Korean company.

Samsung’s Australian vice president, telecommunications division, Tyler McGee, told this website that Samsung Australia planned to release the tablet in Australia in the fourth quarter.

It would be available before Christmas, he said.

The tablet features a 7-inch LCD display and will run the latest Google Android 2.2 operating system, Froyo, at launch. It will be able to store up to 16 gigabytes of data internally and has a microSD slot that allows for an additional 32 gigabyte SD card.

The Samsung Galaxy Tab will also make use of both Wi-Fi and 3G technologies, allowing for internet access on the go. It will also feature a front and rear-facing camera.

The rear-facing camera, which utilises an LED flash and auto-focus, is 3 megapixels, while the front-facing camera, used for video calling, is of a lower quality - 1.3 megapixels.

The tablet will come in one model and weigh 380 grams, half that of its rival, the Apple iPad 3G with Wi-Fi.

No pricing has been announced and it’s not yet known if it will be sold outright as opposed to being tied to a telecommunications company like Telstra or Optus on a subsidised plan.

McGee said the pricing would be “competitive” to Apple’s iPad.

“At this point in time the [telcos] are still reviewing how we’re going to bring it to market,” McGee said. “In four weeks time we hope that [telcos] will have settled down with their plans and we should have something else to share then.”

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