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  1. #1

    Google

    Google Legally Avoids Taxes
    Added: Tuesday, August 21st, 2012


    The world’s most popular search engine Google isn’t paying much tax in the United Kingdom, and of course the country’s Parliament is not very happy about it. In fact, Google has found a great way to avoid paying most of British taxes.

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    The Parliament of the United Kingdom is currently thinking of dragging a company’s executive into the mother of all Parliaments to explain how Google manages to save so much in taxes, while generating massive annual profits.

    The company paid as little as £6,000,000 in British taxes despite generating a profit of almost £400,000,000. The truth is clear and legal: Google does it via using its Ireland-based subsidiary having an agency agreement with Google UK. In other words, 90% of the company’s profits are transferred to Ireland, from where Google pays a host of fees, which include licensing charges to a Google-owned Bermuda company. In the end, there is almost nothing left of the profits that could stay in the United Kingdom to be taxed.

    Google’s current strategy, dubbed the “Double Irish” method, is absolutely legal at the moment. It isn’t as if Parliament had no idea what the search giant was doing. Two years ago, a report detailed the ins and outs of the company’s savings scheme and revealed that Google saved $3.1 billion in taxes within 3 years. The company has long been trying to reassure the British government that Google doesn’t need to change anything in the scheme, because taxes are only one piece of what the corporations can deliver to a local economy.

    For example, Google claims that it paid “a substantial contribution” to the economy of the United Kingdom in the form of local, payroll and corporate taxes. Indeed, the company employed over a thousand employees, helped hundreds of thousands of startup businesses to grow on the Internet and invested millions of pounds to support new tech businesses in East London, let alone Google Panda.

    In other words, the idea Google tries to deliver to the UK Parliament is “leave us alone we behave well”. But the government understands it as the words of the mighty and rich corporation which simply doesn’t want to pay tax. In response, Google claimed that it would readily pay a larger rate of tax – this time last year – but only if the law really required the company to do so.

    By:
    SaM
    August 21st,2012

  2. #2

    Re: Google

    google piracy

    Google can pirate video,E book, all kind, and it's pretty much legal for them but, If individual download copyright material the have a FBI come after them, only in America the land of the free.

  3. #3

    Re: Google

    Google Will Appeal Court Ruling over eLibrary
    Added: Tuesday, August 21st, 2012

    The search giant is allowed to appeal the granting of class status to writers who are suing Google over its plans to create the biggest digital library in the world.

    Recently, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York has granted the company permission to challenge the latest decision by Circuit Judge Denny Chin to let writers sue as a group.

    In case of Google’s victory the search engine will save billions of dollars and force the Authors Guild, an outfit behind the authors, to fight each case individually. The search giant has already scanned over 20,000,000 books, and the Authors Guild has claimed Google should pay it $750 for each work copied.

    Circuit Judge Denny Chin decided that it would be unfair to force Authors Guild members to sue one at a time. This would mean different results and higher legal costs. However, the alarming part for Google was that the judge also added the phrase “taking into consideration the sweeping and undiscriminating nature of defender’s unauthorized copying”, which probably means it’s toast if it ever comes to a decision.

    The company told the Appeals court that case-by-case determinations are necessary to find out whether the search engine was making “fair use” of the authors’ works. Google insists that “fair use” would be its main defense point, and the company therefore shouldn’t be forced to litigate without the full benefit of its principal defence.

    Media reports confirm that Google started creating the digital library after the company has signed agreements in 2004 with a number of major research libraries, under which it got the right to digitize both current and out-of-print works. After this, the company started scanning and spent loads of time and efforts to allow everyone have access to knowledge. Thus far, Oxford University, Harvard University, Stanford University, the University of Michigan, the University of California, and the New York Public Library have all had their book collections digitized.

    In the meantime, in March 2011 Denny Chin delivered another ruling on the case, rejecting a $125 million settlement and saying that otherwise it would provide the search engine with a “de facto monopoly” to copy books en masse without permission.

    By:
    SaM

  4. #4

    Re: Google

    Embedding Illegal Video is Legal
    Added: Friday, August 17th, 2012

    Appeals judge Richard Posner handed down a ruling saying that MyVidster, a social video bookmarking website sued by Flava Works, did not encourage swapping and did not encourage copyright infringement. In other words, the court ruled that embedding a copyright-infringing video wasn’t against the law.

    Judge Richard Posner ruled that a social video bookmarking website didn’t violate the copyright of the adult movie porn production company by embedding its copyright-infringing content from the 3rd-party sites. This ruling overturned a preliminary injunction from last year, imposed by a lower court after the porn company filed a lawsuit against MyVidster two years ago.

    The Appeals Court ruling says that MyVidster does not touch the data stream and therefore does not actually host the infringing video, but rather the links to the work hosted elsewhere on the Internet. In fact, MyVidster provides Internet users addresses where they can find entertainment. You can compare this to listing plays and giving the name and address of the theatres where they are being performed, which isn’t the same as performing them.

    The court pointed out that to call the provision of contact data “transmission” or “communication” and thus make the service a direct infringer would blur the distinction between direct and contributory infringement. In other words, this will wrongly make the provider of such data an infringer even if they did not know that the work to which he was directing a site user to his website was illegal.

    In the meantime, Google and Facebook filed documents in support of MyVidster, arguing that websites like theirs should be considered as intermediaries only, and therefore not held liable in case someone uploads illegal content to their servers, claiming DMCA safe harbour. The EFF also filed an amicus brief in support of the service. Of course, the MPAA sided with an adult movie production company, filing a brief urging the appeals court to uphold the lower court’s ruling.

    It is still unclear how this decision will affect other cases. For example, 23-year-old Richard O’Dwyer, responsible for operating the TVShack website, is to be extradited from the United Kingdom to the United States to face copyright violation charges. However, his website also only offered links to other services hosting uploaded copyrighted TV shows and movies, but didn’t host the content itself.

    By:
    SaM
    August 17th,2012

  5. #5

    Re: Google

    Google Is Accused of Facilitating Piracy, Again
    Added: Friday, October 4th, 2013

    Google is again criticized by the UK MPs for failure to curb music and movie piracy. The Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee accused the tech giant of offering the thinnest of excuses to avoid taking action against widespread piracy. The government complaints that the problem costs the creative industry millions of pounds in lost revenue annually.

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    The MPs didn’t accept the explanations from Google that some of the “notorious” websites may also host legal content, and it therefore can’t block all of them. They called Google foremost among tech giants in being able to influence coalition policy-making and pointed out that they had received multiple complaints from across the creative industries about Google.

    British MPs claimed that online pirates convicted of running commercial sites which rip off music, movies and video games should face up to 10 years in jail, up from the current maximum of 2 years. In response, Google claims that it does take down copyright-infringing content when it is notified of it. But it remains under the constant pressure from creative industry groups for moving too slowly or failing to take action.

    Google revealed that it removed over 20 million links to pirated material from the search results in August 2013 alone. However, search itself is not the problem, because only 8% of infringers in the United Kingdom use Google to find illegal movies and 13% to find illegal music. The search giant is working harder than anyone to help the entertainment industry protect its content online.

    The industry experts admit that the suggestion to raise the custodial penalty for piracy isn’t new. It was suggested in a private members bill many years ago, but was reignited in 2012 by the conviction of a site operator who was sentenced to 4 years in prison for running a website linking to pirated video.

    The copyright owners claim that the creative industries are of huge importance to the UK economy, but it is put at risk if content creators can’t rely on a strong framework of intellectual property rights. The MPs claim that serious copyright infringers should be targeted with notifications without delay and urged the government to resolve the current impasse over the DEA by implementing the Online Copyright Infringement Code. The latter allows ISPs to send warnings to suspected copyright abusers.

  6. #6

    Re: Google

    Google Dramatically Changed Its Algorithm
    Added: Monday, October 7th, 2013


    Google just turned 15 and announced a change to its search algorithm. Called Hummingbird, it could nip at the heels of smaller sites, like happened with the previous one. The last changes to Google algorithm, Panda and Penguin, only fixed its parts, but didn’t replace the whole. The developers admit that Hummingbird is a complete rewrite, though it still uses some parts of the old code.

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    The industry observers remember that the last major change was four years ago – the "Caffeine Update". It helped the search engine better collect data than sorting through it. Meanwhile, the last time the company carried out a rewrite this large was 2001.

    The experts regard it as a testament to the power Google has in defining online content that it can be the king maker for many careers in the worldwide web. If this search engine can find you and defines your website as acceptable, then everyone in the world will be able to find you. New search algorithm defines where you get your news from, rather than anything like providing interesting material.

    Thus far, little is known about Hummingbird, because the company has only confirmed it was the most comprehensive overhaul to Google since “Caffeine” in 2009. The developers said that the algorithm allows it to look at long, complex questions more quickly, instead of being bogged down by each word. It also helps identify and rank answers from indexed material.

    The most interesting fact is that the new code has been in use for the last month, but only announced now. Apparently, there’s been no major outcry among publishers that they have lost rankings, and it supports Google. The developers say this is a query-by-query effect, able to improve particular searches.

    Perhaps other search algorithm changes might have already stuffed up smaller websites enough so that the innovation will make little difference. However, taking into account what has happened in the past, a few might be taking a quizzical look at their traffic this month.

  7. #7

    Re: Google

    Google Won’t Filter “BitTorrent” in Autocomplete Anymore
    Added: Thursday, October 3rd, 2013


    Under the pressure of content industry, the search giant had to implement a few changes to its engine. This included blacklisting piracy-related terms from appearing in its Autocomplete and Instant services. From the very beginning, Google blacklisted both “BitTorrent” and “uTorrent”, but recently unbanned these keywords, which caused a sharp increase in search traffic.

    Internet users searching for such terms as “The Pirate Bay” or “MegaUpload” will find no suggestions or search results appearing before they type in the full word. It doesn’t mean that the webpages are removed from the engine’s index, but this move still caused a sharp decrease in searches for these terms.

    However, it is unclear what triggers a keyword to be included in the blacklist. Google explained they remove terms “closely associated with piracy” without revealing further details. The company never published the full list of banned words, but “BitTorrent” and “uTorrent” were there from the start. Both terms are trademarks of BitTorrent Inc., which was rather disappointed that the search giant labeled them as “piracy related”.

    BitTorrent Inc. has always been emphasizing that BitTorrent doesn’t equal piracy. It seems that this effort has finally paid off – both terms are now absent from Google’s piracy filter, and as a result searches for both terms rocketed, resulting in an increase in visitors to the respective websites.

    This is the first time that the search engine has removed terms from its search filter. The most interesting fact is that MegaUpload still remains blocked, although it doesn’t exist for almost two years.

    Unfortunately, Google doesn’t announce or comment the reasons to include certain terms in the list. For example, the company has recently added the name of the popular music streaming service Grooveshark to the list. The latter has had its fair share of legal troubles, but is now licensed by the major labels.

    Internet users worry about over-blocking, but the rights owners have been arguing the opposite. A few days ago the Motion Picture Association of America released a report calling Google and other search engines major piracy facilitators and saying that they should step up their anti-piracy efforts. Apparently, now Google will have to find a balance between these two forces.

  8. #8

    Re: Google

    Infringing Sites Can Be Reached through UK Public Wi-Fi
    Added: Thursday, October 3rd, 2013


    More than half of public Wi-Fi networks in the country fail to filter porn content, while hotels don’t even ask for user’s age. 1/3 of the cafes and restaurants lack safety filters to prevent kids from viewing adult content, with 20% failing to restrict customer access to virtual sex dating websites.
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    The recent research examined about 200 locations in major UK cities, including cafes, restaurants, shops, hotels and public spaces. The results of the study showed that over 50% of free Wi-Fi hotspots allowed unfiltered access to pornographic material. Apparently, British parents were not happy with the results of the study. For example, over 50% of cafes and restaurants don’t filter access to Internet stores selling knives and swords. 4/5 of them also provide free access to drug-related content.

    In the meantime, recently there’ve been two convergent trends: a big increase in public Wi-Fi on the one side, and greater access to smartphones and other devices with a Wi-Fi capability on the other side. This is how children can get access to all that harming content.

    The researchers point out that whilst hotels are predominantly private places, where filtering may be inappropriate, such places as hotel lobbies, cafés and restaurants are definitely public, so the content policy should reflect that. According to the results of the study, hotels scored the worst for filtering of pornographic material compared to cafes, restaurants, retailers and public spaces. Indeed, only 20% of hotels blocked access to adult content, and 10% filtered access to online weapons shops.

    Filtering should cover not only pornography, but also content related to drugs and violence which is just as harmful but often overlooked. It turned out that publicly owned spaces had better filters in place. The researchers explain that having filters in public spaces is just as important as other restrictions – for example, the smoking ban and modesty covers on adult magazines. But simply having a filter is not enough to protect everything.

    Of all the public Wi-Fi hotspots investigated throughout the country, government-owned property and public places like train stations appeared the best in filtering out adult content. 90% of government sites restricted access to porn, though 1/3 of them still allowed full access to Internet weapons stores.

  9. #9

    Re: Google

    Bill Gates Admits Control-Alt-Delete Is Silly
    Added: Monday, October 7th, 2013


    Microsoft’s founder has officially admitted that the puzzling Control-Alt-Delete key combination used to access the login screen was a mistake. In his speech at Harvard University, Bill Gates revealed that it was a mistake. This process was supposed to be performed with a single button.

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    Gates pointed out that this wasn’t entirely Microsoft’s fault. The matter was that the designer of the IBM keyboard refused to provide the software giant with a single button.

    Control-Alt-Delete was from the very beginning designed as a combination used to reboot a computer, and in the early versions of the operating system it was a log-in screen. The IBM computer that Bill Gates helped develop was introduced three decades ago and he was at the mercy of suits at Big Blue.

    This finally explains why the company used the somewhat difficult keyboard combination. In addition, this version of the story fleshes out what David Bradley, the engineer who invented the Control-Alt-Delete sequence said many years ago. Bradley claimed at the time that he came up with Control-Alt-Delete, but it was Gates who made it famous. The engineer had no idea why Bill used Control-Alt-Delete for the login screen, but now this hole in the story is finally cleared up.

    At the moment, Windows XP and Windows 7 still use this combination, while Windows 8 uses it as a shortcut for locking the computer or accessing the task manager.

  10. #10

    Re: Google

    BitTorrent Mastermind Controversial NSA Billboard Campaign

    Andy
    October 8, 2013

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    A billboard advertising campaign claiming that the Internet should be regulated and that everyone’s data should belong to the NSA turns out to be the brainchild of BitTorrent Inc. The campaign, which has been running in New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles, is designed to draw attention to what the Internet has become and remind netizens that there is another way – a people-powered and people-owned Internet with freedom to choose.

    regulBitTorrent Inc, the company behind the successful uTorrent and BitTorrent file-sharing clients, has been making huge efforts in recent times to shed the false image that it is synonymous with mass online piracy.

    The company’s tools can of course be put to illegal uses, but so can those of a thousand other companies in thousands of cities worldwide. The company has been relentless in its quest to get this message to the masses, but it’s also taking another approach to boosting its image with its tech-savvy customer base.

    Anyone who monitors the company’s Twitter feed will see that it regularly retweets items that relate to privacy and freedom, such as the recent NSA whistle-blower scandal for example.

    Like many technology companies BitTorrent Inc. has an interest in keeping the Internet both free and open so the news today that the San Francisco-based company is behind a controversial advertising campaign doesn’t come as too much of a shock.

    Last week billboards appeared in three major cities – New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles – each with a statement designed to be offensive to anyone who values freedom, privacy and a right to choose.



    “These statements represent an assault on freedom. They also, for the most part, represent attitudes Internet culture has accepted. Chips we’ve traded for convenience. Part of the allegiance we’ve sworn to the web’s big platforms and server farms. That’s what you get for going online,” BitTorrent Inc. says of the campaign’s messages.

    The company goes on to bemoan general society’s apparent eagerness to accept data centralization and along with it the distribution of personal information to powerful companies and governments who choose to exploit it.

    “We’ve chosen to accept surveillance culture: the right of security agencies to violate the Fourth Amendment; to see and store data as they see fit,” the company says.

    Interestingly, BitTorrent Inc. also takes a shot at entertainment companies who put content behind paywalls and suggests that all-you-can-eat outlets like Spotify, for example, fail to adequately compensate the artists.

    “We’ve chosen to accept walled gardens of creativity: a lifetime of work (our life’s work) locked into digital stores that take 30% of the revenue and streaming services that pay pennies in royalties,” BitTorrent says.

    Of course, the campaign isn’t simply a me-too retaliation at the revelations of the past few months and years. BitTorrent Inc. has a business model and several products that really do put the power back in the hands of the individual, from its BitTorrent Bundles through to its DIY decentralized Dropbox alternative, BitTorrent Sync and its “NSA-proof” messenger app.

    With these tools and last week’s billboard campaign the San Francisco-based company hopes to capture the imaginations of Internet users who have become weary of entrusting their data to big companies and artists who want to leave the industry machine behind and take their futures into their own hands, as the updated billboards suggest.

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    “This is the generation that will decide whether the Internet is a tool for control, or a platform for innovation and freedom. We have an incredible opportunity. We can shape the next one and one hundred years of human connection. A free, open Internet is a force for change, creativity; the backbone of a society where citizens are stakeholders, not data sets.

    “BitTorrent is built to preserve that Internet,” the company concludes.

  11. #11

    Re: Google

    VPNs: Is it OK to Monitor ‘Bad’ Users on Ethical Grounds?

    Andy
    October 6, 2013


    While VPN providers are expected to act in accordance with the law, is there also room for them to apply their own sets of moral standards in judging who and who should not be monitored? That’s the issue we explore today with VPN provider Proxy.sh, who last weekend and despite their no-logging policy decided to monitor and identify one of their users accused of harassment by a third party.

    When signing up to a VPN provider many users hope that they can use those services in complete privacy, free from the prying eyes of their ISP, aggressive governments and commercially motivated corporations.

    There are many different VPN providers to choose from and endless configuration, pricing and location issues to consider. Those aside, current attitudes suggest that going with one that claims a zero logging policy, where it’s impossible to link any activity with a particular user, is a good starting point for a selection.

    Proxy.sh is one such provider, but last weekend the company openly announced that it would install the Wireshark network monitoring tool on one of its servers in order to identify an individual who had been accused of harassing someone’s daughter. Surprised that the company would do so without a court order, on Monday TorrentFreak published an article on the topic.

    We contacted Proxy.sh for comment and it soon become clear that they were unhappy with our general position that monitoring a user without a court order isn’t something that a VPN service should engage in. After discussing the matter with them all week we’d like to present our findings.

    It’s an interesting situation in which legalities are important but the company’s ethical policy holds the real power. Interestingly and despite placing restrictions where other VPNs do not, Proxy.sh maintains that their policy makes users more secure, not less. The issues could be extremely important for users of all VPNs, no matter which provider they choose.
    Brief background to last Saturday’s decision to monitor a user

    Proxy.sh received a complaint “from a desperate family, with support of its lawyer and a third party IT expert” that a user of Proxy.sh was allegedly using Proxy.sh’s Illinois server 1 to “harass” a female.

    “We were given backup of a rootkit-infected Android mobile with logs about one of our network’s node. Information retrieved via the rootkit-infected mobile was then utilized to harass the minor,” Proxy.sh told TorrentFreak.
    The decision to monitor

    In response to the complaint, Proxy.sh activated its “ethical policy” which forbids, among other things, racist, drug-related and pornographic activity, pedophilia and politically and/or religiously sensitive conduct. Proxy.sh say that in order to qualify as a breach the activity in question must be physically or morally harmful to an individual, not a company or corporation.

    In Proxy.sh’s view the alleged activity against the female amounted to an ethical policy breach and without any court order it began monitoring a US-based server to identify the alleged perpetrator. In a matter of hours the alleged hacker apologized and Proxy.sh shutdown their monitoring.
    The Ethical Policy and where the line is drawn

    ethicsGiven that Proxy.sh is setting standards by which users need to abide or risk being monitored in the event of a complaint, we dug a little bit deeper. Is porn banned if someone is ‘harmed’ by it? What defines harm? Are objectionable religious or political views a risky prospect? Where is the line drawn and how are users expected to know?

    It turns out that porn is acceptable and what Proxy.sh meant to say is that they ban videos depicting “the death of a person, or snuff movie.” It’s not clear, gore fans, whether torrenting Faces of Death is out of the question.

    On the religious front we posed a situation that affected TorrentFreak earlier this year when we reported on porn downloads taking place in the Vatican, a piece which apparently offended some residents of Northern Ireland. Is that outlawed too?

    “With your story on the Vatican, we would be against your activity if you quoted the name of the guy who downloaded porn, and subsequently suggested action should be taken against him. As long as you have kept it general and with respect for all individuals, this is no problem for us,” Proxy.sh explained.

    So we get the general idea – Proxy.sh isn’t going to sit around and do nothing if customers of their service hurt individuals. But the question is this – as a service provider and carrier of information, should they be getting involved at all and are they doing so based on the mere allegations of third parties?
    How easy is it to have a user monitored?

    cameraspy“First of all, you need to get in touch with a lawyer to characterize the crime in a legal context. Then, you need to get in touch with a forensic IT expert who can gather evidences of your misfortune (in computer meaning). Then you all three need to get in touch with us to report a complaint,” the company explains.

    Based on the above it’s far from clear how someone can carry out a religious or politically damaging ‘crime’, much less gather and present proof of it, but it seems that at the least there is some overlap in Proxy.sh’s ethical policy and the law, although in what country’s legal system (possibly ProxyLand’s) remains a blur.

    However, with these gray areas identified we asked the company this – does its ethical policy create uncertainty as to what is acceptable behavior when compared to a provider that doesn’t try to govern use of their services other than in accordance with a specified country’s law?

    “Of course. There has always been some uncertainty in policies and terms. We do not think we are an exception here and we are happy that you take the time with us to define them more in depth. All the people who have got in touch with us with questions about our terms or policy know that we have always answered transparently and as openly as possible to make them even more understanding on case-by-case basis. It is actually good policy before you turn to any VPN provider, to come and ask it precise questions you need answers for.”

    In any event, if a third party complaint passes muster the company is openly prepared to monitor the alleged perpetrator’s VPN connection. That said, Proxy.sh says it will transparently announce that event on its website, something other providers do not.
    Is transparency on monitoring better than complete silence?

    “Of course. We are sons of anarcho-capitalism. We believe in the sovereignty and self-consciousness of individuals, not of those of States or other entities such as agencies or corporations. We also especially value transparency. We believe this is what terribly lacks in today’s world,” Proxy.sh says.

    “Here at Proxy.sh we offer users the full choice of both knowing and deciding to opt out (or simply switching to another node part of our network) when an intervention needs to take place. We do not believe this choice should be left only to governments and VPN suppliers themselves, but rather to the entire customer-base; in other words, to everyone involved.”
    Just because you can, does it follow that you should?

    In addition to all the wonderful people online there are obviously some hateful individuals too. But is it a service provider’s job to appoint itself judge and jury over their behavior, no matter how objectionable? How does Proxy.sh respond to people who say that as a privacy service provider they should simply keep out of their customers’ business?

    “This is a very good question and actually the onus behind our move. To us, a service provider that acts in a jurisdiction where law enforcement is of quality should not feel responsible for interfering with any ethical or legal matter, as the jurisdiction in which it operates is supposed to provide all the necessities. I am thinking here of the United States of course who can through subpoenas directly access the infrastructures of the businesses incorporated in its economy,” the company says.

    “On the other side, a service provider that acts in a jurisdiction where law enforcement may unfortunately not be of quality (for various reasons and by various aspects), should in turn feel responsible for interfering with some ethical or legal matters, to prevent the loophole it uses to avoid legislation it finds unacceptable (e.g. DMCA) from being turned into one that avoids pretty much any sort of legislation.”
    Conclusions

    Aside from setting up your own VPN service, Proxy.sh says that realistically VPN users have a couple of choices.

    “You now face two options: choose a provider that tells you when it will intervene on its network (even though you can’t be 100% sure it will actually tell you all the time), or choose one that actually never tells you anything.

    “I don’t know about you, but for me I actually prefer one that at least keeps me updated about some, especially when one states that he does keep me updated about all of them,” Proxy.sh concludes.

    The big question is this – what are customers happy with?

    A VPN provider who states clearly no logs and no monitoring/logging but may or may not be forced behind the scenes to do so anyway? Or one that claims no logs, some monitoring/logging based on ethics, but promises to keep people informed?

    Would customers prefer it if their VPN provider took the stance of a mere carrier and kept out of their business completely, or would subscribers be more happy knowing that their provider is taking an ethical responsibility for the data flowing through their networks in order to reduce harm?

    The decision, is yours….

  12. #12

    Re: Google

    Samsung Exposed as Top Advertiser on Pirate Sites

    Ernesto
    October 4, 2013


    A coalition of media outlets in Ukraine has exposed Samsung as the top advertiser on two of the country’s largest file-sharing sites. The “Clear Sky” initiative is determined to attack piracy head on and sees funding by well known international brands as a major problem. In a response to their findings the group has demanded an urgent audit of the advertising activities of several brands, which besides Samsung also includes Nokia, Canon, Carlsberg and Coca Cola.

    samsing-pirateWhen it comes to online piracy Ukraine has built up a bad reputation over the years.

    The Eastern European country has been branded by the U.S. as one of the top piracy havens in the world and was placed on the USTR’s priority watchlist.

    To counter this image a group of Ukrainian media outlets has started the “Clear Sky” initiative. The coalition’s goal is to find solutions to online piracy. However, with one of their first campaigns they appear to put the ball back in the court of international companies.

    The group commissioned the research outfit InMind to take a closer look at the advertising revenues of two of the country’s major file-sharing websites, Ex.ua and FS.ua. Both sites have millions of visitors per week and generate a healthy revenue stream through their ads, some of which are paid by global companies.

    According to the report about 10% of all ads on the two file-sharing sites are financed by well-known international brands. Nearly half of all those ads (4.2% of the total) come from Samsung as the bar chart below reveals.

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    A big chunk of Samsung’s advertising budget in Ukraine goes to the two file-sharing sites according to the report. “The research reveals that 15% of all Samsung`s ads in Ukraine are placed on the pirate websites Ex.ua and Fs.ua,” Clear Sky informed TorrentFreak.

    Samsung is not the only international brand that advertises on pirate sites, the top 20 also lists other familiar names including Nokia, Canon, Carlsberg and Coca Cola.

    Other international brands are better at avoiding these sites. For example, Kraft and Procter and Gamble advertize more on Ukrainian Internet than any other the other brands listed above, yet they are not listed among the top 20 advertisers on Ex.ua and FS.ua.

    Clear Sky informed TorrentFreak that they have demanded an urgent audit of the global online advertising practices of several of the world’s largest brands in order to support its domestic anti-piracy efforts.

    “Clear Sky believes that malpractice within global online advertising and the ambiguity surrounding the wider digital environment, are key factors currently enabling piracy to flourish while damaging anti-piracy initiatives,” the group added.

    According to the research 40% of Ukrainian population is exposed to ads from these global brands on file-sharing sites, which gives the impression that these sites are legitimate entertainment portals.

    Pavel Mykolyuk, director of the law firm Vindex and a key member of the Clear Sky coalition, calls on international partners to help address this issue.

    “Clear Sky is calling for international collaboration to ensure anti-piracy efforts are optimized by changing the status quo, a situation that sees brands – sometimes unwittingly – fueling the illicit revenue of these sites and consequently exacerbating the global problem,” Mykolyuk explains.

    How much these international brands indirectly pay to file-sharing sites remains unclear. Some experts estimate that Ex.ua and FS.ua alone already generate millions of dollars in revenue.

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