Anime lawsuit lands in court

A popular Internet hobby has landed some users in court. 2 men are accused of illegally downloading thousands of Japanese anime cartoons. A fundraising effort has started to help pay for their legal costs. This is the first case of it’s kind here in Singapore. Music and software lawsuits have made headlines before but this would be the first conviction for digital photographs, considered to be intellectual property.

“The lawsuit could set several precedents, from the burden of proof necessary to establish that illegal downloads have occurred, to the possible defences for online piracy, and even the penalties offenders can expect if they are convicted.” AsiaOne

The Internet group is called “XenoDefense”. So far they have raised a few thousand dollars. The accused: Mr Felix Lukman and Mr Koh Lian Boon. This could have major problems for the Singapore online community who obviously are heavily into anime, manga, cartoon art (especially those involving tentacles and girls in school uniforms). If you’re into this kind of stuff you might want to keep those pictures stored on some DVDs off your computer. Who knows what might happen going forward. You just don’t want to find yourself in court over some pictures.

Spammers targetting disaster fund raising

Spammers are taking advantage of current world problems to try to exploit computer users, said Symantec Corp, an Internet security solutions vendor.

It said donation scams via e-mail are on the rise and are being tied to recent natural disasters, such as the China earthquake and Myanmar cyclone, and the increasing petrol price hikes.

One earthquake donation scam requested donations for the China victims, where the scammer used a legitimate website and inserted a fraudulent page under the root domain.

When the user clicked on the URL in the spam e-mail message, he was directed to the fraudulent site and asked to make a donation, Symantec said in a press release.

“Spammers are aiming to capitalise on the harsh economic situation and prey on those in our society facing financial pressures,” said C.M. Woon, general manager for Malaysia at Symantec. (story)

Malaysian couple get cheap hotel, expensive hookers outside

Can I get the name of that hotel?

“Malaysian journalist Fauzi Baharuddin, 28, ended up with more than he bargained for when he realised that his hotel was in the heart of Singapore’s red-light district.

‘I booked the hotel as it was the cheapest I could find.’

But soon after he and his fiancee arrived at the hotel, Mr Fauzi realised that something was not right.

He said: ‘That night, my fiancee and I decided to go out for a walk and we were shocked. There were prostitutes and their clients outside the hotel who were propositioning their clients openly.'” (story)

Singapore to upgrade broadband network

Singapore moved a step closer to setting up its ultra-fast broadband network today, when two consortia came forward with plans that promised a futuristic network that would open the floodgate to new online services.

The network, to be rolled out islandwide in the next few years, will offer speeds 10 times faster than now.

By the time the deadline came for tender submission on Monday, two consortia including heavyweight telecom operators like SingTel, StarHub and M1 had submitted their bids in their respective consortia.

Winning this bid would avail them of up to $750 million in government funds. This will be used to lay cables to hook up homes, schools and offices. (story)

Singapore drops to 5th in Network Readiness index

Singapore fell two notches on the Networked Readiness index, an annual ranking released on Wednesday by the World Economic Forum.

The index, which measures the impact of infocomm policies and usage in 127 economies, ranked Denmark as the most ready to take advantage of technology.

It is followed by Sweden, Switzerland, the United States and Singapore.

This is the lowest Singapore has ranked since topping the chart in 2005. It was second in 2006, and third in 2007.

In this year’s ranking, the Republic was top in the quality of math and science education and the Government’s vision of infocomm, areas in which it had done well in the past.

But it only scored 15th on the accessibility of digital content, a new indicator measuring whether content is widely available on platforms such as the Internet, mobile phones and cable television. (story)