(Via Ars Technica.)

The MPAA has asked a Swedish court for $15.4 million in damages from The Pirate Bay. Peter Sunde, the torrent tracker’s fearless captain, says that the claims are bogus.

via BBC

File-sharing site TorrentSpy has been ordered to pay $110m (£56m) in damages to the Motion Picture Association of America for copyright infringement.

Trent Reznor has released the latest Nine Inch Nails album as a free download under a Creative Commons attribution, non-commercial, share-alike license.

As a thank you to our fans for your continued support, we are giving away the new nine inch nails album one hundred percent free, exclusively via nin.com.

We encourage you to remix it, share it with your friends, post it on your blog, play it on your podcast, give it to strangers, etc.

Via OUT-LAW

EDITORIAL: Critics have branded Phorm a regulatory rogue. Its targeted advertising technology will bend our laws and even break them. But these will be hairline fractures – even if Phorm’s operation makes you wince.

Via BBC

Personal details of Facebook users could potentially be stolen, the BBC technology programme Click has found. The popular social networking site allows users to add a variety of applications to their profile. But a malicious program, masquerading as a harmless application, could potentially harvest personal data.

From the BBC:

More than 600 staff at HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) have been disciplined for accessing personal or sensitive data, it has been revealed.

In a Commons written reply, Treasury Financial Secretary Jane Kennedy said that in many cases the penalty for staff was dismissal.

There were 238 people disciplined in 2005, 180 in 2006, and 192 in 2007.

Via Consuming Experience

The Financial Services Authority (FSA) is urging firms to change their attitude to data security and do more to help prevent their customers falling victim to identity fraud and other types of financial crime.

Link to press release

(Via ZDNet) Tom Espiner writes

The British Computer Society has called for Phorm’s controversial targeted-advertising system to be opt-in.
…
“If you are making use of personal information, you should be asking to do so, and it’s good practice to offer opt-in,” said Evans. “If you are looking to build trust amongst customers, this is the way to do it.”
…
Evans suggested that, at a recent “town-hall meeting” organised by Phorm, the company seemed to be pushing back against suggestions that its service should be opt-in.

Via ZDNet Tom Espiner writes

The British Computing Society has criticised the government, claiming its high-profile data breaches have eroded public trust.

On Tuesday the BCS published the results of a survey of members of the public. Of the 1,025 respondents, 66 percent said their trust in government departments had decreased due to information breaches such as the loss of 25 million personal records by HM Revenue & Customs last year.

…”People inside the public sector know [it] is not terribly surprising that [breaches such as HMRC's] happened, but for people outside the public sector this was a huge shock.”

Via The Register

“We could do a sample manual recount, but if it turned up a problem, we wouldn’t be able to do anything about it, which would be the quickest way to collapse voter confidence in the result,” Bennet told us.

This is an anathema to campaigners like Mercuri. “The law should always include some percentage of manual audit and there always must be a way that a problem with the check should trigger an investigation, possibly resulting in the discarding of the electronic totals.”

And she is not the only one who thinks the electronic count should be audited. Becky Hogge, executive director of the Open Rights Group, says that ORG is campaigning for the law to be changed to make a manual recount of a statistically significant sample to be mandatory in all electronically counted elections.