Google has launched a new privacy control feature this week, dubbed Dashboard, which will allow users to see most of the information that is being collected about them at any given time by the search engine giant.
Dashboard will pull together the data that is accessed whenever a user logs into a Google service such as “summaries of an individual’s e-mail, search requests and viewing habits on Google’s video site, YouTube.”
The service will not provide any data if you have not logged into the Google services.
Google has been under fire for years from privacy watchdogs which want to know just exactly it is that the search engine giant knows about you.
Result for: watchdog
Stephen Fry, the popular actor, author and current gadget blogger has spoken out about piracy this week, defending non-commercial piracy and berating the media watchdog groups, who he claims are going about it all wrong.
The lashing, made at the iTunes festival, started with Fry giving a history of music copyright.
Fry started by saying, according to the BBC, “that my business - the film business, the television business, the music business - is doing the wrong thing,” in regards to arresting and criminalizing file sharers.
He then mocked the “preposterous” MPAA ads that claim “You wouldn’t steal a car” by saying he can’t believe the industry would be “so blind… as to think that someone who bit-torrents an episode of 24 is the same as someone who steals somebody’s handbag (or car)”.
Fry himself admitted to downloading an episode of the popular series House, which stars his old friend Hugh Laurie and admitted as well to downloading a few episodes of 24.
The actor also acknowledged that commercial use of pirated material should lead to prosecution, as profiting off the thievery of others work is unjustifiable.
Finally, he added that he truly believed that if prices of digital downloads fell to “fair levels,” most people would pay for their music, and piracy would no longer be the “problem” it currently is.
Result for: watchdog
According to Carphone Warehouse and Talk Talk CEO Charles Dunstone, piracy is unstoppable and the media industry’s call to have ISPs as watchdogs is “naive” at best.
Instead, Dunstone believes a more reasonable solution is to educate users about the “benefits of respecting copyright” while also launching services that will allow consumers to get music and movies cheaper and easily.
Speaking at TalkTalk’s quarterly conference call, Dunstone added:
“If you try speed humps or disconnections for peer-to-peer, people will simply either disguise their traffic or share the content another way. It is a game of Tom and Jerry and you will never catch the mouse. The mouse always wins in this battle and we need to be careful that politicians do not get talked into putting legislation in place that, in the end, ends up looking stupid.”
The media industry continues to push for controversial laws such as the ‘three strikes’ laws that would force ISPs to disconnect multiple time offenders.
“If people want to share content they will find another way to do it,” he added. “It is more about education and allowing people to get content easily and cheaply that will make a difference. This idea that it is all peer to peer and somehow the ISPs can just stop it is very naive.”
