Germany’s Minister for Families has announced a legislative initiative to force ISPs to implement a government-mandated block list, which will be updated daily. The BKA (Germany’s equivalent of the FBI) will be in charge of generating and maintaining the list. As usual, this is being brought in under the ‘fight child porn’ guise. The minister is quoted as saying: ‘We must not water down the problem’ in reply to being challenged that this law and technology could be used to censor other content. She then went on to say: ‘I can’t know what wishes and plans future governments will develop.’ She has agreed the principle of the legislation with the interior minister and the technology minister, which in German coalition government terms means it’s pretty much a done deal.

Ivacy team absolutely loves the new legislative initiative from Minster for Families Ursula von der Leyen.

To show our support  we suggest all new Ivacy users to use a promo-code, which will grant ‘em 10 euro bonus with the first payment; in other words, pay 10 euros for a month of unlimited access and get additional 10 euros (another month) for free,  just  as a gift from Ivacy team.

Just type “URSULA” during the signup into promo-code field,  like illustrated below:

This promo-code is valid until 16 february 2009.

Today, Alan Ellis the admin of OiNK, will appear in court along with five users accused of uploading music via the BitTorrent tracker. The six will appear before magistrates to learn if their cases will be sent on to a Crown Court. They are joined by Cleveland police, who face a copyright infringement crisis of their own.

Remember folks — you can miss a lot of wonderful opportunities, such as

• meeting the court members
• having you photo in a local newspaper with some harsh words right under (damn good way to impress the girls, they love tough guys with criminal records).
• spend a couple of years in a cosy, secured environment, where you are regulary fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. No need to care about taxes or education, btw.

by spending 10 Euros per month.

 Anchorage (Alaska) – FBI agents are using proxy server logs to track down the hacker who broke into Sarah Palin’s Yahoo email account.  The hacker gained access to the Republican Vice Presidential candidate’s account by resetting the password.  He then posted details of his adventures up on a popular online forum, but that information is now leading reporters and federal investigators to the suspect – a Tennessee university college student and son of state democratic representative Mike Kernell.

This is exactly the difference between Ivacy and other “proxy servers”. We don’t keep logs, while most of others do.

This guy is now facing a court.

Poor little kid. He should have known better.

BTW, our unlimited subscription cost only 10 euros per month.

Yeah, ten euros.

I bet you spent much more at Starbucks last month.

The BPI (which represents UK music industry. British Phonographic Industy, that is) has taken a giant leap forward in its efforts to stop illegal file-sharing on the internet by signing a landmark deal with Virgin Media.

While currently trying to reach a voluntary agreement with ISPs over illegal file-sharing, the recording organisation has managed to persuade Virgin Media to join forces with it on a new education campaign. IIt is expected to be the first of a series of initiatives the body is working on with other ISPs.

As part of the campaign customers whose accounts have been used to distribute illegal music will receive letters from Virgin Media and the BPI laying out practical advice on how to prevent internet account misuse, links to legitimate sites and the potential dangers – threats of viruses and spyware - of downloading files from illegal sites.

Late last week, the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC) fired a letter to the country’s privacy czar, urging an investigation into the traffic shaping practices of mega telco Bell Canada. The University of Ottawa-affiliated law clinic suspects that Bell is not just throttling BitTorrent and other peer-to-peer traffic, but illegally monitoring the activities of millions of Canuck web surfers.