Google Pays Oz Man $200,000 for ‘Defaming Him n Search Results'

Source-ANI: Google has paid 200,000 dollars in damages to a Melbourne man after he won a defamation case against the Internet search engine giant.

Milorad Trkulja, also known as Michael, sued the multinational over images of him alongside a well-known underworld figure that appeared in its search results.

The Supreme Court jury found last month that Trkulja had been defamed by the images, which he first contacted Google about removing in 2009.

Google search results also linked to a page on a now defunct website, Melbourne Crime, which had published photos labelled with his name, the report said.

The paper quoted Trkulja, as saying that he had never initially intended to sue Google, but had been galvanised into action after his request for the content to be removed from its searches in 2009 was not granted.

21-year-old girl arrested for Facebook post slamming Bal Thackeray: Whats your take?

 

Police on Sunday arrested a 21-year-old girl for questioning the total shutdown in the city for Bal Thackeray's funeral on her Facebook account.

Another girl who 'liked' the comment was also arrested.

The duo were booked under Section 295 (a) of the IPC (for hurting religious sentiments ) and Section 64 (a) of the Information Technology Act, 2000. Though the girl withdrew her comment and apologised, a mob of some 2,000Shiv Sena workers attacked and ransacked her uncle's orthopaedic clinic at Palghar.

"Her comment said people like Thackeray are born and die daily and one should not observe a bandh for that," said PI Uttam Sonawane.

 

Microsoft unveils a new logo, first change in 25 years

Microsoft on Thursday unveiled a new corporate logo for the first time in 25 years as the US tech giant geared up for a series of big product launches.The new logo features a square made up of four separate colored squares.

The move comes with Microsoft ramping up the buzz for its Windows 8 operating platform and its first tablet computer, called Surface. The company is also making an aggressive effort to gain ground in the smartphone market.

"It's been 25 years since we've updated the Microsoft logo and now is the perfect time for a change," said Microsoft brand strategy manager Jeff Hansen.

"This is an incredibly exciting year for Microsoft as we prepare to release new versions of nearly all of our products. From Windows 8 to Windows Phone 8 to Xbox services to the next version of Office, you will see a common look and feel across these products providing a familiar and seamless experience on PCs, phones, tablets and TVs.

"This wave of new releases is not only a reimagining of our most popular products, but also represents a new era for Microsoft, so our logo should evolve to visually accentuate this new beginning."

The logo also includes the name Microsoft in the Segoe font that is used in products and marketing communications, along with the new squares.

"The symbol is important in a world of digital motion," Hansen said. "The symbol's squares of color are intended to express the company's diverse portfolio of products."

The new logo is being used starting Thursday on the Microsoft.com website and in three Microsoft retail stores today.
"It will sign off all of our television ads globally," Hansen said.

"And it will support our products across various forms of marketing.... We're excited about the new logo, but more importantly about this new era in which we're reimagining how our products can help people and businesses throughout the world realize their full potential."

Microsoft is set to release its Windows 8 next-generation operating system tailored for a world shifting from personal computers to smartphones and tablets on October 26.

Finnish telecom giant Nokia and Microsoft are expected to unveil a smartphone equipped with the Windows Phone 8 operating system on September 5.

Mundane Facebook updates make people sick of you

Mundane status updates, posting photos of food and writing about your boring habits are among the top Facebook gripes, a new study has found.

Public displays of affection, wonderful partner and equally brilliant children also make people sick and if you don't stop clogging up others' news feeds with your mundane status, you're likely to get unfollowed, according to the study.

While 59 per cent of the 1000 Aussies surveyed admitted they would delete friends that hogged their news feed, 42 percent named using the social network as a diary as the most annoying Facebook habit, followed closely by posting Instagram photos of their food.

Checking in everywhere you go rated a 38 per cent annoyance rate, and your public fawning over your latest squeeze is causing 29 per cent of your friends to want to never see your name on their screen ever again.

As many as 21 per cent of people want to stop following you if you keep posting photos of your baby 'News.com.au' reported.

About 26 per cent of Aussies simply can't stand annoying quizzes and tests and commercial promotions that claim to increase your chances of winning by inviting everyone on your friends list to join.

The study also found that passive and aggressive updates and self-promotion came in a close second to that at 24 and 22 per cent 'can't stand' rate respectively.

Should India ban Twitter? - Discuss

Is India becoming another China? That’s exactly what struck my mind when the Indian government threatened "appropriate and suitable action" against Twitter, which has about 16 million users in India, if it failed to block accounts containing objectionable content.

As soon as the already weak social fabric of India was exposed with the so-called exodus of northeastern Indians from major cities, the government began a sort of crackdown on social networking websites, such as Google, Facebook and Twitter.

It asked Internet service providers to block around 300 web pages in a bid to quell ethnic tensions between illegal Bangladeshi migrants and people from the North East. And it further limited SMS messages to five per user per day for 15 days (the limit has now been revised to 20 per user per day).

According to the government, Google and Facebook largely cooperated, while Twitter’s response has been slower to block 28 accounts containing objectionable content.

When the government accused social media sites of not taking quick action to remove inflammatory posts and pictures that allegedly helped stoke tensions at the August 11 Azad Maidan protest in Mumbai, how could it forget to slam its own intelligence network for not pointing it out earlier?

Shameful is the fact that the world’s largest democracy is curbing the freedom of expression to hide its own incompetence.

I remember making a story much before the August 11 incident about exaggeration by some groups of the incidences of ill-treatment of Muslims in Myanmar to stoke tensions elsewhere. In fact, a report at that time around mentioned about a series of doctored and misidentified photographs that were circulating widely, especially in the Pakistani social media, showing violence against Rohingyas. But the government was probably sleeping till the hate messages and pictures were directed at India to stoke tensions.

Coming back to today’s scenario, if the government just wanted to get rid of the pictures and content that contained hate speech, which resulted in recent tensions in Bangalore, Mysore and elsewhere, then why did it block those Twitter users, who have either supposedly criticised the government or made fun of it? Twitter was asked to block parody accounts operating under the names of PMO and Manmohan Singh.

The idea of banning speech that can add fuel to the fire is fine, but the government’s knee-jerk broad censorship is worrisome. According to Bangalore's Center for Internet and Society, some local as well as international news outlets were blocked between August 18 and August 21. It noted that even posts that discredited rumors have also been blocked.

In fact, Twitter accounts of prominent journalists were also blocked, resulting in the emergence of the hashtag #emergency2012, which is a reference to the Emergency period in 1975.

The funniest part was that Milind Deora, the minister of state for Communications and Information Technology, who used Twitter on Thursday to defend the government’s actions, had got his account suspended for unknown reasons on Friday.

Also interesting is the fact that when the international community was warning India not to make a terrible mistake by cracking down on communications technology, New Delhi found a sympathiser in none other than China.

A newspaper affiliated to the Communist Party of China said: “What happened in India can help us understand more objectively whether the Internet can foment social instability and how it does so."

The Global Times newspaper also hit out at the US for the role played by Facebook and Twitter in increasing the troubles. Notably, Facebook and Twitter are banned in China.

A piece of advice for the esteemed Indian government, which is trying hard to save its face amidst various corruption cases: Banning social networking websites to prevent violence from spilling over won’t help, but strengthening social fiber of this country to avert such tensions from even arising will do.

A patriotic advice: Politicians, please don’t make India another China, but a role model for the world.

Online content censorship up 49%: Google

NEW DELHI: As part of its 'transparency report', Google on Monday said that it had received 101 content removal requests from Indian authorities between July and December last year, asking it to delete 255 items from its websites. Of these, just five requests were made by courts.

Google, which runs services like YouTube and Blogger apart from the widely used search engine, said the number marked an increase of 49% in such requests compared with January-June 2011 period. In terms of requests made by the government bodies excluding courts, India topped the list as it sent 96 requests to Google to remove content. However, in terms of number of items that governments wanted to remove, Brazil, US, UK, Germany and Spain were ahead of India.

According to the Google data, the company was asked to remove 130 items, including 77 videos on Youtube, because they were deemed defamatory. Another 25 items, including 24 videos, were considered hate speech. The interesting bit was that of these only 25 items — 23 on the blogs hosted by Google and two on other Google sites — were considered defamatory by a court.

"This is the fifth data set that we've released. And just like every other time before, we've been asked to takedown political speech," Dorothy Chou, senior policy analyst wrote at the official Google blog. "It's alarming not only because free expression is at risk, but because some of these requests come from countries you might not suspect — Western democracies not typically associated with censorship."

National security and piracy, touted as primary reasons by government officials behind the push for control on the web, didn't lead to many content removal requests in India. Google was told to remove only two items because of copyright reasons and only 10 videos on YouTube because they were considered a threat to national security. At the same time, the company was told to remove 22 items because of impersonation risk and seven items because the content was 'offensive' to religions. Also, requests were made to remove two videos from YouTube because they were too violent in nature and one item was deemed pornographic.

As far as removing the content was concerned, Google said it complied with 80% requests received from Indian courts. But for requests made by police or other government agencies, it complied in only 26% cases. "For the six months of data we're releasing today, we complied with an average of 65% of court orders, as opposed to 47% of more informal requests," wrote Chou.

While Google officials were not available to comment on Monday, in its earlier report the company had explained that it did not comply with all requests. "We received requests from (Indian) state and local law enforcement agencies to remove YouTube videos that displayed protests against social leaders or used offensive language in reference to religious leaders. We declined the majority of these requests and only locally restricted videos that appeared to violate local laws prohibiting speech that could incite enmity between communities," the report said. "In addition, we received a request from a local law enforcement agency to remove 236 communities and profiles from Orkut that were critical of a local politician. We did not comply with this request, since the content did not violate our community standards or local law."

Between July and December, Google also received 2,207 requests from Indian authorities seeking access to user data. In total, these requests targeted 3,427 accounts/people. Google said it complied with 66% requests. The company had received 1,739 such requests in the first half of 2011.