Back in 2014, Russia enforced a new “bloggers” law, which requires bloggers and social media users who have over 3,000 daily visitors to register with the government. As a result, Intel had shut down its Russian forums and blogs. Despite the fact that the law was enforced quite a lot of time ago, only less than 370 blogs and social media accounts have currently registered.
When asked why bloggers would want to register, Russian authorities claimed that registering could help attract more advertising dollars. In the meantime, the blogger law is intended to improve the quality of Russian blogging, by lowering the amount of profanity, unverified information, and libel. However, the critics believe that the law is aimed at silencing criticism.
Another interesting fact is that 3 of the 370 blogs on the registry contain the word “fuck” in their names: one of them is the community “Fuckbet,” a sports analysis website, another is “Fuck_Humor”, a group specializing in amusing memes.
Back in 2014, Russian officials threatened to block social networks like Twitter and
for not cooperating with the new registry plans. The most hilarious move of the authorities was the following: since Twitter fails to cooperate on the registry requirement, Russian Twitter users were asked to post screenshots of their analytics page to show that they're getting too many visitors. This doesn’t seem to help, because the 10 Twitter users who are currently on the blogger registry are pro-Kremlin media figures and Internet celebrities.
At the moment, it remains unknown what Russia will do with bloggers who have failed to register. Anyway, the bloggers law is still concerning for supporters of free speech.
Ross William Ulbricht is accused of murder-for-hire, with the Silk Road trial finally starting for a San Francisco man charged with operating an Internet black market where drugs were traded.
US district judge overruled defense objections, concluding that prosecutors could provide evidence about 6 murder plots into the trial. In respond, prosecutors claim that Ulbricht operated an underground online portal known as Silk Road, where over 100,000 customers purchased hundreds of kilograms of cocaine, heroin and other drugs. Ross Ulbricht has pleaded not guilty and denies that he was known as “Dread Pirate Roberts” online.
The government alleges that Ross Ulbricht tried to protect his illegal business by asking others to kill people who posed a threat to the Silk Road. The judge admitted that the evidence was prejudicial to the defendant and injects an element of violence into the case, but that prejudicial effect was reduced by the government’s stipulation that no actual murders happened.
In the meantime, the judge added that the charges in the case were very serious, because Ross Ulbricht was charged not with just taking part in drug distribution conspiracy, but with creating and running an Internet criminal entity of a huge scale, which could bring him tens of millions of dollars in fees. This means that evidence that Ross was trying to protect this sprawling business by soliciting murders-for-hire is therefore not unduly prejudicial.
Silk Road operator was arrested by FBI more than a year ago at a public library, where agents seized his computer. According to the government, Ross launched an online black market four years ago, claiming that he wanted to design a place for people to buy anything anonymously. The government pointed out that a spreadsheet found on Ulbricht’s computer listed “sr inc” as an asset worth $104 million.
Ross William Ulbricht was charged in Manhattan with conspiring to commit drugs trafficking, as well as with conspiring to commit computer hacking and money laundering. The prosecution claims that this scheme has been working for two and a half years. Ulbricht is also charged in federal court in Baltimore.
The industry observers admit that if convicted in both cases, Ross could face up to life sentence.
Australia was supposed to develop its broadband infrastructure further, along with other developed nations, but the country somehow found itself dropping well in terms of Internet speeds.
The country’s average connection speeds is only on the 44 place, down 4 lines from the 2013 report which estimated online connection speeds and broadband uptake worldwide. Some believe that the drop-off is the result of delay, indecision and policy change on the national broadband network, which is the fibre optic network implemented nationally. The observers complain that each policy change with respect to the national broadband network resulted in a 2-year delay in infrastructure being rolled out.
With the Labor government, the initial intention was to create a fibre-to-the-node network, but then the plans changed to fibre-to-the-premise broadband. Since the national network couldn’t use Telstra’s copper network, it had to build its own network, and this could take another four years. However, when the country had a change of government, the approach to Internet also changed to the initial plan.
In the meantime, the creators of the national network and the government also face pressure from the United States that pushes to change the definition of broadband. The definition of broadband Internet was suggested to change from 4Mbps download and 1Mbps upload to 25Mbps down and 3Mbps up. This change would raise more doubts if the network is not engineered correctly.
To help Australia to move its broadband rankings to at least the top 10, the country needs to get on and do it, because any more delay would have just the opposite effect. In the meantime, many industry observers are critical of the initial approach, saying that copper could slow broadband connection speeds by up to 50%.
