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INDUSTRY

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DQI Bureau
New Update

US Court Bans Word Sales

Upholding patent infringement charges by a small Toronto firm i4i against
Microsoft, a US Appeals Court ordered the software giant to stop selling Word by
January 11, 2010, and pay $290 mn in damages. Microsoft said it will introduce
the copies of Word 2007 and Office 2007 without the offending technology by the
court ordered deadline.

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Rural India Shops Online

eBay Indias census guide reveals that at least 747 rural towns in India are
witnessing active buying and selling trends. In fact, rural towns are also
witnessing a rise in online shopping behavior. At least 181 rural towns are
active entrepreneurship hubsselling to both domestic and global buyers. The
finding of the census also includes buying and selling patterns in twenty-eight
states and seven union territories.


Iranian Cyber Army Hacks Twitter

Twitter has come
under hacker attack by a group claiming to be the Iranian Cyber Army. The
same group seems to have hacked into another website http://www.mowjcamp.org/
and has posted the same message, according to a report by TechCrunch, which
gave a rough translation of the message, apparently written in Arabic:

Iranian Cyber Army

This site has
been hacked by Iranian Cyber Army

iranian.cyber.army@gmail.com

USA think they
control and manage Internet by their access. But they dont. We control and
manage Internet by our power, so do not try to stimulate Iranian peoples
to.

Now which country
in embargo list? Iran? USA?

We push them in
embargo list Take care.

The attack
happened between about 10-11 pm Pacific time on December 17, 2009. The
homepage of Twitter was replaced by a black background page showing a green
flag and with a headline that read, in English: Iranian Cyber Army ... This
Website Has Been Hacked by Iranian Cyber Army.However, the microblogging
site resumed its operation in about an hour. Experts say now it would be a
good idea for users to change passwords of their Twitter accounts as well as
that of other accounts that share the same password as Twitter.

Facebook Faces Privacy Ire

The row over Facebooks recent changes to its privacy settings intensified, as
the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) and other groups complained to
the US government, asking the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to open an
investigation into the social networking company. When Facebook, the worlds #1
Internet social networking site, had introduced a broad revision of its users
privacy settings. It had invited criticisms from privacy advocates who claimed
the changes were pushing Facebooks 350 mn plus users to expose more of their
personal information.

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Internet Piracy Growing in India

India ranks
eighth in the world for the largest number of illegal peer-to-peer (P2P)
activities (data sharing) with the highest level of film piracy of any
English speaking country, reveals a study based on tracking of downloading
IP addresses on P2P networks. The study was jointly conducted by Motion
Picture Association (MPA) and Dtechnet, an Internet company specialized in
providing software solutions to track and prevent piracy on their digital
content and online.

According to a
data obtained from April-September, 2009, Indian downloaders heavily used
P2P portals such as BitTorrent. About 6.5% of IP addresses located could be
tracked back to Indian IPs, the study said. This placed India as the fourth
largest downloader after the US (17.2%), the UK (10.7%) and Canada (8.3%).
What was surprising and therefore more alarming was that India has a very
low base of Internet penetration compared to the US and the UK. The study
suggests that most downloaders are concentrated in Delhi, Bengaluru, and
Mumbai. For instance, UTV promoted Kaminey is estimated to have been
downloaded just over 3,50,000 times, with around two-thirds of those
downloaders located in these cities.

Hackers Crack Kindle

An Israeli hacker, known as Labba, has successfully broken the copyright
protection on Amazons Kindle e-reader. The hack will allow the e-books stored
on the reader to be transferred as pdf files to any other device. Meanwhile, a
US hacker i♥cabbages, has also created a program called Unswindle that
promises to convert books stored in the Kindle for PC application into a
different file format.

Microsoft Sued for Bing

Bing, the much-touted search engine from Microsoft, is feeling the heat of a
trademark controversy, as a small US design firm is suing the software giant on
the grounds of its prior claim to the name Bing. In its suit, filed in a
circuit court in the state of Missouri, Bing! Information Design (BID) accused
Microsoft of trademark infringement, unfair competition, and tortious
interference with business expectancy. According to Tony Simon, the attorney
representing Bing!, the design company has been using the name Bing! for the
past ten years.

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TN Association Blames BSNL

BSNL officials
have been accused by Namakkal District Information Technology Association (NDITA)
for using a third party to set up broadband connection, paving way for the
person in question to gain monetary benefits by unethical means. NDITA has
also accused that some BSNL employees are making money out of this
word-of-mouth deal.

According to the
association, BSNL sends Sakthivel of Alfa System to the customers place,
who asks for broadband connection. Sakthivel introduces himself as BSNL
officials and is authorized by BSNL to setup the broadband
connection.Sakthivel uses this opportunity for his personal gains, a way to
make money by misinforming customers that their system, which is perfectly
working fine, has some problem with OS, LAN card and also says that the
system is infected with virus, said Ravichandran, president, NDITA.

Through this deal
with Sakthivel, some Namakkals BSNL officials are also getting monetary
benefits, NDITA alleged. Sakthivel affixes Alfa System stickers on the
systems sold by our association members. He also creates some technical
problems purposely that cannot be solved by the BSNL staff, noted
Ravichandran. This issue has become a quandary to the BSNL customers and
our association members as well who are losing their business due to this.
We want BSNL to look into the matter and take stern action immediately.

Delhi HC Raps Microsoft

The Delhi High Court has asked Microsoft to pay Rs 8 lakh for choosing to fight
four piracy cases in Delhi, even though they originated in other cities. The
cases were against four different defendants alleging violation of copyright on
grounds of suspicion that they were using pirated software. Microsoft had filed
cases against Bengaluru based Dhiren Gopal; Manish Chowdhury, who has offices in
Ahmedabad, Pune, and Bengaluru; Mumbai based Pradeep Khanna; SR Mehta who has
offices in Chandigarh, Mohali, and Dera Bassi.

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