2. Court Orders Pirate Bay Domains to be Forfeited to the State

The Swedish Court of Appeal has ruled that The Pirate Bay will have its Swedish domains, ThePirateBay.se, and PirateBay.se, based on the grounds that the domains are tools used to infringe copyright, according to a report by Torrent Freak. It seems likely that there will be an appeal in this case, as The Pirate Bay co-founder and alleged owner of the domains Fredrik Neij has hinted.

3. Premium domains are confusing, but can be profitable for domain name registries

Premium domains can be confusing, but a premium strategy can payoff for a registry if done right, according to a report by Domain Name Wire, which notes that Rightside had a record month for premium domain sales last month, averaging about $550 per domain.

Source: TheWHIR

Thanks to our sponsors, SoftLayer, Lenovo, Radware, Liquid Web, we are able to offer complimentary drinks and hors d’oeuvres. Our sponsors also come with prizes to giveaway to lucky attendees. Here’s what you could win (if you bring a business card):

If you’re in New York or surrounding area, I hope to see you on Thursday night! RSVP free today.

Source: TheWHIR

SEE ALSO: New Report Confirms Tech Firms Failing to Protect User Privacy Rights

“NTIA’s initial analysis only scratches the surface of this important area, but it is clear policymakers need to develop a better understanding of mistrust in the privacy and security of the Internet and the resulting chilling effects,” Rafi Goldberg, Policy Analyst, Office of Policy Analysis and Development said in a blog post describing the report. “In addition to being a problem of great concern to many Americans, privacy and security issues may reduce economic activity and hamper the free exchange of ideas online.”

Perhaps the most interesting finding was that 45 percent of online households reported that these concerns prevented them from conducting financial transactions or buying goods and services online. Even more troubling, these concerns also kept online users from posting on social networks or expressing opinions on controversial or political issues via the Internet. Thirty percent of respondents refrained from at least two of these activities, according to the report.

This last finding suggests that Internet-connected households are becoming savvier in terms of understanding that private services online are seldom private, and the importance of understanding who owns your data online, but reflects a self-censorship that could be dangerous. Last year a report by the Pew Research Center found that one-third of Americans have changed social media privacy settings, used social media less often, and avoided use of certain terms online in order to protect their information from surveillance.

Source: TheWHIR

Bangladesh Central Bank, Swift Blame Each Other Over Heist

A mystery group has stolen $81 million from the Bangladesh central bank, using “Bangladesh Bank’s Swift credentials to divert money from Bangladesh’s foreign-reserve account at the New York Fed to fraudulent bank accounts in the Philippines.” The whole thing is quite a mess, and has left everyone doing a lot of finger pointing.

How much is a security flaw worth? An inside look into Yahoo’s bug bounty program

Yahoo’s digital security team, dubbed the Paranoids, meet weekly to review reports from security researchers who claim to have found flaws in Yahoo’s platforms. They are the ones who decide “whether a hacker will get a cash prize as high as $15,000 – or just a box of Yahoo-branded swag.” Personally, I’d be OK with a band T-shirt that says The Paranoids.

And speaking of security…

Study: Number of Costly DoS-Related Data Center Outages Rising

Denial of Service, or DoS, is the most common form of cyberattacks on data centers, according to a new report by the Ponemon Institute. In 32 percent of the DoS attack incidents survey respondents reported, their data centers suffered a partial outage, while 17 percent suffered total outage.

Google proposes new set of female emojis to promote equality

While the most popular emojis are still the smiley face, sad face, and the heart, if you’ve ever scrolled through your emoji keyboard you’ve likely seen that the emojis representing women are a little bit…shallow. Google thought it was high time that changed. The new emojis reflect 13 different professions, including a software engineer and scientist.

Source: TheWHIR

SEE ALSO: WordPress.com Secures Millions of Domains with Free, Automatic HTTPS

.Blog domains will be available from WordPress.com or through one if its partner domain name registrars.

Mullenweg told VentureBeat in an interview that it worked with Primer Nivel in the auction process in order to conceal its identity; “But there could be an incentive for other bidders if they knew it was us, and we’d just raised funding, that they would try to drive the price up. It was right after we did our $160 million round.”

Mullenweg said that “because companies use blog as a subdirectory and a subdomain, I think that the domain is interesting.”

READ MORE: Google Domains Service Moves to .Google

New gTLDs have not seen a lot of mainstream adoption, but with WordPress’ widespread reach it could help educate users.

“It is too early to tell whether the new [gTLD] space will be accepted as a viable alternative to the established space,” a recent academic report said.

Source: TheWHIR

SEE ALSO: Yahoo Japan to Run on OpenStack, Cloud Foundry

SB Cloud CEO and executive vice president of SoftBank Eric Gan said that the companies have been working on the joint venture over the “past few months.”

SB Cloud’s offerings will include data storage and processing services, enterprise-level middle as well as cloud security services, according to an announcement.

“We are proud that Alibaba Cloud can leverage its cloud computing expertise in the joint venture with SoftBank,” Sicheng Yu, vice president of Alibaba Cloud said in a statement. “We look forward to helping more Japanese companies grow their business with our secure, scalable and innovative cloud computing services.”

SB Cloud CEO and executive vice president of SoftBank Eric Gan said that the companies have been working on the joint venture over the “past few months.”

Just last month, Digital Realty announced that it has pre-leased the entirety of its first Japan data center to a “major hyperscale cloud provider.”

http://www.thewhir.com/web-hosting-news/big-cloud-provider-pre-leases-digitals-entire-first-japan-data-center

Other cloud providers with a presence in Japan include Microsoft and Amazon.

Source: TheWHIR

“Loyalty is high for the primary services providers,” he said. “In fact, 95 percent of the customers surveyed are expecting to stay with their current primary provider in the next year. Almost 70 percent have an annualized agreement with their service provider.”

This customer loyalty is critical for service providers as more options hit the market; pulling clients in every direction to fight for a piece of their IT spend.

SEE ALSO: Security, Cloud Computing Remain CIO Budget Priorities: Report

The study indicates just how customers are spending the majority of their IT budgets. According to the report, 71 percent of customers’ cloud and hosting budgets are now allocated to managed services, application hosting and security services.

Benmalek said that managed services in particular is “one of the fastest-growing segments” of IT spend in the cloud.

Survey respondents said that it is important that cloud and hosting providers have experience helping customers transform existing IT environments to cloud-based services, offer services beyond infrastructure (including managed services), can make recommendations for cloud platforms or apps to purchase, and can migrate workloads to different cloud environments. The survey also suggests that customers want service providers who can be a single point of contact for a variety of cloud services, and can broker contracts with other service providers.

Microsoft has more than 30,000 hosting partners, and while Benmalek wouldn’t say specifically how much revenue these partners drive for the vendor, he did say that it continues to grow “double digits from year to year.”

“It’s one of the fastest growing businesses for us,” he said.

Service providers are one component of Microsoft’s hybrid cloud strategy, Benmalek said. Microsoft’s “three-legged stool” is on-premise, hosted private cloud and services providers, as well as Azure public cloud.

“It’s a very exciting time for us and I think the vibrant ecosystem we see continues to be a key bet for us,” he said.

The full 78-page report is available for download on Microsoft’s website.

Source: TheWHIR

nWorkspace includes software, infrastructure, services, and support, offering partners and customers a choice of licensing models including named user and concurrent user licensing options, CloudJumper said. The concurrent user model virtualizes or “floats” a fixed number of licenses across the network as opposed to device-specific license allocation.

CloudJumper is working with strategic service providers, a “relatively new channel partner classification” to deliver the WaaS platform.

“Managed services have evolved to the point where providers no longer have to deal with the assembly of complex solutions, unwieldy configurations, or a combination where difficulties in management are par for the course,” JD Helms, president, CloudJumper said in a statement. “Our organization represents a new era in plug-and-play business IT where ease of operation and an unmatched customer experience scales without limits.”

Read more on The WHIR’s sister site, Windows IT Pro.

Original article appeared here: nGenx Spinoff CloudJumper Launches to Workspace as a Service Market

Source: TheWHIR

Read more: Web Hosts Urge Senate Judiciary Committee to Update ECPA

Groups including the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the i2Coalition applauded the passage of the bill. The EFF called it a “win for user privacy” but noted that it still “isn’t perfect.”

“In particular, the Email Privacy Act doesn’t require the government to notify users when it seeks their online data from service providers, a vital safeguard ensuring users can obtain legal counsel to fight for their rights,” the EFF said. “The government should also be required to obtain a warrant when demanding a person’s geolocation data. And if the government does obtain any communications data in violation of the law, courts should have the ability to suppress that evidence in criminal prosecutions.”

“Reforming ECPA has been a policy priority for the i2Coalition since we were founded,” i2Coalition Policy and Board Chair David Snead said in a statement. “We are grateful to the House for taking leadership on this important issue, and call on the Senate to expeditiously follow in their colleague’s footsteps. The unanimous House vote should send a clear message to the marketplace that Congress is listening to our customer’s demands for a warrant for content.”

Source: TheWHIR