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One of the key moderators of Playpen, an infamous darknet child porn website, has been sentenced to 20 years in prison. The 47-year-old man from Kentucky will also face lifelong supervision once his prison sentence has ended. As the site's global moderator, he was in charge of deleting content that wasn't …

Following on from claims that fake-news had a large impact on the U.S. presidential elections, technology firms like Google and Facebook are taking steps to combat it in the lead up to the French elections in April. Together they've debuted a service called Cross Check, which when it goes live …

Possibly one of the most impactful online piracy cases ever began in earnest this week, with the legal representatives of alleged owner of KickassTorrents, Artem Vaulin, facing off against the U.S. government over four federal indictments. His lead lawyer, Ira Rothken, best known for defending Kim Dotcom, argued that torrents …

PornHub is looking to combat the idea that pornography harms the minds of the impressionable, by offering an educational resource of its own. Launched as a small, sub-site within the main Pornhub domain, the Sexual Wellness Center is filling up with articles, videos and Q&A resources, all in the aid …

The reason that the launch of Kim Dotcom's MegaUpload 2.0 did not occur on the planned 20th January launch date, was because of a Canadian stock exchange. Although MegaUpload 2.0 was set to perform a reverse takeover of a Canadian firm in order to become publicly listed and increase its …

The big four internet service providers (ISP) in the UK have agreed to voluntarily begin sending out warning letters to customers that are suspected of piracy. That means customers of Sky, BT, Virgin Media and TalkTalk may now receive a warning if their IP address is thought to be involved …

Desktop browser usage was once dominated by Internet Explorer, but those days are long gone. Today Chrome rules the roost and as Internet Explorer usage took a huge dip in 2016, many of those transitioned over to the Google browser. However at the tail end of the year Firefox began …

While Amazon's strategy for drawing in English speaking crowds to its Amazon Prime Video service might involve live-action shows like The Grand Tour and Mr Robot, elsewhere in the world it's using animation to do the same. In India, Amazon has acquired the exclusive rights to a number of popular …

Bitcoin has crested the $1,000 (£812) mark for the first time in years. After steady growth over the Christmas period, in the first day of trading in 2017, it has breached the $1,000 mark and continues to grow. This represents an increase of around 25 per cent in the past …

Key sales website, G2A, is looking to change up the purpose and function of its Shield service. Initially designed as purely a form of insurance against bad keys, it is now being overhauled into a form of premium membership, complete with game bundles, better chat support and more features set …

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is worried about the state of privacy and net neutrality online, but it's really worried about it once Donald Trump comes to power in January next year. To try and get the jump on that, it's taken out a full page advert in Wired magazine to …

In what should be taken as a lesson to always, always proof something before you put it online, the quickly pulled IMAX trailer for The Mummy reboot has been drawing a lot of interest since its re-upload. It's not clear why, but much of the sound appears to be missing, only …

If it seems like every online entity is looking to employ digital assistants to help improve their customer's experience, that's because they are. Everyone from Twitch, to Facebook are now looking to algorithms to help them out and it turns out pornography streaming site, Pornhub, is no different. It's just …

The automated moderation algorithm introduced by gaming streaming site, Twitch, earlier this week, is already paying dividends. According to a number of streamers who traditionally have to deal with abuse or fighting in their attached chat, the number of people saying mean stuff has fallen dramatically. Traditionally, viewing any popular …

Gaming streaming site, Twitch, has announced the introduction of new automated moderation tools, which will try to analyse the intent of messages and block those it deems hateful or abusive. Designed to do what no team of human moderators could achieve, Twitch claims AutoMod will become more effective over time, …

Some of the world's biggest technology firms are going to share a database of image and video hashes for ‘extemist content' with one another, in order to prevent them from appearing on their various platforms. This is much the same system they use to tackle child pornography and although it …

The biggest file sharing website in France, Zone-Telechargement, has been shut down after being seized by the police. This will see millions of file sharers looking elsewhere for their content, as Zone-Telechargement was ranked as the 11th biggest website in France at the time of its shutdown. Launched in 2011, …

Digital advocacy organisation, the Open Rights Group, has lambasted a number of politicians for making a proposed amendment to the Digital Economy Bill, which would make it perfectly legal to block porn sites which don't add effective age registration. On top of labelling the idea censorship, the ORG criticised the …

Like a real world game of Agar.io, Facebook is swallowing up everything around it as it expands into new fields of advertising and absorbs old ones. With the release of its second quarter financials, we've learned that its net income has tripled year on year, thanks to a huge expansion …

Due to a disagreement with a local licensing body, German Youtube viewers haven't been able to watch much in the way of music videos on the streaming site – without using a proxy – for years now. However, finally, after much negotiation, a deal has been struck and the blocks …

A recent episode of Black Mirror that addressed the idea of social networking ratings affecting the real world, could be closer to reality than you might think. Admiral is currently looking to use analysis of Facebook posts, searching for triggers like exclamation points and confident statements, as a bearing on …

EA Games made the somewhat surprising move in September, to begin complying with United States trade sanctions, whereby it stopped offering its Origin service and exclusive games in affected regions. What's even more surprising though, is that when those sanctions are lifted, it doesn't remove the blocks. This is most …

A number of British politicians have made it clear they want search engines to do more to help tackle piracy. One proposed solution suggested that if those search firms don't come to a voluntary agreement with copyright holders, that the government could step in and fine them. One of the …

Following the continued downturn of the British pound compared to the U.S. dollar following the referendum on the U.K. leaving the EU, Microsoft has announced a big jump in its software prices. Businesses can expect to pay 13 per cent more for local software and as much as 22 per …

From Pirate Parties to Paypal founders, we're looking at a few AMAs this morning, but we can't pass up the chance to look through all of the things Space X CEO, Elon Musk was asked about in his. Moving swiftly on from the questions about poo disposal and electric busses …

If you ever wanted to send an email to the president of the United States, now you can. As part of its big leak of emails from Hilary Clinton campaign head, John Podesta, the personal, pre-presidential email address of Barack Obama was revealed. Unfortunately at the time of writing it …

Close to five years on from the seizure of the MegaUpload servers following the arrest of site founder, Kim Dotcom, millions of users from all over the world still don't have access to their data. Since the hosting company which currently stores the hardware has suggested the drives within them …

Rumours were abound earlier this week when Wikileaks founder and Ecuadorian embassy resident for the past four years, Julian Assange, found his internet connection severed. We were told it was by a state party and it turns out that party was Ecuador itself, which now admits that it was responsible …

Californian's attempting to access some of the world's most popular pornographic websites this week will have found it a little harder than normal. In protest of Proposition 60, which would make it mandatory for porn performers to wear condoms during shooting, a number of sites blocked Californians from viewing any …

BitTorrent Inc. the company behind the Utorrent file sharing client, has become a one CEO firm once again. This came as part of a falling out between the two heads, who previously joined up as the company transitioned to a more commercial entity. It has denied that the company is …