A Paris court has found Google guilty of copyright infringement in a ruling which could have ramifications for its plans to digitise the world's books.

The search giant must pay 300,000 euros (£266,000) in damages and interest to French publisher La Martiniere.

It was one of many to take Google to court for digitising its books without explicit permission.

Google was also ordered to pay 10,000 euros a day until it removes extracts of the books from its database.

Google wants to scan millions of books to make them available online.

This court case will be seen as a victory for critics of the plan who fear Google is creating a monopoly over information.

Publisher Herve de La Martiniere launched his court case three years ago but Google continued to scan books during this period.

La Martiniere, the French Publishers' Association and authors' group SGDL who started the court battle initially demanded that Google be fined 15m euros (£13.2m).

The book publishers claimed that scanning books was an act of reproduction and, as such, was something that should be paid for.

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China wants to meter all internet traffic that passes through its borders, it has emerged.

The move would require international agreement - but it is being discussed by the United Nations body in charge of internet standards.

It would allow countries which currently receive no payment for use of their lines to generate income.

But an EU cyber security expert has warned the plan could threaten the stability of the entire internet.

Andrea Servida, of the European Commission, told a House of Lords committee that China could have a "hidden agenda" in wanting to monitor data flows.

And, in later comments to BBC News, he suggested technical changes needed to charge everyone for internet traffic flowing through China could undermine the web's founding principle of openness as well as raising security and stability concerns for all net users.

Developing countries

But the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), the UN body in charge of internet standards, firmly rejected his claims saying it was "not clear" how introducing tariffs could threaten internet security or stability.

The ITU also stressed that the Chinese proposal did not involve modifying the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) - one of the core specifications that controls how data flows around the internet - as Mr Servida has alleged.

An ITU spokesman said: "The ITU has no plans to modify the BGP protocol, which is not an ITU-T standard.

"A proposal has been made, and is being studied, to use BGP routers to collect traffic flow data, which could be used, by bilateral agreement, by operators for billing purposes."

The spokesman said discussions about international internet tariffs had been taking place for the past 10 years and the Chinese proposal was one of many ideas of being studied by ITU working parties.

"We would have welcomed EU participation in the discussion and it's regrettable that the UK Parliamentary committee has been misled in this way," added the ITU spokesman.

But Mr Servida said that as far as the European Commission was concerned the Chinese proposal was "ambiguous" about whether it would involve installing BGP routers or modifying the BGP protocol itself.

And he told BBC News the European Commission's concerns were shared by other delegations at the ITU.

He said that because the BGP protocol is an Internet Engineering Task Force standard and not controlled by the ITU "the involvement of ITU in this specific matter is highly questionable and alarming".

"It indicates a clear intention to introduce higher government control of a critical internet function through what may appear to be a purely technological discussion," he added.

'Security roadmap'

The ITU firmly rejected this claim and insisted that it had involved the wider internet industry in its discussions - with several experts being invited to contribute to the most recent talks on introducing tariffs, which took place in Kampala, Uganda, in September this year.

"There have not been any proposals to introduce 'higher government control of a critical internet function'," an ITU spokesman told the BBC.

Mr Servida, who stressed he was speaking in a personal capacity and not on behalf of the European Commission, said it was "certainly worth engaging in a discussion on tariffs for international internet" - but he suggested China could have ulterior motives for wanting to monitor "packets" of data flowing around the internet and that it could "establish a 'de facto' legitimacy for someone to have a closer look at internet data flows".

China's proposal is understood to have the backing of a number of developing countries, who currently have to bear the cost of international internet connections.

At the moment, when countries install internet circuits, they have to choose between a "peer-to-peer" system for connections with other countries, in which no money changes hands but the traffic flow between the two countries balances out, or an asymmetrical system, where they have to pay the full cost of the connection.

It is understood that the Chinese proposal would see countries reaching a commercial agreement when internet connections are established, including possible compensation for traffic flow and number of routes.

Mr Servida, deputy head of unit at the European Commission's Information Society and Media Directorate General, is one of the authors of an EU plan to protect all 27 member states from large scale cyber attacks and disruption, which is expected to come into force some time after 2011.

The Commission is also working on proposals for international standards for internet security and resilience.

Mr Servida said: "Our target is to develop a roadmap for international cooperation on principles and guidelines for security and resilience by the beginning of 2010."

The proposals would be presented to the EU's international partners at the UN-run Internet Governance Forum and elsewhere at the end of next year, he added.

Mr Servida raised his concerns about China earlier this month when he gave evidence to the House of Lords EU home affairs subcommittee, which is investigating cyber-security.

He cast doubt on the idea that is was possible to "take down" the entire global internet, but added: "Regionally you may have strong disruption and that goes for any region."

He also spoke of the need to reach out to nations who "feel they have legitimate grounds to think of the internet as a kind of private garden" and involve them in international cyber security efforts.

China's laws restricting internet access had been brought in to "protect Chinese citizens" and so were hard to argue against, he told the committee, but the country was now working on technical and trade barriers which would be "bad" for all net users.

"Fencing the internet is not going to help anybody," he told the committee.

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Ten privacy groups in the US have filed a complaint to the Federal Trade Commission over Facebook's new privacy settings.

They argue that privacy on the social networking site has been adversely affected as the firm encourages users to open up their profiles.

The company changed its privacy settings, ostensibly to make it easier for users to control their profiles.

But it also made it easier for content to be shared with all Facebook users.

The idea that personal photos and comments can be seen by all 350 million Facebook users has angered privacy groups.

The complaint, filed by the Electronic Privacy Information Center and signed by nine other privacy groups, argues that the recent changes "adversely impact users".

"Facebook's changes to users' privacy settings disclose personal information to the public that was previously restricted," the complaint read.

"These changes violate user expectations, diminish user privacy, and contradict Facebook's own representations," it goes on.

It urged the Federal Trade Commission to investigate the social network site.

Targeted ads

Facebook said in a statement that it had discussed its privacy programme with the FTC before making the changes.

Chief executive Mark Zuckerberg himself fell victim to the new settings, when newspapers and blogs published some of his personal photos.

He said in his blog that opening up access was deliberate.

"I set some of my content to be more private, but I didn't see a need to limit visibility of pics with my friends, family or my teddy bear :)."

Facebook is encouraging users to make their profile information more widely available. There are three settings available: Friends, Friends of Friends, and Everyone.

It recommends that users favour the third, and most open, setting for status updates, photo albums and basic information while contact information should be reserved just for friends.

Google and other search engines are keen to include social network information in its indexes.

Rival social network Twitter offers users limited ability to restrict who sees content.

Such openly available information would also make it easier for social networking sites to target users with advertisements.

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Twitter has been hit by an embarrassing security breach.

A group claiming to be the Iranian Cyber Army managed to redirect Twitter users to its own site displaying a political message.

Twitter said the attack had been carried out by getting at the servers that tell web browsers where to find particular sites.

The site said it would start an investigation into what allowed the "unplanned downtime" to take place.

Address books

Twitter was hit by the security breach at 2200 PCT (0600 GMT) which led to users being redirected to a page showing a message declaring it had been hacked by the Iranian Cyber Army.

It showed an image of Arabic text overlaid on a green flag carrying the name of the third Shi'i Imam, Imam Husayn.

It also included a poem in Persian which said: "We shall strike if the leader orders, we shall lose our heads if the leader wishes."

Also included were the words: "Those that wage fight on the path of God win."

Some have suggested the attack is retaliation over the use made of Twitter during protests surrounding the Iranian election.

Soon after the images appeared Twitter went offline. About an hour later the site came back to life and appeared to be working normally.

A post on the Twitter status blog said: "We are working to recovery (sic) from an unplanned downtime and will update more as we learn the cause of this outage."

Later, Twitter admitted that its DNS records had been "temporarily compromised". It said it was looking into what happened.

"THIS SITE HAS BEEN HACKED BY IRANIAN CYBER ARMY

This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

U.S.A. Think They Controlling And Managing Internet By Their Access, But THey Don't, We Control And Manage Internet By Our Power, So Do Not Try To Stimulation Iranian Peoples To....

NOW WHICH COUNTRY IN EMBARGO LIST IRAN USA

WE PUSH THEM IN EMBARGO LIST

Take Care.

DNS, the Domain Name System, acts as the address books for the internet. It tells browsing software where to find the computers hosting a particular webpage.

By attacking the DNS servers the hackers were able to re-direct Twitter users.

"These changes mean that when you or I type a website address into our browsers, we are directed not to the real website but to a second site, set up by the hackers, in this case the 'Iranian Cyber Army'," said Rik Ferguson from security firm Trend Micro. "This has the net effect of making it look like, in this example, servers belonging to Twitter were compromised when in reality that was not the case."

Mr Ferguson said such attacks were typically a result of politically motivated hacking or "hacktivism".

However, he added, some cyber criminals also try the ruse using a replica of a website in an attempt to trick people into handing over login details.

The attack is the latest in a series of security embarrassments that Twitter has suffered.

In August, Twitter was offline for two hours as it struggled to cope with an attack aimed at a Russian blogger.

In July many of Twitter's confidential business documents were stolen in a hack attack and published online.

Many spammers and scammers are also targeting the service in a bid to hijack accounts and piggyback on the popularity of some Twitter users.

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Insurgents in Iraq have hacked into live video feeds from unmanned American drone aircraft, US media reports say.

Shia fighters are said to have used off-the-shelf software programs such as SkyGrabber to capture the footage.

The hacking was possible because the remotely flown planes have an unprotected communications link.

Obtaining such video feeds could provide insurgents with information about sites the military might be planning to target.

The breach of the Pentagon surveillance system's security is said to have come to light when footage shot by a Predator drone was found on the laptop of an apprehended Iraqi insurgent.

A senior Pentagon official is quoted as saying that although militants were able to view the video, there was no evidence that they were able to jam electronic signals from the aircraft or take control of them.

The unnamed official said the US defence department had addressed the issue by working to encrypt all video feeds provided by drones in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Predator drones can fly for several hours, remotely controlled by pilots thousands of miles away. The aircraft can carry out surveillance and attack targets with on-board missiles.

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said the US military continually evaluated the technologies it used and quickly corrected any potential problems it discovered.

"There's potential vulnerabilities in all of our systems," he said.

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The power of technology to mobilise the masses and force change has been felt across the world - and now a documentary film-maker hopes to offer "practical advice" for activists.

The film - 10 tactics for turning information into action - offers practical advice such as "amplify personal stories", and "how to use complex data".

"Technology and social media platforms have revolutionised the way we communicate and campaign on global and local issues," says Stephanie Hankey, co-founder of Tactical Tech, the NGO behind the film.

"We have seen examples of the power of social media to shine a spotlight on oppression and hold governments to account, notably in Iran and Burma."

Essential support

The film, which is being shown in over 35 countries, draws on the experience of 25 rights advocates from around the world who have used social media tools like Twitter, Google Earth and Facebook to successfully take on governments and corporations.

THE TEN TACTICS

• 1. Mobilise People
• 2. Witness and Record
• 3. Visualise Your Message
• 4. Amplify Personal Stories
• 5. Just Add Humour
• 6. Investigate and Expose
• 7. How to Use Complex Data
• 8. Use Collective Intelligence
• 9. Let People Ask the Questions
• 10. Manage Your Contacts

Listen to Colin Grant's full report

Among them is Noha Atef, an Egyptian blogger who campaigned heavily for the release of prisoners, and Dina Mehta, who helped orchestrate a Twitter campaign to get blood donors and essential support to hospitals during the Mumbai terror attacks.

Tactical Tech tries to encourage productive use of information activism, the term they give to empowering people, using technology, with facts.

While the film heavily encourages social media use, it also takes time to explain the dangers and limitations.

"The security and privacy aspect of information-activism - any activity that is in anyway political - is extremely important to us," says Marek Tuszynski, also from Tactical Tech.

"We don't just tell people 'Hoorah! This is the ten tactics we have to be using'.

"In each tactic we explain the downsides of using it and how you should be protecting yourself."

Protecting victims

Sam Gregory, from human rights organisation Witness, also says efforts must be put in to make activists fully aware of the consequences of their actions online.

DIGITAL PLANET

• Digital Planetis the weekly technology programme broadcast from theBBC World Service
• It is broadcast on Tuesday at 1232GMT and repeated at 1632GMT, 2032GMT and on Wednesday at 0032GMT
• It is also available as apodcast
• It can be found on the social networksFacebookandOrkut

"Victims and survivors of human rights abuses are already vulnerable, so it's really important when we film them to make sure we don't doubly victimise them.

"In a digital era you can't assume that once a piece of footage is out there it won't be copied, placed on YouTube, and seen by the perpetrator."

Beyond safety and privacy issues, Tactical Tech is also trying to warn of operational problems that activists may face.

"Facebook stops you from messaging the people in your group after you hit 5000," notes Namita Malhotra from the Alternative Law Forum, Bangalore.

"So without realising when we crossed that mark and became 16,000 and 40,000 we realised we could not communicate with anyone in the group anymore."

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A producer from Uruguay who uploaded a short film to YouTube in November 2009 has been offered a $30m (£18.6m) contract to make a Hollywood film.

The movie will be sponsored by director Sam Raimi, whose credits include the Spiderman and Evil Dead films.

Fede Alvarez's short film "Ataque de Panico!" (Panic Attack!) featured giant robots invading and destroying Montevideo, the capital of Uruguay.

It is 4 mins 48 seconds long and has had more than 1.5 million views so far.

"I uploaded (Panic Attack) on a Thursday and on Monday my inbox was totally full of e-mails from Hollywood studios," he told the BBC's Latin American service BBC Mundo.

"It was amazing, we were all shocked."

The movie Mr Alvarez has been asked to produce is a sci-fi film to be shot in Uruguay and Argentina. He says he intends to start from scratch and develop a new story for the project.

"If some director from some country can achieve this just uploading a video to YouTube, it obviously means that anyone could do it," he added.

YouTube recently revealed the most watched videos of 2009. Britain's Got Talent star Susan Boyle topped the chart with more than 120 million views worldwide of her debut on the show.

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Television viewers in north-west England are still struggling to get local stations after the digital switchover earlier this month.

The BBC has received complaints from viewers who received Welsh TV instead of their usual regional channels.

Digital UK said 7.2 million viewers had switched over in that area and about 6,000 contacted their advice line about "overlapping signals".

Analogue TV will be switched off across the UK by 2012.

The North West is the biggest region to lose its analogue signal so far. Homes have been affected across the Granada TV area in Cheshire, Lancashire, Greater Manchester and Merseyside.

Eric Southworth, from Fleetwood in Lancashire, said: "I have been getting BBC Wales, ITV Wales and Channel Four Wales [S4C].

"I don't understand Welsh."

The BBC's North of England correspondent, Nick Ravenscroft, who has been investigating the problem, said the newly-boosted digital TV signal was so strong, Mr Southworth's TV set had been picking up services from a transmitter near Wrexham.

"When televisions scan the frequencies they start from the lowest and work upwards. The signal bringing Welsh TV from Wrexham is at a lower frequency than the transmitter for north-west England, which is near Bolton," our correspondent explained.

"So, the Welsh services are assigned to the first channels. The North West services are typically on channels in the 800s."

He said viewers had been complaining about the problem and the lack of solutions from the official helpline.

"The minority is vocal," he added. "But judging by their e-mails, intensely annoyed, not least because many have spent money upgrading their equipment or aerial in preparation for the switchover."

Similar problems occurred in the West Country when that area switched over earlier this year.

'Overlapping signals'

Simon Crine, from Digital UK, the company leading the UK's switchover to digital TV, said he understood the problems had caused "angst and irritation".

He said viewers could get help re-tuning their TV sets via the Digital UK helpline.

"We took an enormous number of calls on the days of switchovers and in Granada, the north-west region, nine out of 10 people went away happy," he said.

"One in 10 reported overlapping signals from Wales and we tried to help those people through that process," he said.

The switchover started in 2007 and will continue until 2012. Analogue channels will be switched off region by region and replaced with free-to-air digital TV and radio services (Freeview).

Switchover has already been completed in the Granada TV region and parts of east and central Wales. It will be rolled out to the other regions of England and Wales - as well as Scotland and Northern Ireland - between now and 2012.

Anyone in need of assistance with the digital switchover should contact the Digital UK helpline on 08456 505050.

There is also a dedicated phone number for disabled people and those aged 75 and over who need assistance - the BBC Switchover Help Scheme on 0800 408 7654.

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