The House of Representatives has just passed a new legislation that will ban all forms of malicious Caller ID "spoofing," the art of using a fake caller ID to trick victims into revealing personal information.

The bill, which passed with a "voice vote," is intended to stop spoofing before it gets more prominent. Proponents of the bill say new technology is making spoofing much easier, and the technology is cheap or even free.

Rep. Eliot Engel, a Democrat in N.Y. who is also the chief sponsor of the bill, cited one case where the police busted an identify theft ring which had stolen over $15 million from 6000 victims using different spoofing scams including pretending to be banks.

The bill, H.R. 1258, will completely outlaw spoofing technology if it used for deceiving or harmful intent. Legitimate uses, such as spoofing to protect identities of certain users or companies, will still be allowed. Those found to be abusing the technology can be fined and even spend time in jail.

The legislation still requires Senate approval.

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Submitted last month and accepted just yesterday by Apple, the Opera Mini 5 application is now at the head of all "Top Apps" lists, from every country in which the App Store is available.

There are over 50 million Opera Mini users globally.

Opera Mini uses Opera's servers to render and compress pages, thus increasing speed for the end user, and also working around Apple's stringent rules.

The company says users of the iPhone over AT&T's slower 2G Edge data will definitely feel the "uptake in speed."

Whether all the downloads are just a curiosity or proof that iPhone/iPod Touch users are looking for choice within their hardware remains to be seen, but it seems pretty clear that Opera will be gaining a significant amount of users.

Pic via Engadget

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Speaking at the "Chirp" conference earlier today, Twitter founder Evan Williams has said that Android devices will finally be getting an official Twitter app in the near future.

What remains unclear is whether the official app will be a rehash of "Tweetie," (the very popular app which was just purchased by Twitter), a new app developed by the company, or an app created jointly with mobile device makers, such as the BlackBerry Twitter App for, you guessed it, Blackberrys.

Tweetie, one of the most popular Twitter apps for the iPhone, was just acquired last Saturday and will be renamed "Twitter for iPhone," as well as go free.

The Blackberry Twitter App was also dubbed the "official" Twitter app for the platform.

The company also announced two days ago that an official Twitter iPad app was on the way.

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Microsoft Corp. revealed on Wednesday that it is investigating reports of harsh working conditions at a Chinese factory that products products for the Redmond-based software giant. The National Labor Committee released a report on Tuesday about harsh treatment of workers at a KYE Systems Corp. factory in the city of Dongguan in Guangdong province.

It accuses KYE of recruiting hundreds of 16 and 17 year olds who work 15 hour shifts, six and seven days a week. The report said that in 2007 and 2008 before the economic downturn hit badly, workers were at the factory as many as 97 hours per week, whilst working for over 80 of those hours.

In 2009, workers were at the facility 83 hours a week and working 68 hours. In addition to the long working hours - for which workers were paid just 65 cents an hour of which only 52 cents is "take-home pay" after deductions are made for factory food expenses - workers were not allowed to talk, listen to any music or even use the bathroom during working hours.

Workers who broke the "rules" were forced to clean the factory's bathrooms as punishment. "The workers have no rights, as every single labor law in China is violated," the report alleged. "Microsoft's and other companies' codes of conduct have zero impact."

Microsoft said that it is committed to the fair treatment and safety of workers employed by its vendors. "Microsoft has invested heavily in a vendor accountability program and robust independent third-party auditing program to ensure conformance to the Microsoft Vendor Code of Conduct," the company stated. It vowed to take appropriate remedial measures on discovery of vendor misconduct.

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Japanese adult entertainment firms are threatening lawsuits against companies located in Taiwan for copyright infringement. Among those threatened parties are Internet and mobile phones operators and cable channels. A lawyer for eight separate Japanese adult entertainment firms said they have lost millions of dollars in potential revenue over the illegal activity.

"My clients suffered huge losses because they cannot collect royalties for the adult videos," said lawyer Michael Chien, estimating it to be around 1 billion Taiwan dollars, or roughly US$33 Million, every year. "Screening and selling the videos without authorisation is unacceptable. Taiwan should do more to protect intellectual property rights."

Chunghwa Telecom and Taiwan Mobile, the largest mobile phone operators in the country, have been identified by the eight adult entertainment producers as violators of the their copyright.

The companies, which account for about a third of all Japanese pornography content, have demanded that the firms pay royalties and remove unlicensed videos from their services within a month.

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Twitter co-founder Biz Stone revealed on Wednesday that the popular micro-blogging source has over 105 million registered users. The site is now adding 300,000 new users a day to its service, which launched back in 2006. The site receives about 180 million unique visitors a month, Stone revealed to software developers at the "Chirp" development conference.

Speaking to over 1,000 software developers in attendance, he revealed the figures of registered users and traffic for the first time. The company told of how many Twitter users access the service through software applications created by third-party developers. Twitter has started to create its own similar software solutions as well as buying up some, which might not be good news for many of the developers.

"It is clearly a tension and it is why we are trying to show where we are going," Twitter co-founder Evan Williams said, adding that it was natural for Internet services to have both complementary and competitive relationships with third parties that develop software building on its technology platforms.

"There are thousands of ways to use Twitter that haven't even been imagined yet. There is so much left to invent. It is really early and we can do it together," Evans told the crowd.

On Tuesday, Twitter revealed that it will start showing promoted tweets on search results, where companies and others can place 140 characters or less advertisements.

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According to an ITWorld report, Adobe is on the verge of suing Apple, as the two companies continue to battle over Apple's strong rejection of Flash support on their devices.

The report cites "sources close to Adobe" when saying a lawsuit is in the works in the coming weeks.

Over the course of a few months, the niceties between the two companies has broken down, with Apple practically saying Flash is not good enough to be on the iPad and one Adobe developer going as far as to tell Apple to screw itself.

Officially, Adobe is keeping mum on the subject and says it is still creating a Packager for iPhone OS tech, although it has almost been completely banned by Apple thanks to new SDK language which bans cross-platform compilers as the one launched with Adobe Creative Suite 5. Not just targeting Adobe, the new SDK language also blocks Microsoft Silverlight.

Over 70 percent of current videos online use Flash and over 96 percent of all computers currently have the Flash plug-in installed in their browser of choice.

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According to Apple press contact Natalie Harrison, the company will need to delay the international launch of the iPad, citing extremely high demand, and supply that can't hold up.

As of April 8th, CEO Steve Jobs said the company had sold 450,000 iPads, in the United States alone, and that number is likely over 600,000 now.

Reads the press statement:

"Although we have delivered more than 500,000 iPads during its first week, demand is far higher than we predicted and will likely continue to exceed our supply over the next several weeks as more people see and touch an iPad™. We have also taken a large number of pre-orders for iPad 3G models for delivery by the end of April."

Additionally, the press release says the "surprisingly strong demand" has forced Apple to rethink their international launch, and the devices won't hit overseas until the end of May.

On May 10th, international pre-orders will go live and Apple will give pricing for the different models of the device.

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According to new data by the research firm The Diffusion Group, the Sony PlayStation 3 has the highest percentage of 'connected' console users, with 78 percent of users connected to the Internet.

Rival Xbox 360 had 73 percent connected, and the Nintendo Wii came in third at 54 percent.

Although it is the leader, the number for the PS3 is actually surprisingly low given the fact that the console has built-in Wi-Fi.

Adds Diffusion Group director of research Michael Greeson (via Gamasutra): "Today's game consoles are increasingly connected to the internet, not just to enhance their gaming experience but to access the growing variety of online media-video."

The survey polled 2000 console users with broadband, in the U.S.

Concluding the report, Greeson says that all three consoles "are best positioned to become the first mainstream over-the-top (OTT) video delivery platform," especially given that Netflix free streaming is now available for all three platforms.

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Last year in the US the PRO-IP bill was signed into law. It created a new head of copyright enforcement in the Justice Department and called for public input on ways to address intellectual property infringement.

It also mandated that the GAO (Government Accountability Office) identify and quantify the presumed harm to the US economy from IP infringement. In a report issued on Monday they were critical of both government agencies and industry groups for promoting facts and figures.

On the government side they looked at three figures which have been widely used to argue in favor of increased IP enforcement. According to the GAO, none of the numbers stand up to scrutiny because they, "cannot be substantiated or traced back to an underlying data source or methodology."

These include a FBI estimate that US businesses lose $200 to $250 billion annually due to counterfeiting. These figures were originally found in a FBI press release, but the agency, "has no record of source data or methodology for generating the estimate."

Other reports from US Customs and Border Protection and the Federal Trade Commission were similarly criticized for being short on facts, and even discredited by the agencies themselves.

However, the report also noted that this hasn't stopped other government agencies and a number of trade groups from citing them as fact.

And how do government officials actually arrive at these figures since they appear not to be collecting any data on the subject? According to the GAO they rely heavily on numbers supplied by various industry groups, even though those groups, "do not always disclose their proprietary data sources and methods, making it difficult to verify their estimates."

The industry provided information GAO auditors were able to examine didn't hold up very well to serious scrutiny. This should come as no surprise to anyone who has examined the assumptions used by organizations like the BSA (Busines Software Alliance) and MPAA.

Of BSA numbers, which are revised annually, the report noted, "it uses assumptions that have raised concerns among experts we interviewed, including the assumption of a one-to-one rate of substitution."

The rate of substitution is how many people who have a pirated or counterfeit good would have bought the legitimate good. A one-to-one rate of substitution means every piece of pirated software installed is counted as a lost sale.

A 2005 report issued by the MPAA is also mentioned, although that organization's later admission of errors in their conclusions interestingly isn't.

The GAO does note that "It is difficult, based on the information provided in the study, to determine how the authors handled key assumptions such as substitution rates and extrapolation from the survey sample to the broader population."

Unfortunately none of this is really new information. Criticism of the various figures and studies used to promote stronger IP protection is easy to find if you are looking.

And it was just as easy to find when PRO-IP was passed. The bigger question is who Justice Department officials will be listening to.

Given the number of high ranking officials at the Department of Justice who have been integral to RIAA and MPAA lawsuit campaigns it's probably not the GAO.

They've already increased DOJ's involvement in RIAA lawsuits by arguing in favor of ludicrous copyright infringement damages for file sharing.

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