Tom Wood, a Year 10 student, probably 15 - 16 years old has cracked the federal government's $84-million internet porn filter in just 30 minutes. He can deactivate the filter in several clicks in such a way that the software's icon is not deleted which will make his parents believe the filter is still working.

Australian communications Minister Helen Coonan said the government had anticipated kids would find their ways around the NetFilter. Yes Minister but 30 minutes for a teenager to crack a 84 million dollar filter is simply ridiculous.

We're starting to get bills for the iPhone here at Ars, and while many of us have had smartphones for some time, we've never seen a bill like this.

One of our bills is a whopping 52 pages long, and my own bill is 34 pages long. They're printed on both sides, too.

The AT&T bill itemizes your data usage whenever you surf the Internet via EDGE, even if you're signed up for the unlimited data plan. AT&T also goes into an incredible amount of detail to tell you—well, almost nothing. For instance, I know that on July 27 at 3:21 p.m. I had some data use that, under the To/From heading, AT&T has helpfully listed as "Data Transfer." The Type of file? "Data." My total charge? $0.00.

Undercover reporter Michelle Madigan (Associate Producer of NBC Dateline) got a little more than she bargained for when she tried to sneak in to DEFCON 2007 with hidden cameras to get someone to confess to a felony.

DEFCON organizers caught wind of this from undisclosed sources and casually contacted Madigan to see if she wanted official press credentials and a press badge to cover DEFCON. Reporters in the pressroom were then fully briefed on the situation before the "spot the undercover reporter game" so that they could cover the event.

Madigan was apparently trying to do a shock piece for NBC Dateline to show middle America how criminal underground hackers had descended on DEFCON Las Vegas to learn tricks of the trade and how Federal Agents were tracking them down.

DEFCON official "Priest" also had reason to believe that that Madigan was planning to out uncover federal agents attending DEFCON and expressed some serious concern about the safety and privacy of those agents. Because of this, staffers used this to lure Madigan to the room where they planned to out her instead in front of DEFCON attendees in the "spot the undercover reporter" game but Madigan bolted from the scene before her photo was put up on the projector.

The sad part of this story is that Madigan was given every opportunity to get a press pass and get access to any of the speakers and attendees above board. Even after the secret video taping she was offered a chance cover the rest of the conference with an official press badge.

In the past we've covered various stories of how author J.K. Rowling and her publisher have been needlessly aggressive in trying to enforce copyright claims dealing with Harry Potter.

The NY Times has an article that claims to be about copyright infringement and counterfeit Harry Potter books in China, but the details suggest it's really more about fan fiction. The article focuses almost entirely on non-authentic Harry Potter books, often written by fans, that are then sold to a Chinese market clamoring for more Harry Potter.

However, as Against Monopoly points out, this has apparently spurred greater interest in reading among kids, so of course Rowling's publishers are looking into stopping these books from being sold. You can certainly understand Rowling's worry about being wrongly associated with works that she had no part in writing... but you have to wonder if she's perhaps missing an opportunity by simply sending in the lawyers.

Whether the millions of kids who load up their iPods from LimeWire are thieves, or whether there's something incongruous about Sheryl Crow, a millionaire many times over, railing against piracy. When you look at the technology, there's no getting around the fact that DRM is an abject failure.

The 10-year-old Content Scrambling System employed on early DVDs is such a technological relic at this point that Crunchgear recently reported that: "According to the Finnish courts, CSS is so weak that it doesn't even count as a protective measure anymore."

In a game of iPod cat and mouse, the DRM system used in iTunes' music has been repeatedly cracked and then "fixed" by Apple. Last fall, the cracking program called QTFairUse6 had been updated so it could continue to perform its DRM-stripping duties within hours after Apple released iTunes 7.

There's been no update from the Advanced Access Content System people on the cracking of their AACS DRM, which is used in the new high-definition HD DVD and Blu-ray DVDs, since May 7.

The widely circulated crack comes in the form of a program called FairUse4M. The first iteration of this crack worked with Windows Media Player 10 under Windows XP, but for a long time wouldn't work on Vista. Alas, FairUse4M has now been updated to crack WMP11 running on Vista.

The AP is reporting that Leonard Nimoy will 'don his famous pointy ears again' in the next Star Trek movie, due out Christmas of next year. From the article: 'He greeted the crowd with a Vulcan salute. Nimoy was joined by the newly named young Spock, "Heroes" star Zachary Quinto [Sylar], who bears an uncanny resemblance to Nimoy. Both Spocks were introduced by the film's director and co-producer, J.J. Abrams.'

Discovery Channel he-man Bear Grylls, the host of the survival-skills show "Man vs. Wild," is barely the man he seems to be on TV.

On the program, Grylls appears to camp out in quickly-built shelters deep in the wilderness while battling hypothermia and dehydration. But when the cameras stop rolling, Grylls has actually moved to luxurious hotels.

"If you really believe everything happens the way it is shown on TV, you are being a little bit naive," said Mark Weinert, an Oregon-based survival consultant, who said producers hired him as an adviser for the show.

In another instance, where Grylls was supposed to be surviving on a desert island, he was actually in Hawaii and spent nights at a motel, Weinert said.

In another episode, viewers watched as Grylls tried to coax what seemed like a wild mustang into a lasso in the Sierra Nevada.

In fact, Weinert said, the horses were not wild but were brought in by trailer.

They may never know it, but U.S. air travelers and others set off silent terrorist warning alarms nearly 20,000 times in 2006 when their names matched against the government's centralized terrorist watch list, according to a statistic buried in a Department of Justice document.

The number represents a 27 percent jump over 2005, and points to the growth in the federal Terrorist Screening Center, a joint FBI and DHS operation that controls the government's master list of suspected terrorists. Agencies from the FBI to the NSA nominate names to the database and assign threat level codes to each name. The criteria for inclusion is considered classified.

A massive hunt was under way last night to find the mole who leaked the new Harry Potter online.

American publishers Scholastic went to court to identify the person who revealed details of the novel five days before its official release date.

The mole breached the tightest security operation in publishing history to put the first two-thirds of the US version of the book on a website.

English publishers at Bloomsbury are said to be "spitting blood".

A source in America said last night: "Heads are sure to roll over this." Bloomsbury recently told how it spent £10million on a massive security operation to ensure no secrets leaked.

Its furious American counterparts at Scholastic launched a court order claiming infringement of copyright to track down the culprit.

The performers, normally duos, mainly covered songs written and made famous by other musicians. There was no cover charge, no pay for the musicians, no limit to how long patrons could sit on a couch with their coffee, playing chess and enjoying the music.

Then a few months later, music industry giant ASCAP started calling and sending letters saying East Coast Coffee & Tea was in violation of copyright laws. The fee to continue the music was $400 a year.

Six months later, other music copyright companies began calling the Halls and demanding money. Most days there would be three or four phone calls from each company, Hall said.

When a songwriter signs with one of the licensing companies -- the country's three biggest are BMI, SESAC and ASCAP -- his or her music is copyrighted.

"It started 15 years ago when I had a guy come out to our other place, Cantina dos Amigos, and play Mexican music on his guitar on the patio," Andrus said. "They came after me for money. Are they really sending royalty checks to the songwriter in Mexico?"