An anonymous reader writes "Slate provides the first-person account of a CEO who received an e-mail with several business documents attached threatening to distribute them to competitors and business partners unless the CEO paid $150,000. 'Experts I consulted told me that the hacking probably came from government monitors who wanted extra cash,' writes the CEO, who successfully ended the extortion with an e-mail from the law firm from the bank of his financial partner, refusing payment and adding that the authorities had been notified. According to the article, IT providers routinely receive phone calls from their service providers if they detect any downtime on the monitors of network traffic installed by the Chinese government, similar to the alerts provided to telecom providers about VoIP fraud on their IP-PBX switches. 'Hundreds of millions of Chinese operate on the Internet without any real sense of privacy, fully aware that a massive eavesdropping apparatus tracks their every communication and move...' writes the CEO. 'With China's world and ours intersecting online, I expect we'll eventually wonder how we could have been so naive to have assumed that privacy was normal- or that breaches of it were news.'"

First time accepted submitter rogue-girl writes that a "Cairo Administrative Court announced earlier on Feb. 9 that a ruling has been issued to block YouTube within the country for 30 days. This decision comes after a lawsuit was filed back in September 2012 during the turmoil caused by the infamous trailer 'The Innocence of Muslims' spread through the popular video platform. The Court has also asked for all websites having published parts or the entire trailer to be banned for 30 days."

An anonymous reader writes "Distributel, an independent Canadian ISP, has fought back in a file sharing lawsuit by opposing a motion to disclose the names of subscribers alleged to have engaged in file sharing. The company did not oppose a similar request in November 2012, but says in court documents filed on Friday that several factors led to a change in position after it received another request for more names. Those concerns include evidence of copyright trolling, privacy issues, and weak evidence of actual infringement by its subscribers. The decision to fight back points to mounting ISP frustration in Canada with file sharing lawsuits that come after the Canadian government sent clear signals that such actions were unwelcome."

Wired reports that the 3-D printed AR-15 magazine from Defense Distributed we mentioned a few weeks back has been improved through design, and is now robust enough to last through firing (at least) several hundred rounds, rather than fewer than a hundred as in the previous iteration. CNET says the video demonstration on YouTube was first yanked, then restored, but as of now seems to have been yanked again.

New submitter terbeaux writes "The documentary TPB AFK follows the creators of The Pirate Bay — Peter Sunde, Fredrik Neij and Gottfrid Svartholm — through their technical and logistical trials of keeping TPB online as well as their court appearances in Sweden. After its premiere at Berlin International Film Festival, TechCrunch is reporting that TPB AFK is now available under a Creative Commons license for purchase, download on TPB, or viewing on YouTube. The budget for the film was raised on Kickstarter, where the makers achieved twice the funding goal in the allotted month-long funding campaign. The film already has 40,000 YouTube views, 19,000 torrent seeders, and over 2,000 paid downloads. There are public screenings happening world-wide."