Investigation finds group hijacking web servers to distribute child porn

A criminal group has been discovered to be hijacking web servers in order to distribute child pornography, according to an investigation conducted by the Italian Postal and Communications Police and Europol, the European Police Office.

Europol said on Friday that its joint investigation has, since early 2009, resulted in the cleaning of more than 1,000 web servers worldwide in conjunction with the servers' owner. "The complex investigation is still ongoing, to identify the producers and connected criminals," Europol said.

Kindle now the bestselling product in Amazon's history

Amazon.com announced on Dec 17 that the third-generation Kindle is now the bestselling product in Amazon's history, eclipsing "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Book 7)." The company also announced that on its peak day, Nov. 29, customers ordered more than 13.7 million items worldwide across all product categories, which is a record-breaking 158 items per second.

Here are the Amazon Worldwide 2010 Holiday Facts:

• On Christmas Day, more people turned on new Kindles for the first time, downloaded more Kindle Buy Once, Read Everywhere apps, and purchased more Kindle books than on any other day in history.
• On the peak day this season, Amazon's worldwide fulfillment network shipped over 9 million units across all product categories.
• Amazon shipped to 178 countries.
• One of Amazon's most remote shipments contained the "Tinker Bell and the Great Fairy Rescue," "Toy Story" DVDs, "Chicken Soup for the Dog Lover's Soul," NHL 11, Halo Reach and Call of Duty: Black Ops and was delivered to the hamlet of Grise Fiord, north of the Arctic Circle in Canada.
• Amazon shipped over 350,000 units to APO/FPO addresses.

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China: 11.000 porn sites shut down in 2010

The Chinese government on Wednesday said it had closed down over 60,000 pornographic websites in the first 11 months of the year, state-run Xinhua news agency reported.

During a press conference, China's director of the Information Office of the State Council Wang Chen said the country had eliminated around 350 million pornographic material, as well as indecent Internet content, such as texts, images and videos.

Since December 2009, China launched a nationwide campaign to increase Internet security and remove its pornographic and vulgar content. The campaign has led to the investigation of 2,197 criminal cases and the punishment of 4,965 criminals. As a result, some 58 offenders have been sentenced to prison terms of over five years.