About 50% of all junk mail on the net emerges from just 20 internet service providers (ISPs), a study has found.

The survey of more than 42,000 ISPs tried to map the net’s “bad neighbourhoods” to help pinpoint sources of malicious mail.

The survey by Dutch researchers found that, in many cases, ISPs specialise in particular threats such as spam and phishing.

Methods to thwart attacks and predict targets also emerged from the study.

» via BBC

Starting next week, most U.S. Internet users will be subject to a new copyright enforcement system that could slow the Internet to a crawl and force violators to take educational courses.

A source with direct knowledge of the Copyright Alert System (CAS), who asked not to be named, has told the Daily Dot that the five participating Internet service providers (ISPs) will start the controversial program Monday.

The ISPs—industry giants AT&T, Cablevision, Comcast, Time Warner, and Verizon—will launch their versions of the CAS on different days throughout the week. Comcast is expected to be the first, on Monday.

» via Daily Dot

In a potential test case for Europe, the French government on Monday ordered a big Internet service provider to stop blocking online advertisements, saying the company had no right to edit the contents of the Web for users.

The dispute has turned into a gauge of how France, and perhaps the rest of Europe, will mediate a struggle between telecommunications providers against Internet companies like Google, which generate billions of dollars in revenue from traffic that travels freely on their networks.

European telecommunications companies want a share of that money, saying they need it to finance investments in faster broadband networks — and, as the latest incident shows, they are willing to flex their muscles to get it.

» via The New York Times (Subscription may be required for some content)

Xavier Niel, the French technology entrepreneur, has made a career of disrupting the status quo.

Now, he has dared to take on Google and other online advertisers in a battle that puts the Web companies under pressure to use the wealth generated by the ads to help pay for the network pipelines that deliver the content.

Mr. Niel’s telecommunications company, Free, which has an estimated 5.2 million Internet-access users in France, began last week to enable its customers to block Web advertising. The company is updating users’ software with an ad-blocking feature as the default setting.

That move has raised alarm among companies that, like Google, have based their entire business models on providing free content to consumers by festooning Web pages with paid advertisements. Although Google so far has kept largely silent about Free’s challenge, the reaction from the small Web operators who live and die by online ads has been vociferous.

» via The New York Times (Subscription may be required for some content)

A French Internet service provider (ISP) with more than 5 million subscribers has taken the unusual step of blocking most web advertising. ISP Free is now blocking most advertisements to subscribers (Français) through an opt-out system; if Free subscribers wish to see web advertising, they will be required to change their router’s settings. Free, one of the country’s most popular ISPs, gained popularity by offering customers an integrated DSL modem/router/digital video recorder in a single set-top box. French website Numerama reports there is no whitelist (Français) for advertisers to bypass the ad blocker.

» via Fast Company

The much debated “six strikes” anti-piracy scheme was supposed to kick off in the United States today, but this is not going to happen. The Center for Copyright Information has announced that the ISPs are not ready to send warnings just yet, citing Hurricane Sandy as one of the reasons for the delay. The scheme is now expected to take off early next year if everything goes according to the updated schedule.

» via TorrentFreak

Mediacom, one of the larger Internet providers in the United States, has not joined the controversial six-strikes anti-piracy scheme set to start later this year. But that doesn’t mean Mediacom customers can pirate without consequences, on the contrary. The Internet provider rigorously terminates the Internet access of subscribers who receive two DMCA notifications and after a third notice customers are permanently disconnected and banned for life.

» via TorrentFreak

Even as France looks set to scrap its three-strikes antipiracy scheme known as HADOPI, US Internet providers are inching forward with their milder “six strikes” program. But the head of that effort says the system is about education, and it is coming by the end of the year.

» via ars technica