INSTITUTE FOR HIGHWAY SAFETY SAYS CELL PHONE BANS DO NOT REDUCE ACCIDENTS

According to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) has issued a report saying cell phones are not causing accidents, but is "the full spectrum of things that distract." The IIHS (funded by a group of car insurers) compared crash data between states that had instituted cell phone bans and those that hadn't. According to its research, while the ban had reduced phone use, it hadn't helped reduce crash rates.

The National Transportation Safety Board has presented several studies linking cell phone use to an increased chance of crashing and their latest proposals would ban not only cell phone usage, but most hands-free systems found in major car makers' vehicles today.

SAMSUNG GETS TABLET BAN LIFTED IN AUSTRALIA

A ban that prevented Samsung’s local subsidiaries from marketing and selling the Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet in Australia was lifted on Friday, marking another victory for Samsung in its ongoing legal battles with Apple. An Australian High Court ruled that Samsung’s 10-inch tablet does not “slavishly rip off” Apple’s iPad, and sales of the slate will resume next week according to The Sydney Morning Herald, in time to catch the tail end of the holiday shopping rush. Read on for more.

The ruling comes following Apple’s appeal after a judge overturned a ban on Galaxy Tab 10.1 sales late last month. This new victory for comes on the heels of another win for Samsung; a U.S. district judge on Monday decided against banning sales of Samsung’s tablet in the United States, saying that such a ban would not prevent Apple from being irreparably harmed.

Apple and Samsung currently have more than 30 pending lawsuits filed against each other around the world.

SYRIA BANS iPHONE IN ATTEMPT TO CONTROL PROTESTS

Times are tough in Syria right now, but that isn't stopping the Assad government from making things a whole lot worse. The nation's customs department, a branch of the Syrian Finance Ministry, has officially banned the iPhone in an attempt to curb citizens from sharing news and videos of the massive protests and violent crackdowns throughout the nation. For those not keeping score, foreign press have been largely barred from the nation since March, which necessitated the use of citizen journalism as a means to report news from the streets. As Syrians come to grips with new economic sanctions against the country, the banning of the iPhone is, sadly, certain to escalate the unrest.

AMAZON REMOVING DUPLICATE eBOOKS

Under the idea of "private label rights," authors can do just that: sell their works to others who can rebrand and resell them. This week, Amazon cracked down on duplicate ebooks in its Kindle Store, pulling titles because they "diminish the experience for customers." One copycat who got the smack down called it a "kick in the pants" when his 22 titles got yanked. He did, however, admit he had the swift one coming. Aping authors can expect more book banning as Amazon continues to rid itself of "undifferentiated or barely differentiated versions of e-books."

US SUPREME COURT STRIKES DOWN CALIFORNIA VIOLENT VIDEO GAME LAW

On Monday, the United States Supreme Court rejected a law that would make it illegal for video game stores and publishers to sell or rent violent video games to minors. The law, which was adopted in 2005 and rejected in a 7-2 vote, was deemed unconstitutional and against freedom of speech rights. According to Reuters, a number of big players in the gaming industry opposed the law, including the Entertainment Software Association, whose ranks include Sony, Microsoft, EA, and Disney. “Our cases hold that minors are entitled to a significant degree of First Amendment protection,” Justice Antonin Scalia said. “Government has no free-floating power to restrict the ideas to which they may be exposed.”

FRANCE BANS MENTION OF FACEBOOK AND TWITTER ON TV TO HELP MARKET COMPETITION

The words "Facebook" and "Twitter" are now verboten on French TV, because France thought it'd be a good idea to follow its own laws. Last week, the country's Conseil Supérieur de l'Audiovisuel (CSA) ruled that TV networks and radio stations will no longer be able to explicitly mention Facebook or Twitter during on-air broadcasts, except when discussing a story in which either company is directly involved. The move comes in response to a 1992 governmental decree that prohibits media organizations from promoting brands during newscasts, for fear of diluting competition. Instead of inviting viewers to follow their programs or stories on Twitter, then, broadcast journalists will have to couch their promotions in slightly more generic terms -- e.g. "Follow us on your social network of choice." CSA spokeswoman Christine Kelly explains:

Why give preference to Facebook, which is worth billions of dollars, when there are many other social networks that are struggling for recognition? This would be a distortion of competition. If we allow Facebook and Twitter to be cited on air, it's opening a Pandora's Box - other social networks will complain to us saying, 'why not us?

Fueling competition via aggressive regulation may strike some free-marketeers as economically depraved, but it certainly won't kill social media-based commerce. Facebook and Twitter have already become more or less synonymous with "social networks" anyway, so it's hard to envision such a minor linguistic tweak having any major effect on online engagement.

MILITARY BANS PORTABLE MEDIA DEVICES

The U.S. military is telling its troops to stop using CDs, DVDs, thumb drives and every other form of removable media — or risk a court martial.

Maj. Gen. Richard Webber, commander of Air Force Network Operations, issued the Dec. 3 “Cyber Control Order” — obtained by Danger Room — which directs airmen to “immediately cease use of removable media on all systems, servers, and stand alone machines residing on SIPRNET,” the Defense Department’s secret network. Similar directives have gone out to the military’s other branches.

“Unauthorized data transfers routinely occur on classified networks using removable media and are a method the insider threat uses to exploit classified information. To mitigate the activity, all Air Force organizations must immediately suspend all SIPRNET data transfer activities on removable media,” the order adds.

It’s one of a number of moves the Defense Department is making to prevent further disclosures of secret information in the wake of the WikiLeaks document dumps. Pfc. Bradley Manning says he downloaded hundreds of thousands of files from SIPRNET to a CD marked “Lady Gaga” before giving the files to WikiLeaks.

To stop that from happening again, an August internal review suggested that the Pentagon disable all classified computers’ ability to write to removable media. About 60 percent of military machines are now connected to a Host Based Security System, which looks for anomalous behavior. And now there’s this disk-banning order. [Wired]

DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION LOOKING TO BLOCK CELL PHONE USAGE IN CARS

According to the U.S. transportation secretary, technology that automatically disables cellphones in cars could become mandatory. Ray LaHood has been publicizing his Faces of Distracted Driving campaign, which aims to make motorists aware of the dangers of using their phones while on the road. "There's a lot of technology out there now that can disable phones and we're looking at that," he told a show on MSNBC earlier this week. With around 5,000 fatal casualties each year due to distracted driving, LaHood has a point. However, is this draconian measure really the way to bring those figures down?

LaHood's proposals suggest introducing scrambling technology inside cars. There are a few problems with the idea — and not just that you won't be able to dial your honey from the road. First, the move would prove remarkably expensive for car manufacturers. Second, it means that every person inside the vehicle would be unable to use their phone. Third, what happens in the case of an emergency? And fourth, how will this affect the GPS features found on many smartphones?

One could argue that only by imposing stringent anti-drunk driving legislation on the world's population did it force people to think twice. There is, however, a difference. If LaHood's plans for cellphones in cars were transferred to the issue of drunk-driving, it would be akin to outlawing the transport of alcohol in a car. [Gizmodo]