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A software division of News Corp. is accused of trying to bump off rival pay-TV services by hacking their smartcodes and enabling the public to view the competitors' transmissions for free.

With a phone-hacking scandal still hanging over the head of News Corp. in Britain, Rupert Murdoch's international conglomerate is facing new hacking allegations in Australia.

According to the Australian Financial Review, e-mails and internal documents allegedly show that a "secret unit" inside News Corp. committed acts of corporate espionage against rival pay-TV services that may have resulted in the collapse of one company.

As part of the proof presented by the paper, editors there have posted to the Web more than 14,400 internal documents belonging to News Corp.

If the allegations prove true, News Corp. would face a second significant scandal. The company's reputation has already been tarnished when it was revealed last year that reporters at News Corp.-owned News of The World hacked into the voice mail of scores of public workers, celebrities, and Milly Dowler, a teenage girl who had been kidnapped and murdered.

The new allegations involves a unit within the News Corp.-owned NDS, which is accused of hiring hackers to crack smartcard codes issued by rivals of News Corp.'s pay-TV service. Smartcards are the equivalent to pass keys. They are inserted into set-top boxes and decrypt the broadcast signals.

The hackers allegedly distributed the codes over the Web so viewers could access their competitors' transmissions without paying.

One company is said to have been driven out of business as a result. News Corp. and NDS, which was acquired recently by Cisco Systems, have issued denials of wrongdoing. The newspaper reported that Australia's federal police have launched an investigation.

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News Corp., faces new hacking allegations, internal e-mails published

A software division of News Corp. is accused of trying to bump off rival pay-TV services by hacking their smartcodes and enabling the public to view the competitors' transmissions for free.

With a phone-hacking scandal still hanging over the head of News Corp. in Britain, Rupert Murdoch's international conglomerate is facing new hacking allegations in Australia.

According to the Australian Financial Review, e-mails and internal documents allegedly show that a "secret unit" inside News Corp. committed acts of corporate espionage against rival pay-TV services that may have resulted in the collapse of one company.

As part of the proof presented by the paper, editors there have posted to the Web more than 14,400 internal documents belonging to News Corp.

If the allegations prove true, News Corp. would face a second significant scandal. The company's reputation has already been tarnished when it was revealed last year that reporters at News Corp.-owned News of The World hacked into the voice mail of scores of public workers, celebrities, and Milly Dowler, a teenage girl who had been kidnapped and murdered.

The new allegations involves a unit within the News Corp.-owned NDS, which is accused of hiring hackers to crack smartcard codes issued by rivals of News Corp.'s pay-TV service. Smartcards are the equivalent to pass keys. They are inserted into set-top boxes and decrypt the broadcast signals.

The hackers allegedly distributed the codes over the Web so viewers could access their competitors' transmissions without paying.

One company is said to have been driven out of business as a result. News Corp. and NDS, which was acquired recently by Cisco Systems, have issued denials of wrongdoing. The newspaper reported that Australia's federal police have launched an investigation.

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News Corp. faces new hacking allegations involving pay TV

Movement aims to decentralize Internet

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

Editor's note: The staff at CNN.com has been intrigued by the journalism of Vice, an independent media company and Web site based in Brooklyn, New York. Motherboard.tv is Vice's site devoted to the overlap between culture and technology. The reports, which are being produced solely by Vice, reflect a very transparent approach to journalism, where viewers are taken along on every step of the reporting process. We believe this unique approach is worthy of sharing with our CNN.com readers.

Brooklyn, New York (Motherboard.tv) -- You're on the Internet. What does that mean?

Most likely, it means one of a handful of telecommunications providers is middle-manning your information from point A to point B. Fire off an e-mail or a tweet, broadcast a live stream or upload video to YouTube, and you're relying on vast networks of fiber optic cables deep underground and undersea, working with satellites high above, to move your data around the world, and to bring the world to your fingertips.

It's an infrastructure largely out of sight and mind. AT&T, Level 3, Hurricane Electric, Tata Indicom -- to most these are simply invisible magicians performing the act of getting one online and kicking. To many open-source advocates, however, these are a few of the big, dirty names responsible for what they see as the Web's rapid consolidation. The prospect of an irreparably centralized Internet, a physical Internet in the hands of a shrinking core of so-called Tier 1 transit networks, keeps Isaac Wilder up at night.

Wilder is the 21-year-old co-founder of the Free Network Foundation. Motherboard, VICE's science and technology offshoot, first caught up with Wilder at Zuccotti Park during the fledgling days of Occupy Wall Street. The Kansas City native seemed to be running on little sleep. He'd gone hoarse from chanting relentlessly over the first three days of a populist movement that would soon sweep the country and the world. But there was an undeniable urgency and excitement when Wilder told us about the efforts of the FNF, a non-profit, peer-to-peer communications initiative striving to liberate the global Internet from corporate and governmental interference.

It all sounded lofty and arcane and way, way over our heads. But Wilder seemed committed enough to his drop in the bucket of global revolution, which comes in the form of nine-foot-tall Freedom Towers that beam out free, secure Wi-Fi to occupied sites and underserviced communities, that we wanted to hear more.

See the rest of Free the Network at Motherboard.tv.

If the argument for mesh networking, a sort of pirate radio Internet scheme that allows people to talk to one another online through no middle man, is that a centralized 'Net lends itself to the sort of surveillance and censorship that, however futile, strokes the Internet kill switch of science fiction, is there a way to circumvent that system altogether? Is there a way to build a new network from the bottom up? To occupy a fresh Internet outside the existing confines of the Web? Or is that all just the stuff of ideological fantasy?

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Movement aims to decentralize the Internet

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) - Internet cafes that offer online slot machines have been popping up around the nation lately -- and now, two have opened in the Grand Rapids area.

A woman whose husband recently stopped at Lucky's Internet Cafe on Plainfield Avenue to play online slot machine games contacted Target 8. 'It sounds like a casino,' she said. 'Is it legal?'

That's the question state and local lawmakers are struggling with.

A Target 8 investigator played the online slot machines and took photos with a hidden camera.

"You can play casino-like games on the Internet," an employee explained.

People who run these businesses say they are not casinos and it's not illegal gambling. That's because people are paying for Internet time, not feeding a slot machine.

"If you win on the machine, we pay out what you win. You can surf the Net, as well," the employee said.

"You get the feeling that you're in a casino," said George Washington, who said he's been enjoying the online slot machines at Stars on 28th Street. "We just found out two weeks ago and we did pretty good, so we've been visiting almost every day 'cause it's so close."

Jim Haning, the owner of Lucky's and Stars Internet Cafe in the Grand Central Plaza on 28th Street, told Target 8 in a phone conversation that the games are like a sweepstakes that is played for prizes -- like those you'd find at a fast food restaurant -- and they're legal.

The Michigan Gaming Control Board on its website says the cafes are operating under a false premise and that they are not exempt from gambling laws.

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Internet cafes gamble with Mich. law

The internet penetration rate in Nepal has nearly doubled to 15.75 per cent in the last one year.

The growth is supported mainly by the increased number of subscribers of the general packet radio service (GPRS) mobile internet and ADSL data service.

The number of data subscribers has increased to 4.19 million as of mid-February this year, with a majority of them using mobile internet, according to the Nepal Telecommunications Authority. The number was at 2.26 million until mid-Feb last year with the penetration rate at 7.93 per cent.

There has been a heavy increment in the number of people subscribing to GPRS, ADSL, wireless modem and optical fibre broadband internet. The number of users of GPRS service being provided by Nepal Telecom (NT) and Ncell has increased by 95.63 per cent to 3.86 million as of mid-February this year, against 1.97 million as of mid-February last year.

NTs ADSL subscriber increased to 78,740 - up from last years 43,547. The number of wireless modem and optical fibre data users grew 143.35 per cent to 78,740, as per the NTA figure. However, the number of users of dial-up internet declined by 1.54 per cent, cable internet by 47.36 per cent and CDMA 1X or EVDO by 2.13 per cent in the last one year.

Many people have switched to wireless high speed data service from slow dial-up service, said NTA Deputy Managing Director Arjun Ghimire, adding that the growth in the number of subscribers was a result of easy mobile internet facility and reduction in the price of high-speed internet services.

The number of users surfing internet on their handsets has also gone up significantly in the last few years. NTA statistics show of the 13.84 million GSM mobile users, 28 per cent have subscribed to mobile internet. When there were 5.68 million mobile users in December 2009, 9.13 per cent of them used GRPS data service.

Meanwhile, internet service providers reluctance to submit the actual number of their users on a monthly basis to the regulatory body has affected in determining the exact data penetration rate of the country. There are around 48 ISPs permitted by the NTA to operate email and internet service. But hardly a dozen have been providing regular information to the authority, says an NTA official.

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Internet penetration doubles in Nepal