Summary: “National Cyber Security Awareness Month” is being exploited by a programme that receives the support of Howard Schmidt from Microsoft (now Cyber Security Czar); In it, children aged 11-14 would be taught cyber ‘security’ rather than insecure parts of the systems simply removed
“The estimated cost of unsolicited emails to businesses in 2007 was $100 billion,” wrote lnxwalt earlier today, pointing to this page. The overall cost of Windows botnets that dispatch spam and cause other harm may be measurable on the scale of trillions.
Microsoft is currently alerting customers that ASP.NET is a security problem. We covered this in earlier stages of the problem [1, 2]. It affects a lot of Windows-powered Web sites and last night there was a discussion in IRC about the serious Twitter flaw and whether it affects just Internet Explorer, Windows, and Office users. One newly-published article says:
[T]he worms of yore were so devastating because they could exploit a global monoculture: Microsoft Internet Explorer or Microsoft Word running on Microsoft Windows just about everywhere. This made it far simpler to exploit weaknesses in distant PCs, because the actual architecture was known with a high degree of probability.
With the mouseover mess, we were saved by the wonderfully diverse ecosystem of Twitter clients operating through the Twitter API. This meant that assumptions that were correct for code running on the twitter.com site were not valid elsewhere.
This hammers home once more the importance of avoiding monocultures, and encouraging rich and diverse ecosystems (multicultures?) One of the easiest ways of doing that is to adopt free software alternatives to all the Microsoft warhorses. The open source world being what it is, it is far more varied, not least in terms of versions and applications (critics might even call it fragmented). That makes mass attacks hard, and therefore unlikely, since ne-er-do-wells don’t even bother trying when they can just code for Windows.
Open source is certainly not immune to attacks – for example, I fell victim to the mouseover exploit despite using a completely free software stack (thanks, Twitter.com) – but it reduces the risk overall. That means if you are not using it for business, you are increasing that risk – which would be a pretty irresponsible thing to do, no?
On the client side, having Windows cannot help.
Microsoft’s former employee Howard Schmidt of now the Cyber Security Czar in the United State (after a recent appointment which we mentioned in [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]) and rather than calling out Windows and making platform recommendations, he does the usual thing by endorsing/giving people unnecessary ‘education’ about Windows et al. He can’t take Windows off schools’ agenda where Gates (his former boss) is increasingly taking control, can he? Some PR puppets sent us the following E-mails a short while ago, helping to show how Schmidt and his subordinates try to tackle this problem. Below we put the message, without appending an accompanying press release that we omit.
A free program that brings top cyber security experts into schools to teach kids how to avoid online dangers has received the support of White House Cyber Security Coordinator Howard Schmidt.
The (ISC)2 Safe and Secure Online Program, administered by the world’s largest body of information security professionals, brings experts into schools to teach children ages 11-14 how to protect themselves in a cyber-connected world. Issues addressed include cyber bullying, social networking, online predators, identity theft, online reputation, and more.
Launched in the U.S. in the fall of last year, the program has reached more than 30,000 kids. Just in time for National Cyber Security Awareness Month, the U.S. program now has more than 1,000 cyber expert volunteers signed on to conduct presentations this fall.
Please see full details below. If you would like to know if any schools presentations are taking place near you, or if you would like additional information on the program, please contact me. Thank you.
Juliette Mutzke
Maples Communications, Inc.
Schools should not be used to indoctrinate children with presentations on how to use Microsoft software and other products securely (it is often not possible). It is neither effective nor a decent use of school time/budget. █
“[W]hen nobody is using Windows, there will be no botnets”
Over the course of the last two years, networking vendor Cisco has been upgrading and expanding its small business networking offerings. That effort continues this week with the launch of a new lineup of managed switches and updated VoIP phones specifically gears for small business networking environments.
Ubuntu can’t have all the fun only for itself”, open source distributors are saying as they rush to copy its Bug No. 1 titled “Microsoft has a majority market share”.
Debian, Ubuntu’s parent distribution, has set up Debian Bug No. 1 which also reads “Microsoft has a majority market share”. Mandriva, another competing distribution has set up Mandriva Bug No. 1: “Microsoft has a majority market share and Ubuntu has a majority market share on the Linux desktop”. Fedora, Gentoo, Archlinux, Slackware and other distributions are expected to follow suit.
At least if you are a Red Hat shop you can be secure in the knowledge that you are running the No. 1 open source server OS — the IBM of Linux, if you like — from a stable independent company. Heck, Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is so respectable that the mighty Oracle uses it as the basis for its own Linux offering.
Video effects in PiTiVi have edged one-step closer to release with the merging of developer Thibault Saunier’s Google Summer of Code effects work to PiTiVi’s ‘master’ branch.
With the PiTiVi team keen to ensure solid ‘quality’ releases there will need to be some thorough testing and bug fixing before you find a stable release containing this landing in your laps.
The PiTiVi developers have quietly released a 0.13.5 version of their GStreamer based open source video editor. The changes were made to address “some of the bigger issues before the Ubuntu Maverick development freeze”. This includes fixes for bugs with still PNG or JPEG images, various performance improvements, support for periodic backup of current projects, easier cross fading, better icons and better iconic representations of link and unlink. A new “add keyframe” button and shortcut has also been added and the “missing plug-ins” installer is now fixed in this release.
Clementine is not just another music player for Linux, Clementine is the fork of mighty Amarok 1.4 which used to be my favorite music player once. Clementine is already one of those great triumphs of open source software and underlines the fact that an open source software never really dies.
Usually the word “wiki” is associated with an online repository of information that can be edited by anyone. That’s not exactly the driving force behind Zim Desktop Wiki, though — instead, it’s a personal note-taking app that arranges your notes in a sort of personal wiki. Of course, if you do want to share notes with others, like coworkers, the app has an easy-to-use Web server utility as well.
As many of you are now aware Cuba has come out with its own operating system based on a Linux variant called Gentoo. This Gentoo is more popular among the more technically skilled users. The operating system has been in development since 2007 and has recently been released to the public.
First I would like to make the point that this is the new operating system for home PCs in Cuba, proof that the right wing claims of PC ownership in Cuba is illegal are untrue. It’s been a long standing lie the bourgeois propagandists have been spouting about Cuba. If the right wing was so sure those Cuban citizens were being deprived of PCs then they would stop blocking shipments of donated PCs to Cuba like they did in July of this year in Texas.
Nginx (pronounced “engine x”) is a free, open-source, high-performance HTTP server. Nginx is known for its stability, rich feature set, simple configuration, and low resource consumption. This tutorial shows how you can compile and install Nginx on CentOS 5.5 server with SSL, PCRE, GeoIP, Zlib, Gzip and DAV support.
Procedure bellow fixes one hidden issue in recently developed xen-4.0.1_21326_01-1.1.src.rpm. It removes error “xen be core: xen be core: can’t open gnttab device” in corresponding /var/log/xen log file during attempt to run virt-install for PV Guest in VNC mode or attempt to run python installation profile referencing VFB for domains of same kind.
I picked up a PC Power Pad Pro at a garage sale, for something like US$0.50. A steal, for 2% of its original retail, right? Except I couldn’t get it to work with my sound card.
Quite a number of you pointed me to a post on Phoronix about how Gallium3D developers have managed to get Microsoft’s DirectX 10/11 onto Linux. Surely game support must follow …
As Microsoft slowly breaks old compatibility, and Wine continues to improve Windows compatibility. it seems only a matter of time before some Windows programs run better in Wine than in Windows.
[...]
So I boot into Ubuntu 10.04, download the installer from www.bigbrainz.com, right click on the .exe file and choose to run it with Wine on the right click menu. The installer launches, I accept all the defaults, start the game, and the game plays perfectly.
While most of the proprietary games get all the attention on Windows, on Linux it’s the other way around. Of course, this is because we’re stuck with only few choices for mainly any type of game, from arcade to shooters or strategies. But there are good, if not great, alternatives in Linux.
Today I will overview two Linux games which are a very good alternative to the famous Civilization series from Windows, Freeciv and FreeCol. They are both open-source, free, and usually come included with every distribution.
KDE SC 4.4 is out in the wild for some time now. It comes with a new Kdm theme called Ethais (Author=Roman Shtylman) and a new Ksplash Screen (Authors = Nuno Pinheiro, Riccardo Iaconelli and Marco Martin).
Epidermis changes the appearance of your GNOME desktop in all its aspects in one click. Epidermis ‘skins’ change the appearance of your desktop wallpaper, Metacity windows border theme, your GTK+ controls theme, your icon theme, your mouse cursor theme, your GRUB bootsplash screen and your GDM login screen theme. Each of these customizations are downloaded in ‘pigments’ which are available from an Epidermis ‘repository’.
We wrote last week about Diaspora, the open source social network designed to offer privacy to users who are fed up with Facebook’s regular policy changes and the threat of privacy violation. Last week, the site and its code went live for developers, but for those out there ready to dive into the social networking platform should take note: A few passage from the Contributor Agreement have members of the open source community concerned.
ComputerWorld is the latest to run a scary story about OAuth 2.0 and how insecure it is. Unfortunately, instead of doing their homework and paying attention to my post, they borrowed a bunch of my quotes (almost half the article), added some original nonsense, sprinkled a few errors, and gave it a sensational headline: “OAuth 2.0 security used by Facebook, others called weak”.
GeeXboX is a live distribution that can quickly turn a PC into a straight-forward media playback solution. It can be installed to a hard disk, but it works quite well when booted from a CDROM or other removable media. I’m going to examine the existing, stable 1.x series and also take a look at what the forthcoming (but already usable) 2.x series has lined up.
For example, take Mandriva/Mageia. Part of the Mandriva community, including ex-employees of the company, is forking Mandriva and creating Mageia, a new Linux distribution.
Their website doesn’t say exactly why they are forking but says they no longer trust the company’s motivations. The move seems to be prompted by layoffs:
Most employees working on the distribution were laid off when Edge-IT was liquidated. We do not trust the plans of Mandriva SA anymore and we don’t think the company (or any company) is a safe host for such a project.
Certainly I can see how people who have been laid off would no longer trust the company.
It does look like Mandriva is restructuring to give more power to their community. However, I doubt they will reverse their decision to move the desktop development to Brazil. In addition to having lots of great free software developers in Brazil, I bet development costs are much cheaper in Brazil.
After major layoffs at Paris-based Mandriva, which is refocusing on the server edition and emerging-nation market, former employees have launched a new distribution called Mageia. The Mandriva Linux fork is being developed by a new community-based Mageia project, and will maintain both KDE and GNOME versions.
The Mageia fork announcement arrives after Mandriva’s Edge-IT development subsidiary was liquidated, and most of the developers working on Mandriva Linux were laid off, says the new Mageia.org. This was preceded by numerous resignations over the company’s strategy and future, says an OSNews story yesterday on Mageia. Mandriva has continued to struggle despite a fresh infusion of investments in June, says the story.
Shares of Bed Bath & Beyond Inc. and Red Hat Inc. each climbed about 5% late Wednesday after the retailer and the software provider posted quarterly results that surpassed Wall Street’s projections.
In a few days, hardware designers will gather in Taiwan for the second annual Ubuntu Hardware Summit, hosted by Canonical. Here’s a look at some of the highlights of the conference, and what they suggest about Canonical’s longterm plans for the world’s most popular Linux distribution.
Ubuntu developer Canonical is experimenting with new hardware sensors as it looks at computing beyond the keyboard and mouse.
All computer users are used to controlling their desktop with a mouse and keyboard. But how about controlling your PC without using your hands at all and just using your body?
It’s something that Canonical, the maker of Ubuntu Linux, is starting to work on.
Enea announced the release of a Linux configuration and build environment integrated with NetLogic Microsystems’ Linux software development kit (SDK). Billed as “an intuitive and extensible Linux jump start kit,” and free to customers using NetLogic’s MIPS-based XLP, XLR, and XLS processors, Enea’s offering is said to incorporate graphical configuration, build, and debug tools.
Android market share has been growing rapidly. With almost two dozen manufacturers developing Android devices, we’ve seen an explosion of different models – each with its own market differentiators and unique characteristics. Users now have choices, but these choices come at a cost. This proliferation of devices has led to what some developers call fragmentation and others call compatibility issues.
These are happy children at Sekoly Lova Soa (Lova Soa School) in Ambatoharanana, Madagascar. They’re using use the Speak activity thanks to OLPCorps Ampitso: American college students Mary Yanik (University of Maryland), Kate Doyle (George Washington University), Michael Buckwald (GWU), and Sean Robinson (GWU).
Dell, responding to complaints from users and open source advocates, has released the modified Android code used on its Streak tablet PC.
When Dell first released the Streak it used a customised version of Google’s Android operating system. But, because Android contains numerous open source-licensed components, Dell came in for a lot of criticism for not releasing the changes it had made.
A change to Apache Software Foundation’s SOLR, a sub-project of Apache Lucene, which added “full parameter substitution for function queries” became the millionth commit made to the Apache Software Foundation’s repository.
So, you’re not content with just using the social web; you want to be part of building it, too.
As a budding or beginning web app developer, you’ve got a difficult but rewarding path ahead of you. You have to master (or at least attempt to master) the intricacies of OOP and scripting languages, learn to build web apps the hard way (practice, practice, practice), and network your way into a few job opportunities. You must also decide whether you’d like to work as a solo/consultant/freelancer, a startup employee or founder, or a rank-and-file developer at an established company.
[...]
By far the most oft-repeated words of advice we heard from masters of the web dev trade were these: Put in some time on open-source projects. The hands-on experience will challenge you, educate you and help you build your body of work.
Aside from code for code’s sake, open source projects are a good way to meet other devs and do some networking. You’ll have the opportunity to work with people who are much more skilled and experienced than you are yet; take full advantage of this situation and be a sponge.
SourceForge and GitHub and good places to start looking for open source projects that appeal to you; also, as you follow various blogs around the web and see what projects might need a few extra hands. Sites like Code for America and organizations such as the Mozilla Foundation are always looking for good developers with free time.
Finally, when working on open source apps, not only will you get great practice and be able to learn from some really excellent engineers; you’ll also be giving back to the community. As some would say, creating and sharing free and open-source software is one of the best things you can do to help your neighbors as a developer.
Engineers and product managers from device and computer manufacturers and designers will meet in Taipei, Taiwan for a free day-long session hosted by Canonical Ltd. on Sept 24, 2010.
If you are looking for nice application that displays the lyrics as the song plays and if you love to sing along then there is a really nice application that can turn your system into a karaoke machine.
OSD lyrics displays lyrics of any song that you play through your music player. It automatically downloads the required lyrics from different sources. Just turn it on and you are ready to go.
Today, I’m happy to announce that this agency will be rebuilding FCC.gov using Drupal. This decision is a significant step towards modernizing our own underlying online infrastructure — a key stage in redesigning and rebuilding FCC.gov.
Got a few pounds to lose? Cancel the gym membership. An increasing body of research reveals that exercise does next to nothing for you when it comes to losing weight. A result for couch potatoes, yes, but also one that could have serious implications for the government’s long-term health strategy
StatusNet Inc. today released premium features for its StatusNet Cloud service. The 30,000 networks currently running on the company’s software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform may upgrade today to get additional features and further control.
The Inverse Team [External] is pleased to announce the immediate availability of SOGo 1.3.2. This is a minor release of SOGo which focuses on small new features and improved stability over previous versions.
The administration of the region of Basilicata in southern Italy, on behalf of all the Italian Regions, will republish as open source ‘Piattaforma Experience’ (Experience Platform), software to help monitor hydraulic and geohydrological risks. The software will most likely be published using the European Union’s open source licence (European Union Public Licence, EUPL).
Open Source has the full support of one member of the Government’s IT management, but he has asked for more business cases to show how it can save the Coalition cash.
Bill McCluggage, deputy chief information officer (CIO) for the Government, used his keynote at today’s 360 IT event at Earls Court to outline future plans for Government IT, and one of his first ports of call was open source.
“We do operate in an environment where open source is used but it is only a minority,” he claimed, admitting our European counterparts were more advanced when it comes to adoption.
“Our view there is… we can go heavily into specifying open standards… opening the way for open source to get in.”
This article introduces and explores connections between rural traditions and contemporary projects of voluntary cooperation within emergent online network practices. The key examples are mainly from Finland, the Baltic Sea region, and USA. Reflections are made on the emergence of such connections during a trans-disciplinary seminar organised by the author. The main body of the essay mixes social and network culture history, including rural village community support, known as “talkoot” in the Finnish language, its establishment within cooperative development during the 20th century, and the information communications and technology society of contemporary Finland. Discussions of collaborative web platforms such as wikis, the BitTorrent protocol, and “crowd-sourcing” open up questions considering their relation to older cultural traditions. The paper concludes with contemporary examples of where traditions of rural cooperation have conceptually assisted several Finnish entrepreneurial and activist projects. Throughout the paper “the swarm” is identified as a concept worth exploring further to illustrate where the expansive potential of network culture meets concentrated local action.
The second major contextual situation that has influenced our company is the shift of manufacturing out of the US. With this shift, the US market is starting to lack the influence of American middle class spending habits. The general consuming structures of Fordism will apply less and less to the US market and therefore the R&D, design, and arts industries will also either move their nexuses to China or drastically change shape. This is because what the “creative class” is making product for is the language of the US consumer, and the current product language will be less and less profitable as the buying power of the people who speak the language decreases as the world’s consumer market shifts.
We’ll also add some simple functionality to show payments from local councils that’s being published in the local council spending data. The information’s already in the database (and is actually shown on the OpenlyLocal page for the charity); I just haven’t got around to displaying it on OpenCharities yet. Expect that to appear in the next day or so.
Mark Zuckerberg, the 26-year-old founder and chief executive of Facebook Inc., plans to announce a donation of up to $100 million to the Newark schools this week, in a bold bid to improve one of the country’s worst performing public school systems.
This first video from Xiph.Org presents the technical foundations of modern digital media via a half-hour firehose of information. One community member called it “a Uni lecture I never got but really wanted.”
The program offers a brief history of digital media, a quick summary of the sampling theorem, and myriad details of low level audio and video characterization and formatting. It’s intended for budding geeks looking to get into video coding, as well as the technically curious who want to know more about the media they wrangle for work or play.
The companies that have created the most new value in the last decade, are Internet companies like Facebook, Google, etc. They’ve created hundreds of billions in value. Good for them, but bad for us.
Why? IF these companies represent the most valuable new industry of the early 21st Century, where are the jobs that will provide prosperity for millions today, and potentially tens of millions in the future? They don’t exist. These companies create few real jobs.
China’s one-child policy, probably the most audacious exercise in social engineering the world has ever seen, could be up for review, as Beijing policymakers worry about the effects of a population ageing fast, with insufficient numbers of youngsters to support them.
There is speculation that a gradual rollback of the policy – first imposed 31 years ago – will start next year with pilot schemes in the five provinces of Heilongjiang, Jilin, Liaoning, Zhejiang and Jiangsu.
Most popular accounts of evolution stress the innate selfishness of the process. Species change because individuals are driven by a blind urge to thrive at the expense of others, it is claimed. Frans de Waal begs to differ.
Amnesty International is condemning Iraq for holding an estimated 30,000 prisoners without trial, including 10,000 prisoners who were recently transferred from US custody.
As one who is opposed to centralization, I am wary of attempts to turn a grassroots movement against big government like the Tea Party into an adjunct of the Republican Party. I find it even more worrisome when I see those who willingly participated in the most egregious excesses of the most recent Republican Congress push their way into leadership roles of this movement without batting an eye — or changing their policies!
A British company that uses a genetically modified compost-heap bug to produce biofuel from rubbish has signed a $500m (£319m) contract with a US firm.
TMO Renewables developed a strain of “turbo-charged” bacteria that can turn tea bags, cardboard, wood and other household waste into fuel for cars and trucks. The Guildford-based company signed a 20-year, $25m-a-year deal with US firm Fiberight.
Environmental campaigners suspended themselves from the anchor of an oil drilling ship today in an attempt to stop it drilling a well in the North Sea.
Greenpeace activists used boats to reach the 228m-long Stena Carron drill ship, anchored a mile off Shetland, and then climbed up the giant rungs of the chain.
Victor Rask, 38, and Anais Schneider, 29, then settled into a tent suspended by ropes from one of the metre-long rungs with supplies for a few days.
Greenpeace said the ship, operated by US energy giant Chevron, was about to sail for a site in the Lagavulin oil field before drilling an exploratory well in 500 metres of water.
Huong’s dank shop provides some brief respite from the waves of horn-blaring luxury SUVs bullying pedestrians on the pavements of Hanoi. But more crucially, it offers a final resting place, of sorts, for some of Vietnam’s wild elephants.
In the days before they were gung ho about the need for spending cuts, the Liberal Democrats used to be equally gung ho about the need for Britain to join the single currency. Indeed, Danny Alexander, the Treasury minister wielding the spending axe, was the spin doctor for Britain in Europe, the pressure group dedicated to seeing that the pound was scrapped.
To be fair, Alexander was not alone. All the other Lib Dem big guns – Nick Clegg, Chris Huhne, Vince Cable – were as insistent then that failure to join monetary union would be an error of historic proportions, as they are insistent now that there is no alternative to austerity.
The International Monetary Fund is to dispatch permanent officials to Athens, amid mounting speculation that the emergency aid programme currently propping up debt-stricken Greece will have to be prolonged.
Although widely praised for implementing the toughest austerity measures in post-war history, the Greek government also faces growing criticism over the pace of reforms agreed in return for a €110bn (£90bn) EU and IMF-sponsored rescue package in May.
FAO director-general Jacques Diouf attends a press conference in Rome, Tuesday, Sept. 14, 2010. The estimated number of chronically hungry people in the world dipped considerably below the 1 billion mark, thanks in part to a drop in food prices from the spikes that sparked rioting just a few years ago, U.N. agencies said Tuesday. They cautioned that the estimate, the first drop in 15 years, is no cause for celebration since there are still an estimated 925 million undernourished people on the planet. A report by the Rome-based Food and Agriculture Organization estimated that there are 98 million fewer than in 2009, when the estimate just topped the 1 billion figure.
The United States will experience a slow, jobless recovery from its deepest and longest downturn since the 1930s but will avoid a double-dip recession, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development said today.
In its annual health check of the world’s biggest economy, the Paris-based OECD said that it expected activity to expand by 2.6% in both 2010 and 2011 without having a marked impact on the country’s near double-digit jobless rate.
When Jason Grodensky bought his modest Fort Lauderdale home in December, he paid cash. But seven months later, he was surprised to learn that Bank of America had foreclosed on the house, even though Grodensky did not have a mortgage.
Grodensky knew nothing about the foreclosure until July, when he learned that the title to his home had been transferred to a government-backed lender. “I feel like I’m hanging in the wind and I’m scared to death,” said Grodensky. “How did some attorney put through a foreclosure illegally?”
Iraqi authorities should stop blocking peaceful demonstrations and arresting and intimidating organizers, Human Rights Watch said today. Iraqi security forces should also respect the right of free assembly and use only the minimum necessary force when violence occurs at a protest.
The European Parliament has reneged on its previous position to protect users rights against 3-strikes/graduated response for copyright enforcement with a vote endorsing the Gallo report.
To make matters worse, the French media has exposed how the European Parliament was informed by rights-holder lobbying which included the name of at least one dead person.
Stallman called digital rights management (DRM) technologies “malware” that could monitor usage and said they were “explicitly designed to do things to the detriment of users”.
Using software-as-a-service (SaaS) was the same as using non-free software, he said, because users did not have access to the source code or executable file.
“SaaS means that instead of doing your computing in your own computer, you do it by sending the relevant data to someone else’s computer,” he said.
Open sauce guru Richard Stallman has called for everyone to get off file sharing’s case and has come up with some weirdie beardie advice as to how the entertainment industry can make money without charging anyone.
According to IT News, Stallman claimed that artists and musicians were “not entitled to” compensation from listeners, but governments could introduce a tax to support their work.
Stallman seems to think that Governments have piles of dosh to give away to rock stars. Arts are usually the first to get the chop in government restructuring as “more important things” such as education, health and science usually get the dough.
Richard Stallman, an American freedom activist who founded the Free Software Foundation and pioneered the concept of copyleft has thrashed anti piracy outfits and said it’s time to give file sharers a break and put the problem to bed.
Stallman, who has long been involved with openness and is the main author of the most widely, used software license (GNU General Public License), hit out at anti piracy outfits and called for an end to the file sharing war. He even came up with some advice on how he thinks the problem could be solved for all involved.
Today a federal court in Madrid dismissed charges of copyright infringement against YouTube. This decision is a clear victory for the Internet and the rules that govern it. Spanish broadcaster Telecinco had claimed that YouTube should be liable when users upload copyright-infringing material.
The court rejected Telecinco’s claim, noting that YouTube offers content owners tools to remove copyright infringing content and this means that it is the responsibility of the copyright owner – not YouTube – to identify and tell YouTube when infringing content is on its website. This decision reaffirms European law which recognizes that content owners (not service providers like YouTube) are in the best position to know whether a specific work is authorised to be on an Internet hosting service and states that websites like YouTube have a responsibility to take down unauthorised material only when they are notified by the owner.
A friend of mine, Councillor Jason Kitcat, who is also involved in ORG, is being disciplined for posting clips of Brighton & Hove Council meetings to Youtube.
The clips are said to be a “political” use of “Council resources”.
Their documents say Jason attempted to “hold the administration politically to account” by trying “to highlight what the he believed were the administration’s deficiencies”, while using “the council’s intellectual property” and website. Rather than concluding he was doing his job, they say Jason should face being suspended from his post.
[...]
Unfortunately, in this case Brighton & Hove are simply asserting that the copyright ‘belongs’ to them and therefore falls under their right to regulate Councillor’s use of council property: and in doing so are attempting to create a dangerous precedent.
If Jason is held to have abused council “property”, Councillors will be intimidated from using information to tell residents what is going on. The same information, in words, is reported in minutes and placed in “political” leaflets. Will Brighton Councillors stop such reporting, as the same copyright subsists in Council minutes?
Brighton is full of tech-savvy voters, and many people who are strong believers in human rights and dignity. Will they stand up for freedom of speech and protest against their Council’s attempt to place limits on the rights of their elected representatives? I certainly hope so.
Ah, the recording industry. We’ve already discussed how ridiculously complex it is for a music startup to obtain the licenses it needs. Combine that with the ridiculously high rates demanded by the record labels and the fact that they demand licensing for things that shouldn’t need additional licenses, and you understand why it’s so difficult for music startups to survive, and why the market is so fragmented.
You hear it all the time. Spotify isn’t available in the US. Pandora isn’t available outside the US. And so on. Name the startup and there are serious restrictions on it. Things in Canada are pretty bad, where they basically don’t have any of these music services, and it’s because the Canadian recording industry is apparently demanding absolutely, positively insane fees — such as 45% of gross revenue. Yes, gross revenues. If you know anything about the finances of these kinds of businesses, that’s laughable. As Pandora’s Tim Westergren notes, Canadian radio stations pay approximately 2.1% of gross revenue to the recording industry.
The ZeroPaid article ACTA Still Hasn’t Been Seen by Any UK MPs makes the excellent point that ACTA negotiations are ongoing, continuing on their fast track with the intent of being concluded by the end of October prior to the American US election.
[...]
The main European ACTA site, La Quadrature du Net, along with the openACTA: Stop ACTA Now site from Mexico have been working tirelessly to keep citizens informed. We have been fortunate that in spite of powerful disincentives, there has been a steady stream of leaks from within the ACTA negotiations, so the secret treaty is not as secret as they would have liked.
We understand the Greens/EFA Group’s interest in the transparency very well.
The Government of Japan also recognizes the importance of the transparency in ACTA negotiations and decided to arrange a lunch meeting with the public on September 24 as you know.
However, it is with regret that we cannot arrange the meeting during the week of September 27 due to purely practical organizational reasons.
We regret that we could not inform you earlier of lunch meeting as you pointed out. As we just settled the program of ACTA negotiations in Tokyo this week with the negotiating parties, we cannot inform our lunch meeting to public beforehand. Please kindly understand our situation.
ACTA negotiating parties share the intention to promote transparency and we are to discuss any ways to promote the transparency of ACTA negotiations.
Summary: ITNews has just published an interview where Richard Stallman speaks about software patents
YESTERDAY night we showed that ITNews unfairly accused Dr. Stallman of “crashing” an event (as in “Stallman crashes European Patent session”). Liz Tay has just posted a more polite article/headline which contains evidence of what the so-called ‘crashing’ was (in video form) and also the following interview with Stallman.
Thanks to ITNews for making the effort producing an Ogg version. Here is the remainder of their videos.
Techrights attempts to make everything available as Ogg and often it’s a compromise in the sense that there are interesting videos that cannot be shared. █
As I said at the beginning of this blog entry, the members of Linux International were fully behind the creation of LPI in 1998. It was even suggested that LPI become a branch of Linux International, but I felt that this would be a bad idea. It would be better, I felt, to have a separate organization focused solely on certification, but I did volunteer my time, effort and experience to help move LPI along.
Then one day in late 1999 the fledgling LPI had a slight problem, one that I am proud to say I helped to rectify. In order to verify that the exams were psychometrically accurate, fair and worthy of the LPI brand, LPI had to have a certain number of the exams performed and graded. But without the brand, there was nothing to induce a candidate to pay the money to take the exam. No inducement, no exams taken. No exams taken, no way to prove the validity of the exams. This was the classic “chicken and egg” problem.
CloudLinux, as well as Canonical and its Ubuntu Linux, highlight the head start Red Hat, and to some extent its enterprise Linux counterpart Novell, have given other companies ready and willing to serve up Linux in the cloud. These vendors, many of which base their own offerings on CentOS, also highlight the ongoing presence of community Linux in cloud computing, a topic we’ve covered as well.
Virgin Mobile officials announce on the carrier’s Facebook webpage that they have plans to add Samsung Intercept to their offering in the coming weeks. While the announcement doesn’t specify the exact release date, Virgin Mobile subscribers should be thrilled as this is the first Android smartphone coming from the carrier.
From these battery power consumption results from the past five Fedora releases using three different notebooks, it does not appear that the power performance is vastly improving — or at least just not in the past two years for the selection of hardware we used. The Lenovo ThinkPad R52 tended to go through the least amount of power when running Fedora 14 Alpha, but the notebooks with newer Intel hardware did worse so we will have to wait and see how the final release performs. Coming up next we will be looking at the battery power consumption rate as we test each major Linux kernel release and that testing will be on a greater selection of hardware (netbooks including) as we look for any definitive changes in the power consumption rate of Linux. We will also be trying out Intel’s historical MeeGo/Moblin releases to see how its performance-per-Watt has changed with their intended Atom hardware configurations.
OpenShot is a non-linear video editor for Linux (GNOME) with an amazing set of features: you can resize, trim or cut video, it comes with video transitions with real-time previews, image overlays, title templates, video encoding, digital zooming, audio mixing and editing, digital video effects and well, most of the features you can think of.
Hotot is a new lightweight Twitter client for Linux which although still in Alpha, it already looks very interesting! It doesn’t come with many features by default for now (other than the basic features you would expect to find in a Twitter client, including search), but it’s extensible through add-ons.
This state tracker does not use any Microsoft code, as confirmed by its developer. However, some are still uncertain about the legal status of Direct3D on Linux (along with the *BSDs and elsewhere that Gallium3D is compatible) and whether Microsoft could end up providing legal challenges to its adoption.
Corbin Simpson even wanted to pull this Gallium3D state tracker out of Mesa, but VMware’s Jose Fonseca is in opposition to it being dropped and is calling for more discussion (mailing list). In another message, Jose mentions the D3D1x state tracker could be split into run-time and client driver components where the Wine developers (or ReactOS) could then re-code the run-time if they are concerned about the one living in Mesa.
The debate over this fascinating Direct3D 10/11 state tracker is ongoing. Meanwhile, Luca has committed Wine DLLs that use this state tracker so that in fact Wine can now hook into Gallium3D for this Microsoft Direct3D acceleration on the GPU (or on the CPU if using LLVMpipe). See this Git commit.
AssaultCube is available for Windows, Linux or Mac. The moment I installed and launched AssaultCube, I knew that I was in for a treat. Type in your nickname, set the screen resolution and you’re off and running. You’ll see yourself and your teammates in the map at the upper left of the screen. Obviously, you won’t see your opponents – you have to hunt them down!
So what makes LXDE? On the one hand, its modularity allows for better customization and easier implementation of its tools in other DEs. This comes at a price, however, and that price is an identity as a unified DE.
Nokia’s Qt Software subsidiary released version 4.7 of its Qt cross-platform application and UI framework, touted for offering much faster performance. The Linux-compatible Qt 4.7 adds two building blocks of an upcoming high-level animation- and touch-enabled UI stack called Qt Quick: a Javascript-based QML language and a “Qt Declarative” C++ module.
With the release of Qt 4.7.0 it’s time to use it to build KDE packages destined for openSUSE 11.4. This means that Qt 4.7 will shortly land in KDE:Distro:Factory repositories. In a couple of months’ time it will be followed by betas of the KDE 4.6 releases. If you are using KDF just because it’s the latest KDE release, consider replacing it with KDE:Release:45 now, which will remain 4.5 and Qt 4.6 based.
Nokia has announced the official release of Qt 4.7, a new version of the company’s open source development toolkit. The update introduces an impressive new framework called “Qt Quick” that accelerates the development of mobile user interfaces that work across multiple platforms and form factors.
If you are a regular reader of our blog, you probably need no introduction to GNOME Shell and its capabilities. We had a complete review of GNOME Shell before, and we were quite happy with the way it was evolving. GNOME Shell, even though it is still in its early stages of development, was an absolute delight to use.
I have a love/hate relationship with gnome. I use it, I develop for it and at the same time I dislike the way the gnome project produces functional libraires.
A few days ago, Mark Shuttleworth took some time to address critics who scoff at Canonical’s contributions to GNOME and the Linux kernel itself by sharing his thoughts on the subject in his personal blog. The post, titled “Reflections on Ubuntu, Canonical and the march to free software adoption”, reflecting on Canonical and Ubuntu’s contributions to the world of free and open source software. There are a couple of interesting stories, some obvious rationalization, some genuine insights, and more than a few nods to the various forces that come together to create a Linux distribution.
Seif is proposing that the Activity Journal could pop out at lightning speed when the mouse hits a side of the desktop, in this case, the left side. He also wants people to notice how quickly the journal appears.
A core design element of the Impression themes is dark desktop and menu panels which displays well with the Ubuntu default wallpaper. A specific design element of the menu is the decision on how to “prelight” each menu item. The Impression themes use a prelight tint which is subtle to reduce strobing.
Google is doing it. Facebook is doing it. Yahoo is doing it. Microsoft is doing it. And soon Twitter will be doing it.
We’re talking about the apparent need of every web service out there to add intermediate steps to sample what we click on before they send us on to our real destination. This has been going on for a long time and is slowly starting to build into something of a redirect hell on the Web.
A few days ago, former Mandriva employees as well as community members banded together to announce the Mageia project, from the Mandriva sources which, they say, will ensure the project’s survival.
Mandriva has now come out to clarify the project’s future and has said that Mandriva will continue to be supported and developed on the desktop in both free and paid flavours.
In a reaction to the founding of the Mageia project and to a question posed on the Cooker mailing list, the French Linux distributor Mandriva has commented on its current situation and future plans. The company says the Mandriva distribution is far from dead and will continue to be consistently maintained. The next release of the Mandriva Community Edition is reportedly planned for the beginning of 2011.
Red Hat continues to report strong quarterly results as the company plans to ramp up its cloud management capabilities.
The company on Wednesday reported earnings of $23.7 million, or 12 cents a share, on revenue of $219.8 million, up 20 percent from a year ago. Non-GAAP earnings were 19 cents a share.
A few months back Glyn Moody, noted open-source journalist, asked the question, “Why No Billion-Dollar Open Source Companies?” Jim Whitehurst, Red Hat’s CEO answered, “Red Hat could get to $5 billion in due course, but that this entailed ‘replacing $50 billion of revenue’ currently enjoyed by other computer companies. Guess what? Red Hat is on its way.
In its latest quarter, Red Hat’s total revenue was $219.8 million, an increase of 20% from the year ago quarter. Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Subscription revenue for the quarter was $186.2 million, up 19% year-over-year. I guess Oracle’s attempt to snatch Red Hat’s business away with a re-branded RHEL really hasn’t worked.
Red Hat is still a strong presence in the Linux distribution market as its latest financial results prove, declares a senior company executive who noted that the company’s success comes despite targeted maneuvers by its competitors, specifically, Oracle.
Alex Pinchev, executive vice president and president of global sales, services and field marketing for Red Hat, told ZDNet Asia in an interview Thursday that the software company has increased its share of the Linux distribution market from 80 percent four years ago to 87 percent today. This growth comes despite of competition from companies such as Oracle and Novell, he said.
For those disappointed by Oracle’s decision to discontinue supporting a free version of its Solaris Unix-like operating system, a new alternative emerged to take its place. OpenIndiana is part of the Illumos Foundation. OpenIndiana will be built on the last available version of OpenSolaris and will contain bits of Solaris 11. OpenIndiana is the new OpenSolaris.
OpenIndiana is said to be compatible with Solaris 11 and Solaris 11 Express and should be an easy drop-in replacement for those systems. Initially OpenIndiana will contain some closed-source code since the current code-base is not fully open. These bits will eventually be replaced by fully Open Source code.
In Software Market 3.0, it’s not so much that the Freedom of the software leads to the freeness of the software – although, if you have the resources in-house, you never need pay anyone outside (that’s a big “if” by the way). In Software Market 3.0, everything is available at no charge to somebody because of the need for developer freedom, so it’s tempting to think it’s all available to everyone at no charge – but it’s not.
Our second confirmed keynote speaker for lca2011 is the original author of Sendmail, co-founder and Chief Scientist of Sendmail, Inc., and co-author of Sendmail, published by O’Reilly and Associates. He has presented numerous papers on email and programming and while at U.C. Berkeley, he was the chief programmer on the INGRES relational database management project. He then led the Mammoth project to provide large-scale research software and hardware infrastructure. He has also designed database user and application interfaces at Britton Lee (later Sharebase) and has contributed to the Ring Array Processor project for neural-network-based speech recognition at the International Computer Science Institute.
Among all new browsers, Mozilla may have found the best compromise to bridge the old and the new. Users can easily switch between the new naked interface and the old legacy interface. The new reduced menu that hides below the orange Firefox / Minefield button feels lighter and more organized.
Also new is a major update of the Gecko layout engine, which hits version 2.0 and delivers rendering improvements. Mozilla has not released a lot of information about its Mozilla 2.0 platform so far, but we will be updating our coverage as soon as more information becomes available.
Firefox 4 Beta 6 was released on September 14. Beta 7, which is currently under development, is slated for release sometime in the second half of September and the first release candidate is expected to be delivered in the second half of October.
You would think a firm that fancies itself a Linux development company would have some respect for the GPL. With most companies, you’d be right. But not with Oracle. It becomes more obvious with each passing day that Larry Ellison has absolutely no respect for the GPL. The FOSS community would do well to consider Ellison to be the proverbial wolf in sheep’s clothing and act according – for “FOSS-friendly” Oracle might pose more of a threat than Microsoft ever did.
Ellison seems to be making the GPL his play toy, shamelessly looking for holes in the license to exploit to his own advantage. Several years back, to show his displeasure at Red Hat for potentially moving into his territory when they acquired JBoss, he boldly announced the release of Unbreakable Linux, which was really Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) rebranded as an Oracle product (which he was perfectly free to do under the terms of the GPL).
The new kernel is faster than RHEL 5, the company says–though that’s not too surprising, given that the current RHEL is based on an older version of the Linux kernel. The next version, RHEL 6–due later this year–will presumably be similarly updated, with all the speed and other benefits that brings.
What’s more concerning, I think, is the way Oracle is trying to introduce vendor lock-in in an area that’s supposed to be defined by openness.
The company has already been showing its true feelings about openness lately. First, it sued Google over Android’s use of Java, then it pulled the plug on OpenSolaris, the open version of Sun’s Solaris operating system. One can only worry for OpenOffice.org.
But not everyone has made the adjustment. The Bells haven’t. Tech lobbyists like the Progress and Freedom Foundation haven’t, talking of “property” as sacrosanct even when it leads to monopolies that frustrate change, growth, and competition.
Oracle most definitely hasn’t, and this is a big problem given their control over what many still consider the crown jewels of open source — Java and Open Office.
Oracle’s ambitions were on display all week in San Francisco, along with its proprietary attitude, best summed up by the adage “what’s yours is mine and what’s mine is none of your business.”
There is nothing “socialist” about sharing infrastructure. America’s growth is based on it. From canals to railroads, from ports to freeways, from convention centers to the Internet, shared infrastructure has lowered costs for America’s businesses throughout our history, and made our economy the envy of the world.
After years of using Red Hat Enterprise Linux as the basis for its own “Unbreakable Linux” distribution, Oracle this week announced that it has created its own version of the Linux kernel that’s optimized for use with its other enterprise offerings.
Oracle is announcing its plans for advancing the Java Platform, Standard Edition (Java SE) and optimizing it for new application models and hardware, including extended support for scripting languages, increased developer productivity and lower operational costs.
The announced roadmap for the OpenJDK accelerates the availability of Java SE with two releases, one in 2011 and one in 2012. These OpenJDK releases will continue to serve as the basis for the Oracle Java Development Kit (JDK) 7 and JDK 8.
The UK government’s deputy Chief Information Officer has outlined plans to hand public sector IT contracts over to small businesses and suppliers of open-source and cloud-based solutions in an attempt to balance the books.
Speaking at the 360IT conference in London on Wednesday, Bill McCluggage also promised greater transparency over IT procurement, with tenders and contracts published online.
“It is quite an interesting time, with some 120 days since the new government,” he told delegates. “The new administration’s policy is to promote small business procurement so that 25 per cent of government contracts should be awarded to SMEs.”
“We want to move away from large system integrators,” he added.
McCluggage said IT projects across all departments were being reassessed ion a bid to cut the bill for central government IT, which currently stands at more than £7 billion – nearly half of the £16.9 billion spent nationally on public sector IT services.
A few months ago, opensource.com ran a story on a textbook for college students learning programming (Can Professors Teach Open Source?, Greg DeKoenigsberg, Apr 6 2010). The textbook, “Practical Open Source Software Exploration,” was created the open source way on the Teaching Open Source wiki. (Read Greg’s article for more on what we mean by creating the textbook “the open source way”.)
Although the textbook was written with students in mind, it turns out that professors are pretty important when it comes to teaching, too.
Late July, I sat in on a conversation between primary authors of the textbook on my team at Red Hat and Timothy Budd, associate professor at Oregon State University’s School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Budd used “Practical Open Source Software Exploration” in an introduction to free and open source software course in the spring 2010 semester. He reported that the book has potential, but that there are a few major things to get fixed.
Today, the company announced the beta launch of four new European mapping sites built on OpenStreetMap data, in France, Germany, Italy and Spain.
The AOL company says all four sites will utilize the new MapQuest brand and UI and will have data from OSM, allowing users to improve areas like streets in their neighborhoods, bike paths, parks and hiking trails. Each site will be a stand-alone offering that lives alongside the existing MapQuest sites – which are based on commercially available map data – in the four countries.
At the worldwide OpenOffice.org Conference 2010 in Budapest I have participated giving two talks: the main one was about ODF Scripting, which is about how to generate office texts, presentations and spreadsheets automatically. The other (very short) talk was about ODF-next, that is what should be in my opinion the evolution of the OpenDocument Format (ODF) for office documents.
The National Bureau of Economic Research, the arbiter of the start and end dates of a recession, determined that the recession that began in December 2007 ended in June 2009.
If you have a startup in a city outside of the San Francisco Bay Area, ecosystem is a word you hear pretty frequently. And Montreal is no exception. I’ve been part of Montreal’s startup scene since I moved here from the Bay Area in 2002. I’ve been active in local events and projects since our first BarCamp in 2006. And I’ve taken an amateur’s interests in other cities’ efforts to kickstart their own startup virtuous cycle – New York, Portland, Vancouver and others.
On Thursday, the House Committee on Administration will take a vote on the Fair Elections Now Act — the bill that we, along with many others, have been pushing for the past two years. The Committee will pass the bill. With a bit of luck, and a lot more pressure, the managers of the bill believe it could have the votes to pass the House as well. If they’re right, and if the Speaker allows the bill to come to the floor, then for the first time in a generation, the House will have ratified fundamental and effective campaign finance reform.
This optimism will surprise many of you. As I’ve travelled to talk about this issue, the overwhelming attitude of people who want better from our government is that our government is incapable of giving us better. The House ratifying Fair Elections would be the first, and best evidence, this skepticism might be wrong. It would also be a testament to the extraordinary work of organizations like Public Campaign and Common Cause (especially the campaign director, David Donnelly), as well as many others, including MoveOn, the Coffee Party, You Street (as in “not K Street”) and many of you. This victory would give American voters an idea worth fighting for. It would be a critical victory, at least if we can gather the final few votes needed in the House. (You can help in that by using our Whip Tool).
When Google’s services are blocked or filtered, we can’t serve our users effectively. That’s why we act every day to maximize free expression and access to information. To promote transparency around this flow of information, we’ve built an interactive online Transparency Report with tools that allow people to see where governments are demanding that we remove content and where Google services are being blocked. We believe that this kind of transparency can be a deterrent to censorship.
After signing its intention to conform its copyright act to World Intellectual Property Organization standards 11 years ago, the Canadian government has introduced Bill C-32, the Copyright Modernization Act, to fulfill that mandate.
But after the failure of two previous attempts — Bill C-60 and Bill C-61 both died on the vine due to unexpected election calls — some are warning the same fate could befall the CMA, especially since federal conservatives remain in charge and could be toppled by the opposition at any time.
Stevie Wonder launched his “Declaration of freedom for people with disabilities” which he said was “a call to action, a plan to empower the independence of people with disabilities by providing them with the tools to learn and grow.” In addressing ministers and policy-makers from WIPO’s 184 member states, he said, “through your legislative efforts, incentives can be created to advance the blind and visually disabled towards the promise of a better life.”
A senior judge has given the clearest indications so far that patience could be running out with “pay up or else” letters currently being sent out in their thousands to alleged file-sharers. At a hearing to authorize yet more, the judge called the schemes “a huge sledgehammer to crack a nut” adding that once the Digital Economy Act is in force, further applications may not be successful.
Perhaps in response to this, apparently Google is now asking people in their forums to identify books within Google Books that are in the public domain, so that Google can investigate and see if they should be opened up as public domain books (found via Glyn Moody).
The context is a discussion over whether it should be legal for users to strip off TUR (technological usage restrictions), also known as DRM, when the validation servers for their legally-purchased content (that is, music, video, and software) are shut down. Should Windows XP stop working when Microsoft shuts down its Genuine Disadvantage servers? Should people who bought “protected” music lose when Wal-Mart or Microsoft or Apple decide to shut down their authorization servers?
[...]
Now, we must understand that copyright and patents do not exist to enrich media and technology companies, but only to benefit society as a whole. The RIAA, the MPAA, and the BSA consist mostly of large and rich corporations. They are large and rich, I surmise, because misinterpretation of a simple clause of the Constitution into a near-perpetual right to compensation has enabled corporations and “stars” to get very high returns for their efforts. The bad thing about those ultra-high returns is the belief that they are entitled to them, which was the reason behind technological usage restrictions in the first place.
The US Supreme Court is weighing in on the first RIAA file sharing case to reach its docket, requesting that the music labels’ litigation arm respond to a case testing the so-called “innocent infringer” defense to copyright infringement.
The case pending before the justices concerns a federal appeals court’s February decision ordering a university student to pay the Recording Industry Association of America $27,750—or $750 a track—for file-sharing 37 songs when she was a high school cheerleader. The appeals court decision reversed a Texas federal judge who, after concluding the youngster was an innocent infringer, ordered defendant Whitney Harper to pay $7,400—or $200 per song. That’s an amount well below the standard $750 fine required under the Copyright act.
Musician Carole Pope has an op-ed in the Globe and Mail today calling on the government to reform Bill C-32 by extending the private copying to MP3 players. That approach was derided by both Canadian Heritage Minister James Moore and Industry Minister Tony Clement as the iTax last spring and Clement tweeted a response today. Regardless of your view on the levy, the op-ed highlights just how divided the music industry in Canada is on Bill C-32. While sites like the CRIA-backed Balanced Copyright for Canada seek to project an image of strong support for the bill, the reality is that the Canadian music industry is deeply divided on many aspects of the proposed legislation. In fact, in recent weeks it has turned increasingly critical, touting the need to pass the bill, but simultaneously offering mounting criticism of its provisions.
Industry Minister Tony Clement’s iPod contains 10,452 songs, he told reporters on May 26, most of them transferred from CDs he bought. It’s a widespread practice generally known as “format shifting,” and in Canada, it’s illegal.
The theory behind copyright is simple – if we allow anyone to copy a good new idea, then no one will come up with the next one. The theory makes perfect sense – in theory. In previous posts, however, we have described how fashion designers, chefs, comedians and pornographers all continue to create, even though others are free to copy their fashion designs, recipes, jokes, and . . . images. In this post, we’ll take a look at something different: football.
enator Patrick Leahy yesterday introduced the “Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act” (COICA). This flawed bill would allow the Attorney General and the Department of Justice to break the Internet one domain at a time — by requiring domain registrars/registries, ISPs, DNS providers, and others to block Internet users from reaching certain websites. The bill would also create two Internet blacklists. The first is a list of all the websites hit with a censorship court order from the Attorney General. The second, more worrying, blacklist is a list of domain names that the Department of Justice determines — without judicial review — are “dedicated to infringing activities.” The bill only requires blocking for domains in the first list, but strongly suggests that domains on the second list should be blocked as well by providing legal immunity for Internet intermediaries and DNS operators who decide to block domains on the second blacklist as well. (It’s easy to predict that there will be tremendous pressure for Internet intermediaries of all stripes to block these “deemed infringing” sites on the second blacklist.)
Read that bold part carefully. What this is saying is that despite the fact that you can be kicked off the internet based solely on accusations, not convictions, and despite all of the problems with false accusations and the fact that an IP address alone does not accurately identify an individual, and despite the fact that the massive number of notices being sent out mean that there will surely be false positives, the only people reviewing these notices to make sure they’re accurate will be employed by the agent hired by the copyright holders themselves. Due process? It’s dead.
As pressure on file-sharing continues to mount, many people are searching for ‘safer’ methods to acquire music. Today we bring news of an application that seems to be almost too good to be true. With a huge database of songs, Mulve delivers music to users’ desktops at amazing speeds at the touch of a button with zero uploading, meaning that “getting caught” is no longer a concern. Question is, how long will it last?
Country’s Intellectual Property Office (IPO) confirms that no democratic institution in the UK has yet seen a draft of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA).
More news of the frighteningly secretive nature of the ongoing Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) negotiations has appeared with the confirmation by the UK’s Intellectual Property Office that no text of the treaty has yet been shared with any MP or the country’s Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee.
What this means, as has been the case in other countries where the ACTA is being debated, is that to date no democratic institution in the UK has seen a copy of the ACTA draft.
While it’s not clear that it’s done much, at least at the last few ACTA negotiation meetings, time has been set aside for various “civil society groups” to meet with the negotiators and ask some questions. Apparently, the ACTA negotiators would rather not do that anymore. Sean Flynn has detailed just how difficult the negotiators made it for such groups to attend the latest meeting in Tokyo. Everyone knew that the meeting was happening in Tokyo, but the rumors were that it started next week.
Summary: Following controversial remarks and actions from a cabal of well-connected establishments, many articles get published which criticise private stakes in the reduction/control of the world’s population (monopolising means and decisions on the matter)
“We feel like if Craiglist is serious about addressing this issue of sex trafficking of women and children, they should complete the task and make complete and permanent that all erotic suites are closed down,” said Bradley Myles, executive director of the Polaris Project, which works to end human trafficking and slavery. The group receives funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Google and The Body Shop Foundation.
It would be easy for the foundation to distance itself from this action (like many others), which is still a subject of much controversy. But anyway, the latest example we have of Gates’ help to Big Business has a lot to do with banking. That’s where a lot of money changes hands, far more than ever circulates in the software industry which Microsoft is in. Remember that Gates is an investor in Goldman Sachs, which means that he indirectly helps increase hunger in Africa, not necessarily end or reduce it. It’s one of those many areas where Gates pretends to have some specific goals but actually invests (for profit) in those who promote opposite goals.
Several months ago we wrote about what Gates was doing in Haiti. From each huge disaster come some huge business opportunities and Gates seems to be facilitating some banking industry in there, assisted by the Microsoft-seeded Grameen Foundation [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]. Gradually, they are bringing banks into underdeveloped nations (victims of predatory loans from the West in most cases). They market this as help to the population, as if people who lost their family and home can find solace in a mobile phone with a bank account for micro-payments; the reality is more complex because it gives banks from the West even more leverage over already-crushed populations. Katrina was an example of this.
Cecilia Kang from the Washington Post (where Melinda Gates is on the board) has published no less than 3 articles about it, all just advertising this Gates-Grameen project [1, 2, 3] (Kang publishes many other articles to further Gates’ agenda in the Washington Post, but we rarely refer to her by name).
And the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has dedicated $12 million to help village farmers in Tanzania, Cameroon and Rwanda save money through electronic mobile phone deposits. It has launched a $10 million contest in Haiti to fund the best mobile banking ideas to channel earthquake relief to people who would otherwise stand in long lines at overwhelmed bank branches to collect cash. (Melinda Gates is on The Washington Post Co. board of directors.)
Gates and his partners in the West get links with the local population in place like Tanzania, Cameroon and Rwanda (to repeat the above), which also helps them manage exploitation of local farmers by a variety of companies that produce pesticides, extract rare metals, spread experimental drugs, GMO and so forth at a very high risk (to the population, not to the companies, c.f. Trafigura disaster in 2009). Many good films were produced (albeit no blockbusters) to help explain these depressing issues that exist in the repressed Black Continent. China, not just the West, has become one of the notable exploiters. We won’t go into the details of this because it’s off topic and it requires further research to ensure accuracy.
“Thanks to the spending of billions of dollars on press coverage by the Gates Foundation, the propaganda outweighs the signal here and there is little hope of getting a message of truth across to everyone.”The short story is that Gates may be creating businesses for friends of his or companies that he invests in. Thanks to the spending of billions of dollars on press coverage by the Gates Foundation, the propaganda outweighs the signal here and there is little hope of getting a message of truth across to everyone. As we noted some days ago, media sellouts at The Guardian and Causecast too (possibly the way this foundation of Microsoft’s co-founder pays the Huffington Post to carry its agenda) ensure that propaganda even reaches some of the more trusted and seemingly “independent” publications. Here we have the Huffington Post (under the “Causecast” banner) publishing some propaganda about the cellphones-banks initiative Gates is pushing for. And finally, here is another plug quoting Gates’ workers on the subject. Who benefits from all of this? Clearly there is someone all this money flows towards.
We are left with no choice but to approach more controversial grounds which we shall defend with many references, mostly from respected sources. Earlier this month we wrote about Gates’ remarks on “death panels” [1, 2]. Make no mistake; some pretty major publications took notice [1, 2, 3, 4]. It was not some irrelevant out-of-context remark and the 4 articles cited here bear the headlines “Bill Gates On ‘Death Panels’”, “Gates Death Panels – Bill Gates On Health Care Savings”, “Bill Gates on “death panels””, and “Bill Gates On Death Panels”. A fifth new reference is titled “Bill Gates Death Panels and Health Care Savings” and it says quite calmly: “Clearly there are an array of moral issues when dealing with these death panels that Gates seems to advocate. Proponents of the idea give an example in which paying $1 million for a medical procedure to extend a persons life a few months should be outweighed by the fact that the same amount of money could hired 30 teachers for a year. Bill gates stated that there was a “lack of willingness” to even remotely consider the question of choosing between “spending a million dollars on that last three months of life for that patient” or laying off ten teachers.” (We will touch the subject of teachers tomorrow)
This controversy has also reached more controversial circles that are affiliated with Alex Jones (whom we prefer not to rely on because of alarmist tendencies):
Bill Gates’ advocacy for “death panels” has caused controversy amongst conservative commentators, but the real outrage behind the story has been completely overlooked – the fact that Gates is a hardcore eugenicist and has called for lowering the global population through vaccines which his foundation funds to the tune of billions.
Gates’ “death panel” comments were actually made over two months ago at the Aspen Ideas Festival in Aspen Colorado, but they only garnered attention when the video clip appeared on numerous conservative websites on Sunday, including Breitbart.tv and The Blaze.
During a question and answer session, Gates implied that elderly patients undergoing expensive health care treatments should be killed and the money spent elsewhere.
[...]
The Microsoft owner’s advocacy for killing granny in the name of spending the money elsewhere strikes at the root of why so many Americans are outraged over Obamacare, which contains as one of its core components a cost/benefit board which will be able to refuse care to elderly patients, proving that death panels will indeed come into force despite establishment media PR campaigns to convince the public otherwise.
[...]
The Microsoft founder’s advocacy for death panels is a shocking admission, but it pales in significance when one considers that Gates, as one of the richest men on the planet who routinely meets with other billionaires to discuss population reduction efforts, has publicly stated his intention to use the billions of dollars worth of vaccines that he funds to lower global population in the third world, which could only be achieved if the vaccines were designed to forcibly sterilize people without their consent or induce forced abortions.
Global Research, a respected Web site by many people’s estimation, published a long article on September 7th. The headline is “Vaccinate the World: Gates, Rockefeller Seek Global Population Reduction” and the body says:
If you can’t seem to bring yourself to believe that such an undertaking is possible, or that there are human beings willing and capable; Look back in time, this kind of conspiracy isn’t new, in fact this kind of control was idealized by Plato some 2,300 years ago in his momentous work The Republic. Plato wrote that a ruling elite should guide society, “…whose aim will be to preserve the average of population.” He further stated, “There are many other things which they will have to consider, such as the effects of wars and diseases and any similar agencies, in order as far as this is possible to prevent the State from becoming either too large or too small.”
The activities of the ruling elite in controlling population, writes Plato, must be kept secret. He writes, “Now these goings on must be a secret which the rulers only know, or there will be a further danger of our herd… breaking out into rebellion.”
Peering back into the mists of time and history reveal that there is truly nothing new under the sun. What has been done will be done again, and the 21st Century manifestation of global elites have advanced tools at their disposal.
What we are about to show is the link between the banking industry and other agendas that Gates and Rockefeller love to promote. Gates is right now boosting his image in public for some trust to be bought. As sad as it may be, the general public remembers not Gates’ days as a monopoly abuser at Microsoft; he is glorified in the press in many languages, so people do listen to what he says and accept a lot of it uncritically. As we showed before, Gates is working with the World Bank (responsible for debt-imposed slavery in populations Gates pretends to help the most) and not too surprisingly, the same bank which is aligned with GAVI (for vaccination) is also helping governments with Gates’ banking crusades (Gates — unlike bankers in suits — appeals to the population because of his lobby/brand value). From this new article:
Survey work for the land bank project has already been initiated. The Bill Gates Foundation, the World Bank and Asian Development Bank are expected to help the government in the project, official sources said.
A World Bank Trust Fund is also mentioned here, in an article titled “Bill Gates to Fund EAC Health Project”:
“I believe early next year, the review of the proposal of the project on Medicines Registration Harmonization will be done, and at that time, the Gates Foundation through World Bank Trust Fund, will be in a position give out a grant of 9.5 million dollars to EAC,” Seiter said.
To quote another new article from the same source: “At the joint meeting of; EAC Secretariat, World Bank, NEPAD, WHO and GTZ, held at the EAC headquarters in Arusha, Tanzania, Mr. Seiter said there is every indication that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation through the World Bank will accept a proposal to fund the project on Medicines Registration Harmonization in the EAC Partner States.”
One last article from this source also names the UN, which is very close to the Gates family (at a personal level too as we demonstrated before):
At a press fellowship hosted by the UN Foundation, sponsored in part by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, journalists from various global media organizations, including allAfrica.com, were brought together on September 7-9 to talk about the MDGs with a wide range of policymakers and presenters.
Part of the UN is increasingly seen in Africa as a front for Monsanto and other such interests from the West. One has to be careful and sceptical because people serve personal interests, not just stated goals in some establishment (whether they believe in these goals or not).
In a new press release which uses Techrights in a couple of its references, the World Bank is mentioned as well, in the context of eugenics. It has an interesting collection of events and disclosures, e.g.:
While lecturing at the elitist TED 2010 conference in Long Beach, CA, Bill Gates slipped a statement while speaking on the dangers of climate change and over population: “Vaccines? I love them.” His admission was made in the context of his philanthropic strategy and, as we will see, vaccines play a dominant role in his firm conviction that population reduction is an urgent priority for the survival of humanity. Then the question is, who should be eliminated from the population? Who is elected from the public to make such decisions? The short answer is no one. Hence it is being done quietly thru foundations, international agencies and private industry.
Today the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is “the most powerful charity in the world, and one of the most quietly influential international organizations of any sort.”[1] The Foundation is funded to the tune of $34.6 billion plus an additional $30 billion from Warren Buffet’s investments. This is almost the entire budget of the World Health Organization (WHO).
Gates has followed in the footsteps of the Rockefellers’ lead to usher the New Green Revolution, an aggressive onslaught of genetically modified seeds (GMOs) to increase large scale corporate-influenced agriculture in Africa, India and elsewhere. The international GMO initiatives have devastated small cooperative farms that have served as the lifeline of food for centuries and as resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of farmers. Of course nobody among the oligarchic elite, such as Gates, Rockefeller and Monsanto execs, will suffer from the consequences of this failed revolution.
[...]
In 2000, the Gates Foundation founded the International Finance Facility for Immunization (GAVI) and that organization’s Global Fund for Children’s Vaccines. GAVI is a global collaboration that includes governments, the Rockefeller Foundation, the World Bank, WHO, the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers, UNICEF, vaccine makers, and other influential entities. All of these are zealot vaccination promoters. The organization’s mission is to vaccinate every child in Africa. Through GAVI and its various programs, an estimated 250 million children in developing countries have already been vaccinated.[3] But the Foundation itself does not perform drug and vaccine research and development. In addition to traditional grant giving, it also provides lines of credit. For example, the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative received from the Foundation a $100 million line of credit to empower the nonprofit organization to influence HIV vaccine development within the vaccine industrial complex.[4]
[...]
As early as 1968, the Rockefeller Foundation’s annual report recommended anti-fertility vaccines as a viable means for lessening the human population growth rate that should be aggressively pursued.
This is not to be confused with scare-mongering about vaccination. The issue here is not a theory about drugs that are harmful but about the openly-stated goals of population reduction through sterilisation or other means, with patents that are owned by few companies with vested interests (monopolies). Even before Gates 'bought' TED he made it quite clear that population control is on the agenda (there is no problem with that as the world’s population has clearly grown too fast), but the controversial part is who exactly decides on action, how it is voted on (transparency, participation, etc.), and who potentially profits from it (e.g. drug companies, nations that are permitted to expand their population at the expense of others, and ethnic groups that can ‘manage’ the expansion of other groups based on some selfish criteria). In order to understand the affiliations at play, one might require further readings and background information. “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men,” warned Lord Acton. █
“Assistant Secretary, U.S. Treasury, Harry Dexter White (left) and John Maynard Keynes, honorary advisor to the U.K. Treasury at the inaugural meeting of the International Monetary Fund’s Board of Governors in Savannah, Georgia, U.S., March 8, 1946.” –Wikipedia on World Bank
Time to stand up against software patents and WIPO
Summary: The southern part of the world, where wealth is scarce and software patents are largely illegitimate, is being visited by Richard Stallman who helps educate about the harms of software patents (even to Europe); it is also acknowledged that patent value in Europe is an odd duck and that the Europe-based WIPO is hostile towards the vast majority of people
Australian lawyers are hoping to help ruin EPO just like USPTO (the European and American patent offices, respectively). Richard Stallman, an activist far gentler than the mainstream media may have the population believe, has been giving some talks in Australia and now he turns his attention to a European Patent session in the same country. The Australian press is being unfair by claiming that Dr. Stallman “crashes” the session (that’s what the headline says) when in fact all he did was hand out printed copies of his article and held up a sign with a polite message. Judge him based on the following new article whose headline is unfair and worth correcting:
Software freedom activist Richard Stallman made an unexpected appearance at a European Patent Office presentation in Brisbane today.
Stallman, pictured, who was also due to address the World Computer Congress later in the day, carried a placard that said: “Don’t get caught in software patent thickets”.
He briefly interrupted a presentation by European Patent Officer Ralf Abbing, who spoke about the “big issues in IP in relation to computing technology”.
In his presentation, Abbing outlined the requirements for software patent applications under the European Patent Convention (EPC).
“We have a very narrow interpretation,” Abbing said of patentable software.
According to Article 52 of the EPC, patented inventions had to be “susceptible of industrial application”, new, and involve an inventive step.
The Article excluded aesthetic creations, discoveries, mathematical models, business methods and presentations of information from being patented.
Abbing explained that patentable software also had to be “technical” – that is, software that processed physical data parameters, controlled values of an industrial process, or affected “the way a computer operates”.
[...]
Stallman said he supported the movement, and told iTnews that the European Patent Office was lobbying for software patents in Australia.
“We’re here at the World Computer Congress and what I’ve discovered is that the European Patent Office is here to campaign in favour of software patents in Australia,” he said.
“You can be sure that if Australia allows software patents, almost all the patents will belong to foreigners and will give them the opportunity to sue Australians.
Another new article, this one from The Australian, has an exceptionally deceiving headline, “Richard Stallman calls for internet tax to combat piracy” (he neither talked about “piracy” nor called for an “internet tax”). The latter part of the article speaks about the appearance at the European Patent session:
He and an unknown colleague held up placards reading: “Don’t get caught in the software patent thickets”.
While considering him eccentric, some experts at the conference were sympathetic to Mr Stallman’s ideas.
During a presentation on software piracy among students, Linda Spark, a researcher from Johannesburg’s University of Witwatersrand said: “Although I thought some of Richard Stallman’s ideas were a bit radical, there’s a lot of areas I don’t disagree with him. If we look at the history of software you have to ask why software is owned. It’s because someone got greedy along the way. It wasn’t originally proprietary software.”
“The ethics on both sides are really bit questionable.”
Notice how preconceptions of Stallman (created by daemonisations in the press) affect people’s reception of his teachings. No wonder Stallman has disdain for the PR industry. They try to maginalise him and create a radical image of him. In reality, his message makes a lot of sense, just like the messages of Mr. Moore and Mr. Assange for example.
Truth be told, Stallman’s views have made him many enemies in quarters such as the proprietary software industry, the meta-industry of patent lawyers, and so on. Here we have IAM (lawyers’ magazine) shooting itself in the foot by admitting that the industry it shelters is quite worthless (or a “Seductive Mirage” as Richard Stallman called it in the famous essay he handed out in paper form in Australia).
“Under 1% of patents account for close to 50% of overall patent value in Europe,” says this headline: [via Glyn Moody]
Under 1% of patents account for close to 50% of overall patent value in Europe – UPDATED
[...]
Obviously, there is no scientific valuation process involved here, but the answers can be considered indicative of how much value the owners felt they got from their patents. And what is so interesting is how this survey backs up so many others in finding that the vast majority of patents turn out to be worth very little or nothing at all; but those that are worth something can be worth a hell of a lot. The trick, of course, is in knowing which patents will fall into which category. Unfortunately from a patent procurement perspective, it can’t be done ahead of time – though there are plenty of people that are looking to find ways of getting an edge in this area.
What’s Microsoft stance on changes to software patents in New Zealand?
Fundamentally the final decision needs to be in the economic interest of New Zealand. IRP should be designed and serve New Zealand’s interest. The concerns we still have is that there’s been no real detailed economic analysis of what impact any changes are going to have.
The fundamental idea that someone who invents something, spends the time, money and effort to create something new should be able to benefit from it, is something that we believe in deeply. It’s our core businesses. That’s why we spend US$9 billion a year on research and development. It’s important that we benefit from that and show our shareholders that we benefit from that.
In a time where there’s so much talk about the importance of IT and export growth in New Zealand, it seems odd that we’d throw away a profit prediction for a thing that we’d want to sell.
Microsoft is avoiding the subject. This is not surprising. In order to avoid backlash from the public, Microsoft always prefers to push for software patents using front groups (e.g. 'NZ'ICT in New Zealand). It hides behind proxies which pretend to serve the opposite side, in this case “NZ” (‘NZ’ICT is a multinational, not a New Zealand representor).
To finish off this overly-elongated post, mind the latest news which exposes the evils of WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organisation). We last wrote about it 10 days ago. A famous blind man, Stevie Wonder, is taking on WIPO and shockingly enough WIPO snubs him. This made it into a lot of publications, even Reuters.
U.S. pop and soul music legend Stevie Wonder told diplomats from nearly 200 nations on Monday to stop squabbling over copyright and agree on a pact bringing “hope and light” to blind people around the globe.
And the singer-musician, himself sightless since just after birth, warned negotiators at the United Nations intellectual property and copyright agency WIPO that he would write a sad song about them if they didn’t act on his appeal.
They did not “act on his appeal” based on some articles we found, so we look forward to Wonder’s eulogy for the WIPO, which grows increasingly controversial, especially among poor nations (the world’s majority) and minority groups like blind people.
Andrew Katz, a new writer for IDG in the UK, writes about the term WIPO uses to justify its existence. It’s misleadingly called “intellectual property” and as Katz correctly argues, it’s just an analogy not to be taken seriously:
[Y]ou’ll find organisations like the RIAA, BSA, FAST and BPI talk a lot about “property”. And you’ll find organisations like the Free Software Foundation railing against that characterisation.
It’s also fairly telling that the organ of the United Nations which deals with these issues is called the “World Intellectual Property Organisation”, and that the relevant government agency in the UK is Intellectual Property Office.
It’s nice to see the FSF getting some credit there. The FSF, unlike the IBM-backed Linux Foundation/OIN, is strongly against patents. That’s why Techrights is sympathetic towards the FSF. █
Summary: Mozilla joins the OIN (Open Invention Network) as a licensee and some well-known figures in the Free software world have gentle criticism
QUESTIONS about the methodology of the OIN withstanding, Keith and the OIN have done some commendable things to defend GNU/Linux from Microsoft patents [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]. This must be why Windows/RAND proponents like Microsoft Florian hate the OIN so much and spend a lot of time bashing it.
Mozilla, a US-based company/foundation, has been expressing concerns about software patents for a few years now. The subject came up this year as well [1, 2, 3], especially because of MPEG-LA, which is headed by a patent troll [1, 2, 3, 4].
In this new press release, Mozilla’s joining as an OIN licensee got typical coverage (no exciting details therein):
Open Invention Network (OIN) today extended the Linux ecosystem with the signing of Mozilla as a licensee. By becoming a licensee, Mozilla, the developer of leading software applications including the popular Firefox web browser, has joined the growing list of organizations that recognize the importance of participating in a substantial community of Linux supporters and leveraging the Open Invention Network to further spur open source innovation.
The Open Invention Network, a Durham-based organization founded by a group of companies including IBM and Red Hat, has signed Mozilla as a licensee, extending the patent community of the Linux operating system to the developer of the Firefox web browser.
This doesn’t mean we’re suddenly enthused about patents in any way, but OIN is doing some good work, and I believe that any protections that they afford Mozilla are on the whole more positive, and outweigh reservations about the patent the system.
Martin vonWillebrand, a lawyer from Helsinki, asked Glyn Moody (who expressed scepticism about Mozilla’s action until he saw Mozilla’s clarification): “Why should Mozilla not join #OIN? I see Open Invention Network as a growing commitment to not assert #Linux #swpats”
Unlike lawyers who profit from patents, there are people like Bradley Kuhn (FSF/SFLC) who wrote: “Not surprised #Mozilla joined #OIN (who doesn’t want royalty-free #swpats ?), but #disturbing they wanna do program work w/ pro-patent OIN.”
Overall, Techrights considers Mozilla’s decision to be a positive development. Techrights also endorses Mozilla’s Web browser (Firefox), because unlike Chrome, for example, Firefox is Free software-friendly and software patents-hostile by ideology. █
Several months ago we wrote about what 
