Summary: Microsoft’s co-founder and the Finnish giant now led by Microsoft’s former president are still lobbying against the interests of software freedom
As mentioned in the latest TechBytes episode, Microsoft’s Elop-led Nokia [1, 2, 3, 4] is lobbying for the back door to software patents in Europe along with the pharmaceutical cartel. Is Nokia doing this to prepare for Microsoft-serving patent attacks in Europe (Nokia’s more aggressive patent strategy is a subject it spoke about recently)? Or is it Nokia’s same old patent campaign which we wrote about in prior years? Anyway, here is the new report:
Nokia Oyj (NOK1V), the world’s biggest maker of mobile phones, and AstraZeneca Plc (AZN) said a plan to create a European Union-wide patent system won’t be successful unless a separate patent court is established.
A regional patent without a dedicated court would be “dangerous,” said Tim Frain, director of intellectual property rights regulatory affairs at Espoo-Finland-based Nokia.
Typically fraught and tiring week in Strasbourg, – and its only Tuesday! But life in politics is often illuminated by a little ray of sunshine, and so this week I was delighted to meet and shake hands with Bill Gates, the founder of microsoft.
He joined us to discuss the changing priorities of development aid, and the need to find different approaches to our problems.
I was particularly interested in his `Living proof` initiative that seeks to show where all the money is spent. The EU could learn a thing or two from him!
To quote the sole comment there, “Unfortunately Microsoft & Bill Gates are actually part of the financial mess we are all in, support for the 3rd world is part of the intellectual property agenda and the UK’s self imposed reliance on Microsoft Software is costing the taxpayer millions if not more.” That same commenter came to our IRC channel and added: “I get the impression that the new Gates strategy is to say the world has a lot of problems I can help sort it out.” We addressed this subject many times before. This man is up to no good as he increases his power and instructs politicians to handle public money in ways that benefit his financial investments (which include Microsoft’s). █
Summary: Assorted security news about the “biggest name and email address heist in US history” and beyond
A few days ago we wrote about the Epsilon fiasco, which is said to have affected Marks and Spencer customers, probably owing to the Windows machines getting cracked (as they so often do). What we didn’t know at the time is that this was the “biggest name and email address heist in US history”. To quote The Inquirer:
BIG US BANKS JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup and US Bank are just three of the companies affected by a massive data breach at online marketing firm Epsilon.
These are just a few of the companies that do business with Epsilon, which said in a statement that its clients “were exposed by an unauthorised entry into Epsilon’s email system”.
Epsilon is a firm that sends billions of emails ads each year to people who register their interest at its customers’ websites or give their email addresses when shopping. At the moment it is unclear how many people have been affected, but Reuters claimed “it could be one of the biggest such data breaches in US history”.
What’s being described as a “massive” security breach at email marketing firm Epsilon has compromised the customer names and emails of some of the largest companies in the US, including seven of Fortune’s top 10 institutions, reports SecurityWeek.
Epsilon reportedly sends out 40 billion emails each year for more than 2,500 clients. SecurityWeek reports that clients of Epsilon affected by the infiltration include: TiVo, US Bank, JPMorgan Chase, Verizon, Capital One, Marriott Rewards, Ritz-Carlton Rewards, Citi, Brookstone, McKinsey & Co., New York & Co, Kroger and Walgreens.
It says that “Epsilon reportedly sends out 40 billion emails each year for more than 2,500 clients.” Well, earlier today a marketing (spamming) agency called 2ndimpression sent on behalf of Thornley Groves a bunch of marketing junk to clients, myself included. It did this (sent unwanted mail) without permission from the recipients, requiring non-existent usernames to unsubscribe from this endless mess. These firms deserve no sympathy. Some of them are borderline criminal, but they probably know the law well enough to manoeuvre around prosecution. To them, it’s risk analysis and reward. Microsoft Florian uses similar tactics to shower journalists with quotes to embed in articles.
Summary: A quickly-arranged show to test new encoding options which may resolve cache timeouts
This is the first episode that we encode at a lower level of quality in order to reduce download time/decrease file size. Please provide feedback on whether the degradation of signal is acceptable. We hope this show is interesting too (we never script anything or prepare notes).
HTC announced a 4.3-inch, dual-core 1.2GHz Android phone — initially heading for T-Mobile and Vodafone before going global. The HTC Sensation features a unique, contoured display, 768MB RAM, a full range of wireless features, a new HTC Watch video service, and an updated version of the HTC Sense featuring a “active lockscreen.”
Earth science (also known as geoscience) is the focus of understanding the sciences related to the planet Earth. It includes a wide range of fields such as geology, geography, geophysics, meteorology, oceanography, and glaciology. Some people are surprised to learn that astronomy is also regarded to be an earth science. Geology is generally considered to be the primary earth science.
Earth scientists plays an important role in helping nations minimise risks that are posed by climate change and natural disasters (such as floods, tornados, hurricanes, and earthquakes).
DraftSight builds are available in both Debian and RPM packages on the product’s home page. The beta weighs in at a beefy 68.8 MB, with a prodigious list of dependencies, but it is a real, native Linux application and not a WINE port. The dependencies are standard GUI fare — Freetype, Cairo, GTK+, D-Bus, and so forth, so any up-to-date system should have no trouble installing it. Still, it might have been nice to have the dependencies listed on the web site, although that is par for the course — Dassault’s DraftSight site has an annoying habit of providing the majority of its content (including the FAQ and Getting Started Guide) as downloadable PDFs rather than simple HTML.
Since the launch of Linux Magazine TV (LMTV) in February of this year, my interest in video has increased beyond any reasonable limits. I’m obsessed with video and our efforts in this new area for us. For weeks I’ve tried to find a way to use my new Panasonic HM-TA1 pocket video camera for new LMTV entries and my own projects. Last week I discovered Cheese Webcam Booth (Cheese), which is the topic of this week’s article. Using Cheese is intuitive and closely resembles the Apple iPad2 Photo Booth app. The difference in price between Cheese (free) and Photo Booth ($499+ for the iPad2) is significant, which definitely gives you something to smile about.
Looking for a way to get involved in the Ubuntu Community? Ahmed Kamal of Ubuntu Community Team at Canonical as posted a call for help for anyone who want to Help Shape Ubuntu.Maps.Com.
Make Linux Software posted a video showing the “fastest ever embedded Linux boot.” The video shows a BeagleBoard equipped with a 720MHz TI OMAP3530 processor booting Linux 2.6.32 in an impressive 300 milliseconds from boot loader to shell — although the jury is out on just how useful the stripped-down 1.5MB image might be.
Texas Instruments (TI) announced an “OpenLink” project, which has released a battery-optimized, open source Linux wireless driver stack for mobile devices. The initial release will support Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and FM communications on TI’s WiLink WL1271/3 and WL1281/3 chips, running on the ARM Cortex-based BeagleBoard and PandaBoard boards under Ubuntu, MeeGo, and Android, says the company.
The web browser portion of the Android market is one of the most fiercely competitive markets since all users at one point or another need to browse the Internet on their devices. Although Android ships with a default web browser, the increasing demands users place on surfing the Internet has lead to the launch of more advanced browsers that offer added features and usability.
“I am excited for this, the third Community Leadership Summit – the last two events have been a great success, and this year is sure to be the best event yet for bringing together community leaders to share best practice in a truly independent environment” – Jono Bacon, Ubuntu Community Manager and Founder of the Community Leadership Summit
Google has announced the availability of two open source hash functions for producing 64- and 128-bit hash values from strings. The company states that these functions are suitable for such applications as hash tables – eg. indexing a database – but are not suitable for cryptography.
Many traditional media entities have embraced social-media services like Twitter and Facebook and blogs — at least to some extent — as tools for reporting and journalism, using them to publish and curate news reports. But newspapers in particular seem to have a hard time accepting the “social” part of these tools, at least when it comes to letting their journalists engage with readers as human beings. A case in point is the new social-media policy introduced at a major newspaper in Canada, which tells its staff not to express personal opinions — even on their personal accounts or pages — and not to engage with readers in the comments.
Zunguzungu’s got an excellent, nuanced piece on the creation and attribution of value in newsgathering and reporting. Zz reminds us that the current arrangement is perfect arbitrary and contingent: no underlying universal principle reifies certain news-related activities (writing the story), ascribes no ownership stake to other activities (sources quoted and unquoted, tipoffs, references); and damns yet another set of activities (curating, aggregating and commenting upon the news).
You head down to the local government office to pick up your check. But when you get there, the clerk says you can’t have the refund — unless you pay him a bribe. So you pay the bribe, and the clerk gives you your refund.
Both you and the clerk have just committed a crime, according to Indian law.
Kaushik Basu, chief economic adviser to India’s Ministry of Finance, wants to change that.
Last week, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) tried to get the Senate to adopt candidate Barack Obama’s core principle of presidential warmaking powers.
Paul added an amendment to a bill that would adopt as the “sense of the Senate” the following quote from candidate Obama: “The president does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.”
We just wrote about how Max Davis, who’s trying to create a silly and totally pointless compulsory licensing system for MMS content was more or less laughed out of court in the lawsuit he filed against the mobile operators, claiming that they were running illegal P2P file sharing programs in the form of their MMS capabilities. It apparently took him all of a few days to come up with a new, perhaps even more ridiculous strategy: he’s suing AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile and TracFone for supposed antitrust violations over the same basic issues. Once again, it seems clear that this is an incredibly weak (and almost certainly unproductive) attempt at getting these companies to agree to his pointless licensing scheme.
Fast-moving chunks of space debris zipped uncomfortably close to the International Space Station twice in the past week — cosmic close calls that will likely become more common over the next several years, experts predict.
For one thing, after 50 years of spaceflight there is just more junk up there than there used to be, sharing space with vehicles and their human crews. And this debris can snowball — as when satellites collide, spawning thousands of new pieces of orbiting junk.
Private spaceship maker SpaceX announced plans Tuesday (April 5) for a new heavy-lift rocket, a vehicle that would be the most powerful commercial rocket ever built and haul much heavier loads than the company’s previous boosters.
In 2003 Paul Ryan was one of 207 Republicans in the House of Representatives who voted for the Medicare prescription drug benefit championed by President George W. Bush—a reckless expansion of a huge program that was already heading for bankruptcy. Yesterday Ryan, who now chairs the House Budget Committee, did partial penance for that budget-busting blunder with a plan that includes ambitious Medicare reforms as well as $5.8 trillion in spending cuts during the next decade.
At a time when Democrats and Republicans are squabbling over whether to cut $33 billion or $61 billion in spending this year—neither of which would make much of a dent in a deficit that is expected to hit $1.6 trillion—Ryan’s plan may seem breathtakingly bold. But while it is admirably forthright in some respects, it dodges several important questions. It’s too bad there is no opposing party to keep the Republicans fiscally honest.
The CTIA is arguing that a San Francisco ordinance demanding radiation levels be displayed on phone packaging breaches the First Amendment of the US constitution, and is thus illegal.
Speaking to CNET, the wireless telecommunications organisation claimed that forcing shops to reveal the specific absorption rate (SAR) of phone handsets infringes on the retailers right to free speech by compelling them to mention it. The ordinance requires all San Francisco retailers to provide the information at the point of sale, though it hasn’t yet come in to force.
San Francisco’s board of supervisors has agreed to put its Right-to-Know Ordinance under further review after the wireless industry’s lobbying arm claimed the legislation infringes on the First Amendment rights of cell phone retailers.
In an interview with CNET, CTIA spokesman John Walls said the city cannot force retailers to distribute materials that warn consumers about the possible negative effects of cell phone radiation. “You can’t compel speech,” he said. “Telling retailers to give out that information violates the First Amendment.”
The head of INTERPOL has emphasized the need for a globally verifiable electronic identity card (e-ID) system for migrant workers at an international forum on citizen ID projects, e-passports, and border control management.
Speaking at the fourth Annual EMEA ID WORLD summit, INTERPOL Secretary General Ronald K. Noble said that regulating migration levels and managing borders presented security challenges for countries and for the world that INTERPOL was ideally-placed to help address.
Transportation Security Administration administrator John Pistole defended controversial full-body scanning techniques that have endured withering criticism from Republican leaders in Congress.
Speaking at a Department of Homeland Security conference in Washington Friday, Pistole said the body scanners that have attracted attention in recent months were TSA’s best option for preventing non-metallic explosive devices.
The authorities may seize laptops, cameras and other digital devices at the U.S. border without a warrant, and scour through them for days hundreds of miles away, a federal appeals court ruled.
The 2-1 decision (.pdf) Wednesday by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals comes as the government is increasingly invoking its broad, warrantless search-and-seizure powers at the U.S. border to probe the digital lives of travelers.
Under the “border search exception” of United States law, international travelers, including U.S. citizens, can be searched without a warrant as they enter the country. Under the Obama administration, law enforcement agents have aggressively used this power to search travelers’ laptops, sometimes copying the hard drive before returning the computer to its owner.
Back in January, we noted the somewhat ironic fact that a US Senator had put a “secret hold” on a bill to protect government whistleblowers. We wondered if someone would blow the whistle and out that Senator. Thankfully, the folks from On the Media stepped up, and set up a project to find out who put that secret hold on the bill. Last we had checked in, they had narrowed it down to three possible Senators: Jon Kyl, Jeff Sessions and James Risch.
In September 2008, Bernard von NotHaus donned prison stripes at the Silver Summit at the Best Western Coeur d’Alene Inn.
Von NotHaus, 67, was at the summit pitching his own “Liberty Dollar” coins, but dressed the part of a convict to stick a symbolic finger in the eye of the federal authorities. They had seized records, dies for casting coins, and Liberty Dollars from three Coeur d’Alene businesses linked to his currency. Sunshine Minting Inc. in Coeur d’Alene made coins for von NotHaus.
When Bill Kristol endorsed America’s intervention in Libya, the Weekly Standard editor was being completely consistent with everything else he has said about American foreign policy. He just wasn’t being consistent with his pose as a proponent of fiscal restraint. It’s bracing to watch Kristol twirl so easily from denouncing “the Democrats’ orgy of spending” and complaining about Republicans who “don’t have a credible plan to deal with the debt or the deficit” to jubilating that the president “didn’t shrink from defending the use of force.” But the pundit’s gyrations can’t obscure a basic reality: You can pay your bills or you can be a global policeman, but you can’t do both. Not in 2011.
According to ABC, the cost of Obama’s kinetic spending reached $600 million in its first week. The Pentagon estimates that the total could reach $800 million by the end of September, and the Pentagon just might be lowballing. Todd Harrison, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, has told The National Journal that the price tag could “easily pass the $1 billion mark on this operation, regardless of how well things go.” And if things don’t go well…
Here’s yet another ridiculously bad ruling for search engines in Italy. Glyn Moody points us to the news of a blog post by a lawyer involved in the case (against Google) who is happy that his side prevailed and that Google is liable for search autocomplete suggestions. The case involved someone who was upset that doing a Google search on his name popped up “con man” (“truffatore”) and “fraud” (“truffa”) as autocomplete Google search suggestions. We’ve seen similar cases elsewhere, and France has (most of the time) also ruled against Google.
Of course, this is ridiculous for a variety of reasons. Google is not “creating” this content. It’s accurately suggesting results based on what users are searching. Clearly, people are searching on this particular individual along with the two terms. That’s not Google’s fault. Yet Google is liable for it?
As we go through this brief extension in three of the more controversial provisions of the Patriot Act, which give law enforcement tremendous leeway in spying on people with very little oversight, there have been some hearings about those provisions. At a recent Senate Judiciary Hearing about this, FBI director Robert Mueller was asked if any of the three provisions had been found to be abused. Mueller responded, “I’m not aware of any.” However, as the EFF notes, it has clear evidence of the roving wiretap being abused, which it found via some FOIA documents. Tellingly, when it requested info about Patriot Act violations, it received heavily redacted info. However, via a different FOIA request, it received other information that, when combined with the first FOIA request, reveals a clear abuse by the FBI.
That particular war has already been lost, pretty much. Conventional wisdom among the tech savvy is that DRM is bad, and few of the indies use it. Nontechnical ebook buyers will figure it out when they decide to move to another reader system and can’t take their purchases with them. (The ebook business is so new that most people are still on their first reader and their first forty or fifty ebooks.) The day will come in the next few years when Big Print will be a lot less big, and competing against a lot more ebook publishers who have long understood that DRM does no one any good.
Innovation has emerged as a key means by which the US can pull itself out of this lackluster economy. In the State of the Union, President Obama referred to China and India as new threats to America’s position as the world’s leading innovator. But the threats are not just external. One of the greatest threats to the US’s ability to innovate lies within: specifically, with the music and movie business. These Big Content businesses are attempting to protect themselves from change so aggressively that they risk damaging America’s position as a world leader in innovation.
WASHINGTON–The tone of a congressional hearing held today on antipiracy was set early when Rep. Bob Goodlatte suggested that Google was falling short in its antipiracy efforts.
Seeing as he’s a Senator, it would help if he were familiar with the law. As such, he would know that (1) copyright infringement is not “theft,” and (2) yes, the First Amendment protects all kinds of speech, even speech made by criminals and (3) the Free Speech issues that many of us are concerned with are the takedowns of legitimate non-infringing content, which we’ve seen happen repeatedly by Homeland Security — which is the type of program Leahy is looking to expand with COICA.
Trademark and copyright holders frequently characterize piracy as a legal failure, arguing that tougher laws and increased enforcement are needed to stem infringing activity. But a new global study on piracy, backed by Canada’s International Development Research Centre, comes to a different conclusion. Following several years of independent investigation in six emerging economies, the report concludes that piracy is chiefly a product of a market failure, not a legal one.
The Social Science Research Council launched the study in 2006, identifying partner institutions in South Africa, Russia, Brazil, Mexico, Bolivia, and India to better understand the market for media piracy such as music, movies, and software. The result is the most comprehensive analysis of piracy to date.
We’ve been discussing how the FDA has been systematically banning drugs that have been on the market for years, and retroactively granting monopolies to particular pharmaceutical firms. The case that’s drawn the most attention is that of Makena, a drug to prevent early childbirth which is provided on the market by a bunch of different firms, and was competitively priced around $10/dose. Yet, after the FDA stepped in and gave a monopoly to KV Pharmaceutical under the economically-clueless belief that this would help make the drug “more available,” there was a massive public backlash when people discovered KV would increase the price of the drug from $10 to $1,500.
We’ve certainly suggested that Chris Dodd was making a big mistake by focusing on the MPAA’s old talking points in his new role as chief of that lobbying organization. Rather than leading Hollywood to a future of new business models and smarter embrace of what consumers want, he’s kicked things off by being anti-consumer, anti-technology and a supporter of previous policies that have failed massively. It’s not exactly a recipe for success.
We’ve already mentioned how the House’s Hearing on: “Promoting Investment and Protecting Commerce Online: Legitimate Sites v. Parasites” turned into something of a bitchfest at Google for not waving a magic wand and stopping infringement. However, I also wanted to look at the prepared statements of the four participants, which seemed to overflow with ridiculous strawmen.
First up, we have esteemed and respected First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams, who (it is always said) defended the NY Times in the Pentagon Papers case many years ago. While Abrams is widely respected, it feels like lately he’s been getting quite sloppy in his thinking. Late last year, he published a piece trying to differentiate Wikileaks from the NY Times/Pentagon Papers situation, and was widely criticized for getting many of his facts wrong — undermining his entire argument.
The latest in the ongoing trial of Joel Tenenbaum, the student who was found guilty of sharing 30 songs online, and told to pay $675,000 for it, until the judge unilaterraly reduced the amount to $67,500. As we noted at the time, it really seemed like Tenenbaum had horrifically bad legal counsel, in the form of Harvard law professor Charlie Nesson, who still seems more focused on making the case a circus, rather than focusing in on the key issues. That does not, however, mean there aren’t key issues here, with the big one being the appropriate standards for determining how much one should have to pay if found guilty of file sharing.
The appeal was just heard on Monday, and you can listen to the oral arguments (mp3) from the court’s website. It’s definitely an interesting hearing and worth listening to. As with most appeals court situations, the bulk of the work is done in the briefs that were filed prior to the hearing, and which everyone is familiar with. The oral hearings get right to the point and drill down on where the panel of judges has questions.
The estate of Rick James, best known for his song “Super Freak,” filed a proposed class action lawsuit on Friday against Universal Music Group over money owed from digital downloads and ringtones.
The new class action lawsuit comes in wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision not to review a case initiated by Eminem’s former Detroit-based producing partners, F.B.T. Productions, which won a lower 9th Circuit ruling last September deeming digital music to be more akin to a license than a physical sale of music. The distinction is important: Copyright owners get a 50% share on royalties from licenses but only about a 12-20% royalty rate from sales.
A coalition of progressive activists and conservative bloggers slammed the bipartisan push to crack down on online piracy backed by organized labor and the entertainment industry on Monday, calling it an encroachment on freedom of speech.
Lawmakers from both parties are scheduled to hold a press conference at the Capitol Monday, where they are expected to renew their push for new online piracy laws that give feds greater authority to shut down sites that host or link to pirated content.
The effort will likely resemble the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA), which was introduced by Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and passed the committee last year. The White House has backed the effort and recommended stiffer penalties for online piracy convictions.
There are thousands of sites that link to video on the Internet and it’s becoming increasingly common for them to be threatened by rightsholders when they link to unauthorized content. However, things have gone a stage further as a site is now being sued by a copyright group for linking to completely legal content provided by official sources.
So argued Kenneth M. Stern, a California lawyer; no dice, said the district court in Stern v. Does (C.D. Cal., decided Feb. 10, 2011 but just now made available on Westlaw). No dice, said the court, concluding that the message lacked the modicum of creativity required for copyright protection — because it was so short and dictated by functional considerations — and that the copying was a fair use. Both conclusions seem right to me, though the fair use conclusion is especially clear, given the utter lack of any likely effect on the value of plaintiff’s work.
During the last couple of weeks a heated debate has sprung up around the claimed massive music piracy of a relatively unknown band. One Soul Thrust currently have just 176 followers on Twitter yet according to their manager the group is being destroyed by the pirating masses who have, to date, downloaded their debut album 100,000 times. With the CRIA apparently supporting the band’s position, it’s time to investigate.
When Zediva launched, we already knew it was going to face a legal fight from the MPAA and the movie studios. The company lets people stream movies they want to see, but tries to get around the legal licensing issues by only streaming directly from internet connected DVD players, playing legitimately acquired DVDs. Their argument is that it’s really no different than renting a movie and bringing it to your own DVD player. And, perhaps, the Cablevision ruling in the US on remote DVRs gives them some support for their position. But, there was no way the industry was going to just let this go by without any sort of fight. And, so, the MPAA has now sued the company claiming that it’s a “sham,” and that Zediva is running an illegal video-on-demand service without the proper licenses. In some ways, this case could also impact the attempts by cloud music players to stream legitimate content without a license as well.
The movie studios have seen the online movie rental service Zediva and filed their thumbs-down review of the site in federal court Monday, asking for monetary damages and an immediate shutdown.
Zediva.com, which officially launched in mid-March, rents new release movies without permission from the studios by letting its customers rent a DVD player and disc from afar. Only one person can rent a given disc at a time. That, the company argues, puts it in the same legal bucket as a traditional video rental store.
Hadopi, the French agency charged with handling file-sharers’ copyright digressions, has once again been shamed by a copyright-related blunder. The agency which mandates that all citizens secure their networks to keep out freeloading pirates, has a surprisingly unsecure site itself. Ironically enough, the vulnerability allowed outsiders to change the search engine of the Hadopi site into that of The Pirate Bay.
Techdirt talks a lot about how to make money in the music biz without actually selling music. Consider this an improvement. With these instructions, you’ll hardly have to produce any music at all, and if you do, you won’t have to go through all that time-intensive and “extremely expensive” production/promotion stuff.
Over the past several months a series of domain name seizures by the Department of Justice (DOJ) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) made headlines across the Internet.
Under the flag of “Operation In Our Sites” the authorities shut down a dozen file-sharing and streaming sites, as well as close to 80 sites selling counterfeit goods. After two months of silence on the domain seizure front, the MPAA has now applauded the US authorities for their “successful” enforcement efforts.
Amazon’s decision to launch its new Cloud Player without securing additional music licenses has been described as a “bold move” by many observers. It takes serious guts for Amazon to simply declare that it doesn’t need licenses — especially when even casual observers know the music industry thinks otherwise.
Liberty Media/Corbin Fisher continues its somewhat aggressive attempts to blame everyone but itself for failing to put in place a better business model. Remember, we just noted the bizarre claim that it made in the mass infringement lawsuit it filed that anyone who did not secure their internet routers to block all infringing material was negligent. In the comments to that post, someone pointed out that the company also had recently changed its terms of service to say that if anyone with an account had content from that account end up pirated, the user owed $25,000 even if they could prove that the account was hacked…
Posted in Site News at 4:20 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: File sizes to shrink considerably in future shows
TIM and I had a quick chat yesterday after it turned out that we had oversampled 38 shows/episodes, basically saving at a sample rate far greater than what we had recorded. This becomes especially problematic because audio files are serves by a cache server that drops the connection after 10 minutes, which means that timeouts will affect downloaders on a low-bandwidth connection. Some listeners reported this to us last year, but it wasn’t until yesterday that we thought about shrinking file sizes. The idea came from a listener. On an important and technical note, this listener asked whether feasible to “make the files much smaller (monophonic with a slower sample rate and lower resolution).” I then spent over an hour experimenting with Audacity and ffmpeg. I ran a series of tests where parameters in the encoders are changed and I then listened to the results. The VoIP recording we do is at 16KHz, compared to the far greater frequency which we used to encode this in (huge waste of space for no gain in quality). Eventually I found that even without using the command line, e.g. ffmpeg -ab 16k -ar 11025, I could still rely on Audacity to handle both .mp3 and .ogg extensions to produce files about a quarter of the size they used to be. The only drawback of that is that when we have music tracks (of higher sampling/resolution) they obviously degrade in quality. Since the vast majority of the recorded tracks will always be talk, that ought to be worth the compromise and smaller files would also make storage and bandwidth less of an issue (caching resolves only the latter, to a degree).
Would anybody be interested in video versions of the show? SIP Communicator and Ekiga are compatible with my webcam and gtk-recordmydesktop can be used to show Web sites and other things while the show is running. █
Summary: Despite projects like OpenSUSE, Novell promote proprietary software, spreads Microsoft APIs, and gives Microsoft anti-Linux ammunition
THE video above shows Novell and Microsoft as a pair, as usual. Those two companies are not rivals. In other recent videos about Novell [1, 2] we just see a lot of proprietary software advertising from Novell, which is more like Microsoft than Red Hat. Except for Novell’s proprietary agenda and SLE* releases as described in the British technology press [1, 2], there’s negligible OpenSUSE news (very little of it these days) and news about Novell’s spreading of Mono. Some bits of news are a little more enlightening:
Gnote is a great choice because it’s lightweight and doesn’t have Mono as a dependency.
It is amazing that some people refuse to believe that Novell’s .NET/C# advocacy is any different from its Silver Lie advocacy. It’s about APIs, not just patents. The Hovsepian-led Novell is a parasite feeding on the GNU/Linux community in order to make itself richer by serving Microsoft agenda inside this community. Novell is most likely to give its patents to Microsoft pretty soon (another massive cash infusion for Novell and FUD infusion for Microsoft), so let’s not pretend that Novell is a defender of the community. █
Summary: USPTO encourages litigation — not innovation — from people who were once productive and lost the plot, then used the patent system to fulfill their sense of entitlement
Suing over 100 companies is the type of action taken by Traul Allen, the patent troll who is also the co-founder of Microsoft; and that’s just what Jay Walker is doing [1, 2, 3, 4] after serving as an actual participating member of society. From Priceline.com he moved on to this:
A group of lawsuits filed yesterday by Priceline founder Walker Digital take aim at Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and more than 100 other companies for infringing on key parts of its patent portfolio.
The 15 lawsuits, filed in U.S. District Court of Delaware, say these companies are infringing Walker Digital-owned patents covering things like e-commerce, private social-networking communications, online auctions, and a driving directions tool with visual cues.
Under the guise of “research”, Walker does the same thing as Interval, which also attacks Android (Linux-powered) right now:
In a broad move, technology research and development lab Walker Digital—which most famously gave birth to Priceline.com—has filed some 15 lawsuits against more than 100 leading technology companies, alleging they infringe on a broad array of it patents. The company chairman, Jay Walker, is the founder of Priceline.com and the lead inventor on the majority of Walker Digital’s patent and patent applications, and claims a broad number of patents that apply to ecommerce, retailing, online publishing, gaming, education and other industries—and now he wants to be compensated for other companies allegedly using his work.
The reason we’ve brought up Walker’s descent to patent-trolling is that it helps show what practices the USPTO empowers. This makes lawyers — not scientists — stronger.
Many implementations/execution are either inspired by others or are simultaneous realisations, which clearly lead to overlap. Should Google sue Microsoft for all its knockoffs of Google’s products. How about this new example?
“Me too” Microsoft now Streetside – Have they heard of Google’s Streetview?
[...]
So its not Google Streetview then is it? Just like I saw with WP7, I believe it’s a watered down version of an already successful product – I’ll let you decide though. Watch out for a Bingmobile in a town near you!
Patents are a game waged by the losers (those who cannot compete), suggests the track record. Google does not sue Microsoft for copying many of Google’s ideas (or Google-acquired ideas/companies), whereas Microsoft keeps tying to extort Android with patent lawsuits and get Google in trouble by lobbying regulators/politicians. Read this new article:
U.S. General Services Administration Associate Administrator David McClure told a Senate subcommittee Tuesday that his office hadn’t pulled FISMA accreditation from Google’s touted Apps for Government applications, but was in the process of recertifying a more advanced version of the software.
Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., asked McClure to respond to a company blog post from Microsoft Corporate Vice President David Howard Monday charging that recently unsealed U.S. Department of Justice documents reveal that the Google Apps for Government application had not been certified under the Federal Information Security Management Act.
The DOJ documents are from a federal court case in which Google has charged that Microsoft was unfairly awarded a contract to move the U.S. Department of the Interior email systems to the cloud. FISMA certification would allow the Google apps, which were a part of its pitch for the DOI contract, to be used by a greater number of federal employees.
Groklaw remarks: “You thought 2011 was a good year to start believing every word Microsoft says about competitors? What? Are you nuts?” █
Accepting the award on Torvalds’ behalf will be conference keynote speaker Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation. Zemlin works with the world’s largest technology companies, including Google, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Intel, Nokia and others, to help define the future of computing on the server, in the cloud and on a variety of new mobile computing devices. His work at the vendor-neutral Linux Foundation gives him a unique and aggregate perspective on the global technology industry.
One of the big advantages of using Linux is that its security tends to be so much better than that of the competing alternatives. That’s due in large part to the way Linux assigns permissions, but it’s also certainly true that the open source operating system is targeted by malware writers far less frequently than Windows is, in particular, simply because it’s less widely used and so much more diverse.
[...]
There are, of course, countless other security tools for Linux out there, many of them excellent as well.
Opera 11.10 aka Barracuda has been released today. With the new, more flexible Speed Dial your favorite sites are better looking than ever. Speed Dial automatically uses website logos and lets Web developers make content tailored for speed dial. And in Opera 11.10 you can add as many sites to Speed Dial as you like.
Opera Software today announced the final release of Opera 11.10, an incremental update with a barrel full of subtle changes. Perhaps the biggest one is a revamped and faster Turbo that’s up to four times as fast as before, the Norwegian browser maker claims. Part of the secret sauce in the recipe for faster Turbo is the added support for Google’s WebP image format, which provides lossy compression for photographic images.
Project Bossanova has high hopes to develop “the first 3D game built especially with Linux as the first priority. It will set the standard in gameplay, graphics, compatibility, community integration and more.” In addition, they plan to have the game, now announced as RunServer’s MMT, to be open-source. This is an MMOPRG game and it’s being built using the Unigine Engine.
For the next 14 days, you can get Wolfire Games’ freshly-released Humble Frozenbyte Bundle! Like the first two bundles, you pay what you want to download five independent, DRM-free, cross-platform computer games, and choose to divide your money between the game developers, Child’s Play, and EFF. The Frozenbyte Bundle includes Trine, Shadowgrounds Survivor, the unpublished game Splot, and gaming prototype Jackclaw, in which you get to rampage through a city, throw cars, and generally cause mayhem.
KDE Spain is organizing Akademy-es 2011, the annual meeting of KDE users and contributors in Barcelona, Spain from May 20th through May 22nd. Akademy-es is an important event in the KDE calendar. Attendance and the technical quality of papers have increased significantly during each of the previous events.
New this year, Akademy-es will take place in two different locations. The events of each day are designed to fit ideally with the surroundings. On Friday, Akademy-es will be held at the North Campus of the Polytechnic University of Catalunya, and weekend activities will be at The School of Sant Marc de Sarrià.
The default desktop opens with a shaded cover that is actually a desktop lock. You can drag that away to unlock and reveal these “plasma strips” that are for KDE widgets. One is an RSS feeds list and another is a weather widget. Clicking on a feed title opens the article or post in Firefox – one might expect Konqueror. You can drag the strips with your mouse cursor as a whole to reveal any additional strips that didn’t fit on the display. You can add more widget strips by clicking the “plus sign” at the end of widget strips. On each strip is a configuration icon that can be clicked on to reveal another configuration icon and a quit icons. If you drag the original configuration icon to the newly spawned configuration icon that opens the configuration dialog for that particular widget. Using the handle at the bottom of the screen will drag the whole strip containment out of sight to reveal an almost normal appearing desktop.
GNOME 3 and Ubuntu’s soon-to-be released Unity are the first GNOME desktops designed from the start with usability principles in mind. Not that releases in the GNOME 2 series ignored usability, but in GNOME 2, usability was an addition to the desktop, comparable to adding the foundation after the house was built.
Whether you use GNOME 3 or Unity will probably depend on your distribution’s choice. But assuming you have a choice, which should you use? Suggesting an answer is hard, because in many ways the two are distinctly similar in design, with the differences largely in the details.
The New York Stock Exchange and Deutsche Borse are planning a move to a single cash equities trading platform, understood to be based on Red Hat Linux, in a crucial step towards saving €79 million (£64 million) in annual IT costs and delivering robust, fast messaging.
If the merger goes ahead, the exchanges will also integrate “complementary” derivatives businesses, and combine their US options platforms. The savings represent 26 percent of the €300 million total planned cost cuts, which also include more efficient clearing and market operations.
With an announcement on the security mailing list, Canonical has confirmed that support for Ubuntu 9.10 will cease on April 29 2011. This came as no surprise as it adheres to the expected support cycle of a .10 Ubuntu release, and 9.10 is now 18 months old.
The recommended upgrade path from 9.10 is to Ubuntu 10.4. 10.04 is a long term support (LTS) release, and support will end on April 2013. Note that, according to official Ubuntu documentation, it’s not possible to skip a release version when upgrading. So, it’s not possible to go straight from 9.10 to 10.10. It is possible to upgrade from 9.10 to 10.04 and then to 10.10. That’s quite a lot to go through, and personally, I’d be tempted to make a fresh install and migrate the user data.
This cycle we started off determined to make it easy for anyone who wanted to contribute to Ubuntu Unity to have no roadblocks in their way. We concentrated on making our work processes as smooth and easy as possible. We had Q+A sessions in IRC, Ask Me Anythings on Reddit, and regular status reports so that anyone who wanted to dive in this cycle could grab Unity and fix a bug.
Should Linux users try Moon? Since it is more of a creative spin-off of Ubuntu, and not a completely self-made distro, it really is more a matter of taste, computing style, and personal preference than functionality or utility. Former and current Mac users looking for an easy to use, friendly distro with a familiar interface can find refuge in MoonOS to ease any transition pains they might experience in swapping to Linux. Of course, like Ubuntu, MoonOS is an excellent beginner’s distro, and it will provide most of the tools a former Windows user may be looking for in Linux. Even those who are tired with Ubuntu and wish to try a different approach will discover Moon to be just as easy as – if not easier than – Ubuntu with its Docky alternative. MoonOS’ default theme is arguably more attractive, although whether Moon’s green is more likable than Ubuntu’s brown is a purely subjective matter. Also, all Ubuntu users have to do is change their default appearance, and the argument ceases to exist.
Finally, more experienced users could decide that Moon does not meet their advanced needs, and Ubuntu fans and Linux veterans may be annoyed by Docky and unimpressed with the original artwork. Nevertheless, with its alternative take on Ubuntu and its colorful, customizable Docky, MoonOS remains easy enough for anyone to use and interesting enough for even a dedicated Linux user to try.
The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux, today announced that Renesas Electronics Corporation is its newest member.
Renesas is a premier supplier of advanced semiconductor solutions, including microcontrollers (MCUs), systems-on-chip (SoC) solutions and a broad range of analog and power devices. The Japan-based company is aggressively investing in the areas of next-generation automotives, mobile phones, set-top boxes and other increasingly sophisticated electronics that are running Linux. For example, Renesas recently announced new SoCs for next-generation mobile phones and for dashboard-mounted car navigation systems, respectively, that support advanced human machine interfaces (HMI).
According to All Things Digital, HTC is currently bigger than Nokia in terms of market caps by about $1.04 billion and RIM by $5 billion. This according to Robert Chen is due to “a very unique business model and ecosystem strategy.”
Mozilla is doing an admirable job of helping users get the most out of Firefox 4, including posting lists of add-ons that can lead to performance problems. But its rapid release cycle is new, and it remains to be seen–especially since previous Firefox development proceeded much more slowly–if Mozilla is ready to follow the cycle that it has announced.
Recently I was asked by a family member to set them up with a copy of Publisher. Apparently, they weren’t aware of the cost involved in purchasing this software, so I suggested we look into some free alternatives that might better meet their needs. After some thought, I remembered that Microsoft Publisher is just Word with a few additional bells and whistles at the user’s disposal. And remembering that most desktop publishing software is a bit overwhelming for most folks, I instead chose to make due with OpenOffice Writer. Why not simply choose Serif PagePlus Starter Edition? Honestly, as great as the software is, there is just too much going on. At this point, I might as well have suggested Scribus. No, keeping things limited to drawing tables and inserting images was where it’s at. But this leaves us with the need to get some decent clip art inserted into Writer so that it’s ready to go.
Ross Turk is the new director of community at Talend , a company that’s not afraid to say they use an open core model. In this H Half Hour, The H asks Turk about how the open core model works at Talend and how the company is building a community around its data transformation and management tools.
Venture capital funding for open source software-related vendors declined 14% in the first quarter. According to our preliminary figures, OSS-related vendors raised $79.8m in Q1, compared to $92.5m a year ago.
Richard Stallman, founder of the free software movement and the GNU Project, spoke Monday on the benefits and threats of digital inclusion in society.
Stallman defines digital inclusion as the creation of an inclusive information society in which all people have access to information and communication technology.
Slowly but surely, biology and biotechnology efforts that follow open source principles are improving, and as they mature, they could have a profound effect on healthcare, longevity, disease control, and much more. Biotechnology reporter Luke Zimmerman’s latest dispatch on the work of Sage Bionetworks founder Stephen Friend offers a case in point. With gene sequencing efforts going on all around the world–but mostly going on in silos, where information is not shared in optimal ways–Friend is convinced that shared data could bring on huge advances in biotechnology. His is only one of several promising efforts in this area.
What platform versions are being downloaded? What geographies is your service popular in? Which APIs are being consumed? What progamming languages are most popular? From web analytics of your documentation to user activation data, you can answer these questions. But this isn’t happening at present.
The Portuguese Parliament approved on the 6th of April 2011 a Law for the adoption of Open Standards on public IT systems. This law represents the consensus reached by the represented parties following two proposals submitted by PCP and BE, that were discussed and merged on the Working Group that produced the final text.
Nearly 120 stakeholders and another 34 webinar attendees gathered for the April 5-6 ANSI Workshop: Standards and Codes for Electric Drive Vehicles in Bethesda, MD, to examine the standards and conformance activities needed to drive the safe, effective, and large-scale deployment of electric drive vehicles (EDV).
Here I extracted a few quotes from the European Parliament resolution of 6 April 2011 on a Single Market for Enterprises and Growth which show its special emphasis on improving interoperability conditions for the single market. Strassbourg sents a clear message.
This week a new consortium was launched that may signal who will finally own the last great, unclaimed consumer computing platform – the automobile. The new organization is the Car Connectivity Consortium, and the winner is . . . well, we’ll come back to that a little later. Suffice it to say for now that the fifteen year battle to control the digital future of the automobile could be at an end, and that its resolution may tell us something about the future of the digital desktop as well.
We may have set a new low for idiotic lawsuits. Jonathan Tasini, a freelance reporter who was famously involved in a lawsuit with the NY Times, concerning copyrights on a database of freelancer articles, is now suing the Huffington Post for not paying him while he wrote for it by choice. The basis of the lawsuit is the already discussed fact that a bunch of folks who blogged for the Huffington Post are stupidly upset that Arianna Huffington sold her site to AOL for $315 million, and that they didn’t get any of the money. Of course, they didn’t invest their money in the site. They held no equity and, most importantly, they wrote for the site for free by choice. If they didn’t like the “deal”, they shouldn’t have done it.
Huffington Post bloggers who think they ought to get paid for their volunteer writing have been litigating their case in the court of public opinion. Now they’re taking it to a real one.
Today, a group of bloggers led by union organizer and journalist Jonathan Tasini filed a class-action suit against the Huffington Post, founder Arianna Huffington, and AOL, which acquired the news-and-blogs site in February.
The NYT has a front page story on the debate over Representative Ryan’s plan to privatize Medicare. The article is an entirely in the form of he said/she said, providing readers with absolutely no information that would allow them to assess the arguments over the plan. This is especially important since the article reports that changes like those in the Ryan plan are necessary to control costs.
Democrats who think Paul Ryan and his Republican colleagues have foolishly wrapped their arms around the third rail of American politics by proposing to hand the Medicare program to private insurers will themselves look foolish if they take for granted that the public will always be on their side.
Miles C. CollierOn March 23, 2011 a group called Revere America issued a dire-sounding PRNewswire press release titled, “Americans Fear Loss of Freedom on Anniversary of Health Care Reform Law.” It warned that “a majority” of Americans view health care reform as “a threat to their freedom” and cited a poll by Bill McInturff of Public Opinion Strategies to prove it. The release came well after Revere America had spent $2.5 million on attack ads in the 2010 mid-term elections to defeat Democratic candidates in two states — New York and New Hampshire — who had voted in favor of health care reform. Just prior to the mid-term elections, in the autumn of 2010, Revere America ran a a slew of false and misleading attack ads against the health care reform bill that erroneously called health reform “government-run healthcare” (a Republican and insurance industry buzz-phrase). The ads said that the new law will result in higher costs and longer waits in doctors’ offices. In another false claim aimed at inducing fear, the ads told viewers that “your right to keep your own doctor may be taken away.”
Today will go down in the public relations history books as the day health insurers and their allies began a coordinated campaign to ensure that the health care reform law is implemented in ways that will benefit them way more than the rest of us. Today is the day they plan to launch their brand new front group — drum roll, please — the Choice and Competition Coalition (CCC). But first, a bit of context.
In India, after the initial stunned reaction, the tone of the official response to our publication of the India Cables was set by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh questioning or disputing in Parliament the authenticity of the cables and what the U.S. Embassy and consulates were reporting back to the State Department. Here’s what he actually said in the Lok Sabha, our House of Commons, on March 18. He said the government “cannot confirm the veracity, contents or even the existence of such communication.” This seems to have set the Indian government apart from the rest of the governments, the rest of the world, at the receiving end, doesn’t it?
Yes, it does.
Have you come across this reaction anywhere else?
We have not come across this reaction and that reaction disturbed me. Because Hillary Clinton had been involved in informing the Indian government, in December [2010], as well as many other governments, that this was coming. There has been no question as to the credibility of any document we have ever published in the last four years, let alone the [U.S. Embassy] cables — which have been authenticated by the very aggressive action of the State Department towards us and by hundreds of journalists from the most reputable institutions across the world.
Gov. Jerry Brown on Tuesday signed legislation requiring California utilities to get one-third of their power from renewable sources, giving the state the most aggressive alternative energy mandate in the U.S.
Natural gas, with its reputation as a linchpin in the effort to wean the nation off dirtier fossil fuels and reduce global warming, may not be as clean over all as its proponents say.
Gas prices are approaching record highs, but so far most Americans do not appear to be drastically cutting back their driving or even their spending as they did in 2008.
Corporate insiders peddling the claim that drilling for methane gas will solve America’s energy needs just scored big in Washington — and for these insiders fracking for gas is very lucrative business. House Resolution 1380, given the feel-good moniker of the “New Alternative Transportation to Give Americans Solutions Act ” or “NAT GAS Act,” was announced on Wednesday, April 6, in the U. S. House of Representatives. The bill is 24-pages long and rewards the fracking industry with tax credits and products to help “drive” consumption. The bigger the vehicle, the more tax credits given.
Moral hazard in the financial system “looms larger than ever before,” even after the Dodd- Frank law gave U.S. federal agencies tools to regulate institutions that may be deemed too big to fail, said billionaire investor George Soros.
“The evidence is overwhelming that the first priority of the authorities is to prevent a market collapse, and everything else has to take second place,” Soros, chairman of Soros Fund Management LLC, said yesterday at a conference in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire.
In yesterday’s post, I compared two ways of solving the long-term Medicare deficit: (a) increasing payroll taxes and keeping Medicare’s current structure or (b) keeping payroll taxes where they are and converting Medicare into a voucher program. As a person who will need health insurance in retirement, I prefer (a), but others could differ.
Oil dropped to the lowest level this month on Tuesday as energy experts said the world will remain flush with surplus oil this year despite the loss of Libya’s exports and increased demand from Japan.
Oil was also pushed down after Goldman Sachs warned investors that the price had already topped its second-quarter forecast and is due for a “substantial pullback” in the near term. Traders took special notice of Goldman’s warning because the investment bank is considered a big player in oil markets, and it’s known for bullish price forecasts.
The fiscal savior of this country will be the person who persuades us to bite the bullet: Accept some pain now to remain prosperous later. That person will not be Rep. Paul Ryan.
The reviewers agree: The Path to Prosperity, aka the Republican budget proposal for 2012 that was released a week ago by the House Budget Committee — which Ryan chairs — is one helluva read. To liberals, it’s the nightmare of a madman with an ax chasing you down a long hallway. To conservatives, it’s a sweet dream of wonderland, where angels dine on Heritage Foundation press releases. Right or wrong, it is said, Ryan has at last set the stage for an honest debate about government spending and the federal deficit.
Higher taxes have been missing from the fierce budget battle that nearly shut down the federal government. But President Barack Obama is about to put them on the table – at least a modest version that he had pushed before and then rested on the shelf.
It’s been a little unclear what, exactly, President Obama could say on Wednesday that would count as a new plan for long-term deficit reduction. His pledge to avoid raising taxes on people making less than $250,000 means most taxes are off the table. The Affordable Care Act means most of his health-care reform ideas have already passed into law. The five-year non-security discretionary spending freeze got announced in his 2012 budget proposal, and though you could imagine defense cuts entering the picture, the White House hasn’t seemed eager to go down that road. That leaves tax reform and Social Security, neither of which the administration would be interested in attempting alone.
Fool junk mail recipients once, and then Fake penkeep fooling them over and over again. That’s the hope of a Virginia-based direct mail marketing company that has developed a specialized machine that makes junk mail envelopes look like they have been hand-written.
On April 6, 2011, FOX News announced it would help Beck “transition” into other ventures, which include for-air projects and FOX News’ websites. What the press release did not mention was the successful campaign against Beck initiated by Color of Change, an organization rooted in equal political access for people of color.
The Wisconsin state elections board and Milwaukee County District Attorney’s office have revealed a money laundering scheme involving illegal contributions to Scott Walker’s campaign committee by the head of Wisconsin & Southern Railroad Company.
The months-long investigation found that William Gardner, the CEO and president of Wisconsin & Southern Railroad (WSOR), instructed employees to make political campaign contributions for the 2010 elections and then reimbursed those donations from WSOR’s corporate account. Through this money-laundering scheme WSOR spent a total of $53,800 on political contributions in the 2010 election cycle, vastly exceeding the $10,000 per person (or per corporation) limit required by Wisconsin law; Gardner used corporate funds to reimburse 11 contributions from himself, his girlfriend, his daughter, and several employees. The majority of that spending, nearly $50,000, went towards the Friends of Scott Walker campaign committee.
Yesterday Ed Vaizey’s website blocking ‘Working Group’ met to discuss a plans for a voluntary scheme to block access to websites accused of infringing copyright. It’s an idea that has caused quite a stir; 2,000 people have so far written to their MPs and the terms ‘The Great Firewall of Britain’ and ‘Hadrian’s Firewall’ were coined on Twitter
Nominet’s discussions about domain suspensions started yesterday. Over 3,000 sites have so far been ‘suspended’ at the request of the Police. This has been taking place without any formal procedure, although an appeals mechanism has handled 12 complaints, of which 9 were upheld.
Hugo Roy asked my thoughts about the recent case of Google’s employees being convicted in Italy for a video that has been online a few months on Google Video (now YouTube).
I have already said so by and large, microblogged extensively on that. My opinion is that the decision is a shame for my Country.
[...]
Google, as soon as it was informed of the problem, took the content down and possibly thought it was over.
Not quite, as the Prosecutor in Milan, where Google is based in Italy and where the content was allegedly put online, decided to indict four Google executives. Recently the Court of Milan decided that the executives have violated Italian Data Protection Law and convicted them.
This is what I have learned from public sources, I hope I have not reported them inaccurately. I have no direct knowledge of the facts.
[...]
Filtering == censorship
It is impossible to put enough people in line to watch, inspect, report of each and any video that is uploaded. Too much information is put online per second, period.
So the solution for the Prosecutor seems to be “you are doing this in China, you can do this here”. What Google is doing there is censorship. So we want censorship here too.
Over the last couple of days, I’ve blogged a bit about the proposed legislation that came to be known as Bill C-52 in the last session of Parliament. (See: Canadian police state legislation needs closer examination, and Conservative majority would pass lawful access within 100 days. Also check out Michael Geist’s excellent post: The Conservatives Commitment to Internet Surveillance.) Bill C-52 fell off the order paper when the 40th Parliament was dissolved for the current election, but I think it really needs to be extensively discussed in the current election. (I should note that this is not necessarily a partisan issue, since it was originally proposed by the Liberals many elections ago.)
The company which has Microsoft, the creator of the world most insecure software products, as a partial owner [Microsoft has $250 million invested in Facebook and holds stakes in the company] can’t stay safer. Facebook, the social brokering site, continues to put users data and critical information at risk.
The company which harvested Gmail users data but refused to give them access to their own Facebook data to sync it with their Google account continues to put that sensitive data at risk.
Beijing has a doctrine of non-interference in other countries’ internal affairs, but the State Council Information Office releases an annual report on the US human rights record as a riposte to Washington’s criticisms. The document says it underlines the hypocrisy of the US and “its malicious design to pursue hegemony under the pretext of human rights”.
Last week the secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, criticised China’s “worsening” record – citing the detention of artist Ai Weiwei and others – as she released the annual state department survey of the human rights situation around the world. An introduction to the Chinese document, by the state news agency Xinhua, said the report was “full of distortions” and the US “turned a blind eye to its own terrible human rights situation”.
Next Tuesday, April 12th, the EU Parliament Committee on Industry, Research and Energy (ITRE) will hold a major vote for the future of wireless communications in the European Union. By amending the radio spectrum policy programme proposed by the European Commission, Members of the Parliament have an opportunity to boost wireless Internet access. By encouraging shared and unlicensed uses of the spectrum, they can create the next generation of WiFi networks that will improve access to the Internet in urban as well as rural communities, and launch the next wave of innovation in mobile communications. But the risk is for Europe to give in to media or telecoms corporations who would like to control the airwaves – a public resource. La Quadrature calls on EU citizens and NGOs to step into this important debate on the future of our communications system, which forms the structure of our democratic societies.
The Industry Committee of the European Parliament has adopted amendments to the EU Spectrum Policy Programme allowing for a free use of airwaves for citizens, which will lead to the development of the next generations of free wireless Internet communications (“next generation WiFi”). This vote is encouraging and must be confirmed in plenary, despite the pressure that broadcasters and telecoms industries will inevitably put on the European Parliament to keep airwaves under control.
Chris Castle is a Lawyer who specializes in the Music Industry. Of the many lawyers who weigh in on copyright issues, Chris is the one I have the most respect for. Chris admits up front that he has a strong economic interest in the issue, unlike Barry Sookman, James Gannon, or Richard Owens, who pretend that they do all of their writing out of the goodness of their hearts.
Chris Castle is a Music Industry Lawyer. I classify Chris as an honest lawyer, he has his opinions, and he’s quite willing to admit that his opinions are biased by his employment.
The Conservatives have launched another campaign over the iPod Tax today complete with website, video and Twitter account. I posted a lengthy account of the claims last December (short version – the Liberals on record now as opposing, the earlier record is open to debate), but the issue keeps returning. Given the attention to the issue, it is worth noting that Bill C-32, the Conservatives own copyright bill, would likely have led to a doubling of the fees that Canadians pay on blank CDs. Alternatively, it would have led to a dramatic reduction in revenues for Canadian artists. The reason stems from the government’s commitment to ratify the World Intellectual Property Organization’s Internet treaties and the legal requirements found in those treaties.
In the coming days, a college meeting of the European Commissioners will take place to decide the future of European copyright policy. This revision takes place in conditions that raise severe concerns from a democratic perspective and put fundamental rights at risk, especially when it comes to the Internet.
Controversial copyright-enforcement company Righthaven was already catching a lot of flak for its lawsuit against Brian Hill. Denver alt-weekly Westword was eagerly reporting that its biggest competitor, The Denver Post, was trying to make extra cash off its photos and articles—by working with Righthaven to sue a 20-year-old, chronically ill, mildly autistic hobby blogger. Now Righthaven has dropped that case. But the same Colorado judge who showed little patience for Righthaven’s tactics in the Hill case is overseeing dozens of other Righthaven cases.
We hope you will join us for future shows and 
