Bonum Certa Men Certa

Links - Copyright Maximalists turn on Libraries, Other Horrors. Will Yang Return to Yahoo?

Reader's Picks



  • Security



    • Another Nugget from M$
      Days ahead of the patch folks all around the world have been able to take over almost any PC on a LAN running that other OS just by placing a malicious .dll on some networked storage device. The mind boggles. I can see SANs intended to share files among the group to be used to own the whole LAN.


    • Google sheds some light on Iran's involvement with the Diginotar cert incident.
      It means that somebody in Iran had gone to great lengths to intercept supposedly secure Internet traffic, including Gmail messages. ... [Iran] remains one of the few nations that would have a need to defraud Western companies in order to conduct such surveillance. Many governments, including countries with a poor reputation for defending freedom of expression or privacy, are able to generate any number of fake digital certificates on their own authority. The current dependence of secure Internet traffic on a few, potentially insecure commercial companies is a profound flaw.

      Richard Stallman notes, "I am sad to report that the Chrome browser that this was done with is nonfree software."



  • Defence/Police/Aggression





  • Finance



  • Anti-Trust



    • Yahoo co-founder urged to help oust chairman
      A major Yahoo Inc. shareholder is recruiting company co-founder Jerry Yang to join a crusade to oust Chairman Roy Bostock amid the upheaval triggered by the recent firing of CEO Carol Bartz. The shareholder, hedge fund manager Daniel Loeb, sought Yang's help in a letter sent Wednesday.


    • MICROSOFT DONATES $8 MILLION GRANT TO THURGOOD MARSHALL COLLEGE FUND[sic]
      Microsoft Corporation has recently announced that it will be renewing its partnership with the Thurgood Marshall College Fund through an additional $8 million software grant. This recent grant brings the total donation amount given by the Microsoft Corporation to $29 million, and will provide software for TMCF’s 47-member network of Historically Black Colleges and Universities. ...

      There may be a hardware component to this dumping/indoctrination, but the value is a tax avoidance fiction and the hardware will be a liability using the software that comes with it.





  • Censorship



    • Child Pornography Bill Makes Privacy Experts Skittish
      The bill requires all Internet service providers to save their customers' IP addresses — or online identity numbers — for a year. The bill's stated purpose is to help police find child pornographers, but critics say that's just an excuse for another step toward Big Brother.




  • Privacy

    • Massachusetts track car location by automatically scanning license plates from police cars.
      Civil libertarians are raising the alarm over the state’s plans to create a Big Brother database that could map drivers’ whereabouts with police cruiser-mounted scanners that capture thousands of license plates per hour.

      I'm not sure why the system would have to be in police cars and could not be operated from other cameras like the red light cameras at every major intersection. People should be concerned about those too.





  • Civil Rights



  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • WIPO Broadcasting Treaty Returns From The Grave
      The current draft Treaty would grant exclusive, 50-year intellectual property rights to distributors of information that apply in parallel with copyright protections, even when transmitters have had no role in creating the content being transmitted.

      The treaty and article use the propaganda term Intellectual Property, and the treaty is more than an extension of copyright.



    • Copyrights



      • PJ Notes a lawsuit to prevent universities from making digital libraries, which objects even to digitization of orphaned works.
        Well, the more they try to assert their Most Holy rights, and the rights of people no one can find, the more certain I am that copyright law will end up reformed. It's like Righthaven. Or patent trolls. When people get disgusted by excessive use of the law, they decide to do something about it. Maybe it's time to go back to the prior copyright system, where you had to register your copyright to have one?

        Guardian source article intentionally not linked.







  • Comments

    Recent Techrights' Posts

    Like Microsoft and IBM, the 'Alicante Mafia'-Governed EPO Does PIPs Nowadays (at the EPO, It's "Professional Incompetence Procedure")
    So "PIPs" are definitely in the EPO and we saw letters sent to staff
    Time for Change, More New Articles, Less Curation
    The oligarchy wants to gut the real press and replace media with slop and social control media (or social control media with slop in it, i.e. their own voices, mechanised)
    Almost 1,600 EPO Employees Went on Strike Last Week
    There is another strike coming 2.5 weeks from now
    Over at Tux Machines...
    GNU/Linux news for the past day
    You Know Microsoft's "Value" is 100% Fictional When in One Single "Trading" Day in Wall Street It Loses THREE TIMES More in "Value" Than It Was 'Worth' in 2009
    Microsoft does not behave like a company riding trillions but like a company that struggles with payroll
    Better Outcomes When Facing the Discomfort of Conflict
    Don't take the easy way out when the "hard way" is the right way and it can result in positive revelations
    Leaving the United States 3 Years Ago Was the Best Decision We Made
    A lot of stuff is being consolidated
    BillBC (BBC) Covered Up Pedophilia, Now It's Covering Up for Its Sponsor Bill Gates by Reprinting His Lies, Which His Own Wife Disputes
    Is Bill Gates having orgies (group sex)?
     
    Linuxiac Not Rehabilitated, It's Still Full of LLM Slop (Part of a Trend)
    The Web as a resource/source of information is perishing
    "Sponsored by Azul" to Write Fake 'Article' About Azul, Quoting Azul Itself
    The "journalism" industry [sic] became so utterly corrupt
    JuristGate is for sale: three billion Swiss francs for a domain name
    Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
    Gemini Links 05/02/2026: Coercion, Antibiotics, and LVDT Project
    Links for the day
    IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, February 04, 2026
    IRC logs for Wednesday, February 04, 2026
    Links 04/02/2026: Extreme Malice in Microsoft's Visual Studio Code on GNU/Linux, More Hey Hi (AI) Chaos
    Links for the day
    Sexism & GNOME: shaming men, hiding women, Sonny Piers update
    Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
    Gemini Links 04/02/2026: Humanity and Animality, systemd (Controlled by Amutable, a Proxy of Microsoft) Moves on to "Extinguish" Phase
    Links for the day
    Certificate Authority Let's Encrypt Used to be Widely Used in Geminispace, Now It's Down to Just 0.2% of the Whole
    Let's Encrypt is not your friend
    What IBM Does Is Clearly Illegal in the US: Tying Severance Packages to NDAs (Non-Disparagement Agreement/Clause)
    The NDAs make things worse; they keep people isolated and silent
    Microsoft's Giant Snowball of Layoffs and PIPs (in 2026)
    They would delay until March or April if they wanted to, but then we can expect numbers exceeding 10,000 layoffs (Microsoft always low-balls the real figure/s)
    Mozilla Turned Firefox Into Shovelware, Adding 'Kill Switch' for Slop Still Means Mozilla is Participating in a Pyramid Scheme, Plagiarism, Grifting
    Mozilla is still a slop pusher
    Links 04/02/2026: "Laws of Succession" and Microsoft's VS Code as Code-Stealing Malware
    Links for the day
    Phoronix Swims With the Real Trolls, People Who Fancy Proprietary Software and Back Doors
    If Larabel begins to actively participate in provocation with the "Microsoft GitHub fans club", what does this tell us about Phoronix?
    They Know Microsoft Layoffs Are About to Hit Them Hard
    The gaming division at Microsoft is a complete catastrophe, lots of money (debt) down the drain [...] Buying Activision was all about misleading shareholders or hiding the deep trouble/problems XBox was having
    Red Hat is Not a Linux Company, It's IBM's Ponzi Scheme Enabler
    Had we still been stuck in 2021, perhaps IBM would plaster "NFT" or "metaverse" all over RedHat.com
    Keep Grinding
    "Don't let the bastards grind you down"
    Mobbing at the European Patent Office (EPO) - Part III - Who's Going to Pay for the EPO's Corruption? (Aside From European Citizens)
    Some people inside the EPO reached out to us
    "Investors Are Concerned About an AI Bubble" (That GAFAM and IBM Ride)
    A few decades from now IBM will only be remembered in the same sense many so-called 'AI' companies will be remembered
    EPO Staff Union: "Very High Strike Participation on Friday 30 January", Another Strike Starts 19 Days From Now
    EPO management in a bit of a panic
    Censorship/Free Speech and Social Control Media
    It's important to have a grasp of how contemporary censorship works and how to tackle it
    Google News as Slop Booster
    this is what Google links to
    Over at Tux Machines...
    GNU/Linux news for the past day
    IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, February 03, 2026
    IRC logs for Tuesday, February 03, 2026
    Gemini Links 04/02/2026: "Raspberry Pi Relaxes the Rules for Its RP2040 Hacking Challenge" and "Long Web Society"
    Links for the day
    IBM Falls by Over 10%
    a recipe for disasters like accounting fraud
    Links 03/02/2026: Windows Copies GNU/Linux, Windows TCO Shown Again
    Links for the day
    Gemini Links 03/02/2026: Alhena Turns One, Slop Rejected, and Max Roy Carrouges Recalled
    Links for the day
    How to Identify Demonisation or Dehumanisation Tactics Against Interesting Figures or Luminaries in Free Software
    Rather than in general or generally in technology
    We Should Learn From Bulgaria
    Why can't European companies and government recognise and react to a threat (when they see one)?
    Dr. Andy Farnell on Why and How European Authorities Can Adopt Free Software, Parenting in the Age of Digital Abundance
    Will Europe use technology that Europe controls (not the hegemon), for a change?
    Canonical: Ubuntu is GAFAM (US), We're Resellers of American Proprietary Software
    They want people to pay for a licence
    Seems Like IBM Trolls Use Chatbots to Vandalise Platform That Discusses IBM's Secret Layoffs, Forever Layoffs
    Not for the first time either
    You Know Your Company is Dead or Basically a Pyramid Scheme When Jim Cramer Keeps Promoting Its Stock
    How much does IBM pay for "puff pieces" or "fluff" about QC?
    Red Hat (Under IBM) Works for Microsoft (Proprietary Software) and Slop
    Yesterday Red Hat's official site, redhat.com, published exactly 5 new blog posts
    IBM is Dying (More Layoffs), Red Hat Will Continue to Suffer From the Acquisition
    Financial engineering
    Colombia Adopting GNU/Linux Even Faster (at Microsoft's and Apple's Expense)
    Do politics play any role in this?
    An Effort to Tackle Slavery in 'Open Source' Clothing
    "a civil rights lawsuit to examine the concerns of censored developers in the free, open source software ecosystem"
    $15 billion lawsuit: Ubuntu, Google & Debian crowdfunding campaign launch
    Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
    The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) Delusion - Part II - Why We Need to Expose the SRA to More Daylight, Public Scrutiny
    SRA is neither effective nor regulated
    Links 03/02/2026: "Distraction is a Sin" and Fake "Encryption" (Surveillance With Good Marketing)
    Links for the day
    400-Page US Federal Court Against Abuses by Google, Microsoft and Front Groups That Abuse Volunteers for American Corporations
    There are 386 pages in total (in the US claim)
    Corporate Influence Never Impacted Us
    There's no reason to assume we'll ever "sell out"
    Growth of GNU/Linux in Cuba
    Right now a lot of the world drafts or already implements a GAFAM exit plan
    A Day After EPO Strikes an Escalation to Heads of Delegations to the Administrative Council
    They rely on the European media playing along, helping them to hide major blunders, even crimes
    Over at Tux Machines...
    GNU/Linux news for the past day
    IRC Proceedings: Monday, February 02, 2026
    IRC logs for Monday, February 02, 2026
    Gemini Links 03/02/2026: Stargazing, Development Boards, and Tcl/Tk Slop
    Links for the day