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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

    At Microsoft, "Firing People is a "Cheat Code" to Pump the Stock Short-term But They Are Literally Destroying the Company's Soul Long-term."
    They frame layoffs as a "success story"
    Google News Poisons Its Own Index With More Slopfarms (Including "filmogaz")
    Naming and shaming lazy slobs who rip off other people using LLMs can work, eventually
    Naming Culprits in Switzerland
    Switzerland is highly secretive about white-collar crime
    Sanitised Plagiarism as "AI" (How Oligarchy Plots to Use Slop to Hide or Distract From Its Abuses, or Cause People Not to Trust Anything They See/Read Online)
    This isn't innovation but repression
    Recent Layoffs at Red Hat (2026 the Year of Ultimate Bluewashing)
    I found it amusing that Red Hat's CEO has just chosen to wear all blue, as if to make a point
    Team Campinos Talks About SAP Days Before EPO Industrial Actions and a Day Before the "Alicante Mafia" Series (About Team Campinos Doing Cocaine)
    EPO staff that isn't morally feeble will insist on objecting to illegal instructions
    Stack(ed) Rankings and Ongoing Layoffs at Red Hat and IBM (Failure to Keep Staff Acquired by IBM)
    IBM is mismanaged and its sole aim is to game the stock market (by faking a lot of things)
     
    Great Reset at IBM, the Company That Pulps Red Hat
    In 2026 many workers are RTO'ed, PIP'ed, and at Red Hat many have effectively 'left the company' and now start afresh as "IBM" staff
    The "Alicante Mafia" - Part II - Breakout of Discontent This Winter in Europe's Second-Largest Organisation
    So far we've caused a lot of panic and stress inside Team Campinos
    The "Alicante Mafia" - Part I - An Introduction to the Mafia Governing the EPO
    Are some people 'evacuating' themselves to save face?
    J.H.M. Ray Dassen & Debian, Red Hat, GNOME unexplained deaths
    Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
    Gemini Links 16/01/2026: "Porting My Main Website Over to Gemini" and Seeed Studio DevBoard
    Links for the day
    IBM Stacked and Ranked Badly, Maladministration Dooms the Company
    Now they stack people up for PIPs and layoffs ("RAs")
    Links 16/01/2026: UK Royal Family's "Legal Team Accused of Dishonesty, Fraud and Misconduct", OSI Still Controlled by Microsoft (the OSI's Spokesperson is on Microsoft's Payroll, Not Interim Executive Director, Deborah Bryant)
    Links for the day
    Writing About Corruption
    Fraud is everywhere
    The B in IBM is Brown-nosing and Buzzwords (or Both)
    International Buzzwords Machines
    IBM's 'Scientific-Sounding' Tech-Porn Won't Help IBM Survive (or Be Bailed Out)
    Who's next in the pipeline?
    IBM Was Never the Good Guy
    its original products were used for large-scale surveillance, not scientific endeavours
    The Bluewashing is Making Red Hat Extinct (They All Become "IBM", Little by Little)
    IBM does not care what's legal
    Slopfarms Push Fake News About Microsoft Shutdown, 30,000+ Microsoft Layoffs Last Year Spun as Only "15,000"
    The Web is seriously ill
    Countries Take Action Against Social Control Media and 'Smart' 'Phones', Not Slop (Plagiarised Information Synthesis Systems or P.I.S.S.)
    None of this is unprecedented except the scale and speed of sharing
    Sites That Expose Corruption Under Attack, Journalism Not Tolerated Anymore (the Super-Rich Abuse Their Wealth and Political Power)
    Sometimes, albeit not always, the harder people try to hide something, the more effective and important it is for the general public
    Links 16/01/2026: Social Control Media Curbs in Australia Underway, MElon Still Profiting by Sexualising Kids 'as a Service'
    Links for the day
    More People Nowadays Say "GNU/Linux"
    We still see many distros and even journalists that say "GNU/Linux"
    LLM Slop on the Web is Waning, But Linuxiac Has Become a Slopfarm
    I gave Linuxiac a chance to deny this or explain this; Linuxiac did not
    More Signs of Financial Troubles at Microsoft, Europe Puts Microsoft Under Investigation
    The end of the library is part of the cuts
    Pedophilia-Enabling Microsoft Co-founder Cuts Staff
    Compensating by sleeping with young girls does not make one younger
    Microsoft Shuts Down Campus Library, Resorts to Storytelling About "AI" to Spin the Seriousness of It
    Microsoft is in pain
    Free Software Foundation (FSF) Back to Advertising the Talks of Richard Stallman
    A pleasant surprise
    Over at Tux Machines...
    GNU/Linux news for the past day
    IRC Proceedings: Thursday, January 15, 2026
    IRC logs for Thursday, January 15, 2026
    Gemini Links 16/01/2026: House Flood and Pragmatic Retrocomputing Dogfooding
    Links for the day
    Links 15/01/2026: Starlink Weaponised for Regime Change (by Man Who Boasted About Annexing South American Countries for Tesla's Mining), Corruption in Switzerland Uncovered by JuristGate
    Links for the day
    Linuxiac May Have Reverted Back to LLM Slop (Updated Same Day)
    Is he back off the wagon?
    GAFAM and IBM Layoffs Outline
    a lot of the layoffs happen in secrecy and involve convincing people to resign, retire, relocate etc.
    Links 15/01/2026: Internet Blackouts, Jackboots Society in US
    Links for the day
    Coming Soon: Impact With EPO Cocainegate
    Will Campinos survive 2026?
    The Last 'Dilberts' or Some of the Last Salvaged (Comic Strips Which Disappeared Shortly After They Had Been Published)
    Around the time the creator of Dilbert went silent he published some strips mocking TikTok and usage of it
    The Creator of Git Probably Doesn't Know How to Install and Deploy Git
    Nobody disputes this: Mr. Torvalds created Git
    Slop is a Liability
    Slopfarms too will become extinct because people aren't interested in them
    GAFAM is a National and International Threat to Everybody
    GAFAM is just a tentacle in service of imperialism
    EPO People Power - Part XXXVI - In Conclusion and Taking Things Up Another Notch
    They often say that the law won't deter or stop criminals because it's hard to enforce laws against people who reject the law
    Running Techrights is Fun, Rewarding, and Gratifying
    In Geminispace we are already quite dominant
    Red Hat is Connected to the Military, Its Chief Comes From Military Family (From Both Sides)
    The founder of Red Hat's parent company literally saluted Hitler himself (yes, a Nazi salute)
    Don't Cry for Gaslighting Media in a Country Which Loathes the Press
    my wife and I received threats for merely writing about Americans
    Red Hat (IBM) is Driving Away Remaining Fedora Users
    I've not used Fedora since Moonshine
    Robert X. Cringely Has Already Explained IBM's Bullying Culture (Towards Its Own Staff)
    IBM is a fairly nasty company
    Proton Mail compromise, Hannah Natanson (Washington Post) police raid & Debian
    Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
    Over at Tux Machines...
    GNU/Linux news for the past day
    IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, January 14, 2026
    IRC logs for Wednesday, January 14, 2026
    Gemini Links 15/01/2026: "Ode to elinks", envs.net Pubnix and Downtime at geminiprotocol.net
    Links for the day
    Still Condoning Child Labour and Exploiting Unpaid Children Developers as PR Props (to Raise Monopoly Money)
    These people lack morals. So they project.
    "Security, AI or Quantum" on "the IBM Titanic"
    Who's RMS?
    Hours Ago The Register MS Published Microsoft Windows SPAM "Sponsored by Intel." The Fake 'Article' Says "AI" 34 Times.
    The Register MS isn't a serious online newspaper
    EPO People Power - Part XXXV - Where Else Will Corruption and Substance Abuse be Tolerated?
    We need to raise standards
    Status and Capital
    People who do a lot are too busy to boast about it and wear fancy garments
    IBM Paying the Price for Treating Workers Badly and Discarding Real Talent (Because It's "Expensive")
    IBM is dead man walking
    Turbulence Ahead
    I last rebooted my laptop in 2023
    Google News Rewards Plagiarism With LLMs (About Linux, Too)
    Google is in the slop business now
    Links 14/01/2026: Failing Economy and Conquest Abroad as a Distraction From Domestic Woes
    Links for the day
    Gemini Links 14/01/2026: The Ephemerality of Our Digital Lives and "Summer of Upgrades"
    Links for the day
    Projection Tactics - Part III: Silencing Inconvenient Voices Online
    If X gets banned in the UK, it'll be hard to see what the spouse says in public
    Outsourcing on Microsoft's Agenda, Offshoring Also
    "In some cases, India hiring is poised to replace certain roles previously based in the U.S."
    Links 13/01/2026: 'Dilbert' creator Scott Adams Passes Away With Cancer, Ban on X/Twitter Considered for CSAM Profiteering
    Links for the day
    The Goal is Software Freedom for All
    Anything to do with "Linux Foundation" is timewasting
    Reminder That Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Is Not Free, And It's Because of IBM
    software freedom just 'gets in the way'
    Under IBM, in Order to Game the Stock Market, Red Hat Resorted to Boosting the Biggest Ponzi Scheme in Human History
    This is what IBM turned Red Hat into
    Revision handed Microsoft the keys to the distortion of the past/history
    This isn't the first time The Register MS rewrites computing history in Microsoft's favour, as we pointed out several times in past years
    What Will Happen to GAFAM After the US Defaults Rather Than Bails Out the Market?
    Or tries to topple every government that doesn't play by its rules?
    EPO People Power - Part XXXIV - Bad Optics for the European Union (for Failing to Act and Tolerating Cocaine Use in Europe's Second-Largest Institution)
    There are principles in laws which tie awareness with complicity
    EPO's Central Staff Committee is Now Redacting (Self-Censoring) Due to Threats From the EPO "Mafia"
    "On the agenda: salary adjustment procedure for 2025 (as of January 2026)"
    "AI" (Slop) 'Demand' Isn't Growing, It's Fake, It's a Pyramid Scheme
    They try to resort to 'creative' accounting (fraudulent schemes like circular financing)
    Difficult Times at IBM and Microsoft Ahead of Mass Layoffs (Probably Before This Month's Results Unless Postponed to 'Prove' Rumours 'Wrong')
    IBM and Microsoft used to be tech giants. Nowadays they mostly pretend by pumping up their stock and buying back their own shares.
    Canonical: Make Ubuntu Bloated (Debian With Snaps), Then Sell the 'Debloated' Version for a Fee
    If people want a light distro, then they ought not pay Canonical but instead choose a light (by design) GNU/Linux distro
    People Don't Want "Just Enough", They'll Look for Quality
    That's why slopfarms will go away or become inactive
    Gemini Links 14/01/2026: 3D and Tiny Traffic Lights Pack
    Links for the day
    Over at Tux Machines...
    GNU/Linux news for the past day
    IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, January 13, 2026
    IRC logs for Tuesday, January 13, 2026
    Slop Waning Whilst Originals Perish
    Slop is way past its "prime"
    XBox's 'Major Nelson' Loses His Job Again, This Time in a Microsoft Mono Pusher
    Microsoft hasn't much of a future in gaming. XBox's business is in rapid decline and people who push Mono to game developers are the same