Bonum Certa Men Certa

Links - New and Old Censorship, Anti-trust, Privacy Violations and Pollution.

Reader's Picks



  • Hardware



  • Health/Nutrition



  • Security



  • Defence/Police/Aggression



  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife





  • Finance





  • Anti-Trust

    • Pay TV piracy hits News
      The actions are documented in an archive of 14,400 emails held by former Metropolitan Police commander Ray Adams who was European chief for Operational Security between 1996 and 2002. The Financial Review is publishing thousands of the emails on its website at URL afr.com.

      The emails show that Murdoch used "piracy" as a competitive weapon, helping people to break the digital handcuffs of rival's pay TV boxes. The loss of face and revenue helped Murdoch to consolidate his media empire.



    • Microsoft all but buys Netscape with AOL patent acqusition

      This Microsoft friendly news source uses gloats over this superposed "end of the browser wars" and uses the term "intellectual property" while glorifying and validating software patents.



  • Censorship

    • The reason I'm helping Chris Hedges' lawsuit against the NDAA
      the Homeland Battlefield Bill has already a chilling effect upon my ability to investigate and document matters of national controversy that would ordinarily be subject to my professional inquiry. It has therefore prevented my readers from receiving the full spectrum of truthful reporting which, in a functioning democracy, they have a right to expect.


    • Iraq’s internet on the brink
      A year since the Arab Spring, the internet in the region is facing significant threats from governments trying to gain more control over it.


    • Media companies & ISPs outline plan to stop piracy

      Not so voluntary censorship is set to roll out on people in the US. Appealing accusations of sharing will cost people $35.



    • World Without Web
      ... we underestimate the alarming degree of contingency lurking behind ‘inevitable’ developments. ... The divergence point for this history is in 1983-1984, when the leadership of DARPA lied through its teeth to Congress about who was being allowed access to the Internet. ... what if DARPA had been caught in that lie, funding for its network research scaled back, and a serious effort made to kick randoms off the early net?


    • CISPA – The Sneaky Son Of SOPA

      A good collection of links about a nasty law against sharing.





  • Civil Rights



  • Privacy



  • Education Watch



  • DRM

    • How Adobe DRM Requires People to Pirate Library Books
      Open standards make sense. What makes no sense is that large companies in the field still do not understand this. ... It turns out that a majority of the 6,495 titles available at my local library were accessible only through a locked .acsm file format. ...you can think of a .acsm file as being very much like a .torrent file. If you use Windows or Mac, you can (theoretically) download and install Adobe Digital Editions (ADE). This software reads the .acsm file and then it will download the actual .epub book, complete with DRM. ... there is no legal way to access the content without breaking the law if you are using free (libre) software.

      Tell your local librarian to never use a system like this!





  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Another Patent Attack on Google with More Wild $$ Predictions ~pj
      Nokia and Microsoft. Partners at law, so to speak. Is this another Microsoft/Nokia outsourced production? Remember when Barnes & Noble told us that it views Microsoft and Nokia's patent campaign as an antitrust violation, a deliberate campaign to destroy Android and maintain Microsoft's monopoly on the desktop and extend it to smartphones, with Nokia piggybacking with its patents for weapons and MOSAID being brought in to do some of the dirty work? So when you read the scare headlines, remember this: Google is awesome at patent litigation. It tends to prevail. I told you that when Oracle first sued Google


    • Oracle’s Position is Worse Than I Thought


    • USPTO Issues Interim Mayo Guidance ~pj
      "...the claimed product or process amounts to significantly more than a law of nature, a natural phenomenon, or an abstract idea with conventional steps specified at a high level of generality appended thereto." Why *wouldn't* that apply to software?


    • Mayo Decision Impacts Myriad Genetics - Judgment Vacated, Remanded ~pj
      Things are looking up in PatentLand


    • Prometheus bound: An important precedent for the next software patent case
      Plainly, this was not a dispute about software patents, but the Court’s unanimous opinion will guide it and lower courts as they analyze future software patent cases.


    • Copyrights

      • Judge rules file sharing is not a "conspiracy"
        The litigators are trying to get around the fact that judges aren't happy with allowing mass lawsuits, so what they are doing is taking one internet user to court but using that lawsuit as a pretext to subpoena other defendants who had participated in the same BitTorrent swarm. ... James Holderman of the Northern District of Illinois raised his eyebrow in disgust at this trick, saying that it was trying to get around the "stiffening judicial headwind."


      • 5000+ Artists Line Up For a Pirate Bay Promotion
        “We’re one of the worlds top 60 sites in the Internet. This brings us a responsibility to use the site to do something good. When I think about it, it’s insane that all the other top 100 sites only blast ads and self-centered stuff on their front pages. We do this for fun and for the love of culture, so we’re everything the major labels are not.”


      • 3 Major Publishers Sue Open-Education Textbook Start-Up

        See also this excllent summary

        To gain access to the digital alternatives, students select the traditional books assigned in their classes, and Boundless pulls content from an array of open-education sources to knit together a text that the company claims is as good as the designated book. The company calls this mapping of printed book to open material “alignment”—a tactic the complaint said creates a finished product that violates the publishers’ copyrights.


      • DRM is crushing indie booksellers online


      • MPAA Lines Up With Porn Studio in Steamy Copyright Dispute

        A video site that published movies as urls is surprised that people would download those movies. They also found a judge that agrees enough to shut down a website where users share the urls, sometimes as embedded movies.







  • Recent Techrights' Posts

    IRC Proceedings: Saturday, August 30, 2025
    IRC logs for Saturday, August 30, 2025
    Representing and Speaking for Animals
    If I ever choose to take this matter to tribunal with animals-centric NGOs on my side, it'll get some press coverage for sure
    The UEFI 9/11 - Part II - Campaign of Censorship and Defamation Against Critics
    In dictatorships, humour serves an important role. It's tragic.
    How Not to Build Software
    code forges that need a Web browser perhaps fill some 'niche' demand
    GAFAM and "MATA"
    The use of dark humour there hopefully helps illuminate what a lot of "modern" technology became like and how it interacts with human civilisation (to what ends and whose gain)
    Flying in 2025
    worse than ever before
     
    Links 31/08/2025: Google Gmail Data Breach and LF Puff Pieces for Pay
    Links for the day
    Over at Tux Machines...
    GNU/Linux news for the past day
    This is What Google News Has Become
    Moments ago
    The Slopfarm WebProNews Has Turned Google News Into a Laughing Stock Full of Plagiarism by Slop
    If Google News dies of neglect, that's one thing. It's starting to seem like active neglect by Google is a form of participation.
    Do What is Moral, as What's Legal Isn't Always Moral
    Do what's objectively moral, no matter the costs and the risks
    Slopwatch: Google News Assisting Plagiarism and Anti-Linux FUD, Serial Slopper Rips Off Linux-Centric Journalists
    This makes the Web a much worse place and lessens the incentive to do journalism
    Links 30/08/2025: NVIDIA Fakes Results to Hide a Bubble Already in Implosion Phase, Data Breaches Galore, Important Win for Workers' Union in Canada
    Links for the day
    In Kazakhstan, Yandex Estimated to be 20 Times Bigger Than Microsoft
    Bing is measured as down this month
    Shutterstock Not Enough? The Register MS Uses Slop Images in Articles (Seemingly More and More Over Time)
    Cost-saving trajectory amid office shutdown?
    Gemini Links 30/08/2025: Games, PostmarketOS, and Slop
    Links for the day
    Links 30/08/2025: Imgur Uproar and Many Ukraine Updates (Mediazona Reports Over 200,000 Russians Died for Putin)
    Links for the day
    Birds Are Not "Pests and Vermin", Privacy is Not a Crime, and GNU/Linux is Not 'Hacking Platform'
    I could not help but think of Free software analogies
    The Sites Should Be Very Fast Again
    That issue is now resolved
    Activists, Including Technical Activists, Need Not Pursue Affirmation
    Techrights doesn't play or participate in a "popularity contest"
    The UEFI 9/11 - Part III - Chaos is Scheduled to Happen Second Thursday of September (No Matter What the Microsofters Tell You)
    The clock is ticking
    Downplaying the Impact of "UEFI 9/11" is a Losing Strategy
    we won't publish much whilst on holiday
    Government Sites Should Run Free Software
    Not proprietary bloatware with buzzwords
    LLM Slopfarms Take No Breaks
    When people run sites by bots they don't need to worry about "breaks"
    GNOME Having a Meltdown Again
    Thanks and farewell to Steven Deobald
    Gemini Links 30/08/2025: Low Tech and Hunchbin 1.0.6
    Links for the day
    Over at Tux Machines...
    GNU/Linux news for the past day
    IRC Proceedings: Friday, August 29, 2025
    IRC logs for Friday, August 29, 2025
    Financiers and Sponsors of the Slop Hype (Pyramid Scheme Waiting to End, Bubble That Will Inevitably Implode)
    It's also burning the planet
    Slopwatch: Fake Articles About "Linux", Google Helps Ponzi Schemes and Slopfarms in Google News
    Slopfarms are a real pain
    Gemini Links 29/08/2025: Retiring at 62 and URL Filtering HTTP(S) Proxy on Qubes OS
    Links for the day
    Links 29/08/2025: Lisa Cook Sues Convicted Felon and Backdoor Mandate in UK Resisted
    Links for the day
    Links 29/08/2025: Arti 1.5.0, War on Public Health (CDC), and Slop 'Bros' Made to Pay for Their Mass Plagiarism
    Links for the day
    No, 4Chan is Not Fighting for You by Lawyering Up Against Ofcom (UK)
    Don't mistake proto-fascists for people who "fight for you". They don't.
    In Many Places in the World Vista 11 "Market Share" is Going Down, Not Up
    In some countries Windows is already down to third place or lower
    More Microsoft-Connected Layoffs, at Least Third Time This Month! (Also Another Death on Campus)
    Microsoft as a "gaming" company is where studios, projects, games, and even developers come to die
    Slopwatch: Fake Articles About "Linux", Slop Images in VentureBeat, Linux Foundation Spam Made With LLM Slop and Slop Images
    The only relief or upside - if any exists - is that the pace of slop was down a bit this week
    Over at Tux Machines...
    GNU/Linux news for the past day
    IRC Proceedings: Thursday, August 28, 2025
    IRC logs for Thursday, August 28, 2025
    Gemini Links 29/08/2025: Poems, Games, and Java 25 Performance
    Links for the day