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

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  • Security



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  • 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

    Before the OSI Was Bribed and Hijacked by Microsoft via GitHub and Compromised Management...
    The OSI isn't even remotely "woke"
    The OSI Has Been Silent for Over 3 Weeks, It Has a Severe Trust Issue After Promoting Microsoft and Proprietary GitHub
    OSI took a lot of money from Microsoft to become a Microsoft lobbyist
    Bribery is OK If You Work for Microsoft (No Punishment Expected)
    It's very troubling and a symptom of a broken society/system when particular laws or rules are applied and enforced against some people but not against others
    Someone Should Remind Microsoft Lunduke That Microsoft Hires Many Sexual Criminals and Pedophiles as Well
    Microsoft Lunduke on an "expedition" to find one or more perverts, then generalise to everyone in the "community"
    Cash Machines (ATMs) Make Mistakes and They're Proprietary Software
    Correcting mistakes is a colossal challenge
    Yes, Microsoft is the Problem
    "I am no MS shill."
    Another Failed Use Case for Chatbots (LLM): Legal Advice and Analysis
    They're just some self-discrediting toy that costs way too much to operate
     
    Local Staff Committee Munich (LSCMN) at the European Patent Office (EPO) Requests an Urgent Meeting to Avoid Abolishing the Office
    This is dictatorship led by the most corrupt
    Slopwatch: Fake 'Linux' 'Articles' and Spamfarms/Slopfarms
    at least 5 fake articles in one day
    Gemini Links 29/07/2025: Wayland Unfit for Use and LLM Slop Faking One's Language Skills With Robot Communications
    Links for the day
    Nailing the "Hey Hi" (AI) Hype Bubble
    So-called "hey hi" as they define it now is all about large companies or regimes remotely controlling the processes running on your machine and even your very own behaviour on your machine, which is in effect no longer your machine but some remotely controlled apparatus
    "Four decades; Four freedoms; For all users" Now as a T-shirt
    That's shown along the sidebar
    Links 29/07/2025: Bad Climate and "Fair Software Licensing" Blasts Microsoft
    Links for the day
    Links 29/07/2025: Data Brokers Gone Wrong/Rogue and "Copyright Thicket"
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    Slopwatch: Linuxconfig.org, Linuxsecurity.com, Fagioli, The Register
    Today's "Slopwatch" isn't the first article about LLM slop
    We Cover Topics Other Sites Are Too Afraid to Cover (Even When They Know the Facts)
    It's not that they doubt the truth, they just realise there may be consequences for talking about it
    They Try to Tell Us the Free Software Foundation Inc is Dying, But Its Revenue Doubled Since the Dot-Com Bubble Burst
    Being in "Activism" is never easy; but it does positive things for society
    It's About the Cost of Workers, Not the Fictional Skills Shortage (That Does Not Exist, the Media Spreads False and Sometimes Self-Fulfilling Narratives)
    This issue isn't limited to computing, some dub it "globalism"
    Links 29/07/2025: More Pushbacks Against Slop and More Praises of Tom Lehrer
    Links for the day
    Gemini Links 29/07/2025: Purple Yarrow and Understanding Op Amps
    Links for the day
    This Monday WebProNews Absolutely Flooded the Web With Fake (LLM Slop) 'Articles' About "Linux", Google News Promoted Them as Legitimate
    All of the following are fake articles attributed to pseudonyms or authors that don't exist; the images are also slop. Why does Google promote these?
    Linuxiac is Not a Slopfarm, But at Least Some of Its Articles Are Machine-Generated Fakes
    what we said about it was correct
    Expect More Microsoft Layoffs
    "Are more job cuts coming?"
    Microsoft Behaving Like It's Running Out of Money to Pay Salaries
    Does that seem like the behaviour expected from a company which claims it is "worth" trillions?
    LWN Downtime Due to Linode, Not LLM Bots
    "I’ve received an email letting me know that there is a potential for data loss."
    Over at Tux Machines...
    GNU/Linux news for the past day
    IRC Proceedings: Monday, July 28, 2025
    IRC logs for Monday, July 28, 2025
    Nonfree Software in My Bank, by Richard Stallman
    Updated 8 hours ago
    Links 28/07/2025: Science, Health, and Conflicts
    Links for the day
    Gemini Links 28/07/2025: Healthy Self-Image With Autism and a "New Life"
    Links for the day
    Links 28/07/2025: COVID-19 Sped up Brain Aging, "Circumvention is More Popular Than Compliance"
    Links for the day
    Richard Stallman is Usually Right Because He Thinks "Outside the Box"
    he is able to observe society (mores and norms) as somewhat of an outsider
    LWN Has Been Down for a Long Time, Another Casualty of LLM Bots?
    Time will tell. How much time though?
    Slopfarms Versus 'Linux' (and Against People Who Write Real Articles About GNU/Linux)
    LLM slop in slopfarms by Brian Fagioli and Redazione RHC
    Gemini Links 28/07/2025: Bila Yarrudhanggalangdhuray and Running pkgsrc in a FreeBSD Jail
    Links for the day
    Microsoft Turns News Sites Into Spamfarms
    Is the site The Register MS the next IDG?
    The Register MS/The Register US
    On Saturday I contacted them for a comment (before issuing criticism)
    Hacking revelations at Vatican Jubilee of Digital Missionaries
    Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
    Over at Tux Machines...
    GNU/Linux news for the past day
    IRC Proceedings: Sunday, July 27, 2025
    IRC logs for Sunday, July 27, 2025