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

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  • 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

    Sounds Like IBM is Preparing for Mass Layoffs/Redundancies in Red Hat, Albeit in "PIP" (Performance Improvement Plan) or "Relocation" Clothing
    This isn't the "old" IBM; they're applying pressure by confusion and humiliation
    Gemini Links 17/04/2025: Role of Language and Back to Mutt for E-mail
    Links for the day
    Microsoft's Attack Dogs Have Failed. Now What?
    It would be utterly foolish to assume that Microsoft has any intention of changing
    All Your "Github Projects" Will be Gone One Day (Just Like Skype)
    If you have code you wish to share and keep, then start learning how to do so on your own
    Fedora Already Lost Its Soul Under IBM
    Fedora used to be very strict compared to many other distros and it had attracted very bright volunteers
    Links 17/04/2025: Calling Whistleblowers at Microsoft, Slop Doing More Harm Everywhere
    Links for the day
     
    Links 18/04/2025: "Fentanylware (TikTok) Exodus Continues", Chinese Weapons Allegedly in Russia Already
    Links for the day
    Gemini Links 18/04/2025: Price of Games and State of Tinylog
    Links for the day
    "Sayonara" (さよなら), Microsoft
    Windows had fallen below iOS in some countries
    Links 18/04/2025: Layoffs at Microsoft Infosys and Qt Becoming Increasingly Proprietary (Plus Slop)
    Links for the day
    Google News is Dying
    treating MElon's algorithmic/biased site as a source of verified news
    To Understand Who's Truly Controlling You Follow the Trail of Censorship (or Self-Censorship)
    Do not let media steal and steer the narrative; CoCs are not about "social justice", they're about corporate domination
    Microsoft is Still Attacking GNU/Linux and the Net
    Microsoft bribed the government using money that did not even exist
    Over at Tux Machines...
    GNU/Linux news for the past day
    IRC Proceedings: Thursday, April 17, 2025
    IRC logs for Thursday, April 17, 2025
    Gemini Links 18/04/2025: Pinephone Pro and Linux is too Easy
    Links for the day
    Links 17/04/2025: Russian Bot Farms Infect TikTok (Which US Government and SCOTUS Decided to Block January 19), US Hardware Stocks Crash Due to Tariffs
    Links for the day
    Gemini Links 17/04/2025: Sticking to Free Software, Smolnet, and Counting the Reals
    Links for the day
    Open Source Initiative (OSI) Privacy Fiasco in Detail: In Conclusion and Enforcement Action Proceeds Against OSI at the California Privacy Protection Agency (CPPA)
    There's too much to cover in one single part
    When You Fail to Filter Your Clients You End Up SLAPPing Reporters on Behalf of Bad People From Microsoft in Another Continent
    “American Psycho”
    Links 17/04/2025: LayoffBot and Tesla Cheats Buyers
    Links for the day
    Over at Tux Machines...
    GNU/Linux news for the past day
    IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, April 16, 2025
    IRC logs for Wednesday, April 16, 2025
    Trump Authority (CA) With a Trump NSA is All About Security, But Whose?
    A "turnkey tyranny", as the NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake loved to call it
    Confirming IBM Shutdowns and Layoffs Today
    It's not over yet
    Gemini Links 16/04/2025: The 2010s Are Calling and Why "Tools Will Not Liberate Us"
    Links for the day
    You Should Probably Self-Host Your E-mail and Never Use a Web Browser for Mail
    Does anyone still believe Gmail is "free"?
    Links 16/04/2025: Cliff Lynch RIP, More Attacks on Science (NASA)
    Links for the day
    StatCounter Shows the Market Share of Vista 11 is Decreasing in Ukraine This Year
    Microsoft abandoning Vista 10 users would be a victory for Vladimir Putin
    Google Promotes Fake Articles (LLM Slop) Instead of Originals, Relaying Microsoft's Linux FUD Emanating From Microsoft LLMs
    Shame on Google for participating in the slopfest
    In Some Countries the Largest OEMs Already Dump Microsoft Windows
    Windows at 18.9%, Android 60.2%
    The "Gold" Rule: Taking Money for Reputation Laundering and Openwashing Under the "Linux" Banner
    Seller of expensive toilet paper, Jim Zemlin
    LLM Slop Says Slop is "coming for white-collar jobs. Microsoft’s layoffs are just the start"
    Look what the Web has become
    Microsoft Down From 100% to 10% in Myanmar/Burma
    only about 4% of Web requests in Myanmar/Burma come from Vista 11, soon to be the only "supported" version of Windows
    Reporting Facts About Violence Against Women Deserves Awards, Not Frivolous Lawsuits and Threats
    What is Microsoft's stance on women's safety?
    Linux.com as Spamfarm of the Linux Foundation, Partner of the Gates Foundation
    They no longer publish articles
    When Fedora Said It Was Looking to Integrate "AI" It Meant Promoting Microsoft's Proprietary Spyware and GPL-Violating Slop
    When they say "AI" they mean Microsoft
    Slopwatch: The Typical Slopfarms and the 'Brian Fagioli Dilemma'
    To the Web and to society (exposed to the Web) LLMs are a net negative
    It Used to be IBM, Now It's Microsoft (Why You Need to Fire Microsofters or CIOs Working for Microsoft)
    Typically the only effective solution is to identity and remove Microsofters from one's project/organisation (before they can bring more Microsofters in)
    IBM Closes Offices and Labs in the United States to Open New Ones in India
    It's not layoffs per se; they're substituting/swapping veteran employees for lesser-paid ones
    Over at Tux Machines...
    GNU/Linux news for the past day
    IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, April 15, 2025
    IRC logs for Tuesday, April 15, 2025
    Gemini Links 16/04/2025: IndieWeb Carnival, Tinylog RFC, "Focus, the Web and Gemini"
    Links for the day