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

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  • 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

    Microsoft XBox Layoffs: Almost 2,000 Layoffs Became "Over 2,000"? (Over 20% of the Staff)
    over 20% of staff will be let go, not counting staff that leaves voluntarily
    Summer Plans in Techrights and Elsewhere
    massive layoffs at Microsoft
    Our Desktops Are Not Your Experiments, X is Not an Experiment
    Breaking what already worked
    Microsoft's Big Lies Regarding This Week's Mass Layoffs Have Already Begun (and They're Already Being Spread by Slopfarms)
    Microsoft is the "market leader" in slop
    They Made Technology Scary and Taught Us That It's Innocent, Friendly, Even "Social"
    Rejection of all this "apps" and "gadgets" and "Smart" (whatever that means!) status quo isn't a rejection of society
     
    Microsoft Isn't Laying Off Tens of Thousands to 'Invest' in Slop ('Hey Hi'), It's Laying Off Tens of Thousands Because It's Running Out of Money (and Willing Lenders)
    the layoffs are a sign of the business failing, not "hey hi" (whatever that is) replacing staff
    Intel Lays Off 20% of Its Workforce, Microsoft is Doing the Same This Year
    Like a yoyo, whatever goes up will come back down
    GNU/Linux Rises to New Highs in Angola, Africa in General is Abandoning Windows
    Western media barely covers Microsoft layoffs in Africa, but in recent years Microsoft culled the workforce and even shut down entire operations
    Destination Geminispace (in the Age of LLM Slop and Slop Images That Infest the Web and Social Control Media)
    Geminispace isn't vast, but at least it is - on average - a lot "cleaner"
    GNU/Linux Growing in Sierra Leone This Year
    Based on what statCounter is seeing, this year there are more and more people there who adopt GNU/Linux
    Serial Sloppers Gonna Slop
    More sites out there ought to call out the cheaters
    Quartz (qz.com) is Spam and a Slopfarm
    It used to be OK. Then they fired the staff.
    Links 30/06/2025: US Economic Woes, Extreme Heat
    Links for the day
    Over at Tux Machines...
    GNU/Linux news for the past day
    IRC Proceedings: Sunday, June 29, 2025
    IRC logs for Sunday, June 29, 2025
    Gemini Links 30/06/2025: "The AI Hype" and New AuraGem Ask
    Links for the day
    Explaining the Full Story of SLAPPs From Microsoft Staff
    For every action there is a reaction, for every attack there will be proportionate consequences
    The Openwashing Shills Initiative (OSI) - Part III: IRS and Status of OSI
    "They lied to the US IRS and there’s a paper trail"
    IBM Red Hat's Dogmatic Fanaticism Under a Thin Veil of "Modernism"
    IBM now has the audacity to paint people who don't agree as "nazis"
    Microsoft's Share in Guatemala Fell From 97% to 14%
    Eventually Microsoft will get stuck in a loop of layoffs, layoffs, and more layoffs
    The Media is Under Attacks Partly Because There's Little Other (Remaining) Press to Speak in Its Defence
    The biggest danger here is that when there's very little press or no "opposition media" left it becomes even easier to crush critics because there aren't many people left to speak about the matter
    If Your Web Site is Run by Bots, Eventually Nobody Will 'Read' It Except Bots (People Don't Want to Read Slop)
    Eventually people learn from mistakes
    Links 29/06/2025: Microsoft Releases False/Fake Benchmarks, "Google Wants You to Watch Ads or Take Surveys to Read Articles"
    Links for the day
    Links 29/06/2025: Data Breaches and Online Censorship
    Links for the day
    Gemini Links 29/06/2025: "The Price Of Eggs" and Gemini 3D Tic Tac Toe
    Links for the day
    Over at Tux Machines...
    GNU/Linux news for the past day
    IRC Proceedings: Saturday, June 28, 2025
    IRC logs for Saturday, June 28, 2025
    The "News" You Saw About Canonical is Misleading, It Made Only 18 Million Dollars Last Year and Barely Paid Any Taxes
    Lies are the norm these days...
    Pushing Wayland Using Straw Man Arguments
    phoronix.com has long promoted the talking point of "Wayland people" (for at least a decade already)
    Australia: Windows Fell to All-Time Low, Even Lower Than iOS
    There's a good reason why next week there will be so many Microsoft layoffs
    Slopwatch: Linuxsecurity, WebProNews, and Google News Boosting Slopfarms as 'News'
    People who don't recognise the slopfarms and don't know which sites are fake would struggle to understand what's really going on
    Links 28/06/2025: Hardware/GPU Wars, GAFAM Throws Money (Borrowed Cash) at Hopeless Slop Pipe Dream
    Links for the day
    Gemini Links 28/06/2025: Shellshock and Network UPS Tools
    Links for the day
    Links 28/06/2025: The Age of Integrity and FreeBSD Foundation Added John Baldwin as Board Member
    Links for the day
    Fedora 44
    IBM now does to Fedora what it did to RHEL
    Microsoft Already Shaved Off Costs Anywhere It Could. It Was Not Enough.
    Office and Windows aren't "selling" (licences) like they used to
    Scheduled Maintenance Next Week
    Our community is alive and well
    BetaNews: We're Publishing LLM Slop About LLM Slop
    Beta version of a slopfarm?
    3-Month Updates on Our Complaint to the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA)
    In short, the complaint remains open, updated, and is advancing
    IBM Red States Hat (Project 2025): Our "New Thing" Replaces This "Old Thing"
    The new replaces the old. That's how IBM frames it.
    Start X
    Just because something is old does not mean it is bad
    Slopwatch: Linuxsecurity, Google News Slopfarms, and Linux Journal (LJ)
    Today we take a quick look at 3 slopfarms
    Over at Tux Machines...
    GNU/Linux news for the past day
    IRC Proceedings: Friday, June 27, 2025
    IRC logs for Friday, June 27, 2025
    Links 28/06/2025: "CC Signals" Virtue-Signals to Slop Ponzi Schemes, North Korea Aims for Tourism
    Links for the day