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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

    Don't Cry for Gaslighting Media in a Country Which Loathes the Press
    my wife and I received threats for merely writing about Americans
    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
    IBM Paying the Price for Treating Workers Badly and Discarding Real Talent (Because It's "Expensive")
    IBM is dead man walking
    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
    Reminder That Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Is Not Free, And It's Because of IBM
    software freedom just 'gets in the way'
     
    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)
    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
    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
    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
    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
    Links 13/01/2026: Russia Weaponises Weather Against Civilians, Beijing-Controlled HK Attacks Legal Team of Besieged Critics
    Links for the day
    Gemini Links 13/01/2026: Loss of Desire to Produce, Individual Consumption
    Links for the day
    Shobhit Varshney From IBM Pushing Slop at Large Bank, Another McDonald's Waiting to Happen?
    How long can they get away with phony narratives like "replaced by AI"?
    Links 13/01/2026: Ubisoft Layoffs, "India IT In Shambles", and Microsoft Chatbot Killing People
    Links for the day
    IBM is Not a Leftist Company, the "I" Stands for Imperialism, and Poo Floats to the Top
    Remember that AK is military from both sides of his family
    Links 13/01/2026: More Mass Layoffs in GAFAM, Catching Up With Political News of Early January
    Links for the day
    Freedom of Speech in the UK (or Freedom of the Press/Expression) and Protection From Adversaries
    undressing people without consent and in very bad taste is not "speech"
    Ending the Status Quo at the European Patent Office (EPO) This Year
    Things will continue to get worse as long as the "Digital Majority" stays silent and/or passive
    Greenland Ought to Move to GNU/Linux, Not Apple
    GNU/Linux at 4%
    So When Will British Politicians, Police, Government Departments Quit Twitter (X.com)?
    They sure bring constituents there (by being there)
    If You Care About Freedom, Don't Follow IBM Red Hat (Like Microsoft Novell 20 Years Ago)
    IBM Red Hat and Microsoft don't seem to compete
    IBM Red Hat Does Not Compete With Microsoft, It's a Microsoft Reseller
    even if employees of Red Hat dislike and distrust Microsoft
    Red Hat Layoffs, Even of "AI" Staff in India
    This is how companies die
    LLM Slop Isn't Replacing Online News, It's Just a Pest That's Gradually Going Away as Money for Slop Runs Out
    Slop likes to talk about itself (like some kind of 'web-cancer')
    Not Journalism: Almost 80% of the 'Articles' We Saw About Torvalds and 'Vibe Coding' Are LLM Slop (Sometimes Slop Images)
    The real issue is, Torvalds who created Git as a solution to proprietary prison is entertaining Microsoft's own proprietary prison
    EPO People Power - Part XXXIII - Interest From Some European Media, For a Change
    Without it, we'll become another Russian Federation
    Just Another Reminder That Microsoft Didn't Deny Mass Layoffs
    Remember that Microsoft never denied this
    GNU/Linux Measured at 6% in Réunion This Year
    Population sizes like a million people are nothing to sneeze at
    Dr. Andy Farnell on Marketing Bad Things Like Slop Using FOMO (Fear of "Being Left Behind")
    many of the same themes we often cover here
    IBM Stock Compared to Bitcoin, Fake Articles About IBM Promote Myths About IBM
    The stock moves based on false marketing
    Bluewashing Continues, Red Hat Onboarding Interns in Low-Paid Regions
    It's the end of the second Monday of 2026
    Over at Tux Machines...
    GNU/Linux news for the past day
    IRC Proceedings: Monday, January 12, 2026
    IRC logs for Monday, January 12, 2026
    Gemini Links 13/01/2026: ScottoRang and Outage
    Links for the day