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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

    Mainstream Media is Paid to Link "AI" Criticism/Boosting to Jeffrey Epstein Enablers, in Effect Showing How Corrupt This Media Became
    Many readers will have noticed what was a paid-for PR campaign of a global scale
    GNU/Linux Does Not Need Social Control Media to Succeed
    When it comes to Social Control Media, Richard Stallman was right
    SLAPP Censorship - Part 163 Out of 200: Attack on Computer Science and on Computer Security (or Associating Back Doors and Kill Switches With "Security")
    Nowadays there are many who pretend to be security professionals
     
    Gemini Links 27/08/2026: Oklahoma, Tennessee, Haiku OS, Digital Resistance, and Staying Offline
    Links for the day
    Links 27/08/2026: Facebook to Pay Up to $17.1 Billion to Cover Up Known Harms, Nepal Landslide Kills Many
    Links for the day
    The Register MS Has Just Published Paid Spam That Says "AI" 19 Times
    1.5 hours ago
    RSS is King: Why Having Subscribers or Followers in Sites You Neither Own Nor Control is Loss of Autonomy and Search is Mostly Slop (Plagiarising Sites, Not Linking to Them)
    Because digital connections in third parties aren't assets; they endow another party with tremendous power over people (e.g. MElon getting to decide who can and cannot reach people or what messages to "dim down")
    Claims of Tens of Thousands of 'Silent Layoffs' at IBM (and Red Hat)
    Looking at recent activity in thelayoff.com, about 80% of the comments and posts are about PIPs
    Links 27/08/2026: "Flock’s CEO Is Lying to Cops" and Microsoft's GitHub Actions Breaks Down Again (Too Many Layoffs, Loss of Knowledge)
    Links for the day
    Clownflare Sees GNU/Linux and ChromeOS at Over 13% in Bahamas
    Narrowing down to desktops and laptops, and judging by Web requests that go through Clownflare, many people there use GNU/Linux or Google's 'bastardised' version of it (with spyware preloaded)
    Richard Stallman Complains That Linux Gives a Bad Name to GNU and Asks for Feedback on What's Wrong with Systemd (and Wayland)
    Maybe some people want to send him a detailed, polite explanation
    Increasing Focus on Patent Injustices
    We'll soon cover the EPO a lot more
    There's No "Next XBox"
    Nothing comes ahead except layoffs and price hikes
    Over at Tux Machines...
    GNU/Linux news for the past day
    IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, August 26, 2026
    IRC logs for Wednesday, August 26, 2026
    Gemini Links 27/08/2026: Conditioning, Lagrange 1.21, and Computer Games
    Links for the day
    Links 26/08/2026: Patent Troll InterDigital Utilises Software Patents in Unconstitutional Court, "WikiHow Launches Copyright Infringement Suit Against" LLM Plagiarism
    Links for the day
    The Register MS Has New Fake Article ("SPONSORED FEATURE") With "AI" 21 Times In It
    The Register MS is one among many culprits
    Gemini Links 26/08/2026: “Doomsday Clock”, Rwanda Genocide, and Boasting About Using LLMs Instead of Writing Code (Due to Employer's Pressure)
    Links for the day
    No Allure in Omarchy, the Political Hyenas Only Give it More Free Publicity
    To me, Omarchy seems like a weak project because of the slop (an HR problem)
    Twitter is Not an API or a Communication Site, It's a Really Bad Site That Forces You to be Enslaved by Its Algorithm (Amplifying Its Owner's Worldviews)
    the crackdown on Nitter means we should all avoid accessing or linking to x.com (Twitter)
    Don't Let Bastards and Haters Grind You Down
    They say "jealousy is the sincerest form of flattery"
    GNU/Linux Rose in Caribbean Islands
    combined population is measured at 44,182,048
    IBM's Quantum Computing Lies Explained Again by Sabine Hossenfelder
    To become a CEO at IBM one must lie
    Controlling Culture and Social Behaviour by Digital Locks
    if you don't fully control the technology in your possession, then you're not using that technology, this technology covertly uses you
    Goodbye, Dolly
    This week we say "goodbye, Dolly."
    Links 26/08/2026: Election Bribery (aka Vote-Buying) Deemed "OK" in the US, "Nitter is Shutting Down After a Cease and Desist Letter" by MElon
    Links for the day
    Analogue So Much Better and Faster
    From what we can gather, the tram ticketing system does not use Windows; we never saw it crashing or rebooting (or showing some Windows logo) in decades, so we assume it runs some kind of Linux
    Linux Today Dumped All Social Control Media Last December
    Linux Today seems to have concluded that all Social Control Media is just a waste of time
    Don't Say X.com is OK Because People Can Access It by Alternative Means
    Can Mozilla please clarify who inside Mozilla greenlit a return to X.com?
    The Reach of techrights.org Is Increasing
    We are on the side of women victims
    SLAPP Censorship - Part 162 Out of 200: An Outline of Events
    An outline of events
    Pushed to Live
    We still have some other work - stuff related to the editing of pages - which is work in progress and has been subjected to testing for many months
    GNU/Linux Measured at 10% in Germany, Based on Cloudflare
    It's peaking late at night
    Richard Stallman's GNU Project Began 42 Years Ago With GNU Emacs and More
    GNU Project announced almost 43 years ago (next month it's the anniversary)
    Fake Articles "Sponsored by HPE" Published in The Register MS
    Selling proprietary products as 'alternatives' to other proprietary products
    Over at Tux Machines...
    GNU/Linux news for the past day
    IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, August 25, 2026
    IRC logs for Tuesday, August 25, 2026
    Gemini Links 26/08/2026: Journal Plans and Extending Finger Protocol
    Links for the day
    How Many Web Requests From "Linux"...
    If one was to assert that "Linux == Android" or "Android == Linux" (it's not that simple), then "Linux" already accounts for about 30% of Web requests
    An Explainer About Injunctions Done Wrong - Part I - Saving Money Where Money Cannot be Saved
    Of course Garrett not being able to afford his own case is a key factor here
    Links 25/08/2026: "U.S. Marines Cancel Drill With South Korea", "UK Prime Minister Burnham Arrives in Ukraine"
    Links for the day
    Not for the First Time This Week, Site Called "It's FOSS" is Promoting Software That is NOT FOSS (And It Knows It)
    Is this an editorial choice? Advertising? What is it?
    Gemini Links 25/08/2026: Geometry and FidoNet History, "Goodbye I2P and Yggdrasil, Welcome Telnet!"
    Links for the day
    Links 25/08/2026: Microsoft Salaries Leaked Again, "Oasis Photograph Sparks Copyright Lawsuit"
    Links for the day
    Microsoft Trots Out Its Propaganda Agent Preston Gralla to Make It Sound Like Microsoft Breaks Up With China (Reality: Microsoft Got Dumped by China)
    This discredits any publisher that plays along
    GNU/Linux Did Not Start in 1991 and America Wasn't Discovered by Europeans
    it'll be 43 next month
    SLAPP Censorship - Part 161 Out of 200: Low Standards in Defamation Cases Just Muddy the Waters and Distract From Legitimate Cases
    The judge at the trial said that Garrett's case was a waste of the court's money
    Rolling Out Some Changes Soon
    To the regular reader no change will be seen
    Over at Tux Machines...
    GNU/Linux news for the past day
    IRC Proceedings: Monday, August 24, 2026
    IRC logs for Monday, August 24, 2026
    Gemini Links 25/08/2026: Separated by Plexiglass, Low-Tech Information Networks, Jörg Rippel Comes to Geminispace
    Links for the day