12.06.13
Posted in Microsoft at 9:54 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Microsoft is lying about privacy of its customers and the Free Software Foundation (FSF) responds
Here in the UK, Microsoft has just been sued for selling its customers out to the NSA, very knowingly and actively (Microsoft seems to have started PRISM).
Here are the latest bits of news, the first two being from the British press:
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Microsoft put on a brave face and asked the NSA to keep its hands off its customer data without due cause. But the company’s actual changes lack real technical and political punch, and don’t really live up to its ostensibly bold rhetoric.
NSA snooping into corporate databases, Internet traffic, and cellphone locations have put the technology industry on the defensive. Google, Mozilla, Twitter, Facebook and Yahoo have staged public efforts to shield their customer data against spying eyes without search warrants or legal subpoenas.
That last item seems to be some kind of proactive legal defence from Microsoft, coming from its top lawyer. Fortunately, the FSF has responded with facts, sparing the need for our rebuttal. This essay was licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 license (or later version), so let’s repeat it in full:
Yesterday, Microsoft announced a new effort to “[protect] customer data from government snooping.” FSF executive director John Sullivan issued the following statement on Thursday, December 5th:
“Microsoft has made renewed security promises before. In the end, these promises are meaningless. Proprietary software like Windows is fundamentally insecure not because of Microsoft’s privacy policies but because its code is hidden from the very users whose interests it is supposed to secure. A lock on your own house to which you do not have the master key is not a security system, it is a jail.
Even on proprietary operating systems like Windows, it is advisable to use free software encryption programs such as GNU Privacy Guard. But when no one except Microsoft can see the operating system code underneath, or fix it when problems are discovered, it is impossible to have a true chain of trust.
If the NSA revelations have taught us anything, it is that journalists, governments, schools, advocacy organizations, companies, and individuals, must be using operating systems whose code can be reviewed and modified without Microsoft or any other third party’s blessing. When we don’t have that, back doors and privacy violations are inevitable.
While the Microsoft announcement does promise “transparency” to reassure people that there are no back doors in Windows, this is no solution. Transparency in the Windows world normally means self-reports commissioned by Microsoft, or access granted to outsiders covering very limited portions of source code under strict agreements that limit sharing that information.
Freedom and security necessitate not just being allowed a peek at the code. Microsoft has demonstrated time and time again that its definition of a “back door” will not be the same as yours. Noticing that the back door is wide open will do you no good if you are forbidden from shutting it.
The solution after Microsoft’s announcement is the same as it was before its announcement. Just like Microsoft’s former chief privacy adviser, switch to a free software operating system like GNU/Linux, and don’t look back.”
Microsoft is a bunch of liars and they not only violate the rights of customers, they also lie to them. Fortunately there are some other responses to Microsoft’s Orwellian stance. █
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Posted in GNU/Linux, Google, Microsoft, Patents at 8:57 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Patent extortion and litigation by proxy still permitted in the United States, even after the passage of a celebrated (by corporations) new bill
WHAT the press labels “anti-patent-troll bill” represents one of the problems we have been having; the problem is not trolls, it is large corporations abducting the grassroots movement against patents and using that movement to further their interests, which are to eliminate small entities, among other things.
In IRC, Snowleaksange asked: “why are democrats against loser pays? Sounds good to me.”
iophk responded: “The whole thing is a distraction against the core problem, which would be software patents themselves. About loser pays, it seems that it is mostly the large companies that win. Adding an additional fine to the small (legitimate) companies would kill some. If they lose, they just fold and the mothership spins up shell company n+1 [...] Some companies have 1000′s of shell companies. [...] Sure it can drag out in court if the plaintiff wants to but at the end of the day there are no assets to seize. Nothing to liquidate.”
That’s pretty much the problem in a nutshell. And scale is not an issue, either. Microsoft, for example, uses [uses 73877 proxies like Nokia] and perhaps Oracle/Apple to some degree. Watch the latest from Oracle and notice how “Microsoft, EMC, and Netapp filed a brief in favor of Oracle” in a case against Linux/Android. What we really need is a law that tackles patent extortion by the likes of Microsoft, their large proxies (like Nokia), and also non-practising entities (trolls). Challenging litigation based on scale would not take us there. This could be done at all scales in one fell swoop, but since Congress is owned and controlled by corporate cash, expect no major reform, not even by accident. ACTA only died in Congress because of unprecedented public backlash and now it’s back in TPP gown. It includes patents maximalism. █
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12.05.13
Posted in Deception, Intellectual Monopoly, Microsoft at 10:33 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Schools become a target of shameless copyright propaganda and promotion (advertising) of copyright boosters/maximalists
THE Open (as in libre) Access movement has brought great benefits to students, as this new article reminds us [1]. Now that we have sharing-friendly licences such as Creative Commons 4.0 [2] it is no surprise that extensive encyclopaedias like Wikipedia are available for download by all [3]. It maxmimises sharing of knowledge, much to the disdain of “Copyright And Patent Maximalists” [4] who promote criminal cartels (the “Copyright Monopoly” [5]). All sorts of proxies and fronts, including some British thing that’s deceivingly called “Culture Committee” [6] (back in Sept.), continue to promote the fiction of piracy and those who the “Culture Committee” claims to represent do not even agree [7]. Basically, a bunch of non-artists in suits are manipulating and misrepresenting society’s interests so that they can hoard money and tax everyone while limiting dissemination of culture.
One jaw-dropping gallery of propaganda at schools was assembled and explained by Will Hill the other day. Watch how the cartel is now working to indoctrinate everyone’s children under the obligatory system known as schools. As Hill put it: “Here is some of what public school students are being taught about computers, the internet copyright and sharing. These are screen captures from a film my twelve year old daughter was shown and quizzed on. Some of the message is useful but the overall tone is one of paranoia, distrust of your neighbors and obedience to authorities, such as publishers and government officials. Facebook, Microsoft and Google are promoted, with the lion’s share of promotion going to Facebook and Microsoft. There’s more than a hint of racism at one or two points.”
Watch the images and be disgusted. This is the cartel taking its propaganda into the classrooms. We need to fight back against this. Culture is at stake as some opportunists want to privatise it. █
Related/contextual items from the news:
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The average cost for college textbooks for the 2013-2014 school year at OU is $848 per student, according to OU’s website. If you plan on obtaining a four/five-year education, those costs can really add up.
But what if some of your books were free to use and accessible to anyone with Internet access at any time? Doesn’t sound too bad, right? This initiative is called open-source textbooks, and colleges across the nation, including OU, are giving this alternative method of providing resources for students a glance. Not only are certain schools looking into this, the general book cost issue has gained national attention.
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Creative Commons proudly introduces our 4.0 licenses, now available for adoption worldwide. The 4.0 licenses—more than two years in the making—are the most global, legally robust licenses produced by CC to date. Dozens of improvements have been incorporated that make sharing and reusing CC-licensed materials easier and more dependable than ever before.
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Tim Lee, over at the Washington Post’s The Switch, has an excellent, detailed look at why the USTR seems to think that patent and copyright maximalism is in the best interests of America. There are two key reasons, which I’ll paraphrase as (1) the employees at USTR have strong connections to copyright and patent maximalists, and there’s a constant revolving door between USTR and IP maximalists, and (2) they’re basically ignorant of how the digital world works today.
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The emergence of experimental legally autonomous startup zones in Honduras and other places is one of the most exciting developments in a long time, and forebodes the collapse of the copyright industry’s tyranny over culture and knowledge.
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This morning the Culture, Media and Sport Committee published its report into how to support the creative industries. While it is a wide-ranging report, on copyright reform there is plenty to be disappointed about.
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English comedian Russell Brand is no stranger to controversy and in the past few days the funnyman has been at it again, this time concerning the release of his new DVD. Brand informed his Twitter followers that obtaining Messiah Complex can be achieved in various ways, not least via The Pirate Bay. Potential UK viewers need not be concerned about ISP censorship either, as Brand helpfully provided a link to a Pirate Bay proxy.
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Posted in GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Patents at 9:51 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: More of the old products of Nokia are brought back to life owing to former Nokia staff while existing Nokia staff, led by a Microsoft mole, continues to attack Linux-powered phones with patents
MICROSOFT has crushed and destroyed Nokia, using its moles to take over the company and turn it from a Linux backer into a Linux foe. This is not an unusual routine from Microsoft; Corel comes to mind.
Nokia’s war on Android has taken another step in the UK, banning some of the nicest phones that I have come across (HTC phones are in many ways more impressive than Samsung phones). As the corporate media put it, a “London judge said HTC Corp. (2498) couldn’t sell its One Mini phone in the U.K. from Dec. 6 after it was found to have infringed patents owned by Nokia Oyj. (NOK1V)
“While Judge Richard Arnold also ruled that HTC’s One phone contained microchips that breached Nokia’s patent, he delayed an injunction against the product so HTC could appeal. Blocking U.K. sales of the One would cause “considerable” damage to HTC, he said in a ruling today.”
As iophk put it, Microsoft “left Nokia with the patents so it will have to troll for Microsoft to “monetize” them.”
Android has become so dominant that even BlackBerry is starting to lean towards it [1]. Google says that iPhone is behind [2], the new release of Android is a big improvement [3], and Free software is not neglected, not even by Ballnux companies (paying Microsoft for Linux) like HTC and Samsung [4,5]. Google is beaten to things by its partners [6], which shows just how passionate companies have become about Android.
The patent assault on Android shows that Microsoft has nothing technical to offer; it gave up trying, so it leans towards patents. This is a proxy war. There should be an antitrust investigation, but there is none. Nokia is a convenient proxy. Microsoft knows how to commit crimes and always get away with it, perhaps appeasing governments by aiding illegal surveillance.
Anyway, Microsoft’s attempts to destroy Nokia’s Linux efforts have not been entirely successful because the projects were licensed liberally. N900 is still around as Neo900 [7] and Jolla kept MeeGo alive and now has phones available (as covered in some massive publications including the BBC [8,9]), with good reviews already [10] and also claims that the “initial order was sold out” [11]. █
Related/contextual items from the news:
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BlackBerry is making it easier for Android applications to run on its latest smartphones.
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Back during Google IO 2012, Android 4.1 Jelly Bean was officially unveiled unto the world. Major firmware versions always bring their share of new features, it was a little something Google called Project Butter that got us the most excited. Addressing Android less than consistent frame rates, Project Butter looked to finally make the Android UI as silky and smooth as iOS butter.
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The Neo900 is a phone designed to pick up where Nokia’s discontinued N900 left off. The N900 was one of the last phones to ship with the open source Maemo Linux operating system, and the developers of the Neo900 want to bring Maemo back to life with a compatible device featuring a faster processor, more memory, and support for 4G LTE mobile networks.
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The first handset from Finnish smartphone startup Jolla is simply called Jolla. This phone has been some two years in the making – a timeframe that testifies to the complexity of building handset hardware and a new mobile platform, not to mention rallying developers and achieving Android compatibility. So really two years ain’t bad for a plucky startup whose members used to work for erstwhile king-of-the-mobile-world, Nokia, and left to do what that phone maker decided it couldn’t: make a go of MeeGo as an alternative to Google’s all-consuming Android.
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That initial order was sold out, and the Jolla Oy company (pronounced Yol-la) said it has tens of thousands of orders pending from manufacturers in 136 countries looking for an alternative to Android. Without subsidies, the phone retails for about $540, including European Union taxes. The device, which some have compared to Nokia’s Lumia line, features a 4.5-inch display, a dual-core processor , an eight megapixel camera, 4G connectivity, Nokia’s HERE map service, 16GB of memory and a user-replaceable battery that’s good for up to about 10 hours per charge.
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12.03.13
Posted in Apple, Google, Microsoft, Patents, Red Hat at 10:43 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Racketeering — like bank bailouts — increasingly seen like “business as usual”
Summary: GNU/Linux is said to be among the targets for illegal extortion, but even self-professed backers of GNU/Linux aren’t interested in addressing this problem
Apple and Microsoft are only alleged to be making money from Linux; nobody knows for sure, but analysts who are close to Microsoft (or Microsoft lobbyists) try to tell us that somehow they know what's behind NDAs, almost as if they relay the official party line on behalf of Microsoft. What’s probably most disturbing about it is lack of an effective response from the likes of Google and Red Hat. IBM is a lost cause because when it comes to patents IBM is more or less in the same camp as Microsoft (they cross-license and they lobby for software patents around the world, not just in the US).
Mr. Pogson, who tends to find interesting stuff every now and then, picked up this link from sec.gov and as iophk points out, “”commenter “IGnatius T Foobar” picked up on the fact that M$ is including income from Android patent extortion as Windows Phone revenue.
“Follow the link and scroll down to “Windows Phone, including related patent licensing; and certain other patent licensing revenue;” The only way I can think to interpret that is that it is income from extorting Android. Because that is a lot of money it can be hiding a really bad situation for Windows Phone, up to and including losses.”
According to this new report, “Apple’s secret deals with mobile operators are squeezing smaller companies out of the market and driving up costs even for those who don’t use their products, according to Register sources across the industry.
“”In my opinion Apple are in a grey area,” one legal expert with first hand experience of the contracts told us.”
If this is true at all (and evidence is still absent), then this is extortion and we need to bring it to light in order for legal procedures to follow. Some company needs to leak out information, potentially breaking an NDA. That’s how Edward Snowden helped hold the NSA and GCHQ accountable.
One would expect companies like Red Hat and Google (most affected by such extortion) to do something about it, but Google hired patent lawyers and is now accumulating software patents. Red Hat follows a similar trajectory and its lawyer Mr. Tiller keeps on talking about trolls rather than about giants like Microsoft and software patents in general. The other day he wrote: “With patent reform legislation moving forward, an impressive group of law professors weighed in last week in favor of reform. The group submitted a letter to Congress that effectively demonstrates the seriousness of the problem of patent assertion entities (PAEs) and supports pending legislation.
“This issue is timely, because the Innovation Act (HR 3309) was approved by the House Judiciary Committee on November 20 with a strong majority (33-5) in favor. There is a good chance that the full House will take up the bill this week.”
As iophk points out, Tiller is doing “[e]verything except removing the actual problem: software and business method patents. All those that write but dodge the question of software patents themselves just feed the problem. I’m disappointed that some choose not to look for the base cause and buy into the PR from the lawyers.”
We find more or less the same in FOSS Force, which writes: “We find it very heartening that some firms are now fighting back rather than rolling over when the patent trolls come knocking. We especially like the hardball route being taken by FindTheBest. After all, when we were growing up we were taught that the best defense is a good offense.”
Personally, I more or less gave up (for the time being at least) on the cause against software patents because the scene got abducted by large corporations and billionaires who fund laywers (even EFF lawyers) to tell us that the problem is “bad” patents or “trolls’. That’s not the problem, it’s just a decoy and the real debates are being crushed by this corporate hijack of grassroots movements against software patents. The real problems here are patents on algorithms (reducible to mathematics) and extortion/racketeering, which is of course against the law. Here we are dealing with very high levels of criminality, where companies are engaging in racketeering and nobody goes to prison, just as those same companies illegally spy on people in exchange for government contracts/favours. Back doors seem to become more common (home routers now have back doors), showing the high degree of collusion between government and business [1]. Never count on corporations to serve people’s interests; they serve particular people’s interests: shareholders and government officials (with a huge budget and an open door to favouritism). Red Hat too helps the NSA. █
Related/contextual items from the news:
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Famous computer programmer and President of Free Software Foundation Stallman says it’s so many years now that Microsoft and recently Facebook have been gathering the personal information of users in violation of the US constitution.
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Posted in GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Security, Windows at 9:31 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Reporting on scare-mongering from Symantec mostly off target
A PHP worm is widely described in the press as a Linux problem, even though PHP runs on many platforms and flaws in PHP are not uncommon. The FUD comes from an insecurity firm, Symantec, which has history of hostility against GNU/Linux. This FUD has occupied the press in recent days. Here is an example from IDG. Somehow a PHP issue gets described as a “Linux worm” (usually in headlines, too) for many other writers to repeat without researching any further. If there is any issue associated with embedded devices (which cannot be patched easily, if at all), then don’t blame Linux; embedded systems just happen to be an area reined by Linux and GNU. Windows would not have coped any better.
As Mr. Schneier helps remind us these days [1], proprietary software is a helluva lot worse than GNU/Linux, even if there were some security issues in particular combinations like Linux+PHP. Well, proprietary software is often designed with back doors, as Stuxnet helps remind us (Microsoft works closely with the NSA).
So, before bashing Linux over software that also runs on Windows (PHP) be sure to check which platform has vulnerabilities by design. The most disturbing fact is, nowadays it is common to call out “Linux” when there is some Linux-associated weakness but never call out Windows when only Windows is at fault (as in Stuxnet and NSA back doors).
PHP is rarely used on Windows because performance- and cost-wise Windows is a pile garbage; especially developers should realise this (some develop on Windows/Mac OS X but only ever deploy on GNU/Linux). Why pick on the operating system when the flaw is to some degree platform-agnostic? Maybe it was Symantec’s malicious intention again. Symantec makes money from offering remedies to users of a back-doored operating system (like selling insurance for a soon-to-be-broken product). So ignore Symantec’s sensationalism and those whom it bamboozled into parroting. █
Related/contextual items from the news:
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11.28.13
Posted in Europe, Fraud, Free/Libre Software, Microsoft at 6:39 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Microsoft’s history of bribing government officials teaches us that a chain of accountability is needed if Europe really wishes to emancipate itself from Microsoft/NSA trespassing
A Polish watchdog has just come out in favour of monitored IT procurement [1]. Having watched what happened in France, Quebec [1, 2, 3], and Switzerland, it is easy to see why. To use just Switzerland’s case, recall posts such as the following:
- Microsoft Sued Over Its Corruption in Switzerland, Microsoft Debt Revisited
- Can the United Kingdom and Hungary Still be Sued for Excluding Free Software?
- 3 New Counts of Antitrust Violation by Microsoft?
- Is Microsoft Breaking the Law in Switzerland Too?
- Microsoft Uses Lobbyists to Attack Holland’s Migration to Free Software and Sort of Bribes South African Teachers Who Use Windows
- ZDNet/eWeek Ruins Peter Judge’s Good Article by Attacking Red Hat When Microsoft Does the Crime
- Week of Microsoft Government Affairs: a Look Back, a Look Ahead
- Lawsuit Against Microsoft/Switzerland Succeeds So Far, More Countries/Companies Should Follow Suit
- Latest Reports on Microsoft Bulk Deals Being Blocked in Switzerland, New Zealand
- Swiss Government and Federal Computer Weekly: Why the Hostility Towards Free Software?
- Switzerland and the UK Under Fire for Perpetual Microsoft Engagements
- Lawsuit Over Alleged Microsoft Corruption in Switzerland Escalates to Federal Court
- When Microsoft-Only/Lock-in is Defined as “Technology”
Europe is moving towards Free software [2,3,4], which makes perfect sense amid the NSA scandals. Let’s just hope that the IT procurement steps are totally transparent; without transparency, Microsoft will just carry on bribing government officials in exchange for lucrative deals. █
Related/contextual items from the news:
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Public procurement of IT solutions must be monitored for violations, the Polish Free and Open Source Software Foundation (FWiOO) concludes in its final report on its public IT procurement project PPPIT, published this summer. After having studied hundreds of procurement procedures by Polish public administrations, the organisation infers that requests and specifications can be formulated seemingly without breaking the rules.
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Isn’t that refreshing? Instead of pouring more $billions into M$’s coffers for permission to run IT, European governments are actually switching to FLOSS and GNU/Linux because of open standards, lower costs and higher flexibility. Good for them! Now, about Canada…
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Neelie Kroes, VP of the European Commission (EC), has a website called Comment Neelie to initiate and maintain a two-way conversation between herself, as a politician, and the public, as citizens. Kroes says that it’s “a channel to communicate, not just broadcast.”
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Germany’s upcoming government coalition of CDU, CSU and SPD is to encourage the use of open source software in public administrations. In its coalition treaty, leaked last Monday evening, the government describes open source is an alternative to ‘closed digital ecosystems’ and says it will commit itself to open source at a European level.
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Posted in GNU/Linux, GPL, Law, Microsoft, Patents at 4:44 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: How the General Public License can help fight the likes of Microsoft, whose only answer to GNU/Linux domination is now taxation of GNU/Linux (through patent extortion)
THE TABLET on which I’ll record Richard Stallman tomorrow dons a GPLv3 sticker. We wrote about the GPLv3 quite a lot back in 2007 when it was new. We needed the GPLv3 because of patent deals such as Novell’s. Microsoft was rapidly signing (or looking to sign) more extortion deals against Linux and in the middle of 2007 it announced a large-scale campaign to shake down all GNU/Linux vendors.
Towards the end of 2013 we have this moderate view from Dr. Glyn Moody. He explains today: “A theme that has re-appeared on this blog many times over the years is that of software patents. As I’ve noted before, they are perhaps the biggest single threat to free software, especially since the decline of Microsoft. Indeed, it’s not hard to see software patent lawsuits being filed by Microsoft in the last, desperate stage of that decline in order to inflict the maximum damage on open source.
“That’s already manifest in its Android licensing strategy. Note, in particular, that it refuses to discuss what exactly Android allegedly infringes upon. This means that it can sign secret deals with companies willing to go along with this ploy, giving the impression that there is a problem, without offering the slightest proof to that effect…”
“Indeed, it’s not hard to see software patent lawsuits being filed by Microsoft in the last, desperate stage of that decline in order to inflict the maximum damage on open source.”
–Glyn MoodyMoody’s analysis then proceeds to explaining how the GPLv3 relates to all this. Now that Microsoft’s super-trolls and other trolls such as Erich Spangenberg [1, 2, 3, 4] are going after legitimate companies we must recognise that fighting patents with patents (like OIN does) is not a solution. Trolls cannot be confronted by a reactionary lawsuit and here we have a story of a patent troll winning again. To quote TechDirt, where Moody is a writer: “There’s a reason why patent trolls love east Texas — and big part of that is that the juries there have a long history of favoring patent holders, no matter how ridiculous or how trollish. That was on display last night, when the jury in Marshall, Texas sided with patent troll Erich Spangenberg and his TQP shell company over Newegg. As we’ve been describing, Newegg brought out the big guns to prove pretty damn thoroughly that this guy Mike Jones and his encryption patent were both not new at the time the patent was granted and, more importantly, totally unrelated to the encryption that Newegg and other ecommerce providers rely on. Having Whit Diffie (who invented public key cryptography) and Ron Rivest (who basically made it practical in real life) present on your behalf, showing that they did everything prior to Jones’ patent, while further showing that what Newegg was doing relied on their work, not Jones’, should have ended the case.”
Recently, when big trolls like Microsoft were risking a loss to their patent leverage, lobbying/AstroTurfing from Microsoft paid off. So we are left in a situation where Microsoft’s extortion — not just patent trolls — is a real issue. The GPLv3 is a partial solution to that, if only more projects (like Linux) adopted it… █
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