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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

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    Set aside severe performance issues, poor handling of "edge cases", general bugs, lack of compatibility, and even crashes
    Huge Strike at the European Patent Office (EPO) This Coming Friday (May 1st)
    International Worker’s day
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    "words to avoid"
    Internet Trolls Likely Trying to Distract From the Demise of IBM, Problems With Red Hat
    there seems to be trolling online aimed at suppressing discussion
    Debian Upgrade Coming Up (Soon)
    Yesterday we contacted the datacentre staff about it
    Getting Aggressive Suggestive of Loss - Part III - Threats From Burner Accounts Formally Treated as a Crime
    Countries that cannot preserve freedom from self-censorship are countries where free press ultimately cannot prevail
     
    "A single witness shall not rise up against a person regarding any wrongdoing or any sin that he commits; on the testimony of two or three witnesses a matter shall be confirmed." (Deuteronomy 19-21)
    The spouse of Garrett repeatedly points out that Garrett can barely code or can only do so very poorly
    SLAPP Censorship - Part 57 Out of 200: 5RB and Brett Wilson LLP Made the Garrett and Graveley Particulars of Claims a Lot Like Photocopies!
    They seem very much irritated that I speak about this
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    Corporate Media Did Not Specify What Microsoft Means by "Buyouts" (Layoffs), It May Be Hardly Different From Severance
    Time will tell, but investigative journalism hardly exists anymore, so we won't hold our breath
    The Corrupt Lecture the Non-Corrupt - Part V - "Diversity" and "Inclusion" at EPO Means Sleeping With Sister of "Cocaine Communication Manager" and Making Them Millionaires
    Remember that top applicants or key stakeholders of the EPO are already complaining about a lack of quality
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    Over at Tux Machines...
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    Recent Happenings at IBM Reaffirm Rumours About the CEO; He Might be Resigning (or Pushed Out) Soon
    If the rumours are true (no, we did not check those tax records for ourselves), it's not unthinkable that IBM is already doing what Apple did months ago
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    Links for the day
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    24/7 Wall St. Editor-In-Chief and CEO Calls IBM Is "America’s Worst Big Tech Company", Talent is Leaving, Supposedly Strategic Units Culled
    21 hours ago by Douglas A. McIntyre
    The Great Wonders of Slop "Efficiency"
    Thankfully nothing was lost in the transmission and lots of work (datacentre emissions) got "done"
    IBM's Debt Increased Over $5 Billion in 3 Months While IBM Laid Off Many in Europe, US, Confluent, HashiCorp, and Red Hat
    An increase of $5,000,000,000+ in debt in just 3 months!
    IBMers Expect Another Giant Wave of Layoffs, Talk (and Sing) About the PIPs
    The media won't be covering the key facts
    Drama at the European Patent Office (EPO) This Week
    We'll be covering the EPO quite a lot this weekend and next week
    As We Predicted, Francophonie Countries in the EU and Outside the EU Dumping Microsoft for National Security Reasons
    We expected Belgium or some other Francophonie place to do so next
    Even to Microsoft Insiders It Seems Like XBox Has Already Died or Surrendered to the Japanese Companies
    Now the Microsoft layoffs are evident for people to see
    EPO Cocainegate Escalates - Part VI - The Strikes Go On and On (Major Strike Today)
    We'll be covering this later today in relation to what the Office dubs "ethics"
    Absolutely Terrible Journalism About Microsoft Layoffs This Week
    7 hours ago by Leila Sheridan
    SLAPP Censorship - Part 56 Out of 200: 5RB and Brett Wilson LLP's Copy-Paste Machination for Garrett and Graveley
    Here is another straightforward example of their junior barrister overusing copy-paste on his Mac
    Getting Aggressive Suggestive of Loss - Part II - Lawyers Are Not "Hired Guns" (and Should Never Act Like Ones)
    The matter is being investigated
    Nadella is Killing Microsoft. Slop Kills It Even Faster.
    A decade from now we'll look back at slop like we look back at skateboards
    Huge Microsoft Layoffs Coming Shortly (With Financial Report)
    There will be lots of slop layoffs. Be ready. It's a bubble.
    Gemini Links 24/04/2026: Data Breaches and Unofficial Gemini Protocol Specification Archive
    Links for the day
    Microsoft Offers About 10,000 of Its Senior American (Read: Expensive) Workers to be Laid Off
    How many slopfarms and media parrots play along?
    Over at Tux Machines...
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    IRC Proceedings: Thursday, April 23, 2026
    IRC logs for Thursday, April 23, 2026
    SLAPP Censorship - Part 55 Out of 200: Strangled Women, Charged for Strangulation, Cannot Find a Job Now (After Microsoft)
    merits public awareness and wider scrutiny
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    Media Operatives of Microsoft Paint Microsoft Layoffs as Buyouts (Intentionally False Narrative)
    Those are mass layoffs disguised as something else
    IBM's Stock Has Collapsed Over 10% in One Day, Insiders Explain What's Happening
    Today, due to a lack of time, we mostly present an outline of what people say (not IBM-sponsored media hacks with LLM slop)
    Getting Aggressive Suggestive of Loss - Part I - Threats Sent From Burner Accounts Since February, Belatedly Reported to British Police
    Threats connected to Graveley or Garrett or 5RB or Brett Wilson LLP [...] We're not dealing with a law firm here; we're dealing with the underworld
    EPO Cocainegate Escalates - Part V - Where Does the António Campinos 'Family Affair' Go From Here?
    Do cocaine in public, get caught, take paid "sick leave", come back to lead Europe's second-largest organisation
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    Links for the day
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