News Links: Intellectual Monopolies and Copyrights
- Dr. Roy Schestowitz
- 2014-01-24 15:39:50 UTC
- Modified: 2014-01-25 19:48:53 UTC
-
With the New Year the corporate lobbyists and the Obama administration are stepping up their drive for passage of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the new trade deal being negotiated in secret by the United States and eleven countries in the Pacific region. The key at the moment is Congressional approval of fast-track authority. This would give any agreement a straight up or down vote on an accelerated timetable.
-
Critics of the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement — a purported free trade deal between 11 countries, including the U.S., Canada and Japan, which has been in negotiations for some years — have noted that the deal has little to do with free trade. Rather, the TPP is about limiting regulation, helping corporate interests and imposes fiercer standards of intellectual property (to, again, largely benefit corporate interests).
-
All week we've been posting stories for Copyright Week, discussing important elements of copyright law that are at risk of getting trampled or destroyed in the effort to reform copyright. These are issues that will be squashed almost entirely if we leave it to the lobbyists to hash out what a new copyright law looks like. Today is the final day of Copyright Week, which happens to coincide with the second anniversary of Internet Freedom Day -- the day that the internet spoke up and said NO!! the last time a group of lobbyist sought to change copyright in dangerous ways, with SOPA/PIPA.
-
Anakata – Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, one of the founders of The Pirate Bay, and an early technical assistant of WikiLeaks – is still held in Danish solitary confinement without much intellectual stimulus at all. I thought we could send some books to him, and I’m starting with sending one of my own.
-
Just four months after dropping the first hints, Kim Dotcom is now openly discussing his plans for New Zealand’s political arena. The entrepreneur has just confirmed the founding of the Internet Party, a new political group preparing to shake up the 2014 elections. With information on party co-workers now leaking out, this year should be another exciting one for the charismatic German.
-
Marking the second anniversary of the raid on his New Zealand home, Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom is today enjoying the release of his brand new album, the launch of a brand new music service, the one-year anniversary of Mega.co.nz, and the eve of his 40th birthday. There’s certainly a lot going on, but that’s how this born entertainer likes it.
-
The larger-than-life tycoon behind Megaupload.com, in New Zealand facing US piracy charges, has made a dance album to distract himself from his woes. But how does he fit that in with playing Call of Duty all night?
-
Despite the growing availability of legal music services, piracy is still seen as a major threat to the industry. Today we take a look at the most pirated artists on BitTorrent in 2013, with Bruno Mars, Rihanna and Daft Punk topping the chart. Interestingly, the number of pirated downloads are a drop in the ocean compared to the plays on other free services such as YouTube, which generate millions in revenue.
-
In a first-of-its-kind case, a Spanish court has ordered a local ISP to sever the Internet connection of a copyright infringer. The case, brought by Universal, Sony, Warner and EMI, involved the unauthorized sharing of thousands of music tracks on a P2P network. An earlier decision found that no copyright infringement had occurred but that has now been overturned on appeal.
-
During a debate on the UK’s Intellectual Property Bill, the Prime Minister’s Intellectual Property Adviser has again called for a tougher approach to online file-sharing. In addition to recommending “withdrawing Internet rights from lawbreakers”, Mike Weatherley MP significantly raised the bar by stating that the government must now consider “some sort of custodial sentence for persistent offenders.” Google also got a bashing – again.
-
Several countries including the US and France have implemented so-called “strikes” systems to warn and punish P2P file-sharers. The goal of these programs is to reduce piracy, but do they have any effect on people’s downloading habits? New findings published by U.S. and French researchers show that these anti-piracy measures don’t stop or even reduce piracy.
Recent Techrights' Posts
- EPO Education: Workers Resort to Legal Actions (Many Cases) Against the Administration
- At the moment the casualties of EPO corruption include the EPO's own staff
-
- Microsofters Try to Defund the Free Software Foundation (by Attacking Its Founder This Week) and They Tell People to Instead Give Money to Microsoft Front Groups
- Microsoft people try to outspend their critics and harass them
- [Meme] EPO for the Kids' Future (or Lack of It)
- Patents can last two decades and grow with (or catch up with) the kids
- Topics We Lacked Time to Cover
- Due to a Microsoft event (an annual malware fest for lobbying and marketing purposes) there was also a lot of Microsoft propaganda
- Gemini Links 22/11/2024: ChromeOS, Search Engines, Regular Expressions
- Links for the day
- This Month is the 11th Month of This Year With Mass Layoffs at Microsoft (So Far It's Happening Every Month This Year, More Announced Hours Ago)
- Now they even admit it
- Links 22/11/2024: Software Patents Squashed, Russia Starts Using ICBMs
- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Thursday, November 21, 2024
- IRC logs for Thursday, November 21, 2024
- Gemini Links 21/11/2024: Alphabetising 400 Books and Giving the Internet up
- Links for the day
- Links 21/11/2024: TikTok Fighting Bans, Bluesky Failing Users
- Links for the day
- Links 21/11/2024: SpaceX Repeatedly Failing (Taxpayers Fund Failure), Russian Disinformation Spreading
- Links for the day
- Richard Stallman Earned Two More Honorary Doctorates Last Month
- Two more doctorate degrees
- KillerStartups.com is an LLM Spam Site That Sometimes Covers 'Linux' (Spams the Term)
- It only serves to distract from real articles
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, November 20, 2024
- IRC logs for Wednesday, November 20, 2024
- Gemini Links 20/11/2024: Game Recommendations, Schizo Language
- Links for the day
- Growing Older and Signs of the Site's Maturity
- The EPO material remains our top priority
- Did Microsoft 'Buy' Red Hat Without Paying for It? Does It Tell Canonical What to Do Now?
- This is what Linus Torvalds once dubbed a "dick-sucking" competition or contest (alluding to Red Hat's promotion of UEFI 'secure boot')
- Links 20/11/2024: Politics, Toolkits, and Gemini Journals
- Links for the day
- Links 20/11/2024: 'The Open Source Definition' and Further Escalations in Ukraine/Russia Battles
- Links for the day
- [Meme] Many Old Gemini Capsules Go Offline, But So Do Entire Web Sites
- Problems cannot be addressed and resolved if merely talking about these problems isn't allowed
- Links 20/11/2024: Standing Desks, Broken Cables, and Journalists Attacked Some More
- Links for the day
- Links 20/11/2024: Debt Issues and Fentanylware (TikTok) Ban
- Links for the day
- Jérémy Bobbio (Lunar), Magna Carta and Debian Freedoms: RIP
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Jérémy Bobbio (Lunar) & Debian: from Frans Pop to Euthanasia
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- This Article About "AI-Powered" is Itself LLM-Generated Junk
- Trying to meet quotas by making fake 'articles' that are - in effect - based on plagiarism?
- Recognizing invalid legal judgments: rogue Debianists sought to deceive one of Europe's most neglected regions, Midlands-North-West
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Google-funded group distributed invalid Swiss judgment to deceive Midlands-North-West
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Gemini Links 20/11/2024: BeagleBone Black and Suicide Rates in Switzerland
- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, November 19, 2024
- IRC logs for Tuesday, November 19, 2024