Copyright News: DRM, Censorship, Megaupload, Hypocrisy, and Impact on the Internet
- Dr. Roy Schestowitz
- 2014-04-13 08:40:58 UTC
- Modified: 2014-04-13 08:40:58 UTC
DRM
Keurig's next generation of coffee machines will have a way to prevent any coffee not licensed by Keurig from brewing in the machine as early as this fall. Locking down a thing like coffee seems both trifling and difficult to accomplish—no one has yet described how Keurig can differentiate its own pods enough so that its machines would honor those pods and only those pods.
Censorship and Links
Payday lender Wonga has forced Twitter to take down a user's parody advert by making a copyright claim.
Megaupload
Just three days after the Motion Picture Association of America brought a civil lawsuit against Megaupload, the Recording Industry Association of America has jumped in with its own case.
Hypocrisy
Every month, reports condemn the general public for downloading movies and TV shows without permission, but perhaps those industries need to look a little closer to home. A new survey among film industry professionals suggests that almost 40% have downloaded movies and TV shows illegally.
Internet
There's a European Election coming up. Voting starts in about one month, with the main election days on May 22-25. We've had many victories as activists and concerned citizens in the past five years to defend the net and its liberty, but the main showdown looks like it'll come down in the next five years. Your vote is going to matter.
On April 4th, 1994, Mosaic Communications Corporation was officially incorporated as a going concern. If you don’t recognize the name, that’s because the company would eventually change its name to Netscape Communications Corporation when the University of Illinois (which owned the trademark on the name Mosaic) threatened legal action.
As the European Commission clearly stated in its Communication on Internet Policy and Governance of 12 February 2014, conflicting visions on the future of the Internet and on how to strengthen its multistakeholder governance in a sustainable manner have intensified recently. The next two years will be critical in redrawing the global map of Internet governance. Europe must contribute to finding a credible way forward for global internet governance; it must play a strong role in defining how the internet is run and ensuring it remains a single, un-fragmented network.
Recent Techrights' Posts
- The Week to Come
- Planning ahead
- LLM Slop Has Only Been a Boon for Misinformation Online
- The very same companies that were supposed to maintain quality (again, not limited to Google with PageRank) are now actively participating in generating and spreading slop
- When They Tell You It's Free, Does That Mean No Charges (If So, Who's Paying and Why)?
- there's "no free lunch"
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- Links 28/07/2025: COVID-19 Sped up Brain Aging, "Circumvention is More Popular Than Compliance"
- Links for the day
- Richard Stallman is Usually Right Because He Thinks "Outside the Box"
- he is able to observe society (mores and norms) as somewhat of an outsider
- LWN Has Been Down for a Long Time, Another Casualty of LLM Bots?
- Time will tell. How much time though?
- Slopfarms Versus 'Linux' (and Against People Who Write Real Articles About GNU/Linux)
- LLM slop in slopfarms by Brian Fagioli and Redazione RHC
- Gemini Links 28/07/2025: Bila Yarrudhanggalangdhuray and Running pkgsrc in a FreeBSD Jail
- Links for the day
- Microsoft Turns News Sites Into Spamfarms
- Is the site The Register MS the next IDG?
- The Register MS/The Register US
- On Saturday I contacted them for a comment (before issuing criticism)
- Hacking revelations at Vatican Jubilee of Digital Missionaries
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Sunday, July 27, 2025
- IRC logs for Sunday, July 27, 2025
- We're Going to Focus Less on the Molotov Cocktail-Throwing Microsofters and More on Patents
- We can get back to focusing on what we wanted to focus on all along
- Just Trying to Keep Web Sites Honest (Journalistic Integrity)
- the latest articles in LinuxIac are real
- Links 27/07/2025: Political Affairs, Data Breaches, Attacks on Freedom of the Press
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 27/07/2025: Hot in Japan and Terminal Escape Codes
- Links for the day
- Links 27/07/2025: More Microsoft Layoffs Coming, Science and Hardware News
- Links for the day
- Links 27/07/2025: FSF Hackathon and "Hulk Hogan Was a Very Bad Man"
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 27/07/2025: DAW Mixer Chains and Simple Software
- Links for the day
- The Register MS is Inventing or Giving Air Time to New Conspiracy Theories so as to Distort the Narrative As High-Profile Agencies Fall Prey to Microsoft Holes
- But the problem is holes, i.e. Microsoft making bad products; the problem is Microsoft
- Most Editors at The Register Are American, Including the Editor in Chief, a Decade-Long Microsoft Stenographer (Writing Prose to Sell Microsoft)
- It's not easy to tell where the site is based (we tried) because it's hiding behind ClownFlare and CrimeFlare hasn't been well lately
- Pushers of systemd Rewrite History (Richard Stallman Said UNIX "Was Portable and Seemed Fairly Clean")
- Unlike systemd
- "New Techrights" Soon Turns 2 (A Few Days Before the FSF Turns 40)
- We have a lot more to say about LLM bots
- When Silence Says So Much
- Garrett, a 'secure' boot pusher, will need to defend himself in the UK High Court
- The Register in Trouble
- There is not much that can be done at this point
- Trajectory of The Register: From News Site/s Into "B2B"... and Into Microsoft Salespeople
- Something isn't right at The Register
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Saturday, July 26, 2025
- IRC logs for Saturday, July 26, 2025
- Misinformation in Social Control Media
- Social control media passes around all sorts of tropes
- Slopwatch: Fake Linux 'Articles' and Slopfarms With "Linux" in Their Names/Domains
- throwing bots at "Linux" to make some fake articles
- Links 26/07/2025: Amazon Shutdown in China, Russian Economy Slows
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 26/07/2025: History of Time (1988) and Gemini Games
- Links for the day
- Links 26/07/2025: 50 Percent Tariffs in Amazon, Dying Intel Offloads Network and Edge Group (NEX)
- Links for the day
- Doing My Share to Tackle Online Slop and SPAM
- Trying my best to 'fix' the Web
- Blaming Programming Languages for Users' and Developers' Bad Practices
- That's like blaming cars for drivers who crash into things
- Slopwatch: Fakes, FUD, Duplicates, and Charlatans Galore
- The Web as we once know it is collapsing. Some opportunists try to replace it with low-quality slop.
- The Register UK Seems to Have Become American and Management is Changing (Microsofter as Editor in Chief)
- The Register 'UK' is now controlled by the Directions on Microsoft guy
- Many People Still Read Techrights Because It Says the Truth, Produces Evidence, and Does Not Self-Censor
- Unlike so many other sites
- The Register is Desperate for Money, According to The Register
- I decided to check how they're doing as a business
- Microsoft Finally Finds a Use Case for Slop?
- Create low-quality chaff to shift the media's attention?
- Microsoft Windows Lost 400 Million Users in a Few Years, Why Does The Register Double Down on Windows With New US Editor?
- days ago they hired a new US editor
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Friday, July 25, 2025
- IRC logs for Friday, July 25, 2025
- For Libel Reform One Must First Bring (or Raise) Awareness to the Issues and Their Magnitude
- I myself know, from personal experience
- Links 26/07/2025: Rationed Meals in the US and TikTok Repels Investments (Too Toxic)
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 26/07/2025: "Bloody Google" and New People in Geminispace
- Links for the day
- Response to Solderpunk (Father of Gemini Protocol) About the Gemini Community
- Solderpunk responds to non-sequitur
- HTML and the Web Used to be Something a Child Could Learn, "Modern" Web is a Puzzle of Frameworks, Bloat, and Worse
- When the Web was more like Gemini Protocol