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08.22.15

Links 22/8/2015: Chromebook Gains, GNOME 3.18 Clues

Posted in News Roundup at 1:49 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

Leftovers

  • John Oliver Exposes the Racket of the Christian Megachurch Industry

    On Sunday’s “Last Week Tonight,” John Oliver took on the fraudulent behind-the-scenes (and occasionally, not so behind-the-scenes) practices of America’s mega-televangelist ministries — specifically, those that have exploited people’s faith for monetary gain with the promise that “donations will result in wealth coming back to you.” It’s called “The Prosperity Gospel,” and is built on the idea that every donation a congregant gives its pastor is a “seed” that will one day be harvested. “Wealth is a sign of God’s favor,” after all.

  • Hardware

    • Your Toner Is No Good Here: Region-Coding Ink Cartridges… For The Customers

      Everyone likes buying stuff with a bunch of built-in restrictions, right? The things we “own” often remain the property of the manufacturers, at least in part. That’s the trade-off we never asked for — one pushed on us by everyone from movie studios to makers of high-end cat litter boxes and coffee brewers. DRM prevents backup copies. Proprietary packets brick functions until manufacturer-approved refills are in place.

  • Security

    • LinuxCon: CII Program Will Give Badges to Open Source Projects With Strong Security

      Amid this week’s LinuxCon in Seattle, SecurityWeek reported that the Core Infrastructure Initiative (CII), which funds open source projects, will give the badge to those that meet a set of standard criteria. This includes an established bug reporting process, an automated test suite, vulnerability response processes and patching processes. A self-assessment will determine whether the project owners merit the badge.

    • Why every website should switch to HTTPS

      HTTPS protects both website owners and users from interference by network operators. It provides three protections: data authentication, integrity, and confidentiality. HTTPS makes sure that the website you loaded was sent by the real owner of that website, that nothing was injected or censored on the website, and that no one else is able to read the contents of the data being transmitted. We are seeing more and more evidence of manipulation of websites to inject things that the website owners and users didn’t intend. Additionally, browsers are starting to deprecate HTTP as non-secure, so in the coming years non-HTTPS websites will start throwing warnings by both Chrome and Firefox.

    • Embargoed firmware updates in LVFS

      The new embargo target allows vendors to test the automatic update functionality using a secret vendor-specific URL set in /etc/fwupd.conf without releasing it to the general public until the hardware has been announced.

    • Security updates for Friday

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

  • Transparency Reporting

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

  • Finance

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • Two Candidates Surge in 2016 Polling–but Only Trump, Not Sanders, Fascinates Media

      The two big surprises of the 2016 presidential race so far are Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump. Two dark horse candidates opposed by party insiders, each began a substantial surge in campaign polls around the beginning of July. In Real Clear Politics‘ average of polls, Sanders has gone from 12.7 percent to 25.0 percent since July 1, while Trump has gone from 6 percent to 22 percent.

      Yet corporate media show a fascination with just one of these characters. Is it the self-described socialist senator from Vermont, who has focused his campaign on combating the US’s rising inequality? Or is it the billionaire real-estate developer who blames America’s economic troubles on foreigners and calls for massive deportations?

    • Louise Mensch takes swipe at Corbyn campaign – and hits herself

      Mensch was unbowed by the criticism and continued to post examples of abuse she said had come from Corbyn supporters. She did not respond to a request for comment.

    • Louise Mensch Roundly Mocked For Twitter Search Faux Pas In Corbyn Row

      Users of the micro-blogging site were quick to point out the mistake, mocking the former MP for her monstrous faux-pas.

      While anti-Semitism is rife on social media, and Mensch and others has raised concerns regarding Corbyn’s alleged links to high-profile anti-Semites, the gaffe itself was widely appreciated.

  • Censorship

    • Indonesia Blocks The Pirate Bay, IsoHunt, Others

      After promising a strong response to piracy for several years, Indonesia has finally taken action against The Pirate Bay. Along with fellow torrent index IsoHunt.to, the site is among almost two dozen others now ordered by the Ministry of Communications to be blocked at the ISP level.

    • Google ordered to remove links to ‘right to be forgotten’ removal stories

      Google has been ordered by the Information Commissioner’s office to remove nine links to current news stories about older reports which themselves were removed from search results under the ‘right to be forgotten’ ruling.

      The search engine had previously removed links relating to a 10 year-old criminal offence by an individual after requests made under the right to be forgotten ruling. Removal of those links from Google’s search results for the claimant’s name spurred new news posts detailing the removals, which were then indexed by Google’s search engine.

      Google refused to remove links to these later news posts, which included details of the original criminal offence, despite them forming part of search results for the claimant’s name, arguing that they are an essential part of a recent news story and in the public interest.

    • Google ordered to remove links to stories about Google removing links to stories

      The UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has ordered Google to remove links from its search results that point to news stories reporting on earlier removals of links from its search results. The nine further results that must be removed point to Web pages with details about the links relating to a criminal offence that were removed by Google following a request from the individual concerned. The Web pages involved in the latest ICO order repeated details of the original criminal offence, which were then included in the results displayed when searching for the complainant’s name on Google.

    • London ‘Draw Mohamed’ exhibition cancelled due to ‘real possibility people could be killed’

      A planned ‘Draw Mohamed’ exhibition has been cancelled in London after counter-terrorism police warned that people could be killed if it went ahead.

      Organiser Anne Marie Waters, Sharia Watch director and former UKIP candidate, revealed that security services had reason to believe the event might be attacked, with a “very real possibility that people could be hurt or killed – before, during and after”.

      Organisers asked more than 200 galleries to host the exhibition but their requests were almost universally refused, with even the gallery that eventually agreed later pulling out.

    • UK Piracy Police Asked Domain Registrars to Shut Down 317 Sites

      Since its launch two years ago, the City of London Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU) has requested domain name registrars to suspend 317 pirate sites. A lot of requests were denied, but police say they don’t know how many. The numbers were made available in response to a Freedom of Information request by TF, which also reveals more interesting details.

    • Boston Public Broadcaster WGBH Files Bogus DMCA Notice On Public Domain Video Uploaded By Carl Malamud

      It’s amazing the kind of trouble that Carl Malamud ends up in thanks to people not understanding copyright law. The latest is that he was alerted to the fact that YouTube had taken down a video that he had uploaded, due to a copyright claim from WGBH, a public television station in Boston. The video had nothing to do with WGBH at all. It’s called “Energy — The American Experience” and was created by the US Dept. of Energy in 1974 and is quite clearly in the public domain as a government creation (and in case you’re doubting it, the federal government itself lists the video as “cleared for TV.”

    • The biggest threat to comedy? Self-censorship

      ‘A powerful declaration of the primacy of freedom of expression, not always the most fashionable view at a liberal arts festival.’ It’s lines like this that prove we live in strange times. This caught my eye in a review of character comic Sarah Franken’s new Fringe show Who Keeps Making All These People?, a searing satire of the Islamic State, political correctness and the gutlessness of modern Western culture. I wonder if the reviewer recognised the irony.

    • A showgirl’s story of sequins and censorship in Shanghai

      If the strangeness of opening a burlesque club in China had not occurred to Amelia Kallman and Norman Gosney as a Buddhist cleansing ceremony took place in their future venue, it certainly did when they found themselves submitting Frank Sinatra lyrics to be vetted by the local cultural department.

    • China’s official response to emergencies is ‘censorship’

      As Tianjin residents struggle to find answers, China has imposed heavy restrictions on independent media trying to cover the deadly explosions that rocked the port city. DW spoke to China expert Isabel Hilton.

    • How did the Chinese media react to the Tianjin explosions?

      It has now been more than a week since the explosions in Tianjin occurred. Discussions on online social networks such as Weibo (China’s version of Twitter) show Chinese netizens are angry. The incident has been Weibo’s top trending topic for a week, with combined posts gaining more than 3 billion views.

    • FPB unmoved by R2K on ‘censorship’ policy

      The Film and Publication Board (FPB) will not publish public comment on its Draft Online Regulation Policy, which has been heavily criticised as Internet censorship legislation.

      This after the Right2Know Campaign called for records of the FPB’s public hearings and written submissions to do with the controversial draft policy to be made public.

      “We believe the record of public comment will confirm that the majority of South Africans want a free Internet,” says R2K in a statement.

    • Erdogan Enhances Censorship Ahead of Snap Polls

      As predicted, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan had absolutely no intention of abiding by the results of the June 7, 2015 when, for the first time in more than 12 years, his Justice and Development lost its majority in parliament. Joining a coalition means compromising with opposition parties rather than continuing his own tyranny of the plurality.

      Hence, Erdoğan has called snap-elections for November 1. Erdoğan is no gambler, however, and he will not trust his fate to the voters determining their party pick on an even playing field.

    • Ongoing censorship blocks Kurdish, critical, data-based media during time of crisis

      A black curtain has been preventing the public from receiving news since certain media outlets’ websites have had all access to their sites from within Turkey blocked since July 25, just as the cease-fire between Turkey and the terrorist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) ended and the country enters a war against radical terrorist group the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

    • Writers slam ‘censorship by bullet’ in Mexico

      Demanding an end to “censorship by the bullet” in Mexico, more than 500 international writers and intellectuals called on President Enrique Peña Nieto to do more to prevent the murder of journalists in a country they say has “no safe haven for the profession”.

    • Censorship by bullet

      It’s hard to know which is worse: the deadly conditions that threaten critical journalists in Mexico or the government’s feeble response to recent deadly attacks. The intolerable situation has produced a letter from 500 global writers and thinkers to Mexico’s president urging him to address his country’s terrible record on protecting news professionals. Among the signers: novelists Salman Rushdie, Junot Diaz, Margaret Atwood and news figures Christiane Amanpour and Tom Brokaw.

    • Europe’s Latest Export to America: Internet Censorship

      American Web users’ access to Internet content may soon be limited, thanks to a recent decision by French regulators. France’s National Commission on Informatics and Liberties (known by its French acronym CNIL) ordered Google to apply the European Union’s bizarre “right-to-be-forgotten” rules on a global basis in a June ruling. The search engine announced at the end of July that it would refuse to comply. If it is nevertheless forced to do so, the result could be unprecedented censorship of Internet content, as well as a dangerous expansion of foreign Web restrictions on Americans.

    • India’s Government Censorship

      Since his election in May 2014, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has trumpeted India’s open society and vibrant democracy when he speaks to foreign heads of state and business leaders. But, at home, his government is seeking to restrict freedom of expression, including recent attempts to limit access to the Internet and the freedom of Indian television networks to report the news.

    • Age ratings enforced for UK-produced music videos on YouTube and Vevo

      Videos made in the UK by artists signed to major labels will be classified before release, in measures meant to protect children from unsuitable online content

    • Profile: Are age ratings on music videos and video games appropriate?
    • Mark Latham, censorship and free speech

      Does Mark Latham’s parting of ways with the Australian Financial Review amount to censorship? Has political correctness gone mad? Are commentators not allowed to be provocative? Should we not tolerate a wide array of views – popular or not? Do ‘frightbat’ feminists on Twitter have too much power?

    • How UC can respond to bigoted speech without censorship

      Second, parents should insist on workable procedures for students to report instances of bigotry (and also for allegations that faculty members are failing in their duty to evaluate student work based on its quality, rather than a divergent political view).

      Third, they should ask the regents to ensure that each campus has a plan so that when a significant instance of bigotry occurs, there are clear and immediate communications from the chancellor, campus police and campus administrators.

      Fourth, parents should ask the regents to stress a core principle without which the university cannot function: that attempts to outlaw or chill speech are more dangerous than hateful speech itself. Unless the speech is illegal, such as threats against a person or a group coupled with a clear call for immediate unlawful action, it must be answered with other speech that argues why what was advocated or articulated was not only wrong, but also bigoted. This, not censorship or “trigger warnings,” will tell the students that people of goodwill are speaking out with and for them.

    • Bloggers need to exercise self-censorship

      Bloggers need to exercise ethical self-censorship, one of the organizers of NeForum for Bloggers 2015, LiveJournal head marketing officer Ivan Kalyuzhny told reporters.

    • UK Orders Google to Censor Links to Articles About “Right to Be Forgotten” Removals

      The “right to be forgotten” has always been a double whammy of a disaster: an awful policy based on terrible ideas. Under the right, implemented in 2014 by the European Court of Justice, private citizens can petition search engines to hide results that pertain to their pasts. As a policy, the right to be forgotten is bad because companies like Google have legitimate free speech interests in presenting their results as they see fit. As an idea, it’s bad because it bars search engines from publishing truthful information about matters of public concern—a troubling precedent which, taken to its logical end, could lead to serious censorship.

    • Google to Remove Links on EU Censorship

      On Thursday, a UK court ordered Google to remove links to some stories about the right to be forgotten.

    • Africa: Stand Up Against Unaccountable Net Censorship

      When ISPs and social media platforms are held legally responsible for all content passing through them, we all lose out.

    • Ecuadoran government imposes censorship of media due to volcano crisis outside Quito
    • Why is Ecuador censoring coverage of volcano’s activity?

      The Ecuadorean authorities have imposed “preventive censorship” on all media coverage of Cotopaxi, a volcano 50 km south of the capital that became active again on 14 August after 73 years of inactivity. The government’s communiqués are now the only permitted source of information on the subject.

    • Campus censorship feeds false fears, stifles learning

      The new language of campus censorship cuts out the middleman and claims that merely hearing wrong, unpleasant or offensive ideas is so dangerous to the mental health of the listener that people need to be protected from the experience.

    • Fighting Back Against Internet Censorship in Australia

      Look at a move back in 2014 with proposed legislation that would give more powers to a government regulatory body to say what they want taken offline – all in the name of ‘protecting children.’

    • Dozens of journalists stop reporting following intimidations and censorship

      The National Union of Somali Journalists (NUSOJ) backs the protest of journalists working in central Somalia due to increasing pressure, intimidations and censorship by armed religious group.

    • Comedian’s take on University campus censorship
    • The little-known history of secrecy and censorship in wake of atomic bombings

      The atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki 70 years ago, is one of the most studied events in modern history. And yet significant aspects of that bombing are still not well known.

      I recently published a social history of US censorship in the aftermath of the bombings, which this piece is based on. The material was drawn from a dozen different manuscript collections in archives around the US.

      I found that military and civilian officials in the US sought to contain information about the effects of radiation from the blasts, which helps explain the persistent gaps in the public’s understanding of radiation from the bombings.

    • Censorship By Remote Control

      The recent show-cause notice by the government to three television channels on Yakub Memon’s hanging, and its temporary ban on 857 porn sites, have rekindled apprehensions about overt and covert censorship, and of the kind of coercive constraints on free and fearless expression that is a fundamental right guaranteed to every Indian.

    • New routing method promotes censorship-free internet

      Computer scientists have developed a novel method for providing concrete proof to internet users that their information did not cross through certain undesired geographic areas.

      The new system, called “Alibi Routing”, offers advantages over existing systems as it is immediately deployable and does not require knowledge of the internet’s routing hardware or policies.

      Recent events such as censorship of internet traffic, suspicious “boomerang routing” where data leaves a region only to come back again, and monitoring of users’ data have alerted the researchers.

    • Western Mainstream Media Censor Green Left Pope Francis’ “Laudato Si’” Message For Urgent Action On Climate Change

      Censorship, lying by omission and lying by commission will doom the planet.

    • Don’t censor anti-Semites, argue with them

      Chiming in with the outraged individual who wrote to the Fringe, Gideon Falter, chairman of the Campaign Against Antisemitism, said in a statement that Chabloz’s presence should be ‘of grave concern’ to Fringe organisers and urged Scottish premier Nicola Sturgeon to step up and enforce her pledged ‘zero-tolerance’ policy on anti-Semitism.
      Related categories
      Free speech

      But as dodgy, detestable and potentially anti-Semitic as Chabloz may be, the ease with which people are trying to run her out of the festival, and, potentially, out of the country, is a complete disgrace. In a free society, we must all be free to speak, discuss and salute however we like.

    • Who is policing the word police? Github’s retarded move causes user backlash.

      Currently a controversy is brewing over at Github, which can be described as “the facebook of programmers”. That’s one heck of an elevator pitch, and made Github the darling of VC-funders and happy users alike. It’s a web-based Git repository hosting service, where you can upload your projects and if anyone takes a liking to your repo they can fork it and work on it too.

      Git in this context is a free software distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License, and every Git working directory is a full-fledged repository with complete history and full version-tracking capabilities. A fork is a copy of a repository. Forking a repository allows you to freely experiment with changes without affecting the original project, and the original project doesn’t affect yours. Just making that clear so that Adria Richards doesn’t come around in case I make any forking-jokes.

  • Privacy

  • Civil Rights

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

    • Google joins Facebook in trying to prevent IAMAI from taking strong anti-Zero Rating stand

      Google joined hands with Facebook to try and prevent the Internet and Mobile Association of India, which represents some of the largest Internet companies in India, from taking a stand that counters Zero Rating. According to emails exchanged between IAMAI’s Government Relations committee members, of which MediaNama has copies, Vineeta Dixit, a member of Google’s Public Policy and and Government Relations team, strongly pushed for the removal of any mention of Zero Rating from the IAMAI’s submission, as a response to the Department of Telecom’s report on Net Neutrality. Please note that Google hasn’t responded to our queries, despite multiple reminders.

    • Two Important Speeches: The Threats To The Future Of The Internet… And How To Protect An Open Internet

      Last week, I came across two separate speeches that were given recently about the future of the internet — both with very different takes and points, but both that really struck a chord with me. And the two seem to fit together nicely, so I’m combining both of them into one post. The first speech is Jennifer Granick’s recent keynote at the Black Hat conference in Las Vegas. You can see the video here or read a modified version of the speech entitled, “The End of the Internet Dream.”

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • Once Again, Megaupload User Asks Court for His Files Back

        Three years ago now, EFF’s client Kyle Goodwin, a sports videographer, asked the court to allow him to retrieve the files he stored in an account on the cloud storage site Megaupload. When the government seized Megaupload’s assets and servers in January 2012, Mr. Goodwin lost access to video files containing months of his professional work. Today, EFF filed a brief on behalf of Mr. Goodwin asking, once again, for the return of the files.

        We originally asked the court for help back in 2012. The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia took briefing, and even held a hearing. Unfortunately, since that time not much has happened. The U.S. government has continued pursuing a criminal case and a civil forfeiture case against Megaupload and its owners, but the data stored by millions of Megaupload customers, including material like Mr. Goodwin’s sports videos that had nothing to do with the alleged copyright infringement that Megaupload is accused of, languished in a warehouse on hundreds of servers owned by Carpathia Hosting, Megaupload’s former contractor.

      • Appeals court: Prenda lawyer who drained cash from his law firm must pay up

        A Minnesota court has ordered Paul Hansmeier, one of two lawyers considered the creators of the Prenda Law copyright-trolling scheme, to pay sanctions in a case where he and his colleague John Steele were accused of trying to collude with a defendant.

        An order published Monday by a Minnesota appeals court describes how Hansmeier tried to dodge a $64,000 judicial sanction in the Guava LLC v. Spencer Merkel case by moving money out of his Alpha Law Firm then dissolving it. A district court previously found that Hansmeier’s actions and inconsistent explanations warranted a piercing of the “corporate veil,” and that court ruled that Hansmeier should be held personally responsible for the debt. Now, an appeals court has agreed (PDF) with that conclusion.

08.21.15

Alice v. CLS Bank (the Alice Case/§101) Continues to Crush Software Patents in the United States

Posted in America, Law, Patents at 4:09 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

One important case has put potentially hundreds of thousands of software patents in a mass grave

Manchester cemetery

Summary: Patent scope in the United States continues to be narrowed down as more software patents get their wings clipped

“US Pat 6,326,978, Display for selectively rotating windows,” wrote Patent Buddy was “Killed by CAFC” (using Alice as precedent).

This is consistent with the outcome of Alice (Alice v. CLS Bank at SCOTUS level) as we have covered it in the past few months [1, 2, 3, 4, 5].

Despite all this, patent lawyers say that “US software patent suits being filed at higher rate than in 2013″. To quote their sources: “An analysis of patent litigation by Managing IP using the Docket Navigator database has revealed that software patent lawsuit filing is not only up on 2014, but has rebounded to exceed the levels in 2013.

“When Managing IP last carried out this analysis in December 2014, the figures revealed a plunge in software lawsuit filing. This was attributed to the Supreme Court’s Alice v CLS Bank ruling on June 19, which held that merely claiming an abstract idea is insufficient to establish patent eligibility.”

Irrespective of the number of lawsuits, many of them are lost (legal toll becoming a burden to the plaintiff) because of Alice; that is very important. Patent lawyers are trying to convince their existing and prospective clients to keep patenting software, so they only tell part of the whole story.

“Patent scope is clearly a key problem.”It is clear that swpats (software patents’ shorthand) continue to collapse in the United States and this month is no exception. Examples continue to be covered, just not by media of patent lawyers (they lie by omission, as we have explained before).

“CAFC Refused to Re-Hear Case,” wrote Patent Buddy, “First Patent Kill by Alice” (the latest such example).

Here is some analysis which says: “In its first substantive application of Alice v. CLS Bank in 2015, the Federal Circuit has once again shot down claims for not meeting the patent-eligibility requirements of 35 U.S.C. § 101.”

When it comes to the USPTO, which adapts to these developments slowly but surely, a patent lawyer in London says that the judicial exceptions are now very broad.

Patent scope is clearly a key problem. It’s not about patent trolls, however they’re defined. Some sites continue to focus on “Companies Sued The Most Over Patents In 2015″ (without scaling for the size of companies, hence serving as propaganda that frames large corporations as the biggest victims), but we all know that the patents themselves, not the users thereof or the target of lawsuits, open the door to misuse, abuse, and anti-competitive behaviour, as our previous post demonstrated (Apple versus Android). █

Company of Hype and ‘Fanbois’ Continues Its Patent Attacks on Android/Linux

Posted in Apple, Patents, Samsung at 3:46 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Why would anyone still support a bully like Apple?

Radiohead Manchester

Summary: Apple’s attacks on Android (using bogus patents) may be soon be escalated to the US Supreme Court (SCOTUS)

PATENTS are the long-term foe of Free software because as long as there are software patents (even in just a few countries) import of devices with Linux or Android or whatever other Free software inside them can be banned, barred, blocked at the border. It’s a massive injustice.

The other day we saw the law firm Fox Rothschild LLP (prolific when it comes to pro-patent-maximising opinions) spreading FUD against Free software licences and promoting software patents. These are the sorts of parasites that continue to stand in the way of a Free software-run world — one in which transparency and participation are part of the social contract. Suffice to say, transparency and participation reduce corruption and empower peace, whereas the opposite creates suspicion, hostility, betrayal, and conflict.

Florian Müller has spent a number of years attacking Android, sometimes as part of the contracts he was paid for, e.g. by Microsoft. He recently wrote about how Apple lost a key design patent. It’s one which we covered before. It’s laughable.

Sarah Burstein says that “SCOTUS hasn’t heard an issue of substantive design patent law for over 100 years.” She cites Howard Mintz who wrote that “Federal Circuit refuses to rehear Samsung appeal of verdict in patent trial against Apple. Scotus or bust” (i.e. last resort).

The SCOTUS has thus far been the best weapon against ridiculous patents (more on that in our next post) and Müller says that Samsung will appeal to it, answering questions from Apple propaganda sites (see questions like “will Samsung ask SCOTUS?” regarding this article from Mac Rumors).

“These are the sorts of parasites that continue to stand in the way of a Free software-run world — one in which transparency and participation are part of the social contract.”This development has been covered a lot by corporate media in the US and it hardly shocks us that a US court ruled in favour of a US company, not a Korean company. We wrote about such biases many times before (the ITC is a good example of that) and since the corrupt CAFC is involved, it makes this anything but shocking, just expected.

There is no CAFC hearing for Samsung, say lawyers from London. Someone “wrote in to say that the method by which the figure was arrived at would, if unchallenged, lead to “absurd results” on the basis that three design patents could not encompass the entire value of a smartphone which has hundreds (if not thousands) of IP-protected features.”

The bottom line is, Apple’s patent war on Android has turned 5 (it started against HTC and then Samsung was added). HTC is still suffering and Apple hopes to destroy Samsung not by innovating but by litigating. By extension, Apple attacks the whole Android world, including Linux. We can’t let Apple get its way. █

EPO Corruption of Patent Boundaries: Business Methods and Algorithms Patented

Posted in Europe, Patents at 2:41 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Helping US patenting standards go international

Manchester international airport

Summary: How the European Patent Office (EPO) not only turns a blind eye to European law while patenting or granting patents on software but also openly advocates this now

THE EPO has been under fire here for nearly 8 years. The original reason, well before sheer corruption became evident at numerous levels, was patent scope. We had written a great deal about software patents in Europe and the “EPO [is] still pushing for patents on software and business methods,” according to the FFII’s President who now points right into the EPO’s own site.

Well, none of these domains should be patentable in Europe. Anything else would be Battistelli breaking the law yet again, this time in order to artificially increase the number of granted patents, the overall revenue, etc. (making himself look good at the expense of the public to whom he does a huge disservice).

“Democracy in Europe is gradually being crushed under the auspices of “unity” and patents are just one aspect among several (see so-called ‘trade’ deals for more).”Here is the EPO writing “Big data, linked data, linking data: what’s the difference & what role do patents play in them?”

This is promotion of this conference, which seemingly strives to expand the scope of patents.

Jesper Lund, who has been active in this area, ‏says that the “EPO is actively advising people on circumventing the ban on patenting sw [software] and business methods as such (“if claimed as such”).”

The FFII’s President adds that it’s done “With the blessing of the Danish Patent Office DKPTO!” Remember that a Dane, Jesper Kongstad, is Battistelli’s number one minion (or one among several), which is why protests by EPO staff targeted the Danish Consulate earlier this year [1, 2, 3, 4]. Also recall what the Danish Presidency did 3 years ago to further empower the EPO's grip and potentially bring patent trolls to Europe. According to two new reports from IP Kat [1, 2], Europe takes further steps towards this. This issue wasn’t voted on, there was no referendum, and it’s clearly against the interests of ordinary Europeans. Democracy in Europe is gradually being crushed under the auspices of “unity” and patents are just one aspect among several (see so-called ‘trade’ deals for more).

For the EPO it would make perfect sense to eventually patent methods of breaking the laws (abusing staff, patent scope and so on), then evading justice, as was previously done in the Dutch courts system, with help from a corrupt official. █

Who’s Obsessing Over Patent Trolls in Latest ‘Reform’ Efforts? Larger Patent Trolls Such as Xerox

Posted in Patents at 2:12 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Xerox logo

Summary: Response to claims that the patent problem is being tackled by focusing on patent trolls and their favourite courts in the Eastern District of Texas

TECHRIGHTS has consistently (over the course of several years) opposed the obsession with “patent trolls”. The de facto usage of the term implies small firms without products, but in reality a lot of the same tactics are used by multinational companies such as Microsoft. The only difference is the number of products advertised on their sites (if any exist at all).

The other day the EFF said that “[w]e Need Venue Reform to Restore Fairness to Patent Litigation”, citing a TV programme about the issue of patent trolls, not patent scope or anything like that. To quote the EFF: “Back in 2011, This American Life toured an office building in Marshall, Texas, and found eerie hallways of empty offices that serve as the ‘headquarters’ of patent trolls. For many, that was the first introduction to the strange world of the Eastern District of Texas, its outsized role in patent litigation and especially its effective support of the patent troll business model. Trolls love the Eastern District for its plaintiff-friendly rules, so they set up paper corporations in the district as an excuse to file suit there. Meanwhile, defendants find themselves dragged to a distant, inconvenient, and expensive forum that often has little or no connection to the dispute.

“The remote district’s role has only increased since 2011 The latest data reveals that the Eastern District of Texas is headed to a record year. An astonishing 1,387 patent cases were filed there in the first half of 2015. This was 44.4% of all patent cases nationwide. And almost all of this growth is fueled by patent trolls.”

But that’s far from the only issue.

An article by Joe Mullin, who specialises in patent trolls, says that “changes to patent law have made it easier to beat patent trolls, but it hasn’t made the patent hotspot of East Texas any quieter. In fact, it’s been in the news more. Massive numbers of patent troll suits continue to be filed there, and the judge who hears most of them has erected barriers to defendants seeking to have their cases disposed of early.”

So it’s obviously not working out. This whole kind of activism (or corporate lobbying) does nothing to eliminate the core issues, mostly addressed by SCOTUS for the time being (more on that in a later post).

Xerox, itself a patent troll by extension, is claimed to have just beaten a patent troll, MPHJ [1, 2, 3, 4]. To quote a lawyers’ site, “Xerox Corp., Lexmark Corp. and Ricoh Americas Corp. won their bid to undo a so-called patent troll’s patent for document scanning Wednesday when the Patent Trial and Appeals Board ruled eight of the invention’s claims unpatentable.

“Nonpracticing entity MPHJ Technology Investments LLC, once called a “patent troll” by Vermont’s attorney general, was unable to persuade the board that the claims in its patent didn’t just combine decades-old prior art, according to a decision handed down by PTAB.”

It is so strange to see Xerox among the defendants here because Xerox itself has become a troll. ~100 Novell employees ended up working for Xerox after Fuji Xerox signed an early patent deal with Microsoft (involving Linux). Xerox now uses proxies to act as its own private patent trolls. Remember when the Microsoft-connected Acacia attacked Linux using Xerox patents (5,276,785 and 5,675,819)?

If spurious litigation (not just “patent trolls”) is what we’re seeking to combat, then we ought to look beyond the scope defined by large conglomerates with an army of lobbyists. Contrary to common belief, Xerox is not a dead company as it still enjoys an annual revenue of $26.58 billion. █

08.20.15

Links 20/8/2015: Fedora 24 Plans, Ubuntu Phones in India

Posted in News Roundup at 5:07 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

Leftovers

  • Dear Amazon: Your work culture really is terrible

    In response to the New York Times much-read takedown of Amazon’s harsh workplace culture, CEO Jeff Bezos asked employees for stories that might reflect the alleged abusive practices — and one person has taken up his offer.

    Beth Anderson, a spouse of a former Amazon AMZN staff member who worked at the company from 2007 to 2013, wrote a public letter on Quartz, and unfortunately for Bezos, Anderson agrees with much of the details in the NYT story: “Many scenarios and anecdotes detailed in the article hit very close to home,” she wrote.

    Specifically, Anderson takes issue with the constant need for her husband to be at the beck and call of the company. Working in a team that manages shipping warehouse software, Anderson’s husband was expected to respond to his pager within 15 minutes, or face repercussions from his manager: “If something came directly from you, Jeff, it was all hands on deck until that problem got figured out. No matter the emotional or physical toll,” Anderson wrote.

  • Science

    • The Town That Decided to Send All Its Kids to College

      College was never much of an option for most students in this tiny town of 1,200 located in the woods of the Manistee National Forest. Only 12 of the 32 kids who graduated high school in 2005 enrolled in college. Only two of those have gotten their bachelor’s degree.

  • Health/Nutrition

    • Cleveland Clinic boots McDonald’s from US hospital

      The Cleveland Clinic health center will be getting rid of a McDonald’s franchise after nearly a decade of trying to push the fast-food giant out of its hospital, a spokeswoman said Tuesday.

      The renowned US hospital said the move is part of a series of reforms aimed at helping its 44,000 workers and millions of patients make healthier choices.

  • Security

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife

    • Who Killed the Venus Flytrap?

      At the height of summer, in this part of North Carolina, the heat can be suffocating. It swells with the humidity, sticks your shirt to your back in seconds. When you lie belly-down on the dry land, every scratch and flicker of grass is a reminder of the life crawling beneath your body: the grasshoppers and mayflies, the ticks and bark lice. She can’t move.

      [...]

      The flytrap only grows wild in one location: a 100-mile range surrounding Wilmington, a city of about 111,000 people, 10 miles from the North Carolina coast.

  • Finance

    • Is Bitcoin facing an existential split?
    • Bitcoin Is Having an Identity Crisis
    • Fork Release Intensifies Bitcoin Community Bitterness
    • Google Went Public 11 Years Ago Today

      historically, one of the best performers in the stock market over the last decade. But 11 years ago to this day, Google’s IPO was considered a disappointment.

      On August 19, 2004, Google went public with a price of $85 for its roughly 19.6 million shares, which as CNBC’s Bob Pisani noted, was at the low end of expectations. The reason was manifold, starting with Google’s choice to sell their shares through a Dutch auction, where buyers went online to indicate the price and amount of shares they wanted until Google determined a fair price for their shares. As USA Today recounts, this didn’t please those who wanted the option of offering first dips at these shares to their interested clients.

    • Loss of Manufacturing Jobs Isn’t ‘Tectonic’–It’s a Policy Choice

      Wall Street executive Steve Rattner had a column (8/14/15) in the New York Times in which he derided Donald Trump’s economics by minimizing the impact of trade on the labor market. While much of Trump’s economics undoubtedly deserve derision, Rattner is wrong in minimizing the impact that trade has had on the plight of workers.

    • Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras resigns, calls for snap elections

      GREEK Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has announced his resignation and called for snap elections, as he went on the offensive to defend the country’s massive bailout after it triggered a rebellion within his own party.

  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • Iowa Radio Host Stands By Plan To Enslave Undocumented Immigrants If They Don’t Leave

      Influential Iowa radio host Jan Mickelson — whose show is a frequent destination for Republican presidential candidates — is standing by his plan to make undocumented immigrants “property of the state” if they refuse to leave the country after an allotted period of time. In comments to Media Matters, Mickelson described his plan as “constitutionally defensible, legally defensible, morally defensible, biblically defensible and historically defensible.”

    • Standards of Political Civility and Darwin’s Finches

      One hallmark of this year’s political “discourse” (to abuse a term) has been the number of astonishingly angry and ill-informed accusations made by some candidates against their opponents (and others). Nothing unusual about that, sad to say. But what is different is the degree of acceptance, and even approval, exhibited by many voters that in earlier years might have rejected these candidates as well as their statements.

    • Critical blogger banned from voting in Labour leadership election

      Labour have been accused of ‘purging’ critical voices from the party after a Labour-supporting blogger was banned from voting in the leadership race, after criticising his local council.

      Lambeth Councillor Alex Bigham sent a dossier to his party recommending that website editor Jason Cobb, be excluded from voting, due to “possible entryism”

      The document, seen by Politics.co.uk, included a series of screen-grabbed tweets in which Cobb accused some Labour councils of “social cleansing” in London as well as a link to a 2010 article he wrote for the Guardian in which he criticised Lambeth council.

  • Censorship

    • Facebook has taken over from Google as a traffic source for news

      Anyone who works for a major news website or publisher knows that social referrals—that is, links that are shared on social networks such as Facebook and Twitter—have become a crucial source of incoming traffic, and have been vying with search as a source of new readers for some time. Now, according to new numbers from the traffic-analytics service Parse.ly, Facebook is no longer just vying with Google but has overtaken it by a significant amount.

  • Internet/Net Neutrality

    • The End of the Internet Dream

      It doesn’t have to be this way. But to change course, we need to ask some hard questions and make some difficult decisions.

    • Sprint getting rid of phone contracts, calls them a “thing of the past”

      Sprint is getting rid of two-year smartphone contracts, following a move made previously by T-Mobile US and Verizon Wireless.

      “By the end of the year, customers of the No. 4 wireless company will have to pay the full price for their phones or spread the payments out by leasing the device, an option that started last year,” CNBC reported.

      Sprint CEO Marcelo Claure explained the move in an interview with CNBC. Buying a new phone at the subsidized rate of $199 is “a thing of the past, the industry has changed,” he said.

    • BREAKING: Netneutrality more complex than you thought!

      Interestingly, when zero-rating is squashed, the opposite happens. When the government forbade zero rating in the Netherlands, its largest provider KPN responded by doubling their users’ data caps without a price hike.

      Thus, my suggestion to the Brazil government would be: work with providers to get indiscriminate data bundles to more users, rather than empowering providers to control their users’ Internet usage.

  • DRM

    • Apple Music boasted of 11 million users – but half have already tuned out

      Just over half the people who sampled Apple Music have stuck around to use the service regularly, a study by music industry analytics firm MusicWatch has found. Apple recently took a victory lap for hitting the 11 million user mark among people who had sampled its new service, which is meant to compete with similar offerings from Spotify and Pandora. But 48% of those users aren’t there any more.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • Rightscorp’s DMCA Subpoena Effort Crashes and Burns

        Rightscorp’s efforts to unmask file-sharers using the DMCA has crashed and burned. After a federal judge ruled in favor of ISP Birch Communications and quashed the anti-piracy firm’s subpoena, Rightscorp appealed the decision. Now the company has backed down, handing the ISP and privacy a big win.

Blackmail and Lies From the Press and the Government of New Zealand Attempt to Sell to the Public a Deal That Broadens Patent Scope

Posted in Australia, Deception, Law, Patents at 8:22 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

More protectionism for more large companies, even those coming from outside of New Zealand

John Key

Summary: Corporate conquest or takeover of New Zealand culminates in empty promises from government officials and blackmail against citizens of New Zealand, especially the country’s dairy industry

THE DEBATE about software patents in New Zealand is very important because it set the tone for similar debates in Europe and Anglo-Saxon-dominated countries such as Australia and Canada. It usually revolves around lobbying from US giants against local companies in New Zealand. The lobbying is done through law firms and front groups, but sometimes it’s done more directly (risking backlash and brand erosion for the likes of Microsoft and IBM).

The fight is back in a big way and there are many articles in the local media, as well as the international media. The Institute of IT Professionals has just had the corporate media in New Zealand lobbying for TPP, as expected, despite it being an evil secretive deal, enabling more systemic looting by the world’s super-rich. Some myths and classic nonsense get propagated, but there is also criticism of the secrecy, for instance: “Despite some of the potentially positive matters outlined below, we still hold concerns about the detail – or rather, lack of it. As the negotiations are being held in private, the actual wording being negotiated is restricted to negotiators and other government officials only. This means we and others can’t undertake independent analysis of the impact of what is being agreed until negotiations are complete.”

Rob O’Neill, who has used his role at the CBS-owned ZDNet to fight back against software patents in his country, now explains “​How New Zealand’s software patent ban can survive the TPP”.

“Officials give assurances there will be no changes to software patents, ISP liability and parallel importation,” he wrote the other day. Does he really trust these officials given their terrible track record on other secrets? Remember how John Key repeatedly lied about surveillance. It was only when leaks came out (undoing the secrecy) that he had to respond like an angry brat, shooting the messengers rather than admit that he had lied.

It may sometimes seem like the corporate press helps raise scrutiny rather than help the corporations that own the media. Despite that, on the very same day IDG hosted (at ComputerWorld) a notable lobbyist these days for software patents (Martin Goetz). He is now treated as a guest author in this nonsensical piece denying the existence of patents on software, even if he’s just reposting there (plus some “NZ” added) what he very recently wrote for lobbyists of software patents in IP Watchdog (patent lawyers with an exceptionally big mouth). How dumb does he think the readers are?

The people who want software patents in New Zealand are basically blackmailing for changed laws, using sanctions in reverse. As Clare Curran (MP) put it the other day, “Will Groser trade NZ innovation 4 dairy? Software sector raises concern over patents 2 secure access 4 dairy products”

See this Australian article which supports what she wrote and take note of this article from New Zealand:

While not unanimous, there is strong consensus from the industry against software patents. “In a 2013 poll of over 1,000 New Zealand IT Professionals across the sector, around 94% of those with a view wanted to see software patents gone,” Taylor says.

“Following significant work by IITP and others, the Government agreed and modified the Patents Act to protect New Zealand technology firms from software patents in their home market.”

“The patent system doesn’t work for software. Research shows it’s near impossible for software to be developed without breaching some of the hundreds of thousands of software patents awarded around the world, often for ‘obvious’ work.

The government is of course lying and misrepresenting the opposition. It just wants this deal sealed and done for the plutocrats, some of whom are not even based in New Zealand at all. As one author put it the other day, alluding to Groser: “The government is also running the line that those same hard core anti-TPP protesters have opposed every single trade deal that New Zealand has entered. This is willfully deceptive in that it assumes the TPP is a free trade deal – when in reality, several of its most noxious provisions are anti-trade in that they entrench existing corporate advantage.

“Also, regular protest is necessary because successive “trade” pacts have included the same objectionable elements for well over 20 years. Almost identical investor-state dispute settlement mechanisms (which enable corporations to sue sovereign governments when they pass laws that infringe on profit expectations) have cropped up in mooted trade deals ever since the MAI (Multilateral Agreement on Trade) proposals in the 1990s. Eventually, the MAI was defeated by a mass mobilization around the world very similar to the anti-TPP protests today. It can be done.”

New Zealand is under attack. It’s not just affecting software professionals but also countries outside of New Zealand, which is why we hope that citizens of New Zealand will get involved and help crush TPP. The assurances given by government officials are just lies and a shallow form of deception whose purpose it to sell the deal. Once it’s signed there’s no going back. █

Vista 10 Turns PCs Into Zombies: Microsoft to Remotely Delete Software From Windows, Like Amazon Deleted Books From Kindle

Posted in Microsoft, Vista 10, Windows at 7:42 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Without consent, with no warnings whatsoever, without any exceptions

Alleyway in Manchester

Summary: Microsoft allows itself to remotely delete software from Vista 10 (not just Microsoft’s software), as revealed by the mainstream media not too long after the failed launch (poor adoption so far)

TECHRIGHTS is a lot more worried about the precedences set by Vista 10 than about Vista 10 itself, in part because it has been an epic failure so far, despite it being a supposedly ‘free’ upgrade (converting one’s PC into Microsoft’s property). Vista 10 proves people like Richard Stallman correct. It combines everything that can possibly go wrong with proprietary software, intentionally, to serve the proprietor’s sick agenda. Complicity with the state makes it far worse, especially given rogue elements such as espionage (political, not just industrial/competitive).

Based on this article, Microsoft is not even hiding universal back doors in Windows and it reminds users that they just rent their PC if they install Vista 10. To quote the Indian Express, “Microsoft can disable any counterfeit software or hardware running Windows 10, at least this is what is being interpreted based on the updated End User License Agreement (EULA). The new terms and conditions allow Microsoft to change or update software on your computer and changes to the EULA were first spotted by PC Authority.”

That’s rather unprecedented, unless one considers how Amazon deals with Kindle. Ryan, a former Microsoft MVP, told us that “Microsoft can apparently reach in and disable software that they think is pirated. Not just theirs.” Remember that Microsoft also denies the option not to have Windows ‘updated’, i.e. modified remotely. Microsoft is now neglecting to even say what it is changing and why. To quote this new report from the British media:

Windows 10 is keeping its new owners busy, as Microsoft has released the second “cumulative update” for the operating system in three days.

The update dated August 11th was billed as a “security update for Windows 10” and promised “improvements to improve the functionality of Windows 10” plus resolution for half a dozen bugs.

The August 14th update is described as replacing the August 11th update, but with what or why isn’t explained. All that Microsoft will say is that the new download “includes improvements to enhance the functionality of Windows 10.”

Why might a three-day old update need a replacement? Microsoft’s patching process hasn’t gone well, of late, with multiple patches causing unintended consequences necessitating further patches.

But wait, it’s much worse and it’s going to get even worse next year.

“Vista 10 proves people like Richard Stallman correct.”Under the pretext of “emergency”, forced updates now become more than a weekly thing. “There’s mega patch #4,” wrote Ryan. “My system says Cumulative Update for Windows 10 for x64-based Systems. (KB3081444)

“It looks like they copied Compressed RAM from Linux.” Ryan quotes this article which says: “In Windows 10, we have added a new concept in the Memory Manager called a compression store, which is an in-memory collection of compressed pages. This means that when Memory Manager feels memory pressure, it will compress unused pages instead of writing them to disk. This reduces the amount of memory used per process, allowing Windows 10 to maintain more applications in physical memory at a time. This also helps provide better responsiveness across Windows 10.”

So it’s not even a security update, it’s just a ripoff of Linux, and Microsoft forces people to accept it. “That’s in build 10525,” Ryan wrote. “Not much news about this latest mega patch though. They don’t list what’s in them anymore, so why bother covering them?”

For all one knows, there can be ,pre back doors in there.

“The only thing Microsoft will tell you is that it patches a Critical security hole in IE 11,” Ryan added, “but it goes much further. It’s on Reddit.”

So basically, once again we are reminded that installing Vista 10 is becoming part of a Microsoft botnet (the network too, by extension), commandeered by people who modify and delete binaries without the option to opt out and without even explaining what is done (toggling off surveillance antifeatures has no effect, either). What kind of person would install such a thing? It’s a surveillance monster, remotely controlled by Microsoft and its spy buddies. There is already a free (and freedom-respecting) upgrade and it’s called GNU/Linux. █

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