06.20.09

Contents

• GNU/Linux
  • Distributions
  • Devices/Embedded
• Free Software/Open Source
• Leftovers
• Digital Tipping Point: Clip of the Day

GNU/Linux

• Ubuntu a minor player? Not outside the States

  I met with the President of Metasys, a Brazilian company that has Linux-based servers, desktops, and software in thousands of schools, businesses, and homes throughout Latin America, Africa, and Europe. Metasys is running on 350,000 desktops in Brazil alone. And guess what? People pay for it because it’s good; it has a great ecosystem of server, software, and management products; and because it’s still drastically cheaper than Windows.

• Essential tips to help you work smarter with Linux

  The way we use computers has changed. This is thanks to the fact that most of us are continually connected to the internet. But the evolution of Linux has also played an important role in this revolution.

  The open source development model means that anyone with half an inclination can develop and distribute their own software, and thousands of developers have done just that. The majority of those applications might not be all that revolutionary, but there’s a small, essential core of tools and applications that are changing the way we do things on the desktop.

• Why I Use Linux: Bryan’s Story

  Meanwhile, my two Linux systems just keep on running. Restart – never, well, nearly never. Hardware issues – not my Linux. Heck, Puppy Linux (and Mepis before that) had no issue even with the wireless PCMCIA card I put in my old laptop (that tells you how old it is).

• Desktop

  • Add multi-touch to your Linux notebook… and your old MacBook

    Here’s a fascinating hack for a rainy day. Programmer randomtruth has figured out a way to enable multi-touch under Linux and is working on a way to add multi-touch to older MacBooks.

  • How a Microsoft veteran learned to love Linux, and why it matters

    Like many of my fellow employees, I was only vaguely familiar with free software when I left and decided to try Linux on a lark. At Microsoft, I got all the software I wanted for free, and I always thought free software would be behind proprietary software. For 15 years I had made it a priority to learn about many aspects of Microsoft technologies, and my office contained rows of books on everything from Undocumented Windows to Inside SQL Server. When running Windows I felt as comfortable as Neo in the Matrix, without the bullets and leather, so while I was willing to look around, I was half-forcing myself and didn’t want this little experiment to mess up my main computing environment.

  • Linux Against Poverty – It is a GO

    Quoting Helen Keller in a Linux blog may seem strange, but there are many parallels between this magnificent woman and Free Software/Linux. We both started way behind the competition with handicaps and hindrances that made it almost laughable that we would compete.

    First they Ignore you
    Then they laugh at you
    Then they fight you
    Then you win…

    Of course you can only win if you compete.

    Common sense. And not being afraid.

  • The simple pleasures of the obsolete technologies

    Scanning with Xsane was faster than scanning in Windows. I don’t know why. Small operations on the resulting images were accomplished faster in gThumb than in GIMP. OpenOffice.org 2.3 worked very well, despite being “obsolete”. And it even generated a surprisingly small PDF from the final 100 MB document. Amazing. And fast. Nothing crashed. At all.

  • Using Ubuntu as your sole operating system in academia

    I’ve been using Ubuntu Linux as my sole operating system for two years now, ever since before I became a professor. The switch was completely painless as I had already been using the same software on Windows and the Mac for years (such as OpenOffice, Firefox, VLC, Pidgin, Netbeans, Eclipse, JEdit, Inkscape, Gimp, etc.). I wrote about making the switch to Linux gradually over 6 years ago, and I dual-booted to Windows and Linux for a long time, but Windows was still my primary OS until 2 years ago.

  • Growing Your Business Using Ubuntu

    I am able to run about 90% of what I need on a daily basis through Ubuntu. For the other 10% I have to use a virtualized installation of Windows. Even if 10% of your network had to have Windows for something, the savings for the rest would be astronomical. For most users, Ubuntu would be sufficient to run 100% of needed software, therefore saving your company thousands of dollars in licensing costs. Simply replacing one Windows file server with Ubuntu would save nearly $1000.00 and none of your users would know it was there.

• Server

  • CA Pushes Linux On Mainframes

    A recent survey sponsored by CA indicated that larger enterprises are expecting to invest more money into running Linux applications on mainframes.

    CA is continuing the drumbeat of mainframe computing, sponsoring a survey showing that enterprises are continuing to invest in running Linux on the platform.

  • What Myth Do You Want To Kill Today?

    Think for yourself for a change. Stop to think that upwards to 70 percent of the Internet runs on Linux. Is that obscure? If what you say were true, wouldn’t the Internet be brought to its knees on a daily basis? If it were Microsoft servers running the show, it may very well be. The fact that Linux exists gives you a stable environment to dwell on the Internet. I’d be a bit more respectful and check my facts before I went leaving public record of my ignorance. What you say or do on the Internet never goes away. Carla should have posted those comments.

  • HP Servers and Ubuntu: Reading Between the Lines

    We are still at the very early stages of the HP-Canonical relationship. And Canonical’s own server software initiative remains in its infancy. But mark my words: HP, IBM and Dell all will be pre-loading Ubuntu Server Edition within a year or two.

• Applications

  • Songbird 1.2 debuts new features

    Browser and jukebox freeware mashup Songbird brings onstage four new features to help manage songs, communicate better with iTunes, customize volume, and expose more information from Last.fm.

  • Songbird: The Firefox of Music Managers

    Songbird won’t completely replace iTunes for many of you — especially if you’re a video or podcast junkie, or have an iPhone or iPod touch. But, as a pure desktop music manager, Songbird is equal to iTunes in most respects, and better in many — especially if you’re into music blogs.

  • Songbird 1.2.0 – 10-band Equalizer Now Included

    It’s been a while since I had a look at Songbird, and that was when 1.0 came out. The new release was put out a little earlier this month and comes with a brand new equalizer, a new mode to auto-organise media files included in the collection and Last.fm radio integration.

  • Valve To Launch Native Linux Game In July?

    Dyson is set to launch in Steam on the 31st of July. Will we see native Linux support at this time for Dyson? Will a Steam Linux client launch in tandem at that time? On the Steam web-site it’s stating that Linux is one of the supported operating systems… We shall wait and see. Postal III is also still on track to launch this year, which uses Valve’s game engine, and it too is set to officially offer Linux client support.

  • Bordeaux 1.8 for Linux Released

    Steven Edwards of the Bordeaux Technology Group released Bordeaux 1.8 today. Bordeaux 1.8 has had many changes on the back end. The build process has been totally rewritten, packaging has been totally rewritten, the .sh installer is terminal based now and the dependency for pygtk and pango has been removed, the .sh installer will now run on any supported platform Linux, BSD, Solaris and Mac. Our winetricks script has been synced to the latest official release, Steam should now install and run, There has also been many small bug fixes and tweaks.

  • How To Run Windows Apps In Linux

    Wine is an open source project that, on the face of it, seems to offer something wondrous: the ability to run Windows applications under Linux (or any other open source OS). It does this by attempting to recreate the Windows API layer in open source.

    Finally! A chance to run those Windows programs for which there are no open source analogs: Quicken, or Flash CS. And all those games!

  • Rip: A New Way to Package Ruby Software

    If you work on multiple Ruby projects concurrently, you’re probably accustomed to juggling gems. One project requires one batch of gems; another effort depends on a different set; and a third project utilitizes a specific legacy gem. Thankfully, the Ruby gem system can maintain multiple versions of the same gem in a single repository, making much of this task easy. If you need an explicit version of a gem (or any late model version, such as 3.x), simply install the code you need and name the dependency.

  • Having Yum for Breakfast

    In this wide world of Linux, there are primarily just two package management systems which reign: RPM and Deb. Most binary distributions use one or the other and there has long been tension between the two. So which system performs better?

  • Alien Arena 2009

    We received the following announcement today:

    It’s been over six long months of dedicated, at times daunting, and ultimately triumphant work…and COR Entertainment at last announces the release of Alien Arena 2009!

  • Teaching Math with the KDE Interactive Geometry Program

    Despite a few weaknesses, Kig is a very powerful tool for teaching upper-level mathematics. After climbing a little bit of a learning curve (yes, it’s all about curves), both students and teachers can use Kig to have fun learning and teaching mathematics.

  • Red Hat KVM suite, VirtualBox 3.0 hit beta: News in brief

    This week, Red Hat inched closer to putting its underwhelming Xen hypervisor adventures behind it and ushered in a new era of virtualization based on the open source product Kernel-based Virtual Machine, or KVM. Initially announced in February, the Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization (RHEV) suite is now in private beta and will include four products: a standalone KVM hypervisor, a Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) bundle that includes KVM, RHEV Manager for Servers, and RHEV Manager for Desktops.

  • Amarok 2.2 development, one week in

    Last Friday, trunk was opened for features and changes intended for Amarok 2.2. In the scope of a few hours more than 250 commits had been made as people were frantically committing their local git repos.

• Desktop Environments

  • some [KDE] quickies

  • 15 Cool and Unique GDM Themes

    Not long ago, we’ve featured here some of the most beautiful KDM themes available for all the KDE users out there. So it’s only appropriate to give GNOME lovers a little treat by presenting several good looking GDM themes this time around.

  • Transform Kubuntu Jaunty to Windows 7 In 3 Simple Steps

    One thing that I love about Linux (and Ubuntu) is that it is fully customizable and I can configure it to the way that I want it. Previously, I have already illustrated its flexibility by showing how you can transform Ubuntu Hardy and Intrepid into Mac OS X. Today, let’s bring a step further and see how we can transform Kubuntu Jaunty to Windows 7 in 3 simple steps.

    In this tutorial, we will make use of the Vistar7 – Windows 7 transformation pack to perform the transformation. This transformation pack has a nice collection of Windows 7 themes and comes with an installation script to make the whole transformation a breeze.

• Distributions

  • BlankOn 5.0 Nanggar Release Notes

    Jakarta, June 16th, 2009 – Today the BlankOn Developer team officialy release BlankOn 5.0 with the code name Nanggar, the culture that is brought up to this version is from Batak culture. The name Nanggar is taken from Batak language which means “Hammer”.

  • Ubuntu’s A Fading Memory, PCLinuxOS and 64 Studio Are Fab. So Far.

    These performance differences are so large I may have to make time to investigate why. These PCs are all different: AMD Sempron and Athlon, SATA 3.0, 1-2GB RAM, ATI and NVidia, and the Thinkpad is an Intel Core Duo with 1GB RAM and Intel video. The video and wireless drivers are all supported by genuine FOSS drivers in the kernel; no extra fuss required. I shop carefully and select well-supported components because I surely do hate diagnosis-and-fixit drama.

  • Comparing MEPIS 8 and Ubuntu 9.04

    I first tweeted about Ubutu 9.04 a week ago. Now I know I’m not exactly comparing apples with apples, since MEPIS 8 is based on Debian 5.0 and uses KDE 3.5, whilst Ubuntu 9.04 uses GNOME 2. I might be better off evaluating Kubuntu, the 9.04 release uses KDE 4, which I’d used previously, and disliked due to its (apparent) gradual reduction in speed.

    [...]

    I’ve no issues with Synaptic, as it is used to manage packages in both MEPIS and Ubuntu.

    I loved to use Dropbox and Meld in Ubuntu, so much that I was probably willing to accept the differences between kate/gedit, konsole/terminal, katapult/do.

    What was frustrating to me was to develop halfway, and then have to wait for the system to return control of the UI to me, and if not reboot.

    The overall score is MEPIS 3, Ubuntu 1.5. This scoreline is obviously subjective, but you’ve heard all the good things about Ubuntu, have a slow(er) laptop, please do consider MEPIS. Both MEPIS and Ubuntu support audio/wireless networking flawlessly, unlike (cough, cough) Debian.

    At this point, I really don’t see the benefits of using Ubuntu (mostly due to its speed/stability issues) over MEPIS, so yeah, I’m a fan.

  • Top Tip: Which debian based distro for newbie?

    To a more experienced user I’d recommend to start with Sarge or testing (at the moment they mean the same), but to a new user I recommend to start with something like Knoppix, Mepis or even Libranet: they are Debian-based (not Debian proper) linux distributions which will give you a more gentle introduction to Debian. Besides they have friendly forums which can assist you in your first steps.

  • Community Remaster: PCLinuxOS Xfce – Phoenix Edition RC1

    This project has sprung up from the MyPCLinuxOS Forum per a request from the Xfce enthusiasts. Sproggy took this project on as a personal task to see if he could create a worthy PCLinuxOS Remaster to sit alongside the other greats Remasters out there. Sproggy chose Xfce because it is lightweight and superfast on old computers.

  • Red Hat

    • Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Beta Draws Industry Interest

    • Red Hat Collaborates with HP on SOA Solutions To Bring Value To Customers

    • Opennet offers SMB-focussed open source support packages

      Opennet Middle East and Africa, the master distributor and authorised Certified Training Centre of Red Hat Linux products for Middle East and North Africa (MENA), has announced the availability of new open source support packages targeted specifically at the SMB sector.

    • Red Hat unit expects 100% revenue jump for fiscal 2010

      The Mexican unit of US Linux operating systems integrator Red Hat (NYSE: RHT) expects revenues to increase 100% during its fiscal year 2010, which will end February 28, unit director Gerardo Flores told BNamericas without providing hard figures.

    • HP and Red Hat Integrate SOA Tools

      The pact gives Red Hat a way to offer governance and policy management to its JBoss Enterprise SOA Platform, while it gives those that use HP’s SOA Systinet a lower cost enterprise service bus alternative for points within a SOA environment.

  • Fedora

    • The Three Faces of Fedora 11, Part 3: Xfce

      I have to confess that in writing this blog item about Xfce on Fedora 11, I’ve had divine inspiration. I mean, really divine inspiration, as in as high on the divinity food chain as you can get.

    • Fedora 12 Release Schedule and Goals

      While every Fedora fan enjoys the newly released Fedora 11 Linux-based operating system, the developers are working hard on the next release, Fedora 12, due for release in November-December 2009. Make sure you visit our website, starting with August 18th when the first alpha will be released, as we will do a full coverage of the Fedora 12 development process. Without any further introduction, let’s have a look at the release schedule:

      August 18th, 2009 – Alpha release
      October 6th, 2009 – Beta release
      October 20th, 2009 – Release Candidate
      November 3rd, 2009 – Fedora 12 final release

    • Fedora!

      After using Fedora for six months I’m more than happy with it. The most recent release, Fedora-11, is very fast booting and has been tremendously stable for me. That’s amazing, considering that some of the software is supposed to be right there at the edge. Fedora uses the Gnome desktop by default, but I prefer KDE myself. KDE 4.x has been controvertial, to say the least, but I really like the latest (4.2). It intalled flawlessly and has not crashed on me once. Can’t beat that.

  • Ubuntu

    • Ubuntu 8.04 update: Happy to be back in a Linux environment (revised)

      I’ve been bringing more data into my main Ubuntu 8.04 LTS installation on one of my two Toshiba Satellite 1100-S101 laptops, and I continue to be satisfied with the performance of what by most accounts is the world’s most popular desktop Linux distribution.

      No, its GNOME desktop isn’t as fast as Debian’s. But even though I do have Xfce (and not the full Xubuntu) installed on this Ubuntu laptop, I’m still using the brownish-themed GNOME that ships with the distro.

    • Linux Mint 7 ScreenShots

      Here we bring you yet another set of Screen Shots, but this time it is of Linux Mint 7 ( Gloria ). Let me start off by saying this… I’ve been using/managing Linux for almost 11 years now and I want a desktop that just works.. I am so out of that phase on making things work together ( Unless it is programming ). Linux Mint has done that for me, so I really want to say THANK YOU to Linux Mint Staff and Users for all the work you guys have done and for taking the time to make my life easier.

    • Easy Video Chat with Skype 2.0 in Ubuntu 9.04

      Perhaps there are some of you out there with a friend or loved one that is a long distance away and a regular phone call just doesn’t suffice. It’s one thing to hear his or her voice, but to see a face and a smile makes a world of a difference. I am soon to be in such a situation and I wanted to make sure I was going to be able to make the most of my communication with this special person.

    • Senior uses Ubuntu system 14 months trouble free

      MORAL OF THE STORY

      Properly setup and customized for an individual’s computing needs, Ubuntu Linux can be used successfully and easily by anyone of any age and computing ability. AND, the problems associated with computing under the Windows environment disappear.

      My only regret is that I did not start looking into and learning about Linux prior to 2006.

    • Microsoft, Ubuntu and Social Networking

      Because the Ubuntu users are voluntarily responsible for much of the operating system’s marketing, support and development, a sense of community is inherent in the Ubuntu experience. This strength puts Ubuntu and similar open-source projects at a strong advantage vis-à-vis Microsoft when it comes to building social networks.

    • Kubuntu QA and Feedback

      I have come up with a couple of ideas for the plasmoid because of a simple design flaw. Utilizing the plasmoid will only work during a Live CD session or after Kubuntu is installed and running. Now we all know that during a development cycle not everyone can have the luxury of a Live CD or an install going as planned. Because of this, the plasmoid would be useless, therefor causing us to go back to an archaic method of filling in the feedback. The Internet! At least we have the Internet. Some things I would also like to incorporate, which is probably just another 5 minutes with the plasmoid, is the ability to work on the survey offline, and then syncing as soon as you come online.

• Devices/Embedded

  • VPS.NET Offers Full Suite of Turnkey Linux Appliances

    “This is a real boon for VPS.NET customers; Turnkey offers an incredible selection of applications that everyday users can apply virtually immediately,” UK2 Group chief executive officer Ditlev Bredahl said in a statement. “These appliances represent best of breed solutions and reflect our commitment to responding to customers requests for easily deployable, useful solutions.”

  • Low-power ARM9 SBC supports Linux

    The Linux distribution offered with the SBC includes a Debian ARM Linux 2.6.27 kernel, U-boot 1.3.4, GCC 4.2, Perl, and MySQL. The package is said to include a Linux cross development tool-chain, as well as other utilities “for rapid native application development.”

  • Phones

    • Source code for Palm WebOS released

      To comply with the GPL, Palm has released the source code packages for its Linux-based WebOS used by the new Palm Pre, which has been on sale in the US since the beginning of June. The company has also set up its own open source site.

    • 10 reasons why open source makes sense on smart phones

      Naturally, cost is one of the biggest “features” open source brings to the mobile market. But now you should see how being a part of the open source community will benefit the world of smart phones.

Free Software/Open Source

• Trophees du Libre

  5 and 6 June the winners and jury members of the Free Software Awards have been the friendship came to Soissons to present and discuss 23 projects free.

• If Microsoft wants its staff to understand the threat it faces from open source it should charge them to use its own software

  Is there another company in the world that would be able to afford to build a cloud computing platform using Microsoft products?

  The fact that Microsoft’s development teams get to use Microsoft software for free protects them from the commercial realities of what it means to develop applications an infrastructure and run business using that software.

• Acquia Search screencast with RedMonk

  In this screencast, Bryan House from Acquia discusses Acquia Search with Michael Coté from RedMonk.

• Why Parrot is Important

  If you look back over the history of programming languages, surprisingly few new features have been added in the past four decades. Even the most exciting features of modern dynamic languages existed in early languages such as Lisp and Smalltalk. Certainly, the features have been combined in different ways, and there’s progress in the implementation details or interface, but truly new ideas are in short supply.

• SourceForge Grows Up – and Out

  SourceForge is keenly aware of its roots in the open source community, and its strategies for growth encompass ways to better serve its base. Among its goals are a transformation of the Sourceforge.net Web site into “a world-class development environment,” said Jon Sobel, SourceForge’s group president of media.

• How Do We Introduce FOSS and Linux to Those Who Resist It?

  At home, it’s more manageable, in a way. You have less users to deal with but they could be more stubborn than 10 other users combined. In any case, it’s easier to study the habits of your family and/or housemates compared to an entire organization. Studying them will take time and interaction with them too. But then you get to have a better grasp of what software they need, what tasks they need to accomplish etc. In an office, it gets trickier because each person has different needs and there’s a whole lot of them so you have to study them a lot.

• Firefox

  • Firefox 3.5: What’s in a Number?

    I had an interesting chat this morning with Mike Shaver, VP, Engineering at Mozilla, about the imminent Firefox 3.5. Its launch takes place against a background where Firefox continues to make gains in the browser market, passing the 50% share in some European countries, and where it has created an unparalleled ecosystem of addons that places it at the forefront of the browser world in terms of capability and customisability.

  • Firefox 3.5 RC2: A Quick First Look

    Mozilla today released Firefox 3.5 Release Candidate 2, which you can download from Mozilla’s Web site. Release Candidate 2 is the first version of Firefox 3.5 that average users might want to run, since it’s faster and more stable than the beta versions were. Firefox 3.5 boasts a number of significant changes–ranging from new ways to work with the browser features to under-the-hood improvements that Mozilla developers say will make the browser more than twice as fast as Firefox 3. Here are some of the new features you’ll find in Firefox 3.5.

  • Deactivate Location-Aware Browsing in Firefox 3.5

  • new firefox logos

    If you blog or write articles about Firefox and your blog or publication usually includes a Firefox logo with those stories, please take a moment to head over to the Mozilla Firefox Logos page and get updated artwork.

  • New Firefox Icon: Q&A

• Business

  • Actuate “treats” its sales force to open source 101

    It’s interesting to see a company like Actuate responding to the open source model, and we have written before about the fact that we believe it will become a role model for other companies wanting to learn how to engage with open source.

  • PostgreSQL 8.4 on the home straight

    The PostgreSQL developers have published a first release candidate for version 8.4 of the free database system with a final version due later this month.

  • Advancing a culture of IT openness

    Second, a culture of IT openness must support the idea and use of open source software on a level playing field with traditional proprietary software. I understand that this is not enough for many people, but if we could get more IT users, especially governments at all levels, to give explicit parity to open source, we will have made huge strides.

• FSF/GNU

  • The Software Freedom Law Show

    Karen and Bradley discuss the SFLC’s amicus brief in the Jacobsen v. Katzer with their colleague, Aaron Williamson.

• Government

  • Does UK Government Grok the GPL?

    This is really quite interesting. It seems as though the UK government are starting, finally, to get the whole “Commons” thing.

• Openness

  • Laissez-faire community building

    “Community” can be a squishy concept at times, simultaneously important yet very hard to quantify and qualify. Even so, Walker’s suggestions point to ways to get the most value from communities by giving the most value to those communities.

Leftovers

• Censorship/Web Abuse

  • Feds to give cops Internet-snooping powers

    Police and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service already have the power to wiretap private communications, provided they have judicial authorization, but the law does not require ISPs to grant them access.

    Tom Copeland, chairman of the Canadian Association of Internet Providers, said it will be a hardship for some of the country’s smaller providers to upgrade their systems to facilitate interception.

  • E-Mail Surveillance Renews Concerns in Congress

    The National Security Agency is facing renewed scrutiny over the extent of its domestic surveillance program, with critics in Congress saying its recent intercepts of the private telephone calls and e-mail messages of Americans are broader than previously acknowledged, current and former officials said.

  • Lawmaker Unveils Anti-Metered Billing Law

    Prompted by Time Warner Cable’s botched attempt to force low caps and metered billing on its customers, Rep. Eric Massa (D-N.Y.) today unveiled the “Broadband Internet Fairness Act” (HR 2902), legislation aimed at protecting consumers from unreasonable broadband overage charges. Massa, prompted by consumer complaints, stepped up during the Time Warner Cable kerfuffle to call the effort an “outrageous, job killing initiative.”

• Copyrights

  • Court orders Jammie Thomas to pay RIAA $1.92 million

    Jammie Thomas-Rasset was found guilty of willful copyright infringement on Thursday in a Minneapolis federal court and must pay the recording industry $1.92 million.

    In a surprise decision, the jury imposed damages against Thomas-Rasset, who was originally accused to sharing more than 1,700 songs, at a whopping $80,000 for each of the 24 songs she was ultimately found guilty of illegally sharing..

  • RIAA lawyers toss “a skunk in the jury box,” apologize

    Recording industry lawyers dodged a bullet today after the judge in the Jammie Thomas-Rasset retrial threatened to throw out the complete testimony of an important expert witness. Not disclosing new information to opposing counsel makes federal judges very, very grumpy.

  • Record Labels Continue ‘Negotiating Through Lawsuit’

    And yet… the process continues. While Warner Music has done a bunch of these sue-to-negotiate deals, EMI seems to be involved in many of the more recent lawsuits of this nature. Its latest target is GrooveShark, one of a bunch of sites that lets you listen to streaming music online. Apparently the two companies had been negotiating terms… and then suddenly EMI sued. Par for the course. In the meantime, if you’re a music startup hoping to do a licensing deal with a major label, make sure you have some litigators on your legal team. You’re going to need them.

  • Entertainment Industry Still Insisting That Gov’t Protectionism Is The Only Way To Compete

    A few months ago, we responded to an ill-informed opinion piece in the UK’s Independent by Stephen Garrett, who runs a TV production house. In his essay, Garrett trotted out all the old falsehoods about how file sharing is the same as theft and that ISPs absolutely need to stop file sharing or the entertainment industry will die.

  • ISP Dragged to Court for Refusing to Block The Pirate Bay

    After several victories in Danish courts, the entertainment industry is now trying to get The Pirate Bay blocked in Norway. The country’s largest Internet provider ‘Telenor’ is now being dragged to court by IFPI, after it refused an earlier request to disable customer access to the world’s most prominent tracker.

  • France Changes “Three-Strikes” to Judge Ordering Disconnections

    Govt reacts to the country’s Constitutional Council ruling that the “free communication of thoughts” for which the Internet is essential can only be curtailed by trial and not by order of govt agency.

  • Universities Struggling To Deal With Law Requiring Them To Fight File Sharing

    So now what’s happening? Well, universities and colleges are wasting a ton of time, money and effort to try to comply (found via Michael Scott, who notes, “what a waste of resources.”). The article talks about how universities feel punished for something that isn’t even a problem:

    “We have not received one complaint about one student. Yet now we have to go out and incur the cost to solve a problem that we didn’t really have…. Tying actually capital and operating dollars to it in this economy to solve a problem we don’t really have at our scale has been an issue.”

  • Confused French Indie Labels Sue Google

    It appears that the collection society for indie record labels in France, SPPF, is a bit confused about how the internet works. It’s sued Google over videos on YouTube, claiming that while Google had removed a bunch of videos that were using songs covered by SPPF, many of those songs had returned! Of course, that’s probably because other people uploaded them. But rather than put the blame where it’s due (on the uploaders), SPPF has just decided to sue Google.