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11.02.16

Caricature: European Patent Office as Mordor

Posted in Europe, Humour, Patents at 10:08 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

European Patent Office as Mordor

Summary: The latest cartoon which is commentary about the working conditions at the European Patent Office (EPO)

Breaking the European Patent System With the UPC Hammer, Courtesy of the EPO and Lawyers-Centric ‘News’ Sites

Posted in Europe, Patents at 12:09 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Breaking what’s clearly not broken to build something new which doesn't work for anything or anyone but billionaires

EPO Frame Breaking
When all else fails Battistelli characteristically uses a hammer

Summary: The latest overt pushes for the Unitary Patent, courtesy of biased (self-serving) media and the EPO’s Michael Fröhlich, who joins Margot Fröhlinger with her Unified Patent Court (UPC) advocacy that conveniently waves off Brexit

THIS new article from Managing IP (MIP), a proponent of the UPC, is very optimistic about the UPC. It’s hardly surprising given the site’s track record. Even though recruitment of UPC judges has been called off the site speaks of the UPC as though it’s some unstoppable gravy train which is also desirable. It’s neither; the public does not want it (at least the few who understand what it does) and it seems to have been derailed — quite fatally in fact — following Britain’s vote for Brexit.

“How can a continent with so many languages get along with the UPC? And now that the only large English-speaking member state may be out, why even have hearings and patents in English?”“UK Prime Minister Theresa May rules out influence of the CJEU and authority of EU law in a post-Brexit Britain,” MIP wrote, but “Labour party MPs demand answers from government regarding UK participation in the UPC and EPO” (we rebutted this spin before). MIP says “five more EU member states including Italy and Slovenia [are] expected to ratify the UPC Agreement early next year,” but without Britain and especially with lingering uncertainty about its status in the EU the UPC won’t get anywhere any time soon. Its death might not be “official” for several years to come, but it’s not too hard to see where this is going.

How can a continent with so many languages get along with the UPC? And now that the only large English-speaking member state may be out, why even have hearings and patents in English? How would Spain feel about it? Battistelli may think (as he’s a clueless nontechnical thug) that patent examination and accurate translations can be attained using algorithms, but he's wrong beyond words. Fools who think that automated translations are an excuse that can make patents go global (applicable everywhere) would have us believe that even patents in Mandarin (new MIP article about notoriously crappy patents from SIPO) would be legible in Latin/Greek-derived languages. At this stage we’re actually entering the twilight zone, wherein totally idiotic people like Battistelli make big decisions that can undermine the whole of Europe. According to another new article from MIP and from IP watch [1, 2], there is a new AIPLA President and he is one who used to be involved in software patents and ITC cases (embargo at the behest of large corporations). WIPR, in the mean time, writes about AIPLA 2016 and quotes the EPO’s Michael Fröhlich (another Battistelli and UPC “yes man”, not to be confused with Margot Fröhlinger [1, 2, 3, 4]) who will say just about anything — even lie — in an effort to make the UPC seem inevitable. From the report:

The Unified Patent Court (UPC) and unitary patent will become a reality, with or without the UK, according to a senior official at the European Patent Office (EPO).

Michael Fröhlich, director of international legal affairs at the EPO, was speaking in a personal capacity at the American Intellectual Property Law Association’s (AIPLA) 2016 Annual Meeting in Washington, DC.

He said: “The issue of the Brexit vote is the last hurdle in what has been a hurdle chase since the beginning. There have been hurdles that have been higher than what Brexit has posed … and this last one will be taken successfully.”

Slovenia is about to become the 12th country to ratify the UPC Agreement in the coming days, with Italy expected to become the 13th, according to Fröhlich, speaking on Friday, October 28.

He added that Germany plans to finish the parliamentary ratification process by the end of year.

They have been saying this for a long time, yet it never actually happened. Last year Battistelli said that UPC would happen this year and it’s already near December/Christmas. Progress made? Nothing. Even worse — the UPC has gone backwards/in reverse, owing primarily to the UK. Always remember that the EPO’s management is now living in (and accepting) Battistelli’s fantasy land. The man is deluded, maybe clinically damaged. He will say anything to get his way, even breaking his very own rules, then look for scapegoats (especially when he does not get his way). Recall what he's rumoured to have attempted to do even to Roland Grossenbacher (behind his back). Nobody is safe from the paranoia and vengeance of Battistelli, not even old allies/friends like Grossenbacher. Battistelli turned the EPO’s management into a dangerous cult.

“Always remember that the EPO’s management is now living in (and accepting) Battistelli’s fantasy land.”Be wary and sceptical of all the UPC propaganda that’s still abound. Here we have WIPR asking its choir (mostly patent law firms) about things that the choir would profit from. Nothing is said about the number of respondents and their nature, but this was used to generate misleading headlines about UPC, as usual (“Readers confident in UPC despite Brexit vote”).

WIPR did the same thing regarding software patents in the US about a week ago. As we said at the time, that’s like conducting a poll in Fox News about Donald Trump’s chance of becoming President. They’re asking an already self-selecting and biased population to reinforce an echo chamber’s mentality/mindset (self-deluding/self-misleading, disconnected from reality). █

Patent Maximalism is Destroying the European Patent Office (Just a Paperwork Assembly Line), Exile of Boards Ensures No Turnaround

Posted in Europe, Patents at 11:15 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

…And the Administrative Council allows this to happen, knowing darn well the consequences

“Shallow understanding from people of goodwill is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.” ~Martin Luther King, Jr., 16 April 1963

LANDBRUG photo

Summary: The EPO is racing to the bottom of patent quality and the last resort, the Boards of Appeal, are being destroyed by Battistelli, who attempts to make this destruction appear like “improved independence” while the Administrative Council, led by Battistelli’s Pet Chinchilla, condones these outrageous moves or simply abstains rather than object (ruinous passivity)

THE EPO keeps following the footsteps of the old USPTO — the patent office in which there was only one goal: maximalise profit (for the Office). The inherent problem with this misguided strategy is that it’s short-term (and thus quite likely short-lived), as applicants sooner or later realise that their patents are being devalued and that the newer patents are not even worth pursuing. Too much of everything or too much of anything has a stigma or proverbs associated with it in many languages/cultures.

Watch this latest nonsensical piece of patent maximalism seeded by the EPO and EUIPO for cheap PR. The EPO is so proud that someone reprinted these lies — lies that even Managing IP refused to accept several years ago. Deloitte has also just released similar propaganda in the form of a press release. These people view the whole world in terms of patents (or so-called “Intellectual Property”, which also includes trademarks and other laws). “Industries that use IPR intensively have a huge impact on the economy, study shows. Here are the key findings,” the EPO wrote this week, repeating some of this whole nonsense. They try to take credit for every single segment of the science and technology world!

“Too much of everything or too much of anything has a stigma or proverbs associated with it in many languages/cultures.”In reality, the EPO needs the appeal boards and it needs outside (independent) auditors of patent quality. Sadly, Battistelli is allowed by his Pet Chinchillas at the Council to just demolish these boards, little by little, step by step. The EPO under Battistelli already rejects the law and doesn’t give a damn about what the European Parliament says, so much so that, as Benjamin Henrion put it today: “EPO software patent guidelines have been updated, they keep using the term “computer-implemented inventions” https://is.gd/U8GQmj” (this is a new publication from a British site).

Yet again, as a matter of fact, the EPO is pushing software patents that are against the EPC and the Parliament’s determination. This is happening every week these days, i.e. a lot more frequently than before. We have campaigned on this subject for a very long time (I have personally done so longer than this site’s existence) and this week comes yet another lie from the EPO (namely that people need no special software to apply for a patent, clearly a fallacy). Also this week we see the EPO using EPOPIC as yet another opportunity to distract from abuses, retweeting stuff like [1, 2].

“Why is the media no longer covering internal EPO affairs?”How many people are even aware of what goes on inside the EPO? As one insider put it (illustrating it visually too): “This is how it feels like walking through the EPO corridors in 2016″ (see the image and the responses there). Why is the media no longer covering internal EPO affairs? Have intimidation tactics worked? Why do insiders need to submit anonymous comments in some thread from almost 5 months ago? One such comment says: “The EPO is for sure a magic place with its 365 day/year Halloween, leave-no-trace social conferences and its alien AC support forces. Happy Halloween!”

“As a side effect, more of the EPO money is leeched towards Germany,” another person wrote about the relocation of the boards to Haar:

Re. Art. 36 EPC (weighing of votes):
Germany did not vote no in the Budget and Finance Committee…
I assume, Munich is happy that another building is now in use, thus earning taxes.
As a side effect, more of the EPO money is leeched towards Germany.

Without the German vote, the weighing will be very close against the mass of smaller countries coming to the Administrative Council meeting in December (meeting 150! time for a fancy dinner!).

Here is a very detailed comment about what happened in the meeting behind closed doors:

Yes the German delegation seems to be playing a double game here.
During the June assembly they did not make any criticism of the planned move.

The only delegations that criticised or questioned the proposal were as follows.

Switzerland
“The boards’ location falls within the EPO President’s powers. In the redesigned framework, the BOA President would also play a role, by drawing up their budget. Only via the budget can the Council exercise direct influence. So this is not a formal request either; we are merely pointing out that in our opinion the boards’ location has no bearing on their independence. The Swiss delegation is therefore not prepared to agree to any spending on relocating the boards, and suggests leaving them where they are.”

Ireland
“Relocation: Ireland believes that a separate location for the boards of appeal is neither justified nor required. Users have already expressed the view that
the boards are considered to be independent from the rest of the Office and the fact that the boards are physically located in the Isar building does not
impinge on their independence. It seems that even a relocation within Munich would give rise to unnecessary expense and my delegation cannot see that the expenditure associated with such a move could be justified.”

Austria
“As far as relocating the boards was concerned, those most immediately affected, i.e.BOA members and users, would have to agree. And the cost – even in the
Munich area – would also have to be taken into account.”

Netherlands
There was no point relocating the boards, as proposed in Section C of CA/43/16; this would merely waste money.

Slovakia
“The Office’s relocation proposal was certainly better than the original one, but even such a move should still be presented to the Budget and Finance Committee for opinion, because it would cost a lot of money.”

Czech Republic
“Lastly, on the relocation issue it agreed with earlier speakers. This was more an internal management issue, and should be uncoupled from the
independence question. But if the majority was in favour of a move, it would oppose it.”

Bulgaria
“Relocation did not seem essential, and the costs involved should be looked into.”

Denmark
“Lastly, it was certainly not convinced that relocating the boards – whether in Munich or the vicinity – would make them look more independent.”

As we predicted years ago, the EPO is rapidly losing top talent and is becoming a paperwork pipeline (look at the recruitment standards), without much/any science in the mix. See these two new articles [1, 2] that show us in what ways the EPO is ‘evolving’. Brain drain continues, but the priority now seems to be more paperwork. Nicely done? Painful, covert way to kill any joy and pride associated with a job at the EPO?

Unless something is done to undo the coup, the EPO will end up like the chinchilla shown at the top, dissected and skinned for whatever profit may be in it. █

Links 2/11/2016: Fedora 25 Final Freeze, Minoca OS Under GPL

Posted in News Roundup at 10:02 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • What if Linux never existed?

    Linux has been around for a long time now, and many of us take it for granted as part of our everyday lives. But have you ever paused to consider what life would be like if Linux never existed? A writer at Network World recently explored this question based on some funny social media posts.

  • Linux Journal November 2016

    I like the idea of life hacking. I’m not sure it’s a term that you’ll find in the dictionary (although perhaps—dictionaries have some odd things in them now), but the idea of improving life by programmatically changing things is awesome. I think that might be why I’m such an open-source fan. When it’s possible to change the things you don’t like or improve on something just because you can, it makes computing far less mystical and far more enjoyable.

  • Desktop

    • Some Disappointed Apple Fans Are Moving To Ubuntu Linux

      At its October event, Apple tried hard to convince the users that its latest MacBook Pro is machine built for professional users. The company showed off the brand new Touch Bar that changed its appearance depending on the applications running on the screen. The new MacBooks are thinner and more powerful than ever. But, there’s something missing that’s driving away some diehard Apple fans.

      Firstly, Apple decided to ditch a large array of connectivity ports–HDMI ports, SD card slot, Thunderbolt 2 ports, and standard USB port. These ports have been replaced by 4 Thunderbolt 3/USB-C ports. So, the same power user segment that’s being aimed by Apple, is expressing lots of concerns.

      Apart from the disappeared ports, these MacBooks have maximum 16GB of RAM. On the contrary, minimum 32GB RAM is becoming a standard for power users. While Microsoft is presenting itself as the new innovative tech company, some Apple loyalists are turning to another alternative, i.e., Linux.

    • Elementary, My Dear Siri!

      I’m not one prone to knee-jerk reactions, but I’m also not one to sit about idly without considering alternatives. So the first thing I did after the Apple keynote was to download a copy of Elementary and burn it to an SD card.

      An hour or so later, after checking that my Chromebook would work OK with it1, I installed from the live image to the SSD and began the process of figuring out whether, three years after I first tried it, Elementary is finally good enough for me as a development environment.

      Like last time, this isn’t a review per se, but rather a smattering of my impressions while trying to assess whether it suits me.

      I’m being realistic here – I know it’s not macOS, I don’t expect it to be macOS, it will not be a magical replacement for macOS for most people who share my current disenchantment with Apple, but I am very familiar with Linux, and most definitely need to consider moving to it in the long term given the way Apple has been neglecting Mac hardware and software over the past few years.

      So given this week’s keynote completely ignored desktops and that I sorely need to upgrade my six-year-old Mac mini, this is as good a time as any to evaluate what’s out there.

  • Server

    • AWS releases Amazon Linux container image for use in on-premises data centers

      Amazon Web Services (AWS), a division of Amazon that offers cloud computing and storage services, today announced that it has released a container image of its Amazon Linux operating system — which has, until now, only been accessible on AWS virtual machine instances — that customers can now deploy on their own servers.

      Of course, other Linux distributions are available for use in companies’ on-premises data centers — CentOS, CoreOS, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Canonical’s Ubuntu, and so on. Now companies that are used to Amazon Linux in the cloud can work with it on-premises, too. It’s available from AWS’ EC2 Container Registry. Amazon Linux is not currently available for instant deployment on other public clouds, whether Oracle’s, Google’s, Microsoft’s, or IBM’s.

  • Kernel Space

    • Fireside Chat: GKH Talks Licensing, Email, and Aging Maintainers

      No one aside from Linus Torvalds has more influence or name recognition in the Linux Kernel project than Greg Kroah-Hartman. More commonly known as GKH, the ex SUSE kernel developer and USB driver maintainer is now a Linux Foundation Fellow and the full-time maintainer of the -stable Linux branch and staging subsystem, among other roles. In a recent Fireside Chat with Kroah-Hartman at Embedded Linux Conference Europe, Tim Bird, Chair of the Architecture Group of the Linux Foundation’s CE Working Group, described him as the hardest working person he knows.

    • Linux 4.4.30

      I’m announcing the release of the 4.4.30 kernel. This fixes a bug in
      4.4.29 and older kernels by reverting two patches that should not have
      been applied.

      All users of the 4.4 kernel series must upgrade.

      The updated 4.4.y git tree can be found at:
      git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-stable.git linux-4.4.y
      and can be browsed at the normal kernel.org git web browser:

      http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-st…

    • Linux Kernel 4.4.30 LTS Fixes a Bug in 4.4.29 and Older Kernels, Update Now

      After informing the Linux community about the release and immediate availability of the Linux 4.8.6 kernel, renowned Linux kernel developer Greg Kroah-Hartman announced the Linux 4.4.29 LTS kernel.

      Linux kernel 4.4.29 LTS was a fairly normal maintenance update that brought changes to a total of 82 files, with 657 insertions and 358 deletions, according to the appended shortlog and the diff from Linux kernel 4.4.28 LTS announced a week ago. However, later that day Greg Kroah-Hartman bumped the version to 4.4.30, removing two patches that shouldn’t have been applied in the first place.

    • Hyperledger Eyes Mobile Blockchain Apps With ‘Iroha’ Project

      A blockchain project developed by several Japanese firms including by startup Soramitsu and IT giant Hitachi has been accepted into the Hyperledger blockchain initiative.

      Developed by Hyperledger member and blockchain startup Soramitsu, Iroha was first unveiled during a meeting of the project’s Technical Steering Committee last month. Iroha is being pitched as both a supplement to other Hyperledger-tied infrastructure projects like IBM’s Fabric (on which it is based) and Intel’s Sawtooth Lake.

    • It’s Bitcoin’s Birthday: Whitepaper Released 8 years Ago Today

      At the time, many people who first read the paper became interested in the background technology, and several wanted to see it in a working state.

      It seems very few knew that was going to happen.

      Once Bitcoin launched in 2009, the biggest success story in digital money was launched. Satoshi launched Bitcoin as open source software so anyone could use it, fork it and update it. At first, the early adopters were mainly from the cryptography community like Hal Finney, the recipient of the very first bitcoin transaction.

    • Web Pioneer Tries to Incubate a Second Digital Revolution

      Brian Behlendorf knows it’s a cliché for veteran technologists like himself to argue that society could be run much better if we just had the right software. He believes it anyway.

      “I’ve been as frustrated as anybody in technology about how broken the world seems,” he says. “Corruption or bureaucracy or inefficiency are in some ways technology problems. Couldn’t this just be fixed?” he asks.

      This summer Behlendorf made a bet that a technology has appeared that can solve some of those apparently human problems. Leaving a comfortable job as a venture capitalist working for early Facebook investor and billionaire Peter Thiel, he now leads the Hyperledger Project, a nonprofit in San Francisco created to support open-source development of blockchains, a type of database that underpins the digital currency Bitcoin by verifying and recording transactions.

    • ​New round of HPE software layoffs begins

      Linux Plumbers, the invite-only conference for core Linux developers, is usually a happy occasion, but not this time.

      Several top programmers came looking for work because they had just been laid off by Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE). And they weren’t the only ones. Last week, HPE laid off numerous OpenStack cloud developers.

    • Graphics Stack

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

    • GNOME Desktop/GTK

      • Rust and Vala
      • Bézier curves, markers, and SVG’s concept of directionality

        In the first post in this series I introduced SVG markers, which let you put symbols along the nodes of a path. You can use them to draw arrows (arrowhead as an end marker on a line), points in a chart, and other visual effects.

        In that post and in the second one, I started porting some of the code in librsvg that renders SVG markers from C to Rust. So far I’ve focused on the code and how it looks in Rust vs. C, and on some initial refactorings to make it feel more Rusty. I have casually mentioned Bézier segments and their tangents, and you may have an idea that SVG paths are composed of Bézier curves and straight lines, but I haven’t explained what this code is really about. Why not simply walk over all the nodes in the path, and slap a marker at each one?

      • Rust and GObject

        From documentation Rust provides a low level and high level API to access common operations. Provides a set of assumptions to help its great features like automatic memory management, secure and concurrent data access. On high level side, Rust provides a rich set of common collection, iterators, tuples and others.

        For GObject interoperability, there is a project , and this too, I found to allow you to use GObject based libraries in Rust, while they depends on other project, or directly on GObject Introspection generated XML files to introspect these C libraries.

      • Meet Meow, a Purfect GNOME Menu Editor

        If you love using GNOME Shell but wish that it was easier to create and customise folders in the App View, here’s an app that might help.

      • GNOME Shell 3.23.1 Introduces Dual-GPU Integration, Mutter Adds Wayland Fixes

        We reported last week that the first milestone of the upcoming GNOME 3.24 desktop environment, due for release on March 22, 2017, arrived for early adopters, but the changes weren’t all that significant.

        A few days after the announcement for GNOME 3.23.1, the GNOME Shell 3.23.1 graphical interface and Mutter 3.23.1 window and composite manager made their appearance on the official FTP server, and looking at their changelogs, attached at the end of the article for reference, it appears there are plenty of new features to get excited for.

      • GNOME and Rust

        I’ve been keeping an eye on Rust for a while now, so when I read Alberto’s statement of support for more Rust use in GNOME, I couldn’t resist piling on…

        From the perspective of someone who’s quite used to C, it does indeed seem to tick all the boxes. High performance, suitability for low-level tasks and C ABI compatibility tend to be sticking points with new languages — and Rust kills it in those departments. Anyone who needs further convincing should read up on Raph Levien’s font renderer. The usual caveat about details vis-a-vis the Devil applies, but the general idea looks exactly right. Rust’s expressiveness and lack of baggage means it could even outperform C for non-trivial code, on top of all the other advantages.

  • Distributions

    • New Releases

      • IPFire 2.19 Linux Firewall Distribution Switches to Unbound as DNS Proxy

        On the first day of November 2016, Michael Tremer from the IPFire project, an open source, professional, secure and hardened Linux-based firewall distribution, proudly announced the release of IPFire 2.19 Core Update 106.

        IPFire 2.19 Core Update 106 is the latest stable release of the Linux firewall OS, and it looks like it implements a new DNS proxy, namely Unbound, which replaces the Dnsmasq DNS forwarder and DHCP server used in previous releases. The decision was made because of the recent DNSSEC implementation by default in the distribution, which proves to offer better DNSSEC reliability, enhanced features, such as import of static leases, and improved performance.

      • 4MLinux 20.0 GNU/Linux Distribution Hits Stable Channel, Adds New Boot Options

        Today, November 1, 2016, 4MLinux developer Zbigniew Konojacki informs us about the general availability of the final release of his independent 4MLinux 20.0 GNU/Linux operating system.

        4MLinux 20.0 has entered development at the beginning of September, when the Core edition was pushed to the Beta channels for early adopters, as well as for the 4MLinux developer to rebase all of his GNU/Linux distribution on the new system, which is now powered by the long-term supported Linux 4.4.27 kernel fully patched against the “Dirty COW” vulnerability.

    • Arch Family

      • Arch Linux 2016.11.01 Now Available for Download, Powered by Linux Kernel 4.8.6

        Today is the first day of November (still is in some countries), which means that a new ISO respin of the popular and lightweight Arch Linux operating system is now available for download.

        That’s right, Arch Linux 2016.11.01 is out, and it’s powered by the recently released Linux 4.8.6 kernel, which makes Arch Linux the first GNU/Linux distribution to offer a live and installable ISO image powered by the latest stable and most advanced Linux kernel version available, at least at the moment of writing this blog story.

      • Manjaro 16.10 “Fringilla” Released

        A new version of the Arch-based Manjaro Linux distribution is available and continues with its Xfce desktop choice while a KDE Plasma 5.8 version is also available.

    • Red Hat Family

      • Red Hat Extends IT Automation Reach

        Using a more declarative approach to IT automation that doesn’t require IT operations staff to learn how to program has the obvious benefit of being simpler for more IT organizations to embrace. Now Red Hat is extending the reach of that approach with the release today of an update to the agentless Ansible open source framework that reaches deeper into the realms of networking, containers and the cloud.

      • Finance

      • Fedora

        • Fedora 25 Linux Now in Final Freeze, Slated for Release on November 15, 2016

          ovember 1, 2016, was an important day on the release schedule of the forthcoming Fedora 25 Linux operating system, as it hit the Final Freeze development stage, leading to significant cut-offs.

          The Final Freeze stage is a very important step in the development process of any GNU/Linux distribution, which means that no new packages will be added to the operating system and its current state will be preserved until the final release, but not before it passes all tests for all supported hardware architectures. As usual, during the Final Freeze stage, only critical bug fixes are accepted, and new package versions will be pushed to the stable repos after the OS officially hits the streets.

        • Fedora 25′s Hybrid Graphics Improvements, To Support NVIDIA Wayland EGLStreams

          When Fedora 25 ships in (hopefully) two weeks it will contain much better support for hybrid graphics / Optimus systems thanks to improvements led by Red Hat.

        • Fedora 25 Is Vetting Their Switchable Graphics Support This Week

          For those with a NVIDIA Optimus laptop or other dual-GPU system, Fedora QA has organized a test day this week for testing the switchable graphics support for Fedora 25 that will be shipping later this month.

        • Hybrid Graphics and Fedora Workstation 25

          When we started the Fedora Workstation effort one thing we wanted to do was to drain the proverbial swamp of make sure that running Linux on a laptop is a first rate experience. As you see from my last blog entry we have been working on building a team dedicated to that task. There are many facets to this effort, but one that we kept getting asked about was sorting out hybrid graphics. So be aware that some of this has been covered in previous blog entries, but I want to be thorough here. So this blog will cover the big investments of time and effort we are putting into Wayland and X Windows, GNOME Shell and Nouveau (the open source driver for NVidia GPU hardware).

    • Debian Family

      • Debian developer completes 20 years with project

        The Debian GNU/Linux project is 23 years old and one of its developers has just completed two decades with the community Linux organisation.

        Steve McIntyre, who led the project in 2008 and 2009, joined Debian in 1996. He wrote that he had first installed Debian in late October that year, migrating over from his existing Slackware installation with the help of a friend. It took an entire weekend and he says he found it so painful that he thought of bailing out at many times.

      • Derivatives

  • Devices/Embedded

Free Software/Open Source

  • Aporeto Announces Trireme, an Open-Source Security Project for Kubernetes and Docker
  • Trireme Open-Source Security Project Debuts for Kubernetes, Docker

    Network isolation isn’t the only way to secure application containers anymore, so Aporeto unveils a new security model for containers running in Docker or as part of Kubernetes cluster.
    Dimitri Stiliadis co-founded software-defined networking (SDN) vendor Nuage Networks in 2011 in a bid to help organizations improve agility and security via network isolation. In the container world, however, network isolation alone isn’t always enough to provide security, which is why Stiliadis founded Aporeto in August 2015. On Nov. 1, Aporeto announced its open-source Trireme project, providing a new security model for containers running in Docker or as part of a Kubernetes cluster.

  • Minoca OS: A new open source operating system

    Minoca OS is a general purpose operating system written completely from the ground up. It’s intended for devices looking to conserve power, memory, and storage. It aims to be lean, maintainable, modular, and compatible with existing software.

    In other words, it’s built for little devices that want a full-featured OS.

    On the app side, we’ve got a package manager (opkg), and a growing suite of packages like Python, Ruby, Git, Lua, and Node. Under the hood, Minoca contains a powerful driver model between device drivers and the kernel. The idea is that drivers can be written in a forward compatible manner, so kernel level components can be upgraded without requiring a recompilation of all device drivers.

  • Minoca Is A New GPLv3, General Purpose OS
  • ReactOS 0.4.3 Is Near With New Features, RC1 Released

    There are a lot of operating system updates to end out October and begin November… Even the “open-source Windows” ReactOS is out with a new test release.

  • OpenIndiana 2016.10 Released With MATE 1.14 Desktop, Drops Sun SSH

    The latest version of OpenIndiana, the Illumos-powered Solaris distribution letting OpenSolaris live on in community form, is now available.

  • OpenIndiana 2016.10 Unix OS Migrates to FreeBSD Loader, Adds MATE 1.14 Desktop

    OpenIndiana is a free and open-source Unix operating system, based on Illumos and derived from OpenSolaris. The latest version, 2016.10, was announced by Alexander Pyhalov on October 31, 2016.

    The OpenIndiana 2016.10 “Hipster” release comes with a large number of updated components, new features and under-the-hood improvements, but the most exciting ones are the migration to FreeBSD Loader, porting of Intel KMS (Kernel Mode Setting), implementation of Python 2.7 by default, removal of Sun SSH, and MATE 1.14 desktop, which is now integrated and installed by default.

  • Google “Eve” Kabylake System Gains Coreboot Support

    I haven’t seen Google announce any Intel Kabylake powered Chromebooks yet, but activity indicates that they may not be too far out with now having mainlined Coreboot support for a new device codenamed “Eve”.

  • 8 Open Source BPM Software Options

    Open source business process management (BPM) software appears to account for a large percentage of recent innovation in the broader BPM market.

    “Open source solutions are leading the evolution of the BPM technologies: from pure BPM solutions that automate processes, increase productivity and ensure regulatory compliance to business application platforms that include tools and capabilities to empower DevOps teams to effectively create and maintain business applications,” said Miguel Valdes Faura, CEO and founder of Bonitasoft, provider of an open source BPM platform.

    The trends in open source BPM software mirror the broader BPM market, said Phil Simpson, manager, BPM Product Marketing for Red Hat, mentioning a move away from on-premise deployments in favor of BPM-as-a-service, and adoption of more dynamic ad-hoc case management style flows in lieu of rigid process models.

  • Managing Production Systems with Kubernetes in Chinese Enterprises

    Kubernetes has rapidly evolved from running production workloads at Google to deployment in an increasing number of global enterprises. Interestingly, US and Chinese enterprises have different expectations when it comes to requirements, platforms, and tools. In his upcoming talk at KubeCon, Xin Zhang, CEO of Caicloud, will describe his company’s experiences using Kubernetes to manage production systems in large-scale Chinese enterprises.

  • Node.js Is Helping Developers Get the Most Out of JavaScript

    Node.js, the JavaScript runtime of choice for high-performance, low latency apps, continues to gain popularity among developers on the strength of JavaScript.

  • 10 tips for making your documentation crystal clear

    So you’ve some written excellent documentation. Now what? Now it’s time to go back and edit it. When you first sit down to write your documentation, you want to focus on what you’re trying to say instead of how you’re saying it, but once that first draft is done it’s time to go back and polish it up a little.

  • Apache Ignite Powers GridGain’s In-Memory Computing Platform

    Here at OStatic, we’ve often noted that whenever the Apache Software Foundation graduates an open source project to become a Top Level Project, it tends to bode well for the project. Just look at what’s happened with Apache Spark, for example.

    Last year, Apache, which is the steward for and incubates more than 350 Open Source projects, announced that Apache Ignite had become a top-level project. Ignite is an open source effort to build an in-memory data fabric that was driven by GridGain Systems. Now, GridGain Systems has announced that it is offering the Ignite-based GridGain Enterprise Edition in the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Marketplace.

  • Nitrous.io shuts down, open source self-hosted version promised

    Nitrous.io, a Singapore and San Francisco-based cloud integrated development environment (IDE) provider, has announced it is to shut down its development platform and cloud IDE on November 14, with customers given until that date before their data is deleted.

    The company has stopped new signups, and said that payments made after October 16 will be refunded in full, as well as promising that subscriptions to any Nitrous email list will expire at the end of this month.

  • SaaS/Back End

    • Forrester: OpenStack and AWS are Now Crowned Cloud Standards

      At the recent OpenStack Summit in Barcelona, nteroperability among OpenStack-powered clouds was trumpeted far and wide. And, in tandem with that, OpenStack proponents are also touting the fact that the open cloud computing platform has emerged as a de facto standard, alongside Amazon Web Services.

      Forrester Research’s latest report, “The State of Cloud Platform Standards, Q4 2016,” specifies that OpenStack and AWS are now the cloud standards. That’s quite something when you consider that OpenStack is only a few years old.

      There are, of course, numerous open cloud platforms out there. OpenNebula, Eucalyptus, and CloudStack are just a few of the choices. But Forrester Research reports that ”almost every public, private, and hosted private cloud provider has either already developed or is in the process of developing varying levels of support for the OpenStack APIs.”

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

  • Pseudo-Open Source (Openwashing)

  • Funding

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • GIMP 2.9.6 Readying New Clipboard, GUI Improvements

      GIMP is taking another step towards the long overdue GIMP 2.10 image program update with a new milestone release being on the horizon.

      The GIMP 2.9.6 release has yet to happen but its NEWS entry was updated for the pending release.

      What users can look forward to in GIMP 2.9.6 is a new clipboard implementation to copy/paste layers and layer groups, color tags, the mouse pointer dialogs and colors applied to images are now color-managed, various GUI additions, improvements to some of the built-in tools, a native WebP loader/exporter, and around 60 bug fixes over the earlier GIMP 2.9 development release.

    • Update NEWS for the GIMP 2.9.6 release

  • Public Services/Government

    • Emilia-Romagna ends its use of OpenOffice

      For the second time this year, an Italian public administration is ending its use of open source office productivity software. A source in the IT department of the Emilia-Romagna region confirmed to the Open Source Observatory last week that the region will end its use of OpenOffice. The region will move to a cloud-based proprietary office solution, others say.

      The IT department did not respond to emails seeking comments sent last week and yesterday. This news item will be updated with more information as it becomes available.

      On 31 October, a press statement by the region’s councillor for the Digital Agenda, Raffaele Donini, mentions the use of unspecified cloud solutions, which should reduce the number of pages printed by the administration each year by some 5 million. The switch would save EUR 700,000 per year.

      Update: the region took its decision to switch to a cloud solution on 24 October.

  • Licensing/Legal

    • Wix gets caught “stealing” GPL code from WordPress

      Abrahami was alluding to the use in the WordPress text editor of code originally published as open source under the more permissive MIT public license, as Wix developer Tal Kol said explicitly in a followup post on Medium. Kol said that the code was developed in an attempt to collaborate with WordPress engineers—porting the Automattic, GPL-licensed editor to the React Native JavaScript platform for mobile apps. After a prototype was ready in June, Kol explained, he tweeted a link to the code to Automattic’s engineering team but didn’t get a response until October 28, when Mullenweg called Wix out for a GPL violation.

      The problem for Wix is that while it may very well have open-sourced the component it built using WordPress’ editor—which Kol says was in turn built using another editor licensed under the more permissive MIT open source license—the company then published the component as part of commercially licensed software. That action violates both the spirit and the letter of the GNU Public License, which requires anything built with GPL-licensed code to be distributed with the same GPL license. By adding the GPL-licensed editor module code to its own application, Wix essentially placed its whole mobile application under the scope of the GPL license.

  • Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

    • The Polls of the Future Are Reproducible and Open Source

      There’s a new poll aggregator in town. And it’s a monster, harnessing three of the most powerful ideas in science today: Bayesian inference, open-source software, and reproducible research.

    • Open Data

      • Open Source Data Sharing Software Takes Aim At Cancer

        Researchers collaborating in Pittsburgh have developed an open-source software resource that can better enable investigators studying cancer to process large amounts of genomic cancer data.

        The new resource, developed by researchers from the University of Pittsburgh and the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center can assist investigators in sorting through genomic cancer data to determine better methods of cancer prevention, diagnosis and treatment.

        The open-source software, which processes data generated by The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) project and is called TCGA Expedition, is described in an article in the journal PLOS ONE.

  • Programming/Development

    • Which ‘ancient’ programming language do you use the most?

      The definition of an “older” language is a little fuzzy. For many developers, the languages they are working with were created before they were born. For the purposes of this poll, we selected a few popular languages from Wikipedia’s History of programming languages article and selected the somewhat arbitrary cutoff of needing to have been created prior to 1980.

Leftovers

  • Science

    • Paranoid Android: Erica May Be the Creepiest Robot Ever Built

      Professor Hiroshi Ishiguro is a weird dude. For the last couple of decades, he’s been on a quest to make the most lifelike android possible. His first creation was based on his daughter’s image and proved so frightening to his child that the machine had to be locked away in a crate. Later, Ishiguro–who dresses in all-black, like a Japanese Johnny Cash–made a machine that looks exactly like him. As you do.

  • Security

    • Security updates for Tuesday
    • Let’s Automate Let’s Encrypt

      HTTPS is a small island of security in this insecure world, and in this day and age, there is absolutely no reason not to have it on every Web site you host. Up until last year, there was just a single last excuse: purchasing certificates was kind of pricey. That probably was not a big deal for enterprises; however, if you routinely host a dozen Web sites, each with multiple subdomains, and have to pay for each certificate out of your own dear pocket—well, that quickly could become a burden.

      Now you have no more excuses. Enter Let’s Encrypt a free Certificate Authority that officially left Beta status in April 2016.

      Aside from being totally free, there is another special thing about Let’s Encrypt certificates: they don’t last long. Currently all certificates issued by Let’s Encrypt are valid for only 90 days, and you should expect that someday this term will become even shorter. Although this short lifespan definitely creates a much higher level of security, many people consider it as an inconvenience, and I’ve seen people going back from using Let’s Encrypt to buying certificates from commercial certificate authorities for this very reason.

    • Microsoft says Russia-linked hackers exploiting Windows flaw [Ed: So it says the back doors it gave the NSA are used by many others]

      Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) said on Tuesday that a hacking group previously linked to the Russian government and U.S. political hacks was behind recent cyber attacks that exploited a newly discovered Windows security flaw.

      The software maker said in an advisory on its website there had been a small number of attacks using “spear phishing” emails from a hacking group known Strontium, which is more widely known as “Fancy Bear,” or APT 28. Microsoft did not identify any victims.

      Microsoft’s disclosure of the new attacks and the link to Russia came after Washington accused Moscow of launching an unprecedented hacking campaign aimed at disrupting and discrediting the upcoming U.S. election.

    • Lack of cybersecurity standards leaves election process vulnerable [Ed: Windows in voting machines is a real issue [1, 2]]

      Hackers continue to exploit vulnerabilities in the U.S. political technology, highlighting the need for cybersecurity standards and guidelines to help protect voter information.

    • Windows zero-day exploited by same group behind DNC hack

      On Oct. 31, Google’s Threat Analysis Group revealed a vulnerability in most versions of Windows that is actively being exploited by malware attacks.

      Today, Terry Myerson, executive vice president of Microsoft’s Windows and Devices group, acknowledged the exploit was being used actively by a sophisticated threat group—the same threat group involved in the hacks that led to the breach of data from the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign. And while a patch is on the way for the vulnerability, he encouraged customers to upgrade to Windows 10 for protection from further advanced threats.

    • How DNS Works: A Primer

      DNS has been in the news a great deal as of late. First, there was the controversy over the United States government essentially handing over control of the Internet’s root domain naming system. Then DNS made headlines when cybercriminals performed three separate distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks on a major DNS service provider by leveraging a botnet army of millions of compromised IoT devices. Yet with all the hoopla surrounding DNS, it surprises me how many IT pros don’t fully understand DNS and how it actually works.

      DNS stands for Domain Name System. Its purpose is to resolve and translate human-readable website names to IPv4 or IPv6 addresses. Technically speaking, it’s not a necessary part of the networking processes. Rather, DNS simply makes it easier for human beings to know and remember what server they are trying to reach. For example, it’s much easier to remember that if you want to perform an internet web search, you type in www.google.com as opposed to the IPv4 address of 216.58.217.4.

    • Security Blogger Identifies Next IoT Vulnerability, This Time on Linux OS [Ed: not Linux is the problem here but bad developers of devices]

      Recommendations for mitigation include turning off global telnet open services and not using known vulnerable usernames or passwords. If a device is infected (or you’re not sure if it is), this can be removed by rebooting the infected devices, the post said. Of course it will then have to be secured against the intrusion, or it will be re-infected.

    • Top GCHQ director calls security industry “witchcraft”

      The National Cyber Security Center’s technical director Ian Levy has slammed commonly-accepted cyber security advice, equating the security industry to “witchcraft” and accusing it of deliberately creating unnecessary fear around cyber threats.

      Speaking at Future Decoded 2016, Microsoft’s annual digital transformation conference, Levy argued that cyber security is not transparent and that the industry is “blaming the user for designing the system wrong”.

  • Defence/Aggression

    • Swiss police detain eight in a mosque raid

      Swiss police on Wednesday raided a mosque in the north of the country, detaining eight people, AP reported.

      Those in custody are suspected of calling for killing of Muslims refusing to attend prayers.

      Police searched the mosque in Winterthur, near Zürich, and the apartments of three people, according to a statement from the regional prosecutor’s office. Among those arrested was an Ethiopian imam who could have been behind the call for the killings.

  • Transparency/Investigative Reporting

    • WikiLeaks releases 26th batch of #PodestaEmails from Clinton campaign chair

      The latest release consists of over 1,100 emails. More than 43,000 emails have now been published by the whistleblowing site, which has pledged to make public a total of 50,000 in the run up to next week’s US presidential election.

      Tuesday’s email release divulged more details on the Clinton team’s reaction to her email server scandal and gave further insight into its relationship with the MSM.

    • The FBI Seems To Be Leaking Like A Sieve Concerning Details Of Clinton Email Investigation

      Okay, look, let’s face the fact that any time we write about anything having to do with either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump, people in the comments go nuts accusing us of being “in the tank,” or “shills.” or even (really) “up the ass” of one candidate or the other (and, yes, this has happened with both of the major party candidates). I’m assuming it will happen again with this post, even though it’s not true. As should be abundantly clear, we’re not big fans of either choice (and don’t get us started on the third parties…). So when we talk about one, the other (or even both together), it’s not because we’re “biased” or trying to help or hurt one or the other. We’re just doing the same thing we always do, and which we never had a problem with before, which is reporting on policy related issues having to do with technology, free speech, the 4th amendment, law enforcement, etc. So, before you rush in to yell at us in the comments, please consider that maybe just because we’re not toeing the party line on your preferred candidate, maybe it’s not because we’re in the tank for the other one.

    • The Clinton-Obama Emails

      or everyone wondering why the Clinton email case never went to a grand jury, former U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey offers an explanation: After disclosure of emails between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama , “the president said during an interview that he thought Mrs. Clinton should not be criminally charged because there was no evidence that she had intended to harm the nation’s security—a showing required under none of the relevant statutes.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

    • Why Dakota Is the New Keystone

      The Native Americans who have spent the last months in peaceful protest against an oil pipeline along the banks of the Missouri are standing up for tribal rights. They’re also standing up for clean water, environmental justice and a working climate. And it’s time that everyone else joined in.

      The shocking images of the National Guard destroying tepees and sweat lodges and arresting elders this week remind us that the battle over the Dakota Access Pipeline is part of the longest-running drama in American history — the United States Army versus Native Americans. In the past, it’s almost always ended horribly, and nothing we can do now will erase a history of massacres, stolen land and broken treaties. But this time, it can end differently.

    • State of emergency declared for Alabama after Colonial pipeline incident

      Alabama Governor Robert Bentley on Tuesday declared a state of emergency for the state due to an explosion and fire involving Colonial Pipeline Co [COLPI.UL] in Shelby County on Monday.

      “The State of Emergency is effective November 1, 2016 through December 1, 2016 unless sooner terminated,” according to a statement from the governor’s office.

    • Dakota Access pipeline protesters crowdsource for $5,000, get $1 million

      The crowdsourcing goal was modest: $5,000, enough to help a few dozen people camping in North Dakota to protest the nearby construction of the four-state Dakota Access oil pipeline. The fund has since topped a staggering $1 million.

      The fund is among several cash streams that have provided at least $3 million to help with legal costs, food and other supplies to those opposing the nearly 1,200-mile pipeline. It may also give protesters the ability to prolong their months-long encampments that have attracted thousands of supporters, as the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe pursues the fight in court.

  • Finance

    • Liam Fox’s attempt to secure pre-Brexit deal with EU suffers setback

      Liam Fox’s hopes of securing a trade deal with the European Union before Brexit have been dealt a blow by a leading member of the European parliament, who insists no deal can be struck until the UK has left the bloc.

      Danuta Hübner, a former Polish government minister who became the country’s first European commissioner, said it would not be possible for the UK to conclude a trade deal while still an EU member.

      Now an MEP, she chairs the European parliament’s constitutional affairs committee, which will be responsible for vetting any post-Brexit free-trade agreement with the UK.

      In an interview with the Guardian, she stressed negotiations on Britain’s EU exit under article 50, due to begin next year, would be on a different track to talks on the future relationship.

      “Formally you cannot conclude or even negotiate the agreement that belongs to a third-country situation while you are still a member. Article 50 is only about withdrawal and only when you are out can [you] negotiate another agreement.”

    • European Taxi Unions Merge to Create United Front Against ‘Uber Lobby’

      In Spain, as in almost all other markets it has entered, Uber has faced pushback from authorities, protests by taxi drivers, and a rash of rival startups looking to get their own piece of the lucrative ride-hailing market. But the latest attempt to challenge the US company’s hegemony in the taxi app market is a different beast. Perhaps realizing the difficulties in relying on regulation to keep Uber out, taxi drivers in Spain announced this week plans to create their own app.

      This is not the first time taxi drivers have tried to beat Uber and its ilk at their own game. The last few years have seen a rash of rival apps brought out by taxi drivers, but this approach faces considerable challenges, not least winning over customers from big, established brands with multi-billion dollar budgets.

    • Wells Fargo blackballed employees who refused to commit fraud, forcing them out of the industry forever

      Earlier this month, Planet Money aired an interview with a Wells Fargo whistleblower who was fired for trying to alert the bank to the millions of criminal frauds being committed against its customers, and we learned that the whistleblower had been added to a confidential blacklist used by the finance industry, preventing her from ever getting work in the industry again.

      This week’s Planet Money (MP3) airs an interview with another Wells Fargo whistleblower who resigned when the bank made him recant his complaints to upper management, and then put pressure on him to engage in the same frauds as his colleagues. This whistleblower, too, was unable to get work at any other bank, and it wasn’t until a sympathetic hiring manager at a rival bank told him confidentially that he had been blacklisted that he found out why.

      The blacklist is called “U5,” and it’s maintained by the finance institutions as a way of alerting each other to fraudsters who are fired for breaking finance rules. The list was designed to protect banks from fraud, but it has no defenses against fraudulent banks.

  • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

    • Dems should blame Hillary, not Comey, for the ‘October surprise’

      Before Democrats burn James Comey in effigy, they should think about how the FBI director came to have an outsized influence in the election in the first place.

      It’s not something Comey sought or welcomed. A law enforcement official who prizes his reputation, he didn’t relish becoming a hate figure for half the country or more. No, the only reason that Comey figures in the election at all is that Democrats knowingly nominated someone under FBI investigation.

      Once upon a time — namely any presidential election prior to this one — this enormous political and legal vulnerability would have disqualified a candidate. Not this year, and not in the case of Hillary Clinton.

    • WikiLeaks: Clinton Foundation Plagued by Corruption and Conflict

      On November 1, WikiLeaks released an email from Clinton campaign chair John Podesta that provided perspective into the corrupt inner conflicts of the controversial non-profit the Clinton Foundation.

      “I cannot stress enough that if this is not handled appropriately it will blow up,” wrote Tina Flournoy, Bill Clinton’s chief of staff, in an April 8 2015 email to Podesta. The subject of the email was “CHAI” referring to the Clinton Health Access Initiative.

      The day before, on April 7, Flournoy noted in an email to Podesta and other Clinton staff, “do you guys know where we are – as of today – on CHAI? That needs to be discussed – but he’s about to lose it if we don’t wrap the call.”

      A 2015 New York Times article explained the tensions between CHAI CEO Ira Magaziner, and the rest of the Clinton Foundation, based on a performance review of Magaziner and by CHAI’s board, an influential member of which is Chelsea Clinton. “Ira’s ‘paranoia’ was mentioned by several board members to encompass Ira’s general mistrust of the board and its intentions,” the performance review noted.

    • CNN Gets Caught in Cheating Scandal

      That’s not the way CNN and Brazile reacted when exposed by the WikiLeaks emails. In the first incriminating email, Brazile told the Clinton team, “From time to time I get the questions in advance” and shared a question on the death penalty that Clinton would be asked on CNN’s March 13 town hall.

    • Hillary Supporters Are Still Trying To Pretend Nothing’s Wrong, And It’s Hilarious

      If you want to have an easy condescending laugh at someone else’s expense (and who doesn’t?), type the words “non story” into the Twitter search bar and look how many Hillary Clinton supporters are using that phrase to try and spin away the FBI’s discovery of new evidence pertinent to the criminal investigation of their candidate. Use quotation marks. You can do it with Facebook’s search function too, just make sure you click “Latest” to get the last few days’ worth of spin.

    • Corruption is the cornerstone of the Clinton campaign

      Reopening Hillary Clinton’s FBI investigation isn’t a political ploy, nor is it an “October Surprise.” But it could be God’s early Christmas gift to America.

      Hillary Clinton’s top aide, Huma Abedin, says she doesn’t know how her emails showed up on husband Anthony Weiner’s computer. The FBI stumbled upon another treasure trove of Clinton-related emails while investigating Abedin’s now estranged husband, who is under investigation himself for allegedly exchanging lewd messages with a 15-year old girl.

      Additional emails released in August found that Abedin carelessly toted around classified government information in her car, once asking Clinton’s personal assistant to intercept “a bunch of burn stuff in the pocket of my front seat” she’d left unattended.

      If this wasn’t so incredibly dangerous it would be Saturday Night Live-worthy.

      Despite how we feel about WikiLeaks, Americans should be thanking the good Lord the belly of the beast that is Hillary Clinton has been exposed for what it is. Emails have revealed, as the old song goes, corruption so high, you can’t get over it, so wide, you can’t get around it, and so deep, you can’t get under it.

    • Debunking Trump’s “secret server”

      This is nonsense. The evidence available on the Internet is that Trump neither (directly) controls the domain “trump-email.com”, nor has access to the server. Instead, the domain was setup and controlled by Cendyn, a company that does marketing/promotions for hotels, including many of Trump’s hotels. Cendyn outsources the email portions of its campaigns to a company called Listrak, which actually owns/operates the physical server in a data center in Philidelphia.

      In other words, Trump’s response is (minus the political bits) likely true, supported by the evidence. It’s the conclusion I came to even before seeing the response.

      When you view this “secret” server in context, surrounded by the other email servers operated by Listrak on behalf of Cendyn, it becomes more obvious what’s going on. In the same Internet address range of Trump’s servers you see a bunch of similar servers, many named [client]-email.com. In other words, trump-email.com is not intended as a normal email server you and I are familiar with, but as a server used for marketing/promotional campaigns.

    • Clinton Loyalist Thought Super PAC Coordination With Campaign Was “Skirting if Not Violating Law”

      Neera Tanden, president of the liberal Center for American Progress and policy director for Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign, is arguably Clinton’s most fervent supporter. In one of the hacked emails to and from Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta published by WikiLeaks, Tanden emphasized that “I would do whatever Hillary needs always.”

      But as a recently released email chain shows, even Tanden was concerned in May last year that plans of a pro-Clinton Super PAC to directly coordinate with the campaign were “shady” and “skirting if not violating [the] law.”

      That Super PAC’s coordination with the Clinton campaign has since become the subject of a complaint to the Federal Election Commission from the Campaign Legal Center, a Washington, D.C., watchdog organization.

    • Susan Sarandon Goes Full ‘Bernie Or Bust,’ Endorses Jill Stein

      Actress and activist Susan Sarandon is backing Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein instead of Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

      In a letter published on Stein’s campaign website, Sarandon cites Clinton’s lack of support for a $15 minimum wage and her silence on the Dakota Access Pipeline as some of her reasons for not supporting the candidate.

      “Fear of Donald Trump is not enough for me to support Clinton, with her record of corruption,” Sarandon’s letter reads. “Now that Trump is self-destructing, I feel even those in swing states have the opportunity to vote their conscience.”

      Sarandon was a vocal champion of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) throughout the Democratic presidential primary, and was among his “Bernie or bust” supporters who said they likely wouldn’t back Clinton’s candidacy if the senator lost the primary.

    • Thankin’ Stein

      Green Party candidate Jill Stein has not endorsed Donald Trump, and she has expressed wariness of either Trump’s or Clinton’s winning the presidency.

    • WikiLeaks: ‘Kept Me Out of Jail’: Top DOJ Official Involved in Clinton Probe Represented Her Campaign Chairman

      The Justice Department official in charge of informing Congress about the newly reactivated Hillary Clinton email probe is a political appointee and former private-practice lawyer who kept Clinton Campaign Chairman John Podesta “out of jail,” lobbied for a tax cheat later pardoned by President Bill Clinton and led the effort to confirm Attorney General Loretta Lynch.

    • Clinton aide advised: ‘Dump all those emails’

      Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman advised a longtime aide that they were “going to have to dump all those emails” on the day that a report revealed Clinton’s exclusive use of a private email server while secretary of State, according to stolen emails released Tuesday by WikiLeaks.

      “Not to sound like Lanny, but we are going to have to dump all those emails so better to do so sooner than later,” says the March 2015 message, labeled as from John Podesta to Cheryl Mills and apparently referencing longtime Clinton confidant Lanny Davis.

      “Think you just got your new nick name,” Mills replied.

      Clinton campaign officials have refused to confirm the authenticity of the emails, which are believed to have been stolen from Podesta’s personal account by Russian government hackers.

      Previously released emails have revealed some advisers were frustrated that Clinton hadn’t made information about the server public sooner.

      “Why didn’t they get this stuff out like 18 months ago? So crazy,” policy adviser Neera Tanden wrote to Podesta that same evening, March 2, 2015.

      “Unbelievable,” Podesta replied.

    • All The Dumb Sh!t Trump Has Done As Nominee In One

      Donald Trump has never met a person he didn’t want to publicly shame. Google the words “Donald Trump feuds” and you’ll get hundreds of articles detailing spats with random people like world-renowned architect Frank Gehry and comedian Jerry Seinfeld, who, in the fallout of his feud with Trump, said, “If God gave comedians the power to invent people, the first person we would invent is Donald Trump.”

    • Ajamu Baraka Makes His Case to the People of Baltimore

      The Real News profiles scholar, human rights activist and Green Party Vice Presidential Candidate Ajamu Baraka on a recent visit to Baltimore

    • CNN Debate Attendee Reacts to Her Question Being Leaked to Clinton Campaign

      On Tuesday’s Happening Now, Fox’s Jenna Lee spoke with the woman who asked the question that former CNN contributor Donna Brazile gave to Hillary Clinton‘s campaign before a CNN presidential debate.

      Lee-Anne Walters identified herself as the “woman with a rash” who wanted to ask Clinton about her plan to address the poison water crisis that continues to afflict Flint, Michigan. Hacked emails from WikiLeaks revealed that when Brazile was still with her old network, she somehow got hold of Walters’ question, and then sent campaign chairman John Podesta advanced notice of what was coming.

      When asked how she felt about the news, Walters said that Clinton “should be disqualified because she had had an advantage she shouldn’t have had.” Walters also said that she was “disgusted” by Clinton’s answer, describing it as a “cop-out” that would not adequately address the lead in the city’s water.

    • Make America Think Again: Why You Should Consider Jill Stein

      You just cannot make up the sort of things we have seen this wild, sordid election cycle. Is it any wonder that sixty percent of Americans think that we need another political party in the United States?

      A vote for Jill Stein would help build such a party. The Greens have been around since 1984 and have had some limited election successes. This year, they have managed to get an all time high number of states, 45, including the District of Columbia, that feature their candidate, Jill Stein, on the Presidential ballots. This came about during an all out effort by the Greens for ballot access across the country. Many Bernie Sanders supporters flocked to the Stein campaign after his withdrawal from the Democratic Presidential race.

    • They Don’t Care About Us

      The Podesta emails show that Democratic power brokers won’t reward labor’s unwavering loyalty or record contributions.

    • Presidential Candidates Dr. Jill Stein & Gov. Gary Johnson [Pt. 1]

      Dr. Jill Stein is a mother, physician and longtime teacher of internal medicine. Also the co-author of two major environmental reports — In Harm’s Way: Toxic Threats to Child Development and Environmental Threats to Healthy Aging — she has dedicated years of public service as an environmental-health advocate. She has testified before numerous legislative panels as well as local and state governmental bodies, playing a key role in the effort to get the Massachusetts fish advisories to better protect women and children from mercury contamination. Her first foray into politics was in 2002, when she ran for Governor of Massachusetts. Dr. Stein is again running to be the Green Party nominee for President in 2016.

    • Democratic megadonor bankrolls ‘Republicans for Clinton’ super PAC

      Most of the money behind an upstart “Republicans for Clinton” super PAC has come from billionaire Democratic megadonor Dustin Moskovitz, a co-founder of Facebook.

      According to a Center for Public Integrity review of new campaign finance filings, Moskovitz has contributed $250,000 to the R4C16 super PAC. That represents about 70 percent of the group’s income through Oct. 19.

      R4C16 nevertheless touts itself as “a grassroots movement” of “concerned Republicans who are committed to vote for Hillary Clinton for president to defeat Donald Trump.”

      During the final presidential debate last week in Nevada, the super PAC sponsored an anti-Trump mobile billboard with the message “DON’T GROPE. VOTE,” which traversed the Las Vegas strip for hours.

  • Censorship/Free Speech

    • 15 Temples Vandalised In Bangladesh Over Facebook Post

      An angry mob vandalised at least five Hindu temples and attacked property in Bangladesh after an alleged Facebook post mocking one of Islam’s holiest sites, police and residents said Monday.

      Scores of people attacked the places of worship late Sunday in the eastern town of Nasirnagar after a local Hindu fisherman allegedly posted an edited photo on social media of a Hindu deity inside the black cube-shaped Kaaba in Mecca, Saudi Arabia.

      District police chief Mizanur Rahman said two Islamist groups had been demonstrating to demand the arrest and execution of the fisherman when a group of between 100 and 150 men broke away and attacked the temples.

      A local Hindu community leader said at least 15 temples were vandalised and numerous Hindu idols were smashed during the hour-long rampage.

    • Turkey detains editor of secular opposition newspaper Cumhuriyet and bans media reporting on it

      Turkish courts have ordered a media blackout on reporting the detention of the editor-in-chief of secularist opposition newspaper Cumhuriyet.

      Murat Sabuncu was detained while authorities searched for executive board chairman Akin Atalay and writer Guray Oz, the official news agency Anadolu said.

      Police were searching the homes of Mr Atalay and Mr Oz, the agency added.

      CNN Turk said police have issued detention warrants for 13 of the paper’s journalists and executives.

    • Louis Smith banned for two months by British Gymnastics after ‘mocking Islam’ in leaked video

      Louis Smith has been given a two-month ban by British Gymnastics after he appeared to mock Islam in a video that emerged last month.

      The four-time Olympic medallist has already apologised after a video, filmed by Smith that included his friend and retired fellow gymnast Luke Carson, mimicked Islamic prayer practices.

      The incident happened a month after Smith competed at the Rio Olympic Games, where he won a silver medal in the men’s pommel horse.

      He issued a statement soon after the video was leaked to the media to say he was “deeply sorry” for his “thoughtless actions”. The 27-year-old also said that his heavy training regime during his gymnastic career has not allowed him to “behave like an idiot” when he was younger, but accepted that his actions were inappropriate nonetheless.

    • YouTube Signs Landmark Deal to End Music Video Blocking in Germany

      After years of legal battles, YouTube and German music rights group GEMA have reached a landmark licensing agreement. As a result, Germans now have access to tens of thousands of music videos that were previously “not available” in their country.

    • YouTube Censors Video on … Left-Wing Censorship

      What do you suppose happens on YouTube to a video that is a “discourse on the First Amendment and the tactics that progressives are using to limit speech and political engagement by conservatives”? Well, according to the Wall Street Journal, it falls victim to an algorithm with absolutely no sense of irony.

      A video titled “The Dark Art of Political Intimidation” was posted last week by WSJ columnist Kimberly Strassel as a PragerU lecture. “Within several hours of PragerU posting the video,” said a WSJ editorial, YouTube placed it in ‘restricted mode,’ making it inaccessible to schools, libraries and young Americans whose parents have enabled YouTube technology filters.”

    • YouTube Finally Buries The Hatchet With GEMA, Meaning People In Germany Can Watch Videos Again

      Almost four years after we noted that the fight between German collection society GEMA and YouTube had gone on way too long, it looks like it’s finally been settled. If you don’t know, way back when, GEMA, which is effectively a mandatory copyright royalty collector in Germany, demanded insane rates for any music streaming on YouTube. Apparently, it initially argued that a stream on YouTube was no different than a purchase on iTunes, and thus it should be paid the same rate. In 2009, it asked for 17 cents per video view (which was a decrease from the 37.5 cents per stream it had asked for earlier). 17 cents. Anyone who knows anything about how the internet works and how advertising works knows that’s insane. YouTube was paying out a decent chunk of its advertising revenue to other collection societies at a fraction of a penny per view, which is inline with the potential ad revenue.

    • Chinese Live-Streaming Apps Employing Censorship Against Rivals

      Chinese video services have long censored taboo topics to promote the government’s vision of a “harmonious society.” Now some popular providers are turning the same tools on each other, using blacklists to shut out rival platforms, according to a research group.

      Live-streaming video services in China have grown into a $2.5 billion industry by featuring everything from celebrities cooking lunch at home to women seductively eating bananas. But the competition for fickle viewers is such that several of the largest players have quietly scrubbed mentions of rivals along with political red-flags such as party leaders’ names, according to Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto.

    • Researchers reverse-engineer Chinese streaming services to learn how they’re censored

      As live streaming apps surge in popularity in China, the companies profiting from the craze are pulling out all the stops to censor millions of users and avoid the wrath of a government intent on maintaining a tight control over the flow of information.

      A new report from the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs describes how China’s biggest live streaming apps work to shut down discussion on everything from sex and gambling to political gaffes and government corruption.

    • Civil rights groups take Facebook to task over content censorship
    • Rights groups ask Facebook to clarify policies on content removal
    • Facebook accused of censorship

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Clinton Emails Could Help ex-NSA Contractor Who Took Terabytes Home, Attorneys Say

      In the four years Hillary Clinton sent and received State Department correspondence using a private and insecure email system, Harold T. Martin III allegedly stockpiled classified information inside his Maryland home and an unlocked shed.

      Martin faces charges for alleged theft of government documents and mishandling classified information that carry up to 11 years in prison, and he’s been behind bars since his August arrest, with prosecutors saying they intend to file more serious Espionage Act charges, often used by the Obama administration to go after leakers and whistleblowers.

    • Ex-FBI Chief Reviews Security For Booz Allen After NSA Contractor Arrest

      Consultant firm Booz Allen Hamilton has engaged the services of former FBI director Robert Mueller for an external review of its security practice after one of its employees contracted with the National Security Agency (NSA) was arrested on charges of stealing classified information, reports Reuters. In three years this is the second Booz Allen staff with NSA to have been involved in a controversy, the first being Edward Snowden who leaked classified files in 2013.

      Prosecutors allege that Harold Thomas Martin had been downloading secret documents for over two decades and stolen at least 50 terabytes of classified information. The files seized from Martin’s home include “specific operational plans against a known enemy of the United States and its allies.”

    • ShadowBrokers Release More Alleged Equation Group Data

      Data purports to show configuration details of servers that NSA allegedly hacked and used to host exploits

      For the second time in the last three months, a group that calls itself ShadowBrokers has publicly released data allegedly purloined from the Equation Group, an outfit that many consider to be the cyber hacking arm of the National Security Agency (NSA).

      In August, ShadowBrokers rattled many in the security industry when they leaked details on highly classified hacking tools and exploits that they claimed the NSA had developed and used over the years for breaking into systems belonging to US adversaries.

    • ShadowBrokers dump Equation group hacked servers in publicity push
    • Shadow Brokers Dump List of Servers Hacked by the NSA’s Equation Group
    • ShadowBrokers Dumps Lists of Equation Group Hacked Servers
    • ShadowBrokers Data Dump Leaks Compromised Servers Used By NSA For Hacking Operations
    • Despite its Nefarious Reputation, New Report Finds Majority of Activity on the Dark Web is Totally Legal and Mundane

      Dark web data intelligence provider Terbium Labs has conducted the industry’s first data-driven, fact-based research report that looked to identify what’s really taking place on the far corners of the Internet. For most, the term dark web immediately conjures thoughts of illegal drug sales, pornography, weapons of mass destruction, fraud and other criminal acts. The reality however is that the bulk of activity appearing on the dark web is much like the content and commerce found on the clear web. In fact, research found that nearly 55% of dark web content is legal.

      “What we’ve found is that the dark web isn’t quite as dark as you may have thought,” said Emily Wilson, Director of Analysis at Terbium Labs. “The vast majority of dark web research to date has focused on illegal activity while overlooking the existence of legal content. We wanted to take a complete view of the dark web to determine its true nature and to offer readers of this report a holistic view of dark web activity — both good and bad.”

    • Researchers Claim AI Can Identify Gang Members on Twitter

      Social media feeds contain a wealth of personal information: daily gripes, tastes in music and movies, and plans for nights out. It’s no wonder that police are interested in mining that data for insights into where crime might spring up.

      But can these digital artifacts, taken together, say anything deeper about who you really are? A number of experts believe so: In the near future, algorithms trained on this sort of information may make important decisions about individuals.

      Here’s a recent example. Researchers from the Ohio Center of Excellence in Knowledge-enabled Computing (Kno.e.sis) at Wright State University, in a paper posted to the arXiv preprint server, say they’ve devised a deep learning AI algorithm that can identify street gang members based solely on their Twitter posts, and with 77 percent accuracy.

    • How Canada’s Anti-Cyberbullying Law Is Being Used to Spy on Journalists

      Patrick Lagacé, a columnist for Montreal’s La Presse newspaper, says that police told him he was a “tool” in an internal investigation when they tapped his iPhone’s GPS to track his whereabouts and obtained the identities of everyone who communicated with him on that phone.

      Lagacé alleges that this surveillance was designed to intimidate and discourage potential sources within the Montreal police department from approaching him with information for his story.

      Police obtained a warrant for this under the hugely controversial Bill C-13, which gave investigators new powers, privacy lawyer David Fraser noted in an interview. The bill was initially sold as combatting cyberbullying and the unwanted publication of intimate images online, also known as “revenge porn.”

      “These laws are presented with certain scenarios in mind, but these are laws of general application that can be used for any offence,” Fraser said. “We need to be very careful in parsing, and frankly, not believing, the objectives that politicians use [when selling the public on the need for these laws]. We need to cut through that and look at the substance of the law to see how they can be used, and more importantly, abused.”

  • Civil Rights/Policing

    • These Native American Dakota Access Pipeline protesters say they were held in kennels after being arrested

      After a day of clashes between police and demonstrators, at least 140 protesters were arrested near the Dakota Access Pipeline route last Thursday. Now some of the Native American activists arrested say they were kept in dog kennel-like enclosures and that police wrote identification numbers written on their arms.

      One protest coordinator who was arrested, Mekasi Camp-Horinek, told the Los Angeles Times police wrote a number on his arm and kept him and his mother in a mesh enclosure that appeared to be a dog kennel, which did not have any bedding or furniture.

    • Christian priest pelted with stones by children shouting ‘Allahu Akhbar’

      The Ethiopian vicar was visiting the town of Raunheim on the outskirts of Frankfurt when the pre-teens started throwing stones at him.

      Dressed in traditional priest’s gear and wearing a cross around his neck, the 47-year-old was walking to the Russian Orthodox chapel in Frankfurter Straße with a local priest, who wished to remain anonymous, when he was attacked.

      The three children, aged between 10 and 12-years-old, shouted “Allahu Akhbar” as they threw the stones, the other priest who was visiting from a nearby church said.

    • Dakota pipeline protesters say they were detained in dog kennels; 268 arrested in week of police crackdown

      Tens of thousands of people have checked in on Facebook at the Standing Rock Indian Reservation over the past few days. They are expressing solidarity with the protests against the Dakota Access pipeline in North Dakota, which have faced an increasingly brutal backlash from police.

      Native American activists on the ground recently told reporters they had been detained in dog kennels after being arrested at protests against the proposed pipeline. Other protesters have been pepper-sprayed by police and targeted with beanbag bullets as the militarized police crackdown has escalated.

      For months, indigenous groups at Standing Rock have led protests against the $3.8 billion pipeline, which will transfer oil nearly 1,200 miles, from North Dakota south to Illinois.

      Native Americans, who call themselves water protectors rather than protesters, warn that the pipeline will contaminate their lone source of drinking water and pollute their land. Thousands of environmental and social justice activists from around the country have joined their demonstrations in solidarity.

    • Armed migrants fight running battles in the French capital

      A MIGRANT turf war erupted into violence on the streets of one of Paris’ trendiest neighbourhoods early this morning as asylum seekers beat each other to a pulp with wooden clubs.

    • Canadian Police Use Cell Tower Dumps To Text 7,500 Possible Murder Witnesses

      The police are utilizing “dumps” from cell towers in the area to obtain these phone numbers. And that’s all they’ve obtained, apparently. Using the list of connected phones in the area at the time of the murder, the police are sending text messages asking recipients to fill out a website questionnaire to help police find the killer.

      As much as this might seem like an intrusion, it’s probably preferable to the alternative: sending out dozens of officers to question potentially thousands of witnesses. Obviously, it works out well for the police. But it also works out for citizens. Nothing obliges anyone to respond to the unsolicited texts and answering a few questions on a website is far less annoying than being questioned at home by officers peeking through open doors to see if they can spot anything resembling indicia of criminal activity. Why make the entire day a waste? Why not make a few ancillary arrests while investigating an unrelated crime?

      Unfortunately, it appears ignoring the message (or sending back “UNSUBSCRIBE”) isn’t going to keep the cops from using your phone for their communications.

    • DOJ Finally Releases Its Internal, Mostly-Vague CFAA Prosecution Guidelines

      I’d imagine the DOJ is more concerned about crafty cybercriminals beating them in the tech arms race than it is about legislators’ inability to reform the CFAA (something the DOJ routinely opposes). The “Intake and Charging Policy” memo [PDF] for the DOJ’s prosecution of cybercrimes lists a number of factors to be considered before pursuing federal charges.

      The first key is the sensitivity of the information or system accessed “without authorization,” followed by national security considerations and economic impact. Public safety is also a factor. The document points out that information obtained without authorization can be deployed to stalk and harass officials and lower level members of the general public.

      But the definition of “unauthorized access” isn’t explored adequately in the legal memo, leaving this to be answered on a case-by-bad case basis. The prosecutions of Aaron Swartz and Andrew “Weev” Auernheimer suggest the DOJ allows this definition to be set by the complainant rather than by policy. When MIT or AT&T complain, the government listens.

    • If You Want To Believe This Country Is Falling Apart, Just Ask Those Who Are Supposed To Be Keeping It Together

      Nothing sells like fear. And the Department of Public Safety is in need of some sales. There’s $800 million in border security dollars at stake. At least. The DPS would like $300 million more this year because it’s just damn unsafe to share a border with a foreign country.

  • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

    • After North Carolina Law Bans Municipal Broadband, One ISP Gives Gigabit Connections Away

      Back in August, we noted how the FCC lost an incredibly important case regarding municipal broadband. In short, the FCC tried to dismantle state-level protectionist laws, written by incumbent ISPs, that hamstring towns and cities from building their own broadband networks or striking public/private partnerships for broadband — even in areas those same incumbent ISPs refused to upgrade. The FCC had tried to claim that its congressional mandate to ensure “even and timely” broadband deployment allowed it to strip away any part of these laws that hindered broadband expansion.

      But the courts argued that the FCC lacks this authority, forcing the agency to acknowledge it was giving up on this fight. But there are still countless municipal broadband providers in the 19 states that have passed these laws that can’t launch or expand existing service lest they run face-first into a law written by Comcast, AT&T, Verizon, or CenturyLink lawyers. And there are millions of customers that are incredibly frustrated by the lack of broadband market competition, resulting in the expensive, inconsistent broadband connections most of us “enjoy” today.

    • Canada To Debate Banning ‘Zero Rating’ This Week

      While the United States finally passed net neutrality rules this year, the FCC’s decision to not ban zero rating (exempting some content from usage caps) has proven to be highly problematic. ISPs like Comcast, AT&T and Verizon have all begun exempting their own content from usage caps, putting competing services like Netflix, Amazon and Hulu (or smaller startups) at a disadvantage. The loophole has also spawned new confusing options from Sprint that throttle games, music and video by default, unless a consumer is willing to pony up $20 or more extra to have those services actually work as intended.

      So yes, the United States passed net neutrality rules, but its unwillingness to tackle zero rating means that net neutrality is now being hamstrung anyway — now just with regulatory approval.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Germany pours cold water on takeover bids as concern regarding China’s IP-driven M&A activity spreads

      A number of prospective Chinese takeovers of German high-tech businesses have been suspended by Berlin pending further investigation of their potential economic impact and national security implications. The German government’s intervention does not bode well for Chinese buyers, which have been pinning their hopes of procuring strategically valuable IP on Europe after missing out on US acquisitions due to similar concerns.

      Writing in Die Welt at the weekend prior to departing for Beijing to meet with counterparts, German vice chancellor and economy minister Sigmar Gabriel was markedly critical of China’s approach to acquiring foreign technology. While claiming that China protects its own businesses from foreign buyouts through the imposition of “discriminatory requirements”, Gabriel accused the country’s high-tech industries of “going on a shopping tour here with a long list of interesting companies” with the clear intention of gaining control of strategically important technologies. “Nobody can expect Europe to accept such foul play of trade partners,” he added.

    • Ottiglio Leaves IFPMA For Consultancy In Geneva [Ed: Mario Ottiglio to use connections acquired in public corridors in Europe to push private US Big Pharma interests]
    • WIPO Committee Debates SDGs, Review Of Development Agenda Recommendations

      The World Intellectual Property Organization Committee on Development and Intellectual Property (CDIP) is meeting this week with an agenda including the presentation of a first review on how well WIPO implemented its Development Agenda Recommendations from 2008 to 2015. Also on the agenda is a discussion on what United Nations Sustainable Development Goals can be applied to WIPO’s work, and what the role of WIPO is in technology transfer.

    • Proposal By WHO To Increase Country Contributions Receives Mixed Reactions

      As the head of the World Health Organization warned of funding shortfalls at this week’s financing dialogue, she also proposed to raise assessed country contributions by 10 percent to help mitigate the situation. However, countries had a different take on the suggestion, which is expected to be further considered in the discussions on the budget for 2018/2019, at the Executive Board meeting in January, and at the annual World Health Assembly next May.

    • SCA Hygiene Laches Oral Arguments: How Do we Interpret Congressional Silence?

      Sitting in the background is the Supreme Court’s parallel copyright decision in Petrella v. MGM (2014) holding that the doctrine of laches cannot bar a claim for legal damages brought within the three-year statutory limitations of copyright law. In its opinion, the Federal Circuit distinguished Petrella – finding that in this situation patents should be treated differently than copyrights.

      Martin Black (Dechert) argued for petitioner-patentee SCA Hygiene and suggested that Petrella paves the way: “There is nothing in the Patent Act which compels the creation of a unique patent law rule, and if the Court were to create an exception here, that would invite litigation in the lower courts over a wide range of Federal statutes.”

    • Trademarks

      • CJEU tackles meaning of “so” in trade mark case

        Does the word “so” have a laudatory function when used on its own? The CJEU has struggled to resolve that question in its latest EU trade mark ruling

      • Video Game Voice Actor Strike Devolves Into Petty Trademark Dispute

        For those who don’t follow the video game industry closely, you may not be aware that there is currently a worker’s strike by voiceover actors belonging to SAG-AFTRA against some of the larger game publishers out there. The union and ten or so publishers have been attempting to negotiate a new labor agreement for something like two years, with the sticking point being additional compensation based on game sales. While this concept may sound foreign to those of us that grew up with the gaming industry in its infancy, the explosion in the market and its evolution as an artform certainly warrants the same consideration talents get from other entertainment industries, such as television and film. After all, why shouldn’t game voiceover actors be just as frustrated with Hollywood-style accounting as their on-screen counterparts?

        And, yet, because this is a labor dispute, of course there had to be a petty wrong-turn along the way, which brings us to how SAG-AFTRA is now firing off demands that a PR firm hired by the game studios stop trying to influence the public because of a lame trademark claim. The key issue appears to be that this PR firm is using domain names and social media handles that include the SAG-AFTRA union name.

    • Copyrights

      • Copyright Office Fucks Over Thousands Of Sites With Plans To Remove Their DMCA Safe Harbors

        If you run any kind of website it’s super important that you file with the Copyright Office to officially register a DMCA agent. This is a key part of the DMCA. If you want to make use of the DMCA’s safe harbors — which create a clear safe harbor for websites to avoid liability of infringing material posted by users — then you have to first register with the Copyright Office. Larger corporate sites already know this, but many, many smaller sites do not. This is why for years we’ve posted messages reminding anyone who has a blog to just go and register with the Copyright Office to get basic DMCA protections (especially after a copyright troll went after some smaller blogs who had not done so).

        A few months back, we noted, with alarm, that the Copyright Office was considering a plan to revamp how it handled DMCA registrations, which had some good — mainly making the registration process cheaper — but a really horrific idea of requiring sites to re-register every three years or lose their safe harbor protections.

      • Star Athletica arguments: Will SCOTUS find a uniform test for useful articles?

        Supreme Court oral arguments in Star Athletica v Varsity Brands touched on copyright, cheerleader uniforms and camouflage, with observers uncertain the court will come up with an appropriate test for useful articles

        The Supreme Court heard arguments in Star Athletica v Varsity Brands on Monday in a copyright dispute over designs for cheerleading uniforms. The question presented was: “What is the appropriate test to determine when a feature of a useful article is protectable under section 101 of the Copyright Act?”

      • Reykjavik: Icelandic Pirates Triple Result, But Not Largest Party

        The Icelandic Pirate Party has made a record election. Early vote counts place Pirates at 14 percent, for nine ten seats of the 63-seat world’s oldest Parliament. As the victory party draws to a close and the results slowly finalize, it’s worth looking a little at what comes next.

        Pirate Parties keep succeeding, although on a political timescale. It started out a little carefully with getting elected to the European Parliament from Sweden, then to multiple state parliaments in Germany, city councils all over Europe, the Czech Senate, and the Icelandic Parliament, all in a decade’s insanely hard volunteer work.

11.01.16

Links 1/11/2016: Linux Hallowee, Debian Drops PowerPC

Posted in News Roundup at 11:51 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • 6 ways to use open tools to better support Indian languages

    India is a large and a populated country that makes up a large base of Google consumers. So in recent years, Google’s widened support of world languages for its various products has been a blessing. It has specifically helped Indian people grow their use of and participation on the Internet.

    For one, Google Summer of Code helps students experiment with and build prototypes that enhance language-based software. Another way is through Google Translate, a web and app-based platform that provides machine translation from one language to another. It is predominantly maintained and serviced by volunteer contributions. Yet, there are more ways Google can support great inclusivity through the support of world languages; particularly people speaking South Asian-languages.

  • FreeDOS 1.2 RC1 Released
  • FreeDOS 1.2 RC1

    You may know that I am involved in many open source software projects. Aside from my usability work with GNOME, I am probably best known as the founder and project coordinator of the FreeDOS Project.

  • Minoca OS: A new open source operating system

    Today we’re thrilled to announce that Minoca OS has gone open source. We are releasing the entirety of the Minoca OS source code under the GNU GPLv3. We’re excited to build a community of users and developers around this new operating system, and we need help. You can check out the source at https://github.com/minoca/os. You can also check out our repository of third party source packages here. If you’re just looking to download the latest stable binaries of Minoca OS, head to the download page.

  • Minoca OS goes open source
  • What software documentation can learn from tabletop gaming

    That was it. Those were the (altered for the sake of this example) instructions. Three steps and one big shout that hey, don’t look now but you’re playing the game already, and you’re up and running.

    To be fair, there were a lot of nuances that those three steps did not in any way cover. Luckily, there were three more paragraphs that the author snuck in after the “You’re playing!” pronouncement, providing more details on the types of cards, what they mean, and so on.

    And there were lots of times during those first few games where we had to stop game play and scratch our heads, asking “Wait, we can’t play this card after that card can we? What happens now?” For an answer, we went back to the rules and looked in the little reference section on the back of the rule sheet, learning about the technicalities of the game as we went along.

    But you see, it tricked us; we didn’t feel like we were reading the instructions because we were actively playing the game. We weren’t reading instructions, as such; we were using the rules as reference. It was practically part of the game.

  • How Do We Encourage Technologists in the Public Interest?

    As I mentioned when the Recompiler interviewed me, my inspirations and role models in technology are technologists who serve the public interest. The person who introduced me to free and open source software, Seth Schoen, is a kind teacher and a rigorous thinker who deploys his software engineering expertise at the intersection of technology and activism. I was lucky enough to meet the right people early in my career so I see public interest technology as a desirable and viable career path AND something you can integrate into a career that doesn’t focus on nonprofit/government work — but not enough people know about it, and not enough institutions encourage it.

    How do we help encourage and employ more Seths, more Bruce Schneiers, more Eleanor Saittas, more Kelsey Gilmore-Innises? If you were to say “Sumana, that’s a pretty infosecurity-centric list there, what about people who are more about analytics to enable policy work, or the web developers at 18F, or –” then I would agree with you! This is a broad and deep field, and thus a broad and deep question.

  • Using Open Source to Roll Back Prices at Walmart

    What do you do when your e-commerce site adds at least a million new products every month, and sometimes more than a million in a single week? According to Jeremy King, who is senior vice president and CTO for Walmart Global eCommerce, one of the things you do is invest in open source, both as a user and as a developer. But how do you convince the suits in the front office to release code developed in house as open source?

    “The good part about WalmartLabs is that we sort of didn’t ask for permission,” he admitted last week before a crowd of over 2,000 at the All Things Open conference in Raleigh, North Carolina. He was being interviewed on stage by ATO’s master of ceremonies, community manager Jono Bacon, in a “fireside chat” during the opening day keynote sessions. “We sort of started off with that approach. As we got bigger, obviously you don’t open source a product that you’ve spent resources on for a couple of years without really talking to the enterprise, so it really was a baby step as you go in.”

  • LendingCalc.com’s PUFIN Open Source Blockchain Tech May Be Marketplace Lending Answer

    In the wake of recent company shakeups and growing pains in the marketplace lending industry, the need for better transparency and industry tools for all participants has become a critical concern. PUFIN, an online and open source project to create free and global loan identifiers using blockchain technology, aims to deliver order and uniformity in a secure environment to the marketplace.

    Recent entrants into the market are proposing systems that reserve the right to charge fees at any time. The idea of a free enticement that allows for charging fees later may be the basis for a slow or incomplete industry adoption of online loans.

    LendingCalc.com‘s Ben McMillan and Mike Mazier may have the open source answer: They have filed to patent a fee-free system to use blockchain technology to generate unique identifiers for loans in line with the US Treasury’s whitepaper “Opportunities and Challenges in Online Marketplace Lending.” The company is in the works to set up their system as an open source resource for the industry.

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • 130 serious Firefox holes plugged this year

        Mozilla has shuttered more than 130 serious vulnerabilities reported by community hackers this year.

        The browser-backing outfit announced the statistics in a post covering its bug bounty program and broader information security efforts.

        More than 500 million users ran Firefox at the close of 2015. It’s since become the world’s second-most-used browser.

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • Road to LibreOffice 5.3

      With the availability of the LibreOffice 5.3 Alpha, we have entered the road to LibreOffice 5.3, the next significant major release of the best free office suite ever developed. The software is in the early stage of the final development cycle, and as such should be installed only by expert community members skilled in quality assurance tasks, or involved in launch activities. Although in Alpha stage, LibreOffice 5.3 has an outstanding Coverity Scan score, as confirmed on October 20, with 0.01 defects per 1,000 lines of code (the image on the left is a screenshot of the Coverity Scan dashboard). LibreOffice 5.3 will be officially announced at the end of January 2017.

  • CMS

    • The Wix Mobile App, a WordPress Joint

      Anyone who knows me knows that I like to try new things — phones, gadgets, apps. Last week I downloaded the new Wix (closed, proprietary, non-open-sourced, non-GPL) mobile app. I’m always interested to see how others tackle the challenge of building and editing websites from a mobile device.

      I started playing around with the editor, and felt… déjà vu. It was familiar. Like I had used it before.

      Turns out I had. Because it’s WordPress.

    • WordPress and Wix Are Fighting About Open Source Software

      So WordPress and Wix are fighting one another – and I’m not talking about them competing for customers. Instead, the two website building heavyweights are having a brawl via the blogosphere.

    • Attackers use patched exploits to hit Joomla! sites
    • Joomla websites attacked en masse using recently patched exploits

      Attackers are aggressively attacking Joomla-based websites by exploiting two critical vulnerabilities patched last week.

      The flaws allow the creation of accounts with elevated privileges on websites built with the popular Joomla content management system, even if account registration is disabled. They were patched in Joomla 3.6.4, released Tuesday.

    • Georgia state government earns national recognition for web accessibility

      Georgia’s enterprise web platform runs on Drupal 7, which includes many accessibility features in its baseline code and structure. That makes it easier for any new site to build in accessibility from day one. This comes with the caveat that not all modules are accessible, and plenty can be coded and designed without accessibility in mind, meaning that just using Drupal does not make a site accessible to users with disabilities. That said, even in its original implementation with Drupal 7 in 2012, Georgia’s web publishing platform was built to meet federal accessibility standards (Section 508, for those of you interested in the details).

      From there, when the product team wanted to improve the platform’s underlying code to meet the more modern WCAG 2.0 AA accessibility guidelines, they were working from a flexible and scalable base.

  • Healthcare

    • How open source can change the face of healthcare

      The significant advances being made in technology over the past decade have introduced world changing solutions that are revolutionising how businesses operate.

      However, it is not only business which is reaping the benefits of technologies in the fields of cloud, big data, the IoT, artificial intelligence and others, areas such as

      healthcare are also being boosted.

      Numerous companies such as IBM, Google, Microsoft and more have all invested significantly in the area and have made great strides in placing their technologies in this field.

  • Pseudo-Open Source (Openwashing)

  • Funding

  • BSD

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • AMD’s HSAIL Front-End For GCC Might Finally Be Close For Merging

      There is finally an update on the proposed HSAIL front-end for GCC for supporting the BRIG binary form of the Heterogeneous System Architecture Intermediate Language.

      See that earlier article for more background information on the ongoing GCC HSA efforts that have been happening for a few years now. That HSAIL GCC front-end has been quiet since it was proposed back in May but now it looks like it may be close to going mainline.

  • Public Services/Government

    • France opens source code of three new simulators

      France is continuing to improve its fiscal transparency by opening the source code of three new algorithms, and has promoted use of this code through a hackaton called #CodeGouv.

      The three algorithms are used by the French administration to calculate:

      The cost of a car registration document which can change according to the geographical location or the type of vehicle;
      The legal bonus of an apprentice, which can vary according to the number of working hours;
      The penalty rate. The simulator assesses the interest the French administration should pay if payments are delayed.

      Read more

    • Slovakia: 40% ICT systems to use open source by 2020

      By 2020, 40% of public administration ICT systems in Slovakia should use open source software. The target for open source is part of the country’s ICT architecture, which was updated in September.

    • Nantes: ‘Surveys support switch to open source’

      When implementing free and open source desktop software, public administrations should gather feedback through user surveys, says Eric Ficheux, change management specialist at Nantes Métropole, France’s 6th largest city. “Good news comes only if you organise feedback”, he says, adding: “Survey data cannot be challenged by project opponents, and helps to defend against foul play.”

    • Ho Hum. Another City Switches To LibreOffice

      I knew that 15 years ago when OpenOffice.org came out with version 1.0. It’s still true today. Further, LibreOffice also works on GNU/Linux so another barrier to FLOSS (Free/Libre Open Source Software) has been broken.

  • Licensing/Legal

    • React’s license: necessary and open?

      React’s patent license (1) isn’t a bad idea, because the BSD license is not explicit about granting patent rights; and (2) probably meets the requirements of the Open Source Definition.

  • Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

    • What are the impacts of participatory budgeting in Europe?

    • Open Data

      • Slovakia to fully automate the publication of open data

        Slovakia will automate the publication of public sector information as open data as much as possible, and integrate this process in all government information processing systems. This is one of the main priorities in the National Concept of Public Information Services (Národná Koncepcia Informatizácie Verejnej Správy; NKIVS) that was adopted last month.

      • ODIC 2016: some case studies emerge in Open Contracting

        Start small, clearly demonstrate the impact, and adopt a standardised approach with civil society – these are among the lessons learnt arising from a session on Open Contracting, held as part of the Open Data International Conference (ODIC 2016). This event took place in Madrid at the beginning of October.

        Open Contracting is a way to make public procurement more transparent to citizens and a way to avoid corruption. But only 10% of countries are aligned on an Open Contracting basic standard, it was noted during the session. Data are published in open format. The Open Contracting Partnership has developed a data standard for Open Contracting, the goal of which is to “reflect the complete contracting cycle”, according to the website.

    • Open Hardware/Modding

      • Outdoor Gear Companies: It’s Time to Open-Source Your Technology

        Patagonia finally released the Yulex wetsuits this fall. Even more important, it also released the technology behind the rubber and the names of the factories that produced the suits. The company’s hope: to motivate other manufacturers to use fewer resource-intensive materials. “We knew from the beginning that we’re a very small player in the surf industry—there’s no way we’re going to disrupt that industry—but it was always our intention to invite other companies to use [the technology],” Hubbard says.

  • Programming/Development

    • Perl might be old school, but it continues to attract new users

      Earlier this year, ActiveState conducted a survey of users who had downloaded our distribution of Perl over the prior year and a half. We received 356 responses–99 commercial users and 257 individual users. I’ve been using Perl for a long time, and I expected that lengthy experience would be typical of the Perl community. Our survey results, however, tell a different story.

      Almost one-third of the respondents have three or fewer years of experience. Nearly half of all respondents reported using Perl for fewer than five years, a statistic that could be attributed to Perl’s outstanding, inclusive community. The powerful and pragmatic nature of Perl and its supportive community make it a great choice for a wide array of uses across a variety of industries.

      For a deeper dive, check out this video of my talk at YAPC North America this year.

Leftovers

  • The Great “Cultural Appropriation” Pumpkin: Psst, Halloween Belongs To The Irish

    Yale lecturer Erika Christakis and her husband, professor Nicholas Christakis, were uglied out of the university after she dared to offend the crypussies that pass for college students these days by sending out the mildest call to let people express themselves as they wish on Halloween.

    The thing about all these tiny little authoritarian screechers on campus — they should spend more time going to class and learning the stuff of Western culture that promotes logical thought. Because they don’t bother to do the slightest bit of, “Hmm, where does this argument I’m supporting lead?”

  • How the White House will hand over social media accounts to Clinton or Trump

    The White House just published an overview explaining its plans for a “digital transition” between the departing Obama administration and the incoming 45th president of the United States. It details how each White House social media account (and position-specific handles like @POTUS, @FLOTUS, and @VP) will be transferred to the victor of November 8th’s presidential election. Since Obama is the first commander in chief to have a presence on most of these apps, there’s not much in the way of precedent for figuring out how it’s all supposed to work. So the White House developed some of its own.

    For the big ones, the switchover will happen on inauguration day: January 20th. That’s when either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump will assume the @POTUS Twitter account, for instance. The White House says that the account’s followers (currently over 11 million) will carry over to the next Oval Office occupant, but tweets will be zeroed out so that the 45th president can start fresh. President Obama’s @POTUS tweet history will be moved over to a new account, @POTUS44. That page is already live, though it’s currently protected.

  • Science

    • Finland to allow voters to cast votes online in all general elections

      “The Government intends to carefully look into the possibility of introducing electronic voting in general elections. The matter is associated with both advantages and disadvantages. It is good to examine online voting as a means to promote democracy ahead of the one-hundredth anniversary of Finland,” says Jari Lindström (PS), the Minister of Justice and Employment.

      The task force is expected to conclude its preparatory work by the end of next year.

      General elections include the municipal, parliamentary and presidential elections, the elections to the European Parliament, and the planned provincial elections. Voters in indicative referendums will also be allowed to cast their votes online, according to the Ministry of Justice.

  • Hardware

    • Steve Jobs would probably be rather upset with what Apple has become today

      This past week, Apple spent 82 minutes unveiling a new app, a computer screen made by another company, and three laptops with the same name. They weren’t exactly the major overhauls that many were hoping for, and the event comes not too long after the company released a new iPhone that looked much like the last two it put out, and its other notable innovations of late have been making its products in different sizes and unleashing a sea of dongles on the world.

      In an old interview that’s making the rounds online today, former CEO Steve Jobs explained, in his mind why companies like Xerox, a company that once had one of the most innovative research labs in the world, failed. He compared the product cycles and the corporate structures of strong, stable consumer brands, such as PepsiCo, which John Sculley, the CEO that once replaced him at Apple, previously ran.

  • Health/Nutrition

    • Water, jobs, justice: an urgent demand to rebuild America’s water infrastructure

      During this year’s election, both major party candidates have discussed the need for massive infrastructure investments to upgrade everything from our highways and bridges to our airports. Unfortunately, there has been little conversation highlighting our nation’s urgent need to upgrade our aging drinking water and wastewater systems.

      While our interstate highway system officially turned 60 this year, some of the infrastructure delivering water to our communities is over a century old, and that includes the pipes—many made of lead. So it’s no surprise that there’s an urgent national health crisis unfolding before our eyes. Far beyond Flint, Mich., every week more information is revealed showing that millions of homes, schools, restaurants and small and large businesses in almost every state throughout the country are serviced by lead pipes or old crumbling water lines. According to a recent study by the Government Accountability Office, economically distressed cities with declining populations continue to have urgent water infrastructure needs: there are more Flints waiting in the wings if we don’t act.

    • America’s Legal Pot Economy Is Forced Underground

      Punctuated by sharp intakes of breath, Max Simon repeated himself softly, trying to mask a deep frustration. “We … are … a … media … company. We produce media.”

      Like many startup founders, the 34-year-old has a spiel right down to the enunciation and cadence. He gave his speech nine times, to nine different bankers. Eight rejected him. But it wasn’t venture capital he was seeking. It was a checking account.

      Simon is the founder of Green Flower Media LLC, a production company in Ojai, Calif., that sells educational videos about marijuana, with topics ranging from medicinal use to cannabis industry investing. He likens the platform to a cannabis-centric Lynda.com, the online-course company owned by LinkedIn. Shortly after Green Flower sold its first batch of videos, Simon received an e-mail from Chase Bank. The company’s corporate account was being shut down.

    • Flint, and Michigan, Brace for More Charges in Water Inquiry

      As Flint continues to suffer from a water crisis, one question percolates here in Michigan’s capital: Who will be charged next?

      So far, nine low-level or midlevel government officials have been criminally charged as part of the state investigation into the water’s contamination, which has been tied to lead poisoning in children and the deaths of 12 people from Legionnaires’ disease.

      In recent weeks, however, there have been growing indications that investigators are focusing on bigger targets, and they seem to be looking more intently at the state’s failure to respond to the Legionnaires’ cases.

      “Twelve people died,” said Bill Schuette, Michigan’s attorney general, who is leading the investigation. “That is certainly a high priority for us.”

    • Judge: Flint water allegations ‘shock the conscience’

      The State of Michigan can be sued over allegations that the contamination of Flint’s drinking water damaged the health of residents and hurt the value of their properties, a Michigan Court of Claims judge has ruled.

      Judge Mark Boonstra, in an opinion issued Wednesday, said that if proven true, allegations brought against Gov. Rick Snyder and other defendants by Melissa Mays and other Flint residents, “shock the conscience.”

      Boonstra dismissed two counts against the state, but said two other counts may proceed to trial.

      The lawsuit can proceed on allegations the state violated the due process clause of the state constitution by failing to protect Flint residents’ “bodily integrity,” Boonstra ruled. The suit can also proceed on allegations that state actions were a substantial cause of decline in Flint property values and the state “abused its powers” by “continuing to supply each water user with corrosive and contaminated water,” he said in a 50-page opinion released Thursday.

    • ‘Fix rooms’ plan for Glasgow drug addicts set for green light

      A controversial plan to set up so-called “fix rooms” to allow drug addicts to inject safely under supervision in Glasgow is likely to get the go-ahead.

      Members of the health board, the city council and police are expected to agree the idea in principle.

      The move aims to address the problems caused by an estimated 500 or so users who inject on Glasgow’s streets.

    • Doubts About the Promised Bounty of Genetically Modified Crops

      The controversy over genetically modified crops has long focused on largely unsubstantiated fears that they are unsafe to eat.

      But an extensive examination by The New York Times indicates that the debate has missed a more basic problem — genetic modification in the United States and Canada has not accelerated increases in crop yields or led to an overall reduction in the use of chemical pesticides.

      The promise of genetic modification was twofold: By making crops immune to the effects of weedkillers and inherently resistant to many pests, they would grow so robustly that they would become indispensable to feeding the world’s growing population, while also requiring fewer applications of sprayed pesticides.

      Twenty years ago, Europe largely rejected genetic modification at the same time the United States and Canada were embracing it. Comparing results on the two continents, using independent data as well as academic and industry research, shows how the technology has fallen short of the promise.

    • The Candy Hierarchy for 2016: Halloween’s best and worst treats

      The results of our survey are in. This year’s list of the most loved and hated Halloween treats has a surprise in store!

    • Chan Issues Clarion Call For Increased WHO Funding

      World Health Organization Director General Margaret Chan today warned of serious funding shortfalls for the current biennium endangering the implementation of certain programmes. Areas most in need of financing include non-communicable diseases (such as cancer, diabetes and cardiovascular diseases), food security, and antimicrobial resistance. The high-profile Health Emergencies Programme is also underfunded and Chan proposed to ask countries to raise their assessed contributions at the next World Health Assembly.

    • Brazil, China, India, South Africa Put UN High-Level Panel On Medicines Access On TRIPS Council Agenda

      For next week’s World Trade Organization intellectual property committee meeting, the major developing economies have submitted a request to discuss the recently released report of the United Nations Secretary General’s High-Level Panel on Access to Medicines, according to Knowledge Ecology International (KEI). A key element of the UN report was to make it harder for countries deter or discourage other countries from trying to use patent flexibilities built into the WTO Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) – something the major developing economies have been discouraged from doing in the past.

    • Michigan Mother: Hillary Clinton Receiving Advance Debate Question ‘Should Be an Automatic Disqualification’

      A Michigan mother is furious that now-DNC Chairwoman Donna Brazile sent Hillary Clinton advance notice of her question at a Democratic presidential debate in Flint, Michigan this March.

      According to the latest Wikileaks release of John Podesta’s emails, Brazile tipped off Clinton to an incoming question from an audience member at the debate hosted by CNN — where Brazile was then a paid contributor.

      “One of the questions directed to HRC tomorrow is from a woman with a rash,” Brazile wrote in the email’s subject line. “Her family has lead poison and she will ask what, if anything, will Hillary do as president to help the ppl of Flint.”

      LeeAnne Walters, the woman who asked that question, said on her Facebook page Monday that she found the revelation “appalling.”

  • Security

    • DDoS of SN Underway [Updated]

      Right, so there’s currently a DDoS of our site specifically happening. Part of me is mildly annoyed, part of me is proud that we’re worth DDoS-ing now. Since it’s only slowing us down a bit and not actually shutting us down, I’m half tempted to just let them run their botnet time out. I suppose we should tweak the firewall a bit though. Sigh, I hate working on weekends.

    • AtomBomb: The New Zero-Day Windows Exploit Microsoft Can’t Fix?

      There’s a new zero-day Microsoft Windows exploit in the wild by the name of AtomBomb, and Microsoft may not be able to fix it.

    • New code injection method affects all Windows versions [iophk: “watch the ‘news’ play this one down or ignore it; full product recall is needed at this point”]

      Researchers at cyber-security firm enSilo have discovered a method of code injection in all versions of Windows that cannot be eliminated as it is part of the operating system design.

      The design flaw allows for code injection and is dubbed AtomBomb as it makes use of the system’s atom tables.

      As Microsoft defines it, “An atom table is a system-defined table that stores strings and corresponding identifiers. An application places a string in an atom table and receives a 16-bit integer, called an atom, that can be used to access the string. A string that has been placed in an atom table is called an atom name.”

      In a blog post describing the method of attack, enSilo’s Tal Liberman wrote: “Our research team has uncovered a new way to leverage mechanisms of the underlying Windows operating system in order to inject malicious code. Threat actors can use this technique, which exists by design of the operating system, to bypass current security solutions that attempt to prevent infection.”

    • British parliament members urge Obama to halt hacking suspect’s US extradition

      This week, culture minister Matt Hancock and more than 100 fellow MPs (Members of Parliament) have signed a letter calling on president Barack Obama to block Lauri Love’s extradition to the US to face trial over the alleged hacking of the US missile defence agency, the FBI, and America’s central bank.

      Love—an Asperger’s syndrome sufferer from Stradishall, Suffolk—was told in September at a Westminster Magistrates’ Court hearing that he was fit to be extradited to the US to face trial in that country. The 31-year-old faces up to 99 years in prison in the US if convicted. According to his lawyers, Love has said he fears for his life.

    • Security advisories for Monday
    • Tug of war between SELinux and Chrome Sandbox, who’s right?

      Over the years, people have wanted to use SELinux to confine the web browser. The most common vulnerabilty for a desktop user is attacks caused by bugs in the browser. A user goes to a questionable web site, and the web site has code that triggers a bug in the browser that takes over your machine. Even if the browser has no blogs, you have to worry about helper plugins like flash-plugin, having vulnerabilities.

    • Trick or Treat! Google issues warning of critical Windows vulnerability in wild

      Recently, Google’s Threat Analysis Group discovered a set of zero-day vulnerabilities in Adobe Flash and the Microsoft Windows kernel that were already being actively used by malware attacks against the Chrome browser. Google alerted both Adobe and Microsoft of the discovery on October 21, and Adobe issued a critical fix to patch its vulnerability last Friday. But Microsoft has yet to patch a critical bug in the Windows kernel that allows these attacks to work—which prompted Google to publicly announce the vulnerabilities today.

      “After 7 days, per our published policy for actively exploited critical vulnerabilities, we are today disclosing the existence of a remaining critical vulnerability in Windows for which no advisory or fix has yet been released,” wrote Neel Mehta and Billy Leonard of Google’s Threat Analysis Group.”This vulnerability is particularly serious because we know it is being actively exploited.”

      The bug being exploited could allow an attacker to escape from Windows’ security sandbox. The sandbox, which normally allows only user-level applications to execute, lets programs execute without needing administrator access while isolating what it can access on the local system through a set of policies.

      But by using a specific type of call to a legacy support Windows system library generally used for the graphics subsystem—win32k.sys—malicious code can escalate its privileges and execute outside of the sandbox, allowing it to execute code with full access to the Windows environment. Win32k.sys has been a problem before: Microsoft issued a warning back in June about a similar privilege escalation problem that had not yet been exploited, and another arrived in August.

    • DDoS defenses emerging from Homeland Security

      Government, academic, and private-sector officials are collaborating on new ways to prevent and mitigate distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, based on research years in the making but kicked into high gear by the massive takedown this month of domain name system provider Dyn.

    • US DMCA rules updated to give security experts legal backing to research

      The US government has updated and published a new list of exemptions to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, a move perhaps long-overdue which will protect cybersecurity professionals from prosecution when reverse-engineering products for research purposes.

      On October 28, the US Copyright Office and the Librarian of Congress published the updated rules on the federal register.

      The DMCA regulations now include exceptions relating to security research and vehicle repair relevant to today’s cybersecurity field. For the next two years, researchers can circumvent digital access controls, reverse engineer, access, copy, and manipulate digital content which is protected by copyright without fear of prosecution — within reason.

    • Stop being the monkey’s paw

      This story got me thinking about security, how we ask questions and how we answer questions. What if we think about this in the context of application security specifically for this example. If someone was to ask the security the question “does this code have a buffer overflow in it?” The person I asked for help is going to look for buffer overflows and they may or may not notice that it has a SQL injection problem. Or maybe it has an integer overflow or some other problem. The point is that’s not what they were looking for so we didn’t ask the right question. You can even bring this little farther and occasionally someone might ask the question “is my system secure” the answer is definitively no. You don’t even have to look at it to answer that question and so they don’t even know what to ask in reality. They are asking the monkey paw to bring them their money, it’s going to do it, but they’re not going to like the consequences.

    • Tyfone looks to open-source to solve IoT security issues

      It came as no surprise to Tyfone CEO Siva Narendra when tens of millions of Internet connected devices were able to bring down the Web during a coordinated distributed denial of service attack on Oct. 21.

      Narendra’s Portland-based company Tyfone has been working on digital security platforms to safeguard identity and transactions of people and things for years.

      Narendra says mobile devices in conjunction with the cloud have brought new levels of productivity to our lives. Internet of Things devices (the common name given to these connected items) are poised to bring even greater levels of productivity and cost-savings to businesses, and safety and convenience to our everyday lives.

    • Google just disclosed a major Windows bug — and Microsoft isn’t happy

      Today, Google’s Threat Analysis group disclosed a critical vulnerability in Windows in a public post on the company’s security blog. The bug itself is very specific — allowing attackers to escape from security sandboxes through a flaw in the win32k system — but it’s serious enough to be categorized as critical, and according to Google, it’s being actively exploited. As a result, Google went public just 10 days after reporting the bug to Microsoft, before a patch could be coded and deployed. The result is that, while Google has already deployed a fix to protect Chrome users, Windows itself is still vulnerable — and now, everybody knows it.

      Google’s disclosure provides only a general description of the bug, giving users enough information to recognize a possible attack without making it too easy for criminals to replicate. Exploiting the bug also depends on a separate exploit in Adobe Flash, for which the company has also released a patch. Still, simply knowing that the bug exists will likely spur a lot of criminals to look for viable ways to exploit it against computers that have yet to update Flash.

    • AtomBombing: A Code Injection that Bypasses Current Security Solutions

      Our research team has uncovered new way to leverage mechanisms of the underlying Windows operating system in order to inject malicious code. Threat actors can use this technique, which exists by design of the operating system, to bypass current security solutions that attempt to prevent infection. We named this technique AtomBombing based on the name of the underlying mechanism that this technique exploits.

      AtomBombing affects all Windows version. In particular, we tested this against Windows 10.

    • Disclosing vulnerabilities to protect users

      On Friday, October 21st, we reported 0-day vulnerabilities — previously publicly-unknown vulnerabilities — to Adobe and Microsoft. Adobe updated Flash on October 26th to address CVE-2016-7855; this update is available via Adobe’s updater and Chrome auto-update.

      After 7 days, per our published policy for actively exploited critical vulnerabilities, we are today disclosing the existence of a remaining critical vulnerability in Windows for which no advisory or fix has yet been released. This vulnerability is particularly serious because we know it is being actively exploited.

      The Windows vulnerability is a local privilege escalation in the Windows kernel that can be used as a security sandbox escape. It can be triggered via the win32k.sys system call

    • The next president will face a cybercrisis within 100 days, predicts report

      The next president will face a cybercrisis in the first 100 days of their presidency, research firm Forrester predicts in a new report.

      The crisis could come as a result of hostile actions from another country or internal conflict over privacy and security legislation, said Forrester analyst Amy DeMartine, lead author of the firm’s top cybersecurity risks for 2017 report, due to be made public Tuesday.

      History grades a president’s first 100 days as the mark of how their four-year term will unfold, so those early days are particularly precarious, said DeMartine. The new commander in chief will face pressure from foreign entities looking to embarrass them early on, just as U.S. government agencies jockey for position within the new administration, she said.

    • Hackforums Shutters Booter Service Bazaar

      Perhaps the most bustling marketplace on the Internet where people can compare and purchase so-called “booter” and “stresser” subscriptions — attack-for-hire services designed to knock Web sites offline — announced last week that it has permanently banned the sale and advertising of these services.

      On Friday, Oct. 28, Jesse LaBrocca — the administrator of the popular English-language hacking forum Hackforums[dot]net — said he was shutting down the “server stress testing” (SST) section of the forum. The move comes amid heightened public scrutiny of the SST industry, which has been linked to several unusually powerful recent attacks and is responsible for the vast majority of denial-of-service (DOS) attacks on the Internet today.

  • Defence/Aggression

    • WikiLeaks Reveals Team Hillary’s Libya Spin: It Would Be Syria Without Clinton’s War

      In the lead-up to Hillary Clinton’s marathon testimony before Congress on Benghazi in October 2015, her presidential campaign prepared to make some eye-popping claims—including that Libya would have turned into Syria without U.S. intervention.

      That’s according to an internal talking-point memo released in Tuesday’s dump of WikiLeaks emails. WikiLeaks says those emails were hacked from the inbox of Clinton campaign Chairman John Podesta. The Clinton campaign is not commenting on whether or not the emails are doctored, and blames the Russian government for the hack.

    • Media Roll Out Welcome Mat for ‘Humanitarian’ War in Syria

      As she marches toward the US presidency, Hillary Clinton has stepped up her promotion of the idea that a no-fly zone in Syria could “save lives” and “hasten the end of the conflict” that has devastated that country since 2011.

      It has now been revealed, of course, that Clinton hasn’t always expressed the same optimism about the no-fly zone in private. The Intercept (10/10/16) reported on Clinton’s recently leaked remarks in a closed-door speech to Goldman Sachs in 2013…

    • Shahid Buttar and Selling Empire, War and Capitalism with Peter and Mickey

      In the first half of the program, Shahid Buttar discusses the chapter he wrote for Censored 2017, “Ike’s Distopian Dream,” where he examines the many ways that President Eisenhower’s warning about the military-industrial complex has proven correct.For the second half of the program, Mickey and Peter survey some of the other chapters of Censored 2017, particularly Peter’s chapter, “Selling Empire, War and Capitalism,” a look at the advertising / public relations industry, and how its influence extends far beyond peddling consumer products.

    • Whistleblower exposes how NATO’s leading ally is arming and funding ISIS

      A former senior counter-terrorism official in Turkey has blown the whistle on President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s deliberate sponsorship of the Islamic State (ISIS) as a geopolitical tool to expand Turkey’s regional influence and sideline his political opponents at home.

      Ahmet Sait Yayla was Chief of the Counter-Terrorism and Operations Division of Turkish National Police between 2010 and 2012, before becoming Chief of the Public Order and Crime Prevention Division until 2014. Previously, he had worked in the Counter-Terrorism and Operations Division as a mid-level manager for his entire 20-year police tenure, before becoming Chief of Police in Ankara and Sanliurfa.

      In interviews with INSURGE intelligence, Yayla exclusively revealed that he had personally witnessed evidence of high-level Turkish state sponsorship of ISIS during his police career, which eventually led him to resign. He decided to become a whistleblower after Erdogan’s authoritarian crackdown following the failed military coup in July. This is the first time that the former counter-terrorism chief has spoken on the record to reveal what he knows about Turkish government aid to Islamist terror groups.

    • Inside Palantir’s War With the U.S. Army

      Palantir is the Palo Alto, California, data analytics company co-founded and backed by billionaire Peter Thiel. It had won seed funding and praise from the Central Intelligence Agency a few years earlier and had become a darling among the Federal Bureau of Investigation and a few other government customers. Its employees were at the Pentagon to show off the company’s ability to compile disparate data streams and display the information graphically for non-technical consumers; Palantir hoped to win a big contract.

      But the conversation went poorly. The slacks and dress shirts with a few buttons undone that Palantir executives wore may have been a step up for sunny California where hoodies are the norm but were a sign of disrespect at the Pentagon, according to a person familiar with the meeting. Senior officials, including U.S. Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics and Technology Dean Popps, were not impressed, this person said.

      They told Palantir: “Don’t come to the E-ring without a tie unless your name is Gates or Buffet,” said the person, referring to the portion of the Pentagon occupied by senior officials. “They couldn’t get over the tie thing. They didn’t care about the technology.”

    • German Magazine Uses Daesh Propaganda Video to Show All is Well in Mosul

      In an almost four-minute video, political editor of Spiegel Online Christoph Sydow tried to defend the editorial policy of his magazine regarding the developments in Aleppo and Mosul. However, the shots demonstrated in his video turned out to be the propaganda materials of Daesh terrorists.

      The video was supposed to be a response to critical letters of Spiegel Online readers and their comments on social networks. Many of them accused the magazine of spreading propaganda and presenting the situation in the Middle East in a biased manner.

    • CIA Releases Controversial Bay of Pigs History

      The CIA today released the long-contested Volume V of its official history of the Bay of Pigs invasion, which it had successfully concealed until now by claiming that it was a “draft” and could be withheld from the public under the FOIA’s “deliberative process” privilege. The National Security Archive fought the agency for years in court to release the historically significant volume, only to have the U.S. Court of Appeals in 2014 uphold the CIA’s overly-broad interpretation of the “deliberative process” privilege. Special credit for today’s release goes to the champions of the 2016 FOIA amendments, which set a 25-year sunset for the exemption: Senators John Cornyn, Patrick Leahy, and Chuck Grassley, and Representatives Jason Chaffetz, Elijah Cummings, and Darrell Issa.

      Chief CIA Historian David Robarge states in the cover letter announcing the document’s release that the agency is “releasing this draft volume today because recent 2016 changes in the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requires us to release some drafts that are responsive to FOIA requests if they are more than 25 years old.” This improvement – codified by the FOIA Improvement Act of 2016 – came directly from the National Security Archive’s years of litigation.

    • Still fighting the last war: Syria and the Western peace movement

      The anti-war movement is struggling to find its place in a multipolar world in which stopping the war requires new thinking

      When I was five years old, a very small Vietnamese man came to my bedside to say goodnight. He was the Vietnamese ambassador, and he had a very kindly, wrinkled smile, and, as I later discovered, both he and his wife were veterans of the very long war in Vietnam against foreign occupiers. He himself had crawled under barbed wire fences to set explosives under French war planes during the early 1950s. His wife, also diminutive, had been the 16-year-old leader of an anti-aircraft unit that helped bring down enemy planes during the conflict, which back in 1973 was still ongoing.

    • Sweden declares WWII hero Raoul Wallenberg dead, 71 years after he disappeared in Hungary

      Sweden declares WWII hero Raoul Wallenberg dead, 71 years after he disappeared in Hungary.

  • Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

    • Utilities In Florida Are Using A Fake Consumer Group To Hamstring Solar Competition

      Earlier this year, we noted how traditional utilities were playing extremely dirty in Florida to try and derail efforts to ramp up solar competition and adoption in the state most likely to benefit from it. After all, the vision of a future where competition is rampant, customers pay less money, and solar users actually get paid for driving power back to the grid gives most of these executives heartburn. As a result, utilities have gotten creative in the state, launching fake solar advocacy groups that actually function to pollute public discourse and derail any amendments intended to help solar grab a larger foothold in the state.

    • Fracking Linked to Cancer-Causing Chemicals, New YSPH Study Finds

      An expansive new analysis by Yale School of Public Health researchers confirms that numerous carcinogens involved in the controversial practice of hydraulic fracturing have the potential to contaminate air and water in nearby communities.

      Fracking is now common in the United States, currently occurring in 30 states, and with millions of people living within one mile of a fracking site. The study suggests that the presence of carcinogens involved in or released by hydraulic fracturing operations has the potential to increase the risk of childhood leukemia. The presence of chemicals alone does not confirm exposure or risk of exposure to carcinogens and future studies are needed to evaluate cancer risk.

    • Stein Campaign Condemns ‘Violent Repression of Peaceful Protests Against DAPL’

      The conflict surrounding the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline escalated dramatically Thursday, October 27. Water protectors at Treaty Camp, a new frontline in the path of the pipeline along Highway 1806, were forced off the land in a dramatic and often violent manner by police. The large police action included armored, military vehicles, pepper spray, high-velocity bean bags and tear gas. Shortly after the disturbing confrontation Jill Stein, Green Party nominee for the Presidential Election, and running mate Ajamu Baraka released a statement condemning the actions being used in North Dakota:

      “The Stein/Baraka campaign is horrified and outraged at the militarized repression of water protectors at the Standing Rock reservation in North Dakota. Police and private security forces have engaged in violent actions against peaceful earth defenders who have come to protect the land and water from the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline.

    • Two more Honduran land rights activists killed in ongoing violence
    • NASA Scientists Suggest We’ve Been Underestimating Sea Level Rise

      About 71 percent of the Earth is covered by water, so measuring sea level changes around the world is no small feat. Up until now, scientists believed they knew how much global sea level had risen during the 20th century. This number has hovered around 0.6 inches per decade since 1900, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and has been partly driven by warming ocean temperatures.

      But a new study, published this month to Geophysical Research Letters, found evidence to suggest that historical sea level records have been off—way off in some areas—by an underestimation of 5 to 28 percent. Global sea level, the paper concluded, rose no less than 5.5 inches over the last century, and likely saw an increase of 6.7 inches.

      The reason for this discrepancy was uncovered by earth scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa. By comparing newer climate models with older sea level measurements, the team discovered that readings from coastal tide gauges may not have been as indicative as we thought. These gauges, located at more than a dozen sites across the Northern Hemisphere, have been a primary data source for estimating sea level changes during the last several decades.

  • Finance

    • How the British Brexit Economy Works

      1) A containerful of shoddy training shoes are produced in China, shipped to UK, sorted by lowly paid British zero hours workers and put on shelves of High Street sports shop.
      2) While this is happening, sterling plunges 25%.
      3) Coachload of Chinese tourists visit sports shop attracted by collapsed pound sterling. They exclaim “Wow Western trainers! And so cheap”. They buy them to take back to China as gifts for family members they don’t like that much.
      4) Declare a Brexit sales boom!

    • Theresa May’s ‘just managing’ families set to be worse off

      Low-earning families that Theresa May has promised to help will be thousands of pounds a year worse off by 2020 because of rising inflation, lower wage growth and Tory social security cuts, according to new analysis of their post-Brexit economic prospects.

      Those who the prime minister describes as “just managing” – and who are her key priority, she says – are in line for substantial falls in real incomes unless the chancellor, Philip Hammond, steps in to help them in his autumn statement on 23 November.

      Pressure is growing on Hammond from senior Tories to reverse the decisions to slash benefits, which were announced last year by his predecessor George Osborne, in order to assist those who May said on entering Downing Street were “working around the clock” but still struggling to get by.

    • How Minnesota’s governor performed an economic miracle by raising tax on the rich and increasing minimum wage

      By every measure, Minnesota governor Mark Dayton’s five year run as governor has been a stellar success: while Tim Pawlenty, his tax-slashing, “fiscally-conservative” Republican predecessor presided over a $6.2B deficit and a 7% unemployment rate (the mere 6,200 jobs added under Pawlenty’s 7-year run barely registered), Dayton added 172,000 new jobs to the Minnesota economy, brought Minnesota down to the fifth-lowest unemployment rate in the country, and brought the average Minnesotan income up to $8,000 more than the median US worker, while posting a $1B budget surplus.

      How did Dayton do it? He raised the state income tax on individuals earning more than $150K, from 7.85% to 9.85%; he raised Minnesota’s minimum wage and guaranteed equal pay for women.

    • CETA Signed Off As Wallonia Folds Under Pressure

      Democracy and civil rights took a crushing blow today. Shortly after news surfaced that Wallonia folded under the pressure, the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) has been signed.

      One of the many secret trade deals floating around is known as CETA. While proponents say these trade agreements are simply about trade, the details suggest that such agreements are much more about pushing laws than actual trade.

      Last year, we dug into some of these details and found a number of provisions that adversely affects digital rights. This includes censorship through site blocking, account termination through a three strikes law, unlimited damages for copyright infringement, and provisions that allow border patrols to seize your cell phone at the border.

      Other concerns raised revolve around ISDS (Inter-State Dispute Settlement) that sets up an international tribunal for major multi-national corporations. The purpose is to allow corporations to sue governments if laws are passed that get in the way of profits and future potential profits. Examples raised in the past revolve around warning labels on cigarette packages, regulations on price for pharmaceuticals, and rulings against oil extraction and pipelines.

    • Swiss rail stations will sell bitcoins at ticket machines

      Switzerland is stepping up its bitcoin fascination in a big way. Railway operator SBB (with the help of SweePay) is launching a 2-year trial for a service that lets you exchange Swiss francs for bitcoin at any of the company’s ticket machines in the country. Scan a QR code with your phone and you can get between 20 to 500 francs ($20 to $505) of digital currency at any time. If you want to go shopping without using cards or physical cash, you can do it right after you leave the train station.

      There are some big catches involved. You need to have a Swiss phone number to get bitcoin, so you’re not completely anonymous… and of course, you’re out of luck if you’re not a resident. You also can’t buy tickets with bitcoin at the machines, so don’t think your bitcoin mining operation will pay for your next trip to Zurich.

    • No, CETA is NOT approved yet
    • Canada and E.U. Sign Trade Deal, Bucking Resistance to Globalization

      The European Union and Canada signed a far-reaching trade agreement on Sunday that commits them to opening their markets to greater competition, after overcoming a last-minute political obstacle that reflected the growing skepticism toward globalization in much of the developed world.

    • Icelandic women walk off the job 14% early to protest 14% pay-gap

      On October 25, thousands of Icelandic women went home at 2:38PM, after 86% of their work-days had passed, to protest the fact that they only earn 86% of their male counterparts’ wages.

      They turned out for a mass demonstration that echoed the 1975 protests over pay equity, which saw over 90% of the country’s women take to the street.

    • EU-Canada trade deal signed, but our fates (and ISDS) not yet sealed

      On Sunday, the president of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Council Donald Tusk, prime minister of Slovakia Robert Fico, and Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau signed the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) between the EU and Canada. It followed more than a week of frenzied negotiations after Belgian regions refused to give permission to the central government of Belgium to proceed with the deal.

    • Don’t celebrate Justin Trudeau signing the Ceta deal with the EU – like TTIP, it is a ticking time bomb

      Don’t be fooled by the triumphant rhetoric emanating from Brussels today – the controversial EU-Canada trade deal known as CETA might have returned from the dead in time for Halloween, but it’s very much a zombie agreement. While CETA will now be approved by the European Council and head towards the Parliament, its future looks bleak.

      And it gets worse for Brussels. Because Belgium’s regional parliaments have, in the process of hobbling CETA, driven a stake into the heart of European trade policy. No wonder Financial Times columnist Wolfgang Munchau hailed the so-called ‘breakthrough’ as “a huge victory for Belgium’s Ceta opponents”.

      CETA (the Comprehensive Economic & Trade Agreement) is the sister deal of the better known TTIP trade deal between the US and EU. Just like its sibling, it is essentially not about reducing tariffs, but deregulation, liberalisation, and the handing of further powers over law-making to big business. Despite some fancy footwork by the EU to reform the hated “corporate court” system, which gives foreign investors their own special legal process to sue governments, that system is very much still in place in CETA.

  • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

    • Podesta paid $7,000 a month by top donor

      Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta, last year signed a $7,000-a-month contract with the foundation of a major Clinton donor who made a fortune selling a type of mortgage that some critics say contributed to the housing collapse, hacked emails show.

      In February of last year, as Podesta was working to lay the groundwork for Clinton’s soon-to-launch campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, he signed the contract with the Sandler Foundation, which was started by Herb Sandler and his late wife Marion Sandler.

    • Trump Supporter Voted Twice in Iowa Because “Polls Are Rigged”

      Donald Trump has been warning supporters left and right about the potential devastating consequences of voter fraud. But the first arrest for voter fraud in this election season is actually a staunch Trump supporter. Terri Rote, 55, was arrested on first-degree l misconduct charges after she cast two ballots in the election. She was released on a $5,000 bond.

      So why did Rote, a registered Republican, decide to cast two ballots? She was apparently afraid that her first ballot would be counted as a vote for Hillary Clinton. “I wasn’t planning on doing it twice, it was spur of the moment,” Rote told Iowa Public Radio. “The polls are rigged.”

    • Donald Trump rolls out endorsements from people he pays

      At a campaign event in Miami on Tuesday that was more in keeping with the norms of politics in North Korea, Donald Trump brought reporters to one of his golf courses and invited 10 of his employees on stage to praise him.

      [...]

      Siegel also boasted about helping to secure Florida for George W. Bush in 2000, by pressing thousands of employees to vote for the Republican candidate. In an interview with the same publication, the developer explained that he gave employees not-so-subtle hints about what he wanted them to do by putting negative articles about Al Gore in envelopes along with their paychecks.

      As The Atlantic explained in 2012, after Siegel’s anti-Obama memo was leaked to Gawker, employers cannot explicitly pay workers to vote a certain way, but, in most states, they are permitted to make their preferences known before election day.

      Unlike Florida, California does have a law stating that “no employer shall coerce or influence or attempt to coerce or influence his employees through or by means of threat of discharge or loss of employment to adopt or follow or refrain from adopting or following any particular course or line of political action or political activity.”

    • Five takeaways from the latest WikiLeaks releases

      Government ethics watchdogs have long warned that the Clintons’ nonprofit would present serious conflict-of-interest concerns should the former secretary of State obtain the oval office.

      Republicans — led by Donald Trump — have accused the Clintons of using the foundation to peddle influence and line their own pockets.

      The details in Band’s memo gave new ammunition to critics who have pressed for the foundation to be shuttered.

      In it, Band describes how Bill Clinton’s personal wealth skyrocketed with the help of the same consultants raising money for the foundation, and the same donors who poured millions into the charity.

      “I think it’s going to be a continuing problem unless they close the thing down after she’s elected,” said Democratic strategist Brad Bannon.

      Those calls were echoed by the press.

      “Let me go to bottom line: There is no way under any circumstance the Clinton Foundation should be operating if she becomes president,” Chuck Todd, moderator of NBC’s “Meet the Press,” told WGN Radio in Chicago on Thursday. “I just don’t see how they can keep that going.”

    • Leaked Email Reveals Google Chairman Wanted To Be Clinton Campaign’s ‘Head Outside Advisor’

      WikiLeaks has continued to reveal Schmidt’s cozy relationship with the Clinton campaign.

    • WikiLeaks: Podesta Continued Ties to Russian Firm After He Said He Divested

      More hacked emails released Sunday by WikiLeaks appear to show Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta’s apparent continued connection to Joule Unlimited Technologies, despite his claims that he divested from the Kremlin-financed energy company, The Daily Caller reported.

      Podesta has said he transferred his 75,000 shares from Joule to a holding company named Leonidio Holdings. But included in the released emails is information that Podesta received a K1 income tax form indicating that he was a partner sharing income with Leonidio Holdings, while another form was made out to Podesta’s daughter Megan Rouse, who is a financial planner.

      A June 5, 2015 email from Rouse to John, Mae and Gabe Podesta shows the extent to which other family members were involved: “Mae and Gabe, Please see attached K1 for Leonidio. You can use this to complete your 2014 tax return. We will each report 1/3 share of what’s on the form. Mom and Pa, Please see attached K1 showing the distribution to Leonidio.”

    • Tax form Indicates Podesta Put Kremlin-Tainted Shares In Daughter’s Company

      Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta received a K1 income tax form indicating that he was a partner sharing income with Leonidio Holdings, according to emails released Sunday by WikiLeaks. Another form was made out to Podesta’s daughter, Megan Rouse, his partner in Leonidio Holdings.

      Podesta has always maintained that he transferred his 75,000 shares from Joule Unlimited Technologies, a Kremlin-financed energy company, to an “anonymous” holding company named Leonidio Holdings. Not only does Leonidio share an address with Podesta’s daughter, Rouse, but they share a tax return.

      The other beneficiaries are all in the family too.

    • Obama told us he’s honorable — but he’s just another liar

      Now we know Obama was lying. His own aides said so, in e-mails uncovered by WikiLeaks and made public this week.

    • WikiLeaks: Trump Rally Agitator and Clinton Campaign Manager Are ‘Close’

      Robert Creamer, the operative behind sending provocateurs to Donald Trump rallies, was close to Robby Mook, Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager, according to new emails released by WikiLeaks.

      Creamer, who allegedly spearheaded the dirty tricks for the Democrats, wasn’t just consulting for the Democratic National Committee, according to videos made by Project Veritas. He was sending people to provoke Trump at events.

    • Fmr U.S. Atty: Comey’s Hand Forced by FBI ‘Seething’ Anger at Botched Hillary Email Investigation

      In an exclusive interview with Breitbart News, the former U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Joseph DiGenova gave a stark assessment of what led to FBI Director James Comey’s recent decision to reopen the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server, after an investigation into Anthony Weiner’s sexting scandal led to the discovery of thousands of emails on the computer of Weiner’s estranged wife, top Hillary Clinton aide, Huma Abedin.

    • Boring or Annoying Things We Have to Know

      I have always glazed over at any mention of Hillary Clinton’s emails. The USA is not my country, and it seemed like a rather boring argument about classifications and document security. I also had a natural resistance to anything that appeared to promote the interests of Donald Trump. I now realise that is how a complicit media was deliberately presenting it, and my lack of interest was the desired effect. They are still presenting the issues in a manner which I hope I will be able to prove to you is entirely tendentious. So this weekend I request you to grit your teeth, set aside your disinterest and read through this article. Please.

      Those Hillary server emails are largely a separate thing to those which WikiLeaks has been releasing. What the WikiLeaks release of the Democratic National Committee and Hillary campaign chair Podesta emails has proved beyond any reasonable doubt, is the extent of Hillary’s corruption. Both in terms of the fixing of the primary election against Bernie Sanders by the people who were supposed to be organising it, and the vast sums of money the Clinton family were receiving personally through Clinton Foundation and consultancy activity linked to State Department access, decisions and activity.

      Before Clinton handed over her private email server to the FBI investigation into her handling of classified material, she scrubbed over 30,000 emails and had drives physically treated to ensure permanent destruction. It is obviously very likely that many of those emails referred to the kind of nefarious activity we are now seeing from the DNC and Podesta leaks.

      It is also of course a fact that those 30,000 emails all had recipients, as well as Hillary as a sender. We can be sure that a major effort will have been undertaken to make sure recipients deleted them too. But from time to time some are sure to turn up. That is what has just happened and prompted yesterday’s announcement of a renewed investigation. In the course of an unrelated investigation into alleged paedophile grooming, the FBI has come across some of Hillary’s deleted emails on the device of a close political aide.

    • The Podesta Emails Revelations: A Collection

      —In an email containing information from intelligence sources, Clinton detailed a strategy for defeating the Islamic State and noted Qatar and Saudi Arabia are funding ISIS operations. (Dan Wright, Shadowproof)

      —Hillary Clinton’s letter to mega-donor Haim Saban against the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel was leaked to press to attract pro-Israel donors. (Rania Khalek, Electronic Intifada)

      —During one of her paid speeches for Goldman Sachs, Clinton admitted a no fly zone in Syria would mean the United States and NATO would “kill a lot of Syrians.” (Zaid Jilani, The Intercept)

      —Representatives of Qatar wanted to meet for “five minutes” with Bill Clinton to present a $1 million check to him for his birthday (New York Times)

    • Sometimes You Need to Dig a Little to Unearth the Point of an NYT Story

      As it turns out, most other news outlets did not share the Times‘ sense of newsworthiness.

    • ‘Will Every Eligible Voter Be Able to Cast a Ballot?’

      It’s hard to pick the most ominous or disturbing thing Donald Trump has said, but his call for supporters to “go and watch” polling places in “certain areas” because “you know what I’m talking about” is up there. But Trump’s claim that the election is rigged—unless he wins, in which case it isn’t—didn’t spring full-blown from his head. Republicans have claimed voter fraud benefiting their opponents for a long time. And for a long time, corporate media have set those claims alongside concerns about voter suppression, of African-Americans and immigrants in particular, as though they were equally grounded, or just analogous partisan gripes.

    • FBI discovered Clinton-related emails weeks ago

      The FBI stumbled upon a trove of emails from one of Hillary Clinton’s top aides weeks ago, law enforcement officials told CNN Sunday.
      But FBI Director James Comey didn’t disclose the discovery until Friday, raising questions about why the information was kept under wraps and then released only days before the election.
      Meanwhile, the Justice Department has obtained a warrant that will allow it to begin searching the computer that is believed to contain thousands of newly found emails of top Clinton aide Huma Abedin, two law enforcement sources confirmed to CNN.

      The timeline behind the discovery of the emails came into greater clarity Sunday.
      Investigators took possession of multiple computers related to the inquiry of Anthony Weiner in early October, U.S. law enforcement officials said. Weiner is Abedin’s estranged husband and is being probed about alleged sexting with a purportedly underage girl.

    • Clinton emails: FBI chief may have broken law, says top Democrat

      The Democratic leader in the US Senate says the head of the FBI may have broken the law by revealing the bureau was investigating emails possibly linked to Hillary Clinton.

      Harry Reid accused FBI director James Comey of violating an act which bars officials from influencing an election.

      News of the FBI inquiry comes less than two weeks before the US election.

      The bureau has meanwhile obtained a warrant to search a cache of emails belonging to a top Clinton aide.

      Emails from Huma Abedin are believed to have been found on the laptop of her estranged husband, former congressman Anthony Weiner.

    • The FBI is sitting on ‘explosive’ information regarding Donald Trump and Russia, top Democrat asserts

      A top Democrat in Washington says the FBI has shone a spotlight on a new trove of emails potentially associated with Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while sitting on “explosive information” allegedly tying Donald Trump to the Russian government.

      Senator Harry Reid, the Democrat leader of the US Senate, accused the FBI of double standards in a letter sent late on Sunday to James Comey, the agency’s director, who jolted the presidential race on Friday by revealing the existence of a new cache of emails.

    • Facebook wants to be your guide on Election Day

      Now that the presidential debates are over, Facebook wants to help you prepare for the last political battleground: the voting booth.

      The social-media company unveiled a feature this week designed to help users create a voting plan, showing not just presidential candidates but also information on statewide elections. Should you want to dive down to the local level, you can give Facebook your address and the company will tell you what’s on the ballot in your neck of the woods.

    • Google’s Schmidt drew up draft plan for Clinton in 2014

      Eric Schmidt, the chairman of Google’s parent company Alphabet, submitted a detailed draft to a key Clinton aide on 15 April 2014, outlining his ideas for a possible run for the presidency and stressing that “key is the development of a single record for a voter that aggregates all that is known about them”.

      Though Schmidt did not mention it, this kind of information is the lifeblood of Google’s business.

      The ideas, in an email released by the whistleblower website WikiLeaks, were sent to Cheryl Mills, former deputy White House counsel to Bill Clinton. Mills forwarded it to Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta, campaign manager Robby Mook and Barack Obama’s 2012 campaign manager David Plouffe.

    • Schmidt sought top outside post in Clinton campaign

      Eric Schmidt, the chairman of Google’s parent company Alphabet, expressed a desire more than two years ago to be the “head outside adviser” to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, according to an email released by WikiLeaks.

      The email, dating back to 2014, was part of a bigger trove released by the whistle-blower website, all of which were from the Gmail account of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta.

      There have been unproven claims by the Democratic Party that the leaked material has been provided by Russian sources.

      In the email, sent to campaign manager Robby Mook, Podesta wrote that he had met Schmidt on 2 April 2014 and that he (Schmidt) was “ready to fund, advise recruit talent, etc”.

      Podesta apparently expected Schmidt to be a pushy sort, as he wrote, “He (Schmidt) was more deferential on structure than I expected. Wasn’t pushing to run through one of his existing firms. Clearly wants to be head outside advisor, but didn’t seem like he wanted to push others out. Clearly wants to get going.

      “He’s still in DC tomorrow and would like to meet with you if you are in DC in the afternoon. I think it’s worth doing. You around? If you are, and want to meet with him, maybe the four of us can get on the phone in the am.”

      Mook was in Australia at the time, but wrote back to Podesta that he would “to do a call w him before I get back or meet with him after the 23rd”.

    • Democrats should ask Clinton to step aside

      Has America become so numb by the decades of lies and cynicism oozing from Clinton Inc. that it could elect Hillary Clinton as president, even after Friday’s FBI announcement that it had reopened an investigation of her emails while secretary of state?

      We’ll find out soon enough.

      It’s obvious the American political system is breaking down. It’s been crumbling for some time now, and the establishment elite know it and they’re properly frightened. Donald Trump, the vulgarian at their gates, is a symptom, not a cause. Hillary Clinton and husband Bill are both cause and effect.

      FBI director James Comey’s announcement about the renewed Clinton email investigation is the bombshell in the presidential campaign. That he announced this so close to Election Day should tell every thinking person that what the FBI is looking at is extremely serious.

      This can’t be about pervert Anthony Weiner and his reported desire for a teenage girl. But it can be about the laptop of Weiner’s wife, Clinton aide Huma Abedin, and emails between her and Hillary. It comes after the FBI investigation in which Comey concluded Clinton had lied and been “reckless” with national secrets, but said he could not recommend prosecution.

    • Clinton Foundation: Only 10% and 6% towards charity grants in 2013-14

      The Clinton Foundation spent less than 6 percent of its budget on charitable grants in 2014 and less than 10% the year prior, according to documents the organization filed with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).

    • U.S. Officials Doubt Donald Trump Has Direct Link to Russia

      For much of the summer, the F.B.I. pursued a widening investigation into a Russian role in the American presidential campaign. Agents scrutinized advisers close to Donald J. Trump, looked for financial connections with Russian financial figures, searched for those involved in hacking the computers of Democrats, and even chased a lead — which they ultimately came to doubt — about a possible secret channel of email communication from the Trump Organization to a Russian bank.

      Law enforcement officials say that none of the investigations so far have found any link between Mr. Trump and the Russian government. And even the hacking into Democratic emails, F.B.I. and intelligence officials now believe, was aimed at disrupting the presidential election rather than electing Mr. Trump.

      Hillary Clinton’s supporters, angry over what they regard as a lack of scrutiny of Mr. Trump by law enforcement officials, pushed for these investigations. In recent days they have also demanded that James B. Comey, the director of the F.B.I., discuss them publicly, as he did last week when he announced that a new batch of emails possibly connected to Mrs. Clinton had been discovered.

    • Don’t settle for the lesser of two evils in this election. Vote for the Green party

      Donald Trump’s self-inflicted wounds and propensity for public meltdowns had pushed the public-opinion needle toward Hillary Clinton, according to recent polls. That may have changed a little in the aftermath of the FBI’s renewing of its email probe last week. But even so, the fears of many voters that a Donald Trump presidency might become a reality have abated.

      Those fears are not unfounded. Trump’s failings as a candidate and a person are manifest, and he would be in a position to wreak considerable havoc if elected. That’s especially true at the agency level, with the judiciary and in other arenas where the president can wield executive power. The wildcard aspect of his personality poses risks that can’t be predicted, nor can anyone know the degree to which congress would be inclined to obstruct or approve his most damaging initiatives.

      What has been lost in the salacious and obsessive media coverage of the Republican nominee’s outrageous behavior, bigoted remarks and appeal to the worst instincts of the electorate, however, is a critical examination of what a Clinton administration will mean for the nation. The FBI probe, information on tangled interests within the Clinton Foundation, evidence of influence peddling and Wikileaks revelations detailing manipulation of media and the democratic process, signal a plutocratic style of governance that is all too familiar and increasingly dominant at the federal level.

      The content of what has been revealed in these leaks, as well as her lengthy track record in government and policy statements as a candidate yield an inescapable conclusion: Hillary Clinton represents the entrenched interests of the status quo. Her election will expand the excesses of global interventionism and corporate welfare that have characterized US policies for several decades – at tremendous, almost incalculable cost both domestically and internationally.

    • Jill Stein’s AMA (Ask Me Anything) On Reddit: All You Need To Know About The Green Party Candidate’s Q & A Session

      “We could for example cancel the obsolete F-35 fighter jet program, create a Wall Street transaction tax (where a 0.2% tax would produce over $350 billion per year), or canceling the planned trillion dollar investment in a new generation of nuclear weapons. Unlike weapons programs and tax cuts for the super rich, investing in higher education and freeing millions of Americans from debt will have tremendous benefits for the real economy.”

    • WIKILEAKS: Here’s How The Clinton’s Free Private Jet Scam Works

      Ira Magaziner, the CEO of the Clinton Health Access Initiative, asked former President Bill Clinton to thank Morocco’s King Mohammed VI for “offering his plane to the conference in Ethiopia.”

      “CHAI would like to request that President Clinton call Sheik Mohammed to thank him for offering his plane to the conference in Ethiopia,” Magaziner gushed in a November 22, 2011 email released by WikiLeaks.

      Clinton frequently has expected free, luxurious private jet travel during his post-presidential life. Clinton, his wife and daughter have artfully secured free air travel and luxurious accommodations since they left the White House. It’s an effective way to accept gifts of great value without declaring them for the Clinton Foundation.

    • Clinton Foundation memo reveals Bill and Hillary as partners in crime

      Last week, WikiLeaks dropped a 2011 memo by top Bill Clinton aide Doug Band that lays bare Team Clinton’s sordid financial dealings when Hillary Clinton was secretary of State.

      Band describes how the Clinton Foundation served as a conduit for what he called “Bill Clinton Inc.” — the former president’s for-profit arm. Other documents show State Department involvement.

      The result is an unsavory mix of charity work, profiteering, and pay-to-play politics that potentially reaches the highest levels of US foreign policy and screams for IRS and Department of Justice reviews.

      At center is Band and his consulting firm Teneo. Band served as gatekeeper to all things Bill Clinton. Those wanting a former president as golf partner ponied up. Requests for Foundation dough followed. Next came Clinton Inc. — the steady stream of speeches, books, and honorary titles that enriched Bill Clinton. Teneo managed it all.

      Huge corporations and others seeking Clinton’s orbit lined up. Teneo’s clients included major U.S. corporations Coca-Cola and Dow Chemical, which donated huge sums.

      Foreign firms like UBS donated and greased Clinton Inc.

      For-profit Laureate International Universities went further, buying Clinton “advice” and rights to his prestige for $3.5 million annually. In all, Band states Teneo’s management yielded the former president $50 million — including a $2 million upfront slice of Band’s firm — with another $66 million queued. Band also facilitated political activity including securing campaign donors and managing Clinton’s political schedule.

    • The Clinton Foundation: Hopelessly Corrupt Or Just A Lousy Charity?

      Public Corruption: As the unseemly ties between the Clinton Foundation and Hillary Clinton’s State Department become more glaring and disturbing, the rhetoric from the Democratic side is getting more desperate. Now Clinton hatchet man James Carville says critics of the foundation are going to hell.

    • Poll: Comey’s bombshell changes few votes

      The race for the White House is tight, but it has not been radically changed by the FBI director’s bombshell announcement last week.

      Hillary Clinton has a slim three-point lead over Donald Trump one week before Election Day, according to a new POLITICO/Morning Consult poll conducted entirely after FBI Director James Comey announced the discovery of new emails that might pertain to the former secretary of state’s private server.

      Clinton leads Trump 46 percent to 43 percent in a two-way race, and 42 percent to 39 percent in a four-way race, with Libertarian nominee Gary Johnson at 7 percent and the Green Party’s Jill Stein at 5 percent.

      The poll was conducted using an online panel of 1,772 likely voters on Saturday and Sunday, beginning one day after Comey’s announcement. The poll carries a margin or error of 2 percentage points.

    • National poll: Trump now leads Clinton by 1 point

      Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has overtaken Democratic rival Hillary Clinton for the first time since May in a national tracking poll.

      Trump has a 1-point lead over the former secretary of State, 46 to 45 percent, in the ABC News/Washington Post poll released Tuesday morning.

    • Trump Leads Clinton by 1 Point in New Poll as Enthusiasm Declines

      While vote preferences have held essentially steady, she’s now a slim point behind Donald Trump — a first since May — in the latest ABC News/Washington Post tracking poll, produced for ABC by Langer Research Associates.

      Forty-six percent of likely voters support Trump in the latest results, with 45 percent for Clinton. Taking it to the decimal for illustrative purposes, a mere .7 of a percentage point divides them. Third-party candidate Gary Johnson has 3 percent, a new low; Jill Stein, 2 percent.

    • Report & Wikileaks Reveal How Facebook, Clinton Loyalists Control Your Newsfeed

      Censorship by Facebook has become a thorn in the side of nearly anyone with an opinion differing from the narrative touted by the corporate press — for instance, sentiments not praising Hillary Clinton — and now, through both a new report from Reuters and emails published by Wikileaks, we have insight into why certain posts are targeted.

    • John Podesta’s Best Friend At The DOJ Will Be In Charge Of The DOJ’s Probe Into Huma Abedin Emails

      Now that the FBI has obtained the needed warrant to start poring over the 650,000 or so emails uncovered in Anthony Weiner’s notebook, among which thousands of emails sent from Huma Abedin using Hillary Clinton’s personal server, moments ago the US Justice Department announced it is also joining the probe, and as AP reported moments ago, vowed to dedicate all needed resources to quickly review the over half a million emails in the Clinton case.

    • ‘Google has power to control elections, can shift millions of votes to Clinton’ – Robert Epstein

      People trust the “unbiased” internet search giant Google so much it can actually influence up to 10 million undecided voters to choose Hillary Clinton for president, prominent US psychologist and author Robert Epstein told RT following years of research.

      Despite being a supporter of the Democratic presidential nominee, Dr. Epstein believes Google’s unchecked algorithm of placing one candidate over the other in search results constitutes a “threat to democracy.”

  • Censorship/Free Speech

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Interrogated by Finnish police for alleged idendity crimes, fraud and attempts of fraud

      Putting the word out: I was interrogated by the Finnish police today for
      multiple alleged counts (15+) of identity crimes, fraud and attempts of
      fraud. The invitation letter to be interrogated was sent out on
      2016-10-21 and received by me on 2016-10-25. Today is 2016-10-31.

      The police suspects me because of an “IP-address assigned to my name”,
      which I can’t confirm or deny to have a relation to me. As a suspect, I
      was not told what this aclaimed IP-address was on a specific date to my
      knowledge. It is only speculation if these allegations wrongly against
      me have something to do with my relation with the Tor community or
      activism about digital rights online.

      Pending ongoing investigation, I am not allowed by law to share more
      specific details about to the investigation. I’d be glad to reveal more
      details about the case once the investigation is over and share/hear how
      I became a suspect, once I know about it. (Note that my story is at
      least slightly opinionated.)

      I had a witness with me and I feel like my rights were being violated
      during the interrogation. The officer (not to be named publicly in
      respect for privacy) didn’t want to allow me to write down their badge
      number by taking the badge away from me while trying to write down the
      numbers. The officer looked slightly anxious.

    • Google Glass can teach you Morse code in four hours without trying

      If all that is meaningless to you, don’t worry. Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have found a way for humans to learn Morse code in four hours just by playing games.

      The subjects were given Google Glass headsets (ask your parents) and continued to play games while vibrations near the ear slowly embedded subconscious Morsey goodness into their brains, reported Phys.org.

    • South African Spy Company Used by Gadaffi Touts its NSA-Like Capabilities

      The South African company best known for selling Muammar Gaddafi’s regime spy equipment used to monitor millions of Libyans’ international phone calls is now claiming it can intercept communications on a scale that rivals a government spy agency, according to a company brochure obtained by The Intercept.

      In a 2016 pamphlet produced by VASTech SA Pty Ltd., the company outlines its current capabilities for governments, militaries, and law enforcement agencies around the world, claiming it can conduct “passive detection” of communications transmitted from satellites, fix-and-mobile phones, and fiber optic cable.

      The company is offering multiple tools to vacuum up communications from around the globe undetected, or what the company calls “communication intelligence extraction solutions” — a capability not unlike the U.S. National Security Agency’s PRISM program.

    • Who are the Shadow Brokers?
    • New Leak Leads To Another NSA Spying Scandal
    • Hackers say they’re revealing more from trove of NSA data
    • NSA-Hacking ‘Shadow Brokers’ Reveal Spy-Penetrated Networks
    • Shadow Brokers leak second batch of data allegedly from NSA-linked ‘Equation Group’ hacking unit
    • Shadow Brokers releases list of servers hacked by the NSA
    • Shadow Brokers post list of compromised IP addresses
    • New leak may show if you were hacked by the NSA
    • Hacking group says list features servers infiltrated by National Security Agency
    • The Shadow Brokers dump more intel from the NSA’s elite Equation Group
    • Shadow Brokers leak list of supposed NSA controlled computers in China, Russia
    • Shadow Brokers claim to leak NSA cyberespionage targets
    • ‘Shadow Brokers’ dumps list of NSA-hacked attack servers
    • Shadow Brokers Tell U.S. to Pay to Get Files Back
    • Second Shadow Brokers dump released
    • Shadow Brokers Give NSA Halloween Surprise With Leak Of Hacked Servers
    • Hackers expose apparent NSA cyber espionage operations
    • NSA has been hacking Sonatrach from 2010 to 2002
    • Shadow Brokers leak systems hacked by NSA – mostly mail and uni servers in India, China
    • New leak reveals over 100 web addresses compromised by the NSA
    • Shadowbrokers’ NSA dirty tricks spill points to compromised servers in China and Russia
    • Shadow Brokers leaks list of NSA targets and compromised servers
    • NSA Hackers The Shadow Brokers Dump More Files
    • Hacker group releases list of NSA-compromised servers
    • Past behaviour did not stop leaker from accessing sensitive NSA Data

      The US National Security Agency’s (NSA) latest alleged leaker apparently raised no red flags despite a history of abnormal behaviour. The New York Times reported on 29 October that Harold T. Martin III, who is accused of stealing 50 terabytes of data from the NSA, apparently dealt with divorces, unpaid taxes, legal charges and drinking problems and was still allowed access to top secret information.

      In a detention hearing on 28 October, Judge Richard D. Bennett noted that Martin had a history of drinking problems. In 2006, he faced a drunk driving charge. Martin is known to have been called up for unpaid taxes in 2000, which he did not pay off for over a decade. Martin’s other run ins with the law include a computer harassment charge and an incident where he pretended to be a police officer during a traffic dispute.

      Martin’s house would eventually be raided by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in August 2016. He was arrested when investigators found thousands of pages of classified material on several storage devices, apparently taken from a variety of jobs he held as an NSA contractor, most recently for Booz Allen. It is not clear whether Martin was merely hoarding this information, or intended to leak it. His lawyers have stated that “there is no evidence that he intended to betray his country”.

    • Rights Groups, Activists Ask President To Respond To Unanswered Encryption Petition

      A bunch of organizations concerned with privacy, free press, and human rights are gently reminding the outgoing president that he still hasn’t fully responded to a We the People petition about encryption.

    • Montreal police monitored iPhone of La Presse journalist Patrick Lagacé

      Montreal police strongly defended a highly controversial decision to spy on a La Presse columnist by tracking his cellphone calls and texts and monitoring his whereabouts as part of a necessary internal police investigation — while the journalist involved called what they did “indefensible.”

      “Lives were not at stake, this was not a question of national security,” La Presse columnist Patrick Lagacé said in an interview Monday. “The leaks made them look bad, that’s why they decided to go after me in the way they did.”

      Opposition politicians are also condemning Montreal police for spying on Lagacé, though Montreal Mayor Denis Coderre stood by police chief Philippe Pichet on Monday, noting that a mayor should not intervene in police operations, but did say he was troubled by the news.

      For several months this year, police were monitoring Lagacé’s iPhone to determine the identity of his sources, La Presse reported. This was confirmed to Lagacé last Thursday by Montreal police.

      At least 24 surveillance warrants were granted by courts in 2016, at the request of the Montreal police department’s special investigations section, which probes crime within the police force. The warrants allowed police to track the telephone numbers of incoming and outgoing calls on Lagacé’s phone, and to monitor the phone’s location, although Pichet denied at a hastily convened press conference Monday that the GPS on his phone was monitored.

      Lagacé said he is sure many judges around the world have been asked by police departments to grant similar warrants, but refused because it was too “vulgar” to spy on a reporter. “It was incredibly aggressive,” he said, questioning the judgment of the judge involved.

    • Lords examines Investigatory Powers Bill

      The Investigatory Powers Bill will have its third reading, a final chance to tidy up the bill and make changes, in the House of Lords on Monday 31 October.

    • Belgian Court Fines Microsoft For Failing To Comply With Its Impossible Order

      The court, failing to understand anything but its power to order people around, demanded Skype turn over communications. Skype turned over the only thing it could actually obtain, explaining that its architecture didn’t support the interception of calls. No dice. That only made the court angry.

      The court was no more happy to have pointed out to it that Microsoft didn’t actually fall under its jurisdiction. It maintains no data centers in Belgium, nor does it have anyone employed there. Microsoft suggested the court work with governments of countries where it actually maintains a presence and utilize their mutual assistance treaties.

    • Brandi Collins on Black Lives Surveillance

      Corporate journalists rely on the First Amendment, but it’s increasingly unclear if the First Amendment can rely on them. The relative lack of interest in the impact of spying on activists—a practice with a long and disturbing history given new power by technology—is the latest example.

    • As Expected, FCC Passes Modest Privacy Rules For Broadband Providers, ISPs Act Like World Has Ended

      Over the past week, we’ve been talking a lot about the need for more transparency and user control for privacy on the internet, so it’s only fitting that the FCC has officially adopted its new privacy rules for ISPs that will require broadband providers to be much more explicit concerning what information it collects and shares with others, and provide (mostly) clear “opt-in” requirements on some of that data collection. This isn’t a surprise. It was pretty clear that the FCC was going to approve these rules that it announced earlier this year. And, of course, the big broadband providers threw a giant hissy fit over these rules that just ask them to be more transparent and give users at least a little bit of control over what data is collected.

      Comcast has caused these proposals “irrational” and various think tankers paid for by the broadband providers tried to tell the world that poor people benefit from a lack of privacy. And magically new studies came out claiming that broadband providers are cuddly and lovable, rather than snarfing up everyone’s data.

      And, of course, the various broadband providers want to blame Google for the rules, because everyone wants to blame Google for everything. The issue here is that the broadband access providers have these rules, while online service providers, like Google and Facebook do not. There are, of course, a few responses to this. The first, is that the FCC doesn’t have authority over those sites, like it does have over the access providers under the Telecom Act. The second is that users are much more locked in to their broadband access provider, and there is much less competition. Switching is much more difficult. The third argument is, basically, that Google and Facebook don’t have nearly the same history as the broadband access providers of really nasty privacy violations. Hell, just as these new rules were coming, Verizon was being fined for stealth zombie cookies. Finally, the simple fact is that broadband access providers have the power to spy on a lot more internet activity than Google or Facebook. Yes, those other services are in more and more places, but it’s not difficult to block them. With your ISP everything goes through their pipes, and unless you carefully encrypt your traffic via a VPN, they get to see everything.

    • Why do we still accept that governments collect and snoop on our data?

      In recent weeks, the Hollywood film about Edward Snowden and the movement to pardon the NSA whistleblower have renewed worldwide attention on the scope and substance of government surveillance programs. In the United States, however, the debate has often been a narrow one, focused on the rights of Americans under domestic law but mostly blind to the privacy rights of millions of others affected by this surveillance.

  • Civil Rights/Policing

    • At DAPL, Confiscating Cameras as Evidence of Journalism

      While elite media wait for the resistance to the Dakota Access Pipeline to go away so they can return to presenting their own chin-stroking as what it means to take climate change seriously, independent media continue to fill the void with actual coverage.

      One place you can go to find reporting is The Intercept (10/25/16), where journalist Jihan Hafiz filed a video report from North Dakota, where the Standing Rock Sioux and their allies continue their stand against the sacred site–trampling, water supply–threatening project.

    • ‘Dumbfounded’: Documentarian facing 45 years for filming pipeline protest

      Schlosberg was arrested in Walhalla, North Dakota, on October 11 for filming activist Michael Foster — a member of the group known as Climate Direct Action — as he shut off a valve of a Canadian tar sands pipeline. In solidarity with protesters opposing the Dakota Access Pipeline in North Dakota, activists shut down similar valves in Washington, Montana, and Minnesota on the same day.

      However, authorities in North Dakota have charged the filmmaker with two Class A felonies and one Class C felony, including conspiracy to theft of property, conspiracy to theft of services, and conspiracy to tampering with or damaging a public service.

    • Descendants of Jewish refugees seek German citizenship after Brexit vote

      Descendants of the tens of thousands of German Jews who fled the Nazis and found refuge in Britain are making use of their legal right to become German citizens following the Brexit vote.

      German authorities have reported a twentyfold increase in the number of restored citizenship applications – a right reserved for anybody who was persecuted on political, racial or religious grounds during the Nazi dictatorship, as well as their descendants.

    • Inside Nigeria’s Baby Factories

      Baby factories in Nigeria are pumping out babies for sale on the illegal adoption market. Swedish journalist Therese Cristiansson infiltrated these baby-trafficking networks with a hidden camera.

    • Nigeria lost $9bn to Boko Haram attacks – Presidential panel

      The Presidential Committee on North-East Initiative has revealed that the nation lost about $9bn to the violent activities of the Boko Haram insurgents in Borno, Yobe and Adamawa states.

      According to the committee, a strategic framework would soon be set up by President Muhammadu Buhari in line with his determination to rebuild the North-East.

      The Vice-Chairman of the PCNI, Alhaji Tijani Tumsah, said this on Thursday in Abuja, while briefing newsmen on the outcome of its inaugural meeting.

      According to him, the focus of the meeting was to discuss the mandate given to the PCNI to fashion out a way that would be most direct, in terms of the delivery of that mandate, analyse the enormity of the task and fulfil the presidential mandate to give succour to the people of the North-East.

      Tumsah said, “We are not investigating anybody; there are people who are investigating such diversions. I’m glad you mentioned the Senate, the House of Representatives, police and the EFCC. Our mandate, going forward, is to provide a strategic framework for the implementation of all interventions going into the North-East in terms of humanitarian works, resettlement and eventual rebuilding of the North-East.

    • Iran: Writer Jailed For Writing Unpublished Story

      On Monday, Iranian intelligence authorities broke the apartment door of writer and human rights activist Golrokh Ebrahimi Iraee, raided her apartment and took her by force to serve a 6 year prison sentence for writing a story on stoning women in Islam, that was never published.

      Golrokh Ebrahimi Iraee 35 years old, is the wife of political prisoner Arash Sadeghi, 36 who is now serving a 19 year prison sentence in Iranian prisons. The family has suffered much mistreatment since the 2009 disputed presidential election in Iran and have been in and out of prison. They have also lost their mother who had a stroke the minute the authorities raided their home in 2009.

    • Iran: Writer facing imminent imprisonment for story about stoning

      Iranian authorities must immediately repeal the conviction and sentence of Golrokh Ebrahimi Iraee, a writer and human rights activist who is due to begin serving six years in prison on charges including “insulting Islamic sanctities” through the writing of an unpublished story about the horrific practice of stoning, Amnesty International said today.

      “The charges against Golrokh Ebrahimi Iraee are ludicrous. She is facing years behind bars simply for writing a story, and one which was not even published – she is effectively being punished for using her imagination,” said Philip Luther, Research and Advocacy Director for the Middle East and North Africa at Amnesty International.

    • Woman recalls moment she was strip-searched by police aged 12

      A woman has described being strip-searched by police when she was 12 years old.

      Georgia Wood, now 20, said the officers were “horrible and demeaning” and the incident had “really affected” her life, leaving her lacking confidence and suffering panic attacks.

      Ms Wood was taken into police custody in south Wales eight years ago with her mother, who was suspected of possessing drugs.

      No illegal substances were found on Ms Wood or her mother, Karen Archer, who wasn’t charged with an offence.

      According to figures acquired by the BBC from 13 police forces in England and Wales, more than 5,000 children aged 17 and under were strip-searched between 2013 and 2015.

    • Saudi Arabia is preparing to behead and crucify a 21-year-old activist

      A young Saudi Arabian Shi’a activist, who was sentenced to death last year, has lost his final appeal for justice and is due to be executed by beheading, followed by the mounting of his headless body onto a crucifix for public viewing.

      Human rights groups and Saudi critics are appalled by both the nature of the execution and the flimsy case against Ali Mohammed al-Nimr, though neither of these factors are unusual in today’s Saudi Arabia.

    • Muslim women complain about Sharia inquiries

      More than 100 Muslim women have complained about their treatment under two government probes into Sharia law.

      The inquiries – one ordered by Theresa May when she was home secretary, and another by the home affairs select committee – are ongoing.

      But some women have signed an open letter and said the aim is to ban Sharia councils, not reform them.

      The Muslim Women’s Network UK said the inquiries risk treating women like “political footballs”.

      The councils are tribunals often used to settle disputes within the Muslim community.

      The first evidence session on Sharia councils is due to be held by the home affairs committee on Tuesday.

    • Sharia Courts interfered to protect domestic abusers, MPs told

      Leading figures from the UK’s Sharia councils will give evidence in parliament tomorrow, in the wake of accusations that a leading Sharia court has been protecting domestic abusers from criminal proceedings.

      The Home Affairs Select Committee has published written evidence submitted to it that is heavily critical of the Muslim Arbitration Tribunal (Mat) in Nuneaton, Warwickshire, in advance of its session on Tuesday. The Mat states on its website that it urges the Crown Prosecution Service to “reconsider” criminal charges brought against Muslim men accused of domestic violence.

      The Southall Black Sisters, a group that helps vulnerable women, have told the committee that the strategy of asking the CPS to “reconsider” cases is an “attempt to sabotage criminal proceedings”.

    • UK.gov’s pricey Five Year Plan to see off cyber thugs still in place

      UK Chancellor Philip Hammond is due to reaffirm a pledge to spend £1.9bn up until the end of 2020 to bolster the UK’s cyber security strategy in a speech early this afternoon.

      The updated strategy – which doesn’t include any new spending pledges1 – is expected to include an increase in focus on investment in automated defences to combat malware and spam emails, establish a fund earmarked to recruit 50 specialists to work on cybercrime at the National Crime Agency, the creation of a Cyber Security Research Institute and an “innovation fund” for cyber security startups. All this investment is needed because of increased threats from nation state attackers, terrorists and organised crime gangs, the Chancellor is expected to say.

    • Legislators Demand Answers From DOJ On Expanded Hacking Powers It’s Seeking

      There’s only a couple of months left until the DOJ’s proposed Rule 41 changes become law. All Congress has to do is nothing. This is a level of effort Congress is mostly amenable to. If this becomes law, worldwide deployments of malware/spyware during investigations will be unable to be challenged in court. In addition, the DOJ wants to be part of the cyberwar. It’s seeking permission to remotely access zombie computers/devices used in cyberattacks to “clean” them.

    • There’s no way your Facebook “check-in” is confusing North Dakota cops

      On Monday, supporters of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s protest against the Dakota Access Pipeline began a viral campaign enticing people to “check in” to the reservation on Facebook as a way to “overwhelm and confuse” local law enforcement.

      However, there is no evidence that this tactic is effective, particularly as the Morton County Sheriff’s Department expressly said on its own Facebook page that it “is not and does not follow Facebook check-ins for the protest camp or any location. This claim/rumor is absolutely false.”

      In recent months, activists have been protesting at the site on the border of North and South Dakota in an attempt to halt a planned oil pipeline that many believe would damage the local water supply and desecrate tribal lands.

      This Facebook plea is similar to calls in 2009, during the controversial presidential election in Iran, where supporters of the Green Movement urged people to change their Twitter location to Tehran. Similarly, there was no indication that this action mitigated local Iranian authorities’ ability to arrest protesters.

    • Turkey detains 13 journalists after mass firings of public servants

      Turkey has detained 13 journalists in an ongoing wave of government crackdowns following a coup attempt in July.
      Early Monday morning, Turkish police detained Murat Sabuncu, editor-in-chief of the newspaper Cumhuriyet, along with a dozen other reporters in a raid, according to official news agency Anadolu.

    • Branding Moderates as ‘Anti-Muslim’

      As if facing down violent Islamist fanatics isn’t enough, Muslim reformers now have to dodge attacks from the American left. Consider the Southern Poverty Law Center’s decision last week to brand two such reformers, Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Britain’s Maajid Nawaz, as “anti-Muslim extremists.”

    • Indonesian woman becomes latest person to be caned ‘for standing near boyfriend’

      A 20-year-old woman in Indonesia has been publicly caned for standing too close to her boyfriend, becoming the 14th person to be flogged this month in the same province.

      The unnamed woman was accused of breaking Islamic Sharia law, which strictly forbids unmarried couples to become intimate, and was flogged in front of a crowd in Banda Aceh province.

      She was escorted onto a stage outside a mosque wearing a headdress and was lashed with a cane.

      Incidents of the punishment have reportedly increased recently in Indonesia.

  • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

    • AT&T’s Already Making Things Up To Get Its Massive New Merger Approved

      Over the years, we’ve noted how AT&T has a nasty habit of lying to sell the public, press and regulators on the company’s neverending attempts to grow larger. Whether it’s promising broadband expansions that never arrive, or using astroturf to try and argue anti-consumer mergers are good for toddlers, AT&T’s lobbyists, lawyers, and policy tendrils work tirelessly to argue that up is down, black is white, and any skepticism of its claims are unfounded hysteria. As we saw with the blocked T-Mobile merger, this sort of behavior doesn’t work quite as well as it used to.

      Enter AT&T’s latest $85 billion planned acquisition of Time Warner. Consumer advocates worry AT&T could use its size and leverage to make content more expensive, while the usage caps and zero rating give AT&T’s own upcoming streaming video service an unfair market advantage. Wall Street hasn’t exactly been bullish on the idea either, noting how AT&T’s $69 billion acquisition of DirecTV, followed by its $85 billion acquisition of Time Warner is not only a giant risk on the eve of the cord cutting revolution, but it saddles AT&T with an absolute mountain of debt that will potentially damage the company’s credit rating.

    • Most of Canada’s Biggest Telecoms Want to End Net Neutrality

      On Monday, Canada’s federal telecommunications regulator debates the principle of net neutrality—the idea that every online service should be equally accessible in terms of connection speed and data costs.

      It’s fitting that this hearing takes place on Halloween, because the idea that one of Canada’s telecoms could favour a certain music streaming service, for example, over another—by making Spotify free to use, while Apple Music eats away at your data plan, for example—is pretty spooky.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • Sega/Steam Took Down A Bunch Of Legitimate Steam Workshop Mods Over Copyright Concerns

        We’ve talked often about how common it is for legitimate customers to get caught up in attempts to thwart piracy and copyright infringement. From DRM keeping legit purchasers from using what they paid for to Fair Use uses of content getting taken down by automatic systems on sites like YouTube, it’s worth noting whenever this happens. After all, there is an expression in the legal system that goes something like: I’d rather set 100 guilty people free than imprison a single innocent. The stakes when it comes to copyright aren’t as high as jail time, typically, but it’s interesting how little this mantra penetrates with those who would enforce copyright via carpet-bomb rather than a scalpel.

        Take the recent incident with Sega’s Steam Workshop mod-space, for instance, where dozens and dozens of mods within the platform suddenly disappeared.

      • My Talk At Wikimedia: Copyright Impacts Everything

        Last week, I mentioned that I was giving a talk at the Wikimedia Foundation about copyright. It was a fun time, and the video from the talk is now online. Unfortunately, the audio and the video are… not entirely great. I’d complain about the terrible microphone, but that sounds like a certain presidential candidate. The video is okay, but the colors are off, so my presentation looks a little weird. Either way, you should still be able to get the basics. There’s an introduction from Jan Gerlach at the Wikimedia Foundation, talking about all the important policy work they do, then my talk that runs about half an hour, followed by a Q&A with the audience that runs another half hour or so. It was a fun time, with a really great group of folks, and the conversation continued on after the official session ended for quite a while.

      • Supreme Court Asks White House To Weigh In On Dancing Baby Fair Use Case

        The copyright case involving Stephanie Lenz and her dancing baby is one that may finally be nearing a conclusion after many, many years — but it’s not over yet. As you may recall, Lenz posted a very brief clip of her then toddler, dancing along to a few seconds of a barely audible Prince song. This was almost a decade ago.

      • Copyright and cheerleaders at the Supreme Court

        Star Athletica v Varsity Brands involves copyright protection for cheerleader uniforms. The question asked is: What is the appropriate test to determine when a feature of a useful article is protectable under Section 101 of the Copyright Act?

        “It is important because the court may well strike out on a new course or at least throw its determinative hat in the ring on how to approach useful articles more generally,” says Robert Brauneis of The George Washington University Law School, who will be presenting the session.

      • Copyright on a Useful Item

        Today the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the pending copyright case of Star Athletica v. Varsity Brands. Although not a patent case, the issue involves the boundary line (if any) between patent and copyright and the “useful article” exception. Question Presented: What is the appropriate test to determine when a feature of a useful article is protectable under section 101 of the Copyright Act. The statutory test under Section 101 states that “the design of a useful article . . . shall be considered a pictorial, graphic, or sculptural work only if, and only to the extent that, such design incorporates pictorial, graphic, or sculptural features that can be identified separately from, and are capable of existing independently of, the utilitarian aspects of the article.”

      • Power Struggle In Russia As Internet Pirates Vie For Upper Hand

        The Russian intellectual property industry is on the verge of a new scandal. Following the recent arrest of Sergey Fedotov, head of the Russian Authors’ Society (RAS), Russia’s leading public association for the protection of intellectual property rights, on the charge of multi-million ruble thefts, the Russian police has announced the initiation of criminal proceedings against Maxim Ryabyko, head of the Russian Association for the Protection of Copyright on the Internet (RAPCI).

      • 86-Year Old Grandma Accused of Pirating a Zombie Game

        Since it’s become mandatory for ISPs to forward piracy notifications in Canada, hundreds of thousands of people have received letters over alleged copyright infringements. One of these accused pirates is an elderly woman, who’s threatened with $5,000 in potential damages for downloading a zombie game she’s never heard of.

      • ‘Shocked’ grandmother on hook for illegal mutant game download

        Post-nuclear war, mutant-killing video games are not Christine McMillan’s thing.

        But the 86-year-old from Ontario has been warned she could have to pay up to $5,000 for illegally downloading a game she’d never heard of.

        She is one of likely tens of thousands of Canadians who have received notices to pay up, whether they are guilty or not.

        “I found it quite shocking … I’m 86 years old, no one has access to my computer but me, why would I download a war game?” McMillan told Go Public.

        In May, she received two emails forwarded by her internet provider.

        They were from a private company called Canadian Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement (CANIPRE) claiming she had illegally downloaded Metro 2033, a first-person shooter game where nuclear war survivors have to kill mutants.​

      • Canada Copyright Troll Threatens Octogenarian Over Download Of A Zombie War Game

        Copyright trolling is somehow still a thing and it never seems to fail to provide ridiculous examples of miscarriages of justice. It has been long pointed out how rife with inaccuracy the process of threatening individuals with lawsuits and fines based on infringement as evidenced only by IP address is. Even courts have time and time again pointed out that an IP address is not sufficient to identify a person responsible for a given action. Yet the trolls still send out their threat letters, because bullying in this manner generally works.

        The latest example of this kind of trolling misfire comes from Canada, where 86-year-old Christine McMillan received a threat letter from CANIPRE over an alleged infringing download of Metro 2033, a game in which the player slaughters zombies in a post-nuclear world.

      • Pirate Party Books Election Victory in Iceland

        The Pirate Party in Iceland booked an important victory in the local parliamentary election today, scoring 14.5% of the total vote. While lower than most polls predicted, it marks the first time that a Pirate Party, anywhere in the world, has a serious shot at taking part in a government coalition.

      • Iceland’s Pirate Party Gains Ground in Election

        After near-constant exposure to the nausea-inducing dumpster fire that is the 2016 U.S. presidential race, it might be hard to grok that a movement of anti-establishment internet pirates has become one of the leading political parties of a small island nation.

        And yet that’s what’s happening in right now in Iceland, where the hacktivist-inspired Pirate Party achieved significant victories in the country’s parliamentary elections yesterday. Yesterday they won 14.5 percent of the popular vote, putting them in third place behind the center-right Independence Party and the Left-Green Movement, who won 29 percent and 15.9 percent of the vote respectively. (Earlier results showed them beating the Left-Green Movement for second place, but that changed as more votes were counted.)

        It wasn’t enough to seize majority control of the country as some polls for the extremely tight race were suggesting, but it was enough to win them 10 seats in the 63-seat parliament, up from the mere three they held after the 2013 elections. The formerly leading center-right Progressive Party, meanwhile, saw its seats drop by over half from 19 to eight, its dominance soundly trounced by the Pirates and the country’s smaller left-leaning parties: Left-Green, Bright Future, and Social Democrats. In the wake of the news, Icelandic prime minister and progressive Party member Sigurður Ingi Jóhannsson resigned Sunday.

      • EU Advocate General Declares That Hotels Don’t Need To Pay Copyright License To Have In-Room Television

        We’ve seen all manner of silly claims by copyright licensing groups as to what requires what kind of license in every kind of circumstance. These licensing groups have gone after children’s charities. A UK collection society had the strategy of calling up local businesses and demanding payments should they hear music playing in the background. The Author’s Guild once claimed that reading a book out loud constituted the need for a separate license, while ASCAP asserted with a straight face that the ring of a mobile phone was a public performance. This panoply of idiocy might be funny, except for the very real harm done through this kind of harassment.

        Even the good stories in this vein weigh heavily in that they are necessary at all. For instance, the advocate general for the EU’s Court of Justice recently wrote an opinion advising that hotels didn’t need a copyright license just to have televisions within guest rooms. It’s a good ruling, but conjures the frustrating question as to why it was needed in the first place. The answer, of course, is because a collection group was attempting to collect from hotels for just that reason.

10.31.16

The Insane World of Patent Maximalism and Professor Joshua Pearce’s Case for Weakening Patent Rights

Posted in America, Europe, Patents at 5:25 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

A Case for Weakening Patent Rights
A Case for Weakening Patent Rights [PDF] (shown above are the first five pages among 70 in total)

Summary: Patent scope is being broadened to the point where it has gone way too far and academics push back against this trend, warning that patents are not accomplishing what they were originally intended to accomplish

THE PATENT system in the US, notably the USPTO (one branch among several), seems to be improving. This is good news for the competitiveness of the US. Contrariwise, the EPO has become a menace/liability to Europe.

“The Supreme Court finally accepted that software patents are on abstract things and should thus not be granted anymore.”An “EPO Advertisement,” an EPO insider wrote to us, is “Another Pathetic Attempt By The #EPO @ Desperately Fishing For New Engineers & Scientists http://www.telecompaper.com/jobs/engineers-and-scientists-in-various-technical-fields–444 …” (this link/advertisement was mentioned here before).

We still have a lot of material that we wish to publish about the EPO, but today we wish to share assorted news from the US. Some of it relates to Europe, as we shall explain as we go along.

It doesn’t matter if and when you implement something in a patent (one could be a troll with no products at all, at least not anymore). Based on this, all that matters is the filing date. “Regardless of whether the Phillips statement is correct,” Patently-O wrote yesterday, “going forward for Post-AIA patents, the court should now eliminate “the time of the invention” from its claim construction process. Under the statute, all of the focus now is on the effective filing date with invention shifted to a mere historic element of the patenting process.”

“The Battistelli-led EPO wants to replace examiners with machines, so will machines too apply?”When patents cease to be viewed from the perspective of benefit to society or practical contribution we can expect them to become little more than trophies or a tool of taxation. Sadly, a lot of systems where low patent quality prevails (e.g. SIPO) are like that, with the US only belatedly tackling quality issues and the EPO getting worse over time. Another new article from Patently-O says that “the plaintiff stipulated that Merck’s Dr. Scholl’s process did not infringe and the case was dismissed.” In other words, the only one/s to benefit here would be legal representatives. What a wasteful system.

Regarding patent exhaustion, this recent article says that “[t]he Solicitor General’s recommendations make a cert. grant highly likely in this important case, which goes to the heart of two of the Supreme Court’s favorite patent topics: the scope of the patent right and the extraterritorial effect of U.S. patents. The strategic impact on large multinational businesses, complex licensing deals and so on is potentially enormous.”

“Will machines apply for patents, in order for them to be ‘examined’ by other machines and generate billions of ‘patents’? Where does this insanity end?”The Supreme Court finally accepted that software patents are on abstract things and should thus not be granted anymore. Why does the EPO fail to see this and actively encourages software patents in Europe these days (we gave about 4 examples so far this month). To make matters worse, also in relation to computer algorithms, some believe that Battistelli now envisions replacing patent examiners with deficient computer programs, as if human judgment can conveniently be swapped with a machine. Now, bear in mind that the following news is definitely not satire [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]. Computer-generated patents are now being entertained too, along the lines of online humour where computer-generated academic papers (complete gibberish) got accepted into conferences/journals (SCIgen about a decade ago). The Battistelli-led EPO wants to replace examiners with machines, so will machines too apply? Because of the practices of hedge funds and other bankers, a lot of so-called ‘financial trading’ these days is just machines talking to other machines (algorithms drive the vast majority of trading volume). Are the patent systems next? Will machines apply for patents, in order for them to be ‘examined’ by other machines and generate billions of ‘patents’? Where does this insanity end? How can humans even keep up with such a thing and stay abreast of new patents? If the patent system becomes more like the financial sector (i.e. just a bunch of machines talking with other machines, rigging the system), won’t that render the whole system obsolete?

Here is Watchtroll, a proponent of patent maximalism, saying that “It’s Time to Fix the Global Patent System Before It Breaks Under the Weight of New Applications”. To quote:

What’s happening? Simply put, patent offices are failing to keep up with the growth of the innovation economy and the resulting increase in patent applications. Unfortunately, the problem could easily get worse in coming years. Many patent offices apparently have yet to process applications from recent years, when huge increases in applications have occurred.

It’s a problem that threatens to undermine the global patent system, but what’s both encouraging and discouraging by turns is that it’s largely a basic problem of good governance. Many of the solutions to the problem are relatively straightforward. They require the application of sufficient resources and a willingness to hire an appropriate number of examiners and share work between patent offices. These solutions are a matter of political will and effective management, rather than complex policy. Some countries have shown the will to turn things around, and we hope others will follow.

When patent monopolies become so abundant rather than scarce fewer people can actually bother (or find the time) to read them. What has become of the system? Infinite growth (in the pace of granting) isn’t indicative of faster innovation, just greater lenience and patent office greed. This system will basically kill itself unless it stops and puts barriers on patent scope so as to improve patent quality.

Here is a very recent Patently-O article titled “Bad Patents and the False Claims Act”. An excerpt:

The False Claims Act provides special incentives for whistleblowers to uncover fraud against the U.S. Government. The Act authorizes the whistleblower to file a qui tam lawsuit on behalf of the Government and then receive a cut of any recovered damages. See 31 U.S.C. §§ 3729–3733. The whistleblower here LDPFC appears to be a branch of the hedge fund Foxhill Capital.

This case involves Allergan/Forrest Labs U.S. Patent No. 6,545,040 that is listed in the FDA Orange Book as covering the drug Bystolic. The basic false claims argument is that the market price of Bystolic is high because of the patent coverage – but the patent is (allegedly) invalid. If true, this means that Medicare, Medicaid, and the VA hospitals are all paying more than they should for the drug. As stated by the complaint: “The current market price for Nebivolol (Bystolic) is a false price because the ‘040 patent is invalid.”

Although the legal theory makes sense, the facts may get in the way: Is the patent invalid (PTAB says its close, but no) and, if it is invalid – did the patentee have knowledge of the invalidity?

PTAB, as we wrote yesterday, is the best hope of the US patent system right now. It cleans up the mess left by excess. Among patents that have not expired yet, PTAB might be able to find hundreds of thousands that need to be invalidated (before they even reach the court, if ever). Sent to us from Prof. Joshua Pearce earlier this month was his new paper [PDF] titled “A Case for Weakening Patent Rights”.

“Among patents that have not expired yet, PTAB might be able to find hundreds of thousands that need to be invalidated (before they even reach the court, if ever).”It sure looks like academics too are getting it. They also seem to agree with what Techrights has been saying for about a decade. Too many patents in too many domains do more harm than good.

Looking at the news, here is a very recent story about amicable resolution to a patent dispute:

LG Electronics said Miele was infringing patents for so-called steam washing machines and has sent a letter demanding that the German domestic appliance maker stop using the technology, setting an end-October deadline for a response.

Miele has been and is willfully infringing on LG’s patents, LG said in the letter, sent last week and seen by Reuters.

“In the interest of finding an amicable resolution of this matter, we are open to having an in-person meeting in November to discuss how to resolve this matter,” the company wrote.

The idea of willful infringing in the area of washing machines may make sense; after all, there aren’t hundreds of thousands of patents on washing machines, unlike software. It’s actually possible to keep track of patents pertaining to washing machines. That’s what the patent system was made for and we are not challenging patents in the physical domain (like mechanics). See also the article “Pure Storage agrees $30m patent litigation settlement with Dell” (via “this year’s highest damages awards”). This is about hardware, not software.

“It sure looks like academics too are getting it. They also seem to agree with what Techrights has been saying for about a decade.”Compare that to news about surveillance patents and patents on impossible (or fictional) things. What on Earth is that?

These patents exist “because patents are paper tigers,” Benjamin Henrion wrote, “no working prototypes required.”

Not much novelty is required either, especially when patent offices make “production” their primary goal, choosing quantity over quality.

“The idea of willful infringing in the area of washing machines may make sense; after all, there aren’t hundreds of thousands of patents on washing machines, unlike software. It’s actually possible to keep track of patents pertaining to washing machines.”Henrion said this in response to IBM’s Manny Schecter, a proponent of software patents. “If the quantum space engine is impossible,” he wrote, “how can it be patented?”

So suddenly even Schecter realises that patent scope has gone way too far? See this new article titled “The latest patent for the ‘impossible’ EM Drive has just been made public – and it’s wild” (from Science Alert).

A patent on something which is not even possible shows what some patent systems have sunk to. Yet Schecter fails to see his own double standard. On a separate day he wrote: “US #patent 9464453 is for a themed cemetery! We need to promote software innovation more than theme innovation-software must be patentable.”

“A patent on something which is not even possible shows what some patent systems have sunk to.”Well, IBM is still promoting and lobbying for software patents while suing small companies using such patents. The above “must not be patentable,” Henrion told Schecter. “Freedom of programming is not for sale.”

Well, policy is up for sale in the US. That’s why we’re still seeing the sordid legacy of software patents there. That’s why the US attracted or created so many patent trolls. Earlier this month I had a whole (and long) article written about me, the messenger, as I criticise software patents and this upsets some people. I guess that the software patents proponents would rather not tackle the message and instead go ad hominem. It’s OK, I got used to that. What patent software proponents don’t get is, if they dislike me, then I must be doing something right. I don’t try to be liked by people whose agenda is the opposite of mine. █

The World Comes Tumbling Down for Software Patents and Patent Trolls

Posted in America, Patents at 4:15 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Weeping-angel

Summary: News analysis regarding the state of software patents as well as patent trolls that heavily depend on such patents and on highly biased courts which are based in Texas

EARLY in the month we wrote a variety of articles about Intellectual Ventures v Symantec, which was an important CAFC-level case that may have spelled the doom/end of software patents in the US. Today we bring together and present a potpourri of coverage related to this.

Free Software Foundation on the Effect/Impact for Free/Open Source Software

Now too long ago the Free Software Foundation (FSF) wrote about this case, saying that the judge “provides a strong case against software patent”. To quote:

Mayer lays out the First Amendment argument against patentability of certain subjects, noting that limits on the subject matter of patents are meant to protect free expression. Under U.S. law, 35 U.S.C § 101 (section 101) lays out the scope of patentable subject matter. In analysing this section, courts have carved out certain subjects as being outside the scope of patentability so as to protect freedom of expression. In particular, abstract ideas and mental process have been found too threatening to the free exchange of ideas to permit them to be locked up in patents. After outlining the basics, Mayer goes on to state that “Most of the First Amendment concerns associated with patent protection could be avoided if this court were willing to acknowledge that Alice sounded the death knell for software patents.”

Discussion Everywhere This Month

Recently, TechDirt dedicated a whole audiocast to the subject and titled it “Death Knell For Software Patents”. Obviously, as expected, patent law firms are still bemoaning the (almost) end of software patents and here we have Manatt Phelps & Phillips LLP remarking on the second anniversary of Alice, which is actually almost 2.5 years old by now. The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit’s (CAFC) mea culpa, as one might put it, is admitting that making software patents possible was a horrible mistake. Here is Christine Hall’s article about it, titled “Federal Judge Says Alice ‘Death Knell for Software Patents.’”

It’s not time to break out the champagne just yet, but opponents of software patents might have cause to be hopeful. There’s now a federal judge that openly agrees with them.

This isn’t just any judge, but a judge sitting on the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC), which hears all patent appeals. He’s also not some bright-eyed newcomer to patent law. He was appointed to the Federal Circuit in 1987, where he was Chief Judge from 1997-2004.

On Friday, CAFC ruled that three patents Intellectual Ventures was attempting to use against Trend Micro and Symantec were invalid as they didn’t describe anything patentable. Although the ruling was pretty much business-as-usual and wasn’t unexpected, a concurring opinion by Judge Haldane Mayer went into uncharted waters. Alice Corporation versus CLS Bank International, he said, ended software patents.

“Alice” was the 2014 case in which the Supreme Court ruled that an abstract idea that “does no more than require a generic computer to perform generic computer functions” is not patentable. At the time of the ruling, many thought it would seem to invalidate almost all software patents, except that the Supreme Court bent over backwards to say otherwise within the ruling.

Judge Mayer spent 13 pages addressing software patent issues on several different fronts. For starters, he said they pose a First Amendment problem. “Patents, which function as government-sanctioned monopolies, invade core First Amendment rights when they are allowed to obstruct the essential channels of scientific, economic, and political discourse.”

It’s the free speech issues that led him to the conclusion that “Alice,” in effect, outlawed most if not all such patents. “Most of the First Amendment concerns associated with patent protection could be avoided if this court were willing to acknowledge that Alice sounded the death knell for software patents,” he wrote.

An article by Scott Graham of The Recorder has been titled “Software Patents on Shaky Ground With Federal Circuit in Case After Case” and it is no longer behind a paywall (a two-page short article).

Also see “Federal Circuit Finds Three Intellectual Venture’s Patents Invalid under the Mayo/Alice Framework” — an article that uses more legalese:

The Federal Circuit recently decided a case concerning three patents owned by Intellectual Ventures I LLC (“IV”). Intellectual Ventures I LLC v. Symantec Corp., Case Nos. 2015-1769, 2015-1770, 2015-1771 (Fed. Cir. Sept. 30, 2016). The district court had invalidated U.S. Patent Nos. 6,460,050 (‘050) and 6,073,142 (‘142) and found that Claim 7 of U.S. Patent No. 5,987,610 (‘610) was patent eligible. The district court had also found that Symantec Corp. (“Symantec”) infringed Claim 7 of the ‘610 patent, leading to an $8 million judgment. On appeal, the Federal Circuit held that all three patents were patent-ineligible under 35 U.S.C. § 101.

Patent Law Firms Partly in Denial

Software patents are still being squashed (we covered new examples last night), but their proponents try to find hope. “Alice/101 Patent Invalidity Rate at the Federal Circuit Is 91.4% of Patents Rendered Ineligible,” one patent attorney notes in relation to the statistics presented in Bilski Blog and “I think its the Fed. Dist. Cts. w/>50% 101 Valid Patents; The CAFC is still killing >90% of patents in 101 appealed cases,” he added. This was said in relation to Dan Barsky’s claim that “[f]or the first time since Alice the Fed Circuit has held more #patents valid than invalid @CAFCPatentDaily #intellectualproperty” (incorrect!)

They are both citing Bilski Blog (as above), which has tracked all these cases pretty exhaustively. Their problem is that CAFC and SCOTUS are a lot more potent or influential than other courts, especially those that are in Texas. Here we have Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett & Dunner LLP expressing concern about the decision and another new article about CAFC, this time dealing with the tightening of patent scope in another area:

The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has affirmed the Patent Trial and Appeal Board’s (PTAB) decision to reject a patent application centring on an influenza drug.

Relenza (zanamivir) is a treatment for infection by an influenza virus, and was invented by Constantin Efthymiopoulos, who had applied for a patent relating to methods of administering the drug through inhalation.

One of the rejected claims states that zanamivir should be administered by inhalation through the mouth alone.

Has CAFC finally realised that patent maximalism is not desirable? Lawyers from Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett & Dunner LLP certainly understand that they cannot patent everything under the Sun and here is what they say in a new article about Mayo/Alice:

In Affinity Labs of Texas, LLC v. DirecTV, LLC, Nos. 2015-1845-48 (Fed. Cir. Sept. 23, 2016), the Federal Circuit affirmed a district court order granting a motion to dismiss, holding that the asserted patent, directed to wireless streaming of regional broadcast signals to cell phones located outside the service region, was invalid based on lack of patentable subject matter.

In applying the first step of Mayo/Alice—determining whether the claim is directed to a patent ineligible concept (i.e., abstract idea)—the Court held the claimed invention was an abstract idea and “entirely functional in nature.” The Court found that missing from the claims was how to implement out-of-region broadcasting on a cell phone, and the specification was similarly deficient and in fact underscored the abstract nature of the invention.

Other law firms’ pessimistic notes on the likely end of software patents are worth taking stock of. On the 19th of the month Hodgson Russ LLP published a “A Silver Lining for Software Patents” and Wolf Greenfield & Sacks PC said that “It is Still Possible to Patent Software”, even though it is a lot harder and probably too risky to be worthwhile.

Reprinted with limitations by Amanda Ciccatelli under the same headline (in the form of “news”), we now have “Is Software Patentable?” To quote:

This case could have a significant impact for tech companies and startups if courts continue to take the Alice ruling to mean that software patents are null. So, what might this mean for the future of the tech industry? Brett Schuman, a partner in Goodwin’s IP Litigation Group, and an expert in patent law for startup and emerging growth companies, spoke to Inside Counsel about these questions and other Intellectual Property issues.

Well, startups don’t need software patents; it’s what lots patent trolls sue them out of existence with. Patent lawyers’ media lies about it.

Denelle Dixon Thayer, writing about the latest major CAFC ruling, says that “Software patents preventing free expression online” (as per the decision from the judge). To quote:

Should someone be able to get a monopoly on concepts for software? What if those concepts cover the basic pieces of something as important as the Internet? These are the type of questions constantly debated in the software industry, the patent office and the courts. What is generally overlooked, however, is the very real impact that software patents can have on freedom of expression. The Internet as a software platform is the largest channel of free expression in existence today. So the question we all need to consider now is how much do software patents restrain the rights protected under the First Amendment.

The Internet isn’t a single, uniform system. Rather, it’s a massive, collaboratively created platform, a large part of which is based on open software. It relies on multiple people and companies developing numerous pieces of software that must communicate with each other to work. Because patents allow a single person or company to exclude everyone else, a patent monopolizing basic Internet functionality causes enormous damage to the core of how the Internet is built and functions – the very thing that enables the Internet as a medium for expression on such a huge scale. Both Congress and the courts have recognized this kind of tension and accounted for it in the context of copyright and trademark law. Unfortunately, U.S. patent law has few built-in protections to ensure that patent monopolies do not overreach and restrict free expression.

Last week, achieving this critical balance between patents and free expression hit a crucial milestone. Judge Mayer in the Federal Circuit (the US court that hears patent appeals cases) wrote in a concurring opinion that patents directed at software running on generic computers can violate the First Amendment by creating barriers to communication, discourse, and the exchange of ideas online. In his opinion, he recognized that software and the Internet are widely-used, basic tools for expression. Mayer went further to declare that they are “essential channels of scientific, economic, and political discourse.”

An article by James M. Singer (Fox Rothschild LLP) said that “Federal Circuit Invalidates Three Software Patents; Judge Mayer Calls For Ban On All Software Patents”. From the opening parts:

In the past few months, the Federal Circuit reversed a two-year trend of overturning software patents by publishing three decisions that outlined various parameters in which software can be eligible for patenting. In those decisions (described in previous IP Spotlight posts published here and here) the court cautioned that not all improvements in computer-related technology are inherently abstract. It also said that when assessing patent-eligibility, one must be careful to not use patent-eligibility to invalidate a claim when the real issue with the claim is obviousness.

An article by Russ White has a misleading headline, “The Future of Software Patents” — as if there’s much of a future to them now…

At this point, software patents still stand in the United States. The reasoning of the primary and concurring opinion, however, is likely to be picked up by other courts, potentially reducing (or eliminating, over time) the enforceability of software patents. Since I’m not a legal scholar, I’m not going to comment on the overall likelihood of software patents becoming less than useful. Instead, what I’d like to think through is what the reaction of the network engineering world might be.

A survey taken by patent lawyers in site that targets them says software patents are not dead. But that’s like asking about Donald Trump in Fox News. The audience is already a subsection of the population which has biases/convictions. “Responding to WIPR’s recent survey,” WIPR wrote, “100% of readers disagreed with Mayer’s opinion.”

Well, obviously this means that people who profit from patents don’t like a decision against them. “100% of readers disagreed with Mayer’s opinion,” says the article, but it does not specify the number or respondents. Could be 8. Could be 80. Anything…

Intellectual Ventures and Other Patent Trolls in the News

Dealing with the troll (not company) that caused the latest panic among law firms, Bastian Best tries to defend it by saying: “Another example of the ” #patenttroll = patent owner I don’t like” argument” (or maybe he alludes to universities that feed Intellectual Ventures).

Actually, the core argument is that a patent troll — in this case the world’s biggest (which is also Microsoft-connected) — picks up all the patents and universities facilitate it. “Well,” Benjamin Henrion responded, Intellectual Venture “has many fans among some communities.”

Found via IPRsLaw was the context of it all — an article by the EFF that cites an analysis of Intellectual Ventures. Remember that it was Microsoft that created this monster, Intellectual Ventures, and the EFF urges people to “Tell your university: don’t sell patents to trolls.” Here is their source (which contains a lot of information):

To answer this, I have scraped the names of the original assignees for each of the U.S. patents in the portfolio from patent records (see annotated patents list). The analysis shows that nearly 500 of IV’s patents originally belonged to universities, including state schools (see Figure 1 and university-derived patents list).

The EFF mentioned this chart later on as well and the EFF’s Vera Ranieri said that “Patent Forum Shopping Must End” in relation to the VENUE Act:

As we’ve detailed on many occasions, forum shopping is rampant in patent litigation. Last year, almost 45% of all patent cases were heard in the Eastern District of Texas, a sparsely populated region of Texas probably more well-known as the birthplace of George Foreman than for any technological industry. EFF, along with Public Knowledge, has filed an amicus brief in TC Heartland v. Kraft, urging the Supreme Court to hear a case that could end forum shopping in patent cases.

The case is one of statutory interpretation. Prior to 1990, the Supreme Court had long held that in patent cases, the statute found at 28 U.S.C. § 1400 controlled where a patent case could be filed. However, in 1990 in a case called VE Holding, the Federal Circuit held that a small technical amendment to another venue statute—28 U.S.C. § 1391—effectively overruled this long line of cases. VE Holding, together with another case called Beverly Hills Fan, means that companies that sold products nationwide can be sued in any federal court in the country on charges of patent infringement, regardless of how tenuous the connection to that court. TC Heartland first asked the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit to revisit its law. EFF also supported TC Heartland at that court. The Federal Circuit declined the invitation.

More recently, the EFF’s Elliot Harmon said that “Patent Trolls Undermine Open Access”. To quote this newer analysis:

Patent Trolls Undermine Open Access

This Open Access Week, the global open access community has a lot to celebrate. Hundreds of universities around the world have adopted open access policies asking faculty to publish their research in open access journals or archive them in open repositories. A few years ago, open access publishing was barely recognized on the fringes of science; now, it’s mainstream. Three years after the White House’s groundbreaking open access memo, we may be on the verge of passing an open access law.

Again and again, we’ve seen how making the results of scientific research available to everyone is good for innovation. Innovators should be able to use and build upon the most up-to-date scientific research, regardless of whether they have the budgets and institutional connections necessary to access expensive journal subscriptions and academic databases—particularly when that research was paid for with public funds.

Shooting the messenger is the tactic used by Bastian Best again. “Another one-sided viewpoint by EFF,” he calls it, which is actually more polite than Watchtroll put it. In this particular case, the EFF agrees with Red Hat, whose “EVP speaks out on patent litigation abuse in EDTX”. To quote Red Hat based on this new article:

Help slow the drag with patent venue reform

As our country and North Carolina look to accelerate the growth of our economy and expand its reach to all citizens, one issue has been a continuing drag: abusive patent litigation.

One prevalent tactic of abusers is to haul companies into virtually any district court in the United States, including those far away and those in locations that have nothing to do with where you do business.

Under current patent law, infringement suits can be brought in courts with no or little connection to the parties in the litigation. “Patent trolls” use this weakness in the system to select the courts well-known for their friendliness to patent suits.

For most of these patent trolls, their court of choice is the Eastern District Court of Texas (EDTX), which has been the No. 1 venue for bringing patent suits for nearly a decade. The EDTX saw 44 percent of all patent infringement cases filed in the entire U.S. in 2015, with one judge overseeing more than a quarter of all cases – twice as many as the next most active patent judge.

As a home-grown, global company headquartered in North Carolina that has been recognized as one of the world’s most innovative companies, Red Hat has repeatedly been forced into court in the EDTX. We have no office there; we do no business from there. The patent litigation abusers have minimal contact there, sometimes just a small office. But they go for a leg up in that district, given its reputation.

Red Hat and other companies have tried to move cases to where we can get a fair hearing, but the rules to change venue don’t easily allow that. We believe patent infringement suits, just as other types of suits, should be heard in judicial districts that have a reasonable connection to the dispute.

They basically strive to limit the ability of trolls to choose Texas. Here is a TC Heartland Law Professor Amicus Brief, submitted by “Mark Lemley, Colleen Chien, Brian Love, and Arti Rai” against such patent trolling (mostly in Texas). To quote Patently-O:

From a policy perspective, the case is seen as a vehicle for defendants who do not like being sued in the Eastern District of Texas and into more venues perceived as more defendant friendly.

A group of 50+ law and economics professors led by Mark Lemley, Colleen Chien, Brian Love, and Arti Rai have filed an important brief in support of the TC Heartland petition that I have copied below. Their position is (1) the Federal Circuit has erred on interpreting the law; and (2) the permissive venue result has fueled many of the problems of our patent system.

Patent trolls don’t make as many headlines as they used to, but when they do, it’s about celebrities like Justin Timberlake and Britney Spears. This too is about Texas and Joe Mullin explains:

It’s getting easier than ever for defendants to win fees in patent cases, especially against “non-practicing entities” with no products. But don’t tell that to pop stars Justin Timberlake and Britney Spears.

The two celebrities and their respective production companies were sued by an entity called Large Audience Displays Systems, LLC (or LADS for short) back in 2009.

The patent-holder who came after them is Darrell Metcalf, the inventor of US Patent No. 6,669,346, which describes a way of displaying video images on massive, arced screens. Metcalf, who lives in California, set up an East Texas LLC called Large Audience Display Systems (or LADS for short) back in 2009, then sued the pop stars in that venue, along with the LA Lakers and the band Pussycat Dolls.

The case was transferred to California in 2011. The judge promptly put the case on hold at the defendants’ request, while the patents were under reexamination at the US Patent Office. Ultimately, the office rejected all the patent claims.

The USPTO is asleep at the wheel and it was granting software patents almost all the time. No wonder all this chaos has been happening. Trolls depend a great deal on software patents and they prey on software patents; it’s tempting to think that headlines like “Did trolls cost Twitter $3.5bn and its sale?” speak about/allude to patent trolls, but these actually speak of Internet trolls and Twitter happens to be a frequent target of patent trolls, too (patent trolls are a huge problem for them). Professor James Bessen, an academic who writes a lot about the subject, wrote about this new report. “Major breakthrough “Invention” cues new video after you finish another,” he said, in relation to the following news:

These days, it seems like software patents are falling down right and left. Hundreds of them have been invalidated by US federal judges since the Supreme Court’s 2014 Alice Corp v. CLS Bank. decision, and more patent-holders are getting sanctioned for their behavior in court. The economics of the patent-trolling business are changing in fundamental ways, and lawsuits are down.

It’s tempting to think the whole mess is going to dry up and blow away—but the lawsuits coming from companies like Bartonfalls LLC show that some patent lawyers are going to keep on partying like it’s 2009. Bartonfalls is a shell company formed in the patent hotspot of East Texas, and it sued 14 big media companies on October 11 over US Patent No. 7,917,922.

This is a software patent that really ought to be invalidated. Maybe it will.

Speaking of patent trolls that rely on software patents, see this relatively new article from Mother Jones:

Meet America’s Most Prolific Patent Troll

[...]

So if you send notifications telling customers that their orders have been filled, S&T will sue you for $25,000. Why? Because they claim to have patented this idea if it’s done via some kind of computer network. In all this time, however, the patent has never been tested in court. It’s never been worth anyone’s time.

This. Is. Ridiculous. If you call your customer on the phone, it’s fine. If you send them an email, you’ll get sued. It’s hard to conceive of anything stupider.

This was also covered by the Wall Street media, under the heading which puts it in perspective (based on one criterion among others):

America’s Biggest Filer of Patent Suits Wants You to Know It Invented Shipping Notification

Like almost every online retailer, Spice Jungle LLC emails tracking numbers to customers when they place orders. That’s why the small firm was dumbfounded when it received a demand to pay $25,000 for the right to do so.

There are several aspects to some of these latest developments; one major aspect is software patenting and another is patent trolling, both of which are tied together by causality and other correlations which we covered here before.

We are gratified to see that the USPTO and the US patent system (in general) is improving these days, unlike the EPO. █

10.30.16

FTC Slams Patent Assertion Entities (PAEs), Effectively Patent Trolls, Which Are a Growing Problem in Europe

Posted in America, Europe, Patents at 3:43 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Some baseball bats

Summary: A look at remnants of coverage of the recent FTC report as it relates to a new report from European officials

SEVERAL weeks ago the FTC released a very important report that criticised patent trolls, specifically the patent assertion (PAE) type.

Watchtroll protects patent trolls, as usual, saying that this report is “Doing More Harm Than Good”; then again, did we expect anything else from proponents of trolling and their denialists?

Here is the coverage from IP Watch (behind paywall). What this article means by “some” is the patent microcosm, e.g. trolls’ front groups and clients/representatives (patent lawyers).

“The EPO and UPC certainly make the patent trolls lick their lips.”Well, citing this article that we mentioned on Wednesday early in the month, “The behavior of Litigation PAEs is consistent with nuisance litigation” says FTC, according to this tweet.

Carlo Piana (European lawyer, mostly for Free/Open Source projects) says this “means ask settlement money < upfront unrecoverable litigation cost. Experienced that. Parasites.”

The problem is, as we noted in our previous post, that PAEs have come to Europe and this one person says “Patent Assertion Entities (aka patent trolls) in Europe http://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/bitstream/JRC103321/jrc103321%20online%20version.pdf …”

This is actually the report that we wrote about yesterday in relation to Battistelli. It’s a 149-pages long report.

The EPO and UPC certainly make the patent trolls lick their lips. █

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