11.02.11

Links – E-Tyranny Acts

Posted in Site News at 12:02 am by Guest Editorial Team

Reader’s Picks

• Hardware

  • Whats good for the Goose should be good for the Gander

    Just as many of you would be upset if you where told that desktop (or laptop) you bought had to keep it’s default operating system I am more than a little annoyed that a good deal of the ARM hardware out there comes with this stipulation attached.

• Health/Nutrition

  • Why the Food Movement Should Occupy Wall Street.

    Rampant Wall Street speculation on commodities is driving up food costs, small farmers are being driven off their land, and agribusiness holds monopoly control of our seeds and stores. In this climate, the struggle against massive wealth disparities, unregulated financial institutions, and excessive corporate power is our struggle as well.

• Defence/Police/Aggression

  • Occupy Wall Street: Police Use Teargas on Protestors in Oakland and Atlanta

    [YouTube]

  • Syria continues to shoot protesters.

  • Guantanamo does not give prisoners a fair trial and is functioning more like a cover up of US torture elsewhere.

• Environment/Energy/Wildlife

  • Is the EPA Selling Out Your Water?

    Nancy Stoner, the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) acting assistant administrator for water, is an advocate for water privatization … “I think there’s big money in to be made in how to address the water resources needs for our country, particularly when we are going to have population growth, development, the decay of existing infrastructure and climate change”

    Unbelievable.

  • A new study shows Japanese government underestimated Fukushima release by about half.
    

    “They really took a global view and used all the data available,” says De Geer. … The differences between the two studies may seem large, notes Yukio Hayakawa, a volcanologist at Gunma University who has also modelled the accident, but uncertainties in the models mean that the estimates are actually quite similar.

    Previous estimates showed releases on the order of or more than Chernobyl, this one has it considerably more.

• Finance

  • 5% Cuts to Medicaid would cost tens of thousands of jobs around the US

    No mention is made of what this would do to already inadequate medical care.

• Anti-Trust

  • Facebook-Led Consortium Plans to Remake Big Computing

    It could also be called the Chinese government network infrastructure, anti-Google big computing consortium.

    It also looks like Open Washing.

  • Facebook buys and shuts down Beluga messaging service.

    So it goes with non free software.

  • HP to Kill WebOS

  • Apple threatens Samsung tablet sellers

    The Federal Court has agreed to fast-track Samsung Electronics’ appeal against a ban on its Galaxy Tab 10.1 as Apple goes after online sellers who are still selling the tablet despite the injunction.

• PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

  • Police spy tricked lover with activist ‘cover story’

    Another undercover police officer, Peter Black, said sex was a widely used “tool” to gain the trust of activists when he was deployed in the 1990s. … In most cases, the police officers developed long-term relationships and their subsequent disappearance left women feeling traumatised and angry. … police spies are known to have been having relationships with activists as recently as last year, as part of a secret police operation to monitor political activists that has been in place since the late 1960s.

    The rich and powerful view the rest of us as tools to be exploited and abused without limit. That such behavior would be demanded by police supervisors is just as exploitative as the behavior itself.

• Censorship

  • Founder Says WikiLeaks, Starved of Cash, May Close

    … a 10-month-old “financial blockade” had sharply reduced the donations on which it depends. Calling the blockade a “dangerous, oppressive and undemocratic” attack led by the United States, Mr. Assange said at a news conference here that it had deprived his organization of “tens of millions of dollars,” and warned, “If WikiLeaks does not find a way to remove this blockade, we will not be able to continue by the turn of the new year.”

    Caution: this is a NYT article which falls below Truthout’s usual research standards and cluelessly casts doubt on Mr. Assange in several places, but we can believe that Wikileaks is under financial distress because of a US led financial blockade. The E-Parasite act will normalize this kind of blockade.

  • Facebook or Aaron Barr style infiltrators are censoring OWS protests pages on Facebook

    Facebooks owners include Microsoft and Communist China, so it is no surprise that real activists have trouble using it but the TOS are complex enough to make censorship appear accidental. The great Firewall of China uses similar techniques to monitor and control conversation.

  • EFF: Bloggers Under Fire

    One of the most grave threats to free expression in many countries these days is the intimidation and persecution of bloggers and online journalists. The effects are often far-reaching as bloggers are scared into silence.

  • US Citizens should sign the EFF petition against Internet Blacklists

  • Police requested Google remove YouTube videos showing police brutality. In the case cited, Google refused.

• Privacy

  • India wants to wiretap all Blackberries.

    It’s not free software, so you should assume that it’s already wire tapped.

  • An insurance company tried and Failed to get a Facebook user’s password.

    The court noted that State Farm’s requests are more than a fishing expedition. The interrogatory that sought the name, address and telephone number of each of plaintiff’s friends was “so far outside the realm of discoverable information” that the court concludes it was intended to “intimidate and harass plaintiff.” Parties have gotten out-of-control in seeking social networking profile information.

    We can imagine that Facebook already sold the insurance company the information, because insurance companies have used Facebook information to terminate benefits, but they were unable to produce the perceived dirt in a court without this password request charade. Don’t use Facebook.

• Civil Rights

  • Native American children are stripped from their homes for Federal money

• Intellectual Monopolies

  • RMS on Steve Jobs, 27 October 2011 (Steve Jobs)

    Washington’s statement was harsher than mine. He criticized Mayor Daley as a person; I criticized Jobs’ public activity. … The important thing about Jobs is what he directed Apple to do to those who are still living: to make general-purpose computers with digital handcuffs more controlling and unjust than ever before. He designed them to refuse even to let users install their own choice of applications — and installing free (freedom-respecting) applications is entirely forbidden. He even tried to make it illegal to install software not approved by Apple. …Jobs also made it a personal crusade to attack Android with software patents. … Jobs’ final legacy may be the patent disaster we have warned about for 20 years.

    As usual, Mr. Stallman’s writing are worth reading in their entirety.

  • Oppose the E-Tyranny Act

    Various intellectual monopolies are used to justify censorship and business method monopolies, as we should expect from the confused or malicious people who use the term “IP”

  • The White House has insultingly ignored the petition against software patents by claiming nothing can be done.

    the USPTO can err on the side of rejecting software patents—indeed it has been doing just that to a limited extent. Over time, such rejections, if upheld by the courts, could shift the law in a less software-patent-friendly direction. … If the White House became convinced that software patents were detrimental to the American economy, it could begin filing briefs encouraging the Supreme Court to reinstate its original original ban on software patents.

  • Trademarks

    • On Blogging, Threats, and Silence

      They want you to shrink down very small inside a box where you think they can’t find you.’ And it works. I see it happening all the time; blogs go dark, or disappear entirely, or stop covering certain subjects. … And when it happens to people for the first time, they think they are alone, because they don’t realise how widespread and insidious it is. …

  • Copyrights

    • Meet the Real Parasites: Congress Declares Nuclear War on the Global Internet

      While Congress can’t seem to act in a bipartisan manner to do anything to help the 99% that really need it, the two parties are managing to join hands to help crush freedom on the Net — yes, they are equally culpable in this Orwellian thrust. … The fact that Congress in a bipartisan manner is willing to even consider such abominations is a travesty that we must not, can not ignore or forget.

    • E-PARASITE Bill: ‘The End Of The Internet As We Know It’

      Now I understand why Rep. Zoe Lofgren’s first reaction to this bill was to say that “this would mean the end of the Internet as we know it.” She’s right. The more you look at the details, the more you realize how this bill is an astounding wishlist of everything that the legacy entertainment gatekeepers have wanted in the law for decades and were unable to get.

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