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12.31.16

2016 in Review and Plans for 2017

Posted in Site News at 9:33 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

A look back and a quick look at the road ahead

Summary: A look back and a quick look at the road ahead, as 2016 comes to an end

TECHRIGHTS turned 10 earlier this year (only to experience DDOS attack on the day, so planned celebrations got delayed). It also reached a milestone of 20,000 blog posts back in February.

“Nokia, being a European company, represents the growing threat of patent trolls in Europe — a threat which the UPC threatened to make ever more real and concrete.”Aside from that, in 2016 we got the EPO‘s management on the defensive. They are losing the battle (Brexit pretty much axed the UPC’s prospects, too) and in 2017 we hope to get the EPO (the one people respected) back on track.

Joe Mullin, a good journalist who has been writing a lot about patent trolls for nearly a decade, has just listed “most dramatic patent and copyright cases of 2016″, ending the list with the news that came in just before Christmas. He writes that “Nokia has backed out of the smartphone business, but is still licensing its patents, so the two companies are back at war. Nokia has sued Apple over patents in 11 different countries. Meanwhile, Apple has filed an antitrust lawsuit against Nokia, accusing the Finnish firm of working together with “patent-assertion entities”—a.k.a. patent trolls—to “maximize the royalties that can be extracted from product companies.””

“Combative attitude against us, including routine DDOS attacks, certainly toughened us and we are prepared to do whatever it takes to get truth out.”Nokia, being a European company, represents the growing threat of patent trolls in Europe — a threat which the UPC threatened to make ever more real and concrete.

In 2017 we intend to continue to write about the EPO, highlight the woes associated with patent trolls, combat software patents, and highlight patent attacks on Free/Open Source software. 2017 will be a continuation of this past year. We intend to leak more and to escalate the tone where necessary. Combative attitude against us, including routine DDOS attacks, certainly toughened us and we are prepared to do whatever it takes to get truth out. █

Links 31/12/2016: Firefox 52 Improves Privacy, Tizen Comes to Middle East

Posted in News Roundup at 8:59 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Server

    • 10 Linux System Administrators New Year’s Resolutions (2017)

      As we prepare to bid 2016 a more than deserved farewell, it is a time to make our New Year’s resolutions. Regardless of your experience level as a Linux system administrator, we think it is worthy and well to set goals for growth for the next 12 months.

      In case you are out of ideas, in this post we will share 10 simple professional resolutions that you may want to consider for 2017.

    • A Look Back at 8 IBM Strategic Acquisitions in 2016

      Big Blue expanded its analytics, disaster recovery and security capabilities in 2016 through a series of strategic acquisitions.

  • Kernel Space

    • The Development Pace Of Systemd Fell Sharply This Year

      With systemd having the most commits ever in 2015 for this project, I was curious to see how the statistics for 2016 compared… To some surprise, the number of commits to systemd fell sharply and the code churn is also down to a point not seen in a few years.

      In 2015 there were 5,528 commits to systemd while this year there have been 3,768 commits — a low not seen since 2012 when there were 2554 commits. But then when it comes to new code, this year were 156,491 added (and 94,288 lines removed), a low since 2011. Last year in comparison there were more than double that for lines added: 333k vs. 156k, though last year they also removed a lot of code too.

    • Linux Reboot System call and Linus’ Birthday

      Today (28-Dec) is Linus Torvald, Linux creator’s birthday and I wanted to share with you an easter egg hidden in the Linux reboot() system call.

    • Benchmarks

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

      • Season of KDE

        December, is near to its end and 2017 is finally coming. The last month was hectic though. I had my semester exams in the first half of the month and I didn’t get much time in between to concentrate on my project. But the later half was quite productive. Half time has already passed by and this month was important as I made couple of changes to my UI and code which were important and required for long-term benefits. Another important news for this month is that GCompris had its 0.70 version release this month and we have finally replaced the GTK+ version in Windows with the Qt version. :smile:

      • Whew, what a year!

        This is not the place to present an opinion on all the other things that have happened in 2016, but when it comes to Krita, 2016 was perhaps the most intense year ever for the project. Let’s step back for a moment and do a bit of review!

    • GNOME Desktop/GTK

      • Cinnamon Desktop – The Best Desktop Environment For New Linux User

        Cinnamon is a DE(Desktop Environment). DE is a collection of software, which collectively provide you a seamless Desktop experience. They are the reason, normal people who have no knowledge about the internal working of computer are able to use computers for a wide variety of purposes. Cinnamon is one such collection which is different. Different how? We will see, But for now, let’s just say that Cinnamon played a decisive role in making Linux mint, the most popular distro in the Linux world.

  • Distributions

    • The 6 Linux Distros We’re Most Excited For in 2017

      When I decided to write a list of Linux distributions 2017 will see grow and improve, I didn’t realise what a task I’d set!

      For while our name has Ubuntu in it, Ubuntu is not the only Linux distro we like to keep an eye on.

      Over the past few weeks we’ve been asking you to tell us which Linux distributions you are excited by, and the ones you think/hope will do well in 2017.

      Now it’s our turn.

    • Solus Announces First Release Of Brisk Menu

      We are happy to announce the first release of Brisk Menu, our implementation of a clean, efficient, and modern menu for the MATE Desktop. Brisk Menu 0.1.0 enables quick launching of applications, as well as access to session controls (such as logout, suspend, hibernate) and the system’s Control Center.

    • Distro Excitement 2017, Image Viewers, LibO Calendar

      Today in Linux news The Document Foundation offered a 2017 wall calendar to print off and hang on your wall. Elsewhere, OMG!Ubuntu! shared their picks for distros to watch in 2017 and Fedora has 17 image viewers for 2017. Sourceforge and TecMint have resolutions for administrators and developers as Google heads to Linux.conf.au 2017.

    • And the best distro of 2016 is …

      It is time for the final vote. I have already given you my opinion on the finest performers when it comes to individual desktop environments – Plasma, Xfce and even Gnome, but now, following in the best of our annual traditions, we need to vote on the most complete, most successful distribution of the year.

      Unlike the desktop environment votes, it will not be purely based on the final score. I will also incorporate other elements – how deeply has a particular distro charmed me, whether I have continued using it after the initial review, how it has evolved, and of course, the critical stability, support and friendliness parameters. And then, there’s your vote, too. So let’s run through the coveted shortlist. To wit, the 2016 elite.

    • New Releases

    • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandriva Family

      • [Rosa] Happy New Year 2017

        We’re proud to wish you a good luck in new 2017 year.

        We’ll try our best to continue developing our linux distributions even much better in new 2017 year.

    • Gentoo Family

      • Gentoo-Based Calculate Linux 17 Launches with KDE Plasma 5.8.5 LTS and MATE 1.16

        Today, December 30, 2016, Alexander Tratsevskiy had the great pleasure of announcing the release and general availability of Calculate Linux 17, a Russian desktop-oriented computer operating system based on Gentoo.

        Calculate Linux 17 comes seven months after the Calculate Linux 15.17 release and promises great new features, including the latest KDE Plasma 5.8.5 LTS, MATE 1.16, and Xfce 4.12 desktop environments, along with the long-term supported Linux 4.4.39 kernel.

    • OpenSUSE/SUSE

      • Will SUSE Bring SBCs to Datacenters?

        Is the Raspberry Pi destined to be coming to your datacenter? If not the Pi, then something like it — maybe Arduino or a single board computer we haven’t seen yet, perhaps developed by one of the OEMs? Unless I miss my guess, a Pi-like device is soon going to make up the guts in a new breed of server.

        Back in November, SUSE announced that it has ported SLES, its flagship Linux operating system, to run on the Raspberry Pi 3, and has released it under the somewhat predictable name SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for Raspberry Pi. According to the announcement, as well as an accompanying blog post by jayk, this is no big deal. It was done mainly just for the fun of it, with its only practical application being “that it would be really a cool way for our field team to demonstrate SLES at trade shows.”

      • GeckoLinux “Rolling” and “Static” editions updated

        The Rolling spins of GeckoLinux have been updated to a newer openSUSE Tumbleweed base system, together with some configuration improvements. Additionally, the GeckoLinux Static spins have also been updated with similar improvements.

        GeckoLinux offers live installable Rolling spins based on openSUSE Tumbleweed, and live installable Static spins based on openSUSE Leap 42.2. GeckoLinux currently offers customized spins for the Cinnamon, XFCE, Gnome, Plasma, Mate, and LXQt desktop environments.

    • Red Hat Family

    • Debian Family

      • Derivatives

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • Tux4Ubuntu: Tuxify Your Ubuntu Linux This New Year

            Tux is the official mascot of Linux. He is named so because the penguin looks as if he is wearing a tuxedo. Tux isn’t much visible on various distributions that borrow the Linux kernel as their base. Tux4Ubuntu is a project aimed at bringing Tux to the never before places in the Ubuntu Linux distribution.

            “We want to bring Tux, the Linux penguin, to Ubuntu! From boot to desktop we’ve created themes that include Tux in all the right places,” says the team behind the Tux4Ubuntu project.

          • Ubuntu 16.04 Unity 8 current state

            Ubuntu 16.04 Unity 8 current state
            qt5, gtk3 native on mir, snaps, ubuntu snap store, system settings etc

  • Devices/Embedded

Free Software/Open Source

  • 2016: Open source grows, but conflict remains

    Depending on where you stand, 2016 was either the best year ever for open-source software, or it was a year of controversy and danger. While it’s undeniable that 2016 saw more contributors to open source and more open-source projects than any prior year, it’s also true that this was a year of strife for communities, developers and users alike.

    Chief among those problems would have to be the Dirty COW local privilege escalation attack, a major vulnerability that seems to have been hiding inside the Linux kernel for the past nine years. The discovery of this exploit isn’t necessarily a knock against open-source software as a whole: The bug might never have been found if the sources weren’t also available.

  • 7 New Year’s Resolution Ideas for Open Source Project Developers

    It seems like only yesterday that 2016 begun and we were just about to see great changes happening with SourceForge. Now we’re at the end of it, readying ourselves for yet another year.

    As fond as we are of the year that was, now is not just a time for remembering “Auld Lang Syne”, but also a time to prepare for what comes next. For open source project developers that means not only reflecting upon decisions and actions made, but also coming up with new resolutions that will define the future of open source projects.

  • Business model as a variable to consider when choosing Open Source software.

    Any analytic report about who writes the code in open and collaborative environments will reflect how corporations involvement is increasing in Open Source software development at every level. More and more companies are transitioning from becoming FLOSS consumers to producers and almost every new software company out there has Open Source as a core strategy or even as part of their DNA.

    But who is sustaining the development of that key piece of software that will be a core part of your future product? Who pays those developers? Why? How does the key stakeholders benefit from the outcome of the ecosystem and the software they produce? How much do they invest in the production of that software? For how long? How do they get their income? What is the relevance of the software produced by the ecosystem they feed in their business models?

    These and similar basic questions need to be fully understood before a specific software becomes part of your key product or business. Knowing the answers to the above questions might not prevent you from surprises in the future but at least can prepare you for the potential consequences. What it is clear to me is that these answers are becoming more complicated to find and understand over time, specially for those companies who do not have a strong background on Open Source.

    Choosing a specific piece of software based on purely technical variables or even present healthiness of the community around the project/organization, expectations of the number of contributors or impact in general might not be enough any more. A specific community or project will become “your provider” so the business model behind it is equally important.

  • Events

    • Open source down under: Linux.conf.au 2017

      It’s a new year and open source enthusiasts from around the globe are preparing to gather at the edge of the world for Linux.conf.au 2017. Among those preparing are Googlers, including some of us from the Open Source Programs Office.

  • Web Browsers

    • Mozilla

      • Firefox 52 Borrows One More Privacy Feature from the Tor Browser

        Mozilla engineers have added a mechanism to Firefox 52 that prevents websites from fingerprinting users using system fonts.

        The user privacy protection system was borrowed from the Tor Browser, where a similar mechanism blocks websites from identifying users based on the fonts installed on their computers.

        The feature has been active in the Tor Browser for some time and will become active in the stable branch of Firefox 52, scheduled for release on March 7, 2017.

        The font fingerprinting protection is already active in Firefox 52 Beta.

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • 2017 TDF and LibreOffice calendar

      2017 is just around the corner, so here’s a shiny calendar from The Document Foundation and the LibreOffice community. Print it out, hang it on your wall, and here’s to a great 12 months ahead!

  • Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

    • Hungary withdraws membership from Open Government Partnership

      Hungary has decided to withdraw its membership from the OGP, following a disagreement with the OGP Steering Committee on a report.

    • Scotland published its first action plan as OGP “Pioneer“

      Scotland published its first Open Government National Action Plan since it has been selected by the Open Government Partnership (OGP) as one of the fifteen “Pioneer” governments in April 2016.

    • Germany and Luxembourg joined OGP

      During the Paris OGP Summit 2017, Germany and Luxembourg were among the European countries that announced their intent to join the Open Government Partnership. Portugal said it will “soon” become a member of the institution.

    • Contracting 5 initiative officially launched at Paris OGP Summit
    • OGP countries shifting commitments from basics to innovations

      The countries participating in the Open Government Partnership (OGP) are shifting their attention from “getting the basics right” to innovative measures and reforms that translate into actions capable of generating real change. After ‘public service delivery’, the areas ‘fiscal openness’ and ‘access to information’ are the most prevailing in the commitments for 2015-2016.

    • Paris Declaration to promote collective actions in open government

      The Paris Declaration, which was presented at the OGP Paris Summit in December, will encourage cooperation between countries and civil societies to promote open government on a global scale. The Declaration lists twenty-one collective actions in which governments can take part and share experiences. “Actions are concrete cooperation, output-orientated and will produce tangible results”, the text of the Declaration states.

    • Open Data

      • French to test Sirene data in a hackathon

        Etalab, the French agency in charge of Open Data in France, and INSEE (Institut National de la Statistiques et des Etudes Economiques) – the French national agency for statistics, organised in November a hackathon to test and use the data of the SIRENE (Système informatique pour le répertoire des entreprises et des établissements) database which will be published as open data in January.

    • Open Hardware/Modding

      • ‘Open Source’ Robo-Car in ’17?

        The year 2016 opened the door to a new phase of highly automated driving, moving the discussion away from “wouldn’t it be nice-to-have-a-robo-car” to a more immediate “to-do list” with which regulators, car OEMs and technology companies must grapple if they hope to make self-driving cars commercially viable and safe.

        Gone are days of early-adapter giddiness over the Google car, or an “Autopilot” Tesla with over-the-air software upgrades.

        Reality sank in 2016. The industry is now aware Autopilot’s limitations. The automotive engineering community is taking a crash course in Artificial Intelligence (AI) that’s far beyond today’s computer vision. Engineers are taking note of challenges in machine learning (how do you certify the safety of AI-driven cars?). Many automakers are scrambling for a holistic approach toward cybersecurity.

        So, what’s in the auto industry 2017 agenda that could change the course of robotic car development?

Leftovers

  • Checking email as soon as you wake up could be ruining your day

    If you’re like most people, you wake up to an alarm ringing on your smartphone. Then you probably roll over and check your work email.

    That’s a dangerous way to start the day, according to a woman who studies happiness for a living.

    Reading just one negative email could lead you to report having a bad day hours later, says Michelle Gielan, former national CBS News anchor turned psychology researcher and best-selling author.

  • Deprecated: The Ars 2017 tech company Deathwatch

    This year’s Deathwatch was meticulously curated. After an ad-hoc process for candidate selection—including pleas for input from our secret cabal of Ars readers, editors, and covert operators—our Deathwatch electoral college scientifically assessed each nominated candidate. There was some heavy ballot stuffing for candidates like “the Environmental Protection Agency” and “the United States of America” in this year’s reader balloting. We suspected voter fraud, so we threw all that out and just went with our gut.

    This year, we’ve picked a magnificent seven companies for the Deathwatch. 2017′s list includes two (well, three, sort of) returning champions and a whole bunch of new contenders. Let’s kick things off by noting that it’s a bad year for companies whose names start with “Y.”

  • Health/Nutrition

    • Nightmare of Flint water crisis is far from over

      Flint can’t turn the calendar on 2016 fast enough.

      But will 2017 be any better?

      If history is any indicator, Flint’s situation may only get worse if those guiding the water crisis recovery are not very careful.

      It was nearly a year ago that the Flint water crisis exploded on the national scene.

    • Newly appointed “settlement master” could change government response to Flint water crisis

      A judge has appointed a mediator in a federal case that could dramatically change how the state of Michigan responds to the Flint water crisis.

      Last month, U.S. District Judge David Lawson ordered the state to immediately begin delivering safe bottled water to Flint residents. Right now the state provides water and filters but residents have to pick it up or call a hotline to get it delivered.

      Flint officials argue in court documents the city simply cannot afford to deliver supplies to everyone. The state filed documents saying water tests show Flint’s water is meeting federal standards. The state is asking Judge Lawson to dissolve this order.

  • Security

    • Security updates for Friday
    • Washington Post Publishes False News Story About Russians Hacking Electrical Grid

      A story published by The Washington Post Friday claims Russia hacked the electrical grid in Vermont. This caused hysteria on social media but has been denied by a spokesman for a Vermont utility company.

      The Post story was titled, “Russian hackers penetrated U.S. electricity grid through a utility in Vermont, officials say.”

    • Recount 2016: An Uninvited Security Audit of the U.S. Presidential Election

      The 2016 U.S. presidential election was preceded by unprecedented cyberattacks and produced a result that surprised many people in the U.S. and abroad. Was it hacked? To find out, we teamed up with scientists and lawyers from around the country—and a presidential candidate—to initiate the first presidential election recounts motivated primarily by e-voting security concerns. In this talk, we will explain how the recounts took place, what we learned about the integrity of the election, and what needs to change to ensure that future U.S. elections are secure.

    • Malware Purveyor Serving Up Ransomware Via Bogus ICANN Blacklist Removal Emails

      Fun stuff ahead for some website owners, thanks to a breakdown in the registration process. A Swiss security researcher has spotted bogus ICANN blacklist removal emails being sent to site owners containing a Word document that acts as a trigger for ransomware.

  • Defence/Aggression

    • Something About This Russia Story Stinks

      In an extraordinary development Thursday, the Obama administration announced a series of sanctions against Russia. Thirty-five Russian nationals will be expelled from the country. President Obama issued a terse statement seeming to blame Russia for the hack of the Democratic National Committee emails.

    • Obama’s Dive into the Syrian Abyss

      The bloody Syrian war got bloodier when President Obama allowed U.S. Mideast allies and hawkish U.S. officials to supply weapons to Sunni jihadists including those fighting alongside Al Qaeda’s affiliate, reports Gareth Porter.

    • Donald Trump’s New Nuclear Instability

      President-elect Donald Trump exploded a half-century of U.S. nuclear-arms policy in a single tweet last week: “The United States must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes.” With that one vague message, Donald Trump, who hasn’t even taken office yet, may have started a new arms race.

      Trump’s statement set off alarms around the world, necessitating a cadre of his inner circle to flood the airwaves with now-routine attempts to explain what their boss “really meant.” On MSNBC, Rachel Maddow confronted former Trump campaign manager and newly appointed Trump counselor Kellyanne Conway about the shocking tweet:

      Maddow: “He’s saying we’re going to expand our nuclear capability.”

      Conway: “He’s not necessarily saying that—”

      Maddow: “… He did literally say we need to expand our nuclear capability—”

      Conway: “…What he’s saying is…we need to expand our nuclear capability, really our nuclear readiness, our capability to be ready for those who also have nuclear weapons.”

    • Imagine A World Without Islam

      I am an atheist, but I have been reading in and about Islam since 9/11, and I see that it is not like other religions. It is a violent, totalitarian system masquerading as a religion. And because the Quran is said to be the word of Allah — handed down from Allah through the Angel Gabriel to Mohammed — it is supposed to be unquestionable and unchangeable. This likely means there is no reforming Islam.

    • Five Afghan teenagers are convicted of gang-raping a boy at knife-point in Sweden – but NONE will be deported because their homeland is ‘too dangerous’

      The court said that the boys would have been ‘hit very hard’ by deportation because of the security situation in Afghanistan.

      Four of the defendants received jail terms of 15 months while the fifth was given 13 months, Expressen reports.

      Prosecutors had claimed that one of the attackers filmed parts of the assault, overnight on October 24 and 25, and posted the footage on social media.

      The victim, also from Afghanistan, went to police before five suspects were detained on child rape charges, it has been reported in Sweden.

    • Underage girls trapped in Pakistan bride exchanges

      The 36-year-old Ramzan smiles, eager to please, as he uses his fingers to count out her age when they married. One, two, three . . . until 13, and then he stops and looks at her, points and nods several times.

      The girl’s father, Wazir Ahmed, says she was 14, not 13, but her age was beside the point. It mattered only that she had reached puberty when he arranged her marriage as an exchange: his daughter for Ramzan’s sister, whom he wanted to take as a second wife.

    • FGM in Kenya: ‘Girls are being paraded openly in the streets’

      In Kuria, public ceremonies celebrating the illegal season of female genital cutting have been allowed to take place unchallenged

    • Kenyan girls ‘to stay at school to avoid FGM over holidays’

      It has been reported that hundreds of girls in Kenya will spend the holiday season in schools instead of going home to avoid being subjected to female genital mutilation (FGM) by their parents.

      BBC News has revealed that although many schools should have closed over a month ago, they have remained open to shelter the girls, while some churches are doing the same.

    • Exit Obama in a Cloud of Disillusion, Delusion and Deceit

      Of course Russian hackers exist. They attack this blog pretty well continually – as do hackers from the USA and many other countries. Of course there have been attempted Russian hacks of the DNC. But the report gives no evidence at all of the alleged successful hack that transmitted these particular emails, nor any evidence of the connection between the hackers and the Russian government, let alone Putin.

    • Hypocrisy Over Alleged Russian ‘Hacking’

      As Official Washington rages over alleged Russian hacking of Democratic emails, a forgotten back story is how the U.S. government pioneered the tactics of cyber-war and attacked unsuspecting countries, recalls Michael Brenner.

    • Barack Obama Wasn’t Nearly As Tough on Israel as Republican Presidents

      The Obama administration’s final moves on the Israeli-Palestinian issue — a symbolic resolution allowing the United Nations Security Council to condemn Israeli settlements and a speech by Secretary of State John Kerry warning that the settlement project could permanently end the two-state solution — has sparked a critical backlash from the country’s supporters.

      These reactions range from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu calling the resolution “shameful” to right-wing members of Congress threatening to defund the United Nations.

  • Transparency/Investigative Reporting

    • FOIA Requesters Sue Government Agencies Over Non-Responses To Requests For Election-Related Documents

      Two of the nation’s foremost FOIA enthusiasts — Jason Leopold and Ryan Shapiro — are suing a variety of federal agencies for their failure to respond to requests for documents related to the 2016 election.

      The first lawsuit, filed a couple of weeks ago, concerns records pertaining to FBI director James Comey’s actions in the last few weeks before Election Day. Most of the documents sought relate to the FBI’s on-again, off-again investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server. The pair also seeks a variety of communications between Comey and the rest of the FBI, as well as any internal FBI discussions about the number of leaks that accompanied Comey’s last-minute dive back into the email investigation.

      Shapiro and Leopold are also seeking unredacted copies of Clinton email investigation documents previously released by the FBI. They also would like to see what the FBI has on hand that references a variety of right-wing news sites, including Breitbart News and alternativeright.com.

    • FBI Says It Has 487 Pages Of James Comey Talking Points, Refuses To Release Any Of Them

      Leopold had requested FBI Director James Comey’s talking points for a variety of subjects, including “going dark,” the terrorist attacks in Paris, the “Ferguson Effect,” and encryption. The FBI responded with two things, both of which add up to nothing.

      The letter Leopold received noted that the FBI had found 487 pages responsive to his request. Of those, the agency will be releasing a grand total of zero pages. All 487 have been withheld under FOIA exemptions b(5) through b(7)(E).

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

    • China to ban ivory trade by the end of 2017

      China will ban all domestic ivory trade and processing by the end of 2017, state media reported on Friday, in a move hailed by activists as a gamechanger for Africa’s elephants.

      African ivory is highly sought after in China where it is seen as a status symbol and prices for a kilo (2.2 pounds) can reach as much as $1,100 (£890).

      “China will gradually stop the processing and sales of ivories for commercial purposes by the end of 2017,” the official Xinhua news agency said, citing a government statement.

      The announcement follows Beijing’s move in March to widen a ban on imports of all ivory and ivory products acquired before 1975 after pressure to restrict a trade that sees thousands of elephants slaughtered every year.

      Xinhua said the complete ban would affect “34 processing enterprises and 143 designated trading venues, with dozens to be closed by the end of March 2017”.

    • Climate researcher’s defamation suit about insulting columns is on

      Several years back, some conservative columnists wrote pieces that accused a prominent climate researcher of having fraudulently manipulated data, phrasing it in a way that made comparisons with a convicted child molester. The researcher demanded the columns be removed; when the publishers refused, he turned to the courts. His suit, filed in the District of Columbia’s Superior Court, has been kicking around ever since, as motions to get it dismissed have ended up languishing amidst more filings and an appeal.

    • Buoyed by DAPL Fight, Canadian Chiefs Launch Legal Battle Against Enbridge Pipeline

      Buoyed by the success of Indigenous resistance to the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL), a coalition of Canadian First Nation chiefs have launched legal action against the Trudeau government for its recent approval of the Enbridge Line 3 expansion.

      Derek Nepinak, grand chief of the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs, wrote on Facebook Wednesday that the group’s legal team filed an appeal in federal court challenging the approval, which Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced late last month in tandem with the expansion of Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline.

      Condemnation of both projects was swift, with First Nations vowing to fight back. “Just as Indigenous Peoples are showing unwavering strength down at Standing Rock, our peoples are not afraid and are ready to do what needs to be done to stop the pipelines and protect our water and our next generations,” Nepinak said at the time.

  • Finance

    • The Coming Assault on Social Security

      The first assault of the new Trump administration and Republican Congress upon Social Security has been launched. It comes in the form of release of a new report by the Congressional Budget Office, which of course these days is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Republican Congressional Caucus.

      Using some financial sleight-of-hand, this CBO report pushes forward by two years the date at which its ideologically driven experts claim Social Security benefits will exhaust the Trust Fund, and since the Social Security program is required to be self-financing, the date at which, barring adjustments by Congress in the program’s funding and/or benefit payment levels, promised benefits would have to be cut by what the CBO claims will have to be 31%.

      Such a cut would clearly be a staggering blow to the finances and livelihoods of nation’s retirees, dependents and the disabled.

      This end-of-the-year CBO report is at odds with a report issued earlier this year by the Trustees of the Social Security Administration, which projected that the Trust Fund, barring any changes in taxes or benefit payments, would be tapped out in 2033, and that at that point benefits, barring some fixes in Social Security financing, would have to be cut by an also horrific but far lower 21% (with the remaining 79% of benefit payments being covered by current employee FICA taxes being paid into the system).

  • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

    • False Media Reporting on Trump’s Request to State Dept for Info on Gender Equality Programs

      The Washington Post, quickly followed by the New York Times and NPR and many others, headlined a story that Trump’s transition team asked the State Department for a list of programs and jobs aimed at promoting gender equality.

    • Ralph Nader

      On this week’s program, we hear a speech by Ralph Nader, recorded in Berkeley CA this past October, and hosted by Mickey Huff. Nader spoke on some of the themes of his latest book, “Breaking Through Power,” and explained his proposal for a public-interest lobbying organization with a presence in all 435 Congressional districts.

    • Mormon Tabernacle Choir member quits, refuses to sing for Trump

      Another member of a group selected to perform at Donald Trump’s inauguration is protesting.
      Jan Chamberlin, a member of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, is quitting the group and saying that she could never sing for Trump.

      She sent a resignation letter to the choir president this week.
      “I’ve tried to tell myself that it will be all right and that I can continue in good conscience before God and man,” Chamberlin wrote in a Facebook post. “I only know I could never ‘throw roses to Hitler.’ And I certainly could never sing for him.”

    • Deplorability

      How badly did those who survived worshipping Adolf Hitler in the early days must have felt when they learned the truth, that just about everything the “fuhrer” told them was a lie… How badly will a performer feel when this great adventure turns out badly? How badly will those foolish voters feel in a few years when the economy is in the tank and the world hates what USA is doing even more than they do now?

    • Ridiculous Congressional Proposal Would Fine Reps Who Live Stream From The Floor

      It would be nice if we weren’t remind daily just how petty politicians can be (on all sides of the aisle… so don’t go making this about one party or the other). Over the summer, we wrote about a situations in which House Democrats tried to stage a protest on the House floor — and House Republicans responded by gavelling the House out of session and turning off the live feed on C-SPAN so that the protest could not be easily seen (again, this isn’t partisan: the House Dems did the same to House Repubs eight years ago). In response, some of those participating in the protest started using Periscope and Facebook Live to livestream online from the floor.

  • Censorship/Free Speech

    • Russia’s Five Most Memorable Censorship Moments of 2016

      Roskomnadzor, the Kremlin’s federal censorship agency, is responsible for regulating the Internet in Russia, which includes enforcing police orders and court decisions to ban websites and online services deemed “harmful” or “illicit.”

      According to figures released in April 2016, Roskomnadzor has blocked more than 25,000 websites, though the actual number of sites affected by these bans is more than 600,000, say activists at RosKomSvoboda, because they share the same IP addresses as sites blacklisted officially.

      Today, the number of banned websites in Russia is still rising steadily. As 2016 comes to a close, RuNet Echo looks back at the five most controversial, infamous, and even ironic actions this year by Russia’s federal censors.

    • Internet Censorship: Governments Shut Down The Internet More Than 50 Times In 2016

      As internet access becomes more prevalent around the world, so too do attempts to suppress it. According to digital rights organization Access Now, there were more than 50 attempts by governments to shut down the internet during 2016.

      Access to internet was cut for a variety of reasons throughout the year, including several attempts to stifle dissent and affect outcomes of the democratic process.

      Deji Olukotun, the senior global advocacy manager at Access Now, told the Inter Press Service an internet shutdown was imposed in Uganda by President Yoweri Museveni–including a blackout of social media sites like Facebook and Twitter —on the morning of election day.

    • Governments Shut Down the Internet More Than 50 Times in 2016
    • Facebook temporarily bans author after he calls Trump fans ‘nasty fascistic lot’

      A journalist was temporarily banned from Facebook after a post in which he called Trump supporters “a nasty fascistic lot”, in the latest example of the social media platform’s censorship of journalists.

      Facebook “reviewed and restored” the post by Kevin Sessums after being contacted by the Guardian and dropped the posting ban.

      “We’re very sorry about this mistake,” a spokesman said. “The post was removed in error and restored as soon as we were able to investigate. Our team processes millions of reports each week, and we sometimes get things wrong.”

      Sessums, who is well known for his celebrity profiles for Vanity Fair and two best-selling memoirs, says that he shared a Facebook post from ABC political analyst Matthew Dowd that read: “In the last few hours I have been called by lovely ‘christian’ Trump fans: a jew, faggot, retard. To set record straight: divorced Catholic.”

      [...]

      “It’s chilling. It’s arbitrary censorship,” Sessums said. “I was like, ‘Wait a minute, do I have to be careful about what I say about Trump now?’”

    • Google Removed Over 900 Million ‘Pirate’ Links in 2016

      Google removed over 900 million pirate site URLs from its search results in 2016. The staggering number is an increase of nearly 100% compared to the year before. While Google has taken some steps to make pirate sites less visible, it continues to disagree with rightsholders on how to move forward.

    • Ban Trump, Twitter and Free Speech

      Chief among those opposing ideas they want silenced are Donald Trump’s. His remarks — from the silly, labeled unpresidential, to the more extreme labeled racist/sexist/misogynist/hateful — have attracted a surprising group of otherwise intelligent people demanding he be shut up.

    • Singapore teen blogger seeks US asylum
    • Singapore teen blogger seeks US asylum
    • Singapore activist blogger, 18, seeks U.S. asylum
    • Controversial Singapore teen blogger seeks U.S. asylum
    • James Woods, Culture Warrior, Returns to Fight
    • Conservative Actor James Woods Returns to Twitter Six Weeks After Quitting Over Political Censorship

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • The Government didn’t install cameras and microphones in our homes. We did.

      It begins: Amazon’s constantly-listening robotic home assistant was near a domestic murder case, and now the Police wants access to anything it might have heard. There have been similar cases in the past, but this is where it starts getting discussed: There are now dozens of sensors in our house. Do we still have an expectation of privacy in our home?

      A recurring theme in the dystopic fiction of the 1950s was an everpresent government watching everything you did, as witnessed in the infamous Nineteen Eighty-Four and many others. Adding to the dystopia, starting in the 1970s with movies such as Colossus, computers are typically added to the mix of watching everything all the time.

      However, these fictional dystopias all got one critical thing wrong in predicting the future: the government never installed cameras and microphones in everybody’s home. We did. We did it ourselves. And we paid good money for them, too. A smart television set — with infrared cameras built in, watching the people watching the television set as well as listening to them — costs good money that we happily paid.

    • Creator of NSA’s Global Surveillance System Calls B.S. On Russian Hacking Report

      We’ve previously documented that the hacking evidence against Russia is extremely weak, and the new report on Russian hacking doesn’t say much.

      Indeed – if Russia hacked the Democratic party emails (from the DNC and top Clinton aide John Podesta) – the NSA would have all of the records showing exactly who did it.

    • UK Councils Used Massive Surveillance Powers To Spy On… Excessively Barking Dogs & Illegal Pigeon Feeding

      Over in the UK, we’ve highlighted many of the problems of massively expanding surveillance through the (most likely illegal) “DRIPA” (Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Bill) and the new Snooper’s Charter. And yet, the government there keeps insisting that such powers would never be abused. But, that’s ridiculous. As we’ve seen in the past, it’s difficult to find examples of surveillance powers not being expanded and abused over time. And, now the UK is realizing exactly how that works. The Guardian, via Freedom of Information requests, has discovered that local British councils were given the ability to use surveillance powers under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) to spy on all sorts of people for what appear to be minor infractions…

    • Signal for Android now circumvents censorship in Cuba and Oman

      Open Whisper Systems, the company that makes the Signal encrypted messaging app and that contributed to the encryption in Facebook-owned WhatsApp, today updated its Signal app for Android with the ability to avoid being censored in two more countries: Cuba and Oman.

    • Encrypted chat app Signal sidesteps censorship in Cuba and Oman

      Last week it was Egypt, and now users in Cuba and Oman can send messages without fear of them being intercepted and altered by lawmakers.

    • Signal Desktop Beta: Convenience Added to Security

      Signal Private Messenger has been simplifying the encryption of voice and text messages for several years now. Not only is it a drop-in replacement for existing Android and iOS contract and messaging apps, but its handling of encryption handshakes is invisible to the user, making encrypted messages no harder from the end-user’s perspective than non-encrypted ones. That is an accomplishment in itself, but Signal has gone one step further, releasing a beta version of Signal Desktop for Android, allowing users to text and play calls from a laptop or workstation synced to a phone.

      Signal has come in for some criticism, which I should probably answer before going further. First, the rumor persists that its server code is proprietary. According to Open Whisper Systems, the non-profit that develops Signal, that was true until June 2016 because restrictions on the Apple store were incompatible with the GNU General Public License. However, changes in those restrictions now make it possible to license Signal’s server code under the Affero General Public License, which the Free Software Foundation recommends for on-line services.

  • Civil Rights/Policing

    • Fatal shootings by police remain relatively unchanged after two years

      Despite ongoing national scrutiny of police tactics, the number of fatal shootings by officers in 2016 remained virtually unchanged from last year when nearly 1,000 people were killed by police.

      Through Thursday, law enforcement officers fatally shot 957 people in 2016 — close to three each day — down slightly from 2015 when 991 people were shot to death by officers, according to an ongoing project by The Washington Post to track the number of fatal shootings by police.

      The Post, for two years in a row, has documented more than twice the number of fatal shootings recorded by the FBI annually on average.

    • Saudi Arabia jails man for a year after he publically called for end of male control over women

      A Saudi man has been jailed for a year after he called for an end to the ultra-conservative Islamic kingdom’s male guardianship system.

      The unnamed man was also fined 30,000 riyals (£6,500) after being convicted of “inciting to end guardianship of women”, the daily Okaz newspaper reported.

      He was arrested while putting up posters inside mosques which called for the government to abolish strict rules giving men control over women.

      The man admitted to pinning up posters in several mosques and said he solely launched an “awareness campaign” after finding some “female relatives were facing injustice at the hands of their families,” the daily newspaper said, according to the AFP news agency.

    • If Donald Trump Targets Journalists, Thank Obama

      If Donald J. Trump decides as president to throw a whistle-blower in jail for trying to talk to a reporter, or gets the F.B.I. to spy on a journalist, he will have one man to thank for bequeathing him such expansive power: Barack Obama.

      Mr. Trump made his animus toward the news media clear during the presidential campaign, often expressing his disgust with coverage through Twitter or in diatribes at rallies. So if his campaign is any guide, Mr. Trump seems likely to enthusiastically embrace the aggressive crackdown on journalists and whistle-blowers that is an important yet little understood component of Mr. Obama’s presidential legacy.

      Criticism of Mr. Obama’s stance on press freedom, government transparency and secrecy is hotly disputed by the White House, but many journalism groups say the record is clear. Over the past eight years, the administration has prosecuted nine cases involving whistle-blowers and leakers, compared with only three by all previous administrations combined. It has repeatedly used the Espionage Act, a relic of World War I-era red-baiting, not to prosecute spies but to go after government officials who talked to journalists.

    • French workers gain ‘right to disconnect’

      A new law forcing French companies to give their workers the right to ignore their smartphones outside of work hours takes effect Sunday.

      The measure — introduced as part of a controversial overhaul of the French labor code earlier this year that is the first of its kind in the world — will oblige companies that employ more than 50 people to negotiate a set of rights with their staff about when they have to work outside of contracted work hours.

      In 2015, Labor Minister Myriam El Khomri commissioned a study that warned about the dangers of “info-obesity,” suggesting that using a smartphone to check work emails at all hours of the day can cause burnout, sleeplessness and relationship problems.

    • Dark Days and the Coming of Fascism in the New America

      Today, there is nothing stopping the American republic, which has already devolved into a plutocracy and is recognized as such by even some mainstream political science scholars, from disintegrating further. For certain, after first sparking a democratic revolt (which seems to be happening right now) but later descending into a chaotic political order, the American republic will eventually degenerate into a dictatorship – or “rule by the criminal” – where US society would be guided by those exhibiting only the basest of human emotions.

    • Throwing Roses To Hitler

      Poor poor Drumpf. Turns out he is unbeloved not just by the Rockettes, most Americans and almost every other country – see China’s shiny new Trump rooster and an international cascade of horrified, belittling images – but by many Mormons. Despite a long tradition of political neutrality and conservatism, many Mormons are reportedly upset at the planned appearance of their iconic Mormon Tabernacle Choir at the inauguration of a sexist, racist, intolerant, moronic alleged president-elect who “DOES NOT reflect the values of Mormonism and does not represent its diverse 15+ million members worldwide.” Charging that Trump betrays the church’s principles and values, almost 30,000 Mormons have signed a petition to protest the scheduled performance and demand it be cancelled.

    • California Blames Incarcerated Workers for Unsafe Conditions and Amputations

      In September, after months of organizing via smuggled cellphones and outside go-betweens, prisoners across the country launched a nationwide strike to demand better working conditions at the numerous facilities that employ inmate labor for little or no pay.

      The strike, which spread to dozens of institutions in 22 states, briefly called attention to a fact about prison labor that is well-understood in America’s penal institutions but scarcely known to the general public: Inmates in America’s state prisons — who make everything from license plates to college diploma covers — are not only excluded from the U.S. Constitution’s prohibition on slave labor, but also exist largely outside the reach of federal safety regulations meant to ensure that Americans are not injured or killed on the job. Excluded from the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s mandate of protecting American workers, these inmates lack some of the most basic labor protections other workers take for granted.

    • Ukraine’s corrupt counter-revolution

      Corruption remains Ukraine’s biggest problem. According to polls conducted in December 2016, 89% of the country’s population considers the current government’s battle against corruption to be a failure. As Petro Poroshenko reaches the halfway mark of his first term as president, these figures don’t bode well.

  • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

    • Dutch Regulators Demand T-Mobile Stop Zero Rating, Remind Users That Free Data Isn’t Really Free

      We’ve talked a lot about how the FCC’s refusal to outright ban “zero rating” here in the States opened the door to all manner of net neutrality violations and anti-competitive behavior. Thanks to this omission, we’ve now got gatekeepers like AT&T, Verizon and Comcast all exempting their streaming content from usage caps, while penalizing competing services. Consumers also now face T-Mobile and Sprint plans that throttle video, music and games by default — unless users pony up an additional monthly fee. Some folks, like VC Fred Wilson, saw this coming a long way off.

      And while the FCC only this month acknowledged this kind of behavior is anti-competitive and problematic, the “enforcement” (which is a pretty generous term for the weak-kneed letters the agency is sending out) comes too late as the FCC appears poised to be scheduled for a defunding and defanging under the incoming Trump administration.

  • DRM

    • DRM vs. Civil Liberties: 2016 in Review

      Imagine a world where your Internet-connected car locks you in at the behest of its manufacturer—or the police. Where your media devices only let you consume mass media, not remix it to publish a counter-narrative or viral meme. Where your phone is designed to report on your movements and communications. Where your kid’s toy tells them it’s their friend, then talks about how much it loves sponsored products and transmits everything it hears in your home back to its manufacturer. Where your phone stops working if the police or the manufacturer ask it to. Where these backdoors are vulnerable to hacking, so anyone with the right resources can take advantage of them.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • Prenda’s Paul Hansmeier Now Under FBI Investigation For His ADA Lawsuits

        The wheels of justice have turned to the point where Team Prenda copyright trolling efforts have netted John Steele and Paul Hansmeier federal indictments. The list of charges the pair face is ugly: mail fraud, wire fraud, conspiracy to commit money laundering, and suborning perjury.

        After Prenda’s many copyright lawsuits fell apart, Paul Hansmeier decided to start trolling small, local businesses with ADA lawsuits, hoping to turn what little legal expertise he has into profitable settlements. During this time, Hansmeier was also facing the dismantling of an attempted bankruptcy filing — one that very much looked like an attempt to avoid paying judgments resulting from Prenda’s years of bullshit. To avoid having his assets turned over to creditors, Hansmeier engaged in some creative accounting, like handing off money to a newly-formed trust and… dumping cash into a cardboard box.

      • EU’s Departing Internet Commissioner Leaves Behind Copyright Plan That Will Outlaw Basic Internet Functions

        We’ve written quite a few times about EU Commissioner Gunther Oettinger, a bigoted luddite, who bizarrely was put in charge of internet regulations for no clear reason at all. His main focus seemed to be on putting in place policies whose sole goal was to harm the internet because many key internet companies are American. Oettinger, who seems to be magnetically connected to all sorts of scandals has failed upward to a new job as the EU’s budget chief, but as EU Parliament Member Julia Reda notes, he’s still leaving a trail of internet destruction in his wake. In particular, she highlights ten everyday internet activities that would be outlawed if Oettinger’s copyright and internet proposals become law. It’s a pretty eye-opening list, and should raise serious questions about why Oettinger was ever put in charge of anything having to do with the internet.

12.30.16

Korea’s Challenge of Abusive Patents, China’s Race to the Bottom, and the United States’ Gradual Improvement

Posted in America, Asia, Patents at 2:42 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

South Korea typically finds a healthy balance on patents, from which the country benefits (economy and innovation)

Seoul Plaza, South Korea
Seoul Plaza, South Korea

Summary: An outline of recent stories about patents, where patent quality is key, reflecting upon the population’s interests rather than the interests of few very powerful corporations

THE NEW YEAR IS ABOUT to start and we are eager to see governments all across the world recognising that patents have gone too far if examiners are granting millions of them. Techrights was never an anti-patent site; rather, it was pro-patent quality. We need to limit patent scope so as to ensure that the practical (or economic) impact of patents benefits society at large. The former Chief Economist of the EPO spoke about it earlier this winter.

“We need to limit patent scope so as to ensure that the practical (or economic) impact of patents benefits society at large.”Florian Müller has this new article about a Korean antitrust ruling. We have been writing about rulings of this kind for nearly a decade (going back to the Korean ruling on monopolistic Intel) and 3 months ago we wrote about Microsoft's latest patents controversy in Korea. We remind readers that Korea’s official position is that software is not patentable (different from Japan’s and China’s policy).

“I wish to point out,” Müller wrote, “that ACT is generally very IPR owner-friendly, but when it comes to FRAND licensing of standard-essential patents, its positions are pretty consistent with mine. An organization that takes similar positions on FRAND (and of which Google is a member) is the Brussels-based Fair Standards Alliance. Presumably the reason the FSA hasn’t spoken out on the Korean ruling yet is simply that people in Brussels tend to be on vacation this week (to a far greater extent than in the U.S.).”

“For the record, Florian Müller assured me he had been in no way associated with (or paid by) Microsoft for several years now.”As we noted earlier this year, the Fair Standards Alliance is rather mysterious, but the same cannot be said about ACT. I politely told Müller it’s worth pointing out that Association for Competitive Technology (ACT) is a Microsoft front group with decades of history (going back to the nineties, under another name and acronym). We have exchanged some messages about that [1, 2, 3, 4]. For the record, Florian Müller assured me he had been in no way associated with (or paid by) Microsoft for several years now. A lot of what we wrote about Florian Müller is no longer relevant/applicable as he left behind his Microsoft work and has no intention to do that again. Some people will never forgive him for that, but I have. I believe that he’s not “up for sale” now that he leads a team of “app” developers, hence not dependent on contracts from companies like Oracle, either.

“Just updated post on antitrust ruling against Qualcomm with link to unofficial translation of KFTC press release,” he added, after he mostly focused on ACT’s message. Here is a report we found about the news earlier this week:

A South Korean regulator said it would fine Qualcomm Inc. about $853 million for alleged antitrust violations, the highest such penalty handed to an individual company here, as the U.S. chip maker faces global scrutiny over its patent-licensing business.

A lot of people later discussed the relevance of this to the situation in China, where Qualcomm’s shakedown efforts have only met very limited success.

The Reinhold Cohn Group, writing this new article (“China may become more liberal towards business method and software related patents”), reminds us that China has gone bonkers with patent scope. SIPO now copies/emulates the mistakes of the USPTO and it already becomes a patent trolls’ heaven. It’s beneficial to nobody. “On 27 October 2016,” as the law firm put it, “the State Intellectual Property Office of China (SIPO) published, for comments by the public, proposed draft revisions to its current Examination Guidelines for examining software-related inventions. In the draft revised Guidelines SIPO goes one step further, as, in addition to granting patents on software-related inventions that solve a technical problem, is willing to allow patents for data carriers, and, in some cases, even for business methods.”

“SIPO now copies/emulates the mistakes of the USPTO and it already becomes a patent trolls’ heaven.”So basically they want to be the garbage dump of failed patent applications, or the equivalent of scholarly journals that almost blindly accept every submitted paper (and are hence worthless and have no following). We are gratified to see the USPTO departing from this lunacy left (having been accentuated) by David Kappos. Incidentally, some LLC (usually trolls) turns out to have sued the USPTO for last year’s long outage; it has just lost the case*.

Jasper L. Tran, writing in the Iowa Law Review, has just published “Abstracting About “Abstract Idea”” — a short paper in which he tackles the classification of some patents as “abstract”. Also today, an article titled “Software patent eligibility in Canada: IP year in review” was published but then deleted, maybe by accident. █
__________
* To quote Pharma Patents Blog: “On December 2, 2016, Judge O’Grady of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia granted the USPTO’s motion to dismiss the complaint brought by Elm 3DS Innovations, LLC over the “holidays” declared December 22-24, 2015 when the USPTO experienced a power outage that impacted its electronic filing systems. The decision may leave other stakeholders wondering whether Elm was not the best party to challenge the USPTO’s action, or whether the action is simply unreviewable under the APA.”

German Justice Minister Heiko Maas, Who Flagrantly Ignores Serious EPO Abuses, Helps Battistelli’s Agenda (‘Reform’) With the UPC

Posted in Europe, Patents at 1:42 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Heiko Maas saleSummary: The role played by Heiko Maas in the UPC, which would harm businesses and people all across Europe, is becoming clearer and hence his motivation/desire to keep Team Battistelli in tact, in spite of endless abuses on German soil

IT wasn’t too long ago that we mentioned Heiko Maas in relation to his complicity, by inaction, in EPO scandals. He has received so many letters (and copies of letters) about the situation, yet he seems to be deaf in both ears and blind in both eyes. It’s like everything about the EPO goes right into his shredder as a matter of policy.

Suffice to say, Germany has plenty to gain from the UPC because it cements Germany’s near-monopoly on EU-wide patents. It does to prosecution what was already done examination- and appeals-wise.

“We are now starting to suspect that Germany’s Justice Minister Heiko Maas ignores EPO abuses (crimes by national laws) out of convenience.”Found today via Christine Robben from Team UPC is this blog post from her employer, which said just before Christmas that a “draft bill for the implementation of the UPCA was published on 9 December 2016 by Justice Minister Heiko Maas. Together with the UK, Germany is one of the two countries that still have to ratify the UPCA before the Unitary Patent system can start functioning.”

We are now starting to suspect that Germany’s Justice Minister Heiko Maas ignores EPO abuses (crimes by national laws) out of convenience. Moreover, he pushes Battistelli’s agenda forward with the UPC. Is he complicit then? Or just a bystander-type enabler? One who refuses to intervene because he has something to gain (or to fear)? How does that relate to Germany's media blackout regarding EPO abuses as of late? It’s almost as though large publishers/editors receive instructions not to ‘meddle’. The EPO wastes a lot of money trying to accomplish just that.

Let it be clear that for Germany to oppose the UPC would make no sense. “Entering into force of provisional [UPC] phase (early opt-outs) is still unclear,” Alexander Esslinger wrote about it, but Germany’s main barriers at the moment are Spain and the UK. WIPR gives a platform to those who promote the UPC in the UK, but the UPC has no future here; even Lucy has just been sacked (or resigned), only a few weeks after she promised the impossible.

The UPC would be utterly disastrous to European businesses. We wrote many articles about this in the past. The UPC would also be very damaging to EPO staff, notably judges. Things are already being pushed to the brink of planned failure, as Battistelli understaffs the boards of appeal (BoA) and limits access to them. Battistelli does to the appeal boards the same thing Tories do to the NHS, as a preparatory step preceding replacement.

Ricardo Ontañón of Clarke Modet & Co has just published this article about the weirdness of EPO oppositions in the Battistelli era. To quote the first paragraph:

Analysis of the lack of clarity in opposition proceedings before the EPO

The European Patent Office (EPO) confirmed in recently issued Decision G3/14 the practice highlighted in earlier decisions (T301/87), whereby establishing that during opposition proceedings of a European patent the Opposition Division of the EPO can only analyze the lack of clarity of the amended claims when the amendments made may introduce an alleged lack of clarity.

Ultimately, considering how eagerly Battistelli seems to be following China's footsteps, all these steps that helped assure patent quality may be phased out/deprecated, leaving both plaintiffs and defendants spending a fortune in ‘unitary’ courts that don’t speak their language and handle patents whose legitimacy ought to have been questioned/scrutinised at the European Patent Office/BoA, not in the courtroom (high costs associated with flights, lawyers, interpreters etc.).

Now that we know Heiko Maas is a wilful enabler of the UPC we are going to approach his utterly reckless attitude towards the EPO’s management as part of the problem. █

Links 30/12/2016: KDE for FreeBSD, Automotive Grade Linux UCB 3.0

Posted in News Roundup at 12:15 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • SaaS/Back End

    • 5 Expensive Traps of DIY Hadoop Big Data Environments

      Some myths are rooted in truth — and myths about Apache Hadoop, the open source software framework for very large data sets, are no exception. Yes, Hadoop runs on cheap commodity computer hardware, and it’s easy for users to add nodes. But the devil is in the very expensive details, especially when you’re running Hadoop in a production environment, warns Jean-Pierre Dijcks, Oracle master product manager for big data.

      ‘IT departments will think ‘I’ve got servers anyway’ or ‘I can buy inexpensive ones, and I’ve got some people, so it will cost next to nothing to build our own Hadoop cluster,” Dijcks says. ‘They want to explore this technology and play with it-and exploration is a good thing.’

      But IT departments can find that their Hadoop experiments head down the proverbial rabbit hole, piling up expenses they didn’t anticipate as business colleagues breathe down their necks to deliver. Dijcks cites five common mistakes IT leaders make with their DIY Hadoop clusters.

  • Pseudo-Open Source (Openwashing)

  • Funding

    • How viral open-source startups can build themselves into enterprise-IT powerhouses

      Because open-source software is free and easy to use, it can spread virally through organizations, from the bottom up, in ways that old-style, proprietary software cannot. This is because more-traditional software often requires licenses for specific users upfront. So there’s generally a big, expensive contract signed at the very beginning of an engagement. With open-source, technology gets a free foothold and then sticks around if it proves useful enough for people to pay for it (which is often). Software developers also love tinkering with their tools, which they can easily do with open source.

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • Free Software Foundation Keeps On Giving

      RMS and the Free Software Foundation have given so much to the world: codification of the concept of Free Software, promotion of Free Software, the GNU project, great software licences, and much more. Personally RMS has travelled the world promoting Free Software to all who would listen from students, the media, governments and he’s had great results in Europe, India and South America. Freedom is not just for USAians or other privileged classes. It’s for everyone.

    • A message from RMS: Support the Free Software Foundation

      With just a few days left in 2016, here are some thoughts from Richard M. Stallman, President of the Free Software Foundation (FSF), on why people support the FSF and what we might be able to do next.

  • Programming/Development

    • Hot programming trends in 2016

      Technology is constantly moving forward—well, maybe not always forward, but always moving. Even for someone who keeps an eye on the trends and their effect on programmers, discerning exactly where things are headed can be a challenge. My clearest glimpse into open source programming trends always comes in the fall when I work with my fellow chairs, Kelsey Hightower and Scott Hanselman, and our fantastic programming committee to sculpt the coming year’s OSCON (O’Reilly Open Source Convention). The proposals that we get and the number focused on specific topics turn out to be good indicators of hot trends in the open source world. What follows is an overview of the top programming trends we saw in 2016.

Leftovers

  • Security

    • 10 Things You Must Know About Linux Security

      Millions of users that opt out for using Linux operating system for two decades now, all on the grounds that it is much safer than most others on the market. While it’s true that Linux is less susceptible to security breaches, it is not impenetrable (no system on the planet is), which is why users should get acquainted with some security precautions that can protect their devices even more. The main topic of this article are 10 things you must know about Linux security, and we’ll try to bring this topic closer to home and closer to everyday use of your OS.

    • How to Improve the Security of Your Linux System with Firejail

      Linux is always perceived as a more secure OS than its counterparts. However, that doesn’t mean it’s completely immune to viruses, worms, and other evil stuff. Like any other operating system, it has its own set of limitations, and a lot is dependent on how the individual uses it.

      Of course, nothing can guarantee absolute protection, but there are ways that make life very hard for viruses, worms, and hackers in general. If you are looking for such a solution, look no further, as in this tutorial we’ll be discussing a software, called Firejail, that can improve the security of your Linux system.

    • 33C3: Works for me

      I’ve attended a bunch of sessions on civil rights and cyber warfare, as well as more technical things. One presentation that touched me in particular was the story of Lauri Love, who is accused of stealing data from agencies including Federal Reserve, Nasa and FBI. This talk was presented by a civil rights activist from the Courage foundation, and two hackers from Anonymous and Lulzsec. While Love is a UK citizen, the US is demanding extradition from the UK so they can prosecute him under US law (which is much stricter than the UK’s). This would create a precedent making it much easier for the US to essentially be able to prosecute citizens anywhere under US law.

    • Libpng Updates Fix 21-Year-Old Null Dereference Bug

      Libpng 1.6.27, 1.5.28, 1.4.20, 1.2.57, and 1.0.67 were all released today to fix a pointer null dereference bug dating back to 1995.

  • Defence/Aggression

    • Obama orders sanctions against Russia in response to US election interference

      The Obama administration on Thursday announced its retaliation against Russia for its efforts to interfere with the US electoral process, ordering the expulsion of 35 Russian diplomats and closing two Russian compounds based the US.

      In a statement, Obama said Americans should “be alarmed by Russia’s actions” and pledged further action.

      US intelligences services believe Russia ordered the cyber attack on the Democratic National Committee, Hillary Clinton’s campaign and other political organizations.

    • ‘It’s Hard to Show the World I Exist’: Chelsea Manning’s Final Plea to Be Seen

      In 2010, Chelsea Manning leaked thousands of classified documents in an attempt to shed light on the “true cost of war” in the Middle East. But while other whistleblowers continue to attract media attention and concern, Manning is locked in a maximum-security prison, six years into a 35-year sentence. On the heels of a last appeal to President Obama for clemency, Manning tells Broadly about her struggle for visibility and justice.

    • Theresa May criticises John Kerry’s ‘inappropriate’ comments on Israel

      Theresa May has distanced the UK from Washington over John Kerry’s condemnation of Israel, in comments that appear to be designed to build bridges with the incoming Trump administration.

      Kerry, the outgoing secretary of state, delivered a robust speech this week that criticised Benjamin Netanyahu’s government as the “most rightwing coalition in Israeli history” and warned that the rapid expansion of settlements in the occupied territories meant that “the status quo is leading toward one state and perpetual occupation”.

      The prime minister’s spokesman said May thought it was not appropriate to make such strongly worded attacks on the makeup of a government or to focus solely on the issue of Israeli settlements.

    • Belgian Police Arrest 14-Years-Old Teenager with Backpack Full of Bombs

      Belgian police arrested a 14-years-old Muslim teenager with a backpack full of explosives near a train station in Brussels. A bottle with the words “Allahu Akbar,” written on it, was also found in his possession.

      Police officers were investigating smoke, emanating from a construction site in the Molenbeek region of Brussels, which is considered a top jihadist hotbed in Europe. According to the De Telegraaf newspaper, during the investigation, four youths were detained at the scene, and the main culprit remains in custody.

    • Berlin attack: Lorry’s automatic braking system stopped more deaths during the Christmas market assault

      An automatic braking system fitted to the lorry used in the Berlin attack prevented the deaths of many more victims, investigators have found.

      Anis Amri, a Tunisian Isis supporter, is believed to have hijacked the vehicle from its Polish driver in the German capital before ploughing it into a busy Christmas market on 19 December.

      Twelve people were killed by the lorry and more than 50 others injured, being caught under the wheels or crushed by debris before it came to a stop.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

    • Are Climate Scientists Ready for Trump?

      How should climate scientists react to a president-elect who calls global warming a “hoax?” How much should they prepare for his administration? And should they ready themselves for the worst?

      These questions loomed over the fall conference of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) this month, the largest annual gathering of Earth scientists in the world. How the scientific profession chooses to answer them may decide whether the United States can summon the political will necessary to finally vanquish climate-change denialism—or whether it will continue to muddle through on the issue, not really attending to it, as it has for the past three decades.

    • Trump Is Anti-Environment, But So Was Obama

      It’s rather easy, and undoubtedly necessary, to lambast President-elect Donald Trump and his team of corporate parasites who will soon head nearly every key agency in the U.S. government.

      Of note are the pro-fracking, anti-environmental protections positions of everyone from the nominee for secretary of state, ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson, to the incoming head of the Environmental Protection Agency, Scott Pruitt. Such appointments signal a reckless abandonment of even the pretense of safeguarding vital resources such as air, water, and soil, among many others, at a time when many in the scientific community are ringing the alarm about our quickly unraveling biosphere.

  • Finance

    • Apple Rumoured to Begin Making iPhones in India Starting in April

      According to a report from The Times of India, Apple supplier Wistron is currently prepping an iPhone assembly facility in Peenya, an industrial center in the city of Bengaluru. The plant is slated to start production in April.

      Amid rumours that Apple is ramping up efforts to sell its devices in India, the report claims the company is “very serious” about starting up iPhone production in the country by the end next year.

  • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

    • Inspector generals gain power, but filling positions loses priority

      With civil liberties and advocacy groups raising concern over some of Mr. Trump’s nominees for some Cabinet positions, watchdogs say, one way to keep an eye on the activities of those agencies would be to have strong oversight through inspectors general.

    • Stein: Election audits should be automatic in Michigan

      Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein said Wednesday her abbreviated recount effort showed the vote “was not carefully guarded” in Michigan and should spur legislative action to require automatic post-election audits.

      Republican President-elect Donald Trump was poised to maintain his 10,000-vote margin over Democrat Hillary Clinton when Michigan’s hand recount was halted more than two million ballots in, but Stein suggested the rare glimpse under the hood of the state election system served an important purpose.

  • Censorship/Free Speech

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Good Guy Hacker Launches ‘Security Without Borders’ to Defend At-Risk Dissidents

      Some hackers have lost their way. Today, countless techies have entered the for-profit cybersecurity business, potentially neglecting what one security researcher calls their responsibility to civil society: helping at-risk users like dissidents with the security of their work, for example.

    • Authorities to collect iris scans from Singaporeans, PRs starting Jan 1

      From the beginning of next year, authorities will start collecting iris images from Singapore citizens and permanent residents (PRs) when they register or re-register for their NRIC, or apply for or renew a passport, said the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA).

      The iris images will serve as another identifier to boost verification methods, in addition to the photographs and fingerprints already used on the documents.

    • US reportedly plans retaliation against Russian election hacks soon [Update: sanctions announced]

      According to a CNN report, officials within the Obama administration have said that retaliatory measures against Russia for interference in the US election will happen very soon—perhaps as early as today. But the response is expected to be “proportional” and include diplomatic measures and sanctions. It’s not clear whether there will be any sort of response in kind against the Russian leadership’s computer systems and data.

    • White House Kicks Russian Diplomats Out Of The Country, Releases Preliminary Report On Russian Hacking With More To Come

      As was widely expected, the White House officially announced its response to claims of Russian interference in our election process, and the “response” is basically kicking 35 Russian diplomats out of the country. Russia admittedly suggested it will do the same. The announcement also includes adding some entities to the official list of “Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons.” Somewhat incredibly, now added to that list is the FSB, which is the modern incarnation of the KGB. What’s incredible about this was that it took until now for this to happen. With this, the administration also issued an executive order expanding on a previous executive order from last year, enabling it to take these actions.

    • Is an NSA contractor the next Snowden? In 2017, we hope to find out

      We covered a ton of legal cases in 2016.

      The entire Apple encryption saga probably grabbed the gold medal in terms of importance. However, our coverage of a California fisherman who took a government science buoy hostage was definitely our favorite. The case was dropped in May 2016 after the fisherman gave the buoy back.

      Among others, we had plenty of laser strike cases to cover. There were guilty verdicts and sentencing in the red-light camera scandal that consumed Chicago. The Federal Trade Commission settled its lawsuit with Butterfly Labs, a failed startup that mined Bitcoins. A man in Sacramento, California, pleaded guilty to one count of unlawful manufacture of a firearm and one count of dealing firearms—he was using a CNC mill to help people make anonymous, untraceable AR-15s.

      While we do our best to cover a wide variety of civil and criminal cases, there are five that stand out to us in 2017. These cases range from privacy and encryption, to government-sanctioned hacking, to the future of drone law in America.

    • Top-Secret Doc May Explain Why Russia Blamed for Hack
    • The scary reason the NSA knows when Russia hacks the US, without any doubt
    • Snowden doc shows NSA blamed Russia for hack of murdered journalist: report
    • Leaked Snowden Document Hints At Why Feds Are So Sure Russia Hacked Election

      U.S. intelligence officials appear certain that Russia was responsible for interfering in the presidential election — though they haven’t fully detailed how they know. But a classified document leaked by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden reveals that they’ve tracked Russian hacking before and that the information they gleaned may have helped this time around.

      Russian hacking also occurred in the case of Russian journalist and American citizen Anna Politkovskaya, who was gunned down in 2006 in her Moscow apartment after writing articles critical of the Kremlin and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Five men were convicted of her murder, but it’s still a mystery who ordered the killing.

    • Newly released classified Snowden document suggests NSA knew about previous Russian hacking

      A hitherto-unreleased, top secret document provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, reportedly indicates that the NSA has the technical means to collect and analyse evidence of Russian hacking. The agency monitored a similar cyberattack, believed to be the work of the Russian Federal Intelligence Service (FSB), which targeted a noted Russian journalist, also a US citizen, according to a report.

      In 2005, a year before journalist and known Kremlin critic Anna Politkovskaya was shot dead in her apartment, the FSB is believed to have targeted an email account allegedly used by Politkovskaya. According to a report by The Intercept, the Russian intelligence agency hacked into Politkovskaya’s email account (annapolitkovskaia@US Provider1) and infected it with a customised malware, unavailable in the public domain.

    • Snowden Doc: NSA Blames Russia for Hack of Murdered Journalist

  • Civil Rights/Policing

    • CIA Torture Report, Which Reveals How Prisoners Were Abused And Tortured, To Be Preserved After Federal Judge Passes Order

      A federal judge ordered the government to preserve a Senate report on Wednesday that documents the alleged torture of detainees in CIA custody through tactics such as regular beatings, forced rectal feeding, waterboarding, sensory and sleep deprivation and mock executions.

      U.S. District Court Judge Royce Lamberth passed the order on the appeal filed by the attorneys representing Abd al-Rahim Al-Nashiri who was waterboarded while in CIA custody for his alleged involvement in the attack on the destroyer USS Cole in the port of Aden that killed 17 U.S. military personnel in October 2000.

      The judge has also ordered for the preservation of all associated documents such as the CIA response to the report. He also directed for the report to be deposited with a court security officer. Although for now, the nearly 7,000-page report is being treated as a highly classified document, Lamberth’s order raises the possibility of it being eventually released as a court record, according to Politico.

    • German neuroscientist also told to leave UK after residency rejection

      Schwarzkopf said: “I am a German citizen who moved to the UK in 1999 to study neuroscience at Cardiff University, both my undergraduate degree and my PhD. After I got my PhD in 2007, I decided to remain in the UK to work. I am now married to a British woman and am a faculty member at University College London.

      “I originally applied for that permanent residence document in March 2016 because it is necessary for a British citizenship application.

      “In June, one week before the referendum, my application was rejected. The reason was that I hadn’t included my passport in the application, only a legally certified colour copy. This rejection letter contained the phrase that I ‘should now make preparations to leave’ the UK.

      “I was pretty pissed off at that moment, so I wrote a couple of complaint letters including [one] to the then home secretary Theresa May (she never got back to me).

      “Just to be clear, I don’t think that was anything more than a mistake on the part of the Home Office. They simply use these standard letters.

    • Netanyahu to be investigated for bribery, fraud — report

      Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit has reportedly approved a full criminal investigation of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu into allegations of bribery and fraud.

      Netanyahu will be investigated by police for two separate cases and will be called in for police questioning in the coming days, Channel 10 reported on Wednesday.

      Asked by The Times of Israel, the Justice Ministry — under whose auspices the attorney general operates — declined to comment Wednesday evening on the report. There was no immediate response from the Prime Minister’s Office.

      Earlier this month, Zionist Union MK Erel Margalit and Eldad Yaniv, a lawyer and Labor party activist, petitioned the High Court of Justice to demand the Attorney General answer why had not yet opened an investigation despite what they called “overwhelming evidence.”

    • ‘Guardian’ newspaper fails to support colleague facing deportation threat from Israeli government

      Israel is reported to be ready to expel an award-winning Australian journalist and writer, Antony Loewenstein, after he asked a too-probing question of an Israeli politician at a media event last week. Government officials have said they are investigating how they can deny him his work visa when it comes up for renewal in March.

      It is unsurprising to learn that Israel has no serious regard for press freedom. But more depressing has been the lack of solidarity shown by journalistic colleagues, most especially the Guardian newspaper, for which he has regularly worked as a freelancer since 2013. Not only has the paper failed to offer him any support, but its management and staff reporters have hurried to distance themselves from him.

    • Trump’s Pick For Attorney General A Big Fan Of Civil Asset Forfeiture

      Efforts to rein in civil forfeiture have been moving forward around the country. Several states have passed laws that remove some of the perverse incentives that have allowed law enforcement agencies to seize cash, cars, homes, and whatever else might be laying around without criminal convictions. Very few efforts have gone as far as to make convictions a requirement in every case, but most have at least closed the federal loophole that allowed agencies to bypass more restrictive state laws to take control of citizens’ assets.

      The federal government’s use of asset forfeiture still remains untouched. The equitable sharing program that helped local law enforcement agencies skirt state regulations closed briefly due to budget cutbacks, but was revived once the tax dollars started flowing again.

      While some legislators have mounted efforts to scale back federal civil asset forfeiture, nothing has made its way to the president’s desk. There’s a new president on the way and his choice for attorney general isn’t going to help those efforts along. Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions is a longtime fan of asset forfeiture and still believes — despite years of evidence to the contrary — that it’s an effective Drug War weapon, rather than law enforcement agencies going shopping for things they want.

    • Oversight Board Spares NYPD’s Feelings By Softening Language In Taser Complaint Report

      The NYPD’s estranged relationship with its oversight continues. The Civilian Complaint Review Board — put into place after it became apparent the NYPD wasn’t interested in policing itself — has noticed the department is vocally supportive of better policing, but has no interest in actually making any changes to the way it disciplines its officers.

      The NYPD has yet to see a civilian complaint it can’t make disappear and has almost always recommended a lesser punishment for misconduct than the Board has recommended. In controversial “chokehold” cases, the Board found the NYPD was completely uninterested in doing anything about officers’ use of a tactic it has outlawed.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • 10 everyday things on the web the EU Commission wants to make illegal: Oettinger’s legacy

        In a few days, scandal-prone Günther Oettinger will stop being Europe’s top internet policy maker – he’s being promoted to oversee the EU budget.

        But before leaving, the outgoing Digital Commissioner submitted dangerous plans that undermine two core foundations of the internet: Links and file uploads. While Oettinger is going away, his lobby-dictated proposals are here to stay.

12.29.16

Software Patents Continue to Collapse, But IBM, Watchtroll and David Kappos Continue to Deny and Antagonise It

Posted in America, Deception, IBM, Patents at 7:53 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

They even organise events to push their agenda

Lobbying for Watchtroll

Summary: The latest facts and figures about software patents, compared to the spinmeisters’ creed which they profit from (because they are in the litigation business)

“L

atest [Section] 101 Statistics Show Improved Validity Prospects at Dist. Cts, Not CAFC or PTAB,” said a patent attorney the other day, reinforcing our response to Mullin's article (titled “These three 2016 [CAFC] cases gave new life to software patents”). The reality in the US right now is undeniably bad for software patents, which are being chopped at PTAB’s block and CAFC’s block. Patent maximalists are trying to pretend otherwise and we repeatedly rebut their arguments, only to see these arguments resurfacing over and over again, courtesy of the usual suspects. If the lies are repeated often enough, then maybe prospective applicants (or clients in need of legal representation) will actually believe them.

“The reality in the US right now is undeniably bad for software patents, which are being chopped at PTAB’s block and CAFC’s block.”The other day we saw this new article titled “Assessing USPTO’s Memo On Software Claim Patent Eligibility”; we keep wondering if USPTO officials will become as rational and realistic as US courts. Right now they just strive to rubberstamp whatever they can and those who pay the price for it are both plaintiffs and defendants; only patent law firms profit from it.

“This method of presentation involves storing and processing applications or parts of applications at a user’s local personal computer rather than at a remote server.”
      –PatentDocsAs a side note — although an important note nonetheless — we can’t help but notice that IBM keeps trying to corrupt the system though its former Director, who had worked for IBM beforehand. IBM definitely used to be a (GNU/)Linux friend. Now it’s just an Apple promoter/pusher and a malicious patent aggressor. Yes, IBM has been rather busy going after small companies using software patents. Some of these companies, seeing what a menace IBM is becoming, belatedly turn to PTAB in an effort to invalidate these patents of IBM. Here is one report about IBM’s software patent that will quite likely be invalidated: “The ’967 patent relates to a method for presenting applications in an interactive service featuring steps for generating screen displays of the service applications at the reception systems of the respective users. This method of presentation involves storing and processing applications or parts of applications at a user’s local personal computer rather than at a remote server. This helps avoid possible server bandwidth issues that can be caused by the server being required to serve too much data to multiple users simultaneously. The ’967 patent lists many applications that can take advantage of this method of presentation, including games, news, weather, movie reviews, banking, investments, home shopping, messaging, and advertising.”

This is pretty trivial. It’s akin to caching.

Now watch what David Kappos is cited as saying again. “US is losing the innovation war,” he is quoted by IBM as saying, “to China” (where IBM finds buyers for its failing business units, notably Lenovo).

“Kappos is a paid lobbyist,” Benjamin Henrion noted, “working for patent trolls such as Microsoft or IBM.”

“IBM’s Schecter would know,” I replied, as “he’s IBM’s patent chief ^_^ so [he] has the ‘receipts’…”

What we have here is IBM citing as ‘proof’ a former IBM staff who is now an IBM-funded lobbyist for software patents. Look how dirty (as in dirty play) these people are…

And as if the greater the number of patents, the better… who would be foolish enough to actually believe this?!

“China pushing for software patents,” Henrion noted in relation to another Schecter tweet, “apparatus claims relating to software can contain both hardware and “program” components…” (links to “China Files A Million Patents In A Year, As Government Plans To Increase Patentability Of Software”)

“Kappos is a paid lobbyist working for patent trolls such as Microsoft or IBM…”
      –Benjamin HenrionChina is their new bogeyman. One of these people added: “But USA keeps working on UN-patentability of software. What’s wrong with this picture?”

Nothing is wrong with this picture. It’s a good decision. End software patents, end patent trolls.

“China is plain wrong on this,” Henrion wrote, separately noting (to Marietje Schaake regarding software patents in Europe) that it’s “like the unitary patent lie that it won’t affect software development.”

On a final note, worth seeing is this rant from Watchtroll and 'gang' about end of software patenting (or demise thereof). “Stepping Back from the Cliff: The Year Congress Didn’t Cave to the Anti-Patent Lobby” says the title. They’re currently taking stock of a terrible year for them [1, 2] — a year which saw the demise of patent trolls. Watchtroll continues to attack PTAB for doing its job and we can’t help wondering why IBM’s Schecter treats this like some kind of ambassador for his cause. Does IBM really want to be so closely associated with Watchtroll, who even resorts to attacking judges?

For a more balanced summary of recent events, see “Year in Review: The Top-Five Legal Developments of 2016″ (posted days ago). It has a section about software patents.

“…anti patent trolling would be better, even if trolling is considered pejorative.”
      –Benjamin HenrionThose who are against software patents, notably people who actually write software, are not “anti-patent” as Watchtroll tries to put it. In fact, as Henrion put it, “anti-patent is a gross and blunt exaggeration here. […] anti patent trolling would be better, even if trolling is considered pejorative.”

Patent trolls, in the majority of cases, rely on software patents. Take the latter away to get rid of the former. █

2016 Was a Terrible Year for Patent Trolls and 2017 Will Probably be a Lot Worse for Them

Posted in America, Patents at 6:54 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

New year

Summary: The US Supreme Court (SCOTUS) is planning to weigh in on a case which will quite likely drive patent trolls out of the Eastern District of Texas, where all the courts that are notoriously friendly towards them reside

MANY patents granted by the USPTO have become the basis for ruinous lawsuits filed by patent trolls, which may soon be dealt an unprecedented and much-needed blow.

Patent trolls are not just a minor nuisance or some small random parasitic companies without products; some of them are gigantic and many are covers (or fronts) for large corporation seeking to shield themselves from counterclaims. Consider this new story about “Cayman Global”, yet another ‘IP’ proxy, this time for Faraday Future. “The Verge reports that Faraday Future does not own its intellectual property, and that it is instead owned by a separate entity called FF Cayman Global,” Business Insider wrote the other day. Microsoft too has created its own patent assertion entity — the one it uses to taunt Linux and Android all the time.

Florian Müller and LWN have both highlighted this good article published on December 27th by Daniel Nazer of the EFF. To quote: “Patent trolls were down but certainly not out in 2016. After a massive burst of litigation at the end of last year, we saw a noticeable drop in patent troll lawsuits at the start of this one. But trolls began returning to court as the year continued and 2016 will likely end with a relatively small overall decline. Consistent with recent trends, troll cases clustered in the Eastern District of Texas. Approximately one in three patent suits were filed in that remote, troll-friendly district, and these suits were almost all filed by companies with no business other than suing for patent infringement.”

“Microsoft too has created its own patent assertion entity — the one it uses to taunt Linux and Android all the time.”A lot of patent trolls lose their battles as software patents reach the wastebasket or never get used at all (due to low certainty of settlement/prosecution).

In 2017 we expect the case that will likely destroy trolls to be decided on by SCOTUS. This new article by Sasha Moss, Technology Policy Fellow at the R Street Institute, says that the “U.S. Supreme Court announced earlier this month it will hear the appeal of a patent infringement case brought by Kraft Foods Group Brands LLC against zero-calorie sweetener manufacturer TC Heartland LCC.”

Even lawyers’ sites wrote about this, e.g. “Will forum shopping days, like holiday shopping days, soon come to an end?”

“Only the more ‘extremist’ sites of (and for) patent lawyers, as we noted here before, prefer to say that nothing will change.”Professor Michael Risch wrote about this case that Patently-O, where he wrote/published his piece, predicts is going to kill patent trolls’ business model. To quote Risch, “I should note that the outset that I favor TC Heartland’s position from a policy point of view. I’ve long said in a variety of venues (including comment threads on this very blog) that there are significant problems with any system in which so much rides on where the case is filed. And I think that’s true whether you think they are doing a great or terrible job in the Eastern District of Texas.”

Only the more ‘extremist’ sites of (and for) patent lawyers, as we noted here before, prefer to say that nothing will change. We shall see next year, but the one newly-introduced factor will be the Republican government and perhaps several new appointments of Justices. █

Fitbit’s Decision to Drop Patent Case Against Jawbone Shows Decreased Potency of Abstract Patents, Not Jawbone’s Weakness

Posted in America, Courtroom, Patents at 5:42 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

What a total waste of money!

Waste disposal

Summary: The scope of patents in the United States is rapidly tightening (meaning, fewer patents are deemed acceptable by the courts) and Fitbit’s patent case is the latest case to bite the dust

EARLIER this year we learned that the USPTO might have to reassess design patents, having already reassessed software patents. SCOTUS was poised to look into an Apple v Samsung case (one of several high-profile cases), which later turned out alright for Samsung.

Days ago we found a new article titled “US Supreme Court Sets The Bar Higher For Obtaining Damages For Design Patent Infringement” in the media of patent lawyers. At the same time patent law firms said that we all need more patents that fall inside/within a broader scope (i.e. more money paid for their ‘services’) , this time too in relation to design patents. Another patent law firm spoke in favour of design patents because it makes money out of patent maximalism. Shouldn’t we just ignore them all, knowing that they object to SCOTUS not because SCOTUS is wrong but because of greed? They want design patents, like those which are often applicable to gadgets, but such patents are being phased out, or defanged in the damages sense. The incentive too pursue such patents has just decreased and confidence in existing ones eroded.

Certainty surrounding software and design patents is declining and in fact just two days ago, regarding the Fitbit case that we covered here before, there was a major new development. The seminal lawsuit got dropped:

Fitbit drops patent infringement case against rival wearable tech company Jawbone

Fitbit Inc. has dropped one of its patent infringement cases against rival wearable tech maker AliphCom Inc.’s Jawbone, pointing to its belief that the company is already failing financially, reported The Wall Street Journal.

The two San Francisco-based companies both manufacture and market wearable fitness trackers and have been tied up in litigation with each other, alleging patent infringement and the stealing of trade secrets. Patents in the litigation dropped by Fitbit were related to heart-rate and physical activity monitor technology.

Fitbit’s case would have blocked Jawbone’s ability to bring their competing product into the U.S., however it seems as if financial issues have already hampered the company’s ability to do business. Jawbone no longer lists its products for sale on its website.

Fitbit’s implicit message here is that it was going to win but was merciful enough because of the defendant’s position, but that’s quite likely just spin. The legal battle soon became a two-edged sword because Jawbone fought back and now it looks increasingly expensive for Fitbit to fight on, especially relying on patents that high courts tend to invalidate at the end.

What we are seeing here is part of the trend of litigation declines (as noted by several sources so far this year). Bad news for patent lawyers, but excellent news to everybody else. █

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