Bonum Certa Men Certa

Links - Copyright Maximalists turn on Libraries, Other Horrors. Will Yang Return to Yahoo?

Reader's Picks



  • Security



    • Another Nugget from M$
      Days ahead of the patch folks all around the world have been able to take over almost any PC on a LAN running that other OS just by placing a malicious .dll on some networked storage device. The mind boggles. I can see SANs intended to share files among the group to be used to own the whole LAN.


    • Google sheds some light on Iran's involvement with the Diginotar cert incident.
      It means that somebody in Iran had gone to great lengths to intercept supposedly secure Internet traffic, including Gmail messages. ... [Iran] remains one of the few nations that would have a need to defraud Western companies in order to conduct such surveillance. Many governments, including countries with a poor reputation for defending freedom of expression or privacy, are able to generate any number of fake digital certificates on their own authority. The current dependence of secure Internet traffic on a few, potentially insecure commercial companies is a profound flaw.

      Richard Stallman notes, "I am sad to report that the Chrome browser that this was done with is nonfree software."



  • Defence/Police/Aggression





  • Finance



  • Anti-Trust



    • Yahoo co-founder urged to help oust chairman
      A major Yahoo Inc. shareholder is recruiting company co-founder Jerry Yang to join a crusade to oust Chairman Roy Bostock amid the upheaval triggered by the recent firing of CEO Carol Bartz. The shareholder, hedge fund manager Daniel Loeb, sought Yang's help in a letter sent Wednesday.


    • MICROSOFT DONATES $8 MILLION GRANT TO THURGOOD MARSHALL COLLEGE FUND[sic]
      Microsoft Corporation has recently announced that it will be renewing its partnership with the Thurgood Marshall College Fund through an additional $8 million software grant. This recent grant brings the total donation amount given by the Microsoft Corporation to $29 million, and will provide software for TMCF’s 47-member network of Historically Black Colleges and Universities. ...

      There may be a hardware component to this dumping/indoctrination, but the value is a tax avoidance fiction and the hardware will be a liability using the software that comes with it.





  • Censorship



    • Child Pornography Bill Makes Privacy Experts Skittish
      The bill requires all Internet service providers to save their customers' IP addresses — or online identity numbers — for a year. The bill's stated purpose is to help police find child pornographers, but critics say that's just an excuse for another step toward Big Brother.




  • Privacy

    • Massachusetts track car location by automatically scanning license plates from police cars.
      Civil libertarians are raising the alarm over the state’s plans to create a Big Brother database that could map drivers’ whereabouts with police cruiser-mounted scanners that capture thousands of license plates per hour.

      I'm not sure why the system would have to be in police cars and could not be operated from other cameras like the red light cameras at every major intersection. People should be concerned about those too.





  • Civil Rights



  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • WIPO Broadcasting Treaty Returns From The Grave
      The current draft Treaty would grant exclusive, 50-year intellectual property rights to distributors of information that apply in parallel with copyright protections, even when transmitters have had no role in creating the content being transmitted.

      The treaty and article use the propaganda term Intellectual Property, and the treaty is more than an extension of copyright.



    • Copyrights



      • PJ Notes a lawsuit to prevent universities from making digital libraries, which objects even to digitization of orphaned works.
        Well, the more they try to assert their Most Holy rights, and the rights of people no one can find, the more certain I am that copyright law will end up reformed. It's like Righthaven. Or patent trolls. When people get disgusted by excessive use of the law, they decide to do something about it. Maybe it's time to go back to the prior copyright system, where you had to register your copyright to have one?

        Guardian source article intentionally not linked.







  • Comments

    Recent Techrights' Posts

    Frans Pop suicide and Ubuntu grievances
    Reprinted with permission from disguised.work
    Workers' Right to Disconnect Won't Matter If Such a Right Isn't Properly Enforced
    I was always "on-call" and my main role or function was being "on-call" in case of incidents
    A Discussion About Suicides in Science and Technology (Including Debian and the European Patent Office)
    In Debian, there is a long history of deaths, suicides, and mysterious disappearances
    Federal News Network is Corrupt, It Runs Propaganda Pieces for Microsoft
    Federal News Network used to be OK some years ago
    Hard Evidence Reinforces Suspicion That Mark Shuttleworth May Have Worked Volunteers to Death
    Today we start re-publishing articles that contain unaltered E-mails
     
    [Meme] Sometimes Torvalds and RMS Agree on Things
    hype around chatbots
    [Video] Linus Torvalds on 'Hilarious' AI Hype: "I Hate the Hype" and "I Don't Want to be Part of the Hype", "You Need to Be a Bit Cynical About This Whole Hype Cycle"
    Linus Torvalds on LLMs
    Colin Watson, Steve McIntyre & Debian, Ubuntu cover-up mission after Frans Pop suicide
    Reprinted with permission from disguised.work
    Links 30/04/2024: Wireless Carriers Selling Customer Location Data, Facebook Posts Causing Trouble
    Links for the day
    Links 30/04/2024: More Google Layoffs (Wide-Ranging)
    Links for the day
    Fresh Rumours of Impending Mass Layoffs at IBM Red Hat
    "IBM filed a W.A.R.N with the state of North Carolina. That only means one thing."
    Mark Shuttleworth's (MS's) Canonical is Promoting Microsoft This Week (Surveillance Slanted as 'Confidential')
    Who runs Canonical these days? Why does Canonical help sell Windows?
    What Mark Shuttleworth and Canonical Can to Remedy the Damage Done to Frans Pop's Family
    Mr. Shuttleworth and Canonical as a company can at the very least apologise for putting undue pressure
    Amnesty International & Debian Day suicides comparison
    Reprinted with permission from disguised.work
    [Meme] A Way to Get No Real Work Done
    Walter White looking at phone: Your changes could not be saved to device
    Modern Measures of 'Productivity' Boil Down to Time Wasting and Misguided Measurements/Yardsticks
    People are forgetting the value of nature and other human beings
    Countries That Beat the United States at RSF's World Press Freedom Index (After US Plunged Some More)
    The United States (US) was 17 when these rankings started in 2002
    Record Productivity and Preserving People's Past on the Net
    We're very productive these days, partly owing to online news slowing down (less time spent on curating Daily Links)
    Over at Tux Machines...
    GNU/Linux news for the past day
    IRC Proceedings: Monday, April 29, 2024
    IRC logs for Monday, April 29, 2024
    Links 30/04/2024: Malaysian and Russian Governments Crack Down on Journalists
    Links for the day
    Frans Pop Debian Day suicide, Ubuntu, Google and the DEP-5 machine-readable copyright file
    Reprinted with permission from disguised.work
    Axel Beckert (ETH Zurich), the mentality of sexual violence on campus
    Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
    [Meme] Russian Reversal
    Mark Shuttleworth: In Soviet Russia's spacecraft... Man exploits peasants
    Frans Pop & Debian suicide denial
    Reprinted with permission from disguised.work
    The Real Threats to Society Include Software Patents and the Corporations That Promote Them
    The OIN issue isn't a new one and many recognise this by now
    Links 30/04/2024: OpenBSD and Enterprise Cloaking Device
    Links for the day
    Microsoft Still Owes Over 100 Billion Dollars and It Cannot be Paid Back Using 'Goodwill'
    Meanwhile, Microsoft's cash at hand (in the bank) nearly halved in the past year.
    [Teaser] Ubuntu Cover-up After Death
    Attack the messenger
    The Cyber Show Explains What CCTV is About
    CCTV does not typically resolve crime
    [Video] Ignore Buzzwords and Pay Attention to Attacks on Software Developers
    AI in the Machine Learning sense is nothing new
    Outline of Themes to Cover in the Coming Weeks
    We're accelerating coverage and increasing focus on suppressed topics
    [Video] Not Everyone Claiming to Protect the Vulnerable is Being Honest
    "Diversity" bursaries aren't always what they seem to be
    [Video] Enshittification of the Media, of the Web, and of Computing in General
    It manifests itself in altered conditions and expectations
    [Meme] Write Code 100% of the Time
    IBM: Produce code for us till we buy the community... And never use "bad words" like "master" and "slave" (pioneered by IBM itself in the computing context)
    [Video] How Much Will It Take for Most People to Realise "Open Source" Became Just Openwashing (Proprietary Giants Exploiting Cost-Free or Unpaid 'Human Resources')?
    turning "Open Source" into proprietary software
    Freedom of Speech... Let's Ban All Software Freedom Speeches?
    There's a moral panic over people trying to actually control their computing
    Richard Stallman's Talk in Spain Canceled (at Short Notice)
    So it seems to have been canceled very fast
    Links 29/04/2024: "AI" Hype Deflated, Economies Slow Down Further
    Links for the day
    Gemini Links 29/04/2024: Gopher Experiment and Profectus Alpha 0.9
    Links for the day
    [Video] Why Microsoft is by Far the Biggest Foe of Computer Security (Clue: It Profits From Security Failings)
    Microsoft is infiltrating policy-making bodies, ensuring real security is never pursued
    Debian 'Cabal' (via SPI) Tried to Silence or 'Cancel' Daniel Pocock at DNS Level. It Didn't Work. It Backfired as the Material Received Even More Visibility.
    know the truth about modern slavery
    Lucas Nussbaum & Debian attempted exploit of OVH Hosting insider
    Reprinted with permission from disguised.work
    Software in the Public Interest (SPI) is Not a Friend of Freedom
    We'll shortly reproduce two older articles from disguised.work
    Harassment Against My Wife Continues
    Drug addict versus family of Techrights authors
    Syria, John Lennon & Debian WIPO panel appointed
    Reprinted with permission from disguised.work
    Over at Tux Machines...
    GNU/Linux news for the past day
    IRC Proceedings: Sunday, April 28, 2024
    IRC logs for Sunday, April 28, 2024
    [Video] GNU and Linux Everywhere (Except by Name)
    In a sense, Linux already has over 50% of the world's "OS" market
    [Video] Canonical Isn't (No Longer) Serious About Making GNU/Linux Succeed in Desktops/Laptops
    Some of the notorious (or "controversial") policies of Canonical have been covered here for years
    [Video] What We've Learned About Debian From Emeritus Debian Developer Daniel Pocock
    pressure had been put on us (by Debian people and their employer/s) and as a result we did not republish Debian material for a number of years
    Bruce Perens & Debian public domain trademark promise
    Reprinted with permission from disguised.work
    Links 28/04/2024: Shareholders Worry "AI" Hype Brings No Income, Money Down the Drain
    Links for the day
    Lawyer won't lie for Molly de Blanc & Chris Lamb (mollamby)
    Reprinted with permission from disguised.work
    Over at Tux Machines...
    GNU/Linux news for the past day
    IRC Proceedings: Saturday, April 27, 2024
    IRC logs for Saturday, April 27, 2024