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

    Professor Eben Moglen on How Social Control Media Metabolises Humans and Constrains Freedom of Thought
    Nothing of value would be lost if all these data-harvesting giants (profiling people) vanished overnight
    Debian Left Twitter (MElon "X"), We Think the Free Software Foundation (FSF) Should Do the Same
    What would the FSF really lose if it stopped posting there?
    Tons of Anti-Linux 'Articles' Published by Bots (LLMs), Maybe Microsoft's
    Upon closer inspection, all this FUD turned out to be LLM garbage
    Ubuntu Desktop Director of Engineering Has Only One Blog Post. It Promotes Microsoft Windows.
    Remember that even 15 years ago (more or less, maybe 16 years ago) Canonical appointed a a 'former' Microsoft manager (Spencer) to lead Ubuntu on the desktop
     
    Links 07/02/2025: US 'Demolition Crew', e-ID Loopholes, and Sanctions
    Links for the day
    Social Control Media is Narcissism
    Nowadays there's a lot more literature and even press coverage explaining the harms of Social Control Media
    statCounter Sees GNU/Linux Share Doubling in China Over the Past Year
    It'll be interesting to see what data in the coming months shows
    Over at Tux Machines...
    GNU/Linux news for the past day
    IRC Proceedings: Thursday, February 06, 2025
    IRC logs for Thursday, February 06, 2025
    Richard Stallman (RMS) Confirms Next Week's Talk in Europe
    He gave at least 2 talks in Europe last month
    Nationalism As A Service (NaaS) by Microsoft Azure, Gutting the US Government for Profit
    Will Microsoft be receiving bailouts as a reward for all this?
    Rumours of IBM Layoffs Apparently Confirmed Yesterday, IBM Canada Consulting Impacted (as Rumoured)
    when IBM has layoffs we must also read it as Red Hat layoffs
    Gemini Links 06/02/2025: Voicemail Sucks and Night of Lights
    Links for the day
    Links 06/02/2025: YouTube Takedowns Out of Control, 'DOGE' Breaking Laws
    Links for the day
    IBM Red Hat on "era of cloud computing", pushing "hey hi" (AI) hype in Microsoft Azure
    LLM slop might actually be more benign than Microsoft promotion
    Corruption and Rule-Breaking Prevail at the European Patent Office (EPO), Europe's Second-Largest Institution
    The law does not really exist at the EPO; it can be perceived as merely a "recommendation"
    statCounter: More Countries Where Windows is Around 1% "Market Share" (People Have Moved to Android/Linux)
    in some nations Windows is already 1% or less
    404 Media Says "Workers at NASA Told to Drop Everything to Scrub Mentions of Indigenous People, Women from Its Websites" But There's Also Accessibility in the Firing Line
    In the case of abandoning accessibility, everyone stands to be hurt and proprietary software can be brought in to replace standards
    When BetaNews Writes Real Articles About "Linux" They Promote Windows
    The Web is in a bad state. We need to at least try to correct this.
    Gemini Links 06/02/2025: Cynicism and "Real Magic on the C64"
    Links for the day
    Links 06/02/2025: New Sanctions, Layoffs, and Executive Orders
    Links for the day
    Distros and Desktop Environments, Devices
    GNU/Linux focused
    New Rumours of IBM Layoffs in 2025, IBM Consulting Still Struggles, Based on Management
    "Hey hi" (AI) has been a common excuse for business failure
    Over at Tux Machines...
    GNU/Linux news for the past day
    IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, February 05, 2025
    IRC logs for Wednesday, February 05, 2025
    Links 05/02/2025: Kessler Syndrome and News Online
    Links for the day
    statCounter: Monaco Now 7% GNU/Linux ("Proper")
    GNU/Linux, not counting Chromebooks, is on the rise
    Many Parts of Google Lose Money
    It's quite apparent that many parts of Google - even some that rely on ad revenue or push ads - aren't profiting
    European Internet Forum (EIF) is Dominated by American Corporations and Microsoft Lobbyists, Staff Take the Lead
    Should the officials over here or the European Parliament pay attention to these people?
    Links 05/02/2025: Connection without Connectivity and Unionised Grocery Workers
    Links for the day
    Just Because People on Top of the Microsoft Pyramid Made a Lot of Money Doesn't Mean Microsoft is Wealthy
    The bigger they are the harder they fall
    Gemini Links 05/02/2025: Learning, Madman Ruling a Mad Country, Back in Geminispace
    Links for the day
    statCounter Shows "WIntel" Chasing a Dying Market
    Microsoft acts as if it's running out of money
    Free Software Foundation, Inc. (FSF) Still Raising Money, Richard Stallman Contributes
    total exceeding $430k
    A Lot of Stuff About "Linux" in Google News is LLM Slop, Fake 'Articles'
    It seems to be getting worse
    Over at Tux Machines...
    GNU/Linux news for the past day
    IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, February 04, 2025
    IRC logs for Tuesday, February 04, 2025