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11.07.16

Links 7/11/2016: NES Classic Linux Computer

Posted in News Roundup at 7:18 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • Stop searching for projects and start searching for bugs

    GitHub has a powerful search engine where you can customize your search in a variety of ways. The easiest way to search is by issue label.

    A lot of open source projects label their issues to conveniently track them, using labels like beginner, easy, starter, good first bug, low hanging fruit, bitesize, trivial, easy fix, and new contributor.

    You can further narrow down your search based on the programming language you’re comfortable with, by adding language: name to your search query. For example, here are all issues labeled as “beginner” in JavaScript.

  • ‘Open source’ is not ‘free software’

    In the open source universe, using terms such as FLOSS (Free/Libre and Open Source Software) is common and represents a casual conflation of the terms open source and free software, which are often used interchangeably. I would be remiss if I didn’t also admit that I have been guilty of same. I won’t be doing that anymore—or at least I’ll try not to—for a simple reason: Using the terms interchangeably is dangerous to the goals of free software and open media advocates (read “anti-DRM”). To continue this practice is to undermine beliefs that are fundamental to free software and associated movement.

  • RPG Open Source Horse Pulls IBM i Community Plow

    The RPG development community is shrinking. I don’t mean because old programmers are riding into the sunset. I’m talking about collaboration and its ability to guide development that benefits the community by addressing the challenges of next generation applications for IBM midrange shops. Not that a collaborative open source culture is thriving here. But it could and it should. There are efforts to get this under way. And that will figuratively shrink the community.

  • Events

  • Web Browsers

    • Chrome Crushing It In The Browser Wars While Edge Continues To Sputter

      Despite all the effort Microsoft is expending in getting Internet users to try out and stick with its Edge browser, Chrome continues to the popular choice. Even worse for Microsoft, Chrome’s popularity is growing—it now accounts for more than half of all desktop browser usage and has nearly double the market share of Edge and Internet Explorer combined.

      Market research firm Net Applications has Chrome sitting pretty with a 54.99 percent share of the desktop browser market, up from 31.12 percent at this moment a year ago, while Internet Explorer and Edge combine for 28.39 percent and Firefox stuck at around 11 percent. Even more interesting is that when Windows 10 launched to the public at the end of July 2015, Chrome had a 27.82 percent share of the market while Internet Explorer still dominated the landscape with a 54 percent share. Now the script has flipped.

    • Chrome

      • Google’s Chrome Hackers Are About to Upend Your Idea of Web Security

        In a show of hacker team spirit in August of last year, Parisa Tabriz ordered hoodies for the staff she leads at Google, a group devoted to the security of the company’s Chrome browser. The sweatshirts were emblazoned with the words “Department of Chromeland Security,” along with Chrome’s warning to users when they visit insecure websites that leave them open to surveillance or sabotage: a red padlock crossed out with an X.

      • Gopass, a Chrome extension for Pass

        Last week I treated myself to some hardware upgrades for my desktop, which will be my main workstation from now on. After installing Ubuntu Gnome, I was pleasantly surprised to find that most of my favorite applications from OSX have a Linux version.

        One application that does not have a native Linux client is 1Password, my (now ex-) password manager. Luckily, there’s Pass.

  • SaaS/Back End

  • Databases

    • Open-source database PostgreSQL powering GOV.UK portal

      The UK Government Digital Service (GDS) has been running PostgreSQL for one year now to power the GOV.UK portal. This open-source database system hosts the central content store underlying the portal, its Content Management System (CMS), and its internal publishing API.

  • Education

    • Hungary seeks nationwide, open source eLearning tool

      Municipalities in Hungary should be able to use modern, web based eLearning tools to train their staff. To make this possible, Hungary’s State Treasury is looking for a service provider to help them run the open source Moodle eLearning solution.

  • BSD

    • FreeBSD 11.0

      There were definitely some attractive features in FreeBSD 11.0. I especially enjoyed the changes to the system installer. The ability to set up UFS and ZFS through a series of guided steps was a welcome feature. I also really appreciate that the installer will allow us to enable certain security features like PID randomization and hiding the processes of other users. Linux distributions allow the administrator to set these options, but they often require digging through documentation and setting cryptic variables from the command line. FreeBSD makes enabling these features as straight forward as checking a box during the initial installation.

      I also like how pkg has progressed. I think it has become faster in the past year or two and handled dependencies better than it did when the new package manager was introduced. In addition, FreeBSD’s documentation is as good as ever, though I feel it has become more scattered. There were times I would find what I wanted in the Handbook, but other times I had to switch to the wiki or dig through a man page. The information is out there, but it can take some searching to find.

      Other aspects of running FreeBSD were more disappointing. For example, I had hoped to find boot environments working and accessible from the boot menu. However, progress seems to have reversed in this area as switching boot environments prevented the system from loading. There were some other issues, for example I was unable to login from the graphical login screen, but I could access the Lumina desktop by signing into my account from the command line and launching an X session.

      Hardware was a weak point in my experiment. FreeBSD did not work on my desktop machine at all in BIOS mode and failed to boot from installation media in UEFI mode. When running in a VirtualBox environment, the operating system did much better. FreeBSD was able to boot, play sound and run smoothly, but screen resolution was limited, even after VirtualBox modules had been installed and enabled.

      Perhaps my biggest concern though while using FreeBSD 11.0 was that I could not update the base operating system, meaning it would be difficult to keep the system patched against security updates. Even once I had manually created a /boot directory to fix the boot environment creation issue, freebsd-update and freebsd-version continued to fail to detect the running kernel. This leaves the system vulnerable and means our best chance for keeping up with security updates is to manually install them from source code, not an ideal situation.

      All in all, FreeBSD 11.0 does have some interesting new features, but it also has several bugs which make me want to hold off on using the operating system until a point release has been made available to fix the existing issues.

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

  • Public Services/Government

    • The People’s Code – Now on Code.gov

      Over the past few years, we’ve taken unprecedented action to help Americans engage with their Government in new and meaningful ways.

      Using Vote.gov, citizens can now quickly navigate their state’s voter registration process through an easy-to-use site. Veterans can go to Vets.gov to discover, apply for, track and manage their benefits in one, user-friendly place. And for the first time ever, citizens can send a note to President Obama simply by messaging the White House on Facebook.

      By harnessing 21st Century technology and innovation, we’re improving the Federal Government’s ability to provide better citizen-centered services and are making the Federal Government smarter, savvier, and more effective for the American people. At the same time, we’re building many of these new digital tools, such as We the People, the White House Facebook bot, and Data.gov, in the open so that as the Government uses technology to re-imagine and improve the way people interact with it, others can too.

    • People’s Code: The U.S. Government Delivers Numerous Open Source Projects

      When it comes to the U.S. government, most people’s eyes are trained on the Presidential race, and if yours are, you may have missed the substantial work promoting open source software that the government is doing. For example, The Office of Management and Budget recently mandated in a lengthy memo that under the final Federal Source Code policy, federal agencies will have to share internally developed code with each other and release at least 20 percent of their code to the public.

      Now, the government has launched an update of its website, Code.gov, aimed at housing key open source projects.

    • Code.gov is the US government’s open-source software hub

  • Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

    • Open Access/Content

      • Deep Dive: Open Access and Transforming the Future of Research

        EFF works to inform the world about breaking issues in the world of technology policy and civil liberties. And one of our best ways of communicating with our friends and members is through our nearly-weekly newsletter, EFFector. Last week, we sent out a very special EFFector: a deep dive, single-issue edition that got into the nitty-gritty of open access and research. To keep the conversation going, we are publishing it here on the Deeplinks blog as well.

Leftovers

  • Health/Nutrition

    • East African Nations Agree Declaration Promoting Regional Pharma Sector Investment

      The three-day conference brings together key stakeholders from EAC Partner States including Ministries of Health, Finance and Industry, National Medicines Regulatory Agencies (NMRAs), National Procurement Agencies (NMPAs), AU-NEPAD Planning and Coordinating Agency, World Health Organization (WHO), United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) and the private sector (local and international pharmaceutical manufacturers) as well as international development partners and investors among others.

    • Indian Generic Pharma Warns Against Government Caving To US Pressure On Data Exclusivity

      The Indian Drug Technical Advisory Board meeting on 7 November is expected to discuss a measure that could lead to opening the way to a 10-year data exclusivity period for originator pharmaceutical companies in India, according to the Indian Pharmaceutical Alliance. The alliance submitted a letter to the advisory board to warn against consequences on public health of data exclusivity if the Indian government “succumbs to” pressure by the United States.

      In a letter to the Indian Drug Technical Advisory Board dated 27 October, D G Shah, secretary general of the Indian Pharmaceutical Alliance (IPA), explained why data exclusivity, which extends market exclusivity, would delay access to cheaper versions of the medicines.

    • WHO Makes Headway In Hepatitis C Treatment Access Campaign

      A leading cause of liver cancer and cirrhosis, chronic infection by hepatitis C virus (HCV) affects more than 80 million people worldwide, 85% of whom live in low (13%) and middle (72%) income countries. Around 15% of Egypt’s population, for example, is infected – one of the world’s highest prevalence rate – while it is estimated that 12 million people in India have hepatitis C.

      Nearly 700 000 people are killed by hepatitis C yearly, where preventive vaccines are lacking.

      And this occurs at a time when at least 1.2 million people in Japan and three million Americans suffer from hepatitis C, while the infection is a major European public-health challenge (between 0.4% and 3.5% of the population in different EU Member States), as the most common single cause of liver transplantation.

  • Security

    • Free security is the only security that really works

      There are certain things people want and will pay for. There are things they want and won’t. If we look at security it’s pretty clear now that security is one of those things people want, but most won’t pay for. The insane success of Let’s Encrypt is where this thought came from. Certificates aren’t new, they used to even be really cheap (there were free providers, but there was a time cost of jumping through hoops). Let’s Encrypt make the time and actual cost basically zero, now it’s deployed all over. Depending who you ask, they’re one of the biggest CAs around now, and that took them a year? That’s crazy.

    • SQLi, XSS zero-days expose Belkin IoT devices, Android smartphones

      Research director Scott Tenaglia and lead research engineer Joe Tanen detailed the vulnerabilities during their ‘Breaking BHAD: Abusing Belkin Home Automation devices’ talk at the Black Hat Europe conference in London last Friday.

      The zero-day flaws specifically relate to Belkin’s smart home products and accompanying Android mobile application, which is used to wirelessly control the home automation devices.

      The first flaw, a SQL injection vulnerability, enables would-be hackers to inject malicious code into the paired Android WeMo smartphone app, and thus take root control of the connected home automation device.

  • Defence/Aggression

    • Evil Russian Propaganda from the Evil Russian Invaders

      The BBC World Service was founded by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and funded by them directly for six decades, until a cosmetic change last year. Its specific purpose is to spread British values and the British view of the world abroad. It specifically, on its dozens of different national services, gives an opportunity to dissident voices who cannot get on their mainstream media. The Americans spend hundreds of millions annually on outfits like RFE/RL to do the same. Yet when the Russians do precisely the same thing on a much smaller scale, for example by enabling you to listen to me, this is portrayed as evil propaganda.

      Fortunately we have the Henry Jackson Society to defend you from it. The Henry Jackson Society, supported by Liam Fox, Jim Murphy and pretty well every other right wing enthusiast you can name, is of course a great believer in free markets. And its sense of the market has detected that its old product of a constant stream of Islamophobia is becoming dated, and currently buyers want Russophobia. Whatever your phobia, the Henry Jackson Society will have some to sell you, so here we have their new Manual of Russophobia.

    • Do Wars Make Us Safer? The People Aren’t Feeling It

      A new poll from an unlikely source suggests that the US public and the US media have very little in common when it comes to matters of war and peace.

      This poll was commissioned by that notorious left-wing hotbed of peaceniks, the Charles Koch Institute, along with the Center for the National Interest (previously the Nixon Center, and before that the humorously named Nixon Center for Peace and Freedom). The poll was conducted by Survey Sampling International.

    • Yemen: The man who lost 27 family members in an air strike

      The war in Yemen had been going on for just two months when Abdullah al-Ibbi sat down for a late-night meal with his two wives, their children and grandchildren. It was then, in an instant, that his world shattered.

      The air strike that hit Abdullah’s home killed 27 members of his family. He survived, but only learnt about their deaths six weeks later when he woke up in a hospital bed.

      “If I didn’t fear God, I would have committed suicide at that moment,” he recalls. “I would have jumped off a building… but God gave me patience.”

      The family had lived in the Houthi rebel stronghold of Saada, which has come under intense aerial bombardment by the Saudi-led coalition supporting the exiled President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi.

      The air strike hit their home at around midnight, says Abdullah. Rescuers with bulldozers worked until morning to retrieve the bodies buried under the rubble. Seventeen were children – the youngest, Abdullah’s granddaughter, Inas, was one month old.

      Three of his adult sons also made it out alive.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

    • NOAA 2017 Tide Tables are Available

      NOAA 2017 tide tables are now available. NOAA tide tables have been in production for 150 years and are used by both commercial and recreational mariners for safe navigation. Printed tide tables provide users with tide and tidal current predictions in an easy-to-read format for particular locations. NOAA’s Center for Operational Oceanographic Products and Services produce these tide tables on an annual basis.

    • Rose Aguilar on Standing Rock Reporting, Michelle Chen on Samsung Labor and Environmental Abuses

      This week on CounterSpin: In their feature “What to Know About the Dakota Access Pipeline Protests,” Time magazine told readers that “environmental activists say” the pipeline would contribute to man-made climate change; “they insist that fossil fuels—including the vast reserves in the Bakken Shale—need to be kept in the ground to protect the world from the worst effects of climate change.”

    • Adidas is making a million pairs of its much-anticipated sneakers created from recycled ocean plastic

      For more than a year, Adidas has been teasing the release of a shoe made almost entirely from discarded plastic fished out of the oceans. It revealed its first prototype of the sustainable sneaker, created in collaboration with environmental organization Parley for the Oceans, in June 2015. Finally, in mid-November, the first mass-produced quantity—7,000 pairs, to be exact—will go on sale, and according to Adidas, that’s just the start.

      “We will make one million pairs of shoes using Parley Ocean Plastic in 2017—and our ultimate ambition is to eliminate virgin plastic from our supply chain,” Eric Liedtke, an Adidas executive board member responsible for global brands, said in a Nov. 4 statement.

    • Green Party Candidate In 33rd Senate Race Feels Real Issues Have Been Ignored By Major Parties

      Colin Bennett is no stranger to running as a Green Party candidate in the 33rd Senate District. He ran and lost in 2004, 2006, 2008 and 2014. The only race he missed in the past decade was in 2012, when he ran for Congress.

      Bennett believes that the issue of climate change is too important not to keep trying to find a way to awaken people to the dangers involved, and if that involves running for office, then so be it, he says.

      “Literally, I feel the world is on the precipice of disaster,” said Bennett. “I’m doing everything in my power to turn that around.”

      Bennett, 37, lives in Westbrook, runs a small used bookstore in Deep River called Bennett’s Books, and has other jobs to make ends meet. In the summer, Bennett works for Sail Connecticut Access, a nonprofit operation that gives people with special needs the opportunity to go sailing.

      The campaign across the 33rd Senate District, which stretches down the Connecticut River Valley from Portland to Old Saybrook, has been dominated by disputes between Republicans and Democrats over Donald Trump and Gov. Dannel P. Malloy.

    • French Greens pick MEP Jadot for 2017 presidential race

      French MEP Yannick Jadot will be the Green candidate for French president next year after winning a second-round party primary Monday.

      Jadot won 54 percent of the vote against Michèle Rivasi, who also sits in the Greens/European Free Alliance group in the European Parliament.

      Jadot, a 49-year-old former Greenpeace activist, won the most votes in the primary’s first round in late October with support of 36 percent. Around 13,000 party members and supporters cast their ballot either by mail or online (for French nationals abroad) last week in the second-round of voting.

  • Finance

    • NYT’s Kristof Blames Poverty on Too Many TVs, Not Too Little Money

      Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, who was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 2006 for giving “voice to the voiceless” on international social justice issues, wrote an op-ed in yesterday’s Times (10/30/16) arguing for increased government action on poverty. His calls for heightened attention to economic deprivation, though, were buried in a larger message that was familiar to longtime Kristof-watchers: that the poor aren’t actually poor because they lack enough money, but because of their own moral failings.

    • CEO’s message a jolt to IT workers facing layoffs

      IT workers in the infrastructure team at Health Care Service Corporation (HCSC) were notified recently of their layoff. They expect to be training replacements from India-based contractor HCL. The layoff affects more than 500 IT workers, according to the insurance firm.

      This familiar IT story began a little differently. A few days before employees were notified in mid-October of their layoff, HCSC CEO Paula Steiner talked about future goals in an internal, company-wide video.

      Steiner’s comments weren’t IT-department-specific, but the takeaway quote by one IT employee was this: “As full-time retiring baby boomers move on to their next chapter, the makeup of our organization will consist more of young and non-traditional workers, such as part-time workers or contractors,” said Steiner in the video.

      What Steiner didn’t say in the employee broadcast is that some of the baby boomers moving “on to the next chapter” are being pushed out the door.

    • What is a blockchain, and why is it growing in popularity?

      Last year, Ripple Labs, creator of the virtual currency XRP, was fined $0.7 million (~£540,000) by the US Financial Crimes Enforcement Network for violating regulations concerning money laundering.

      Some observers cite this as the moment cryptocurrencies shaved off their startup hipster beards, put on a tie, and went mainstream. Being fined by a regulator means that you’re part of the financial services industry at last.

      Given that the first and most famous cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, was launched back in 2009, it has taken the wider industry a relatively long time to warm to it. But now suddenly everyone is talking about Bitcoin’s underlying blockchain technology as a disruptor of potentially massive proportions: Sweden is trialling a new land registry that uses a blockchain, dozens of startups spanning numerous sectors are poking around at possible uses, and importantly policy makers such as the European Parliament have voted in favour of a more hands-off approach towards blockchain tech regulation.

    • Dutch campaigners gather signatures to derail EU-Canada trade deal

      Activists in the Netherlands have gathered almost two-thirds of the signatures needed to lay the groundwork for a referendum on Europe’s free trade deal with Canada, which they say overly favours the interests of multinational companies.

      The Dutch have twice voted down European Union initiatives in referendums, scuppering a proposed EU constitution in 2005 and in April throwing into disarray plans for closer EU relations with Ukraine.

  • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

    • The Art of Spin

      How Hillary Clinton backers deployed faux feminism and privilege politics to divert attention from her destructive policies.

    • Front-Page Election News: More Horserace, More Trump, More Presidency

      Most, but not all campaign stories featured these sorts of empty calories; some dealt with important questions of candidates’ leadership, demeanor and conflicts of interest. One piece (Washington Post, 8/30/16) highlighted Trump’s “us vs. them” strategy, often blaming US problems on minority groups. Another (New York Times, 9/3/16) detailed Clinton’s cozy relationship with and frequent courting of the ultrarich.

      Another 12 percent of front-page election stories were focused on voters. Over half of these stories featured straightforward polling reports, while the others were more detailed looks at voter mood and logic. The New York Times covered voters particularly well; giving voice to their doubts and hopes for the candidates (9/14/16, 9/9/16). The Washington Post (8/22/16) and USA Today (9/13/16) both published some illuminating voter pieces, but many merely regurgitated poll data.

    • Podesta Congratulated on Nevada Fraud

      Nevada was of course one of the most blatant examples of all of the Democratic National Committee rigging the election against Sanders. Firstly the caucuses featured casino owners bussing in coachloads of employees with firm instructions to vote for Hillary. Even with this, Hillary was struggling. Next the Democratic party machine announced to the media on 21 February that Hillary had won, despite it being by no means clear if that were true.

      Finally at the delegate conference, Hillary acolyte and DNC member Roberta Lange in the chair called the state for Clinton on the basis of the most dubious delegate vote imaginable – and denying any recount. What is more, the Clinton camp scored a double whammy by portraying, throughout the controlled corporate media, the precise scenes you see in this video as a violent riot by Sanders supporters. I do ask you to watch this video through and see what you think. It may just change your entire mind on what is really happening in US “democracy”.

    • Clintons Are Under Multiple FBI Investigations as Agents Are Stymied

      Current and former FBI officials have launched a media counter-offensive to engage head to head with the Clinton media machine and to throw off the shackles the Loretta Lynch Justice Department has used to stymie their multiple investigations into the Clinton pay-to-play network.

    • Franken: FBI’s Comey should face Senate hearings

      Sen. Al Franken called Sunday for the Senate Judiciary Committee to hold hearings on FBI Director James Comey’s handling of the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private server. And the Minnesota senator said he thinks Hillary Clinton can rely on his state’s voters despite a last-minute visit from Donald Trump, though he said he’s always “nervous.”

      “I think that there should be hearings, and I’m certain there will be hearings in the Judiciary Committee on this matter,” the Franken told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union.”

      His comments reflected the Democratic frustration with Comey telling lawmakers 11 days before the November 8 election that the FBI was reviewing new emails potentially connected to its investigation into whether Clinton mishandled classified information.

      [...]

      Franken also defended the Clinton Foundation as Tapper pressed him on whether it should be shuttered if Clinton wins the election.

    • Can The Oligarchy Still Steal The Presidential Election?

      At this point, I would think that the Oligarchy would prefer to steal the election for Trump, instead of from him, rather than allow insouciant Americans to destroy America’s reputation by choosing a person under felony investigations for president of the United States.

    • Not all Americans are Barking Nutters

      The journalists of course attempt to say that to vote for Stein is to let Trump in. Stein sticks strongly to the argument that the “Queen of Corruption” and “Warmonger” Clinton is not in fact a real choice from Trump. This is of course absolutely true, Clinton is a dangerous extremist – she just happens to support the extremism of the right wing establishment and its poodle media.

      I have been fascinated by the apoplexy generated in the pretend left by the notion that people ought not to vote for Clinton. The go-to argument is that not to vote for her is in itself an act of misogyny. I wonder if they will argue the same for Marine Le Pen. The second argument is that a corrupt warmonger is better than the racist bigot Trump. The interesting thing is, close examination reveals an almost 100% correlation between those apoplectic at any lack of support for Clinton, and those who supported Tony Blair. The idea that being an ultra-corrupt warmonger is not a big problem is obviously a fixed principle with these people.

    • Defying the Politics of Fear

      Our only chance to overthrow corporate power comes from those who will not surrender to it, who will hold fast to the causes of the oppressed no matter what the price, who are willing to be dismissed and reviled by a bankrupt liberal establishment, who have found within themselves the courage to say no, to refuse to cooperate. The most important issue in this election does not revolve around the personal traits of Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump. It revolves around the destructive dynamic of unfettered and unregulated global capitalism, the crimes of imperialism and the security and surveillance apparatus. These forces are where real power lies. Trump and Clinton will do nothing to restrict them.

      It is up to us to resist. We must refuse to be complicit, even in the act of voting, with the fossil fuel industry’s savaging of our ecosystem, endless wars, oppression of the poor, including the one in five children in this country who is hungry, the evisceration of constitutional rights and civil liberties, the cruel and inhumane system of mass incarceration and the state-sponsored execution of unarmed poor people of color in our marginal communities.

      [...]

      The rise of Donald Trump is the product of the disenchantment, despair and anger caused by neoliberalism and the collapse of institutions that once offered a counterweight to the powerful. Trump gives vent to the legitimate rage and betrayal of the white underclass and working poor. His right-wing populism, which will grow in virulence and sophistication under a Clinton presidency, mirrors the right-wing populism rippling across much of Europe including Poland, Hungary, France and Great Britain. If Clinton wins, Trump becomes the dress rehearsal for fascism.

    • US election poll tracker: Who is ahead – Clinton or Trump?

      Americans will vote on 8 November to choose their next president.

      The numbers have begun to tighten as we approach election day amid crises affecting both Democratic contender Hillary Clinton and her Republican rival Donald Trump.

      Use our tracker to follow the contest and scroll down to find some explanation on what the polls show.

    • WikiLeaks Show Washington Post Writer Asked DNC For Anti-Trump Research

      Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank appears to have asked the Democratic National Committee (DNC) to do the majority of the research for a negative column he wrote about Donald Trump in April 2016.

      Milbank’s column was titled, “The Ten Plagues of Trump,” and featured a list of “outrageous things” said by Trump. One of the “plagues” listed by Milbank, for example, was “Blood” and centered around a quote from Trump about Megyn Kelly: “You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever.”

    • WikiLeaks: Chicago mayor used private domain to communicate with officials

      Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel used personal email accounts and a personal email domain to communicate with government officials and political figures, according to a published report based on hacked emails posted by WikiLeaks.

      Emanuel’s personal account information turned up among the thousands of emails from John Podesta, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, the Chicago Tribune reported. Clinton has come under fire for her use of a private email server because doing so potentially jeopardized classified information.

      Emanuel registered his personal email domain, “rahmemail.com,” on May 16, 2011, the day he was sworn into office. The hacked emails also turned up evidence of Emanuel’s personal Gmail account.

    • Chelsea’s husband allegedly used foundation ties to boost hedge fund

      Chelsea Clinton’s husband used his connections to the Clinton family and their charitable foundation to raise money for his hedge fund, according to an allegation by a longtime Clinton aide made public Sunday in hacked documents released by WikiLeaks.

      Marc Mezvinsky extended invitations to a Clinton Foundation poker event to rich Clinton supporters he was courting as investors in his hedge fund, and he also relied on a billionaire foundation donor to raise money for the fund, according to the WikiLeaks documents. They also assert that he had his wife Chelsea Clinton make calls to set up meetings with potential investors who support her family’s political and charitable endeavors.

      The documents — a memo and an email — were written in late 2011 and early 2012, respectively, by ex-Clinton aide Doug Band. They were sent to family confidants including John Podesta, who is now serving as Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign chairman, and Cheryl Mills, who was Clinton’s State Department chief of staff.

    • Why Historians Must Use Wikileaks To Write The History Of The 2016 Election

      Wikileaks is playing a prominent, if under reported, role, in the 2016 American presidential election. Few understand the importance of Wikileaks in the eventual writing of the history of presidential politics.

      The media write and talk about events as they happen, usually without historical background or context. A good historian writes with retrospection about past events that explain historical outcomes. U.S. Presidential elections leave behind a clutter of accounts of those who were (or claim to have been) eyewitnesses to history – campaign insiders, journalists, pundits, and hangers-on. The best insider accounts pierce some of the veil of campaign rhetoric, PR, talking points, and smoke and mirrors to explain what was really happening behind the scenes.

    • Viggo Mortensen will be voting for Jill Stein on Tuesday, says it’s not a protest vote

      Like most of Hollywood, Viggo Mortensen is solidly anti-Trump in this election, but he’s also no fan of Hillary Clinton.

      Instead the “Lord of the Rings” star — a Bernie Sanders supporter until he dropped out of the race — will be casting his vote for Jill Stein.

      “I don’t want to get to the end of my life and look back and go, ‘You know, I never voted my conscience,’ ” he said at a luncheon for his movie “Captain Fantastic” at the Explorer’s Club.

      “Not really, when it mattered. I don’t want to do that. And I don’t look at it as a protest vote. I’m not voting against something, I’m voting for something. I’m voting my conscience. It’s not a protest, it’s an affirmation.”

    • WikiLeaks: DNC and CNN colluded on questions for Trump, Cruz

      Newly released emails from WikiLeaks suggest that the Democratic National Committee colluded with CNN in devising questions in April to be asked of then-Republican primary candidate Donald Trump in an upcoming interview.

      In an email to DNC colleagues on April 25 with the headline “Trump Questions for CNN,” a DNC official with the email username DillonL@dnc.org asked for ideas for an interview to be conducted by CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer.

      “Wolf Blitzer is interviewing Trump on Tues ahead of his foreign policy address on Wed. … Please send me thoughts by 10:30 AM tomorrow.”

      The sender of the email would seem to be DNC Research Director Lauren Dillon, who was identified in previous reports of DNC emails released by WikiLeaks in July.

    • Chelsea Clinton ‘used Foundation resources to fund her 2010 wedding to Marc Mezvinsky’, according to new Wikileaks emails

      Hillary Clinton’s daughter Chelsea allegedly used resources from the Clinton Foundation for her wedding, a new dump of Wikileaks emails appear to reveal.

      In several emails, Doug Band, a former top aide to president Bill Clinton and a former Clinton Global Initiative board member, complains about Chelsea Clinton (writing ‘cvc’ for Chelsea Victoria Clinton).

      In one email, dated January 1, 2012, Band emails John Podesta, Chairman of the 2016 Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, and says Chelsea Clinton was conducting an internal investigation into CGI and the Clinton Foundation, which posed a conflict of interest.

      It is unclear why Chelsea Clinton was investigating her family’s foundation and its dealings with money.

    • DNC staffers prepared CNN anchors Wolf Blitzer and Jake Tapper for interviews with Trump, new batch of 8,000 WikiLeaks emails reveals

      The Democratic National Committee helped CNN anchors Wolf Blizter and Jake Tapper prepare for interviews with Donald Trump, the latest WikiLeaks email dump has revealed.

      Among the batch of 8,263 emails released on Sunday night, one shows that staff working for the network hosts asked DNC staffers what questions they should put to the Republican candidate.

      They also asked for advice when it came to an appearance from former candidate, Ted Cruz.

      An email dated April 28 entitled ‘Cruz on CNN’ reads ‘CNN is looking for questions. Please send some topical/interesting ones.’

    • Vote Your Conscience, Vote for WikiLeaks and Vote for Dr. Jill Stein

      With Hillary Clinton circumventing yet another FBI investigation, progressives have an alternative to establishment Democrats. If your conscience won’t allow you to side with a person who is advised by Henry Kissinger and neoconservatives like Robert Kagan, then you have a choice on November 8, 2016. You can vote for a future without a media beholden to John Podesta’s dinner parties. You can choose a future without Wolf Blitzer or Donna Brazile colluding with the DNC, and without a Democratic nominee accepting Foundation contributions from countries that fund ISIS. If you envision a world without wars for oil, fracking, the prison industrial complex, and severe breaches in campaign finance laws, then you certainly don’t have to pick Clinton or Donald Trump.

      You can vote for WikiLeaks.

      You can vote for WikiLeaks, and appease your conscience by championing Dr. Jill Stein and the Green Party.

      Every movement has a beginning, and although Jill Stein has been active in politics for years, this year marks a turning point in American history. Julian Assange and WikiLeaks have allowed voters to see the inner workings of the Clinton campaign; countering an American media serving essentially as Hillary Clinton’s public relations machine. Instead of a 2005 hot mic audio of Donald Trump (considered to be Pulitzer Prize winning journalism by the The Washington Post) Assange and WikiLeaks have published enough Podesta emails to highlight the long-term implications of a Clinton presidency.

    • Meme warfare: how the power of mass replication has poisoned the US election

      If you use Facebook, or Twitter, have a Wi-Fi connection, watch television or have been to an office Halloween party, you’ve probably encountered them: internet memes.

      These shareable, sometimes pithy and often puerile units of culture have emerged as the lingua franca of the 2016 election, and have given the American people an entirely new way of articulating their beliefs. Clinton’s top tweet is a meme. Trump’s taco bowl became one. Through memes, Ted Cruz was “unmasked” as the Zodiac killer. Jeb Bush’s limp plea for applause got him Vined into oblivion. Bernie Sanders shared a moment with a bird that blossomed into something out of Walt Disney’s long-lost Marxist phase.

      Memes can be fun, or they can be dumb – but as an emerging medium, they haven’t provoked a lot of debate or analysis. In fact, they seem to defy scrutiny.

      And slowly, before anyone can even take note, memes are ruining democracy.

    • WikiLeaks releases latest batch of emails from Clinton campaign chair

      WikiLeaks has published its 33rd tranche of emails from the hacked account of Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta.
      Trends

      The whistleblowing organization has now published more than 55,600 emails in a series of daily online releases which it said were building towards the November 8 presidential election.

    • Democrats advised CNN on interview questions for Donald Trump, according to new WikiLeaks release

      The Democratic National Committee (DNC) apparently helped CNN anchors prepare for interviews with Donald Trump, according to the latest WikiLeaks email dump.

      Included in some 8,263 emails released by WikiLeaks is an exchange that shows DNC staff discussing how to advise CNN on what questions to ask Mr Trump in a scheduled interview ahead of his foreign policy address.

      However CNN defended the practice, saying it had sought the Republicans’ opinions about questions to ask Hillary Clinton in order to “ensure a tough and fair interview”.

      Although the interview with Mr Trump was ultimately cancelled, the emails showed numerous questions were submitted by the DNC.

    • Campaign collusion: Is CNBC’s John Harwood too close to the Clinton operation?

      The following question was asked on Sept. 21, 2015, via email, to the chairman of a major presidential campaign, John Podesta: “What should I ask Jeb?”

      At the time, Jeb Bush was still a leading candidate to challenge Hillary Clinton for the White House — and had more money behind him.

      The question didn’t come from a campaign surrogate or an opinion host — it came from the chief Washington correspondent at CNBC, John Harwood. And just to make sure he hit Bush where the Clinton campaign — which still viewed the former Florida governor as its most likely opponent for 2016 — wanted him to most, Harwood went to Clinton’s campaign chief to do all the thinking for him.

      It should be noted that the title “chief Washington correspondent” means Harwood is not an opinion host or a partisan pundit — he’s one who represents the network as objective and nonpartisan. It also means he cannot consult with opposition campaigns for advice — nor can he provide advice back to a campaign, which Harwood has on several occasions via recent WikiLeaks dumps.

    • Husband Of CNN Exec Tipped Clinton Campaign Off To Network’s Polls Prior To Release

      An email released by WikiLeaks on Sunday shows that the husband of CNN vice president and Washington bureau chief Virginia Moseley tipped the Clinton campaign off to a favorable poll just before its release last September.

      “Good CNN poll coming,” Thomas Nides, Moseley’s husband, wrote to Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta in a Sept. 20, 2015 email.

      Nides served as deputy secretary of state under Clinton and is currently vice president at Morgan Stanley. His name has been floated for a possible high-level spot in a Clinton White House.

    • A call to progressives: Help build and own the Green Party

      It hasn’t been an easy election year for progressives. Many were crushed when Bernie Sanders failed to pull off a historic upset of establishment pick Hillary Clinton, then outraged when leaked emails proved what they already knew — that the Democratic Party elite had conspired against Sanders’ political revolution the whole time.

      But with the racist, sexist billionaire buffoon Donald Trump leading the GOP, many progressives have resigned themselves to pulling the lever for Clinton in an attempt to keep Trumpismo at bay. But before you accept yet another election year of “lesser evilism,” allow yourself to consider investing your vote in the Green Party

      In a 2006 interview with the editorial board of the Jewish Press in Brooklyn, then-Senator Hillary Clinton shared her opinion on the recent election in Palestine: “I do not think we should have pushed for an election in the Palestinian territories. I think that was a big mistake,” said Sen. Clinton. “And if we were going to push for an election, then we should have made sure that we did something to determine who was going to win.”

    • Clinton aide says Foundation paid for Chelsea’s wedding, WikiLeaks emails show
    • Don’t Move To Canada If Your Candidate Loses, Read This

      Regardless of who wins this election, around half of the country is going to have to learn to live under the rule of someone they’ve vilified for the entire election cycle. (That’s two and a half years, but with a RealFeel of untold centuries trapped in the Phantom Zone.) In order to help people from both sides, we’ve put together a few tips in case the other side wins.

    • New WikiLeaks email suggests possible ‘collusion’ between CNBC, Clinton campaign

      CNBC host John Harwood in September 2015 asked Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta, what he should ask then-Republican presidential candidate former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush in an upcoming interview, according to new emails published by WikiLeaks.

      Harwood, who faced harsh criticism for his performance as a debate moderator in the third Republican presidential primary debate in October 2015, sent Podesta an email on Sept. 21, 2015, with the subject line, “What should I ask Jeb…” The body of the email read, “…in Speakeasy interview tomorrow.”

    • Chris Hedges: The End of the Election Will Not Mean the End of Public Anger

      It’s impossible to tell you, because it really will depend on the mood, on the emotions of the voters on election day. That’s all these campaigns are about, because they both essentially are neo-liberal candidates who will do nothing to impede imperial expansion and corporate power. The whole campaign has descended to, you know, not surprisingly, to the level of a reality TV show, with presidential debates featuring women who have accused former President Bill Clinton of sexual assault being brought in by Donald Trump; videos – I’ll go back to the primaries – of the size of people’s genitals. I mean, it’s just appalling, but all of that is emblematic of a political system in deep decay and one that no longer revolves around fundamental issues. We know from the Wikileaks emails, the John Podesta emails that were leaked from Hillary Clinton, that there was a calculated effort on a part of a Clinton campaign to promote these fringe candidates – like Trump, and they particularly wanted Trump, because the difference between Hillary Clinton and a more mainstream Republican candidate, like Jeb Bush, is so marginal. So if you had to ask me, I don’t think Trump will win, but I don’t rule out the possibility that he will win – we have to look at the Brexit polls in Britain…

    • Jill Stein: ‘We Have Crossed the Rubicon in This Election’

      Jill Stein is already looking past tomorrow’s election.

      The Green Party candidate, who is has a polling average of about 2% heading into Election Day, chuckled at the prospect of an outright win Tuesday. She said she’s hoping for 5% in election returns, and beyond that, she’s planning to push for reforms in the presidential debate commission and to help pave the way for future third party candidates with a rank choice voting initiative.

      Stein spoke to TIME on the eve of the election about what she’s seem from voters this year, how women were talked about in the race and why she never takes vacations.

  • Censorship/Free Speech

    • Serbia’s censorship debate

      Is the Serbian government using underhanded censorship methods to control the media narrative or are critics too harsh?

    • FOSS Friendly IBM is Attempting to Destroy OpenLava

      Several years ago Platform Computing (now owned by IBM) released an open source version of LSF (Platform Load Sharing Facility) — their premier software product. LSF is a workload management platform and job scheduler for distributed HPC environments. In recent years that open source product has begun to flourish, and now IBM is using the DMCA in an attempt to erase all progress made on the project since it was first released. I guess if you can’t compete, you call your legal team…

    • Internet Pioneers Slam $750,000 Settlement for the ‘Man Who Invented Email’

      Two early internet pioneers are expressing sadness and disbelief at the fact that Shiva Ayyadurai, a self-described “world-renowned scientist, inventor, lecturer, philanthropist and entrepreneur” who says he invented “email: the electronic mail system as we know it today,” will receive a $750,000 settlement from Gawker Media, the bankrupt publisher that he sued for defamation earlier this year over a series of stories that, his lawsuit claims, “falsely trace the origin of email and call Dr. Ayyadurai a liar.”

      Computer programmer Ray Tomlinson is credited by many experts and historians with developing the technology that we understand today as email. Dave Crocker, who helped write several foundational standards documents about messaging over the internet, told Gizmodo that Ayyadurai’s settlement with Gawker Media represents a victory for a version of the history of email’s development that isn’t supported by evidence. “I grew up being taught that the truth is always a sufficient defense against claims of defamation,” Crocker said upon hearing about the settlement. “Given the extensive documentation about the history of email, I’m sorry to find that that the adage no longer holds true.”

      John Vittal, one of Crocker’s co-authors, seconded his frustration. Vittal is best known in the traditional history of email for being the first person to implement “reply” and “forward” functions. “What’s true is true, and you can’t hide from it, and shouldn’t be able to capitalize on thwarting it,” said Vittal. “To me, it’s a sad day.”

    • Clinton Campaign Also Not A Fan Of Free Speech: Sends Legal Threat Letters Over Trump Ads

      If there’s one thing that the two major Presidential candidates seem to agree on it’s that we have too much free speech and all you First Amendment whiners should quiet down. Just this morning, we wrote about Trump threatening a documentary filmmaker with a cease & desist letter (the latest in a fairly long list of defamation threat letters). And it appears that the Clinton campaign is also ramping up its similar legal threat letter business.

      Last week, it sent cease & desist letters to broadcasters in Florida who were airing Trump ads that used some footage of Michelle Obama back in the 2008 campaign taking something of a swipe at Clinton. And, just today, the campaign supposedly sent out cease & desist letters to broadcasters airing new Trump ads claiming that Clinton is “under investigation by the FBI.”

    • Facebook Blocks Profiles Of Far-Right Polish Groups, Sparks Protests

      Several far-right Polish groups have protested outside Facebook’s office in Warsaw after the social networking site temporarily blocked their profiles.

      About 120 people demonstrated in the Polish capital Saturday afternoon, denouncing what they said was “censorship.”

    • Poland’s far-right groups protest Facebook ‘censorship’ after social accounts removed
    • Far-right Polish groups protest Facebook profile blockages

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • If The FBI Can’t Stop All These Leaks About An Investigation, Why Would it Be Able To Keep Encryption Backdoor Secret?

      In the last 10 days or so, James Comey sent two letters to Congress — the first one notifying Congress of some new information in an “unrelated” investigation that may pertain to Hillary Clinton’s emails. And then the one from yesterday admitting that there was nothing important in those emails. That was effectively all that Comey said officially. Yet, in between all of that a ton of information leaked from the FBI about the investigation. We learned what it pertained to (the Anthony Weiner investigation), heard estimates of the number of emails involved, heard that the FBI found them weeks ago but only told Comey right before he sent the letter, that the FBI didn’t have a warrant to read the emails — and then that it did, and that a whole bunch of people inside both the FBI and DOJ have opinions on both sides of this whole mess.

      Basically, the FBI (and the DOJ) were leaking information like it was the last chance they’d ever have to leak information and their lives depended on who could leak the most.

    • The USA threatens to unleash cyber warfare against Russia
    • A second Privacy Shield legal challenge increases threat to EU-US data flows

      The Privacy Shield transatlantic data transfer deal is now caught in a pincer action: A week after it emerged that Irish digital rights activists had filed suit to annul the deal come reports that a French campaign group has begun its own legal action.

      French civil liberties campaign group La Quadrature du Net filed suit against the European Commission, the European Union’s executive body, on Oct. 25.

      Although the Court of Justice of the EU has not yet published details of the complaint, Brussels-based news agency Euractiv reported Thursday that La Quadrature’s goal is to annul the Commission’s decision that Privacy Shield provides adequate protection under EU law when the personal information of EU citizens is transferred to the U.S. for processing.

    • China Adopts Cybersecurity Law Despite Foreign Opposition

      The Cyber Security Law was passed by the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, China’s top legislature, and will take effect in June, government officials said Monday. Among other things, it requires internet operators to cooperate with investigations involving crime and national security, and imposes mandatory testing and certification of computer equipment. Companies must also give government investigators full access to their data if wrong-doing is suspected.

      China’s grown increasingly aggressive about safeguarding its IT systems in the wake of Edward Snowden’s revelations about U.S. spying, and is intent on policing cyberspace as public discourse shifts to online forums such as Tencent Holdings Ltd.’s WeChat. The fear among foreign companies is that requirements to store data locally and employ only technology deemed “secure” means local firms gain yet another edge over foreign rivals from Microsoft Corp. to Cisco System Inc.

    • A Guy Put Amazon’s ‘Alexa’ In Big Mouth Billy Bass’ Body And People Are Rightly Horrified

      So Big Mouth Billy Bass — you know, that animatronic singing fish that was annoyingly popular at the end of the 1990s — was, frankly, already pretty creepy. But one little modification brought it to new, disturbing heights.

      Brian “Wizard of Terror” Kane posted this lil’ video to Facebook on Oct. 27, which features a Big Mouth Billy Bass configured so that the voice of Alexa — Amazon’s voice assistant similar to Apple’s Siri — emanates from the fish’s mouth.

      The video is simply captioned, “the future” ― and it’s a dystopian vision indeed.

    • How to talk with your loved ones in private

      A few days ago I ran a very biased and informal survey to get an idea about what options are being used to communicate with end to end encryption with friends and family. I explicitly asked people not to list options only used in a work setting. The background is the uneasy feeling I get when using Signal, a feeling shared by others as a blog post from Sander Venima about why he do not recommend Signal anymore (with feedback from the Signal author available from ycombinator). I wanted an overview of the options being used, and hope to include those options in a less biased survey later on. So far I have not taken the time to look into the individual proposed systems. They range from text sharing web pages, via file sharing and email to instant messaging, VOIP and video conferencing. For those considering which system to use, it is also useful to have a look at the EFF Secure messaging scorecard which is slightly out of date but still provide valuable information.

    • Researchers Matched Images on Tattoo Websites to a German Police Database

      For the last year, EFF has been battling to free records from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) regarding an ethically dubious research program to promote the development of automated tattoo recognition technology. The agency is months delinquent in providing a variety of information, most notably the list of 19 research entities who received a giant set of tattoo images obtained from prisoners in custody. This delay is particularly alarming as NIST is currently recruiting institutional participants for the next stage of its expanded research, scheduled to begin on Dec. 1.

      What we’ve discovered so far about NIST’s approach to tattoo identification raises major concerns for privacy, free speech, the freedom to associate, and the rights of research subjects. We’ve also learned that similar tattoo recognition experiments are being conducted in Germany, a country that is usually sensitive to personal privacy.

    • ‘Our Identity Is Often What’s Triggering Surveillance’

      The civil rights director of the Oregon state Department of Justice has filed a lawsuit against his employer. It seems the department got a new computer program that lets them search social media, and to test it out, they looked for hash tags related to Black Lives Matter and activism against police violence, turning up a tweet by Erious Johnson, which led his colleagues to start compiling a report on him without his knowledge. Johnson’s lawsuit claims racial discrimination and a hostile work environment for engaging in protected activity.

  • Civil Rights/Policing

    • 25 Years After Junk Science Conviction, Texas Finally Admits Sonia Cacy’s Innocence

      Twenty-five years after she was first accused of the arson-murder of her uncle, 68-year-old Sonia Cacy on November 2 was finally exonerated by Texas’ highest criminal court, a move that clears the way for her to seek compensation from the state for her decades-long ordeal.

      Cacy’s conviction for a crime that never happened is a prime example of the devastating consequences of allowing junk science into the courtroom, of the need for continuing education of forensic practitioners, and for the robust review of convictions that may have been tainted by outdated, or imagined, science.

      In fact, arguably, it was Cacy’s case that set in motion a series of events that would eventually culminate in a unique partnership between the Innocence Project of Texas and the Texas state fire marshal, designed to review old arson-related criminal cases in order to ferret out convictions based on unsupportable fire science. “Sonia’s case is a lesson to the entire criminal justice system of how important it is to keep bad science out of court,” said Gary Udashen, president of the IPTX and Cacy’s longtime attorney.

    • Officer fired over feces sandwich

      A San Antonio police officer has been fired after an internal investigation determined he tried to give a homeless man a sandwich with feces inside it.

    • Man shot and killed by off-duty officer after ‘road rage incident’ escalated

      A man was shot and killed by an off-duty Chicago police officer Saturday afternoon in the Mount Greenwood neighborhood. The man was riding as part of a funeral procession, his family says, when what officials are calling a “road rage incident” escalated and he was shot and killed.

      During a short press conference, Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson described the chaotic scene near 111th and Troy that led to the fatal shooting around 3 p.m. Saturday.

      Johnson said it began as a “road rage incident” between multiple people and a “fire department member.” Then, Johnson said, an off-duty police officer who was in a barbershop across the street saw the fight and headed over, “announcing his office” as he got involved. That’s when “the subject,” identified by his family as 25-year-old Joshua Beal, “displayed a weapon,” according to Johnson.

    • Nigeria frees Muslims accused of murder over blasphemy

      A court in northern Nigeria has freed five Muslim men accused of killing an elderly Christian woman for allegedly blaspheming the Prophet Mohammed.

      The court in the city of Kano discharged the five men on Thursday on the legal advise of the prosecution.

      “The legal advice presented to the court, dated June 24, states that there is no case to answer as the suspects are all innocent and orders the court to discharge all the suspects,” the judge said in his ruling.

    • Fresh attacks on Hindus in Bangladesh, houses torched

      In fresh attacks on Hindus in Bangladesh, unidentified miscreants set ablaze some of their houses and damaged two temples in central Brahmanbarhia district where several places of worship of the minority community were vandalised earlier this week, police said.

    • Luxembourg’s Asselborn: Turkey is using Nazi-era tactics

      Luxembourg’s Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn, in an interview with Deutschlandfunk Monday, compared the Turkish government’s dismissal of civil servants to methods used by the German Nazi regime, and recommended that the European Union impose economic sanctions.

      Since the failed July 15 coup that killed more than 240 people, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has detained, suspended or dismissed more than 110,000 public servants as part of a wider crackdown on his political opponents.

  • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

    • Despite ESPN Whining, Nielsen Confirms Historic Subscriber Losses For Channel

      Last week, we noted how Disney and ESPN threw a bit of a hissy fit when Nielsen data indicated that ESPN had one of the biggest subscriber losses in company history last month. According to Nielsen’s data, ESPN lost 621,000 homes in a single month, as well as losing 607,000 ESPN2 households and 674,000 ESPNU homes. That’s of course on the heels of losing more than 7 million subscribers over the last three years or so, thanks largely due to the rise of cord cutting, cord trimming (scaling down your TV package) and the rise of some “skinny bundles” that exclude ESPN from the base channel lineup.

      ESPN demanded that Nielsen withdraw its numbers, insisting they represented a “dramatic, unexplainable variation” that didn’t match ESPN’s own numbers. Nielsen obliged, but after conducting an “extensive” review of the numbers found them to be “accurate as originally released.” Of course, this shouldn’t be a surprise; we’ve noted how everybody but ESPN appears to have seen the writing on the wall. But instead of adapting to the changing times, ESPN responded by denying that cord cutting was real, and suing companies like Verizon for trying to bring some flexibility to the traditional cable bundle.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Clinton v. Trump on copyrights and patents: Reading the platform and the tea leaves

      The hot-button issues this election can be counted on one’s fingers—and for most voters, things like copyright and patent policy don’t make the list. Assigned to a wonkish zone far from the Sunday morning talk shows, intellectual property issues aren’t near the heart of our deeply polarized political discourse.

      Of the two major party candidates in 2016, only the Democratic candidate has a platform that even addresses copyright and patent policies. So today, let’s look at what we know about Hillary Clinton’s plan, and make some informed speculation about what could happen to these areas under a Donald Trump presidency.

      Given that the campaign is focused (as always) on a relatively small group of issues, tech policy watchers who spoke to Ars were surprised to see a presidential platform that mentions IP issues at all. Clinton’s briefing paper on technology and innovation addresses both copyright and patent issues directly, and that in itself is something of a surprise. Trump’s website has no such information, so the best clues to his approach lie in his public statements and the people he has surrounded himself with.

    • Copyrights

Where the Sun Rises (Far East) and Software Patents Emanate (US) Come the Patent Trolls

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

Identify the patterns of patent trolling to effectively combat them

Sunset

Summary: The latest examples of patent trolls around the world and a report about their activity or what fuels their growth (mostly software patents)

PATENT trolls thrive in countries that have software patents. It started with the USPTO (US), it later started to happen in the EPO (Europe), and it is already becoming an epidemic in SIPO (China), as we repeatedly warned in recent months. There are several reasons for this correlation and we explained these before.

Software patents are the weapon of choice of patent trolls in almost all cases (some say 70%). “Of the 16 patent lawsuits filed today,” wrote United for patent Reform the other day, “11 were filed by patent trolls — 69%. It’s time for Congress to take action to #fixpatents!”

They are right, but they suggest a fix that tackles trolls themselves, not the patents they tend to rely on. One part of the solution, whilst also pursuing end of all software patents, was mentioned by the EFF the other day when it wrote: “This bill would close the venue loophole in patent lawsuits. https://act.eff.org/action/fight-patent-trolls-support-the-venue-act-of-2016″

This mostly deals with the pattern of patent trolls choosing Texas. It does not deal with trolling itself or the type of patents that they usually buy to use against a large number of companies, especially small ones that cannot afford going to court. Vera Ranieri from the EFF very recently published the article “A Bit More Transparency in Patent Lawsuits” and in it she wrote:

Should patent lawsuits filed in federal courts be hidden from the public? We don’t think so, especially where a patent owner may be suing multiple people based on the same claim. Apart from the general principle that legal processes should be open to the public whenever possible, as a practical matter sealed filings prevent other people under legal threat from the same person from learning information that may be crucial to their own defense.

That’s why we were concerned when we noticed that numerous court filings and at least three court orders were made entirely under seal in a patent case. We contacted the parties to the lawsuit, Audible Magic and Blue Spike, and asked them to file public versions of significant court filings, redacting only information that was truly confidential. Audible Magic quickly agreed to EFF’s request. However, Blue Spike opposed it entirely, forcing EFF to intervene in the case and ask that the court order the filing of public-redacted versions of the sealed filings.

The court granted EFF’s motion to intervene and our motion to unseal. The court ordered Audible Magic and Blue Spike to submit redacted versions of any document a party wished to keep partially sealed. Again, Audible Magic quickly complied. The documents revealed, among other things, that Blue Spike had not created a product it advertised, called the “Giovanni Abstraction Machine,” despite Blue Spike’s public statements indicating otherwise. We also discovered allegations that Blue Spike’s owner, Scott Moskowitz, took the technology that formed the basis of some of Blue Spike’s patents from company called Muscle Fish,1 and therefore shouldn’t have gotten those patents in the first place. (The parties settled before trial, thus leaving the question of Moskowitz’s alleged misappropriation, and also the related validity of Blue Spike’s patents, unanswered.)

This is a very famous (or infamous) case and it’s one among many cases that EFF speaks about it, directly or indirectly. The focus on trolls at the EFF was very prominent last month [1, 2, 3], but also at the end of the month it published this article (cross-posted in TechDirt) about stupid software patents. Here is the latest ‘winner’:

Stupid Patent Of The Month: Changing The Channel

Is somebody really claiming to have invented a method for switching from watching one video to watching another?

This question comes from a lawyer at the New York Times, as an aside in an interesting article about the paper’s response to a defamation threat from a presidential candidate. Apparently, that defamation threat distracted the his legal team from their work on another task: responding to a patent troll. Intrigued, we looked into it. The patent troll is called Bartonfalls, LLC and its patent, U.S. Patent No. 7,917,922, is our latest Stupid Patent of the Month.

The patent is titled “Video input switching and signal processing apparatus.” It includes just two pages of text and, as the title suggests, describes an apparatus for switching between channels that come from different inputs (e.g. between cable channels and free-to-air broadcasts). The patent is directed to the equipment found in and around a 1990s television (such as VCRs, cable converters, satellite tuners). It does not even mention the Internet.

What’s noteworthy here is that again (as usual) we’re confronted with the description of a ‘pure’ software patent. It should never have been granted in the first place. It gave ammunition to trolls who produce nothing and sue everybody.

Over in Japan, based on what IAM says, patent trolls try to paint themselves “medical”. It’s the same trick which is so often used by the world’s largest patent troll, Intellectual Ventures, in order to pretend not to be a troll and to actually have something to offer to society. The corporate Japanese media (English-speaking) has just published “Outdated Design-Patent Laws Thwart Progress”, signaling a sort of worrisome imitation of the USPTO (where design patents are now poised to come under Supreme Court scrutiny).

Over in China, based on some other reports [1, 2], there a bubble of patents in the making. IAM gets rather excited about China’s SIPO becoming a cesspool of crappy patents, including software patents. Based on this one new report, a WiLAN subsidiary hits China, showing that companies from North America now run after everyone and everything in the Land of the rising Sun (Japan) and its much bigger neighbour. Patent trolls in China are not a new ‘thing’; but right now they gain a foothold and it’s a cause for concern because the EPO collaborates with them quite a lot. In fact, SIPO is like the role model of Battistelli, who doesn’t mind the quality of patents, just quantity (or short-term profit). Here is an IAM article that mentions software patents in China as though they’re desirable (IAM is a longtime booster of software patents). To quote:

Last Thursday, China’s State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO) published new draft guidelines for patent examination. Amid tweaks that will be greeted by pharmaceutical innovators, there are also changes to the standards for software patenting that should be a boon to companies seeking protection for computer programmes, something that has been increasingly difficult to obtain in the US and some other markets. SIPO says the measures are driven by “urgent demand” from innovative industries. It is the latest reminder that in the post-Alice environment, many observers say software protection is easier to obtain in China than in the US.

The USPTO’s senior counsel for China, Mark Cohen, drew attention to the proposed new rules in a blog post last week, saying that they “appear to loosen the standards for obtaining software enabled inventions”. According to Cohen’s translation, a section of the Patent Examination Guidelines which asks applicants to describe “which parts of the computer programme are to be performed and how to perform them” is amended to add that “The components may not only include hardware, but may also include programmes”. If adopted, the guidelines would also make it easier to obtain business method patents, as they provide that: “Claims related to business methods that contain both business rules and methods and technical characteristics, shall not be excluded from the possibilities of obtaining patent rights be Article 25 of the Patent Law.”

The IAM Weekly E-mail, distributed on November 2nd, mentioned this as well and said:


Subscribe
IAM Weekly

Editor's round-up

See current issue
The death of software patents has been greatly exaggerated, at least
in China and the United States. On the IAM blog this week, we reported
on new examination guidelines at the Chinese State IP Office which
seem to indicate that it will be easier to get protection for
computer-implemented inventions in the country than it has been thus
far. Meanwhile, in an exclusive article the former chief patent
counsel at Microsoft explained why it has been a very good six months
for US software patent owners. The European Commission has just
released a detailed report on patent assertion entities which
concludes that troll-like behaviour is unlikely to be seen in Europe
for a number of reasons, including the preponderance of high-quality
patent rights and comparatively low litigation costs. Elsewhere, we
looked at Hillary Clinton’s IP policies and focused on a major
BlackBerry licensing deal in Asia. There was news, too, of
confidence-boosting third-quarter results from InterDigital, as well
as claims from its CEO that a recently launched Internet of Things
licensing platform could deliver significant revenue boosts in the
near future.

Joff Wild
Editor

IAM ‘magazine’ is meanwhile grooming yet another patent troll. It started last week and we expect to see more of that from IAM, which is now actually receiving money from some infamous patent trolls like MOSAID/Conversant.

One more item of news regarding patent trolls came from the trolls expert, Joe Mullin (who has written about them for about a decade). He decided to dive into the dark operations of ArrivalStar and here is what he found:

Since 2006, hundreds of US businesses have received letters informing them that they infringe patents belonging to Martin Kelly Jones, who briefly ran a business called “BusCall” in the early 90s. The Jones patents, owned for many years by a company called ArrivalStar, have been called out repeatedly as one of the most egregious examples of patent abuse.

ArrivalStar sent out hundreds of demand letters, often targeting small companies that couldn’t hope to afford a drawn-out defense of a patent infringement suit. It also took the unusual step of suing public transit agencies, saying their bus-tracking systems infringe Jones’ patents. The patents were moved into a new entity called Shipping & Transit LLC last year.

Jones and the lawyers who work with him have squeezed royalty payments from over 800 companies over the years, but little has been known about him, outside the short explanation included in the demand letters he sends out. Now, Jones has made what appear to be his only public comments since his inventions launched a decade-long campaign of lawsuits, in statements to The Wall Street Journal.

It’s sad to see that patent trolls are still treated with some level of recognition and companies like IBM have begun acting more like them (assimilation) because all they have is a huge pile of patents. Here is Manny Schecter from IBM saying that “If apple slicer for eye-appealing apple slices (US9427103) is eligible for patenting, so too should be software…”

MinceR from our IRC channels said that’s “pretty weak argumentation” and Toby agreed, saying that he too noticed.

As if one bad patent supports another… what utterly poor logic from Mr. Schecter. People elsewhere have responded to this tactless tweet of his.

Speaking of patents that are too problematic to defend, how about patents you’re not allowed to get away from, or SEPs as they’re sometimes called (a tax on any implementation with conformance)? It is truly an abomination w.r.t. the raison d’être of patent systems, yet here is MIP writing about it, calling it a “conundrum” rather than a travesty.

Negotiations over patent licensing are tricky. One bad sign is if parties start discussing standard-essential patents in detail

Michele Herman of Metabl and Richard Taffet of Morgan Lewis staged a mock negotiation yesterday as part of the session called “The Nuts and Bolts of Licensing: Strategies for Negotiating to Yes.”

Negotiations over patent licensing are tricky enough. But Herman said it’s a bad sign if parties start discussing standard-essential patents (SEPs) in detail.

In the case of SEPs, there are already many trolls and parasites out there (like WiLAN, which now expands to China). When does the patent system become simply an obligatory tax authority rather than a system where one can license to copy (having found something innovative), rather than comply/adhere to industry standards? RAND/FRAND also comes to mind. █

Patent Law Firms and Their Publishers Latch Onto Rare CAFC Cases Where Software Patents Somehow Survive

Posted in America, Patents at 1:46 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

But these are only about 10% of all cases (can be counted with the fingers of one hand this year), i.e. still the small if not minuscule minority

Stat

Summary: A roundup of District Court and Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) news regarding software patents

HAVING just covered the good news, namely the decline/descent of software patents, now come the less convenient news, or the news that can throw a wrench at the party if one blindly believes the spin that accompanies the news. The ascent of Alice since 2.5 years ago profoundly changed everything in the domain of software patenting. It’s not hard to see why and it’s difficult to argue against it… unless one is a paid lobbyist like David Kappos, former USPTO Director.

First we have the case of Evolved Wireless, LLC v Apple Inc., a District Court (not Texas for a change) where the patents were ruled not ineligible. Here’s the gist of it:

The court denied defendants’ motion for judgment on the pleadings on the ground that plaintiff’s wireless communications patents encompassed unpatentable subject matter because the claims were not directed toward abstract mathematical algorithms

If this decision is appealed and reaches CAFC, expect the patents to die. Just look at CAFC’s recent track record. It’s as hostile as can be toward software patents and a key judge, the one responsible for software patents’ emergence, changed his mind and slammed software patents in a key decision involving the world’s largest patent troll, Intellectual Ventures. We already published several articles about this historic decision.

Meanwhile, says this patent attorney, “US Pat 7,412,510, Software Patent Survived Alice at the CAFC” and another proponent of software patents says “inexplicably CAFC did NOT kill this claim under 101: “computer code … to enhance” an accounting record http://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/sites/default/files/opinions-orders/15-1180.Opinion.10-28-2016.1.PDF … HOPE YET??”

What they hope for is that CAFC will change its course and stop “killing” (their term for invalidation) software patents, but they’re cherry-picking cases most of the time. It lets them shower potential or existing clients with dangerous optimism.

Michael Loney, writing from New York, says that “Federal Circuit finds software claims patent eligible for fourth time this year,” but four in a year is not much. To quote Mr. Loney:

“There is no such single, succinct, usable definition or test” for defining an abstract idea, the Federal Circuit said while allowing a software patent to survive a Section 101 analysis for the fourth time since May

Here is another article about this:

One major take away from this case is that this panel of the CAFC clearly believes software is patent eligible subject matter. At least some of the representative claims discussed (e.g., claim 1 of the ‘065 patent, page 20) is a computer readable medium claim reciting computer code for performing a series of operations. This is very welcome after comments in recent cases from certain judges suggesting that software should be per se unpatentable.

This decision can probably be appealed to the Supreme Court, at risk of overriding Alice. Here is corporate media, namely Barbara Grzincic at Reuters, covering this latest development as well:

A long-running patent fight between network-software rivals Amdocs (Israel) Ltd and Openet Telecom Inc will go at least another round, after a U.S. appeals court overturned a ruling that had invalidated four of Amdocs’ patents.

Other coverage came from lawyers’ sites [1, 2, 3] and pro-software patents lobbying sites [1, 2] where there are no disclosures about vested interests. Some of these articles contain misleading claims, such as “Federal Circuit seems to be loosening the reins on 101 software subject matter disqualifications,” even though CAFC is actually ruling against software patents in a large number of cases, especially high profile cases (like the aforementioned Intellectual Ventures case). No matter what the patent microcosm tries to say (usually spin), CAFC is basically trashing a lot of software patents and the recent decision from Judge Mayer was a death knell to many of them. Lawyers’ sites are understandably desperate for spin because spin sells (it attracts their target audience). The same happens in Europe; European “IP” news sites try to maintain an amicable relationship with the EPO, so they only say good things or nothing at all.

“Has IAM ever given a platform to opponents of software patents and to pessimists? It’s a rarity because that’s not what readers (paying subscribers) want to see.”Speaking of one such European “IP” ‘news’ site, once again it gives Bart Eppenauer (from Microsoft) a megaphone, and as usual in defense of software patents. He is trying to say that all is well for software patents, which is utter nonsense. Here is what IAM wrote under the headline “Key CAFC decisions confirm software is patentable in post-Alice world, says Microsoft’s former patent chief”.

Has IAM ever given a platform to opponents of software patents and to pessimists? It’s a rarity because that’s not what readers (paying subscribers) want to see.

Well, this sure is getting shallow and tiresome. Why don’t they just recruit Eppenauer and give him his own column at IAM? What he talks about isn’t news; it’s not even a new decision, just more entertainment of old staff with attribution to an overhyped person whom they like to grease up a lot (almost every month). █

Microsoft’s Evil Patent Agenda, Issues Pertaining to Patent Scope, and the Mass Invalidation of Software Patents in the US

Posted in Law, Microsoft, Patents at 12:55 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Sweeping changes continue to sweep up the patent mess in the USPTO

Broom

Summary: News about Microsoft’s love of [patents against] Linux, the persistent issue of patent maximalists guiding US patent law, and an update regarding the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) that cleans up the mess left by these aforementioned actors

SOFTWARE PATENTS have always been our primary focus, since the site began exactly 10 years ago.

“I’m not talking about software patents, whose disappearance I would welcome,” said the author of this new article titled “The End of Intellectual Property?”

Patent practitioners must understand that in order for their profession to maintain legitimacy (positive public perception) they need to ensure that patents are granted only on things where patenting can be justified, economically in particular. Not every thing in existence should be patented. That’s just common sense, as authors who studied the effects of monopolies explained in scholarly work for decades if not centuries. Patent law — like copyright law — must examine/study the broader effects, including the externalities.

Today’s article is a mix of news found and collected over the past week. We present the news in no special order.

Microsoft Still Evil and Dangerous

Microsoft is lobbying against Alice (and for software patents, as usual). How do we know? This report from last week reminds us that Microsoft is a nasty, malicious company that intends to continue to sue rivals using software patents. To quote: “As Microsoft’s Micky Minhas sees it, Alice may be dissuading IP owners from other countries from patenting their products here, placing the US at a disadvantage. As China considers accepting patents for business methods, the US is heading “in the opposite direction,” he said.”

Does that mean that China’s patent system is getting better? No, it’s getting worse and patent trolling has gotten a foothold there, as we so often/habitually noted this year. Looking at what Microsoft actually continues to do, consider this new and timely article titled “No, Microsoft does not love open source” (published by the corporate media about a week ago). To quote the key part:

I used to follow Microsoft’s intellectual property Twitter account in order to see exactly how much Microsoft loved open source as it bragged about all the people it had coerced into signing patent agreements. I guess someone realized that crowing about that was not a great idea, because today the feed tweets puff pieces about how great software patents are and how they drive innovation (through litigation).

The truth is that Microsoft’s principal open source strategy hasn’t changed and probably never will. The point of open source to Microsoft (or any other company) is to give you an on-ramp to its platform. For Microsoft, that platform is morphing from Windows to Azure, so of course Microsoft has dialed back its rhetoric toward Linux. If you read Microsoft hates Linux, then you probably won’t host your VMs on Azure — same deal if you have a choice between two virtual private clouds. Duh, Microsoft loves Linux … on Azure. Why wouldn’t it?

Microsoft may even be willing to accept open source that’s tied to its technologies, but not directly to its platform. Generally these will be “children’s edition” versions like .Net Core. I’m not saying Visual Studio for Linux isn’t progress, but is anyone really itching to run .Net on Linux? I mean, after the outrageous commercial success of Mono (/sarcasm), are any of you going, “Woo-hoo, I want to write .Net code and run it on Linux”? Bueller? Bueller? Anyone?

Now, about those lawsuits — Microsoft likes it both ways: Embrace on one hand, and get tidy patent settlements on the other. People who work at Microsoft say it’s a big company, and as with all big companies, the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing. Actually, that would be dismal management — if “we love open source” was really part of Microsoft’s strategy.

As evidence that Microsoft loves open source and Linux, last year Microsoft noted some long-running lawsuits that it wasn’t really winning and dropped them. Repositioning “we cut our losses” to “because we love you” is good PR. Respect! But let’s talk about real change.

For those who think that Microsoft has changed, be sure to check if media coverage changed rather than Microsoft itself. We wrote quite a few articles this year about new instances of Microsoft blackmail using patents, targeting companies which distribute Linux devices.

Patents That Harm Society

There is a new paper (more than a fortnight old by now, which in academic terms/by academic standards is very little) that focuses on patent litigation. Litigation is rarely indicative of success; rather, litigation is invoked when there is a failure and when parties fail to agree about patents. Who benefits from all this the most? Patent lawyers of course, at both sides (offensive and defensive). Here we have a new report about a patent lawsuit against solar panel company . Earth Solar Power, a Chinese solar panel company, got sued. Does the environment benefit from it? Certainly not. What does public interest say about all this? Also see this report about Octane. “Ninth Circuit’s en banc ruling says a case in which fee-shifting is appropriate is “simply one that stands out from others with respect to the substantive strength of a party’s litigating position”,” to quote MIP. Where does the public stand on this? Whose fees are “shifting” and who pays the price for all these lawsuits? Here is another new MIP article, this one speaking about a lawsuit with a decision composed by Justice Ginsberg. It’s not a new case, but here’s what MIP says:

In 2014, the US Supreme Court heard Petrella v Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, which asked the same question of copyright law. In a majority opinion written by Justice Ginsberg, the Court decided that laches should not be an available defense in copyright infringement cases. The Court has recently shown a tendency to want to maintain consistency across the branches of IP law. In this case the Justices will have to interpret whether the statute creates a statute of limitation for damages in patent infringement cases, or if this is not established, whether laches are needed to effect this limitation upon suit delays.

Baby products are not improving because of lawsuits like this (see context in this article) and certainly society loses a lot. Maybe the problem is that too many patents are being granted in too many domains.

Tastelessly enough (in our view), Professor Crouch now uses his student Zachary Kasnetz to criticise a decision he doesn’t seem to approve of. Crouch is part of that crowd (or the insulated choir) that wants us that believe that more patents mean more success, more innovation, or whatever. His blog is usually quite informative (with detailed graphs and everything), but he is clearly subjective and he has become a symptom of a patent system led and steered by maximalists, not moderates. Some of them have become so greedy that they burn down the system and alienate the public. No wonder the connotation with patents among many members of the public isn’t quite so positive. Many now find “patents” synonymous with “trolls” rather than light bulbs, innovation, etc.

Here is a new article where Crouch shows the proportion of abandoned patent applications in the US going down over time. Is this indicative of a patent quality problem? Remember that the real number is FAR higher than what's shown by Crouch, around 92% if one considers revisions and re-applications. Here is another Crouch article about “USPTO Allowance Rate” and further commentary about it (“What is the Steady-State Patent Allowance Rate?”). In recent years, based on these figures, the USPTO got ever more terrible at rejecting bogus patents. David Kappos as Director (now lobbyist) made things ever more dire.

Courts Meet Avalanche of Bogus Patents

The USPTO has created a mess. It certainty did, but it profited from it. It’s obvious at whose expense and to whose gain. The incompetence (top-down, management instructing examiners) now overloads the PTAB staff and leads to a sort of ‘scatterback’ that falls back on courts. Only lawyers and trolls win here.

How did it all happen and what does the USPTO plan to do about it now? Well, based on Patently-O (Crouch’s blog), the “USPTO Proposed to Revise Rule 56″. David says in this article, while linking to a PDF, that the “announcement is here. I will be submitting comments before the 12/27 deadline, and so if you have any ideas or thoughts, please post away.”

So basically policy is being shaped by those who profit from it. We don’t expect public interest groups to have anything to say. Here is the nasty Watchtroll pushing his own agenda with this article about a “new memorandum on software eligibility”. Want to guess what Watchtroll will tell them?

Here is Watchtroll bemoaning the CAFC for smashing about 90% of software patent cases that it deals with. These people just can’t help themselves. Whenever the system tries to correct itself they panic and try to keep it ruined, as from ruin comes more business to them (consulting, applications, litigation etc.) and it’s frustrating to think that the public pays the price for all this unproductive chaos. The public pays, these people pocket it all.

The mess created by the USPTO, which granted patents on software for a number of decades (because it got greedy), scatters back on CAFC now. We see a growing number of reports about it. Kyle Bass, a person whom patent maximalists like to hate, goes on a PTAB winning streak ahead of the winter break. By invalidating crappy patents (granted by USPTO in error) he actually makes money. While opportunistic and selfish, at least it helps keep applicants honest (out of fear). Here is how MIP put it the other day. “The Coalition for Affordable Drugs has notched a flurry of PTAB wins in the past two weeks. The next decisions will not come until the new year,” Michael Loney wrote.

Drugs being more affordable is a good thing, right?

Here is another new update about PTAB, courtesy of Mr. Loney:

The past four months have been stable for Patent Trial and Appeal Board filings, while October saw the Federal Circuit giving another ruling on reviewability of IPR institution in Medtronic, the PTAB issue Kyle Bass and printed publication decisions, and the USPTO propose fee increases and changes to patent agent privilege

The monthly numbers of Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) petitions filed for the past four months have been within a 14-petition range, after displaying volatility at the start of the year.

There is no sign of stopping at PTAB and we are gratified to know that those who attack PTAB (Watchtroll for example) are not succeeding. In another report from MIP it’s stated that the “Federal Circuit [is] falling behind as PTAB appeals stack up,” confirming what we saw other sources claim. IAM ‘magazine’, in the mean time, has a new “Report” (usually paid) which shows that CAFC further limits patent scope (not just impacting software but also logic circuit designs) and it leaves us very hopeful. Is this combination of CAFC and PTAB, inheriting the ‘genes’ of the SCOTUS, going to make software patents a thing of the past everywhere? It’s definitely an attainable future. We’re partly there already.

What got a lot of this reform rolling was the America Invents Act (AIA), which brought PTAB just a few years before Alice. According to Patently-O,”AIA Patents [are] Approaching 50% of newly issued patents” and here is what they mean by AIA Patents:

By the end of the calendar year, most newly issued US utility patents will be considered “AIA Patents.” AIA-patents are examined under the first-to-file rules of the America Invents Act of 2011 and are also subject to potential post-grant-review proceedings. The chart below shows results from a random sample of 7,300 recently issued patents.

Soon enough there might not be many software patents left (not already expired) and Alice/Section 101 accomplished more than just software patents abolition, based on this report about industrial machines. It seems too good to be true, but it’s true. This is why patent law firms are hopping mad.

The US patent system is still messy, but we are optimistic and we believe it’s getting better; most developments these days are positive ones. █

Don’t Believe Team UPC; the UPC is Going Nowhere Fast

Posted in Deception, Europe, Patents at 11:29 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

It's dead, Jim, take the blinders off

White horse

Summary: Team UPC (the pro-UPC “conspiracy” pursuing self gain through legislation) continues to mislead Europeans by putting the wheeled carriage with the wooden horse on it at the gates of the city, hoping that hundreds of millions of Europeans are clueless enough to let it in

EARLIER TODAY some anonymous people (possibly from the EPO) pinged me regarding the UPC, hinting that it may not be dead just yet. I responded by reaffirming that if it gets renamed and rebranded (as was the case at least thrice in the past), then the conspirators will try to pass it again, under a different umbrella, new marketing, slightly different politicians and so forth. That’s just how so-called ‘free’ ‘trade’ ‘agreements’ (not free, not about trade, and definitely more like secret collusions than agreements) typically work their way through the system. Compare TTIP to TISA, for instance, and recall the recent controversy over CETA in Belgium (and by extension the whole of Europe).

“As for the UPC Preparatory Committee (part of the “conspiracy”), it’s already pressing the brakes after this “conspiracy” advertised bogus openings/vacancies, for jobs that essentially did not exist and will never exist, unless some miracle happens.”Bristows, which is sucking up to the EPO and promoting the UPC (with software patents) to the great detriment of their country and continent (often at IP Kat) sees an opportunity to enrich itself from UPC and continues with its pro-UPC drivel. “Meanwhile,” it says, “regarding the UPC project, the topic is expected to be discussed by the EU Competitiveness Council in its meeting on 28 and 29 November 2016, and the UPC Preparatory Committee is meeting in early December 2016. The UK has yet to announce any decision regarding whether or not it will ratify the UPC Agreement.”

It won’t. That’s why nothing is going to happen. As for the UPC Preparatory Committee (part of the “conspiracy”), it's already pressing the brakes after this “conspiracy” advertised bogus openings/vacancies, for jobs that essentially did not exist and will never exist, unless some miracle happens.

We’re frankly tired of seeing all that propaganda and the lies from Team UPC. The EPO too repeats its own lies today (we wrote about these before), saying that “60 million Europeans are employed in IPR-intensive industries – out of ~216 million…”

Did you know that ~216 million Europeans use the toilet?

Did you know that more than 60 million Europeans occasionally eat Pizza?

Yes, it’s true.

Thus, defend pizza! It’s crucial to Europe’s future.

These industries do not exist because of patents; in fact some of them — like software — exist in spite of patents. █

Threats to Dismissed EPO Staff Representative Allegedly Hold Pension (Blackmail Point) to Silence Him Even After Unjust Dismissal, Munich Goes Protesting for Him

Posted in Europe, Patents at 8:49 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Rumours also swirl regarding Battistelli’s mental health

Prunier protest

Prunier protest

Summary: Protests in Munich at lunchtime (photos above are a couple of hours old) and a response from Laurent Prunier himself, as posted a short while ago in a blog

“Aaround 800 members of staff turned up for a “Flash Demo” today in Munich,” a source told us, “in support of Laurent Prunier.” People in the Munich branch standing for The Hague, in the same way The Hague’s staff showed solidarity for Munich staff?

As we mentioned here before, even Prunier's pension nearly came under attack. But instead they use it to control him, to silence him. “Some people say (in private) that Battistelli mental health gives reasons to worry,” says this new comment about Battistelli. To quote:

What the Register, Techrights and French MPs seem to forget is that:
-the dismissed person was already unable to do any union work, he has been sick for months. Dismissing him makes no sense whatsoever.
-the timing is strange, right after the administrative council budget committee showed little support for Battistelli and (that part was already reported) after the council clearly asked for no more dismissals.
-the timing is also strange because the so-called “social conference” restarts to morrow Monday. I know few people are convinced that the “social conference” is little more than an exercise in propaganda, but announcing a dismissal right before there are talks with the staff seems peculiar to say the least.

Some people say (in private) that Battistelli mental health gives reasons to worry. I don’t know whether that is true, but maybe now is the time to ask the question.

Another person says that Battistelli is “man with such a childish behavior [who] controls an International Organization with a budget of 2 billion euros.” Here is the full comment:

Battistelli mental health gives reasons to worry.

Nonsense. This is the behavior of a perfectly sane … bully.

Denied his last “reforms” by the AC – in particular new disciplinary measures whose withdrawal has been welcomed by the staff – Mr. Battistelli with the firing of a further staff representative – against an explicit request of the AC in March not to do so – reminds the AC who is Boss here.

The most worrying thing is that, by doing so, Mr. Battistelli does not give a s*#t to further tarnish the reputation of the Office, and in particular of the AC that clearly looks like has no control on him. His personal goals are more important than the reputation of the Organization he’s presiding.

As even IAM acknowledges “If the reports are accurate – and that is not certain given all the agendas – this does look like a needless own goal.”

Yes: a man with such a childish behavior controls an International Organization with a budget of 2 billion euros.

Ah, and at the next AC in December, the fate of the suspended member of the BoA must also be decided.

Here again is the rumour we’ve been hearing about the pension, in spite of de facto gag orders:

It’s a shame. Another elected staff representative has been dismissed, the third now. He is not allowed to speak about the whole procedure as he would risk the loss of his pensions rights by telling details. Reminds me of a totalitarian regime. And nobody seems to care (apart from a few people).

People then wondered why Merpel wasn’t covering any of it. This is expected, but not all comments show up. Here are a few:

Where is Merpel?

Merpel is here:

“Firings will continue until morale improves – Merpel revisits the EPO”

At around 10:30 AM today (11:30 CET) Merpel finally wrote about it, for the first time since summer. At long last, IP Kat writes something about the EPO that’s not a puff piece or UPC promotion. Merpel said:

It is worth recalling that, in a recent independent study commissioned by SUEPO in which about 40% of EPO staff participated, 98% of respondents rated their confidence in Mr Battistelli as either “low” (6%) or “very low” (92%). Currently, Mr Battistelli is running a Social Conference to address the concerns of the AC. Merpel can save readers the bother of waiting for the inevitable press release at the conclusion of this process. In an atmosphere where dissenting voices have been silenced, and only the foolhardy or very brave would risk their careers by speaking up for the 98% who have lost any confidence in Mr Battistelli, the Social Conference will be hailed as a resounding example of constructive, open dialogue. All it’s missing is the leaders of the staff union who are being eliminated, one by one.

Of course this presents a shining opportunity for ambitious, concerned members of staff to take up the banner and step forward into leadership roles in the staff union. Those without dependent families and who are financially independent would be best suited to take on this career-ending role.

The first few comments are interesting as they raised yet more examples of EPO violations:

Thank you IPKat for keeping the wider (concerned) community informed. If Article 20 requires mandatory co-operation with the German and Dutch Authorities, what is to stop a independent investigation from said national authorities under national labour laws without consent of the senior EPO management etc? Do the national authorities have the power to independently inspect an establishment to determine that workers rights are being respected? If not, they should do.

I seem to recall that after a staff member jumped out of a window of the office in The Hague, the Dutch labour inspection was not even allowed to enter the premises. So far for cooperation. I have not heard of any action by the Dutch government or the AC concerning this blatant violation of Art.20.

A much needed gratitude:

Anonymous in Munich Office (all others are already at the Demo) says:

Thanks Merpel. Welcome back to the EPO…

And then came Prunier himself with a strongly-worded message (strong considering the threats he has been subjected to, even after his dismissal):

Dear Merpel,

Being the person concerned, I would like to thank you for your message, which I would like to endorse, and for the concerns you voice.

I can confirm that no “external review, arbitration or mediation was considered”. If I were allowed to make my file public, any person with even the most rudimentary legal training would be horrified by the kafkaesque procedure. But I cannot make it public without facing immediate retaliation by Mr Battistelli and his associates, who in the meantime feel entitled to caterwaul to the world their righteousness, and my sinfulness (which I categorically denied and deny).

Mr Battistelli pronounced my dismissal in spite of an unambiguous “request” (read: instruction) of the Administrative Council not to do it. The reality is that he and his gang are completely unable to take “no” for an answer. When the Administrative Council tries to draw a line and impose some healthy boundaries against his wishes, Mr Battistelli throws a hissy fit worthy of a spoiled toddler in a candy shop. And, most of the time, he gets his way. Parenting may not be one of the Council’s strong points.

It is really disheartening to see the EPO, once one of Europe’s institutional crown jewels, being brought to its knees by a clique of questionable integrity. Fortunately, each day that passes is a day closer to Mr Battistelli’s departure – and with him, hopefully, also the more toxic elements of his crew. I wish the EPO wisdom and strength in its recovery phase, which will be long and difficult.

Needless to say: i will of course challenge this decision.

With feline admiration,

Laurent Prunier

This is far from over. People we have been hearing from insist they will fight for Mr. Prunier. A fight for Prunier’s rights is a fight for justice and the Rule of Law. █

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