11.17.13
Posted in DRM at 11:30 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Send Renault a strong message by rejecting its ‘innovation’ which gives corporations control over people’s cars (for financial reasons)
THERE IS some appalling work being done by Renault [1], as noted by Karsten Gerloff from the FSFE [2]. Basically, ignoring the security impact of taking power away from the driver*, Renault is now letting the battery become unavailable even when it is still technically available. What a dangerous precedence and ‘innovation’ that is. Renault gives control to some corporations over the driver who owns and drives the car. Why would anyone want to actually pay Renault for such defective-by-design cars?
Let’s hope that Renault’s endeavor will die a quick death, along with DRM on the Web. Microsoft’s previous attempt to bring DRM to the Web was malware called Silverlight, which is turning into a security nightmare even years after its death [3]. The very idea of DRM needs to die. It is contemptible as a concept. █
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* Based on some stories, we already know about computerised cars getting hijacked to kill or punish the driver (and everyone else in the car).
Related/contextual items from the news:
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Moves by Renault to install a battery with digital rights management (DRM) restrictions that can remotely prevent the battery from charging have been slammed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
The new Renault Zoe comes with a “feature” which locks the owner into a contract with a battery maker which is enforced by a DRM within the car’s computer.
This also lets Renault use the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) to stop people tinkering with the car software so they can install a battery of their choice. All this means, you will not be allowed to fix your car without permission and only with official parts. You cannot jailbreak the car.
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The problems with DRM for videos, music, ebooks and games are well known. Despite those issues for the purchasers of digital goods, companies love DRM because it gives them control over how their products are used — something that has been much harder to achieve in the analog world. The risk is that as digital technologies begin to permeate traditional physical products, they will bring with them new forms of DRM, as this post by Karsten Gerloff about Zoe, one of Renault’s electric cars, makes clear…
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The creators of a web-based attack tool called Angler Exploit Kit have added an exploit for a known vulnerability in Microsoft’s Silverlight browser plug-in to the tool’s arsenal.
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Posted in Action at 11:14 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
The large and multinational corporations are getting their way
Photo by Guillaume Paumier
Summary: The cause of net neutrality, which basically bans censorship based on medium or requester, is becoming a lost cause because politicians and bureaucrats stop fighting for it
TALKS about net neutrality in Europe are getting rather pathetic [1]. It sure seems like net neutrality is at the point of no return and not enough citizens do something about it, let alone get upset. Over in the US, where the FCC has just put a sort of mole in charge, there is pretense of support for unlocking [2] and something to do with connection speed [3], not net neutrality. It is almost as though the FCC has officially given up on net neutrality. We need to return the subject of net neutrality to the agenda, or else we’ll lose net neutrality for good. Don’t rely on corporations because even the Internet giant Google shifted from supporting net neutrality to opposing it (or supporting its annulment in a way that works well for Google). This is related but still separate from the subject of privacy/surveillance on the Internet (more on that tomorrow). █
Related/contextual items from the news:
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The proposal from the European Commission in September leaves the door open for certain types of Internet traffic management to scan and discriminate between various types of content, Peter Hustinx, the European data protection supervisor (EDPS), said in a published opinion.
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On January 26th of 2013 cellphone locking in the United States effectively became illegal, at least without permission from your existing carrier. Although most carriers will unlock your device for a fee, there’s still a lot of confusion on the matter.
Since January, we’ve seen petitions calling for the ability to freely unlock mobile devices in the United States, and there has even been proposed legislation targeting the issue.
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The Federal Communications Commission has released a mobile speed test app for Android to help the agency crowdsource data about wireless performance across the country. The app, simply named the FCC Speed Test, doesn’t have the best looking design out there, but it doesn’t necessarily need to: once installed, it’ll automatically check a phone’s connection speed in the background when the device is not in use. While that’ll allow individual users to clearly see how well their own data provider is performing, it’ll more importantly allow the FCC to gather a wide amount of data on cellular carriers nationwide — that is, if its app gets enough users.
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Posted in Intellectual Monopoly at 10:51 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Copyright law addresses needs from centuries ago
Summary: Laws which were written in the age of primitive printing machines cannot be applied to the age of mass exchange (Internet)
WHILE Hollywood is trying to make copyright law even more draconian (through TPP), here in Europe there is an effort to reform (weaken) copyright [1,2]. It is a struggle between politicians who work for Hollywood and politicians who work for the people, not just European people. Sometimes the former group is scoring wins; take for instance this US-style censorship of the Web at the behest of the copyright monopoly (mostly from the US) [3].
The copyright monopoly fought Google over the attempts to reform copyrights for the digital age and Google has just won [4,5,6]. Microsoft, as usual, fought all along together with the copyright monopoly (against Google), showing its huge hypocrisy because it tried to do what Google did and just never succeeded (the product/service got shut down). This whole case helped show what force we are up against and it helped show that with enough determination we can defeat the copyright monopoly. We just need more activism and we need to pressure our politicians to serve public interests, not publicly-traded companies. █
Related/contextual items from the news:
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Time for copyright to be an enabler, not an obstacle.
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Ahead of the last meeting of the “Licences for Europe” initiative, five European citizen organisations – Centrum Cyfrowe, EDRI, Kennisland, Modern Poland Foundation, and La Quadrature du Net – release the following joint press release reaffirming the urgent need of an European Copyright reform.
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Legal action in Denmark has added several major movie download sites to the country’s blocklist. Anti-piracy group Rights Alliance, which acts on behalf of local and United States-based copyright holders, successfully applied to have four sites including Movie4K and PrimeWire blocked at the ISP level. With ten unlicensed domains now inaccessible in Denmark on copyright grounds, rightsholders in Norway are now speaking with ISPs about a Pirate Bay blockade.
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Scans that show snippets are legal—they don’t replace the full book.
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Google has won a resounding victory in its eight-year copyright battle with the Authors Guild over the search giant’s controversial decision to scan more than 20 million books from libraries and make them available on the internet.
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Posted in Intellectual Monopoly at 10:34 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Leaks can save many lives
Image by Moizsyed
Summary: Another good example of the need to protect and make possible anonymous leaks of material like TPP documents
THANKS in part to FOSS, which facilitates whistleblowing, TPP is out in the wild. There are so many articles about it (from many nations) and politicians respond to the leaks. It’s having a huge impact.
To give just a short summary, the Washington Post calls TPP a “Hollywood wish list” [2], FOSS sites praise Wikileaks [2], digital freedom sites say that TPP is “worse than ACTA” [3], the Canadian Web sites accuse the US of pressuring Canadian politicians [4], and there is plenty more from New Zealand [5] and Australia [6-10] (all in English). European sites which publish in English covered this as well [11]. The reports are self explanatory and they don’t necessitate further comments from us.
When people argue that leaks are a “Bad Thing”, be sure to cite TPP for refutation. █
Related/contextual items from the news:
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Officially, the Trans-Pacific Partnership is a trade treaty that will ease the flow of goods and services among the United States, Canada, Chile, Japan, New Zealand, Malaysia, and other nations along the Pacific Rim. But it has attracted criticism for its secrecy, and for the inclusion of controversial provisions related to copyright, patent, and trademark protections.
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Wikileaks has published a draft document of a chapter of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement–the year’s most controversial secret treaty. The secretive multinational free-trade treaty is currently being negotiated by 11 Pacific Rim nations.
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We’ve been waiting a long time for a major leak of the secretive TPP agreement, and thanks to Wikileaks, we now finally have it (pdf – embedded below). It’s long and heavy going, not least because of all the bracketed alternatives where the negotiators haven’t been able to agree on a text yet. Even though the draft is fairly recent — it’s dated 30 August, 2013 — it contains a huge number of such open issues. Fortunately, KEI has already put together a detailed but easy-to-understand analysis, which I urge you to read in full.
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This morning WikiLeaks released secret documents that have confirmed an extreme Internet censorship plan is being pushed behind closed doors as part of the International Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement. Over 100,000 people from around the world have already spoken through an online campaign at http://openmedia.org/censorship
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Secret details show NZ opposed US on issues such as copyright and medicines.
Secret details of the United States-Pacific trade agreement have been leaked showing New Zealand in serious dispute with US negotiators on many issues.
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Part of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement has finally been leaked – and the situation is grim. NM asked experts, including Underground author Suelette Dreyfus, what concerns them most
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The United States is pushing for greater powers over patent and property rights, according to a WikiLeaks release of secret negotiations behind one of the world’s largest trade agreements.
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Wikileaks has leaked a draft of the IP chapter of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement, confirming the Australian government is backing a reinforcement of geoblocking and will also be opposing moves to make ISPs not responsible for what their users do.
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Thousands of Australians could face new criminal penalties for illegally downloading content under the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement.
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The extraordinarily detailed information on negotiating positions released by WikiLeaks shows Australia repeatedly backing the interests of the US against the objections of countries including Canada, New Zealand, Japan, Singapore and Vietnam on questions involving intellectual property. Australia is often the only one of the 12 parties to the Trans Pacific Partnership negotiations to do so.
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For years, the United States and partner governments have worked vigorously to keep the publics they represent from knowing what they are negotiating behind closed doors in the top-secret Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement. But today’s Wikileaks release of the draft intellectual property chapter blew that up, confirming the fears of public interest groups that this is an agreement heavily weighted toward big industry interests.
“If instituted, the TPP’s IP regime would trample over individual rights and free expression, as well as ride roughshod over the intellectual and creative commons,” WikiLeaks’ Editor-in-Chief Julian Assange said in a release. “If you read, write, publish, think, listen, dance, sing or invent; if you farm or consume food; if you’re ill now or might one day be ill, the TPP has you in its crosshairs.”
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Posted in Finance, Free/Libre Software at 10:17 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Hiring statistics suggest an improvement in gender equality, but a bigger story needs to be told
A new report from Dice got the attention of the Linux Foundation [1] because the FOSS world seems to be trying more than anyone to bring women to the community of developers [2]. “Women outnumber men in this year’s tech hires.” says one Microsoft-centric pundit in IDG [3]. A couple of days ago I had my wife join to help me run Tux Machines (it’s a non-profit site, so I’ve removed all ads from it) and she is really getting deeper and deeper into FOSS, so this trend seems to make sense. She recently joined the company that I work for. As some people point out on the Web, hiring X just because s/he is X is never a good kind of hiring and it is possible that financial considerations play a role (women get paid less on average, even for the same job).
There is more to this story than the above report would suggest. As pointed out by Will Hill, in China for example, women get hired because it is easier to abuse and exploit them (or underpay them). To what degree this is applicable in the West remains to be determined. Similar arguments are being made to suggest that a $15 minimum wage [4] in the United States would only make things worse for the poor, not better, for all sorts of reasons we won’t delve into right now. Business can always take their staff/hirings elsewhere [5]. Here in the UK, “permanent austerity” is being promoted while there are many millionaires and billionaires around (including our politicians [6]) and in Massachusetts there seems to be a run away from banks [7] because another crash is expected [8] (there is assurance of bailout at taxpayers’ expense) and our government here in the UK is starting new programs to push every one of us (even savers) into huge personal debt [9] (let alone national debt).
What it all boils down to is a race to the bottom, debt economies (always borrowing from the future and forcing everyone to do so), or in a broader sense globalisation which only benefits corporations (making the rich even richer under the pretense it would lead to some ‘trickle-down’ effect). The next post will say more about it, addressing specifically the subject of TPP. █
Related/contextual items from the news:
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Dice this week released new data showing that more than half of new tech jobs created in 2013 year-to-date have been filled by women.
We’re encouraged to see this trend and believe it will continue. The Linux Foundation is doing what it can to encourage women to contribute to and advance Linux. Our participation in this year’s Outreach Program for Women resulted in a variety of important contributions to the Linux kernel by the interns. These interns were also invited to speak at LinuxCon North America and LinuxCon Europe about their experiences. I talked to a variety of attendees who enjoyed the interns’ session and learned a lot about getting started in Linux.
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The Linux Foundation became a sponsor for the FOSS Outreach Program for Women earlier this year, choosing seven interns to hack on the Linux kernel from June through September. And, the results are in: the intern group ranked among the largest contributors to Linux kernel 3.12.
I asked Lisa Nguyen, one of the seven women interns, what it was like to work full time on the Linux kernel, with Linux developers, remotely for four months. In this interview, Lisa shares with me why she didn’t tell anyone she was applying, what surprised her most about hacking on the kernel, and why she gets up in the morning hungry for more.
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In one of comedian Chris Rock’s routines, he observes: “You know what that means when someone pays you a minimum wage? You know what your boss is trying to say? ‘Hey, if I could pay you less, I would, but it’s against the law.’”
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What everyone is talking about though is the photo of Cameron making this call for lower spending.
Among the items featured in the photo:
A huge gold throne.
A gold speech stand.
Several expensive looking glasses and chalices filled with wine.
A random silver horse.
A huge necklace on the lady sitting on the throne.
Tuxes with white ties.
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Dutch nonprofit provides $500,000 grant to start loan program for increasingly popular BerkShares
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Andrew Huszar, who managed the beginning of the Federal Reserve’s bond-buying program in 2009 and 2010, has two things to say.
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Thanks to government subsidies, banks have seen their share prices as a whole triple since March 2009.
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PricedOut says most first-time buyers would be better off renting and saving so they could access a better interest rate further down the line
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Posted in Action at 9:51 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Media which is funded and run by nuclear (e.g. GE), coal and fossil fuel giants (e.g. Koch Brothers) continues to show how disasters happen but won’t be acted upon unless they kill white people and cause huge financial damage (of Western scales)
THE SERIOUSNESS of global warming was recently demonstrated by a powerful typhoon which mostly hit poor areas in the Philippines and not affected quite so profoundly anywhere else [1]. Global warming is more severe than previously predicted [2] and in Europe there seem to be some efforts to reduce dependencies on fossil fuel and coal [3], although that is hardly enough. In places where denial of global warming has become standard due to lobbying and marketing campaigns from the fossil fuel and coal energy giants we have a lot of work to do. It helps show how corporate control of the press is killing the poor, not killing poverty, and since the poor have no value in the balance sheet of giant corporations (they don’t spend enough), all those major catastrophe are unlikely to cause change. Recently, CNN did a sort of simulation showing a hypothetical impact of this typhoon on Florida, as if such a disaster would only be a disaster if it affected some white people. The analysis from CNN mostly concentrated on economic impact, which really says a lot about how the corporate media views such events. Right now there is mostly a public relations effort trying to exploit the disaster and portray some companies, governments etc. as humane and generous. If they really cared, they would have done something about the climate (prevention). Don’t let the likes of Mr. Cooper act like the “rich uncle from America” and the only rescuers to be noted; remember who he works for (CNN) and who funds his employer. Those who count are people on the ground, people whom CNN et al. would never put on the air. Both ‘leftist’ and openly corporatist media channels are guilty of this. █
Related/contextual items from the news:
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Filling in data gaps with satellites makes the last few years a little warmer.
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“Due to the continuing boom in solar energy, many power stations throughout the sector and across Europe are no longer profitable to operate,” RWE said in a statement.
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Posted in News Roundup at 9:29 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
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Many programs exist that try to serve as a replacement for MATLAB. They all differ in their capabilities—some extending beyond what is available in MATLAB, and others giving subsets of functions that focus on some problem area. In this article, let’s look at another available option: FreeMat.
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The main Web site for FreeMat is hosted on SourceForge. Installation for most Linux distributions should be as easy as using your friendly neighborhood package manager.
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Red Hat is out this week with their first production release of Ceylon, a modular, modern, and statically-typed programming language for Java and JavaScript Virtual Machines. Ceylon 1.0 consists of a language specification, compiler, and Eclipse IDE integration.
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Leadwerks, one of the recent commercial game engines that’s being ported to Linux following a successful Kickstarter campaign, has shared more of their Linux game engine progress from a developer’s perspective.
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Lisp is one of those languages that people either love or hate. Count me among the Lisp lovers. I was brainwashed during my undergraduate studies at MIT to believe that Lisp is the only “real” programming language out there, and that anything else is a pale imitation. True, I use Python and Ruby in my day-to-day work, but I often wish I had the chance to work with Lisp on a regular basis.
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Want to get involved in a cool new initiative to promote it across Europe?
My Young Advisors are a talented group of people advising and supporting me in my work. And they’ve been hard at work themselves. They’ve come up with a great idea: Europe Code Week – a week of initiatives at the end of November (25th-30th) with a focus on coding – workshops, teaching, or just raising awareness.
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Posted in GNU/Linux, Kernel, Security at 9:07 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Why did Linus Torvalds keep quiet about it?
Summary: The NSA asked Linus Torvalds, the founder of Linux, to put back doors inside Linux
Time to ban the NSA from Linux development? Probably.
The NSA has been subverting standards to make the world less secure for everyone (using pseudo-encryption everywhere) and now we understand Torvalds’ weird dodging from the question about NSA requests for back doors [1, 2], not to mention past attempts at back door inside Linux. Linus Torvalds’ father, who is an MEP (here is his Web site), finally does what his son, who is based in the US and is now a US citizen, did not do. He has just revealed that the NSA did ask Linus to backdoor Linux [1] (like Windows).
In light of these revelations we probably should ban the NSA from getting involved in Linux, including SELinux. The NSA has been abusing the whole world (even allies) and breaking the law, so why trust it? Moreover, as revealed in the news some days ago [2,3], there may already be some back doors in Linux, but they are well disguised. █
Related/contextual items from the news:
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The NSA has asked Linus Torvalds to inject covert backdoors into the free and open operating system GNU/Linux. This was revealed in this week’s hearing on mass surveillance in the European Parliament. Chalk another one up of the United States NSA trying to make information technology less secure for everyone.
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