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04.28.16

Latest Black Duck Puff Pieces a Good Example of Bad Journalism and How Not to Report

Posted in Deception, Free/Libre Software, FUD, Marketing, Security at 8:38 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

No investigation, just churnalism

Churnalism

Summary: Why the latest “Future of Open Source Survey” — much like its predecessors — isn’t really a survey but just another churnalism opportunity for the Microsoft-connected Black Duck, which is a proprietary parasite inside the FOSS community

THE “Future of Open Source Survey” is not a survey. It’s just Black Duck’s self-promotional (marketing) tripe packaged as a “survey”. This is a common PR tactic, it’s not unique. We wrote about this so-called ‘survey’ in several articles in the past, e.g.:

We now have more of the same churnalism and it comes from the usual ‘news’ networks, in addition to paid press releases. When we first mentioned Shipley 8 years ago he was busy doing one nefarious thing and two years ago we saw him joining the Microsoft-connected Black Duck. He is quoted as saying (CBS) that “the rapid adoption of open source has outpaced the implementation of effective open-source management and security practices. We see opportunities to make significant improvements in those areas. With nearly half of respondents saying they have no formal processes to track their open source, and half reporting that no one has responsibility for identifying known vulnerabilities and tracking remediation, we expect to see more focus on those areas.” Thanks for the FUD, Mr. Shipley. So where do I buy your proprietary software (and software patents-protected) ‘solution’? That is, after all, what it’s all about, isn’t it? The ‘survey’ is an excuse or a carrier (if not Trojan horse) for proprietary software marketing.

Here is similar coverage from IDG and the Linux Foundation, whose writers did little more than repeat the talking points of Black Duck after the press release got spread around. █

If EPO “Form of Thinking Were to be Followed, Guantanamo on German Soil Would be Possible.”

Posted in Europe, Law, Patents at 8:11 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Siegfried Broß (below) previously defended the defamed judge whom Battistelli suspended if not dismissed in spite of supposed independence

Siegfried Broß
Image courtesy: campact.de

Summary: The EPO is still under fire, but a lot of it happens behind the scenes and involves lawyers and/or bureaucrats

The “EPO very silent at the moment,” one person told us yesterday, “what will be the next move? Be prepared!” Well, based on what we know, as few press reports already gradually reveal, there are lawsuits on their way. The defamed judge too seems to be among those who fight back against Caesar Battistelli, who obviously thinks he is above the law and openly brags about it.

“Not even police in Germany or Dutch special forces can go into EPO premises — as strange as it may sound.”Not much is publicly known about these lawsuits. We don’t know how many people are involved, how many people will be named as defendants, how many pertinent lawsuits there are and so on, but we assume that preparation for this is probably keeping SUEPO officials busy and we might soon know more about the basis of the complaints and who is being legally targeted, as the EPO itself is almost immune from lawsuits (my lawyer told me so after the EPO had SLAPPed me and some EPO applicants told me they wished to sue the EPO but didn’t know how because of its outrageous immunity). For instance, doing a search at the EPO (subpoena) requires prior permission from management. Not even police in Germany or Dutch special forces can go into EPO premises — as strange as it may sound. Not even embassies enjoy the same protections which Team Battistelli now flagrantly abuses. The EPO is like Camp X-Ray and suicides oughtn’t be much of a surprise. There is some resemblance to be found there to the UN or WIPO, which is connected to the UN, mostly because it’s chaotic in the legal sense (there are virtually no legal protections for workers).

As this new article from IP Watch puts it this week (yesterday): “To date, there is no consolidated reference text on WIPO’s governance” (and in the EPO there are special rules that are kept secret as they override national/international laws).

“Here we have again, as was the case two months ago, Siegfried Broß comparing the EPO’s legal status to that of Guantánamo Bay.”In his latest blog post, Battistelli, who tried to work for WIPO (he lost to Gurry), cites the WIPO in an effort to gain some legitimacy. It comes amid relative calm, even though Bavarian/German press evidently continues to cover the situation at the EPO (direct link to the video). Moreover, SUEPO has just prepared a translation of “Patentamtsstreit beschäftigt auch Audi”, which it says was published “only in paper version.” Here we have again, as was the case two months ago, Siegfried Broß comparing the EPO’s legal status to that of Guantánamo Bay. It alludes to some of the aforementioned points.

DONAUKURIER 20 APRIL 2016

FORMER CONSTITUTIONAL JUDGE SIEGFRIED BROSS ON THE EPO

Mr. Bross, over the past few months the EPO has been hitting the headlines with a large number of labour law disputes. You are seen as a major critic of the organization. Why is that?

Siegfried Bross: The EPO is the central authority for the protection of patents in Europe. However, it suffers from an underlying flaw in its structure, which slipped in when it was established. It is a creation of a combination of states, and its immunity was recognized. That in itself is in principle not a problem, but within the EPO an
entirely autonomous legal system has been created, which is not based on any effective system of checks and balances.

What does that signify?

Bross: The Patent Office is detached from national systems of law. That has two consequences which are not acceptable in the context of a state governed by law: On the one hand, as can be seen at the present time, there is no legal protection for the workforce. On the other, there is no legal protection either for patent applicants. There are only the Boards of Appeal at the EPO, which are both officials and judges in one, and which, moreover, are subordinate to the President. Anyone who comes to grief there has no further recourse. Nor is the Office subject to any parliamentary monitoring or control.

How could the constitutional arrangements be structured so as to avoid such problems?

Bross: Either a new court would have to be established inside the Patent Organization, which would be independent of the President, or the legal protection would have to be assigned to one of the states where it has a domicile, such as Germany.

In your view, then, the structure as it exists up to now is not reconcilable with applicable law?

Bross: It contravenes the European Convention on Human Rights, because the 38 Member States cannot ensure the status of a state governed by law. It is a basic principle of human rights that states cannot rescind their responsibility to uphold human rights. This means that the organization should never have been established in
the way it was. The combining of administrative and legislative power in one entity is unacceptable. The position of the President contradicts all basic principles of the democratic state governed by law, and the EPO has by now essentially gained autonomy. I have repeatedly said, if this form of thinking were to be followed, Guantanamo on German soil would be possible.

In the attempt to make the Office more efficient, have the states lost sight of the clients and the staff?

Bross: The focus on cutting costs and higher yield from fees have nothing to do with the task of the EPO. The procedures of issuing patents, the aim of which is the protection of intellectual property, are an absolutely inviolable right for the economy. It is a fundamental task of the patent authority to ensure that there are sufficient personnel available for the thorough examination of patents.

Siegfried Bross was a judge at the Federal Constitutional Court from 1998 to 2010. The interview was conducted by Daniel Wenisch. Archive photo: Deck/dpa

As noted in about a dozen recent daily links in Techrights, lawsuits over torture at Guantánamo Bay have just been given the go-ahead (rather unprecedented a development). The people behind torture techniques may be dragged into court. Let’s hope the same happens to the EPO’s management.

“Just watch what monsters Raimund Lutz, for instance, has come to serve.”Working for the EPO as a legal personality (at any capacity) does not legitimise one’s career or improves one’s credibility at this point (unless one is past retirement age, in which case it hardly matters, as is the case for Battistelli and Minnoye). Just watch what monsters Raimund Lutz, for instance, has come to serve. Don’t worry, he’s paid well for this. According to this news update, Justice Arnold too joins the team (probably tempted by big money and power), albeit he’ll be serving the Enlarged Board of Appeal, which is no friend of Battistelli (recall this letter). As IP Kat put it yesterday: “First, the IPKat learned from CIPA that Mr Justice Arnold has been appointed to the Enlarged Board of Appeal of the European Patent Office. The IPKat understands that he is to replace Lord Justice Floyd, who has been the UK external member of the Enlarged Board for some years. One or two external members of the Enlarged Board are included in the panel in cases where there is a referral to the Enlarged Board by an EPO Board of Appeal or the EPO President, and the scope of the matter extends beyond the internal administration of the EPO. Such cases are relatively rare (single numbers per year) and there are over 20 external members, the IPKat does not imagine that Mr Justice Arnold will be having to jet over to Munich very frequently.”

“The next few weeks may be interesting when it comes to the EPO.”In other news, MIP continues writing about the UPC as though it’s definitely coming, irrespective of all the barriers. To quote the summary: “How might a clearing-the-way case proceed once the UPC is in force? In the latest article in our series, David Rose, Nina O’Sullivan and Axel Walz consider the options for a patent challenger who wishes to launch a competing product” (there are already scenarios for this in the existing system, so the UPC solves a problem which does not at all exist, unless you’re a multinational company that’s not even European).

The next few weeks may be interesting when it comes to the EPO. We have mostly omitted all the “Inventor” propaganda which comes out of the EPO these days, even urging people to double-vote and calling in "media partners" like French papers (it’s the same one again) and hoping they won’t notice the poor record of finalists' selection. █

Links 28/4/2016: Tomb Raider for GNU/Linux, Proxmox VE 4.2

Posted in News Roundup at 6:42 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Where did we all go wrong? And why doesn’t anyone remember?

    But we didn’t pursue them. We replaced them with something cheaper — with Unix machines, an OS only a nerd could love. And then we replaced the Unix machines with something cheaper still — the IBM PC, a machine so poor that the £125 ZX Spectrum had better graphics and sound.

    And now, we all use descendants of that. Generally acknowledged as one of the poorest, most-compromised machines, based on descendants of one of the poorest, most-compromised CPUs.

    Yes, over the 40 years since then, most of rough edges have been polished out. The machines are now small, fast, power-frugal with tons of memory and storage, with great graphics and sound. But it’s taken decades to get here.

    And the OSes have developed. Now they’re feature-rich, fairly friendly, really very robust considering the stone-age stuff they’re built from.

    But if we hadn’t spent 3 or 4 decades making a pig’s ear into silk purse — if we’d started with a silk purse instead — where might we have got to by now?

  • Your Beard Doesn’t Intimidate Me Anymore!

  • Server

    • Understanding Your HPC Application Needs

      Many HPC applications began as single processor (single core) programs. If these applications take too long on a single core or need more memory than is available, they need to be modified so they can run on scalable systems. Fortunately, many of the important (and most used) HPC applications are already available for scalable systems. Not all applications require large numbers of cores for effective performance, while others are highly scalable.

    • 5 Container as a Service Tools You Should Know About

      In a previous article on next-generation cloud technologies, I mentioned Containers as a Service (CaaS), which provides a framework to manage container and application deployment.

    • Don’t Worry About IBM’s Mainframe Sales Collapse

      For those who know little about International Business Machines , the company’s hulking System Z mainframe computers may seem like little more than a relic. The 42% year-over-year decline in System Z sales during IBM’s first quarter would appear to offer proof that the mainframe business is struggling.

      But investors shouldn’t worry about this mainframe sales collapse. It’s happened before, and it will happen again. IBM’s System Z product cycle, which sees new models introduced every few years, induces an extreme amount of sales volatility as clients rush to upgrade. While IBM doesn’t report System Z sales numbers directly, the company does report year-over-year performance, and that allows us to see that the big drop in sales during the first quarter is nothing out of the ordinary.

  • Kernel Space

    • PulseAudio Adds Memfd Transport Support

      PulseAudio gained support for utilizing the Linux kernel’s memfd as a transport mechanism as spearheaded by the systemd/KDBUS crew.

    • Linux Kernel 3.12.59 LTS Out Now with Crypto & Networking Fixes, Updated Drivers

      Linux kernel developer Jiri Slaby today announced the availability of the fifty-ninth maintenance release of the long-term supported Linux 3.12 kernel series, urging all users to update as soon as possible.

      Looking at the appended shortlog, we can notice that Linux kernel 3.12.59 LTS is here to patch various security issues that have been discovered since the previous point release, version 3.12.58, which has been announced two weeks ago by Mr. Jiri Slaby, along with an important piece of information, that the Linux 3.12 series will be supported until 2017 because it is used in SUSE Linux Enterprise 12.

    • Linux infosec outfit does a Torvalds, rageblocks innocent vuln spotter

      An open source security firm has blocked a security researcher who reported flaws in a recently issued patch in an apparent fit of pique.

      Hector Martin took to Twitter on Tuesday to note a trivial crashing vulnerability in a recently issued patch by Grsecurity.

      “I literally crashed my box by pasting a bunch of text into a terminal, due to a really sad bug in the patch,” Martin said.

      In response, Grsecurity acknowledged the issue, which it said would be fixed in the next release. At the same time it blocked Martin on both Twitter and by IP address.

    • Why Linux Creator Linus Torvalds Thinks That C++ Programming Language Sucks?

      This morning, I was reading some news about Linux creator Linus Torvalds and I came across a decade-old note from him. You might have heard about Linus Torvald’s opinion of programming language C++ and this note was about the same.

    • Open Source: Thinking Big by Jim Zemlin

      Zemlin’s career spans three of the largest technology trends to rise over the last decade: mobile computing, cloud computing and open source software. Today, as executive director of The Linux Foundation, he uses this experience to accelerate the adoption of Linux and support the future of computing.

    • Graphics Stack

      • See How Your Linux GPU Compares To Various GeForce GPUs With NVIDIA 364.19

        While waiting for today’s release of Tomb Raider on Linux, for which I just posted various NVIDIA Tomb Raider benchmarks on Ubuntu, I was running some other OpenGL benchmarks.

        One of the benchmark runs I did with various graphics cards this morning while waiting for Tomb Raider was the well known and demanding Unigine Valley demo. Tests were done with various Kepler and Maxwell GeForce graphics cards while using the brand new NVIDIA 364.19 driver on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS x86_64.

      • X.Org Foundation Election Results

        Two questions were up for voting, 4 seats on the Board of Directors and approval of the amended By-Laws to join SPI.

        Congratulations to our reelected and new board members Egbert Eich, Alex Deucher, Keith Packard and Bryce Harrington. Thanks a lot to Lucas Stach for running. And also big thanks to our outgoing board member Matt Dew, who stepped down for personal reasons.

      • X.Org Members Approve Becoming Part Of The SPI Organization

        The results just are in of the 2016 X.Org Foundation elections and the members have voted to become part of the SPI. The foundation thus is basically becoming dissolved to become part of Software in the Public Interest.

        After last year’s vote failed for the X.Org Foundation to merge with the SPI due to not reaching the two-thirds quorum to change the by-laws, this year was a success: 61 of the 65 members voted.

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

  • Distributions

    • New Releases

      • Proxmox VE 4.2 Officially Released with Let’s Encrypt Support, ZFS Improvements

        Proxmox Server Solutions GmbH, a renowned company developing the Proxmox VE (Virtual Environment) server virtualization operating system based on the Linux kernel, announced the release of Proxmox VE 4.2.

      • Proxmox VE 4.2 Released

        Proxmox Server Solutions GmbH, the company developing the server virtualization platform Proxmox Virtual Environment (VE), today announced the general availability of version 4.2. The open source virtualization platform Proxmox VE is a hyper-converged solution enabling users to create and manage LXC containers and KVM virtual machines on the same host, and makes it easy to set up highly available clusters, as well as to manage network and storage via an integrated web-based management interface.

      • antiX 16 Linux OS Gets a Second Beta Build with Kernel 4.4.8 LTS, Many Changes

        It’s been a little over two weeks since the first Beta build of the upcoming antiX 16 Linux operating system was announced, and now we can get our hands on the second Beta release.

    • Screenshots/Screencasts

    • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandriva Family

      • OpenMandriva Adds F2FS Support

        It’s been a while since last having anything to report on with the OpenMandriva Linux distribution, but they wrote in today with news about adding Flash-Friendly File-System (F2FS) support.

        Within their OpenMandriva “Cooker” development repository is the most interesting support with F2FS support being part of their kernel, shipping f2fs-tools by default, and their Calamares installer allowing F2FS for SSD disks. They’ve also added a F2FS patch for GRUB2. With that work in OpenMandriva Cooker, users can be running F2FS as their root file-system with ease!

    • Arch Family

    • Red Hat Family

    • Debian Family

      • Derivatives

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • Entroware’s Orion Laptops Now Ship with Ubuntu MATE 16.04 LTS and Skylake CPUs

            Entroware, one of the few hardware companies to offer laptops with Ubuntu MATE Linux operating system pre-installed, today announced a refresh of its Orion series of laptops.

            The new Orion laptop is now in stock, and it looks like it comes with the next-generation of Intel Skylake processors, as well as the latest and greatest version of the Ubuntu MATE distro, Ubuntu MATE 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus).

          • my Shuttleworth Foundation flash grant

            More important than features is making Propellor prevent more classes of mistakes, by creative use of the type system. The biggest improvement in this area was type checking the OSes of Propellor properties, so Propellor can reject host configurations that combine eg, Linux-only and FreeBSD-only properties.

          • Wolfram Research turns your Ubuntu phone into an IoT sensor
          • Ubuntu 16.04′s support for the ZFS file system may violate the General Public License

            Ubuntu 16.04′s support for the ZFS file system is one of many useful enterprise features on top of all the Linux desktop polish in the new OS. But Linux distributions have avoided shipping ZFS support in the past due to licensing issues, and Ubuntu 16.04’s ZFS support sits smack-dab in the middle of a controversial legal gray area.

          • Ubuntu’s $70 computing stick could fit nicely behind your TV

            Want to turn a TV into a Ubuntu computer? The very orange MeLE PCG02U just might be what you’re looking for. This tiny stick computer costs only $70, meaning you can add a desktop to any TV for very little money. It’s the first Ubuntu device from Mele, a Chinese manufacturer that until now has focused on Android and Windows devices.

          • This $70 computer stick is designed for Ubuntu

            Ubuntu is starting to show up in lot more places lately: tablets, phones, and this neat little computer-on-a-stick created by MeLE called the PGC02U. It’s $70, with an Intel BayTrail processor, 2GB of RAM, and 32GB of storage. It also comes in Ubuntu orange and has a wee little antenna to help with wireless reception. Liliputing points out that you might want to go ahead and install this build of Ubuntu created by Ian Morrison, as it’s designed specifically for stick computers.

          • Mele PCG02U is a $70 Ubuntu PC stick

            Chinese computer maker Mele has been offering small Android and Windows computers for a few years. Now the company is selling a PC-on-a-stick that runs Ubuntu Linux.

          • Mele PCG02U Ubuntu PC Stick Launches For $70
          • Ubuntu 16.04 LTS video review

            Ubuntu 16.04 LTS was recently released, and many Linux users have been wondering what it has to offer and if it’s worth installing or upgrading from a previous release of Ubuntu.

            Not to worry, a YouTuber by the name of Quidsup has a full video review of Ubuntu 16.04 that will walk you through the latest changes to Canonical’s popular desktop distribution.

          • [Older] Ubuntu 16.04 LTS Released, This Is What’s New
          • uNav 0.59 GPS Navigation App for Ubuntu Phones Brings Pinch-Zoom, a Refreshed UI

            uNav developer Nekhelesh Ramananthan announced the release of version 0.59 of the default GPS navigation app for the Ubuntu Touch mobile operating system for Ubuntu Phones.

            According to the announcement, uNav 0.59, which has been dubbed “Beauty and the Beast,” comes with exciting new features, among which we can mention a brand-new navigation structure, giving users the possibility of searching for locations, favorites or coordinates directly from the menubar, as well as a refresh of the UI (details below).

  • Devices/Embedded

Free Software/Open Source

Leftovers

  • YouTube will soon roll out six-second ads that you can’t skip

    YouTube’s adding a new option to help advertisers get their message to consumers — but in a much shorter amount of time than normal. Today the company announced that beginning next month, it’ll offer six-second “Bumper” ads that are designed to be a better companion to the shorter video clips that millions of YouTube users are watching on smartphones. “We like to think of Bumper ads as little haikus of video ads — and we’re excited to see what the creative community will do with them,” YouTube’s Zach Lupei wrote in a blog post. You can see a sample of one below, which was an early test by Atlantic Records.

  • YouTube just announced plans to steal six seconds of your life

    PEOPLE FALLING over and cat fanciers hangout YouTube is planning to make people sit through six seconds of un-skippable advertising in the sort of move that makes sense to businesses but makes people go cray cray.

  • Health/Nutrition

  • Security

    • Security advisories for Wednesday
    • German nuclear plant infected with computer viruses, operator says

      A nuclear power plant in Germany has been found to be infected with computer viruses, but they appear not to have posed a threat to the facility’s operations because it is isolated from the Internet, the station’s operator said on Tuesday.

      The Gundremmingen plant, located about 120 km (75 miles) northwest of Munich, is run by the German utility RWE (RWEG.DE).

      The viruses, which include “W32.Ramnit” and “Conficker”, were discovered at Gundremmingen’s B unit in a computer system retrofitted in 2008 with data visualization software associated with equipment for moving nuclear fuel rods, RWE said.

      Malware was also found on 18 removable data drives, mainly USB sticks, in office computers maintained separately from the plant’s operating systems. RWE said it had increased cyber-security measures as a result.

    • Death of the enterprise VPN – if remote access is not secure what comes next? [iophk: "Spam. Besides, if an app cannot be put on the net without a VPN then it does not belong on the net in the first place."]

      VPNs are the backbone of enterprise remote access and yet their security limitations are starting to pile up. The problem is that the very thing that once made them so useful, network access, is now their biggest weakness. As the 2014 attacks on retailers Target and Home Depot painfully illustrate, this architecture can easily be exploited by attackers armed with stolen credentials to move around networks from within in ways that are difficult to spot until it’s too late.

  • Defence/Aggression

    • The classified ’28 pages’: A diversion from real US-Saudi issues

      The US government has known that Saudi financing of madrassas all over the world has been a major source of jihadist activism. The Saudi regime’s extremist Wahhabi perspective on Shia Islam is the basis for its paranoid stance on the rest of the region and the destabilisation of Syria and Yemen. The 28 pages should be released, but at a time when the contradictions between US and Saudi interests are finally beginning to be openly acknowledged, the issue is just another diversion from the real debate on Saudi Arabia that is urgently needed.

    • Is This What’s in Those 28 Pages? And Does it Matter?

      Did the CIA meet with some of the 9/11 hijackers ahead of the attacks on New York? Did the Saudi government help finance those hijackers? Someone knows the answers, and soon, you might know as well.

    • Rio Sees A ‘Surge’ In Police Killings Ahead Of The Summer Olympics

      Since the beginning of April, 11 people have been killed by the police in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where the Summer Olympics are scheduled to begin in just 100 days. One of the victims was a five-year-old boy.

    • Censored, Surveilled, Watch Listed and Jailed: The Absurdity of Being a Citizen in the American Police State

      April 26, 2016 “Information Clearing House” – “Ron Paul Institute”- In the American police state, the price to be paid for speaking truth to power (also increasingly viewed as an act of treason) is surveillance, censorship, jail and ultimately death.

      However, where many Americans go wrong is in assuming that you have to be doing something illegal or challenging the government’s authority in order to be flagged as a suspicious character, labeled an enemy of the state and locked up like a dangerous criminal.

    • Nuclear Escalation in Europe

      The United States feigned surprise during the simulation of an attack by the Russian aviation against the USS Donald Cook in the Baltic Sea. And yet, as we have reported, Russia already has the capacity to block the ship’s Communications & Commands, and did so, observes Manlio Dinucci, because the ship was in the process of violating the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF). Furthermore, the US nuclear deployment occurred as China is developing hypersonic launchers, a part of whose trajectory will be in glide mode, inspiring new research by DARPA. As from now, Raytheon and Lockheed Martin are participating in the Tactical Boost Glide Program.

    • Ukraine’s Rightists Return to Odessa

      For two years, Ukraine’s U.S.-backed regime has balked at investigating dozens of arson deaths in Odessa and now is doing little as far-right nationalists rally for another confrontation, writes Nicolai N. Petro.

    • Can We Feel the Heat?

      I am travelling as a peace witness in Iraqi Kurdistan. We visited a sheikh whom I had met in Fallujah in 2012. He and his family were forced to flee to Kurdistan about two years ago. Fallujah iis being held by ISIS. None of the residents are allowed to leave. People are dying of starvation.

    • Has The American Age of Decline Begun?

      “Low-energy Jeb.” “Little Marco.” “Lyin’ Ted.” “Crooked Hillary.” Give Donald Trump credit. He has a memorable way with insults. His have a way of etching themselves on the brain. And they’ve garnered media coverage, analysis, and commentary almost beyond imagining. Memorable as they might be, however, they won’t be what last of Trump’s 2016 election run. That’s surely reserved for a single slogan that will sum up his candidacy when it’s all over (no matter how it ends). He arrived with it on that Trump Tower escalator in the first moments of his campaign and it now headlines his website, where it’s also emblazoned on an array of products from hats to t-shirts.

      You already know which line I mean: “Make America Great Again!” With that exclamation point ensuring that you won’t miss the hyperbolic, Trumpian nature of its promise to return the country to its former glory days. In it lies the essence of his campaign, of what he’s promising his followers and Americans generally — and yet, strangely enough, of all his lines, it’s the one most taken for granted, the one that’s been given the least thought and analysis. And that’s a shame, because it represents something new in our American age. The problem, I suspect, is that what first catches the eye is the phrase “Make America Great” and then, of course, the exclamation point, while the single most important word in the slogan, historically speaking, is barely noted: “again.”

      With that “again,” Donald Trump crossed a line in American politics that, until his escalator moment, represented a kind of psychological taboo for politicians of any stripe, of either party, including presidents and potential candidates for that position. He is the first American leader or potential leader of recent times not to feel the need or obligation to insist that the United States, the “sole” superpower of Planet Earth, is an “exceptional” nation, an “indispensable” country, or even in an unqualified sense a “great” one. His claim is the opposite. That, at present, America is anything but exceptional, indispensable, or great, though he alone could make it “great again.” In that claim lies a curiosity that, in a court of law, might be considered an admission of guilt. Yes, it says, if one man is allowed to enter the White House in January 2017, this could be a different country, but — and in this lies the originality of the slogan — it is not great now, and in that admission-that-hasn’t-been-seen-as-an-admission lies something new on the American landscape.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

    • Harmful Algal Bloom Reddit “Ask Us Anything”

      With harmful algal bloom (HAB) season beginning over the next few months in several areas of the U.S., this is your chance to talk with two NOAA scientists who study the impacts of harmful algal blooms and forecast bloom conditions for various U.S. coastal regions.

    • Climate Change Is Taking The Spotlight In Australia’s Election

      Australia hasn’t exactly been seen as a leader on climate policy in recent years: Former prime minister Tony Abbott once called climate change “absolute crap,” and current Prime Minister Malcolm Turbull hasn’t delivered the about-face on climate that many environmentalists had hoped for. But that could change with this year’s election.

      On Wednesday, Australia’s Labor Party, the main opposition to the country’s current Turbull-led coalition government, announced a plan to tackle climate change that’s more ambitious than the country’s current approach. Under the Labor Party, Australia would work to decrease emissions 45 percent below 2005 levels by 2030, compared with the current pledge to cut emissions 26 to 28 percent below 2005 levels. A ruling Labor party would also implement a country-wide emissions trading scheme and would set a goal of getting 50 percent of the country’s electricity from renewables by 2030.

    • Climate Change Action Emerges As Winning Wedge Issue In 2016

      A new public opinion survey finds that “Americans across political lines, except conservative Republicans, would support a presidential candidate who strongly supports taking action to reduce global warming.”

      The survey of 1,004 registered voters by the Climate Change Communication programs at Yale and George Mason University yielded a number of important findings consistent with earlier polling this year by Gallup.

    • Northern Gulf of Mexico Sentinel Site Cooperative

      Oyster beds stabilize the shoreline and filter contaminants from the water, which, in turn, promotes seagrass growth, providing habitat for numerous fish and shellfish species. Oysters are an important food source for animals and people alike, and they are fundamental to the region’s economy. A February 2014 report from NOAA Fisheries estimated that in 2012, the oyster harvest garnered $331 million in revenue in Louisiana alone.

    • ‘Neutral is Not Acceptable’: Nationwide Protests Demand Colleges Go Fossil Free

      A series of sit-ins and protests urging universities to divest their endowments from fossil fuels gained new strength this week, as students at the University of Montana, Vassar College, Northern Arizona University, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison launched their own actions to combat climate change.

      Two nights in a row, on Monday and Tuesday multiple students at Northern Arizona University (NAU) were arrested for taking part in a nonviolent action demanding their school divest from oil and gas companies.

      “Our administration would rather arrest students then take serious action on climate change,” lamented Fossil Free NAU on its Facebook page.

      “We believe that it is morally unjust to be investing in a dying industry,” said NAU senior Michaela Mujica-Steiner, one of the coordinators of the school sit-in. “We would like to see the school step up and lead with students who are currently demonstrating leadership.”

    • Hanford Seeks Possible Leak in 2nd Double-Walled Tank
    • Michigan Official Tried to Manipulate Lead Tests—Eight Years Ago

      A newly resurfaced email demonstrates that in 2008 an official from the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ) tried to game lead tests by suggesting that technicians collect extra water samples to make the average lead count for a community appear artificially low.

      The email was sent in response to a test result that showed one home’s lead levels were ten times the federal action level of 15 parts per billion, and urged the lead test technician to take an additional set of water samples to “bump out” the high result so that the MDEQ wouldn’t be required to notify the community of the high levels of lead in its water.

      “Otherwise we’re back to water quality parameters and lead public notice,” complained Adam Rosenthal of the MDEQ’s Drinking Water office in the email.

    • Michael Moore Blasts Obama in an Open Letter About the Flint Water Crisis

      Political documentary filmmaker Michael Moore has been extremely active in advocating for his hometown of Flint, Mich., since the news of the water crisis there broke months ago.

      He has repeatedly posted about Flint on his website, even going so far as demanding Gov. Rick Snyder’s arrest. And, like other activists in Flint, he’s been urging President Obama to pay a visit to the desperate town.

    • Locals In Peru Force US Company To Scrap $5 Billion Mining Project

      Activists in Peru have forced the second-largest gold mining corporation in the world, Newmont, to abandon its $5 billion Conga copper and gold mining project.

      Indigenous Peruvians say the conga mine project, which was intended to replace the nearly-depleted Yanacocha gold mine nearby, threatens the local environment

  • Finance

    • Luxembourg Puts Journalist and Whistleblowers On Trial for Ruining Its “Magical Fairyland” of Tax Avoidance

      LUXEMBOURG IS TRYING to throw two French whistleblowers and a journalist in prison for their role in the “LuxLeaks” exposé that revealed the tiny country’s outsized role in enabling corporate tax avoidance.

      The trial of Antoine Deltour and Raphael Halet, two former employees of the international accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers, and journalist Edouard Perrin began Tuesday.

      Deltour and Halet were charged in connection with theft of PwC documents. Perrin is charged as an accomplice for steering Halet toward documents that he considered of particular interest.

    • Former Tax Lobbyists Are Writing the Rules on Tax Dodging

      The secret tax-dodging strategies of the global elite in China, Russia, Brazil, the U.K., and beyond were exposed in speculator fashion by the recent Panama Papers investigation, fueling a worldwide demand for a crackdown on tax avoidance.

      But there is little appetite in Congress for taking on powerful tax dodgers in the U.S., where the practice has become commonplace.

    • Reinventing Saudi Arabia after Oil: The Prince’s $2 Trillion Gamble

      Saudi Arabia’s citizen population is probably only about 20 million, so it is a small country without a big domestic market. It is surrounded in the general region by huge countries like Egypt (pop. 85 million), Iran (pop. 75 mn.) and Turkey (75 mn.), not to mention Ethiopia (pop. 90 mn.) Without petroleum, it is difficult to see what would be distinctive about Saudi Arabia economically.

      The excruciatingly young prince, who was born in 1985, has a BA in Law from a local Saudi university and his way of speaking about the elements of the economy is not reassuring. Take his emphasis on the maritime trade routes that flow around the Arabian Peninsula. How exactly does Saudi Arabia derive a dime from them? The only tolls I can think of are collected by Egypt for passage through the Suez Canal. By far the most important container port in the region is Jebel Ali in the UAE, which dwarfs Jedda. His estimate of 30% of world trade going through these bodies of water strikes me as exaggerated. Only about 10% of world trade goes through the Suez Canal.

    • Letter from Oxford

      The future independence of universities is in doubt, especially those dependent on alumni support. Old grads are turned off by the erasure of what they remember. Recent grads are not experiencing the same success. A university degree no longer brings the same economic success that it did in the 20th century. A financialized and offshored capitalism has heavily redistributed income and wealth to the One Percent. One consequence is that the alumni donor base will shrink.

    • A majority of millennials now reject capitalism, poll shows

  • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

    • Hillary Clinton is DINO-mite to the Billionaires

      Now that Charlie Koch has admitted that his money could ride on Clinton would she just tweak a few of her ideas here or there, I can only presume he may have paid for the Yahoo! ad, which can’t be cheap.

      I’m kidding. Hillary has plenty of money.

      But it would be an expression of his devotion, would it not? Koch likes her for good reason. She’s as much about the money as he is, but not everyone admires Madam.

      The dislike of Clinton is borne out in some polls. People are going to hold their noses and vote for Hillary all the way to the convention. Many dislike her, but it’s in their best interest to keep things the way they are. Not just for the Kochs, but for the majority.

      Bernie and The Donald would mess something up. This election is ultimately about pragmatism once you exit the powder room.

    • Vox’s Puff Piece on Goldman Sachs Doesn’t Reveal Goldman Sponsors Vox

      Matthew Yglesias (4/25/16) gave a generous write-up to Goldman Sachs’ new commercial banking subsidiary, GS Bank, without noting that Goldman Sachs is a sponsor of Vox.

      Despite the obligatory “to be sure” paragraph, where Yglesias ran through some of the downsides (“they don’t have a checking account and there’s no ATM access”), the post mostly served to promote a new product “for the masses” from Goldman Sachs, a company worth roughly $87 billion.

    • Amy Goodman on How the Media Is Ruining the 2016 Election by Focusing on ‘Trump-land’

      If you’ve been near a television, computer or newspaper over the past six months, you know it’s impossible to escape media coverage of Donald Trump. Beyond mere annoyance, this avalanche of attention has created a serious problem in media accountability.

      Amy Goodman, host of “Democracy Now!”, argues that the 24/7 Trump coverage is ruining the election. “We need a media that covers power, not covers for power,” she says, noting the imbalance in election coverage among the candidates in this year’s presidential race.

    • Amy Goodman on AJ+: How the Media Ruins Elections
    • Money Couldn’t Buy Love for Maryland Congressional Candidate David Trone

      David Trone entered Maryland’s 8th Congressional District race in late January, but his late start didn’t hinder his campaign spending. Trone broke the record for self-funding a House campaign by spending more than $12 million of his own money, breaking New Mexico Democrat Phil Maloof’s 1998 record of $6.3 million.

      Despite this significant lump of cash, Trone lost Tuesday’s primary race.

      Throughout the campaign, Trone never labeled himself a front-runner—quite the opposite. “There is no question that I am the underdog,” Trone told Bethesda Magazine in January. The “wine superstore owner” faced seven other opponents for the seat, including Kathleen Matthews, wife of MSNBC’s Chris Matthews; State Sen. Jamie Raskin; and two of Barack Obama’s former aides.

    • Exclusive: Half of Americans think presidential nominating system ‘rigged’ – poll

      More than half of American voters believe that the system U.S. political parties use to pick their candidates for the White House is “rigged” and more than two-thirds want to see the process changed, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll.

      The results echo complaints from Republican front-runner Donald Trump and Democratic challenger Bernie Sanders that the system is stacked against them in favor of candidates with close ties to their parties – a critique that has triggered a nationwide debate over whether the process is fair.

      The United States is one of just a handful of countries that gives regular voters any say in who should make it onto the presidential ballot. But the state-by-state system of primaries, caucuses and conventions is complex. The contests historically were always party events, and while the popular vote has grown in influence since the mid-20th century, the parties still have considerable sway.

    • Cracked Distills Idiocy, Mendacity of American Politics (Video)

      This Cracked video provides a humorous overview of the presidential election process and explains why candidates can’t be honest.

    • Offshore Democracy, or Argentina through the looking glass

      Exclude the poor from politics on the grounds that they are tempted to misappropriate public funds, and replace them with the rich: this is the project.

    • Noam Chomsky: Bernie Sanders is Not a Radical, He Has Mass Support for Positions on Healthcare & Taxes

      During an event Tuesday night, Noam Chomsky was asked about Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders and said he considered him more of a “New Deal Democrat” than a radical extremist, as some have portrayed him. Chomsky said Sanders’ positions on taxes and healthcare are supported by a majority of the American public, and have been for a long time. He added that Sanders has “mobilized a large number of young people who are saying, ‘Look, we’re not going to consent anymore.’ If that turns into a continuing, organized, mobilized force, that could change the country—maybe not for this election, but in the longer term.”

    • Fourteen to Go: Sanders Set on ‘Transforming Nation’

      That’s how many Democratic presidential nominating contests remain. From Indiana next week to the District of Columbia on June 14—with delegate prizes as large as 546 in California and small as 12 in Guam to be won in between—14 states and territories have yet to hold their respective caucus or primary.

      “That’s why we are in this race until the last vote is cast,” said Bernie Sanders on Tuesday night, following a win in Rhode Island and losses to rival Hillary Clinton in Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, and Pennsylvania.

    • Why Bernie Will, Should and Must Stay in the Race

      Bernie has substantively—even profoundly—changed American politics for the better, which is why he’s gaining more and more support and keeps winning delegates. From the start, he said, “This campaign is not about me”—it’s a chance for voters who have been disregarded and discarded to forge a new political revolution that will continue to grow beyond this election and create a true people’s government.

    • Why Sanders Supporters Should Not Let Democratic Primary Demoralize Them

      Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton was expected to do very well in the five primaries on April 26, but after the results, Bernie Sanders and his supporters face a critical moment in the election as the campaign fights for every possible delegate on the way to the convention.

      Clinton won Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Delaware decisively. She also eked out a win in Connecticut. She lost in Rhode Island, which was the only state with an open primary that allowed independents to vote for Sanders without affiliating with the Democratic Party.

      Numerous dedicated Sanders volunteers, who have put thousands of hours into the campaign, now face low morale. Sanders supporters lost a lot of hope after New York, and much of that had to do with the establishment news media aggressively promoting the Clinton campaign’s talking points that there was no way Sanders could achieve victory (which was not accurate).

    • The Best Reason for Bernie Sanders to Fight On: Hawkish, Neoliberal Clintons Need a Watchful Eye From Progressives

      Hillary Clinton’s victory language last night showed that she has picked up some of Sanders’ language, and her effort to fold Sanders’ vision into her party’s sounded compelling. But let me mention and rebut some of the Clinton camp’s most convincing points before … ah, elephant in the argument that could end up embarrassing Democrats and actually worsening conditions in the United States even (perhaps especially!) if Clinton wins the White House.

  • Censorship/Free Speech

  • Privacy/Surveillance

  • Civil Rights/Policing

    • Rhode Island Attorney General Pushing For A State-Level CFAA That Will Turn Researchers, Whistleblowers Into Criminals

      We recently wrote about the Rhode Island attorney general’s “cybercrime” bill — a legislative proposal that seeks to address cyberbullying, revenge porn, etc. with a bunch of broadly — and poorly — written clauses. Two negative comments written months apart could be viewed as “cyber-harassment” under the law, separating it from the sustained pattern of abuse that one normally considers “harassment.”

      In addition, the proposed law would criminalize “non-consensual communications.” If the sender does not obtain the recipient’s permission to send a message, it’s a criminal act if the recipient finds the message to be distressing — which could mean anything from emailing explicit threats to posting a negative comment on someone’s Facebook page.

      But that’s not Attorney General Peter F. Kilmartin’s only bad idea. It appears he’s behind another legislative proposal — one that would amend the state’s computer crime laws into something more closely resembling the catastrophic federal equivalent: the CFAA.

    • Jeremy Corbyn hasn’t got an ‘antisemitism problem’. His opponents do.

      These are extraordinary claims to level against the UK’s principal party of opposition, and they have generated an extraordinary amount of media coverage, albeit no serious investigation. The common premise underlying this torrent of articles, think-pieces and polemics – that antisemitism is a growing problem within the Labour party – is rapidly congealing into conventional wisdom. Yet this basic claim is devoid of factual basis. The allegations against Corbyn and the Labour party are underpinned by an almost comical paucity of evidence, while what evidence does exist not only fails to justify the claims being made, but has itself been systematically misrepresented. There is no grounds for supposing either that antisemitism is significant within the Labour party, or that its prevalence is increasing. But, under mounting pressure, the Labour leadership’s response to the accusations has regressed from dismissive to defensive, to the point where policy interventions from such noted antisemitism experts as Richard Angell of Progress are reportedly being treated as serious, good-faith contributions.

    • Egypt’s Dangerous Turn

      Egypt’s military regime is suppressing political opposition even more ferociously than the longtime Mubarak dictatorship while also collaborating in the strangulation of Gaza, writes ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar.

    • FDA to Massachusetts Group Home: Stop Shocking Disabled Residents

      The government questions whether The Judge Rotenberg Center has been straight with families about the risks of its electrical shock devices and alternative treatments.

    • Bill Clinton’s Shameful Legacy on Immigration: ‘Terrible’ Laws He Signed ‘Rip Apart’ Families and Authorize Unjust Detention, Human Rights Watch Says

      Clinton-era immigration laws “have subjected hundreds of thousands of people to arbitrary detention, fast-track deportations and family separation,” Human Rights Watch says in a new report.

    • Longest-Serving GOP Speaker In History Is A Liar And Serial Child Molester, Federal Judge Says

      Former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert was sentenced in federal court today to 15 months in prison and a $250,000 fine, in addition to two years of supervised release, on the condition that he get treatment as a sex offender. Last year, Hastert pled guilty to breaking banking laws by making illegal withdrawals — which he then lied about to the FBI.

      Hastert took out $1.7 million in small amounts to avoid suspicion, according to the indictment, which he then used as hush money to prevent a victim of sexual abuse from going public. The victim, identified only as “Individual A” in the court papers, was a 14-year-old on Hastert’s wrestling team when Hastert was a teacher and wrestling coach at Yorkville High school in Illinois. When the allegations become public, three other victims came forward and said that they had been molested by Hastert while he was their wrestling coach. While the statute of limitations on the sexual crimes ran out long ago, the judge can take any behavior surrounding the banking crimes into account when sentencing.

    • Notorious Louisiana Prison Accuses Inmate Of ‘Defiance’ For Speaking With Reporters

      Officials at one of the United States’ most notorious prisons have reportedly punished an outspoken inmate for daring to correspond with reporters about conditions inside the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola.

      William Kissinger was abruptly relocated from Angola to the Elayn Hunt Correctional Center some 70 miles south in early February, after emailing with a reporter from the New Orleans Advocate for some weeks. Prison officials say he was moved as a disciplinary action because he was guilty of “defiance” and “general prohibited behavior,” the Advocate reports — two broad and vague rules of prisoner conduct that allow officials to punish inmates for anything they decide insults staff or impedes the prison’s function.

  • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

    • Roku CEO Kisses Up To Comcast, Supports Opposition To Cable Set Top Box Competition

      As we’ve been discussing, the FCC is cooking up a plan to open up the closed cable set top box to third party competition. As we’ve also been pointing out, the cable industry has been throwing an absolutely epic hissy fit about this plan, given it would destroy the $21 billion in annual revenues cable operators make off of cable box rental fees. Since it can’t just admit this is all about protecting set top rental fees, the cable industry has been pushing an endless wave of editorials in newspapers and websites nationwide, claiming more set top box competition will hurt consumer privacy, increase piracy, harm diversity, and rip the very planet from its orbital axis.

    • As Broadband Usage Caps Expand, Complaints To The FCC Skyrocket

      For several years now, broadband providers have been taking full advantage of the lack of competition in the broadband market by expanding usage caps and overage fees. More recently, companies like AT&T, Comcast and Suddenlink have taken this practice one step further by charging users a $10 to $35 per month surcharge if consumers want to avoid usage caps. In other words, consumers are paying more money than ever for a service that costs less and less to provide, thanks again to limited competition in the broader broadband market.

      And while companies like Comcast have used the same approach seen in the boiling frog metaphor to slowly expand its usage cap “trials” and hope nobody notices, people are definitely noticing the rising temperatures.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Drawn Out Battle Over Genetic Resources Dampens Africa’s Hopes

      The Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) is the world’s most authoritative legal instrument on intellectual property. It falls under the World Trade Organisation, which sets the rules for trade between countries. The United Nations also has an agency specialising in intellectual property rights, the World Intellectual Property Organisation. The two bodies signed a cooperation agreement in 1996.

      But the trade agreement doesn’t mention traditional knowledge, let alone its association with genetic resources. The UN body, meanwhile, has been trying – unsuccessfully – to negotiate a new framework over the past 16 years. These gaps show how conventional intellectual property frameworks have neglected the knowledge that indigenous communities produce.

      [...]

      All of these examples have attracted international interest. This has prompted indigenous and local communities to spar with foreigners over the benefits that are due to them.

      In the absence of clear rules, a process called “biopiracy” has emerged. Biopirates appropriate genetic resources and their associated traditional knowledge by using patents. Sometimes these are turned into blockbuster products. Local communities don’t benefit at all.

    • Magic Leap lampoons Google Glass in patent filing

      Patent drawings are not generally a source of amusement, as artistic as they may sometimes be. Magic Leap, the fabled and secretive augmented reality start-up valued at USD 4.5 billion, however, snuck a first class nerd joke in its application US2016/0109707 published 21 April 2016 with the memorable title “combining at least one variable focus element with a plurality of stacked waveguides for augmented or virtual reality display” (and containing no less than 152 patent drawings).

    • BREAKING: House passes Defend Trade Secrets Act, next stop President Obama

      The US Senate only just unanimously passed S.1890 (see AmeriKat report here) three weeks ago. Following the Senate vote, the Obama administration called the DTSA “important protection” for American business and industries. Why is the DTSA so important? It provides trade secrets owners with the possibility of filing civil claims for trade secrets misappropriation within the federal court system (necessary given the ease and speed with which misappropriated trade secrets can cross state borders). The DTSA also provides for a seizure order to prevent the destruction or dissemination of misappropriated trade secrets. See the recent post by trade secrets expert, James Pooley.

    • US House passes trade secrets bill
    • Implementing and Interpreting the Defend Trade Secrets Act [iophk: “Microsoft, for example, defines just about everything as a trade secret, especially contracts with public entities.” Has Microsoft (along with other corporations that bought the US government) just criminalised revealing Microsoft contracts? Has Microsoft just criminalised revealing its patent racketeering deals?]

      With today’s 410-2 House vote, the Defend Trade Secrets Act (DTSA) has now passed both the House and Senate and is headed to President Obama for his expected signature.[1] The DTSA amends the Economic Espionage Act to create a private civil cause of action for trade secret misappropriation based upon the Congressional sense that trade secret theft exists and is harmful.[2] Trade secret misappropriation (as a civil matter) has previously been purely a matter of state law. Although there is substantial uniformity between the states,[3] there are also a number of differences and perceived procedural weaknesses.[4] The DTSA would not eliminate or preempt the various state trade secret rights but rather would operate as an additional layer of potential protection.[5] The law is designed to go into effect on its day of enactment and apply to any misappropriation that occurs on or after that date.

    • Transparency of patents on medicines and other technologies

      The Beall/Attaran paper deals specifically with the WHO Essential Medicines List (EML), and the authors might make the argument that not much is known about the patent landscape of the entire EML, per se, but that really misses the point. There are many studies and commentaries on the patent landscape for medicines that are essential, including both those on and off the WHO EML. Much of the work in publishing patent landscapes in recent years has been done by MSF, I-Mak, and the Medicines Patent Pool, as well as several academics and health NGOs. NGOs, including but not limited to KEI, have also addressed policy issues related to the transparency of patent landscapes, not only for medicines, but also in other areas, including clean energy, climate change, and standards essential patents on mobile computing devices, for example.

    • On IP Protection, USTR Finds Fault With China, India … And Switzerland? [Ed: see what else it did, bullying nations that don’t obey the demands of US corporations]

      The Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) does not hesitate to add even its closest friends to its annual list of concerns about possible inadequate protection of US intellectual property rights. So this year, along with perennial listees China, India and dozens of others, vigorous IP-rights defender Switzerland makes an appearance. The annual Special 301 report was issued today, and in its press release this year, USTR also included its primary client in publishing the list – the rightsholder industry.

    • Trademarks

      • Priceline Throws A Fit And Sues USPTO For Not Granting Them Booking.com Trademark

        The Priceline Group has something of a history with intellectual property. Several years back, Jay Walker, Priceline’s founder, appeared to have transitioned to becoming a full-blown patent troll. In the year’s since, the company he once founded has been in something of a tussle with the USPTO over its attempt to register a trademark for “booking.com.” The USPTO had initially approved of the mark, before reversing its own decision only weeks later due to “booking.com” being essentially descriptive. The Priceline Group appealed, but the appeals board upheld the rejection of the mark, affirming it as being descriptive.

    • Copyrights

      • Judge: RIAA and MPAA Can’t Copy Megaupload’s Servers, Yet

        The legal battles between the RIAA, MPAA and Kim Dotcom’s Megaupload have been put on hold for another six months. Virginia District Court Judge Liam O’Grady agreed to stay the cases, but did not grant a request from the industry groups to allow them to copy Megaupload’s data which remains stored at its former hosting provider.

      • US Supreme Court debates copyright case attorneys’ fees in Kirtsaeng

        The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Susap Kirtsaeng v John Wiley, with justices appearing sceptical that prevailing defendants should be awarded fees in close cases

      • International report – Google Books project gets green light

        On April 18 2016 the Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal in Authors Guild v Google, thus leaving in place a lower court ruling that Google did not infringe authors’ copyrights in its project to create a searchable library of the world’s books. The US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit had held that Google’s project was a protected ‘fair use’ of copyrighted works.

      • Rep. Goodlatte Promises ‘Consensus’ Copyright Reform Proposals Soon

        Congress has mostly stayed away from any attempt at copyright reform since the great SOPA blackout of 2012, afraid that anything will set off the public again. However, in 2013, Copyright Register Maria Pallante called on Congress to create the “next great copyright act” designed to update copyright for the 21st century. The House Judiciary Committee has been holding hearings and roundtables every few months since then, some of which have been more encouraging than others.

04.27.16

[ES] La Departura de la Readidad de la EPO Y Su Entrada en la Esféra Industrial China de Propaganda

Posted in America, Asia, Deception, Europe, Patents at 8:00 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

English/Original

Article as ODF

Publicado en America, Asia, Deception, Europe, Patents at 8:20 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

China patents

Sumario: La deceptiva trampa del maximálism de patentes, donde se asume que artficialmente aumentando el número de patentes otorgadas traerá el resultado esperado

En Diciembre 13 del 2014, hace casi un año y medio, The Economist, ocasionalmente un crítico de los mitos de patentes y Nemesis de los propagandistas/egoístas puntos de vista de los de los abogados de patentes, publicó la figura de arriba, del artículo “ficción de Patentes”. Fue uno de varios artículos que desafió la idea que patentes e innovación son proxies/surrogadas unas a las otras (nosotros rechazamos esto hace sólo un par de dias en relación a los EE.UU., donde una nueva clase de patente fue aprobada, anunciado crecimiénto másivo) y que China es de pronto super-innovativa. No deseámos escribir lo que fue hecho el 2014 (y antes) pero sólo para resaltar que es ampliamente reconocido y muy bien sabido que el nuevo amor Chino por las patentes no debe ser considerado erróneamente como innovación.. Como The Economist lo puso (en relación a las figuras/gráfico de arriba): “El reporte resalta el asombroso crecimiento en solicitud de patentes en ese país. El 2010 firmas Chinas llenaron casi el mismo número de aplicaciones de patentes por “invención” (las más rigurosas) como sus contrapartes en Japón y America. Para el 2013 la figura China casi se doble mientras que el grado en esos otros dos países se han mantenido casi el mismo (vean el gráfico).” La misma cosa paso en los EE.UU la década pasada, a pesar de la caída económica; no dice nada acerca de otra cosa pero codicia por patentes está creciéndo y las exáminaciones se estan volviendo mucho más leniente.

“Hoy en día, muy a nuestro pesar, lo que la EPO ofrece es su insuficientemente cualificada gerencia (compadres de Battistelli y familiares), un sindicato amarillo “vendido”a los medios de comunicación, y sugerir erróneamente que un aumento en el número de patentes significa algo (probablemente dice lo mismo como en China o los EE.UU.).”

Esto nos lleva de nuevo a la EPO porque Battistelli, el jefe despistado que convirtió rápidamente la alguna vez respetable Oficina en un hazmerreír, parece estar cegado por los números en lugar de la calidad. Una mentalidad clásica de la ENA. La mini unión de Battistelli, (o su subordinada [ES | ES]) también se ha convertido en un hazmerreír. Como este comentario lo puso al aproximarse el fin de semana se acercó

La “FFPE-EPO, el firmante del memorando de entendimiento, acaba de elegir un nuevo comité. 5 candidatos para 5 puestos. Y el ganador, y el nuevo presidente, consiguieron 9 (nueve) Votos en total. ¿Y Battistelli seriamente los considera un socio ? Cómico. 30 votos fueron emitidos. Y, sin embargo BB insiste en que otros sindicatos deben tener el 40% de un total de 7000 votación, mientras el personal estuvo en huelga ? La FFPE apenas puede reunirse un café por la mañana y mucho menos afirmar de manera creíble su representatividad.”
“Talvez algunas canditatas femeninas podrían ayudar o deberían haber aprendido algo de la SUEPO,” una persona respondió. “REGRESÉNME MIS REPRESENTANTES!!!”
Hoy en día, muy a nuestro pesar, lo que la EPO ofrece es su insuficientemente cualificada gerencia (compadres de Battistelli y familiares), un sindicato amarillo “vendido”a los medios de comunicación, y números cargados [1, 2, 3] sugerir erróneamente que un aumento en el número de patentes significa algo (probablemente dice lo mismo como en China o los EE.UU.). Alguién dice que no hay una traducción de patentes Chinas (Mandarin) en la EPO, sin embargo los sitios de los abogados de patentes dicen cosas como “Aplicaciones Chinas por Patentes en Europa el 2015 creció un 22.2%”, haciendo eco de propaganda China como este nuevo artículo cuyo titular es “Aplicaciones por Patentes de Invenciones creció un 18.7% in 2015″ (“invención de patentes” es un término engañoso que relaciona patente con invención). De acuerdo a este nuevo artículo de la prensa Británica (The Guardian), “Atieva trabajó completamente para perfeciionar y mejorar baterías, llenándo más de 100 patentes y construyendo paquetes de baterías para buses en China” (construir y patentar son dos cosas diferentes).

“Uno necesita decidir si la importancia de patentar sobrepasa la importancia de la vida y el ínteres público.”

No sólo la EPO esta cayendo en esta trampa del maximálismo de patentes (midiéndo lo malo, basado en premisas falsasm). Aquí en el Reino Unido, las vidas humanas importan menos que los interéses corpórativos, así que la UK BioIndustry Association (BIA) queda envuelta en casos de alto perfil en los EE.UU., quejandose de Sequenom v. Ariosa porque una invalidación pone en riesgo su monopolio/altos precios. Esta decisión es buena para salvar vidas, pero NO para los billonarios quienes quieren continuar haciéndo billónes anualmentew, declarando fabricar “medicinas para salvar vidas” miéntras sólo están al alcanze de los ricos. Las medicinas deberíán ser desarrolladas sin muchas patentes también, mucho de ese desarrollo ya es subsidiado por los contribuyentes de todas maneras.
Uno necesita decidir si la importancia de patentar sobrepasa la importancia de la vida y el ínteres público. Si la ‘industria’ de patentes se sale con la suya, habrá muchísimas más patentes, por las mismas razones que la industria de prisiones/penal (infame en los EE.UU.) quiere más gente trás las rejas, compañías de cuidado de salud quieren más enfermedades (i.e. más paciéntes), y los fabricántes de armas quieren crea y profundizar conflictos.

[ES] Una Fársa de Sistema: ¿Cómo la SIPO, USPTO, y cada vez más la EPO se Convierten en Llenado de Patentes (No Se Requiere Propia Examinación)

Posted in America, Asia, Europe, Intellectual Monopoly, Patents at 7:53 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

English/Original

Article as ODF

Publicado en America, Asia, Europe, Intellectual Monopoly, Patents at 11:29 am por el Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: Una crítica al decline en la calidad de patentes en algunas de las más grandes oficinas de patentes del mundo, donde aspiración parece ser neo-liberal en el sentido económico

El sistema de patentes – colectivamente hablando – no está funcionando como se suponía que lo fuése. En lugar de fomentar la innovación realiza la innovación hacia abajo, de la misma forma que las leyes de derechos de autor en todo el mundo en estos días otorgan un monopolio más largo que la vida de una persona, lo que significa que el incentivo para producir trabajos más creativos no es muy alta.

“En lugar de fomentar la innovación realiza la innovación hacia abajo, de la misma forma que las leyes de derechos de autor en todo el mundo en estos días otorgan un monopolio más largo que la vida de una persona, lo que significa que el incentivo para producir trabajos más creativos no es muy alta.”

Basado en estas noticias, las patentes de hardware son demandadas cada vez más por las empresas de Estados Unidos , debido al sistema de patentes de Estados Unidos (pero por compañías asiáticas), lo que significa que el sistema de patentes de Estados Unidos no es ni siquiera necesariamente servir los EE.UU., que sirve una clase particular de personas en los EE.UU. y en el extranjero (corporaciones y multimillonarios).

Sitios como IAM, maximalistas de patents (por admisión propia), continúan tratándo de convertir lo negativo en positivo al decir que en China “las subvenciones [están] creciendo más rápidamente que las aplicaciones” (esto se debe a que la oficina de patentes de China es cada vez como una broma, más que un sistema de archivo de un sistema de patentes con el examen de fase/barrera). Por otra parte, la USPTO también es así, sobre todo en los últimos años ya que algunas barreras para la concesión de patentes se doblaron, dispararondóse (casi el doble). Uno podría tener la impresión de que la USPTO es sólo una oficina de registro ahora? No hay control de calidad. Por marcas comerciales y patentes por igual; el afán de lucro llevado a esta (neoliberalismo). El profesor Mark Lemley acaba citado J Breyer diciendo que la USPTO “ha sido la emisión de miles de millones de patentes que no deberían haber sido emitidas – Me exagerar, pero sólo algunos.” Http://1.usa.gov/1Wmel7j

Bueno, “miles de millones de patentes” suena como un esquema de una patente por persona de algún tipo. Teniendo en cuenta que algunas patentes son lo suficientemente triviales parecen haber sido automáticamente generada por un algoritmo o de pensamiento por un estudiante de escuela primaria, esto no sería tan impensable (si las tasas de patentes eran menos prohibitivos).

“La realidad del las patentes en los EE.UU. está cambiando ahora mismo.”

Nicola Searle de IP Kat ha señalado correctamente notando “He tenido la intención de hacer un post hace algún tiempo acerca de por qué las patentes son una mala indicación de la innovación (lo he mencionado antes, pero en realidad no entrado en detalles.) No es un sesgo anti-patentes, es un pro-buen enfoque datos. En cuanto a estrategias de presión y de patentes …

Bueno, tal vez es tiempo que Searle haga un post sobre ello. Es la segunda vez en una semana que él dice algo a ese efecto y abogados de patentes se estresan por ello (en la sección de comentarios).

La realidad del las patentes en los EE.UU. está cambiando ahora mismo. Como este nuevo comunicado de prensa dice, “Las patentes de software en la Ley América Inventa Ley (AIA) son muy difíciles de alcanzar a través de la USPTO.” Son aún más difícil de defender en un tribunal. Para citar a todo el párrafo:

“Esta patente cubre un elemento importante en la fundación de nuestra plataforma de acoplamiento móvil y representa la singularidad de nuestra propiedad intelectual gamification”, dijo el CEO de Blue Calypso, Andrew Levi. “Las patentes de software en el post Leahy-Smith América del Inventa Ley (AIA) era son muy difíciles de alcanzar a través de la USPTO. Anticipamos la expansión de nuestra cartera de patentes para cubrir un amplio conjunto de propiedad intelectual en esta zona, así como los demás.

“A ellos les importa ni la justicia ni la innovación (que son básicamente términos de marketing para ellos).”

No se preocupen, sin embargo, como los abogados de patentes y sus medios están listors para ‘el rescate’. Ellos están atacando AIA, Alice, PTAB, y todo lo que amenaze a los maximálistas de patentes y agresores. He aquí el término “escuadrón de la muerte de patentes” de nuevo, mostrándose en el ‘analysis’ de IAMdeCuozzo en SCOTUS. Porque si, llamar falsas, inválidas patentes, ¿“invalido” te hace un ejecutor? Un “escuadrón de la muerte de patentes”? Escribimos acerca desobreuso de eufémismosy términos de demonización aquí antes. Sitios como IAM son culpables como cualquiera de bias. He aquí más artículos que encontrámos anoche [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10]. MIP dijoque “La Corte Suprema ha escuchado argumentos orales en Cuozzo Speed Technologies v Lee, la primera Corte Suprema de considerar una apelación de la decisión PTAB” (PTAB de por sí es una apelación, ¿así que porqué tanto más en términos de matrículas deberíán ser añadidos para mantener a los pobres inventores privados de sus derechos o quebrados?).

Basado en estos ejemplos de anoche [1, 2, 3], los abogados de patentes simplemente están tratando de vender sus servicios. A ellos les importa ni la justicia ni la innovación (que son básicamente términos de marketing para ellos.

“De nuevo vemos a la CAFC envolverse, a pesar de su record de ser pro-aplicante o amigable con ellos (irrespectivamente del contexto y la ley, e.g. acerca de patentes de software).”

Más negocio para los abogados ‘IP’ Se observa en este momento (incluso los colores están convirtiendo en monopolios) Debido a que más pleitos y disputas están siendo medidos en Europa. Como parte de la nueva serie de ayer sobre marcas comerciales en MIP [1, 2, 3] encontramos esta titulada “Los casos de cálculo de la EUvan hacia arriba” y que dice: “2015 fue un año de clara mejora sobre 2014 para las decisiones de diseño de la Corte de justicia y del Tribunal general de Luxemburgo. David Stone explica, sin embargo, que el progreso todavía necesita ser hecho para proporcionar seguridad a los diseñadores y profesionales “(las patentes de diseño estadounidense están bajo el escrutinio de SCOTUS, pero eso no es lo mismo que los diseños registrados). Como Patently-O lo puso ayer: “Después fue protocolizado apelación de Coleman, el Circuito Federal rechazó el” factorizar “regla de que muchos habían leído en Richardson. Como se mencionó anteriormente en este blog, Apple v. Samsung y otra vez en Ethicon v. Covidien, el tribunal insiste en que Richardson no lo hizo, de hecho, requiere la eliminación de los elementos funcionales de las reivindicaciones de patentes de diseño.

De nuevo vemos a la CAFC envolverse, a pesar de su record de ser pro-aplicante o amigable con ellos (irrespectivamente del contexto y la ley, e.g. acerca de patentes de software). La CAFC está plagada de corrupción, especialmente en los últimos años (cubrimos esto varias veces antes). No es mucho mejor que la EPO, que después de haber subvertido medios franceses para la propaganda hace un año lo está haciendo de nuevo, a pesar de los riesgos. la calidad del examen no sólo se redujo debido a las políticas de Battistelli, pero también hay conversaciones acerca de reemplazar los examinadores con máquinas (así es como van a trabajar los sistemas de archivo, capaces de detectar duplicados en el mejor).

“No es mucho mejor que la EPO, que después de haber subvertido medios franceses para la propaganda hace un año lo está haciendo de nuevo, a pesar de los riesgos.”

Un lector nos recuerda un viejo artículo de una víctima conocida de este sistema, y señaló: “Sus conversaciones son largas (que tiene muchos otros), sino que empiezan a explicar, de forma indirecta, lo que está pasando con la EPO y desastres similares . La conclusión es que no hay democracia en Europa, la estructura de poder está fuera de eso y los participantes reales tienen desprecio por la democracia activa.”

¿Cuándo habrá democracia en Europa si llega a haberla después de todo? Al presente unos pocos billonarios y corpóraciones del otro lado del charco deciden por todos nosotros. Hace tres días Obama mencionaba que por el mejor interés del mundo necesitamos una Europa Unida ¿pero bajo quién? ¿Bajo el dominio de las corporaciónes de su país?Se está convirtiéndo como en los EE.UU., donde los partidos son ‘comprados’ (o vendidos a los que dan máß), elecciónes son a la venta, y la USPTO es un poco más que una herramiénta de la Sagrada Familia: IBM, Microsoft, Apple, HP y otros. ¿Y necésitamos más decir acerca del sistema Chino?

[ES] Microsoft ‘Asalto con Todo’ Contra Android, Java, y GNU/Linux, Usando la Clásica E.E.E. Táctica de Nuevo

Posted in Antitrust, Deception, GNU/Linux, Google, Java, Microsoft at 7:47 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

English/Original

Article as ODF

Publicado por Antitrust, Deception, GNU/Linux, Google, Java, Microsoft at 7:13 am por el Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Embrace and Extend
Credit: unknown (Twitter)

Summary: Otro recordatorio de la realidad que Microsoft está muy activo en el frente E.E.E., not no sólo contra GNU/Linux pero también Android y Java

NO es un secreto que Microsoft está tratándo de obstaculizar el desarrollo de Android o dominárlo completamente, no simplemente extorsiónandolo con patentes de software o ejerciéndo influencia/control usando patentes de software. Entonces también hay el aspecto antimonopolio; fue Microsoft y sus proxies/grupos frontales que impulsaron a los que impulsaron a los políticos Europeos a ir detrás de las aventuras Linux de Google (hemos cubierto estos hechos muchas veces por casi una década).

“Entonces también hay el aspecto antimonopolio; fue Microsoft y sus proxies/grupos frontales que impulsaron a los que impulsaron a los políticos Europeos a ir detrás de las aventuras Linux de Google (hemos cubierto estos hechos muchas veces por casi una década).”

Ahora mismo encontramos a Jason Perlow [1, 2, 3, 4, 5] (un empleado de Microsoft que habitualmente ataca a los rivales de Microsoft) haciéndo el anti-Java y anti-Android berrinche en ZDNet, quién estupidamente emplea empleados de Microsoft como periodistas. La última de Jason Perlow tiene carnada en el títular, “La crisis existencial de Android: ¿El porqué Java necesita morir en devices móbiles?” (ataque contra ambos Android y Java; dos pajaros, una piedra).
Cuánt típico es todo esto. Agenda disfrazada de ‘noticias’. Ese es el modus operandi y el modelo de negocios de CBS, quien es dueño de ZDNet. Para entender mejor el porque de Perlow desearíá basurear/hablar mal de ambos Java y Android, consideren el caso de RoboVM, e cual Microsoft acaba de matar usando el clásico E.E.E método. El último nuevo artículo acerca del asesinato de RoboVM por parte de Microsoft de James Darvell (y por extensión dañar a Android y a Linux) va como sigue:

Microsoft recientemente hizo un gran ruido alrededor de su amor y apoyo de la comunidad Open Source (especialmente Linux), pero al mismo tiempo se trata de hacer medidas concretas para mejorar su apoyo a los proyectos de software libre, sus motivos no puede ser totalmente altruista. Microsoft sigue financiando ataques legales contra los proyectos de código abierto en varios frentes, y se ha aplastado proyectos de código abierto cuando conviene a la empresa.
Tal es el caso de RoboVM, un compilador de Java-a-móvil que apoya el desarrollo móvil de plataforma cruzada.
RoboVM fue originalmente un proyecto de código abierto, aunque eso cambió después de que la empresa matriz fue adquirida por Xamarin en octubre de 2015. Xamarin tenía varios productos similares que apoyan el desarrollo multiplataforma utilizando diferentes lenguajes de programación. Naturalmente, Xamarin vio RoboVM como una adición adecuada a su establo.
Poco después de la adquisición, se hizo un anuncio en el sentido de que el modelo de desarrollo de código abierto “no estaba funcionando” para el equipo RoboVM. El proyecto se cerró, y derechos de licencia se incrementaron para que coincida con las otras herramientas en la alineación de Xamarin.
A principios de este año, Microsoft adquirió Xamarin, y mientras se está promocionando con orgullo la mayoría de conjunto de herramientas de Xamarin, parece que no hay lugar para RoboVM en los planes de desarrollo multi-plataforma de Microsoft. La semana pasada, el equipo RoboVM anunció que el proyecto sería cerrada.

Actualmente, RoboVM no dijo esto después de su compra pero poco tiempo antes de ella, probablemente cuando negociaba la toma de control por parte de Microsoft todavía tuvo lugar [1, 2, 3]. Darvell del Linux Journal continua:

Sin embargo, hay algunos que dirán que Microsoft no le gusta Java. Microsoft consiguió sus dedos quemados en 1997, cuando Sun demandó a Microsoft por su intento de apropiación de Java. En aquel entonces, Java se convertirá en el “lenguaje de Internet”, y trayendo el apoyo applet de Java en Internet Explorer era un objetivo importante. Al estilo de Microsoft, Java VM de Windows admite sólo parcialmente los Java estándar lo que es más, añadido funciones publicados que no formaban parte de la norma oficial.
El objetivo era crear una situación en código que se ejecutaba en una máquina virtual de Microsoft no se presentaría en cualquier otra plataforma. Secuestrando el estándar de Java, Microsoft planea capturar base de usuarios de Sun y dictar el futuro de Java. Por supuesto, ese plan resultó en un desastre caro, lo que explica la actitud tibia de la compañía a Java desde entonces.

Nos preocupa que el próximo E.E.E. de Microsoft que haya pueda ser Canonical. Entonces allí esta la preocupación acerca de la Linux Foundation, la cual como Canonical al presente tiene dinero de Microsoft money en su mesa. Hablando de lo cual, la propaganda de Microsoft está siendo amplificada por la Linux Foundation incluso dos veces el mismo dia (ayer), levantando dudas como, ¿para quién están trabajando estos dias? Despues de permitir antiguo personal de Microsoft dentro de ellas, y haber estado recibiéndo dinero de Microsoft, el poder del dinero los amenaza también.

“No sobrestime la malicia de Microsoft. Está todavía dirigida por la misma gente.”

Microsoft tiene una historia de usar la corruptible influencia del dinero para demoler a sus competidores, e.g. al contratar a sus empleados, pagar por cláusulas de no competición, hacerse cargo de ellas sólo para desmántelarlas. No sobrestime la malicia de Microsoft. Está todavía dirigida por la misma gente.

“Infestaciónes de Linux están siéndo descubiertas en muchos de nuestros grandes cuentas como parte de los comprómisos de escalación.”

–Microsoft Confidential

[ES] Más Rumores y Llamadas Acerca de Prospectos de Microsoft Vaya a Comprar Canonical (Ubuntu con todo y Zapatos)

Posted in GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Novell, Rumour, Ubuntu at 7:42 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

English/Original

Article as ODF

Publicado en GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Novell, Rumour, Ubuntu at 6:48 am por el Dr. Roy Schestowitz

“Microsoft está coercionando a la gente a pagarle por patentes, pero no menciónan cuales. Si un tipo entra a una tienda y dice: “No es un barrio seguro, porque no me pagas 20 dólares y me aseguraré de que nada te pase,” eso es ilegal. Es chantaje.”

–Mark Shuttleworth

Summary: Teniendo en cuenta los últimos movimientos de Canonical, algunos expertos piensan que es posible que Shuttleworth elija el dinero a Microsoft sobre principios sino también inste para que esto ocurra
DESPUÉS de evitar a los medios de comunicación durante semanas o incluso meses (Googlebombing “Linux” en las noticias) y chantajeando compañías de Linux utilizando patentes de software (por paquetes, no sólo los pagos), mientras que cabildea por unas patentes de software más fuertes que crecen cada vez más preocupados en la fase del “abrazo” (como en EEE) continúa hacia la siguiente “extender”. Microsoft ya está pagando a Canonical (esperen que Shuttleworth no se atreve a decir nada negativo de Microsoft) y devore Ubuntu, al igual que lo hizo con Novell con Hyper-V (encerrándo a GNU/Linux en una cárcel de propiedad de Microsoft).

“Microsoft ya está pagando a Canonical (esperen que Shuttleworth no se atreve a decir nada negativo de Microsoft) y devore Ubuntu, al igual que lo hizo con Novell con Hyper-V (encerrándo a GNU/Linux en una cárcel de propiedad de Microsoft).”

A partir de esta semana, sacando a luz la gran mentira (“Microsoft ama Linux”), Janakiram MSV desde el 1% ‘media/boquilla (waripolera de Bill Gates) dice que “la estrategia de código abierto de Microsoft esta incompleta sin esta adquisición” (alude a Canónical).
“Para hacer el caso más fuerte, aquí están algunas de las razones por las que Microsoft debería considerar la adquisición de Canonical”, escribió. Como Susan Linton puso esta mañana: “Cuando la Microsoft y Canonical nueva relación amistosa todavía está en la mente de muchos, Janakiram MSV aseguró que” hoy la estrategia de código abierto de Microsoft es incompleta “sin ellos. Dijo Microsoft está tratando de cambiar su imagen lejos de ser sólo para Windows, sólo tiene sentido comprar Canonical. Ubuntu tiene millones de usuarios y “. Un ejército de desarrolladores y administradores de sistemas” Aparte de la gente, Canonical viene con LXD, Snappy Ubuntu Core y Juju – todas las cosas que podrían hacer más competitivo Microsoft en el Cloud y IT. Para Janakiram, no hay inconvenientes para Microsoft.”

“No es impensable que Microsoft por lo menos atente comprar a Canonical.”
Hace dos años hemos escuchado posts como “¿Por qué Microsoft debería comprar Canónical?” y el año pasado hubo rumores en ese sentido.
No es impensable que Microsoft podría al menos tratar de comprar Canonical. Ya intentó la contratar (caza furtiva) administrador de la comunidad de Canonical de Ubuntu (este, con coraje que saludamos se negó). Pero ¿el señor Shuttleworth vendería más de lo que ya lo ha hecho? Shuttleworth dejó algunos comentarios aquí en los días después de haber comprado licencias de códecs (por las patentes de software) de Microsoft. Eso fue hace 8 años.
“Eso es extorsión y deberíamos llamarlo como lo es. Decir, como Ballmer dijo, que hay un no publico balance de liabilidad, eso simplemente es extorsión y deberíamos rechazar dejar arrastrárnos a ese juego.”

–Mark Shuttleworth

Links 27/4/2016: A Lot About OpenStack, Vivaldi 1.1 Released

Posted in News Roundup at 6:52 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

Leftovers

  • A tech company accusing a Google-backed UK rival of copying code is now suing its customers

    London startup Yieldify has been hit with a second lawsuit from competitor Bounce Exchange, again alleging that it copied its code. The more recent suit also names some of Yieldify’s customers as defendants in the suit.

    Bounce Exchange, a New York-based company, alleges in New York and Texas court filings that it gave Yieldify executives a demonstration of its product in 2013 and that Yieldify went on to launch a very similar competing product.

  • I lived with an undercover officer – this BBC series gets it all wrong

    The TV drama is well produced but based on such an implausible premise it is misleading and inauthentic

  • Science

    • Court Smacks Down Kansas Christians for Labeling Evolution a Religion to Force School Ban

      A federal court rejected the argument from a Christian group in Kansas which said that evolution was religious “indoctrination” and should not be taught in schools.

      After the state of Kansas adopted Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) in 2013, Citizens for Objective Public Education (COPE) argued that teaching science without a religious explanation for the creation of the universe would indoctrinate children into atheism.

      COPE said that teaching evolution took children “into the religious sphere by leading them to ask ultimate religious questions like what is the cause and nature of life and the universe—‘where do we come from?’”

    • Tim Cook, Mark Zuckerberg and others urge Congress to fund K-12 computer science education

      Some of the biggest names in tech and corporate America, including Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Apple CEO Tim Cook, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg and Walmart CEO Doug McMillon, have teamed up with governors and educators to ask Congress to provide $250 million in federal funding to school districts in order to give every single K-12 student in the nation an opportunity to learn how to code. On the legislative side, these tech CEOs are joined by governors from both sides, including California Gov. Jerry Brown (D) and Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson (R).

    • EC aims to build EUR 6.7 billion science cloud

      In 2017, the EC will make open by default all scientific data produced by future projects under the EUR 77 billion Horizon 2020 research and innovation funding programme, the Commission announced on 19 April “The benefits of open data for Europe’s science, economy and society will be enormous”, the statement quotes Carlos Moedas, Commissioner for Research, Science and Innovation, as saying.

  • Health/Nutrition

  • Security

  • Defence/Aggression

    • The U.S. Is Dropping Bombs Faster Than It Can Make Them

      Like about 90% of the news today, this would be terrific satire, if it wasn’t true.

      America is dropping so many bombs on ISIS that the country is in danger of running out.

      “We’re expending munitions faster than we can replenish them,” said Air Force Chief of Staff General Mark Welsh. Secretary of Defense Ash Carter has asked Congress to include funding for 45,000 “smart bombs” in the Defense Department’s 2017 budget. But it could take a while to rebuild the stockpile.

    • US finally acknowledging al-Qaeda factor in breakdown of Ceasefire

      One of the frustrations of following the Syria conflict from the Arabic press is that when you then turn to the English language accounts, they tend to play down the importance of al-Qaeda or the Support Front (al-Jabha al-Nusra).

      In American parlance, there have just been three sides– the regime of Bashar al-Assad, the Free Syrian Army, and Daesh (ISIS, ISIL). The Free Syrian Army is depicted as democrats deserving US support (only some of them are).

    • From Brady to MH-17, Power Defines Reality

      From the Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 shoot-down to Tom Brady’s NFL suspension, reality gets defined not by facts and reason but by power and propaganda, reports Robert Parry.

    • Saudia Arabia and 9/11: the Kingdom May be in For a Nasty Shock

      Foreign leaders visiting King Salman of Saudi Arabia have noticed that there is a large flower display positioned just in front of where the 80-year-old monarch sits. On closer investigation, the visitors realised that the purpose of the flowers is to conceal a computer which acts as a teleprompter, enabling the King to appear capable of carrying on a coherent conversation about important issues.

    • The Return of the Coup in Latin America

      Venezuela and Brazil are the scenes of a new form of coup d’état that would set the continent’s political calendar back to its worst times. Meanwhile, in Argentina, the brutal model for the demolition of democracy is set forward by the continental oligarchic right and the hegemonic forces of US imperialism who wish to impose their model in the region.

      As we can see in the previews that test the memory of the peoples in the continent, it is difficult to accept that the new types of coups are actually softer and more covert than those which Latin America suffered for so long.

    • ISIL Endgame: Obama to send 250 more US Troops into Syria

      That Obama is focusing on this Kurdish-Arab coalition is a further slap in the face to Saudi Arabia and Turkey, who are backing hard line far-right Salafi groups like the Freemen of Syria in the Aleppo area, who have been attacked by the Arab/Kurdish SDF, which is to their left.

    • Mexico Finds It Easier to Focus on Trump Than Its Own Failings

      During my many years as a correspondent in Mexico, some of my best reporting happened around dinner tables. So on a recent trip back, I dined with a range of old contacts to catch up on how Mexico was handling its most pressing challenges, like the 2014 student massacre in southern Mexico, which shocked the world and ignited protests across the country.

      But all anyone wanted to talk about was Donald Trump.

    • Trapped In Turkey: One Afghan Asylum Seeker’s Quest To Make A Life In The EU

      A 23-year-old Afghan asylum seeker, and an example of the collateral damage of America’s longest war, Kakar has been stuck in Turkey since March 20, waiting for human smugglers to get him to Greece. But things have recently tightened up in the Mediterranean route, with Greece even sending some asylum seekers back.

    • An open letter to Jeremy Corbyn from an Italian

      France has just sold 1 billion dollars worth of military equipment to Egypt. Prime Minister François Hollande flew there to sign the eye-watering deals. Other European nations are counting on Field Marshall Al-Sisi’s regime and Turkey to keep ISIS in check. Egypt’s help with Libya is crucial. The scenario is complex. What else can be done to do posthumous justice to the Cambridge PhD student? Not an easy one.

    • Left-wing, Antiwar Voice in Ukraine Assaulted by Rightist Extremists

      On April 22, the leader of the Union of Left Forces (Союз Лівих Сил) of Ukraine, Vasyl Volga, was attacked in Zaporizhia, southern Ukraine by ‘activists’ – extreme nationalists – of the Azov Battalion and Syla Natsii (Force of the Nation). Volga and his colleagues came to Zaporizhia to present the program of their party which fights for the cessation of war in Ukraine, the restoration of peace and integration of Donbass back into Ukraine.

      Volga and his colleagues were heading to a building in Zaporizhia to hold a press-conference. In an interview with Channel 112 television after the attack, Volga told the 112 journalist that he tried to talk to his attackers but they replied that Ukraine needs war and that they do not want politicians like Volga. One of these thugs attacked Volga from behind. Volga and his colleagues were able to escape thanks to Zaporizhia local police.

    • Meddlesome Empire: Obama and Client Britain’s EU Referendum

      Good to see that history, if it does not possess historical cunning, as Hegel rather foolishly observed, has, at the very least, some humour. US President Barack Obama has been busy making it his business to make sure that Britain remains in the European Union after the referendum elections of June. The urging has all the meaning of a Wall Street plea. If Britain leaves, there will be instability. A world of chaos will ensue.

      Obama in imperial mode has been some sight. Armed with words of condescension, he has treated Britons in a fashion they are rarely used to: being lectured as subjects in need of a good intellectual thrashing. For years, the nostalgic establishment Briton has become the supposedly sagacious backer of US power in various parts of the planet. The US has been assured that it can count on vassal insurance when Washington’s more bizarre imperial failures come to light.

    • Saudi Role Beyond the 28 Pages

      Release of the 28 secret pages from the congressional 9/11 report may be long overdue, but the depth of Saudi involvement with Islamic radicals goes much deeper, says Gareth Porter at Middle East Eye.

    • Orwell’s Ghost is Laughing

      What’s the difference between “boots on the ground” and military personnel wearing boots who are engaged in combat – and perhaps dying – on the ground? If you can answer that question convincingly, perhaps you’d like to apply for John Kirby’s job, because he’s not doing it very successfully. Kirby is the State Department spokesman who, in answer to a question from a reporter about the 250 US troops being sent to Syria, denied President Obama ever said there’d be “no boots on the ground” in Syria.

    • In Yemen, Saudi-Led Intervention Gives Rise to New Armed Religious Faction

      Thickly bearded men — some wrapped in traditional outfits, others masked — can be seen these days driving through Yemen’s central city of Taiz in pickup trucks mounted with machine guns.

      The men belong to a growing faction of Salafis, an ultra-conservative Sunni religious group. In Taiz, the Salafis were once known for being preachers in mosques and religious scholars, but now they have become the most dominant fighters among local resistance to the Shiite Houthi rebels, who ousted from power Yemen’s President Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi.

    • The Pentagon’s Medal Inflation

      Like grade inflation in college, the Pentagon has engaged in medal inflation, diluting awards for actual heroism by proliferating ribbons for bureaucratic skills, as Chuck Spinney and James Perry Stevenson explain.

    • 9/11 Commission Didn’t Clear Saudis

      As the Obama administration belatedly weighs releasing the 28 pages on the Saudi role in 9/11, Americans should not be fooled by claims minimizing the Saudi involvement, writes 9/11 widow Kristen Breitweiser.

    • Justin Trudeau outrage at beheading of Philippines hostage Ridsdel

      The Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has condemned the beheading of a Canadian hostage kidnapped by Islamist militants in the Philippines.

      John Ridsdel, 68, was taken from a tourist resort with three others by the Abu Sayyaf group in September 2015.

  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

    • Grauer’s Gorillas May Soon Be Extinct, Conservationists Say

      The Grauer’s gorilla, the world’s largest primate, has been a source of continual worry for conservationists for more than two decades. Longstanding conflict in the deep jungles of the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo left experts with no choice but to guess at how that gorilla subspecies may be faring.

      Now, with tensions abating somewhat, researchers finally have an updated gorilla head count — one that confirms their fears. According to findings compiled by an international team of conservationists, Grauer’s gorilla populations have plummeted 77 percent over the last 20 years, with fewer than 3,800 of the animals remaining.

    • Bold Moves Block Tapajós Mega-dam and Uphold Indigenous Rights, for Now

      In the shadow of last week’s contentious vote to impeach President Dilma Rousseff, Brazil’s indigenous agency FUNAI and environmental agency IBAMA made unexpected, decisive rulings in defense of indigenous rights and ecological protection in the Amazon. As if pouncing on the opportunity to finally do their jobs without the overbearing interference of an embattled executive, FUNAI moved to demarcate a besieged indigenous territory while IBAMA took this cue to suspend approval of São Luiz do Tapajós, a mega-dam projected to flood it and displace its Munduruku inhabitants.

    • CNN Is More Focused On Running Fossil Fuel Ads Than It Is On Covering Major Climate Stories

      If you tuned into CNN earlier this year, when NASA And NOAA announced that 2015 was the hottest year on record, you weren’t likely to see much coverage of that announcement. In fact, you were more likely to see an ad for the fossil fuel industry than a news story on how fossil fuels are driving the planet’s warming, according to a new report.

    • Flint and America’s Corroded Trust

      It’s been the subject of protests and debates, but if anything is improving in Flint, Michigan, it’s hard for any of us on the ground to see.

      One of the city’s lead pipes has been replaced for the benefit of the press, but more than 8,000 additional service lines are likely corroded and still leaching toxic lead. It took a mom, a pediatrician, and a professor in Virginia to discover Flint’s children were being poisoned. It took cable television to get the nation to give a damn.

    • The Great Barrier Reef Won’t Survive Bleaching Events If Global Warming Continues

      The Great Barrier Reef’s coral is dying, and it may never be the same again.

      Last month, as historically high ocean temperatures bathed the waters around the Great Barrier Reef, the Australian government raised the coral bleaching threat to the highest level possible.

      On an aerial reconnaissance trip from Cairns to Papua New Guinea, researchers observed the parts of the reef that are supposed to be the most pristine and vibrant. What they saw was chilling.

    • Chernobyl at 30: Thousands Still Living in the Shadow of Nuclear Disaster

      Just this week, the Associated Press described Belarus, where 70 percent of the radioactive fallout from Chernobyl landed, as “a nation showing little regard for the potentially cancer-causing isotopes still to be found in the soil.”

    • 30 Ways Chernobyl and Dying Nuke Industry Threaten Our Survival

      April 26 marks the 30th anniversary of the catastrophic explosion at theChernobyl nuclear power plant.

      It comes as Germany, which is phasing out all its reactors, has asked Belgium to shut two of its nukes because of the threat of terrorism.

      It also comes as advancing efficiencies and plunging prices in renewable energy remind us that nukes stand in the way of solving our climate crisis.

    • What does justice for slain Honduran environmentalist Berta Cáceres mean?

      Particularly worrisome to human rights organizations was the government’s response within the first 48 hours after the murder, in which investigators allegedly tampered with the crime scene and treated COPINH members as suspects, while ignoring the escalating death threats Berta had been receiving for her opposition to Agua Zarca — a hydroelectric dam project that would have impacted communities surrounding the Gualcarque River.

    • ‘Days of Revolt’: Chris Hedges, Tim DeChristopher Discuss Far-Reaching Effects of Climate Change

      In this week’s episode of “Days of Revolt,” Truthdig columnist Chris Hedges sits down with Tim DeChristopher, founder of the Climate Disobedience Center.

      The two analyze how the industrialized world fails to significantly confront climate change, beginning with the “exercise in make-believe” that was the 2015 Paris climate conference.

    • Saudi Prince Announces Plan To Free Kingdom From Oil ‘Addiction’

      Prince Mohammed bin Salman is the deputy crown prince of Saudi Arabia — second in line behind the crown prince, and his father, King Salman. Before his father ascended the throne a year ago, Prince Mohammed began to quietly plan for his kingdom’s future with the encouragement of the late King Abdullah, according to Bloomberg. Kings and princes frequently plan for the future, but this time the House of Saud wants to be able to thrive in a low-carbon economy.

    • The Chernobyl accident in Ukraine, 30 years after

      April, 26, 2016 marks the 30th anniversary of the accident in Unit 4 of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine, which resulted in a very large release of radionuclides which were deposited over a very wide area in the Northern Hemisphere, particularly in Europe and, most particularly, in Belarus, Northern Ukraine and part of Western Russia.

      Much work has been conducted immediately after the accident and in the 30 years since in order to secure the area, limit the exposure of the population, provide support and medical follow-up to those affected and study the health consequences of the accident.

    • Mitsubishi Lied About Vehicle Emissions for 25 Years

      Following VW’s smog-testing cheating scandal in September, Mitsubishi on Tuesday announced that its employees used outdated emissions testing methods outlawed in Japan on millions of vehicles sold since 1991.

      The outdated methods violated Japanese regulatory standards and provided deceptively low results for emissions measurements. The environmental impact of Mitsubishi’s decades-long deception is as of yet still undetermined.

    • “There is no doubt”: Exxon Knew CO2 Pollution Was A Global Threat By Late 1970s

      Throughout Exxon’s global operations, the company knew that CO2 was a harmful pollutant in the atmosphere years earlier than previously reported.

      DeSmog has uncovered Exxon corporate documents from the late 1970s stating unequivocally “there is no doubt” that CO2 from the burning of fossil fuels was a growing “problem” well understood within the company.

    • Exxon Knew CO2 Pollution Was A Global Threat By Late 1970s

      Throughout Exxon’s global operations, the company knew that CO2 was a harmful pollutant in the atmosphere years earlier than previously reported.

      DeSmog has uncovered Exxon corporate documents from the late 1970s stating unequivocally “there is no doubt” that CO2 from the burning of fossil fuels was a growing “problem” well understood within the company.

    • 30 Ways Chernobyl and Dying Nuke Industry Threaten Our Survival

      April 26 marks the 30th anniversary of the catastrophic explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.

      It comes as Germany, which is phasing out all its reactors, has asked Belgium to shut two of its nukes because of the threat of terrorism.

      It also comes as advancing efficiencies and plunging prices in renewable energy remind us that nukes stand in the way of solving our climate crisis.

  • Finance

    • Kansas Governor Justifies Kicking 15,000 People Off Food Stamps

      For over five years now, Kansas has served as an economic policy experiment for anti-tax, small-government conservatives. Their lab work is costing the state hundreds of millions of dollars, crippling public service budgets, and making life harder for low-income families without reducing the state’s poverty rate at all.

      With his political star beginning to tarnish, Gov. Sam Brownback (R) came to Washington on Wednesday to discuss his poverty policies at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. At one point, the embattled governor justified his policy of forcing people off of food stamps if they can’t find a job by likening low-income and jobless people to lazy college students.

    • ‘We’re At War’ Says Organizer Behind Education Protests Sweeping The Country

      Keron Blair will look you directly in the eye the whole time he’s talking to you, making sure you absorb every single word he’s saying. His personality seemed a bit reserved when he sat down with me at a Starbucks to discuss Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools, the coalition he is director of, which been responsible for organizing and supporting school protests across the country. But when you listen to his speeches, you hear a minister’s voice.

      “Public education…could die on our watch,” Blair said at a recent event for the Milwaukee Teachers Association. “The reality is what drew me to this fight is the shared acknowledgement that we are in fact at war, and what I’ve learned about wartime is that you cannot operate with the same kind of rules. You’ve got to make some wartime adjustments.”

    • Fast Food Industry Looks To Skirt Labor Law, With An Assist From Scott Walker

      With fast food workers on the march nationwide, deep-pocketed corporate interests have quietly turned to state lawmakers for help.

      The quiet push uses low-profile legislation to shore up a liability firewall that has made it hard for workers in some industries to pursue their labor rights fully since the mid-1980s. Last month, buried in a stack of 59 different laws, Gov. Scott Walker (R) signed a bill that made Wisconsin the latest state to join the party.

      Businesses in the state that use franchising agreements to insulate corporate headquarters from legal liability down at ground level will have a slightly easier time thanks to Wisconsin Act 203. The law prohibits state labor agencies and judges from applying the same logic the federal National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has invoked in recent years to eat away at a common corporate liability shield.

    • Monster Corporate Sovereignty Ruling Against Russia Overturned By Dutch Court, But It’s Hard To Tell Whether It’s Over Yet

      By now, the theoretical risks of including corporate sovereignty chapters in TPP and TAFTA/TPP are becoming more widely known. But as Techdirt wrote back in 2014, there’s already a good example of just how bad the reality can be, in the form of the monster-sized case involving Russia. An investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) tribunal ruled that Vladimir Putin really ought to pay $50 billion to people who were majority shareholders in the Yukos Oil Company. The Russian government didn’t agree, and so naturally took further legal action to get the ruling overturned.

    • On Revolutionary Attitude

      I am willing to predict that Cameron, Blair and Clinton all find their way on to Philip Green’s new yacht. I am willing to bet that no ex-employee of BHS ever does.

      [...]

      The truth is that there is very little hope for young people in the UK. They are saddled with massive tuition fee debt as they leave a commoditised education system in which University Principals are paid £300,000 a year plus. They move in to a market which does not provide nearly enough graduate level jobs for the number of graduates produced. Work they do find leaves them at the mercy of their employers with very few rights or benefits. They will normally live most of their lives in private sector rental, where each will be a small part of the astonishing 9 billion pounds per year the taxpayer gives to private landlords in housing benefit – yet another direct transfer by the state from ordinary people to the rich. Indeed, for a great many tenants, every penny they pay in tax goes in effect to their landlord in housing benefit.

    • UK’s Secret TTIP Assessment: No Benefits, Plenty of Risks

      The TransAtlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) would have “lots of risks and no benefits” for the UK, according to a government analysis released publicly Monday through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request by the advocacy group Global Justice Now.

    • New York Times Finds Verizon Strike Beneath Notice

      The New York Times actually mentioned the ongoing strike against Verizon on Tuesday.

      David Wacker, a service technician with Verizon who is one of around 39,000 landline and cable employees participating in the largest U.S. strike action in four years, was quoted in an article about Bernie Sanders supporters, which noted, in a subordinate clause, that he was on strike.

      That brief reference was the first mention of the Verizon labor action on the news pages of the New York Times in a week.

      The most recent references before that also had to do with Sanders, when he visited a Verizon picket line in midtown Manhattan on April 18. Outside of those Sanders-focused stories, the New York Times hasn’t run a story on this major labor battle since its second day of action, nearly two weeks ago.

    • Did The Beatles Help Fuel The Reagan Revolution?

      Overcrowded classrooms. Crumbling bridges. Shuttered libraries. These have become our everyday realities after over a generation of tax-cutting political bravado.

      A shrinking middle class. Rising dead-end poverty. The splurges of a new super rich. These have also become the markers of our time.

    • How Bill Gates and His Billionaire Pals Used Their Enormous Wealth to Start Privatizing the Schools in Washington State

      Once upon a time, the super-wealthy endowed their tax-exempt charitable foundations and then turned them over to boards of trustees to run. The trustees would spend the earnings of the endowment to pursue a typically grand but wide-open mission written into the foundation’s charter—like the Rockefeller Foundation’s 1913 mission “to promote the well-being of mankind throughout the world.” Today’s multibillionaires are a different species of philanthropist; they keep tight control over their foundations while also operating as major political funders—think Michael Bloomberg, Bill Gates, or Walmart heiress Alice Walton. They aim to do good in the world, but each defines “good” idiosyncratically in terms of specific public policies and political goals. They translate their wealth, the work of their foundations, and their celebrity as doers-of-good into influence in the public sphere—much more influence than most citizens have.

      Call it charitable plutocracy—a peculiarly American phenomenon, increasingly problematic and in need of greater scrutiny. Like all forms of plutocracy, this one conflicts with democracy, and exactly how these philanthropists coordinate tax-exempt grantmaking with political funding for maximum effect remains largely obscure. What follows is a case study of the way charitable plutocracy operates on the ground. It’s a textbook example of the tug-of-war between government by the people and uber-philanthropists as social engineers.

  • AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

    • The Trump University Fraud Case Could Become A Big Problem For Trump This Fall

      GOP presidential frontrunner Donald Trump may have to testify shortly before November’s election in a case accusing his now-defunct Trump University of fraud. On Tuesday, a New York judge ruled the New York Attorney General’s case against Trump University will go to trial.

      New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman first filed the lawsuit in 2013 and only recently received the go-ahead from the New York Appellate Division.

    • Here Are 10 Ways to Make Elections More Democratic

      Voter suppression is real and comes in many forms.

    • Clueless CEOs at the Top

      The Wall Street Journal recently reported that “Populist Tone Rankles America’s Executives.”

      Apparently the CEOs and board members of big American companies are “increasingly frustrated” by the anti-business rhetoric of both parties, and concerned such sentiments might translate into meaningful public policy change after the election.

      “The precipitousness of the political debate is a little scary right now,” Boeing CEO Jim McNerney told The Wall Street Journal. General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt informed investors that relations between government and big business is “the worst I have ever seen.”

    • Hillary: Wall Street’s Golden Girl

      So it’s a go for Zeus to launch the thunderbolt. Neo-Athena – minus the wisdom – Hillary Clinton, Queen of Chaos, Goddess of War, Empress of the Perma-Smirk, will finally have her shot at the U.S. presidency. After the Battle of New York, she’s on top on number of votes; number of states; number of pledged delegates; number of superdelegates.

    • Dark Money Group Tells the Government it Won’t Spend on Elections While Bragging to Donors it Will “Win Senate Seats” with “No Donor Disclosure”

      Newly-released documents expose how shadowy political operatives flaunt campaign finance law to keep donors secret – and that federal regulators are asleep at the switch.

      The Commission on Hope Growth and Opportunity (CHGO) formed in February 2010 – just weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United v. FEC –told the Internal Revenue Service it would not “spend any money attempting to influence” any “election.”

      Shortly after making those sworn assertions to the IRS, however, CHGO officials prepared a memo and PowerPoint slides telling donors that the group’s goal is to “win Senate seats” and to “make a measureable impact on the election outcome” but “with no donor disclosure.” Citizens United, the group told donors, “creates unprecedented opportunity.”

    • Leading Advocates of “Dark Money” Previously Supported Disclosure

      The campaign to allow money to be spent in the political system without a hint of its origin — the growing phenomenon known as dark money — racked up a major victory last week when a federal judge in Los Angeles issued a permanent injunction ending California Attorney General Kamala Harris’s attempt to obtain the donor list for Americans for Prosperity, the primary campaign and elections arm of the Koch brothers’ $889 million advocacy network.

    • Here’s What Today’s Primary Voters Think About the Planet’s Most Important Issue
    • Bernie Sanders Blames Closed Primaries As Path To The Nomination Narrows

      Sen. Bernie Sanders suffered a crushing defeat Tuesday night, losing three out of five states to Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton by significant margins at press time.

      In a speech shortly after most polls closed at 8 pm, Sanders blamed his loss on closed primaries, which barred independent voters from participating in four of five primaries. He did win Rhode Island, which allows participation by independent voters.

    • Sanders’ Choice

      Should Bernie Sanders abandon the Democratic Party, which he’s technically not a member of, and make a run of some kind either as an Independent or in amalgamation with Jill Stein and the Green Party? It’s a fair question, one many of his supporters will be asking.

    • Seymour Hersh on Sanders vs. Clinton: ‘Something Amazing Is Happening in This Country’

      Legendary investigative journalist Seymour Hersh weighs in on the foreign policy positions of the 2016 presidential candidates. “For me to say who I’m going to vote for and all that … I’m not a political leader, that’s not what I’m into,” Hersh says. “But I will say this: Something that’s amazing is happening in this country, and for the first time, I do think it’s going to be very hard for a lot of the people who support Sanders to support Hillary Clinton. … There’s a whole group of young people in America, across the board, all races, etc., etc., who have just had it with our system.”

    • Gutless Democrats Fear Fights: Why Triangulating Neoliberal Clintonites Back Big Business Over People

      But it’s not just that American factory workers were sold out. At the same time, professionals (the same class of people who tell us it’s inevitable) were carefully protected. “The arguments on gains from trade are the same with doctors as with textiles and steel,” Baker noted. “The reason that we import manufacturing goods and not doctors is that we designed the rules of trade that way.” Those rules made it easy to off-shore jobs, but retained obstacles to foreign professionals moving here to work. “The reason is simple,” Baker pointed out: “Doctors have more political power than autoworkers.”

    • Donald Trump Is No Match for the Cruz-Kasich Tag Team

      Don’t call it strategy, call it strategery: Ted Cruz and John Kasich are going to cooperate to deny Donald Trump the Republican nomination. Also, I don’t know, maybe a hurricane will dishevel Trump’s comb-over and reveal his bald pate, causing such mortification that he quits the race. Or maybe there will be an earthquake next week in Indiana, affecting only precincts where Trump has a lead.

    • Ted Cruz Literally Tells Transgender People They Should Only Pee At Home

      Ted Cruz’s tour de transphobia, launched last week to capitalize on Donald Trump’s criticism of North Carolina’s anti-transgender law, has embraced a new extreme position. Speaking to reporters this weekend in Indiana, he actually admitted that he doesn’t believe transgender people should be allowed to use any restroom except the ones in the privacy of their own home.

    • Cruz Reminds Us That Social Conservatism Has Roots in Prejudice

      All Cruz is really doing is reminding Americans that social conservatism was born in anti-integration politics and anti-gay hysteria.

    • Sanders Didn’t Start The Fire, So Don’t Ask Him To Put It Out

      Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign operation has been anything but subtle in suggesting that now that her win in the New York primary Tuesday has made her nomination at the Democratic convention pretty much inevitable, it’s time for the Bernie Sanders campaign to die with dignity.

      Let’s get on with the laudatory memorial service, the campaign seems to be saying, and then the estate sale, in which Sanders’ cadre of fervent and largely young supporters can be snapped up for pennies on the dollar.

      But Sanders, to the Clinton campaign’s frustration, is not bowing to this bit of conventional wisdom because the Sanders campaign is not a typical campaign. It is, to use Sanders’ oft-repeated word, a “revolution.”

    • GOP Mega-Donors Are So Frustrated by Their Failure to Buy Elections That Some Are Actually Bowing Out

      With all the talk of legalized corruption, it should be good news that money can’t always buy an election—case in point, Jeb Bush. But even months after the once “inevitable GOP frontrunner” dropped out, GOP megadonors have been actively throwing money at Trump’s opponents, without catching a break.

      “John Kasich’s campaign took in $4.5 million and his supporting super-PAC $2.8 million for the month,” The Hill reported, also stating that “Ted Cruz took in just $12.5 million in March—less than half of Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton’s campaign haul.”

      Any average person would look at these numbers and think, “That’s a lot of money.” But it’s a actually not enough money.

    • Winning in Losing: How Sanders pushed Clinton to the Left

      Bernie Sanders’ path to the nomination as the Democratic Party standard bearer in 2016 was all but closed off by Clinton’s four big wins on Tuesday. His only hope had been to get close enough to her in pledged delegates to have a substantial number of super-delegates switch to him. (This kind of switch actually took place in summer of 2008 when super-delegates deserted Clinton for Obama). Sanders could not turn a string of primary wins into a victory because he went on splitting the state’s delegates with Clinton. His loss in New York was probably already fatal to his campaign, but the delegate count turned radically against him yesterday. If she can keep her super-delegates, which she now can, Clinton is only a couple hundred away from clinching the nomination (she has on the order of 2,168 with super-delegates, and just needs 2383). Even if she only gets half of California’s 475 Democratic pledged delegates, that would put her over (and she did defeat Barack Obama in California in 2008).

    • Clinton and Trump Edge Closer to Party Nominations, as Sanders Softens His Confrontational Tone

      Donald Trump moved closer to the Republican nomination on Tuesday as he swept five mid-Atlantic primaries, while Bernie Sanders slipped further behind Hillary Clinton—despite winning the smallest state, Rhode Island, and promising to keep campaigning to influence the Democratic Party’s agenda.

  • Censorship/Free Speech

  • Privacy/Surveillance

  • Civil Rights/Policing

    • What White Teachers Can Learn From Black Preachers

      Researchers have found that such mental sorting is commonplace in American classrooms and has huge impact on a student’s ability to succeed. When teachers think a student is “teachable,” he or she supports that student in hundreds of invisible ways: by giving them more time to answer questions, or through visual cues such as nodding and smiling. What’s more, new research found that when a white teacher and a black teacher evaluate the same black student, white teachers are almost 40 percent less likely to think the black student will graduate high school. That same bias often translates into a white teacher being less rigorous with the student and more prone to discipline him or her.

    • Man Sentenced To Die After ‘Expert’ Testified That Black People Are Dangerous

      After Buck was convicted of murder, his own attorneys retained a now-discredited psychologist who testified that Mr. Buck is more likely to be a danger to society in the future because he is black. This testimony then went unchallenged at a later, crucial state court proceeding even though Buck was then represented by a new lawyer. The only new claim that lawyer raised at this proceeding was “based on a non-existent provision of the penal code.”

    • As Poles shift right, democracy runs scarce

      Poland has become yet another European country to take the risky route of a nationalist policy, much to the despair of its international partners, including but not limited to the European Commission, Council of Europe and the United States.

    • Law and policy round-up: Theresa May’s call for the UK to leave the ECHR

      Theresa May, the Home Secretary, gave a speech yesterday which included a call for the United Kingdom to leave the European Convention on Human Rights.

      The speech is set out in full at ConservativeHome, and (as it appears to be a statement on behalf of her department) it is also now on the Home Office site.

      The statement is, of course, more about the politics of Brexit and succession to the Tory leadership than anything serious about law and policy. It is a sort of counter-balance to her position on the UK remaining in the European Union.

    • immigration issues

      Peter and Mickey spend the hour examining immigration issues. They speak to two undocumented young adults who arrived in the US as children. Also on the show are two immigration attorneys, who explain the Obama Administration’s DACA and DAPA actions — one of which is now before the Supreme Court — and the millions of US residents affected by them.

    • Samantha Bee on the Racist, Sexist and Historically Ignorant Responses to Harriet Tubman on the 20

      Placing one of the most important black women in American history on the 20 dollar bill hasn’t been so popular among conservatives, explains the “Full Frontal” host.

    • A Syrian constitution by August: by whom and for whom?

      This comes after the December 2015 UN Security Council Resolution endorsing the road map for the peace process in Syria, and setting a timetable for talks. Resolution 2254 already set optimistic targets including a six-month political process to arrive at an agreement on both governance arrangements and a process for drafting a new constitution – while also acknowledging “the close linkage between a ceasefire and a parallel political process”. Kerry and Lavrov’s call for a draft constitution by August seems to accelerate this already problematic and challenging timetable and raises alarm in light of recent constitutional transitions.

    • What I Told the Attorney General and the HUD Secretary About My Criminal Record

      After four decades of mass incarceration and over-criminalization in the United States, as many as 1 in 3 Americans now have some type of criminal record, and nearly half of U.S. children now have a parent with a record.

      Today, as part of the Department of Justice’s inaugural National Reentry Week, Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch and Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro visited Philadelphia to hear how brushes with the criminal justice system have stood in the way of employment, housing, and more—and how people have persevered.

      Here are three stories told to Attorney General Lynch and Secretary Castro—they are representative of the experiences of millions of Americans held back by a criminal record.

    • In / Out: Which Way for the European Union?

      Egyptian Marxist and political economist, Samir Aziz on the other hand has long made known his preference for what he refers to as “convergence of diversity.” Diversity is what the left does well, so why can’t it make it work?

      Part of the problem is that we don’t have a good working definition for such a condition of diversity. Those of us who grew up in a north west European culture have been exposed to the tradition of precise and clinical thinking. We sometimes call this “clear thinking” even in the midst of muddle. This has served us well, especially in the physical world. In the social world where diversity thrives and often seems to be ahead of our particular curve its utility is less certain.

      So we are left with one of life’s old conundrums. How to do the right thing, how to do the thing right? The technocrats and many of my friends in political parties seek to eliminate risk. Others accept risk – this is not just for the entrepreneur classes – it’s part of diversity.

      In the meantime RISE – like them or loath them – goes to the electorate with a convergence of diversity working model, ready to be tested in the referendum. That’s got to be a good start.

    • More Than a Few Rogue Cops: the Disturbing History of Police in Schools

      Another week, another video of police abuse surfaces. This time the video shows San Antonio school resource officer Joshua Kehm body-slamming 12-year-old Rhodes Middle School student Janissa Valdez. Valdez was talking with another student, trying to resolve a verbal conflict between the two, when Kehm entered and attacked her. “Janissa! Janissa, you okay?” a student asked before exclaiming, “She landed on her face!” In a statement on the incident, co-director of the Advancement Project Judith Browne Davis wrote, “Once again, a video captured by a student offers a sobering reminder that we cannot entrust school police officers to intervene in school disciplinary matters that are best suited for trained educators and counselors.”

    • Four Ways To Fight For Democracy

      As we slog through another negative, money-saturated presidential campaign, Americans are doing everything they can to let their leaders know they are fed up. As if the votes for anti-establishment candidates weren’t enough to send the message, thousands of activists spent the last week in Washington and more than 1,200 were arrested in sit-ins at the Capitol.

    • Watch: Samantha Bee’s Stunning Interview with Wrongfully Accused and Tortured Former Gitmo Prisoner
    • Watch: Samantha Bee Shuts Down Conservative Whining about Tubman on the $20
    • The One-State Mirage

      The reality is that the settlers are there precisely because of a subsidy that involves American tax monies. This in turn means that, should Americans demand of their tax dollars cease being used to fund the illegal settlements, the Israelis will either have to do some serious financial restructuring or the settlers will have to move to subsidized housing inside Israel proper. Those who refuse to budge will have to do so in a Palestinian state. Think removing this subsidy is impossible? How long did it take Bill Clinton to get rid of the subsidy to poor mothers via Welfare?

    • Denying a Cadet Her Right to Wear Hijab Will Not ‘Make America Great’

      Should a Muslim woman who enrolls as a cadet at the Citadel, a public military college in South Carolina, be permitted to wear hijab with her uniform?

      One student cadet at the Citadel doesn’t think so. As The Washington Post recently reported, when Cadet Nick Pinelli found out that an incoming Muslim student had requested a religious accommodation to wear hijab, he took to his Facebook page, publicly proclaiming it “shameful that people expect to be accommodated by groups that are opposite to themselves” and calling on people to “Make America Great Again.”

    • 6 Corrupt Police Forces That Didn’t Even Pretend to Give A F

      In the last few years, there seems to have been a drastic increase of police violence plaguing the United States, as if everyone with a badge is auditioning to become Mad Max in the pending societal breakdown. However, the even more depressing truth is that things haven’t really gotten worse. Quite a few cops have been dragging their asses way over the thin blue line since time immemorial. For instance …

    • A Year After the Baltimore Uprising, the Real Work Is Just Beginning

      ONE YEAR AND one day after Freddie Gray succumbed to the spine injury he received during a 45-minute drive in a police van, the Baltimore police commissioner sat on stage before a room packed with people who had poured into the city’s streets demanding justice. On the walls, black-and-white photos of protesters reminded everyone of the rawness and emotion of Baltimore’s breaking point.

    • Jurors caught using social media could be fined up to $1,500

      Jurors who don’t obey a judge’s admonition to refrain from researching the Internet about a case or using social media during trial could be dinged up to $1,500 under proposed California legislation.

      The first-of-its-kind measure, now before the California Assembly, would give a new weapon to judges in the Golden State who can already hold misbehaving jurors in contempt. But under the new law, designed to combat mistrials, a judge would have an easier time issuing a rank-and-file citation under the proposed law instead of having to go through all of the legal fuss to charge somebody with contempt.

      Judges routinely warn jurors not to research their case or discuss it on social media. Normally, errant jurors are dismissed without any penalty, and sometimes a mistrial ensues. Under the new law, levying a fine would be as easy as issuing a traffic ticket.

      “We are all on our cellphones and iPads all the time,” the bill’s sponsor, state Assemblyman Rich Gordon, said. “The problem with that is that it can lead to a mistrial. We’ve seen that happen across the country where verdicts have been tossed out, trials have had to be redone.”

  • Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

    • New Report Shows Which Brazilian ISPs Stand With Their Users

      We entrust our most sensitive, private, and personal information to the companies which provide us access to the Internet. Collectively, these companies are privy to the online conversations, behavior, and even the location of almost every Internet user. As this reality increasingly penetrates the Brazilian public consciousness, Brazilian Internet users are justifiably concerned about which companies are willing to take a stand for their privacy and protection of personal data. That is why InternetLab, one of the leading independent research centers on Internet policy in Brazil, has evaluated key Brazilian telecommunications companies’ policies to assess their commitment to user privacy when the government comes calling for their users’ personal data.

    • NBC Smells Cord Cutting On The Wind, Will Reduce ‘SNL’ Ad Load By 30% Next Season

      For several years now we’ve noted how instead of adapting to the cord cutting age, many in the cable and broadcast industry have responded with the not-so-ingenious approach of aggressive denial, raising rates as fast as humanly possible, and stuffing even more ads into every television hour. And when broadcasters can’t get the ads to fit, they’ll just resort to speeding up or editing programs to ensure that they’re hammering paying customers with more ads than ever. Given the rise in alternative viewing options, this obviously isn’t the most ingenious form of market adaptation.

    • FCC Green Lights ‘Crushing’ Charter Cable Mega-Merger

      When the deal is complete, two-thirds of the nation’s high-speed Internet subscribers will be under the control of just two corporations, Charter and Comcast.

    • Measurement Lab explores the current state of the Internet

      M-Lab isn’t just about open data either—it’s an open platform for a few different research projects. The one that most people know is called Network Diagnostic Test (NDT). NDT measures your Internet connection by seeing how much information it can transfer between you and a server in 10 seconds. Everything about how NDT works is published openly, and anytime someone runs an NDT test the data is published to M-Lab and available for others to study and analyze.

    • Brazilian Cybercrime Bills Threaten Open Internet for 200 Million People

      Brazilian internet freedom activists are nervous. On Wednesday, a committee in the lower house of Congress, the Câmera dos Deputados, will vote on seven proposals ostensibly created to combat cybercrime. Critics argue the combined effect will be to substantially restrict open internet in the country by peeling back the right to anonymity, and providing law enforcement with draconian powers to censor online discourse and examine citizens’ personal data without judicial oversight.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • WHO Debates Changes To Safeguards Against Undue Influence By Outside Actors [Ed: The World Health Organization has already complained about the corrupting influence of Bill Gates, who’s trying to profit from it]

      Meanwhile, some 34 civil society groups issued a letter [pdf] this week, titled, “Save the World Health Organization from the undue influence of corporations and corporate linked entities.”

    • Innovative R&D Financing Discussed At Geneva Health Forum

      Given this year’s theme for the forum of ‘Sustainable and Affordable Innovations in Healthcare’, the conference discussed innovation across a whole range of issues. This included sessions on the multi-sectoral approaches to health in the era of SDGs, in dealing with viruses such as Zika and Ebola, on health cooperatives, on the IT revolution for health, innovation solutions for migrations and health, access to innovation at scale for Universal Health Coverage, and on healthcare insurance, among many others. There were also side events on clinical trials and on the future of global public health procurement.

      At an open session on April 21, on ‘Innovation Funding for R&D and Access to Global Health’, TDR – the Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases – presented the proposal for a global financial mechanism. The session’s speakers at the Geneva Health Forum included representatives from TDR, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), and the University of Geneva.

    • Irony? Publisher Celebrates IP By Revoking IP

      There’s no better way to celebrate something than by doing the opposite of it. That seems to be the message of a leading publishing company. In a campaign today to hail the virtues of intellectual property, it appears to be hoping to gain goodwill – and possibly some sales – by removing intellectual property on some of its products.

      [...]

      It provides open access to numerous – admittedly intriguing – chapters from copyrighted academic books and journals, like samplers of products for sale.

      Exceptions and limitations to copyright are a part of copyright law. But publishers have been under fire for years to make products open access in order to encourage sharing and creativity, and have had to defend the benefits to authors, research and business of copyrighting content.

    • Trademarks

      • Washington NFL Team Asks Supreme Court To Hear ‘Redskins’ Trademark Case

        On Monday, the Washington Redskins asked the Supreme Court to hear its case, which challenges the constitutionality of allowing a trademark to be barred if it “disparages” others.

      • Washington Redskins Appeal To SCOTUS On Trademark And Seek To Tie Their Case To That Of The Slants

        We’ve talked quite a bit around here about the saga of the Washington Redskins trademark cancellation. The long-held mark by the football team was cancelled after a group of Native Americans petitioned against it, claiming that the team’s name was disparaging of their people. After I, dare I say, flip-flopped from cheering on the cancellation to having the team itself change my mind with a delightfully vulgar ruling, which demonstrated that the USPTO grants all kinds of marks on “offensive” terms, the current status of the trademark remains cancelled. Well, the team has now appealed to the US Supreme Court, not only seeking to have its own case reviewed, but also seeking to tie their case to another that we’ve talked a bit about, that of the Asian music group, The Slants.

        The Slants’ case is different from the Redskins’, with the music group never getting its trademark registration, also based on the notion that its name was disparaging of the very group of people who comprised the band. An appeals court declared the refusal of the band’s trademark applications was a First Amendment violation, rightly. But the USPTO has appealed to the Supreme Court. The Redskins, meanwhile, have petitioned the Supreme Court to take the two cases in tandem, arguing that the slight differences between the two would give the court a well-rounded look at the question of whether blocking disparaging trademarks was a constitutional violation.

      • Hong Kong accepts first movement mark registration

        The Trade Marks Registry recently accepted the first movement mark for registration since the IPD published guidance two years ago. What lessons are there for applicants?

    • Copyrights

      • MPAA Says Pirate Sites Will Take Advantage of Set-Top Box Proposals

        Earlier this year the Federal Communications Commission promised to “tear down anti-competitive barriers” by opening up the set-top box market in the United States and freeing consumers from $20 billion a year in rental charges. The proposals have spooked content owners, not least the MPAA who fear that pirate sites will take the opportunity to build a “black market” business.

      • The Misguided Plan to Expand A Performers’ Veto: More “Copyright Creep” Through Policy Laundering

        A proposal to rewrite parts of copyright law being pushed by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office would create new restrictions for filmmakers, journalists, and others using recordings of audiovisual performances. Against the background of the the Next Great Copyright Act lurching forward and the Copyright Office convening a new series of roundtables on the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, few have noticed the USPTO push happening now. But these proposals are a classic instance of copyright creep and are dangerous for users, creators, and service providers alike.

      • Copyright Maximalists And Lobbyists Celebrate Vancouver Aquarium Censoring Critical Documentary With Copyright

        We’ve written many times about how copyright is frequently used for censorship, and just recently we wrote about law professor John Tehranian’s excellent article detailing how copyright has a free speech problem, in that people using copyright to censor has become more common and more brazen. Whenever we write this kind of thing, however, I get pushback from copyright maximalist lobbyists and lawyers, who insist that no one really wants to use copyright for censorship purposes, but merely to “protect” their works.

        I’m finding those claims difficult to square with the following story, which I only found out about because the Copyright Alliance — a front group for the big legacy entertainment companies, and put together by some well known lobbyists — tweeted out a link to a story on a blog by Hugh Stephens, entitled A Whale of a (Copyright) Tale. Stephens is a former copyright policy guy for Time Warner as well as a former diplomat, who blogs about copyright issues in Canada.

        He happily tells the tale of how the Vancouver Aquarium has successfully blocked filmmaker Gary Charbonneau, who made a documentary critical of the Aquarium’s treatment of dolphins and whales, from using clips from the Aquarium’s website. In the original version of the documentary, approximately five minutes of the hour-long film came from clips he pulled from the Aquarium’s own website. The Aquarium wanted to get the entire film blocked by the court, giving you a pretty clear vision of how they were looking to censor the film. While the courts have not gone that far, they did order Charbonneau to make a new edit and remove all of those clips.

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