• Distributions
• Devices/Embedded

Desktop

• Help a Needy Child get a Linux Powered Computer just by Clicking Your Mouse

  The donated computers are powered by a Linux based operating system and the latest open source educational software. Technology is essentially in this day and age for a child to be able to exceed at school – I can say with 100% certainty that I would not be the person I am today without the access to computers I had from an early age. I was lucky enough to be raised in a family that could afford such technologies – not every child is so lucky.

Applications

• Instructionals/Technical

  • System Monitoring With sar And ksar

  • Install And Configure OpenLDAP On CentOS 5

Desktop Environments

• Some great Linux Enlightenment distros for your consideration… and a last word about bacon

  But getting back to Linux, one of the best and maybe worst things about Gnu/Linux-based operating systems (distros) is the insane amount of choice that one has about the GUI (Graphical User Interface) and which desktop environment/window manager you can use to interact with your system. There are hundreds of Linux distros available that cost nothing to download and use to run your computer with. And there are many choices of GUI managers you can use. The most popular distros come with GNOME, KDE, XFCE, Openbox, LXDE, and Fluxbox. The last four here mentioned are becoming more popular because they are more light-weight (use less system resources, less RAM, so they work great on older computers/netbooks than GNOME or KDE). But there’s also another one that’s been around for a while called Enlightenment. For the past few years it seems like there hasn’t been much development going on with the Enlightenment Project, but recently I’ve seen a few new distros and some well-established ones that use the Enlightenment desktop. The version now in use, E-17, is pretty neat because it is very light on system resources, yet has a beautiful look (eye-candy) and is quick and responsive on a variety of hardware.

• Enlightenment Foundation Libraries Reach 1.0 Release

• K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

  • How to Install KDE SC 4.6.0 on Ubuntu 10.10

• GNOME Desktop

  • Wingpanel updates: now less wing, more panel

    Anyone pulling the Launchpad branch of Wingpanel – the space saving desktop panel – today may be in for a surprise…

Distributions

• Red Hat Family

  • Notes from RH: Virtual Experience

    Yesterday I followed the online event Virtual Experience, presented by Red Hat.

    The event was presented in 4 main areas :Red Hat Enterprise 6, Cloud Computing, Virtualization and Jboss, for an idea of the sessions available take a look here.

• Debian Family

  • Where do App Stores come from?

    In the beginning there was the command-line

    App stores have their roots in the package management systems employed by operating systems such as Debian. Debian is a distribution of Linux founded in 1993 by Ian Murdock.

    While Debian may not have been the first operating system to make use of a package management system connected to software repositories, it went on the become one of the most widely adopted.

Devices/Embedded

• IP phone offers detachable Android 2.2 tablet

  Japanese telecom supplier Nakayo Telecommunications is preparing a videoconferencing-enabled IP phone that includes a removable seven-inch Android 2.2 tablet. The unnamed device features an 800 x 600 touchscreen, a camera, Wi-Fi, a microSD slot, and a USB port, according to the company.

• Phones

  • Nokia/MeeGo/Maemo

    • MeeGo tablets, netbooks arriving in second quarter, says report

      MeeGo-based tablets and netbooks will start shipping in the second quarter, shortly after the release of MeeGo 1.2, says an industry report. Meanwhile, the Linux Foundation (LF) announced three new MeeGo training courses, along with three Android related courses — the first LF courses offered for either mobile Linux operating system.

    • Android

      • Kineo Android tablet launched today – first educ. tablet

        Brainchild unveiled their new Android tablet at the Florida Educational Technology Conference today. The Kineo is targeted at primary and middle school students, and it’s based on a 7″ screen (800×480), with an 800MHz CPU, 2GB Flash, HDMI out, and Wifi.

Blender on sale in alleged violation of GPL

A press release from the Blender Foundation reports that two web sites have appeared selling re-branded versions of Blender. Allegedly in violation of the GPL, these sites, 3DMagix and IllusionMage, intentionally hide the origins of the software, change or remove credits and licensing and apparently even suggest the software on offer is a cracked version of Autodesk 3ds Max.

SaaS

• Convirture and Eucalyptus Systems to partner on open-source, cloud management

  Later this week, sources tell me that Convirture, maker of open source-based virtualization management software, will announce a very close partnership with Eucalyptus Systems, creators of the eponymous private cloud platform. The agreement will have the two companies working together to integrate ConVirt 2.0 Enterprise with both Eucalyptus’ open-source cloud platform and Eucalyptus Enterprise Edition. In addition, the two companies will cooperate on sales, marketing and support activities.

• SugarCRM CEO: Our Partners Can Profit in the Cloud

  Roughly one-third of SugarCRM customers use the company’s on-demand offering; one-third of customers are hosting with a partner; and one-third are running SugarCRM on premise, Augustin estimates. “I’m not sure I see that mix changing much,” he estimates. “The SMBs want SaaS; larger enterprises still want it on-premise and integrated with other applications.”

• Open Source Projects Partner to Offer Free Cloud Computing Training at Southern California Linux Expo

Oracle/LibreOffice

• Review: LibreOffice beats OpenOffice.org by a whisker

  The new LibreOffice open-source office suite “proves that forking isn’t always the kiss of death,” says this eWEEK review. New features in the Linux-ready release — including wider document format support, SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) import into Draw and Writer, enhanced presentation support, and an improved “save as” feature — should give OpenOffice some robust competition.

  In the open source movement, the forking of a project is often a contentious matter, and can lead to the demise or mothballing of the applications that spawn from the original software. In many ways, it’s a “nuclear option,” as developers choose their allegiances and take their skills with them.

• The New Features in LibreOffice 3.3

Business

• Semi-Open Source

  • Puppet Labs Goes for the Enterprise

    Puppet Labs is now officially a software company. The data center management technology company introduced Puppet for the Enterprise this week. The software is a major advancement for the company. It reflects on the cloud management space that is growing fast in concert with the move to virtualization, the need for data center efficiencies and automatic provisioning.

Openness/Sharing

• Open Access/Content

  • Welcome to the SPARC Open Access Newsletter, issue #154

    Contents
    o Another US federal OA mandate
    o Word contest #2
    o Corrections and updates
    o Five years ago in SOAN
    o Roundup
    o Coming this month
    o Credits

Buzek Turns Into Ace Tweeter

Mr. Buzek has 4,413 followers on Twitter, and has used the social-networking tool to publicize the Parliament’s stance amid the vast Brussels bureaucracy. This grabbed attention this week in particular, as the political turmoil in Tunisia and Egypt came to a head, and the EU imposed sanctions on Belarus.

Science

• Facebook generation suffer information withdrawal syndrome

  The scientists asked volunteers to stay away from all emails, text messages, Facebook and Twitter updates for 24 hours. They found that the participants began to develop symptoms typically seen in smokers attempting to give up.

Health/Nutrition

• Latin Americans ‘Guinea Pigs’ for Foreign Clinical Trials

  Leonor, a Mexican citizen, took part in a 2006 clinical trial of a drug to treat kidney disease, designed by a transnational pharmaceutical company.

  “A friend of mine who is a nurse told me about the trial and I decided to take part,” Leonor, a 30-year-old saleswoman who has kidney problems, told IPS. “I was given regular doses of the medicine for several weeks, and they said it worked.”

  Her story is just one among many as clinical trials are increasingly taking place in countries like Mexico and Brazil, for reasons that range from cheaper costs to less rigorous oversight.

• EPA Proposes Stronger Protections for People in Pesticide Experiments

  It will be harder for the chemical industry to use people as test subjects in pesticide research sent to the Environmental Protection Agency, based on an expanded “human testing rule” unveiled late Wednesday.

Security

• Wednesday’s security updates

Defence/Police/Aggression

• Yemen President Ali Abdullah Saleh to quit in 2013

  Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh has said he will not seek to extend his presidency when his current term expires in 2013.

  Mr Saleh, who has been in power for three decades, also pledged that he would not pass on power to his son.

• Police officer charged with second assault at G20

  A Toronto police officer now faces a second assault charge in connection with last summer’s G20 protests.

  The Toronto Police Service said Wednesday that the latest charge followed a complaint received by the office of the Independent Police Review Director.

• Buzek’s opening remarks on the Southern neighbourhood

  The President of the European Parliament, Jerzy Buzek, opened today’s plenary session with a statement on the situation in the Southern neighbourhood of the EU, particularly in Tunisia and Egypt.

• Egypt: Litany of Abuses Fueled Protesters’ Fury

  In Egypt, where protestors continued to demonstrate Tuesday for the eighth day in a row, the use of torture by law enforcement officials over the past two decades has contributed to the growing unrest, rights groups say.

  In a new report by Human Rights Watch (HRW), the international advocacy group claims the practice is endemic and often practiced with impunity.

• Who’s the most shaken up by Egypt’s uprising?

  While the political earthquake rumbling through the Middle East began in Tunisia, when the people took to the streets in Egypt, unrest became a trend rather than an isolated event. In addition, Egypt’s unique role among states in the region — historically and due to the size of its population — amplified the importance of the demonstrations that have filled the streets of Cairo, Alexandria, and the rest of the country for this past week.

  Even before President Mubarak’s decision to end his 30-year rule, Egypt’s crisis had earned the undivided attention of leaders across the Middle East. King Abdullah of Jordan’s sacking of his cabinet and Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s announcement that he too was not going to seek to extend his three-decade-long tenure in office indicated that both men recognized the fuse that was lit in North Africa was connected to stacks of dynamite on which they were sitting.

• Leading Egyptian Facebook Activist Arrested, Friends Say

  n Egyptian Facebook activist and leader of the group known as the April 6 Youth has been arrested in Cairo, friends told Wired.com Wednesday in e-mails.

  Ahmed Maher, 30, gained prominence in 2008 as one of the co-founders of the April 6 Youth, a solidarity group launched to support protests. Organizing mostly online, especially on Facebook, it is a carefully decentralized network of activists, who have used the tools of social media to broadcast grievances with the Mubarak regime, mobilize support, evade the government’s ubiquitous security forces, and, now, help to bring the Mubarak regime to its knees.

• TSA Tests New Technology For Airport Body Scanners

  The U.S. government Tuesday began testing new airport screening technology that does not generate an image of a person’s body, in an effort to address concerns raised by privacy and civil liberties organizations, National Journal reported.

  The use of whole-body scanning machines at airports has been controversial largely because the machines create an image of a person’s body without clothes. The Transportation Security Administration has said the machines give airport screeners the best chance of finding hidden objects on travelers.

• No Military Immunity

  America’s bloated defense budget is ripe for cutting.

• Oversight Chief: Show Me Your FOIA Requests

Cablegate

• WikiLeaks Nominated for Nobel Peace Prize

  A Norwegian lawmaker has nominated WikiLeaks for the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize, stating that the secret-spilling website is one of the most important contributors to freedom of speech in the 21st century.

  Lawmaker Snorre Valen said that by disclosing information about corruption, human rights abuses and war crimes, WikiLeaks is a “natural contender” for the peace prize.

• UK firm’s partner ‘wanted Peru to curb priests in mine conflict areas’

  The US and Canadian ambassadors, who hosted a summit of foreign mining executives in Peru in August 2005, requested specific examples of “anti-mining” teachers and bishops “who engage in inappropriate activities” to take to government and church leaders, the cable claimed.

Environment/Energy/Wildlife

• Koch Industries: The 100-Million ton Carbon Gorilla

  Koch Industries, the private company of the billionaire Koch brothers, is one of the primary sources of carbon pollution in the United States. However, the actual emissions profile of the diversified giant, with its oil and gas, chemicals, cattle, forestry, and synthetics holdings, is unknown, because of the lack of mandatory carbon reporting in the United States.

• It’s Still Just 1971 for Solar

  If you could take a time machine back to 1971 and tell people about today’s computing environment you would not be believed.

  Back then computer networking was brand new. The first Intel microprocessor was months from release. The first e-mail had yet to be sent.

  Yet the vocabulary of what was to come already existed. Bob Metcalfe was writing about what he would call Ethernet. Both TI and Intel were in business. Hobbyists were dreaming of turning components into computers they could call their own.

• Australia Cyclone Yasi roars into Queensland coast

  Rick Threlfall of the Bureau of Meteorology in Brisbane said local residents can expect several more hours of destructive winds

  Fierce winds and driving rains brought by the most powerful storm ever to hit Queensland are lashing northern coastal areas of the Australian state.

• Trade talks could wreck climate change measures, campaigners warn

  Trade talks between Europe and Canada could leave the door open to companies suing states for losses incurred by efforts to fight climate change, campaigners claimed today.

  The warning, backed by an MEP and a law expert, came as 10 protesters unsuccessfully attempted to talk to the Canadian energy minister, Ron Liepert, this morning during a visit to London for a meeting with Lord Howell, the UK minister for the Commonwealth.

• Photos released in campaign to save uncontacted Amazonian tribe

  Some of the most detailed pictures ever taken of an uncontacted Amazonian tribe have been released by the Brazilian government. They show a thriving, healthy community with machetes, baskets full of manioc and papaya from their gardens.

• Indian steel plant gets go-ahead despite fierce opposition

  India’s biggest direct foreign investment project – a huge and controversial steel plant – got the go ahead from the Indian environment ministry today despite years of fierce opposition from local campaigners who claim that the lives of tens of thousands of villagers will be destroyed along with swathes of forest and coastline.

• Forest Chumps

  It took the previous Conservative government 13 years to propose a sell-off as unpopular as this one. The privatisation of the railways was opposed by 85% of British voters(1), and helped to derail John Major’s administration in 1997. Cameron’s plan to flog the public forest estate, presented to the nation after eight months in office, is opposed by 84% of the public(2). So much for his brilliant political instincts. And yet, stupid and destructive as this sell-off promises to be, it’s just a stone’s throw from something really interesting.

  The one good thing about this rotten government is that it recognises – in theory, though apparently not in practice – that there are more than two options for the ownership of common resources. Previous governments – both Conservative and Labour – have presented our choices in crude terms: an asset of benefit to the public can either be owned by the state or sold to businesses and private citizens. Both parties have asserted absolute ownership of resources in which we all have an interest. In order to privatise something, you must first claim that the government and the government alone owns it and has the right to decide who gets it and how it will be used. In this respect the Conservatives have championed state power just as fervently as Labour has.

• Google under fire for dumping paper ad

  GOOGLE has been accused of stifling free speech after it banned an ad attacking a paper manufacturer over its environmental record.

  The Wilderness Society paid to have its ad on Google promoting a boycott against a paper manufacturer that uses wood sourced from Australian old growth forests.

• Barrasso’s EPA Assault

  Barrasso’s bill, “Defending America’s Affordable Energy and Jobs Act,” would block federal regulations under the Clean Air Act, but also the Clean Water Act, the National Environmental Policy Act and the Endangered Species Act. In case you’re keeping track, that’s just about all of the most important environmental laws currently on the books.

• Chamber Calls Obama’s Clean Energy Plan “Ridiculously Premature”

  So much for everyone linking arms and walking together toward a clean energy future. A week after President Obama called for setting a goal of drawing 80 percent of electricity from “clean” energy sources by 2035, the US Chamber of Commerce sent a message back in his direction: fat chance.

  The Chamber’s Institute for 21st Century Energy held a press conference on Tuesday to roll out its energy plans for the year. Endorsement of a clean energy standard—even one that includes nuclear power, natural gas, and “clean coal” in the mix, as Obama’s does—was not part of it. The Chamber has been a major opponent of efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions, but the group signaled Tuesday that it is also going to fight Obama’s much scaled-back version of an energy plan as well.

• Fracking With Diesel

  The 2005 Bush-Cheney Energy Policy Act famously exempted hydraulic fracturing from the Safe Drinking Water Act. But it made one small exception: diesel fuel. The Policy Act states that the term “underground injection,” as it relates to the Safe Drinking Water Act, “excludes the underground injection of fluids or propping agents (other than diesel) pursuant to hydraulic fracturing operations related to oil, gas, or geothermal production activities [italics added].” But a congressional investigation has found that oil and gas service companies used tens of millions of gallons of diesel fuel in fracking operations between 2005 and 2009, thus violating the Safe Drinking Water Act. Hydraulic fracturing is a method of drilling that injects large volumes of water, chemicals, and sand underground at high pressure to break open rock formations and release stores of natural gas. In some cases, however, water based fluids are less effective and diesel fuel or other hydrocarbons may be used.

Finance

• Britons to spend first five months paying tax

  Tax Freedom Day is the day when Britons begin working for themselves rather than the taxman and falls on May 30 in 2011, compared to May 27 this year, the Adam Smith Institute revealed.

  The main reason for the three extra days is the rise in Value Added Tax, which increases from 17.5 per cent to 20 per cent on January 4.

  Tom Clougherty, executive director of the Adam Smith Institute, described Britons as being “desperately overtaxed”.

• No Criminal Charges: All 50 States Ready To Settle Foreclosure Fraud Probe Of Largest Banks

  The five largest loan servicers, including Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase, may be the first to settle with all 50 state attorneys general probing foreclosure fraud, Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller said.

• Impoverished Indian families caught in deadly spiral of microfinance debt

  The morning routine in Palivelupa village, 100 miles north-east of Hyderabad in central India, has been established for years. Once the buffalo are taken to the fields, the tea made and the children sent to school, the women meet under the big neem tree and wait for the debt collectors.

  Until recently, Rama Peadda Boiana, a 29-year-old farmer’s wife, labourer and mother of three, was in charge. “She was hardworking and clever,” Boiana’s sister-in-law, Taj Mani, told the Guardian. “That is why she ran the group.”

• A Real Jaw Dropper at the Federal Reserve

  So, in many respects, details that the Fed was forced to divulge on Wednesday about the $3.3 trillion in emergency loans that until now were totally kept from public scrutiny, marked the beginning, not the end, of lifting the veil of secrecy at the Fed.

  After years of stonewalling by the Fed, the American people are finally learning the incredible and jaw-dropping details of the Fed’s multi-trillion-dollar bailout of Wall Street and corporate America. As a result of this disclosure, other members of Congress and I will be taking a very extensive look at all aspects of how the Federal Reserve functions and how we can make our financial institutions more responsive to the needs of ordinary Americans and small businesses.

PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

• Only People Can Vote — Only People Should Finance Campaigns

  In this country, each person has one vote, no matter whether you are rich or poor. And it is illegal to buy or sell a person’s vote. So why do we allow electoral influence to be bought and sold? Why has politics in America become a commodity in an economic marketplace, where the richest corporations, business associations, unions, and individuals can buy enormous leverage on the outcome of our elections?

• Scalia Teaches First of Bachmann’s Constitutional Mythology Workshops

  Yesterday, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia traveled to the Capitol to teach a class about the Constitution to members of Congress, led by controversial Tea Party caucus chairwoman Michele Bachmann. Justice Scalia’s participation in Bachmann’s Constitution school has prompted a heated debate about the proper relationship between Supreme Court justices and political leaders. But the real debate that should be raging is not about judicial ethics, but about the dubious vision of the Constitution that Scalia and leaders of the Tea Party will be discussing.

• What About Free and Fair Elections in the US?

  Secretary of State Hillary Clinton reflected your sentiments when she commented on the Egyptian uprising with the words “We want to see free and fair elections.”

  But in the District of Columbia, where you and Secretary Clinton reside, there are no “free and fair elections” for electing representatives with full voting rights to Congress. There is only the continual disenfranchisement –unique to all other national capital cities in purported democracies—for the hundreds of thousands of voting age citizens in the District of Columbia.

  You stated that the United States “will continue to stand up for the rights of the Egyptian people.” Presumably that includes the right to have members of Parliament, with full voting rights, elected by the Egyptian voters.

  Although you declared in the 2008 election that you supported voting rights for the District –at the least one voting member of the House of Representatives if not two voting Senators—but you used little if any of your political capital or the bully pulpit and muscle to get even the most modest measure through Congress.

Censorship

• The Egyptian Internet is restored

  In essence, that really is what the government did. There was no need for any fancy networking tuning. The Egyptian officials just called up the Egyptian ISPs and told them to switch their core-routers and Domain Name Service (DNS) servers on at about 11 AM local time, 5 AM U.S. Eastern time and within half-an-hour, most of the Egyptian Internet and its associated Web sites was back up again. As Dr. Craig Labovitz, chief scientist for Arbor Networks, a network security company, told me. “All major Web sites and providers now appear reachable again.”

• For the Smithsonian’s Sake, Clough Should Step Down

  But in late November, Clough chose to instantly buckle under pressure from a right-wing media storm and remove a work of art from the exhibit. Clough’s decision was made, it seems, with very little input from the Portrait Gallery’s staff or the Smithsonian’s board, and without any formal avenue for public discussion. Instead, he listened to the reactionary politics of a far-right news source, extremist religious right leader Bill Donohue, and two newly elevated congressional leaders who had not even seen the exhibit but were eager to pander to their base by opening a new front in the culture wars.

Internet/Net Neutrality/UBB

• Unpacking The Policy Issues Behind Bandwidth Caps & Usage Based Billing

  The Stop the Meter Internet petition now has over 200,000 signatories and is growing fast, which may help explain why UBB has emerged as a political hot potato. The NDP was the first to raise it as a political issue, followed yesterday by a response from Industry Minister Tony Clement (who promised to study the decision carefully “to ensure that competition, innovation, and consumers were all fairly considered”) and the Liberals, who called on the government to reverse the CRTC decision.

• The Government’s Review of Usage Based Billing: What Should Come Next

  Yesterday was a remarkable day for those following the usage based billing and bandwidth cap issue. In the span of 24 hours, an unlikely political consensus emerged that left little doubt that – at a minimum – the CRTC’s UBB decision will be reconsidered. Prime Minister Harper expressed his concern with the decision, Industry Minister Tony Clement hinted at overturning the decision, and both the Liberals and NDP expressed strong support for overturning the decision. Groups like the Canadian Network Operators Consortium, which represent dozens of independent ISPs, wrote to Clement to call for cabinet to reconsider all the CRTC’s UBB decisions and even the Canadian Federation of Independent Businesses wrote to express its concern about the impact on Canadian small businesses. An Industry Committee hearing on UBB will apparently begin on Thursday.

• AT&T faces lawsuit over billing

  AT&T is facing a lawsuit over one Californian’s data bill that could blossom into a costly class-action case, the plaintiff’s attorneys said.

  In court documents in a suit filed on behalf of AT&T customer Patrick Hendricks attorneys wrote, “A significant portion of the data revenues were inflated by AT&T’s rigged billing system for data transactions,” Beta News reported Tuesday.

DRM

• Newest PS3 firmware hacked in less than 24 hours

  Hackers say they unlocked the latest firmware for the PlayStation 3 game console, less than 24 hours after Sony released it in a desperate attempt to stuff the jailbreaking genie back in the bottle.

  Sony announced the release of Version 3.56 on Wednesday. That same day, game console hacker Youness Alaoui, aka KaKaRoToKS, tweeted that he had released the tools to unpack the files, allowing him to uncover the new version’s signing keys.

• Hacker Challenging Court Order to Surrender Computer Gear to Sony

  The lawyer representing a hacker who published the first major PlayStation 3 jailbreak on the internet said Sunday he would challenge a federal judge’s order requiring his client surrender his computer gear to console-maker Sony.

Intellectual Monopolies

• Copyrights

  • UK Music Lobbyist Says Rethinking Fair Use Is ‘Intellectual Masturbation’

    We’ve talked a few times about how the UK is going through yet another copyright rethink with a key focus (among others) on whether or not the country needs more expansive fair use rules within copyright. While we’ve seen similar discussions happen (and be ignored) in the UK, the good news is that the panel investigating this issue seems to include some really knowledgeable folks on the subject. Of course, it appears that some of the established interests aren’t so thrilled about all of this.

  • Homeland Security Seizes Spanish Domain Name That Had Already Been Declared Legal

    It appears that Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) division, and their incredibly sloppy domain seizure operations, have moved on to the next phase — as was promised by both ICE boss, John Morton, and IP Enforcement Coordinator, Victoria Espinel. The timing on this one is particularly bizarre — and politically stupid.

    That’s because the the domain seizure is for the Spanish streaming site Rojadirecta. Yes, ICE seized the domain name of a foreign company. And it gets worse. Rojadirecta is not just some fly-by-night operation run out of someone’s basement or something. It’s run by a legitimate company in Spain, and the site’s legality has been tested in the Spanish courts… and the site was declared legal. The court noted that since Rojadirecta does not host any material itself, it does not infringe.

  • Mass Copyright Lawsuit Lawyer Petulantly Drops Lawsuit After Called Out For Apparent Ethics Violations

    One of the lawyers who has been at the forefront of filing many of those massive P2P infringement cases for porn producers, with the intent of getting people to pay up “pre-settlement” fees to avoid an actual trial (and being accused publicly of downloading porn), Evan Stone, keeps running into problems. Stone, who apparently only became a lawyer a few months ago, seems to have pushed his luck in yet another case, not expecting lawyers on the other side who might recognize what was going on. However, Public Citizen and the EFF, acting as lawyers for those being sued, discovered that Stone had sent subpoenas to ISPs seeking the identity of file sharers even though the judge in the case had not yet determined if such subpoenas would be allowed.

• Distributions
• Devices/Embedded

Linux Penetration into Entertainment Accessories

Today Linux is running most set-top boxes, media streamers, routers, synthesizers and keyboards. Linux is what runs the show at the London Stock Exchange as well as entertains travelers on innumerable airlines.

Desktop

• Click a Link – We Get Money….Maybe.

  Most of the grants available to us are for equipment. I think what I find most ironic is the push to give us computer equipment for our office and logistic operations.

Server

• Zarafa Shows Open Source Momentum at FOSDEM 2011

• Dell Releases Ubuntu-powered Cloud Servers

  Dell is marketing the servers to organizations developing applications to run on Amazon Web Services (AWS). Organizations could use the servers to test the applications locally before uploading them to Amazon’s paid service. The servers have a preconfigured testing and development environment. Eucalyptus duplicates the AWS APIs (application programming interfaces).

  Partnering with Canonical allowed Dell to deliver an infrastructure-as-a-service product in an integrated package and based on open standards, said Andy Rhodes, executive director of marketing for Dell’s data center solutions division, in a statement.

Audiocasts/Shows

• Free as in Freedom: Episode 0×08: Strictly Commercial

  Bradley and Karen discuss non-commercial-only commons licenses, particularly the CC-By-NC license, and how they compare to Free Culture and Free Software licenses, and why some authors pick NC licenses instead of Free Culture/Software ones.

Kernel Space

• Kernel prepatch 2.6.38-rc3

• The Linux 2.6.38-rc3 Kernel Arrives

  After Linus released an early Linux 2.6.38-rc2 kernel due to the 2011 Linux.Conf.Au, Linus has released the Linux 2.6.38-rc3 kernel while developers are returning from this Australian conference.

• Kernel Log: Consistent names for network interfaces

  Future distributions will use a consistent, predictable scheme to name network interfaces, using names such as “em1″ and “pci2#1″ instead of “eth0″ and “eth1″ to provide more transparency for server administrators. As various new kernels have recently been introduced, the Kernel Log will provide an overview of the most important Stable and Longterm kernel series.

• Video: Lessons Learned from 13 Years of LWN

  Jon Corbet gave a presentation about the lessons he has learned running Linux Weekly News for 13 years.

• Graphics Stack

  • Tiling Is Being Worked On For The Open Evergreen Driver

    While the Radeon HD 6000 series is AMD’s latest generation of graphics processor, and has initial open-source support available as of earlier this month, the open-source Linux GPU driver support isn’t yet complete for the older Radeon HD 5000 “Evergreen” series and generations even older than that. One of the features that has been lacking for Evergreen is tiling support within the ATI Gallium3D “R600g” driver for the HD 5000 series while it is available for the R600 ASICs and earlier. Evergreen tiling support though is now being worked on, which should deliver a performance boost once fully implemented for this hardware.

Applications

• Download Double Commander 0.4.6 .deb (Works In Ubuntu 10.10!)

  Double Commander is one of the best two-pane file managers for Linux (but also runs on Windows). It comes with a multi-rename tool, tabbed interface, custom columns, internel text editor with syntax highlighting, built in file viewer, archive support (are handled like subdirectories), extended search and lots more.

• TagPlayer Gets NotifyOSD Support, AppIndicator

  A new version of TagPlayer, a Linux music player plays your local music by using its Last.fm tags, was released today.

• Gimp Paint Studio(GPS)- A collection of brushes and accompanying tool presets for GIMP

  GPS (Gimp Paint Studio) is a collection of brushes and accompanying tool presets. Tool presets are a simply saved tool options, highly useful feature of the GIMP.

• Freespeak, an handy translator

  It is undeniable sometimes when we’re browsing or readiang an article/tutorial we hit a language that we do not understand yet that’s the thing we are looking for, but linux users do not have to worry about these issues because there is applications that can help us in the translation, yup “FreeSpeak“, the application is quite powerful for translate from or into other languages.

• Padre – Perl Application Development and Refactoring Environment

• Instructionals/Technical

  • Who knew IPv6 would be this easy?

  • Setting Up An Android App Build Environment With Eclipse, Android SDK, PhoneGap (Fedora 14)

  • More Latency Tweaks for Desktop Users

  • Better Queries with MySQL—Part 1

  • export environment variable from a bash script

  • OpenBVE – Train Simulator for Ubuntu. Install and Play.

  • Make Mandriva 2010.2 as Router

  • Collecting User Input in a Bash Shell Script

  • UNIX / Linux: How to Use Sticky Bit on Directory and File

  • Gentoo Install Checklist

  • Turn off your PC and BitTorrent from a Linux console with rTorrent

• Games

  • Frictional Games

    Frictional Games was behind 2010’s most scary game, Amnesia: The Dark Descent. By some accounts, the most scary video game ever. Considered by fans, a spiritual successor to the well-received Penumbra series. Amnesia is their most critically acclaimed effort yet. We reached out for a few comments on their success and on being an indie developer.

  • Unigine Corp. releases a few more Oil Rush screenshots, teases awesomeness

    The folks over at Unigine sent out an email last week letting us know they’ve added a few more screenshots to their screenshots page.

  • LGC Tiny and Big Preview!

    Venn of Linux Game Cast let us know they’ve posted a preview of Tiny and Big: Grandpa’s Leftovers based on a beta build provided by the dev team

  • The Goblin and the Butterfly 1.0.0.19

Desktop Environments

• K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

  • [KOffice] Views and a Conversion

    Back in July I blogged about the maturity of KWord. Or, more accurately, the lack of that. I attacked the problem head-on of why KWord is not really used for serious work. In this blog I want to revist the issue and show the progress made since then.

    First, a little look back. Since the KOffice2.0 release now 2 years ago we made various releases with the 2.3.1 release being the most recent. The amount of features added and bugs fixed in each release is nothing short of amazing. Yet, the most heard complaints are of simple issues. Things that stop even the least demanding users from using it daily. In my last blog I suggested user profiles in the form of personas as means to focus on a solution. And this has had some good effects!

  • More Details Emerge On The Bretzn Project

  • KDE SC 4.6.0 in Gentoo

    I’m pleased to announce the availability of KDE SC 4.6.0 to another distro.

  • KDE 4.6 Review | LAS | s1504

• GNOME Desktop

  • Clutter 1.6 & GTK+ 2.24 Tool-Kits Released

    There’s good news in the land of GNOME tool-kits this week. In preparation for the release of GNOME 3.0, GTK+ 2.24 as well as Clutter 1.6.0 have been officially released.

    GTK+ 2.24 is the last stable GTK2 release in that series with all of the exciting work now going into GTK3, which will also be officially released soon. GTK+ 2.24 is the last stable update but it will continue to be maintained and receive bug-fixes. GTK+ 2.24 isn’t too exciting but is a step to help in porting applications to GTK3 while still being source and binary compatible with earlier GTK2 releases.

  • Glade learns some new tricks

    Today’s release of Glade 3.9.2 was brought to you in a large part by our hero Juan Pablo Ugarte the Magnificent (and the crowd goes wild !)

  • Attack Of The Clones Is A Very Interesting, Unique GTK/Metacity Theme

    Attack Of The Clones is yet another theme created by JurialMunkey (who is also behind Divergence IV: A New Hope) that features a unique Metacity theme and a very interesting combination of light and dark colors.

  • Gnome-Shell gets a Live CD

    GNOME-Shell is very nearly upon us – but it’s been an absolute age since I last played with it myself (been knee deep in Natty, folks!).

  • Easily Test Gnome Shell Using A Live CD!

    Testing Gnome Shell just got a whole lot easier! There are now live CD Gnome Shell (Gnome 3) ISO files available for both Fedora and openSUSE – you don’t have to install them, all you have to do is write the ISO files onto an USB stick or CD, boot and enjoy Gnome Shell.

  • GTK+ 3.0, GNOME Shell, Mutter Near Final

    In preparation for the GNOME 2.91.6 release tomorrow, many GNOME modules are being checked in, including new versions of the GTK+ 3.0 tool-kit, the GNOME Shell, and the Mutter window manager.

    While GTK+ 2.24 is now final, version 3.0 is still being worked on but is almost done. GTK+ 2.99.3 is the new release and it also comes with one last ABI break before going gold. GTK+ 3.0 is expected to be declared stable next week.

  • The Board 0.1.1

    I decided to use the classic odd-unstable/even-stable style of versioning.

Distributions

• In Pursuit of a Minimal and Useful Unix

  Ubuntu is the most useful flavor of Unix available today. It has drivers for most hardware you’re likely to encounter, including wireless cards and camera memory sticks. Installation is a breeze, there are tons of ports, and tutorials for anything involving a terminal and an incantation of shell commands. There’s some bloat: Solitaire, instant messagers, OpenOffice, but most apps that ship with Ubuntu have their uses.

• Gentoo – The Pros and Cons

  I’ve recently been getting back into Gentoo Linux, running it in a virtual machine and for some reason I actually understand it better this time around.

  I have used Gentoo before, without truly understanding what I was doing, but now, after using other distros Gentoo actually makes sense. However, it still is a rather unique distro, with its own way of doing things, which has its advantages and disadvantages. Allow me to outline a few.

• Reviews

  • SalineOS 1.1 review

    SalineOS 1.1 ships with OpenOffice 3.2.1.

• Red Hat Family

  • Send in the Clones: The Long Wait for CentOS 6

    You do get what you pay for. And if you pay nothing, there’s little cause to complain.

• Debian Family

  • Canonical/Ubuntu

    • Improving Diversity At UDS

      The Ubuntu Developer Summit is our twice-yearly event in which the Ubuntu community gets together to discuss, design, and plan the work for the next release of Ubuntu. It is an important staple in the Ubuntu calendar, and we meet next in May in Budapest, Hungary.

    • Main frozen for Natty Alpha 2

      Two days out from the expected release of Natty Alpha 2, the milestone freeze is now in effect. Please take care that any packages that you upload to main between now and the Alpha 2 release will help us in the goal of a high quality and timely alpha, and hold any disruptive or unnecessary uploads until after the alpha is out.

Devices/Embedded

• Phones

  • Openmoko Community Update

    The Openmoko Community Update for February 1 has been released with news of new Openmoko hardware. “GTA04 is a project by the long time distributor and hw developer, German company Golden Delicious. The name is loaned from Openmoko project because of the spiritual continuation – GTA01 was the codename for Neo1973, GTA02 was the Neo FreeRunner, and GTA03 was the canceled successor product. Besides offering improved versions of Neo FreeRunner (better battery life, better audio output), they’ve a complete replacement board planned to fit an existing Neo FreeRunner case and use the existing display.”

  • Nokia/MeeGo/Maemo

    • Sojourner – FOSDEM conference browser

      Sojourner by Will Thompson allows you to browse the schedule for FOSDEM 2011, one of the biggest free and open source software conferences in Europe. You can browse by time, by category or by room, and star interesting talks to help locate them later.

  • Android

    • Pentel Airpen Pocket Digitizes Your Handwritten Notes, Stores them on Your Android

The Open-By-Rule Governance Benchmark

What does authentic open source community governance look like? An open source community will involve many people gathering for their own independent reasons around a free software commons with source code licensed under an OSI-approved open source license. But there’s more to software freedom than just the license. The key question any potential co-developer will want to ask is “what is the governance” – on what terms are people participating?

Top ten reasons why I won’t use your open source project

Here’s our top ten list of things you can do to promote your Open Source project, or ten reasons I don’t fork your project.

Why a Distro-Provided OpenSSH is Better than a Third-Party OpenSSH

Recently one of our customers sent us marketing materials from one of our competitors. One thing that stuck out was the positioning that their version of a critical system component used in *NIX OpenSSH is better than the vendor-provided OpenSSH (from Red Hat, for example). As a former systems engineer responsible for many *NIX systems, this raises a red flag and here’s why.

What are the top ten open source projects? OpenLogic’s support view.

According to OpenLogic the top ten projects by support are:

* JBoss Application Server
* Tomcat
* Apache HTTP Server
* Hibernate
* Core Spring Framework
* Struts
* MySQL Community Server
* Subversion
* Ant
* Log4j

Events

• Video: LCA 2011 Keynote Vint Cerf

• Video: LCA 2011 Keynote Geoff Huston

Web Browsers

• Little-known wonders in Chrome, IE & Firefox

  Firefox 4, the Beta version of which can be downloaded by anyone, by default gives screen shots of the eight most frequented sites you’ve visited.

• Chrome

  • Google Chrome Gets Desktop Alerts for Gmail, Chat

    I’m making an exception today to discuss the new HTML5 desktop notifications that alert Google Chrome users when a new e-mail or chat message arrives.

• Mozilla

  • What’s up with SUMO – Jan. 29

    The big things this week:

    * Army of Awesome is now localizable. If you are interested in seeing Army of Awesome in your language, contact Kadir: atopa (at) mozilla (dot) com
    * Top 19 articles + templates will be ready for localization by Thursday.
    * Mobile ready SUMO coming soon. Here’s the demo site shown in the video.

  • Home Dash Faster in your Language with 3

    Following up on the initial release of Home Dash last week, Home Dash 3 adds initial localization support for Spanish, German and Chinese.

  • Last Day to Vote: Game On Community Choice Award

    Today is the last day to VOTE for the Game On Community Choice Award. Take a few minutes to rate the sheer awesomeness of these games. We will be announcing the winner of the Community Choice award on Thursday, February 3, along with all the other prize winners. We will also be randomly selecting three lucky voters and send you a special-edition Mozilla Labs Game On swag pack!

  • Mozilla Firefox L10N Evening – London

    Tuesday, February 08, 2011 from 6:30 PM – 10:30 PM (GMT)

  • Python scoping: understanding LEGB

  • Contributor Engagement Asia town hall meeting planning

    As 2011 starts, I am happy to be working with a newly created team, Contributor Engagement, to help Mozilla communities in Asia contribute to Mozilla. Team-mates of mine, Mary Colvig and David Boswell and William Quiviger have all blogged recently about our new team and efforts.

    To that end, we are scheduling a ‘town hall meeting’ for Asian Mozilla community members next week, either Monday, February 7th, Tuesday, February 8th, or Wednesday, February 9th. This meeting would be a conference call and IRC chat to discuss contribution at Mozilla — what you enjoy about it, what could be improved, what tools you could use to make it easier to contribute to Mozilla, updates + happenings with Mozilla and so on. To start, we’d like to give an overview of the new team, share some very early 2011 plans and most importantly, get some feedback.

SaaS

• Yahoo! commits to Apache Hadoop, drops Yahoo! Hadoop

  Yahoo! has announced that it is dropping its own distribution of Hadoop and plans to work more closely with the Apache Hadoop community. The Yahoo! distribution had been a vehicle for Yahoo! to experiment with and release its own work on the distributed computing and storage framework, but this appears to have been to the detriment of Apache’s Hadoop. “Unfortunately, Apache is no longer the obvious place to go for Hadoop releases” said Eric Baldeschwieler, Yahoo’s VP of Software Engineering, adding that Yahoo has always been committed to open sourcing its work. After reviewing the company’s options, Yahoo has decided to focus on working with the Apache Hadoop community and to be prepared to compromise on how it achieves its development goals.

• What would make cloud computing truly free and open?

  The various trends known as cloud computing have spawned serious critiques about vendors’ reliability, security, privacy, and liability. This talk melds cloud computing with the principles of free and open source software to find solutions or mitigating factors for many of these concerns. Although other proposals have been aired for cloud standards, open clouds, open source licensing, loosening data, and others gestures toward customer control, this talk goes a step or two beyond them to suggest a more comprehensive architectural approach.

Oracle

• Java Hangs When Converting 2.2250738585072012e-308

  This number is supposed to convert to 0x1p-1022, which is DBL_MIN; instead, Java gets stuck on 0×0.fffffffffffffp-1022, the largest subnormal double-precision floating-point number.

• Oracle writes new OpenJDK rules

  Mark Reinhold, Chief Architect of the Java Platform Group at Oracle has announced on his blog that he, with the assistance of John Duimovich and Jason Gartner of IBM, Mike Milinkovich of Eclipse, Prof. Doug Lea of SUNY Oswego, and Adam Messinger of Oracle, has been drafting a set of OpenJDK community rules, or bye-laws, by which the community will operate. He says the draft document will soon be published for public comment.

• Open-source forkers declare Oracle independence

• LibreOffice Debuts, Beating OpenOffice.org by a Whisker

  LibreOffice 3.3 is as polished as one might expect in a project that, for all its novelty, has many years of development work behind it.

FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

• New Country Coordinators for Italy and the UK

  Giacomo Poderi and Sam Tuke are the new Country Coordinators for the Italian and British Country Teams respectively.

  Giacomo Poderi, team member since 2006 and former Deputy Coordinator, is the new Coordinator of the Italian Country Team. The priority goals for the Italian team, under Giacomo’s coordination, will be to create links between FSFE’s work at the European level with the work done by the many groups, associations and activists in Italy in favour of Free Software. To promote participation, increase visibility and networking with other Italian activists, the team will use collaborative projects promoted by FSFE such as the PDFreaders campaign and the forthcoming DFD ’11. At the same time, the team will provide its help to the projects promoted by the groups of the Italian Free Software movement.

• reddit joins the Free Software Foundation! Help us design an ad for FSF.

  reddit, like many of you, supports the work of the Free Software Foundation to promote and protect computer user freedom, and fight against threats such as software patents and DRM. In order to show our support, we’ve joined the FSF as a corporate patron, joining the likes of Google, IBM and Hewlett Packard in our dedication to the cause.

  To celebrate this, we’ve teamed up with the FSF to help design a new logo for their associate membership program. Associate members make up the vast majority of funding for the FSF, and associate members are computer users who, like us, acknowledge and appreciate the importance of free software and the work being done by the FSF. When you join the FSF associate membership program, you join a society of ethical computer users, who value freedom and support efforts to stamp out DRM and software patents. In addition, associate members receive some cool benefits from the FSF:

Project Releases

• jQuery 1.5 Released

  Right on schedule jQuery 1.5 is ready for consumption!

Government

• PL: ‘Ninety percent op public administrations use open source’

  Ninety percent of the public administrations in Poland is using open source software in one way or another, according to the results of a survey carried out in 2010. However: “The uptake of open source is relatively low. It is not evenly spread over servers and desktops.”

• European Commission consults on the modernisation of the European Public Procurement Market

  Public procurement accounts for roughly 17% of the EU’s GDP. In times of tight budgets and economic difficulties in many Member States, public procurement policy must ensure the most efficient use of public funds, with a view to supporting growth and job creation. This would require flexible and user-friendly tools that make transparent and competitive contract awards as easy as possible for European public authorities and their suppliers. With these objectives in mind, the European Commission has today launched a consultation. This open debate with interested parties will focus on the modernisation of the rules, tools and methods for public procurement to deliver better on these goals. The deadline for responses to the Green Paper is 18 April 2011.

• GR: Open source and free Linux system for teachers and pupils at elementary schools

  Sxolinux, the Greek open and free Linux system for pupils constitutes an effort to create a computer laboratory at elementary schools.

  This kind of software allows the use of old and disused systems whose owners would easily give them for recycling. Therefore, with donations of material and with five days of volunteer work, a computer lab was set up. The creator of the distribution used for the Greek sxolinux is Dimitris Kalamaras.

• Govt open-source group nears critical mass

  Proposed by the South Australian Government’s chief information officer back in 2009, the Open Technology Foundation (OTF) aims to educate and support an open and level playing field for the adoption of open technology in governments across Australia, spearheaded by Steve Schmid, the foundation’s strategic planner.

  [...]

  Schmid even wants to take the OTF to the world, with support already coming in from New Zealand governments.

Licensing

• OSOR publishes a new “Legal Corner” section and a licence wizard!

  As from February 2011, OSOR visitors discover a new “Legal Corner” section in their top menu bar. The aim of this section is to provide guidelines and ad-hoc advices around licensing and other legal aspects of using free /open source software (FOSS).

Openness/Sharing

• Six ways to build a solid community

  There’s no guarantee that anyone can build and sustain a community. But there are certainly elements that most successful communities share, and that’s what we’ve tried to present here.

• Committee announce new inquiry into peer review

  The Committee has today launched an inquiry into peer review. The committee invites evidence on the operation and effectiveness of the peer review process used to examine and validate scientific results and papers prior to publication.

• Open Data

  • CC and data[bases]: huge in 2011, what you can do

    You may have heard that data is huge — changing the way science is done, enabling new kinds of consumer and business applications, furthering citizen involvement and government transparency, spawning a new class of software for processing big data and new interdisciplinary class of “data scientists” to help utilize all this data — not to mention metadata (data about data), linked data and the semantic web — there’s a whole lot of data, there’s more every day, and it’s potentially extremely valuable.

  • Art Open Data

    The following guest post is by Rob Myers, artist, hacker, writer, and member of the OKF Working Groups on Open Data in the Humanities and Cultural Heritage.

    Art Open Data is Open Data that concerns art institutions, art history, the art market, or artworks. Using this data, we can examine art history and contemporary art in powerful new ways.

• Open Access/Content

  • Al Jazeera adds Egypt and Tunisia coverage to its CC video repository

    Since the beginning of the Egyptian uprising on January 25th, Qatar-based all-news Arabic channel Al Jazeera has been feeding its repository of CC-licensed video with up-to-date footage from Egypt and Tunisia.

• Open Hardware

  • Customize Your Car’s Electronics Using Arduino

British firms face bribery blacklist, warns corruption watchdog

British companies may face international blacklisting as a result of the government’s attempts to water down the Bribery Act, the chairman of an international anti-corruption watchdog warned.

Prof Mark Pieth said that the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) was obviously “disappointed and concerned” at the prospect of further obstruction in implementing the act, passed by the last Labour government after long delays and that patience was “running out fast” among other industrialised nations.

Why work?

Even though both eBay and Walmart sell huge volumes of retail products, eBay does it in a way that gives much more freedom to its sellers than Walmart sales clerks have. Is it more fun to be an eBay seller than a Walmart clerk? I suspect it often is. And I suspect that eBay sellers—on average—probably bring more energy, creativity, and dedication to their work than a typical Walmart clerk.

Another way of thinking about how to make work fun is to look at some of the most fun activities around—games—and try to use the same features that make games fun to make work more fun. Almost 30 years ago, in my Ph.D. thesis, I used this strategy to suggest how to make education more fun by incorporating features of highly motivating video games. And, surprisingly, the framework I developed then still applies—with some adaptation—to making work fun today.

The framework highlights three important features of highly motivating environments like video games: challenge, fantasy, and curiosity.

Challenging environments are those where you are always confronting challenges that are on the edge of your capabilities—not too easy and not too difficult. It may seem strange to use this example, but I just saw the movie The Hurt Locker, and one of the main characters in the movie was essentially addicted to the life-threatening challenge of disarming dangerous bombs in Iraq. Was his job fun? Most people probably wouldn’t think so, but for him the challenge made his job almost like a game, and he brought huge amounts of dedication to doing his work.

Two /8s allocated to APNIC from IANA

The information in this announcement is to enable the Internet community to update network configurations, such as routing filters, where required.

APNIC received the following IPv4 address blocks from IANA in February 2011 and will be making allocations from these ranges in the near future:

* 39/8
* 106/8

[...]

APNIC reiterates that IPv6 is the only means available for the sustained ongoing growth of the Internet, and urges all Members of the Internet industry to move quickly towards its deployment.

Science

• Antenna decision makes waves

  Procedural transparency is at issue as a US agency transfers a high-precision radio dish to an international partner.

• Japan’s space agency teams up with fishing net maker to collect space debris

  The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and Nitto Seimo Co aim to tackle the increasingly hazardous problem of debris damaging space shuttles and satellites.

  The new system involves launching a satellite attached to a thin metal net spanning several kilometers into space, before the net is detached and begins to capture space waste while orbiting earth.

• Cracking the Scratch Lottery Code

  As a trained statistician with degrees from MIT and Stanford University, Srivastava was intrigued by the technical problem posed by the lottery ticket. In fact, it reminded him a lot of his day job, which involves consulting for mining and oil companies. A typical assignment for Srivastava goes like this: A mining company has multiple samples from a potential gold mine. Each sample gives a different estimate of the amount of mineral underground. “My job is to make sense of those results,” he says. “The numbers might seem random, as if the gold has just been scattered, but they’re actually not random at all. There are fundamental geologic forces that created those numbers. If I know the forces, I can decipher the samples. I can figure out how much gold is underground.”

Security

• Tuesday’s security updates

• Anonymous takes down Berlusconi’s site

  Now Italy, run by the Silvio Berlusconi Mafia, has experienced the first tremors, heralded on January 23 when Anonymous gave warning of things to come.

• Stop trying to balance liberty with security

  From the countless amendments and additions to the Counter Terrorism Act to the ever-expanding Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, there’s no doubting that British anti-terrorist legislation since 9/11 now constitutes a mightily oppressive edifice.

• Report: Ryanair’s booking system is insecure

  Economy airline Ryanair’s online booking system allows for flight amendments and the addition of extra services for their associated fees. According to a report by Berlin newspaper Der Tagesspiegel (German language link), it’s easy for an outsider to gain access to the system using just a reservation number or email address along with the flight date as well as the departure and destination airports.

Defence/Police/Aggression

• Egypt report from Human Rights Watch: “Impunity for Torture Fuels Days of Rage”

  A report released by Human Rights Watch documents how Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s government effectively condones police abuse by failing to ensure that law enforcement officers who are accused of torture are investigated and criminally prosecuted. HRW describes torture as “an endemic problem in Egypt.” According to HRW, ending police abuse—and the cycle of impunity for those crimes—is a driving element behind the massive popular demonstrations in Egypt this past week.

• What’s Happening in Egypt, the Action Movie Explainer: “Raiders of the Lost Mubarak”

  After she realized many people couldn’t wrap their heads around what was going on in Egypt, Furrygirl decided to turn to Hollywood staples and made this Raiders of the Lost Ark mashup version which explains things pretty clearly.

• Egypt: “Your Weapons Are on Cairo’s Streets, America”

• Egypt protesters vow to step up pressure

  Tens of thousands of people have gathered in central Cairo for a seventh day of protest.

  As pressure mounts on President Hosni Mubarak to step down, police have been ordered back to the streets to positions they abandoned on Friday.

• Egypt protests reinvigorating opposition in Iran

  Protests in Egypt calling for the resignation of President Hosni Mubarak have also reinvigorated Iran’s opposition, triggering calls to regroup.”

• Egyptian Protests Inspire Opposition in Iran

  Egypt’s uprising has captivated the Arab world, but in Iran—fresh from its own outpouring of antigovernment unrest—backers of the regime and supporters of the beleaguered opposition are competing for credit for inspiring the demonstrations in Cairo.

• Hidden Behind Egypt’s Uprising, Sudan Protests

  Once the success of the protests in Tunisia reminded the world that governments can be changed by a wide spectrum of people and not a political cadre or religious group or opposition politician but the people themselves, those people went to town prodding and testing for weakness.

  The people of Algeria, Libya, even Yemen were seen on the streets. But Sudan seems to be hidden behind the Egyptian flare up. Now, crisis mapping shows how deep and widespread the discontent is in that country.

• Causes and contexts: Arab Twitter revolutions and the origins of the First World War

  Take the uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia over the past few weeks. Communications technology and social networks have been present, both on the streets, among the protagonists.

  Did Facebook cause the revolution? Is it a Twitter revolution? These are partly silly questions, partly interesting ideas to follow through. Historians will soon enough, why shouldn’t we?

• Incredible: Watch volunteers translate Egyptian phone messages in real-time

  To further this aim, a number of volunteers outside of Egypt (you know, where the Internet still works) have decided to collaborate online to get those voicemails – which are mainly in Arabic – translated into English.

• Live From Egypt: The Rebellion Grows Stronger

• Million Egyptian Protest Planned as Resistance Continues

  It is morning again in Cairo as I post this. The curfew ended at 8:00am and the people of Egypt enter the seventh day of their history making struggle. A famous poem by the early 20th century Tunisian poet Abu al-Qasim al-Shabi, “To the Tyrants of the World” [hear it on NPR] has become a rallying cry in both Tunisia and Egypt.

• Some weekend work that will (hopefully) enable more Egyptians to be heard

  We worked with a small team of engineers from Twitter, Google and SayNow, a company we acquired last week, to make this idea a reality. It’s already live and anyone can tweet by simply leaving a voicemail on one of these international phone numbers (+16504194196 or +390662207294 or +97316199855) and the service will instantly tweet the message using the hashtag #egypt. No Internet connection is required. People can listen to the messages by dialing the same phone numbers or going to twitter.com/speak2tweet.

• Report: Torture in Egypt rampant amid impunity for security forces

  The words are those of one Egyptian speaking to Human Rights Watch – and alleging torture by Egypt’s security services against his fellow detainees.

  Another man, a 22-year-old taxi-driver, told HRW last year about his detention by Egyptian police: “They had whips and hit me on the legs, on the bottom of my feet, and on my back. When they took me down, they brought a black electric device and applied electro-shocks four or five times to my arms until it started smoking.”

• Haroon Moghul on Why the Egyptian Revolution is not Islamist

  Egypt’s “secular” dictator, who didn’t meddle too far into his people’s religious life — he was no Shah, and no Ben Ali — hasn’t created a sharp cultural divide in his country (the economic one is something else altogether). So why would Egyptians need, want, or stress, an Islamic Revolution?

• China quick to label Egypt uprising as “chaotic”

  We all know the line abut Tiananmen Square, that we can only thank God the CCP saved China from chaos by cracking down on the protesters by whatever means necessary. This argument was carried to another extreme in the case of Russia, where the rapid switch to democracy plunged the nation into chaos. Every schoolchild in China knows about that. And now Egypt. Seems like whenever a dictatorship is threatened, the CCP feels the need to desperately convince its citizens that change equals chaos.

• The ‘Italian Job’ and Other Highlights From U.S.’s Rendition Program With Egypt

  Among the many aspects of the U.S.-Egypt relationship, few have been as controversial as the CIA’s extraordinary rendition program, where the agency frequently handed over suspected terrorists to foreign governments with histories of torture and illegal detention.

• The Egypt Crisis in a Global Context: A Special Report

  Let’s begin by considering the regime. In 1952, Col. Gamal Abdel Nasser staged a military coup that displaced the Egyptian monarchy, civilian officers in the military, and British influence in Egypt. Nasser created a government based on military power as the major stabilizing and progressive force in Egypt. His revolution was secular and socialist. In short, it was a statist regime dominated by the military. On Nasser’s death, Anwar Sadat replaced him. On Sadat’s assassination, Hosni Mubarak replaced him. Both of these men came from the military as Nasser did. However their foreign policy might have differed from Nasser’s, the regime remained intact.

• Looters included undercover Egyptian police, hospitals tell Human Rights Watch

  Human Rights Watch confirmed several cases of undercover police loyal to Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s regime committing acts of violence and looting in an attempt to stoke fear of instability as demonstrations grew stronger Tuesday against the autocratic leader.

  Peter Bouckaert, the emergency director at Human Rights Watch, said hospitals confirmed that they received several wounded looters shot by the army carrying police identification cards. They also found several cases of looters and vandals in Cairo and Alexandria with police identification cards. He added that it was “unexplainable” that thousands of prisoners escaped from prisons over the weekend.

• Fight On

  The first new song here in a while. I don’t even know if this will still be relevant by the time you hear it but I had to release it anyway. Like the rest of us around the world I’ve been watching the events in Egypt on the news. The people are calling for the end of a dictatorship and the birth of a new age of democracy.

• Watched Mubarak Making His Statement

  Actually he doesn’t get it at all. His speech would have made sense if it had been given thirty years ago. Now, well, he just sounds lost.

  The entire speech is about what he is going to do. The problem is that the Egyptian public wants only one thing, for him to leave.

• Anderson Cooper ‘punched in the head’ 10 times by pro-Mubarak thugs

  CNN’s Anderson Cooper said Wednesday that he and his crew were violently attacked by pro-Mubarak forces as they tried to make their way through the streets of Cairo.

  “Anderson Cooper punched 10 times in the head as pro-Mubarak mob surrounds him and his crew at Cairo rally,” Maan News Agency’s George Hale tweeted.

  Cooper described his ordeal on CNN’s American Morning.

• DNA collection from arrestees starts Tuesday in North Carolina

  Tuesday marks the first day of a new law that allows law enforcement to take DNA from arrestees, not just those convicted of a crime.

  The new state law begins February 1 and requires officers to take DNA samples from anyone charged with assault on handicapped persons, stalking, or any felony.

Cablegate

• Julian Assange awarded Sydney peace medal

  In the estimation of the Sydney Peace Foundation, Australian Wikileaks founder Julian Assange stands alongside the Dalai Lama and Nelson Mandela.

  As he outrages and embarrasses world leaders by leaking secret US diplomatic cables – and continues to face down allegations of sex offences – Mr Assange has been chosen by the foundation to receive a rare gold medal for peace with justice.

• Open Letter To The Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard Re Julian Assange.

  It is pleasing that you would welcome him back to Australia but your statement that the government cannot do anything to assist him in that regard is not strictly correct and springs from a factual error in you saying “They are charges and they’ve got to be worked through proper process.” Prime Minister, in brief these are the relevant facts and applicable law:

  1) Mr Assange has not ever been charged by Sweden or anybody else.
  2) The Swedish authorities have initiated an extradition process which is contrary to the European Arrest Warrant (“EAW”) system in that they want him back in Sweden for the purposes of investigation, not explicitly to charge him.
  3) The EAW is a fast track extradition process between EU member states brought into effect to allow decisions to be made between EU judicial systems, not between politicians.

• Plea over WikiLeaks jail ‘Briton’

  The Government has been urged to intervene in the case of a soldier held in a US jail on suspicion of passing state secrets to WikiLeaks – on the grounds that he is part-British.

  Bradley Manning, a private in the US Army, went to school in Haverfordwest, Wales, where his mother still lives.

  He has been accused of passing hundreds of thousands of diplomatic cables to the whistleblowing website.

• Amnesty urges UK to intervene in Manning case

  Amnesty International called on British authorities to intervene Tuesday in the case of the Army private accused of leaking material to the secret-spilling website WikiLeaks amid claims that he is an American-British dual national.

  Pfc. Bradley Manning has been held at the Marine Corps brig in Quantico, Virginia since last summer under conditions which his supporters describe as punitive. Manning’s case has attracted sustained attention in Britain in part because his mother is Welsh, but some supporters now claim that the 23-year-old holds British citizenship.

• Lionel Barber’s Hugh Cudlipp lecture: the full text

  Let me now turn to more current sources of controversy, notably the WikiLeaks phenomenon and the phone-hacking scandal. While each is very different and each raises important questions for public policy, there is a single common thread: the transformational power of technology which is rendering media laws and practice obsolete.

  First, a few words on the WikiLeaks affair. The two industrial scale data-dumps included vivid, if partial US military dispatches from the front-line in Afghanistan and Iraq followed by 250,000 classfied diplomatic cables from US embassies around the world. Set alongside each other, they look like the scoops of the century. But as both Alan Rusbridger, editor of the Guardian and Bill Keller, editor of the New York Times, have recounted: managing the story and Mr Assange was far from straightforward.

  Keller describes Assange as a character out of a Stieg Larsson novel who was “elusive, manipulative, volatile and ultimately openly hostile to the New York Times and Guardian.” That will not surprise too many journalists accustomed to dealing with tricky sources, but in this case, other equally challenging ethical, legal and practical problems presented themselves.

  These included how to deal with a US government committed to protecting classified information; how to conduct a cross-border investigation encompassing other media organisations; and how to disentangle the newsworthy and compelling from tens of thousands of computer-stored data. In this respect, the Daily Telegraph’s handling of its Westminster expenses scoop, while still a formidable logistical challenge, tends to pale by comparison.

• Assange’s lawyer says FOI inspired WikiLeaks

  Poor regulation across many of the world’s freedom of information systems formed part of Julian Assange’s inspiration to establish WikiLeaks, the Australian’s lawyer says.

  The 39-year-old is currently under US criminal investigation over the leaking of hundreds of thousands of secret military reports and diplomatic cables released.

• The Witch Hunt Against Assange Is Turning into an Extremely Dangerous Assault on Journalism Itself

  Whatever the unusual aspects of the case, the Obama administration’s reported plan to indict WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange for conspiring with Army Pvt. Bradley Manning to obtain U.S. secrets strikes at the heart of investigative journalism on national security scandals.

• Army Leaks Hit Piece on Bradley Manning

  Last night’s DoD press conference on Bradley Manning was a bizarre affair. Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morrell was snappish, hectoring and ill-prepared. They were clearly thrown when Jim Miklaszewski reported that the Quantico brig commander acted inappropriately in putting Manning on suicide watch, and the journalists present greeted Morrell’s excuses with extreme skepticism.

• Egypt – Cable from Imprisoned Egyptian Opposition Leader: Defend Democracy “for the friendship of peoples live forever”

  Ayman Nour, one of the senior leaders of the Egyptian opposition who is currently organizing a coalition to create an interim government, wrote an eloquent letter from prison in 2006 to then Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, in which he implored the U.S. not to stand by and ignore his plight, according to a new cable released by Wikileaks.

• Egypt – U.S. intelligence collaboration with Omar Suleiman “most successful”

  New cables released by Wikileaks reveal that the U.S. government has been quietly anticipating as well as cultivating Omar Suleiman, the Egyptian spy chief, as the top candidate to take over the country should anything happen to President Hosni Mubarak. On Saturday, this expectation was proved correct when Mubarak named Suleiman to the post of vice-president making him the first in line to assume power.

  An intelligence official who trained at the U.S. Special Warfare School at Fort Bragg, Suleiman became head of the spy agency in 1993 which brought him into close contact with the Central Intelligence Agency. Recently he took up a more public role as chief Egyptian interlocuter with Israel to discuss the peace process with Hamas and Fatah, the rival Palestinian factions.

• WikiLeaks files reveal ‘cold, callous and brutal’ behaviour of ministers

  A mother who lost her daughter in the Lockerbie attack has condemned the “cold, callous and brutal” behaviour of British ministers after WikiLeaks documents revealed how they secretly advised Libya on securing the successful early release of the bomber.

• WikiLeaks: FBI hunts the 9/11 gang that got away

  Secret documents reveal that the three Qatari men conducted surveillance on the targets, provided “support” to the plotters and had tickets for a flight to Washington on the eve of the atrocities.

  The suspected terrorists flew from London to New York on a British Airways flight three weeks before the attacks.

Environment/Energy/Wildlife

• SPCA investigates slaughter of 100 Whistler sled dogs

  The “execution-style” mass cull of 100 sled dogs owned by Whistler-based Outdoor Adventures has sparked an SPCA investigation into allegations of animal cruelty, outrage from animal welfare groups and suspension by Tourism Whistler of reservations for dog sledding excursions by the company.

• Brazilian president’s promises crumble under weight of Belo Monte dam

  Brazil’s new president, Dilma Rousseff, has never been popular among environmentalists.

  Since the early days of predecessor Luis Inácio Lula da Silva’s presidency, when she occupied the post of minister of mining and energy, many activists have seen her as a leader with an old-fashioned view of development. Something like “economic growth is priority number one, no matter if some hectares of Amazon rainforest has to be chopped down”.

  The animosity increased even more after Rousseff was promoted, in 2005, to the ministry of internal affairs – the post that paved her way to the presidency. With the second most important job in the republic, she was responsible for coordinating the government action plan, the Plano de Aceleração do Crescimento (PAC) – the “plan of growth acceleration”.

• Vedanta fights back over Indian hill tribe’s sacred mountain

  FTSE 100 mining giant Vedanta is challenging a ban on mining the sacred mountain of India’s Dongria Kondh tribe. The Orissa High Court will hear the case on Wednesday 2 February.


  The Dongria Kondh, whose plight has been compared to the fictional Na’vi in Hollywood blockbuster Avatar, won an historic victory against Vedanta last year. India’s Environment Ministry blocked Vedanta’s multimillion-dollar bid to create an open-pit bauxite mine on the Dongria’s sacred mountain, stating that Vedanta had shown ‘blatant disregard for the rights of the tribal groups.’


• Masters: Extremely dangerous Tropical Cyclone Yasi bears down on flooded Queensland, Australia

  Of course it remains An amazing, though clearly little-known, scientific fact that we get more snow storms in warm years. See also Another terrific ABC News story — on the role global warming is playing in extreme winter weather.

• Chimpanzee mother learns her infant has died (video)

• Italian hunting in the dock after 35 people killed in four months

  It is not just birds, rabbits and wild boar who meet a sticky end in the Italian hunting season.

  According to statistics published today, 35 people have also been killed in the past four months, and another 74 injured. Italy’s anti-hunting league, the LAC, said all but one were hunters killed accidentally by their shooting companions.

Finance

• AIB sues Oracle over ‘wasted expenditure’

  ALLIED IRISH Banks is suing two related international companies, claiming some €84 million spent by it on a new retail banking software system was “wasted expenditure”.

  The bank claims Oracle’s Flexcube product was “beset with serious technical problems” from the outset in 2007 and only some 3,000 customers out of an expected five million were switched over to it in a three-year period. In March 2010, work on implementing the Flexcube product ceased.

• Manufacturing surges to record high

  Purchasing managers’ index data for January shows activity grew at the fastest rate in the survey’s 19-year history, and highlights strong inflation which could make an interest rate rise more likely

PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

• Google Spent More on Lobbyists in 2010 Than Yahoo, Facebook & Apple Combined

  Google dropped $5.16 million on lobbyists in 2010, according to the Lobbying Disclosure Act Database. The sum represents a 29% increase over the $4 million the company spent in 2009.

Censorship

• Probably Not The Best Time To Introduce Legislation That Can Be Described As Having An ‘Internet Kill Switch’

  We’ve already discussed how, contrary to the claims of some, there really isn’t an attempt to create “an internet kill switch” in the US. There is a (admittedly bad) proposal concerning how the US would respond in the event of some sort of “cyber attack.” The proposal itself would allow the government to mandate how certain “critical infrastructure” pieces of the internet should respond in the event of such an attack.

• Egypt’s Internet blackout gets even blacker

  On Friday we reported that almost all Egyptian Internet connectivity had been cut off. Routes to the company’s major ISPs had been dropped from global routing tables, leaving no way to send traffic to the country. At the time, one ISP, Noor Group, remained connected.

• Ham Radio Not a Viable Option for Egypt

  The Egyptian government has ordered the shutdown of all ISPs (Internet service providers) as well as some cell phone services. The move appears aimed at disrupting protestors, who have been demonstrating across the country since last week. They are calling for the ouster of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

Civil Rights

• Egyptian Actions Highlight Dangers in U.S. Cybersecurity Proposals

  The Egyptian regime’s shutdown of the Internet in an attempt to preserve its political power highlights the dangers of any government having unchecked power over our Internet infrastructure, and puts a fine point on the risks to democracy posed by recent Congressional proposals to give the President a broad mandate to dictate how our internet service providers respond to cyber-emergencies.

Internet/Net Neutrality/UBB

• Statement from the Honourable Tony Clement, Minister of Industry

  Today, the Honourable Tony Clement, Minister of Industry, issued the following statement regarding usage-based billing:

  “On Tuesday, January 25, 2011, the CRTC announced its decision to allow wholesale and retail internet service providers to charge customers for exceeding the monthly usage of data transfer permitted with their broadband Internet package. This will mean, for the first time, that many smaller and regional internet service providers will be required to move to a system of usage-based billing for their customers.

• Reverse internet billing decision, Liberals say

  A CRTC decision that will force small internet service providers to restrict the internet service plans available to their customers should be reversed by the federal government, the federal Liberal Party says.

• Usage-Based Billing Hits Canada: Say Goodbye To Internet Innovation

  O, Canada, what have you done? The country’s Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, the CRTC, has passed sweeping new regulations that will force Internet Service Providers to switch to so-called usage-based billing—metered pricing, in less flowery language. That means ISPs there will charge customers by the gigabyte for Internet access, and that’s on top of a flat service fee. There’s nothing particularly new about metered pricing, but the fact that it’s being implemented on a country-wide basis surely merits a quick discussion.

• Canadians Angry About Usage Based Billing

  Why is this important? Well, these limits or caps that ISP’s have put into place will effect Canadian jobs, and businesses not just consumers wallets. As almost anyone who follows the business side of the tech industry knows, everything is moving towards cloud computing. Basically what cloud computing means, is that any digital product you buy, view, or back up will be done via Internet only. From streaming video like Netflix, to music stored in virtual music lockers, to companies throwing their backups on secure servers over the net. Cloud Computing will significantly impact on the amount of bandwidth Canadians use as hard drives slowly become obsolete.

• Open letter to Minister Clement concerning CRTC

  On behalf of the 107,000 members of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB), I am writing to express our strong concern with a recent decision of the CRTC regarding usage based billing for internet services (CRTC2011-44). The effect of this decision, should cabinet not overturn it, would be significant for small businesses in Canada, particularly as they come out of the recent recession. The vast majority of smaller firms rely on reasonably priced internet services to help them run their operations.

DRM

• ORG calls for DRM evidence

  We know that there has been plenty of under-the-radar harm caused to ordinary consumers by ‘Digital Rights Management’ (DRM) over the past years. And we wouldn’t want that left out of the Review’s evidence base. It might be seeing the service you bought content on disappear, making your purchased music or films useless. Perhaps you bought an iPod or other music player and discovered too late that the format of your legally purchased music collection wasn’t supported. It might be that you bought music or film on one platform and found that unnecessarily restricted your subsequent choices about where to watch it, listen to it, or read it.

Intellectual Monopolies

• Copyrights

  • My Submission to The Legislative Committee on Bill C-32 (CC32)

    Culture grows through sharing. It used to be Canadians bemoaned the lack of a Canadian “identity.” This cultural void was certainly tied in to the limited exposure Canadians had to our own culture since a few corporations controlled all of our culture.

    Today’s combination of hardware, software, media devices, and the Internet makes it possible for creators to create and distribute our work directly to our audience. The new technology has been an incredible boon to both creators and consumers.

    The independent Canadian music industry is ushering in an incredible golden age, in spite of the CD levy which penalizes independent creators. Canadians are leading the world with Independent music production and distribution. And nobody is looking for a “Canadian Identity” anymore since Canadian culture is thriving– through sharing– on the Internet. For the first time in more than half a century, Canadian musicians don’t have to sign away the rights to their music to get recorded and distributed.

  • Copyright is a Monopoly! (And isn’t like normal property)

    The equation of ‘intellectual property’ (IP) such as copyright with (traditional “real”) property is frequently made, especially by those advocating its extension. However, this equation is fundamentally erroneous and results in very serious misapprehension of the nature and effect of IP. In particular, patents and copyright confer monopolies in a way that ownership of real property does not.

  • Hadopi Wants To Kick People Offline For Watching Unauthorized Streams As Well

    There’s no indication given as to how Hadopi or anyone else would actually be able to find out who was watching streamed content, short of seizing log files. But, won’t it be great when you can lose your internet connection, because your friends pointed you to a video on YouTube that wasn’t properly licensed?

  • How shall the artists get paid?

    There will never be a shortage of culture. We have created since the day we learned to put red paint on the inside of cave walls. There is more culture available than ever, much thanks to the Internet.

    There are millions more people who want to live off creating culture than the demand will bear. Most create for different motivations than money. You will have no hard time finding a professional broker or accountant who picks up their guitar as they come home from work to relax a bit, but show me a professional rock guitarist who picks out the financial ledgers for some relaxation in their spare time? In financial terms, there is an oversupply of creators. Always has been.

    When the printing press and libraries arrived, the middlemen proclaimed the death of culture. History repeats itself. Let’s get rid of the middlemen, limit their monopolies, and let the artists and culture flourish.

  • U.S. Resume Controversial File-Sharing Domain Seizures (Updated)

    US authorities have seized the domain of the hugely popular sports streaming and P2P download site Rojadirecta. The site, which is one of the most visited sites on the Internet, lost its .org domain which now redirects to a notice from DOJ/ICE. Rojadirecta is an unusual target because two courts in Spain have ruled that the site operates legally, and other than the .org domain the site has no links to the US.

  • 670 Alleged File-Sharers Off The Hook As BitTorrent Case Dismissed

    Last year, an adult movie producer filed suit against 670 individuals who it claimed had infringed copyright on an obscure title. Now the entire case, which was presented by lawyer Evan Stone, has been dismissed. The plaintiffs were scathing about the court-appointed EFF attorneys, describing them as defenders of piracy. The case was dismissed with prejudice, which means that each of the John Doe defendants are completely off the hook.

  • Digital Economy (UK)

    • UK Government to reassess website blocking piracy measures

      The government has asked the UK’s media regulator Ofcom to review part of the anti-piracy law from the Digital Economy Act to assess if the measures put in place are actually workable and consider the practicality of blocking websites that infringe copyright.

      The government introduced new rulings as part of its crackdown on individuals accused of copyright infringement but after a campaign on the Your Freedom website, a site that allows users to nominate laws they would like to see the government get rid of, deputy prime minister Nick Clegg has said “the government will look at whether we have the right tools for the job in addressing the problem of online copyright infringement”.

    • Digital Economy Act Costs – an unlawful Prisoners Dilemma

      On 17 January 2010, the draft Online Infringement of Copyright (Initial Obligations) (Sharing of Costs) Order 2011 was laid before parliament. It is the first substantive item of secondary legislation made under the Digital Economy Act 2010 and concerns about the simplest thing possible: how much copyright owners and ISP’s will have to pay under the Initial Obligations Code (IOC). Despite its simplicity it has been misdrafted and it may also be unlawful.

    • DE Act: should Parliament pass flawed ISP costs order?

      The European Commission questions whether the DE Act cost-sharing is allowable under EU law. And Ofcom suggests that ISPs could give credit vouchers to the rights-holders if they send fewer warning notices than they forecast.