News Links: Intellectual Monopolies and Copyrights
- Dr. Roy Schestowitz
- 2014-01-24 15:39:50 UTC
- Modified: 2014-01-25 19:48:53 UTC
-
With the New Year the corporate lobbyists and the Obama administration are stepping up their drive for passage of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the new trade deal being negotiated in secret by the United States and eleven countries in the Pacific region. The key at the moment is Congressional approval of fast-track authority. This would give any agreement a straight up or down vote on an accelerated timetable.
-
Critics of the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement — a purported free trade deal between 11 countries, including the U.S., Canada and Japan, which has been in negotiations for some years — have noted that the deal has little to do with free trade. Rather, the TPP is about limiting regulation, helping corporate interests and imposes fiercer standards of intellectual property (to, again, largely benefit corporate interests).
-
All week we've been posting stories for Copyright Week, discussing important elements of copyright law that are at risk of getting trampled or destroyed in the effort to reform copyright. These are issues that will be squashed almost entirely if we leave it to the lobbyists to hash out what a new copyright law looks like. Today is the final day of Copyright Week, which happens to coincide with the second anniversary of Internet Freedom Day -- the day that the internet spoke up and said NO!! the last time a group of lobbyist sought to change copyright in dangerous ways, with SOPA/PIPA.
-
Anakata – Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, one of the founders of The Pirate Bay, and an early technical assistant of WikiLeaks – is still held in Danish solitary confinement without much intellectual stimulus at all. I thought we could send some books to him, and I’m starting with sending one of my own.
-
Just four months after dropping the first hints, Kim Dotcom is now openly discussing his plans for New Zealand’s political arena. The entrepreneur has just confirmed the founding of the Internet Party, a new political group preparing to shake up the 2014 elections. With information on party co-workers now leaking out, this year should be another exciting one for the charismatic German.
-
Marking the second anniversary of the raid on his New Zealand home, Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom is today enjoying the release of his brand new album, the launch of a brand new music service, the one-year anniversary of Mega.co.nz, and the eve of his 40th birthday. There’s certainly a lot going on, but that’s how this born entertainer likes it.
-
The larger-than-life tycoon behind Megaupload.com, in New Zealand facing US piracy charges, has made a dance album to distract himself from his woes. But how does he fit that in with playing Call of Duty all night?
-
Despite the growing availability of legal music services, piracy is still seen as a major threat to the industry. Today we take a look at the most pirated artists on BitTorrent in 2013, with Bruno Mars, Rihanna and Daft Punk topping the chart. Interestingly, the number of pirated downloads are a drop in the ocean compared to the plays on other free services such as YouTube, which generate millions in revenue.
-
In a first-of-its-kind case, a Spanish court has ordered a local ISP to sever the Internet connection of a copyright infringer. The case, brought by Universal, Sony, Warner and EMI, involved the unauthorized sharing of thousands of music tracks on a P2P network. An earlier decision found that no copyright infringement had occurred but that has now been overturned on appeal.
-
During a debate on the UK’s Intellectual Property Bill, the Prime Minister’s Intellectual Property Adviser has again called for a tougher approach to online file-sharing. In addition to recommending “withdrawing Internet rights from lawbreakers”, Mike Weatherley MP significantly raised the bar by stating that the government must now consider “some sort of custodial sentence for persistent offenders.” Google also got a bashing – again.
-
Several countries including the US and France have implemented so-called “strikes” systems to warn and punish P2P file-sharers. The goal of these programs is to reduce piracy, but do they have any effect on people’s downloading habits? New findings published by U.S. and French researchers show that these anti-piracy measures don’t stop or even reduce piracy.
Recent Techrights' Posts
- GNU/Linux up to 5% in Ireland, Not Counting Chromebooks
- statCounter is an Irish
- The War on Free Software Reporters - Part III - Doxing and LARPing
- LARPing is an issue I've had to deal with for nearly 20 years
- The Media Finally Admits (on a Regular Basis) That LLMs Suck
- They could not replace medical doctors, teachers, lawyers etc.
-
- Slovenia: Windows Becomes Minority Market Share This Month
- It finally happened. Android is now measured as bigger than Windows.
- statCounter: Bing Has Lost Market Share Since the Chatbot Hype, in Europe Yandex Nearly Exceeds Bing Now
- Bing also had many layoffs (not that the media bothered covering that); we must debunk Microsoft's baseless claims and deliberate lies/hype
- Microsoft Windows Falls Below 10% in Africa, Down to About 20% in Asia
- The future isn't Windows
- Taiwan Can Defend Its Autonomy Better by Avoiding Microsoft (Back Doors)
- Maybe it's just a coincidence that GNU/Linux "took off" when Hong Kong lost its perceived independence from China
- The War on Free Software Reporters - Part IV - Impersonation and Menacing Behaviour, Defamation Under One's Own Name
- Such serial defamation (that went on for a very long time) is coordinated and relentless
- Links 02/06/2024: Workers' Strikes and a Warming World
- Links for the day
- Microsoft Falls to All-Time Low of 25% in Operating Systems
- If Android is counted, Windows is in trouble as it's down to all-time low of 25%
- Steam Survey: GNU/Linux Up, But Canonical's Ubuntu Declining
- big increases for GNU/Linux, Arch Linux gaining at Ubuntu's expense
- Guardian Digital, Inc (linuxsecurity.com) Leveraging Microsoft Chatbots to SPAM for Microsoft (Googlebombing "Linux")?
- Welcome to the Web in 2024. Search for "Linux" news, get Windows garbage.
- Smallest Number of New Debian Developers in More Than 2 Years
- Maybe Debian should recognise there's a problem instead of trying to censor - at humongous expense - those who speak about the problem
- Slashdot's "Linux" Section is Reposting Press Releases for Red Hat
- Is this being paid for?
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Saturday, June 01, 2024
- IRC logs for Saturday, June 01, 2024
- Links 01/06/2024: Microsoft Chaffbot Broken Out of Control
- Links for the day
- Why We're Taking Things Up a Notch
- Expect about 20 articles a day this year
- Sites That Cover WSL Are Helping Microsoft's Attack on GNU/Linux
- Calling out the typical culprits
- Plans for June
- We'll try to publish Daily Links every time we have enough of these
- Links 01/06/2024: Ukraine Updates, MongoDB Collapses
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 01/06/2024: MNT Pocket Reform, Gemini and Content Length
- Links for the day
- Links 01/06/2024: WeblogPoMo2024, Pentagon’s Increasing Reliance on (i.e. Bailouts to) Microsoft
- Links for the day
- Twitter is (in Many Ways) Already Dead
- Put an 'X' on it
- Posts About Free Software, BSD, and GNU/Linux
- Focus shifts have occasionally been discussed here over the years
- After Softpedia Pushed Out Its Linux News Editor - and Effectively Killed the Linux Section - it Killed the Whole News Section (Altogether)
- So they've killed Linux coverage, then their whole "news" section died
- Their Goal is Control, Not Security (and Their Staff Advocates Fake Security or Pricey Gimmicks That Disempower the Users)
- Those companies just want control, or simply domination over users (and their computers)
- [Meme] The Lowest Standards of Security
- No need for any qualifications
- IRC Proceedings: Friday, May 31, 2024
- IRC logs for Friday, May 31, 2024
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- Cybersecurity is a structural not behavioural problem.
- Reprinted with permission from Cyber|Show
- Free Software is the Future, Open Source is Just Openwashing (Proprietary With a False Marketing Twist)
- Also see postopen.org
- Society Has Been Destabilised by Social Control Networks
- Is it time to get rid of them, if not by sanctions/bans then simply by popular boycotts?
- Gemini Turns 5 This Month
- As long as Geminispace exists and is accessed by enough people, Gemini Protocol will continue to matter
- Links 01/06/2024: More Crackdowns in Hong Kong, Street Named After Navalny
- Links for the day
- The War on Free Software Reporters - Part II - Antisocial Mobs
- how various GNU/Linux bloggers got "canceled" over the years
- Microsoft's Share of Physical Web Servers Fell From 9.14% to 9.04% in One Month
- What's interesting to us is how Microsoft continues moving down in everything measured
- Links 31/05/2024: Escalations in Ukraine and Russia, National Reporter's Shield Law in US
- Links for the day
- Links 31/05/2024: Generating and Using Identifiers, Why Unicode
- Links for the day
- A 3-Year Campaign to Coerce/Intimidate Us Into Censorship: In Summary
- Some high-profile examples of defamation include Linus Torvalds, Richard Stallman...
- [Meme] Never "Missing Out" in FOSS Conferences
- The sexists who objectify women and bully women are going to FOSS events in pursuit of sex, according to themselves
- Racism, Ageism, and Ableism at IBM/Red Hat and Kyndryl
- IBM's Kyndryl is now accused of "racial, age, disability discrimination"
- The War on Free Software Reporters - Part I - Why Techrights Cannot be Censored (and Won't be Censored)
- Microsoft remains by far the biggest culprit
- In Spite of Boot-locking (Trying to Make It Hard If Not Impossible to Install BSDs and GNU/Linux on New PCs) Microsoft's Grip is Rapidly Slipping
- Escaping the Microsoft prison
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Thursday, May 30, 2024
- IRC logs for Thursday, May 30, 2024
- Microsoft's Problem in Puerto Rico
- Notice how much Windows has fallen
- Gemini Links 31/05/2024: MNT Pocket Reform and Benben v0.5.0
- Links for the day
- "I once preached peaceful coexistence with Windows. You may laugh at my expense -- I deserve it." -Be's CEO Jean-Louis Gassée
- Execution of Red Hat: But I helped promote Azure and .NET
- In Many Countries Vista 11's Market Share Goes Down, Not Up (Even Microsoft-Funded Mainstream Media Admits This)
- More people are moving to GNU/Linux