Lucan Varo - Slashdot User

Comment Call the *AA? (Score 5, Interesting) 377

by Lucan Varo on Wednesday March 19, 2008 @12:22PM (#22796594) Attached to: Comcast Says FCC Powerless to Stop P2P Blocking

The Federal Communications Commission has made clear, Cohen writes, that cable service is not a common carrier and therefore is not subject to common carrier guidelines.

So that means they're responsible for what passes over their lines, right? Gonna be interesting.

Submission + - Norway mandates government use of ODF and PDF

Submitted by siDDis on Friday December 21, 2007 @05:29AM

siDDis writes: Earlier this year Slashdot mentioned that Norway moves towards mandatory use of ODF and PDF. Now it's confirmed that the Norwegian government has mandated the use of open document formats from January 1st, 2009.

There are three formats that have been mandated for all documentation between authorities, users and partners. HTML for all public information on the Web, PDF for all documents where layout needs to be preserved and ODF for all documents that the recipient is supposed to be able to edit. Documents may also be published in other formats, but they must always be available in either ODF or PDF.

Submission + - New Attorneys Fee Decision Against RIAA 1

Submitted by

NewYorkCountryLawyer

on Saturday September 22, 2007 @08:50PM

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: "The RIAA has gotten slammed again, this time in Oregon, as the Magistrate Judge in Atlantic v. Andersen has ruled that Tanya Andersen's motion for attorneys fees should be granted. The Magistrate, in his 15-page decision, noted that, despite extensive pretrial discovery proceedings, "when plaintiffs dismissed their claims in June 2007, they apparently had no more material evidence to support their claims than they did when they first contacted defendant in February 2005....." and concluded that "Copyright holders generally, and these plaintiffs specifically, should be deterred from prosecuting infringement claims as plaintiffs did in this case." This is the same case in which (a) the RIAA insisted on interrogating Ms. Andersen's 10-year-old girl at a face-to-face deposition, (b) the defendant filed RICO counterclaims against the record companies, and (c) the defendant has recently converted her RICO case into a class action"

Submission + - MediaDefender and the Streisand Effect (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Foldarn on Wednesday September 19, 2007 @08:15PM

Foldarn writes: It looks like MediaDefender, in an effort to quell the explosion of negative publicity, has instead done the opposite (also known as the Streisand Effect) and made it even more widespread. The folks over at Ars Technica have an article about a few popular BitTorrent sites MegaNova and IsoHunt that are being demanded to remove the ever incriminating emails. What's more, Ars is reporting that it appears that MediaDefender, in response to IsoHunt's decline to remove, may be behind a massive denial of service attack against IsoHunt.

Skype Linux Reads Password and Firefox Profile 335

Posted by samzenpus on Sunday August 26, 2007 @11:40AM from the to-send-better-ads dept.

mrcgran writes "Users of Skype for Linux have just found out that it reads the files /etc/passwd, firefox profile, plugins, addons, etc, and many other unnecessary files in /etc. This fact was originally discovered by using AppArmor, but others have confirmed this fact using strace on versions 1.4.0.94 and 1.4.0.99. What is going on? This probably shows how important it is to use AppArmor in any closed-source application in Linux to restrict any undue access to your files."

Submission + - Foster Demands RIAA Post $210k Security for Fees

Submitted by

NewYorkCountryLawyer

on Wednesday August 15, 2007 @07:10PM

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: "A few days ago it was reported that, in view of the RIAA's one-month delay in paying the $68,685.00 attorneys fee award in Capitol v. Foster, and its lawyers' failure to respond to Ms. Foster's lawyer's email, Ms. Foster filed a motion for entry of judgment so that she could go ahead with judgment enforcement proceedings. In response to that motion the RIAA submitted a statement that it had no objection to entry of judgment, and intimated that it thought there would be an automatic stay on enforcement of the judgment, and that it would ultimately file an appeal. After seeing that, Ms. Foster's lawyer has filed a motion for the Court to require the RIAA to post $210,000 in security to cover the past and future attorneys fees and costs which are expected to be incurred."

RIAA Short on Funds? Fails to Pay Attorney Fees 341

Posted by Zonk on Tuesday August 14, 2007 @05:40PM from the must-be-because-of-all-those-lost-record-sales dept.

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "Can it be that the RIAA, or the "Big 4" record companies it represents, are short on funds? It turns out that despite the Judge's order, entered a month ago, telling them to pay Debbie Foster $68,685.23 in attorneys fees, in Capitol v. Foster, they have failed to make payment. Ms. Foster has now had to ask the Court to enter Judgment, so that she can commence 'post judgment collection proceedings'. According to Ms. Foster's motion papers (pdf), her attorneys received no response to their email inquiry about payment. Perhaps the RIAA should ask their lawyers for a loan?"

YouTube Begins Defense, Seeks Depositions 106

Posted by Zonk on Tuesday August 14, 2007 @04:53PM from the calling-in-the-big-guns dept.

eldavojohn writes "YouTube has begun their defense against Viacom by first calling on 30 depositions from people like Jon Stewart & Stephen Colbert. While the article mentions that YouTube has not revealed what they hope to gain in these depositions, I think Jon Stewart's opinions will weigh in favor of YouTube. Comedy Central's parent company, Viacom, objects to YouTube's hosting of their content. Comedy Central hosts many Daily Show & Colbert Report clips on its own site, bringing in its own ad revenue."

Submission + - Net Neutrality Debate crosses the Atlantic (independent.co.uk)

Submitted by smallfries on Sunday August 12, 2007 @06:07PM

smallfries writes: The network neutrality debate has raged on in the States for some time now. Now broadband providers in the UK have banded together to threaten the BBC that plans to provide programming over "their" network could disrupt operations. The BBC is being asked to cough up the readies to pay for bandwidth charges, otherwise traffic shaping will be used to limit access to the iPlayer. Strange really, I thought that the monthly fee we pay already was to cover access ... but maybe it only covers the final mile and they need to be paid twice to cover the rest of the journey.

Submission + - Bush derails attempts to end illegal wiretapping

Submitted by

P. Rivacy

on Thursday June 07, 2007 @12:01AM

P. Rivacy writes: "Remember how the Congress tried to outlaw the already illegal NSA wiretaps authorized by the President?

Bush is now using delaying tactics to derail the passage of that bill by not providing documents related to the President's warrantless wiretapping program to the Senate Intelligence Committee that is currently reviewing the proposed legislation."

Submission + - Scientologists In Row With BBC

Submitted by

CmdrGravy

on Sunday May 13, 2007 @04:21PM

CmdrGravy writes: "The Church Of Scientology is currently engaged in a row with BBC over a Panorama investigation by the BBC reporter John Sweeney. John is investigating the Church Of Scientology for the program to find out if they have changed in the last few years and moved away from the questionable practices and secrecy they have employed in the past.

The row centres around a YouTube video posted by the scientologists and a DVD they have released which show Mr Sweeney losing his temper with a scientology spokesman Tom Davis in which Mr Sweeney is driven to yelling at Tom Davis at the top of his voice. Mr Sweeney has since apologised for losing his temper which he says he now realises was both wrong and stupid. In the DVD the scientologists also accuse the BBC of organising an anti scientology demonstration and yelling terrorist death threats at John Travolta, allegations which the BBC denounce as being clearly laughable and utter nonsense. John Travolta has also accused of Mr Sweeney of harbouring "personal prejudices, bigotry and animosity" against Scientology in the documentary, and accused the reporter of displaying "hatred against my religion." This despite the fact that in the UK scientology is not classed as a religion due to the financial nature of their practices.

Mr Sweeneys outburst came at the end of a tour of a scientology exhibition which attempts to portray psychiatrists as evil nazi type torturers entitled "Psychiatry: Industry of Death" which is both gruesome and utterly unconvincing. In the days previous to this Mr Sweeney and his camera team became the latest in a long line of reporters to suffer harassment at the hands of scientologists whereby he has been shouted at, spied on, denounced as a bigot by John Travolta had his hotel invaded at midnight, and had mysterious strangers visit his neighbours and family and spy on his wedding. You can begin to see why someone might lose their temper having been victim to this sort of activity.

There is an excellent article in the Telegraph and you can read about the incident in Mr Sweeneys own words here at the BBC.

The video of Mr Sweeney losing his temper is available on YouTube, the argument is about Tom Davis claiming he has said things in a previous interview with someone else at which Tom Davis was not present and therefore cannot know what he has said. During this interview with, I think, an ex scientologist Tom Davis burst in half way through to make claims that the interviewee was some kind of paedophile.

Happily it looks like the BBC is going to stand behind their reporter, judging by this interview with the programs editor and the general tone of their reporting but, really why I'm posting this on /., what can be done against an organisation so determined to prevent fair and unbiased reporting on their activities and is clearly able to utilise the power of the internet and YouTube to further their aims. The BBC is a large organisation and can survive attacks like this which would easily cause a lot more problems to individuals or smaller organisations, is there a way of levelling the playing field in favour of the general population being able to access accurate information on organisations or corporations rather than propaganda put out by the said organisations or corporations ?"

Submission + - Matt Boyd Deemed a Terrorist Threat

Submitted by CaptainCarrot on Friday May 04, 2007 @09:43PM

CaptainCarrot writes: Writer/IT contractor Matt Boyd, formerly the man who made up the words for webcomic Mac Hall and who now does the same for his and Ian McConville's new comic Three Panel Soul, was recently fired from his government job. His conversation with a co-worker about a gun he intended to buy for target shooting was overheard by someone in a nearby cubicle. As it was unfortunately the day of the Virginia Tech shootings, the eavesdropper panicked and reported him to management.

That was bad enough. But when he used the comic to document the meeting where the reason for his firing was explained, he was visited by representatives of local law enforcement investigating him on suspicion of making a "terroristic threat" using the Internet. No charges have been filed. Yet.

Matt's interview at FLEEN about the incident is online.

Submission + - Student arrested for writing essay

Submitted by

mcgrew

on Thursday April 26, 2007 @08:40AM

mcgrew writes: "The Chicago Tribune reports that an eighteen year old straight A Cary-Grove High School student was arrested for writing a "disturbing" essay. From the Trib:

Allen Lee, an 18-year-old straight-A student at Cary-Grove High School, was arrested Tuesday near his home and charged with disorderly conduct for an essay police described as violently disturbing but not directed toward any specific person or location.
So much for freedom of speech in the US."

Submission + - RIAA hires DJ's, then sends in the SWAT team

Submitted by

cancan

on Sunday February 18, 2007 @06:37PM

cancan writes: "The NY times is carrying an article about how the RIAA is hiring hip hop artists to make mix tapes, and then helping the police raid their studios. In the case of DJ Drama and DJ Don Cannon (myspace warning), they were raided by SWAT teams with their guns drawn. The local police chief said later that they were "prepared for the worst." Men in RIAA jackets helped cart away "evidence"."

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