37911611
submission
bs0d3 writes:
Alex Arnold from the Pirate Party Switzerland, has been elected mayor of Eichberg. This is the first mayoral win for the pirates in Switzerland, and hopefully just the begining of things to come. Thomas Bruderer, president of the Pirate Party Switzerland, is delighted: "This result is for our young party is an important milestone. To win a majority vote shows that our members are not just a marginal phenomenon; but are in the midst of society."
36793611
submission
bs0d3 writes:
The Piratebay team is going to be making the RIAA angry, with the launch of a new ad supported VPN service. PrivitizeVPN is available for free from thepiratebay. Instead of earning revenue through subscription as ipredator does, PrivitizeVPN comes packaged to install babylon search bar (adware). PrivitizeVPN appears to be available for windows users only at the moment. The Piratebay staff has a long history of promoting services that have no logs; e.g. , you can't get in trouble if your anonymized ip is subpoenaed by government officials. Although PrivitizeVPN is being released silently, with no press coverage, no official statement, and no comments from The Piratebay of any kind, people are assuming that PrivitizeVPN will have the same familiar data protection policies. A backup download location has been setup here for people who have limited access to thepiratebay domain.
35765513
submission
bs0d3 writes:
According to this article printed in tagesspiegel.de, not having a facebook account should be the first sign that you are a mass murderer. As examples they use Norwegian shooter Anders Breivik, who used myspace instead of facebook and the newer Aurora shooter who used adultfriendfinder instead of facebook. They already consider those with facebook accounts, who lack friends to be suspicious, but now they are suggesting that anyone who abstains from facebook altogether may be even more suspicious. While it is already established that sites like facebook and google+ are no good for political activists, abuse survivors, and people in the witness protection program; abuse survivors will have to take a back seat while more and more insane articles like this come out. This line of thinking could sure help facebook's stock value.
35520015
submission
bs0d3 writes:
Right now, what is lacking across Europe, is a standard law to handle notice-and-take down's of illegal sites like the US' DMCA. Right now illegal content across Europe is subject to non-standard take down letters, some of which include no mention of what was allegedly infringed, nor in which jurisdiction in Europe it's infringed, or who to contact in your jurisdiction to challenge the claim, or even which company it is that is being represented by the law firm that gets in touch with he project. They need a system so that the notices would have to include information that makes them verifiable as correct. EU is holding a public consultation discussing notice-and-take down laws, which can be found here.
35149401
submission
bs0d3 writes:
Aereo, a company that offers live broadcast tv via the internet to New York City residents has won a preliminary injunction hearing today. Today, a federal judge has rejected a bid by major U.S. broadcasters to stop Aereo from rebroadcasting some of their programming over the Internet. District Judge Alison Nathan said that while the broadcasters have shown that they faced irreparable financial damage if were the venture were allowed to continue, Aereo also showed it would face severe harm if the requested preliminary injunction were granted. The full injunction denial ruling can be found here.
35021137
submission
bs0d3 writes:
In regards to the new 'voluntary' graduated response deal; where no one really knows how ISPs will track and accuse customers of copyright infringement, according to CNN, it may be the ISP directly spying on their customers. "But now that they're free from individual blame, there's also the strong possibility that the ISPs will be doing the data monitoring directly. That's a much bigger deal. So instead of reaching out to the Internet to track down illegally flowing bits of their movies, the studios will sit back while ISP's "sniff" the packets of data coming to and from their customers' computers." This could be a problem for people who use US based internet services. If the US wants to be an internet savvy country, they still need the competition in the market place that's always been missing; and a digital bill of rights that isn't a sneaky anti-piracy measure.
34955653
submission
bs0d3 writes:
In Holland, a major ISP known as KPN has found a major security flaw for their customers. It seems that all customers have had the same default password of 'welkom01'. Up to 140,000 customers had retained their default passwords. Once inside attackers could have found bank account and credit card numbers. KPN has since changed all the passwords of the 140,000 customers with weak passwords. They also do not believe anyone has actually been burglarized since discovering this weak spot in security.
34860451
submission
bs0d3 writes:
Voyager 1 is expected to reach interstellar space soon. It will be the first made made object to cross the heliosphere, which is the final stop in our solar system. Voyager 1, famously contained a gold phonographic record. The record was filled with iconic sights, images, and sounds from earth, and the prevailing message, "we come in peace". The disc was comprised by a man named Carl Sagan, and it contained many pieces of art, songs, and images, that are all copy-written. According to NASA, "Most of the material they used was copyrighted by the creators/owners and Sagan had to get copyright releases in order to assemble the original record. Subsequently, Warner Multimedia was able to obtain copyright releases for the 1992 version of "Murmurs of Earth" .. Unfortunately, the book and CDROM are no longer being published and are hard to find as a set.". Some used copies still exist for sale, versions of Murmurs of Earth published before 1992 will not contain the CDROM. Perhaps the next interstallar probe should be run on open source software and use creative commons music, so our first encounter doesn't involve us suing aliens for copyright infringement.
32840065
submission
bs0d3 writes:
According to a recent ruling in New York state, from Senior Judge Carmen Beauchamp Ciparick, "Merely viewing Web images of child pornography does not, absent other proof, constitute either possession or procurement within the meaning of our Penal Law. Rather, some affirmative act is required (printing, saving, downloading, etc.) to show that defendant in fact exercised dominion and control over the images that were on his screen". Which means under New York state law, creating, and possessing child pornography is illegal; the lawmakers never specifically said that merely viewing it is a crime. The prosecution mentioned that the images were saved on his hard drive via the browser cache. However the court ruled that this was not the same as having a saved image. This means that people from New York state who click the wrong link by accident will no longer face serious jail time and a lifetime of registering as a sex offender. People will be able to report what they've found to the police who can then go after the source of the child porn, instead of someone who was merely browsing the internet.
32712943
submission
bs0d3 writes:
For the third consecutive regional election, The German Pirate Party has breached the five-percent mark needed to enter the state parliament, winning 8.2 percent of the vote in state of Schleswig-Holstein.
32061713
submission
bs0d3 writes:
France has had a lasting impact on world politics over the past few years, and the same is true when talking about the internet and piracy. From having a position in the development and support of ACTA, to implementation of HADOPI, to imposing an internet tax to pay for music; France has been at the forefront of anti-piracy legislation. This week, it has been announced that current President and anti-piracy advocate Nickolas Sarskoy is unlikely to win the next election. His leading opponent is a man named Francois Hollande. Hollande has in the past opposed both ACTA and HADOPI (France's 3 strikes law). Hollande believes that ACTA, "originally intended to combat counterfeiting trade was gradually diverted from its objective, in the utmost discretion and without any democratic process." At the same time Hollande is also strongly against piracy. "Piracy, has been costly", Hollande said, "but I do not think that law enforcement alone is the answer to the problem". Will internet issues be of concern to the voters in France. It certainly is to the rest of us internet users.
29874279
submission
bs0d3 writes:
Scientists need your help in the search for life beyond Earth. The SETI Institute is asking the public to join in its hunt for signals from intelligent civilizations out there in the universe. Anyone can register on the new website, SETI Live (setilive.org), to help analyze data from SETI's radio telescope devoted to scanning the heavens for signals from E.T.
29031075
submission
bs0d3 writes:
After some litigation; ReDigi, a site where people can sell used MP3's has been found legal in America. One of the key decisions the judge had to make was whether MP3's were material objects or not. 'Material objects' are not subject to the distribution right stipulated in "17 USC 106(3)" which protects the sale of intellectual property copies. If MP3's are material objects than the resale of them is guaranteed legal under the first sale' exception in 17 USC 109. Capitol Records tried
to argue that they were material objects under one law and not under the other. Today the judge has sided with the first-sale doctrine, which means he is seeing these as material objects.
28558107
submission
bs0d3 writes:
The EU ACTA chief resigns in disgust over disrespect at citizens: "This agreement might have major consequences on citizens' lives, and still, everything is being done to prevent the European Parliament from having its say in this matter. That is why today, as I release this report for which I was in charge, I want to send a strong signal and alert the public opinion about this unacceptable situation. I will not take part in this mascarade"
