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Via Digg, from the It’s The End Of Your Civil Rights As We Know Them Department, also known as Please Read The Manual, Also Known As the Constitution, You Neocon Psychopaths. “Benjamin Franklin long ago warned against rhetoric that demands trading individual rights for corporate security. Asking Americans to greenlight extensive, unchecked electronic surveillance by changing their very definition of privacy is a prime example of such rhetoric.”
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Nice: US authorities, The MPAA and other antipirates are desperately trying to come up with new arguments to cease The Pirate Bay’s activities, but the popular BitTorrent tracker is not planning to back down. Pirate Bay admin Brokep notes: “The US government is losing popularity every day in Europe, and people don’t want to see us give in…”
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Comcast’s filtering/throttling of torrent traffic involves forging TCP reset packets, pretending to be from one end of the torrent session. This is the same technique used by the Great Firewall of China, and a pretty clear violation of various states’ criminal impersonation statues. Could Comcast face legal action?
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Almost half of the world’s countries can be considered democracies, but only 28 qualify as “full democracies”
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Go read this. A man in Ohio was arrested for not showing his driver’s license, after refusing to let a Circuit City employee search his bag.
It’s not proper legal advice, of course, but it’s a fine starting point before a legal war ensues.
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What a stupid idea: “With warrentless wiretapping sweeping the US, a leading congressman is proposing similar measures for the Internet. This isn’t an attempt at ‘fighting terror’ but instead a new measure to reduce so-called ‘piracy’ by making the ISPs the police force.”
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Oops: “Check out the source code to the Facebook index page. This is the only page they have up right now. For more commentary check out techcrunch.com.”
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“Hot off the presses: Judge Dale Kimball has issued a 102-page ruling [PDF] on the numerous summary judgment motions in SCO v. Novell. Here is what matters most: [T]he court concludes that Novell is the owner of the UNIX and UnixWare Copyrights.”
This is really it, then? I wonder who’ll finance and drive the next assault on OSS et al, now that SCO is about to fade, er, burn away…
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P2P ’scam sites’ masquerade as genuine file-sharing sites but con inexperienced file-sharers into paying ’subscriptions’ for free software, such as BitTorrent clients and bombard them with ads and popups. uTorrent has had enough of one such site making profit from their work and is stepping up to the mark to hold them accountable.
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Oops.
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An security expert hired by 11 Oklahoma State University students picks apart the testimony of the RIAA’s own expert witness, pointing out the oversimplifications made by the RIAA in its lawsuits against suspected file-sharers. Read the PDF document, it’s awesome. This guy is basically a trusted expert by the FBI, the Secret Service, and he has various National Security Agency certifications, so he likely does undisclosed for them. Toss in little things like a CISSP and being keynote speaker at security conferences…? He outright pwnz the RIAA’s “technical” nonsense on file sharing in this legal document, and it’s awesome.
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Google has been filtering its search results for years, very useful for the Chinese government, and of course content owner representatives like the MPAA and RIAA. According to Google, the filtering of torrents from the search results is a response to the DMCA complaints they receive.
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This story is completely ridiculous, and I can’t believe the wider media hasn’t picked up on it. Well, I can believe it, given the subject matter, and they’re just lowly prisoners, but good lord. They still have civil liberties in prison, and to expect people to be the masters of their domain or face additional persecution? Outrageous, and more here.
NBC News got clowned at DefCon, Slashdot just reported:
“Dateline NBC allegedly attempted to infiltrate the DefCon hackerfest with a producer using a hidden camera. The show hoped to tape hackers admitting to illegal activities, but DefCon got wind of the plot and displayed the would-be-mole’s photo before every presentation. Dateline refused to deny the planned infiltration. ‘ All journalists covering DefCon sign an agreement upon registering for the conference that outlines the rules, but the DefCon organizers say the mole apparently registered as a regular attendee, thereby bypassing the legal agreement. Dateline NBC is best known for its controversial To Catch A Predator series, which uses hidden cameras to tape men who are allegedly seeking to have sex with minors they met online.”
Serves them right.
“DefCon staff lured her to a large hall telling her that the Spot the Fed contest was in session and that she could get a picture of an undercover federal agent at the contest. When she sat down, Jeff Moss, DefCon’s founder, announced that they were changing the game. Instead of Spot the Fed, they were going to play Spot the Undercover Reporter and then announced, “And there’s one in here right now.” Madigan, realizing she’d been had, jumped from her seat and bolted out the door with reporters carrying cameras chasing after her through the parking lot and to her car.”
More from Digg: “Despite the fact that BitTorrent has been around for a good 6 years now, the lightning fast file sharing protocol hasn’t completely taken off in the mainstream. Since we post a decent amount about BitTorrent around here, we figured it was just time we put out a beginner’s guide to BitTorrent.”
I.e., if you want to start learning how to download “free” media to your system in the modern world with torrents, read this. Go. Now.
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Customers who do not opt out within 30 days of receiving the Comcast Arbitration Notice will relinquish their right to pursue any legal remedies against Comcast in court, including claims for negligence, fraud or intentional wrongdoing. This means you lose the right to sue Comcast…
…while Comcast retains the right to sue YOU.
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LIBERTYVILLE, Ill. - High school students are going to be held accountable for what they post on blogs and on social-networking Web sites such as MySpace.com.
…and this song just came on as I wrote this, out of 3,800 songs. Righteous.
EDIT: Odd, LJ didn’t grab the song. Jimi Hendrix - The Star Spangled Banner.
