Group items tagged

" Ernesto on September 3, 2016 C: 41 Opinion The past month has been a turbulent one for the torrent community. With the closure of KickassTorrents and Torrentz.eu, two of the largest players were gone without prior notice. Today we take a look at the aftermath, showing that the big sites have expanded their userbases but that some smaller torrent sites are actually worse off now."

"The government can prosecute and imprison people for crimes based on evidence obtained from their computers-even evidence retained for years that was outside the scope of an original probable-cause search warrant, a US federal appeals court has said in a 100-page opinion paired with a blistering dissent."

[Submitted on 31 May 2012 - 08:53 ACTA copyright Karel De Gucht David Martin Marielle Gallo Brussels, May 31st 2012 - Votes were cast in three of the four parliamentary committees preparing the EU Parliament's final decision on ACTA. Citizens' concerns, as well as Internet innovators & start-ups' interests have been upheld in "Civil Liberties" (LIBE) and the "Industry" (ITRE) committees. Even the "Legal affairs" (JURI) committee, usually very conservative and keen to support repression on copyright issues, rejected Marielle Gallo's pro-ACTA opinion. Citizens should rejoice but keep up the pressure for the upcoming steps, up until the final vote scheduled for early July. A massive rejection of ACTA would create a political symbol of global scale.]

"Editor's Note: Given Richard Stallman's longtime role in promoting software that respects user freedom (including GNU, which just turned 30), his suggested "remedies" for all the ways technology can be re-designed to provide benefits while avoiding surveillance - like the smart meters example he shares below - seem particularly relevant."

Preamble Today's European Union as a supranational institution is a project of its member states rather than of its citizens. PIRATES hold the opinion that the future of Europe ought to be organised on the common interests of all European citizens, rather than the special interests of a single member state. Therefore all PIRATES in the European Union have adopted this election programme and strive together to make our vision of the European Union reality. The democratic deficit within the European Union has existed since the beginning and has not sufficiently been addressed in the course of the integration process. The primary goal of all PIRATES will be to fix this and to build a solid democratic foundation for the European Union. In order to achieve that goal...

"Citizens made to feel that they "are the subject of constant surveillance." by Cyrus Farivar - Apr 8 2014, 4:25pm CEST"

Just finished reading the court's opinion. I can only wish that the U.S. government had such fine-tuned respect for civil rights Not quoted in the linked article, but opinion paragraph 68 is very bad news for U.S. service providers: "In the second place, it should be added that that directive does not require the data in question to be retained within the European Union, with the result that it cannot be held that the control, explicitly required by Article 8(3) of the Charter, by an independent authority of compliance with the requirements of protection and security, as referred to in the two previous paragraphs, is fully ensured. Such a control, carried out on the basis of EU law, is an essential component of the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data (see, to that effect, Case C-614/10 Commission v Austria EU:C:2012:631, paragraph 37).". The Court is holding, in other words, that an E.U. network *must* be created that can prevent user's data from being transported outside the E.U., that user's data retained for law enforcement or national defense purposes cannot be transmitted or stored outside the E.U. It will take awhile for this to be transposed into national laws. But this is very good news for folks in the E.U. and for civil libertarians globally.

" Rick Falkvinge on April 20, 2014 C: 24 Opinion The fundamental problem with the copyright monopoly today is that it can't coexist with private communications as a concept. Our sharing of culture and knowledge happens as part of the private correspondence that leaves our computer, and therefore, the monopoly cannot be enforced as long as private correspondence exists."

" Andy on April 25, 2014 C: 130 Breaking A Dutch ban on the downloading of copyrighted material from unauthorized sources was cheered by the entertainment industries recently, but will fall short of achieving its aims. That's the opinion of several politicians who believe that only by providing better legal options will the situation improve. As they call for debate, a government spokesperson predicted that the ban will make it easier to chase down 'pirate' sites."

A partial win for the public. The judge makes plain that he disagrees with pre-Snowden disclosure precedent and recommends that the Supreme Court adopt the reasoning of Judge Richard Leon's ruling that finds the NSA call-metadata violative of the Fourth Amendment. The judge says his hands are tied by prior decisions in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals that gave an expansive reading to Smith v. Maryland.

"from the and-its-'fix'-only-makes-things-worse dept When incumbents whose legislative future depends on the portrayal of piracy as the destroyer of worlds commission a report on infringement, you can be sure it will be light on info and heavy on implication. Cold, hard facts generally aren't as conducive to swaying political opinion as scare tactics are. So, instead of verifiable data, the public receives this sort of thing instead. "

It is now beyond doubt that the Supreme Court is declining to authorize an Orwellian government surveillance future for the U.S. This sweeping, unanimous ruling definitely has broad application beyond cellphones, in no small part because the court recognized that cellphones of today are more like desktop computers and a host of other computerized devices than they are like the telephones of yesteryear. Hence, almost everything the court said afterward about the privacy rights in cellphones applies equally to all personal use computers. 

" By Rick Falkvinge on April 29, 2012 C: 76 Opinion The net changes the world's power structures in a much more fundamental way than changing the way a few groups of entrepreneurs are able to make money. The net is the greatest equalizer that humankind has ever invented. It is either the greatest invention since the printing press, or the greatest invention since written language. The battles we see are not a result of loss of money; they are caused by a loss of the power of narratives."

[ Andy on May 3, 2015 C: 0 Opinion While entertainment companies and authorities believe they are necessary to stem the tide of online infringement, many current anti-piracy strategies are putting Internet users at risk. ...]

Rick Falkvinge on May 10, 2015 C: 0 Opinion The purpose of public libraries is exactly the same as the effect of file-sharing. You cannot defend one while opposing the other.

[ Ernesto on May 10, 2015 C: 0 Opinion Spotify is generally hailed as a piracy killer, with music file-sharing traffic dropping in virtually every country where the service launches. However, much of this effect may be lost if recent calls to end Spotify's free tier are honored. ...]

" Report Highlights Network Readiness Index Country/Economy Profiles Infographics and Shareables Blogs and Opinions Press Releases Read the full report "

" Rick Falkvinge on June 21, 2015 C: 0 Opinion The copyright monopoly is based on the idea of an exchange. In exchange for exclusive rights, the copyright industry supplies culture and knowledge to the public. It turns out that the entire premise is a lie, as untethered creators are racing to provide culture and knowledge anyway."

" Rick Falkvinge on September 13, 2015 C: 53 Opinion Language matters. Whether we get to keep our liberties or not depends on whether those liberties are generally named in positive words. The same thing goes for the privileges of corporations."

" Rick Falkvinge on August 2, 2015 C: 215 Opinion In the still-ongoing debate over sharing it's paramount to realize that sharing and copying was always the natural state, and that restricting of copying is an arbitrary restriction of property rights."