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Gonzalo San Gil, PhD.

Awful Spanish Copyright Law May Be Stalled Waiting For EU Court Ruling On Plans To Chan... - 0 views

www.techdirt.com

more critics international spanish copyright law

shared by Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 26 Sep 14 - No Cached
  • Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 26 Sep 14
     
    "from the stopping-good-ideas,-stopping-bad-ideas dept Techdirt has written about Spain's new copyright law a couple of times. There, we concentrated on the "Google tax" that threatens the digital commons and open access in that country. But alongside this extremely foolish idea, there was another good one: getting rid of the anachronistic levy on recording devices that was supposed to "compensate" for private copying (as if any such compensation were needed), and paying collecting societies directly out of Spain's state budget. "
  • Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 26 Sep 14
     
    "from the stopping-good-ideas,-stopping-bad-ideas dept Techdirt has written about Spain's new copyright law a couple of times. There, we concentrated on the "Google tax" that threatens the digital commons and open access in that country. But alongside this extremely foolish idea, there was another good one: getting rid of the anachronistic levy on recording devices that was supposed to "compensate" for private copying (as if any such compensation were needed), and paying collecting societies directly out of Spain's state budget. "
Gary Edwards

The True Story of How the Patent Bar Captured a Court and Shrank the Intellectual Commo... - 1 views

www.cato-unbound.org/...rt-shrank-intellectual-commons

patents software-patents

shared by Gary Edwards on 13 Sep 14 - No Cached
  • The change in the law wrought by the Federal Circuit can also be viewed substantively through the controversy over software patents. Throughout the 1960s, the USPTO refused to award patents for software innovations. However, several of the USPTO’s decisions were overruled by the patent-friendly U.S. Court of Customs and Patent Appeals, which ordered that software patents be granted. In Gottschalk v. Benson (1972) and Parker v. Flook (1978), the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the Court of Customs and Patent Appeals, holding that mathematical algorithms (and therefore software) were not patentable subject matter. In 1981, in Diamond v. Diehr, the Supreme Court upheld a software patent on the grounds that the patent in question involved a physical process—the patent was issued for software used in the molding of rubber. While affirming their prior ruling that mathematical formulas are not patentable in the abstract, the Court held that an otherwise patentable invention did not become unpatentable simply because it utilized a computer.
  • In the hands of the newly established Federal Circuit, however, this small scope for software patents in precedent was sufficient to open the floodgates. In a series of decisions culminating in State Street Bank v. Signature Financial Group (1998), the Federal Circuit broadened the criteria for patentability of software and business methods substantially, allowing protection as long as the innovation “produces a useful, concrete and tangible result.” That broadened criteria led to an explosion of low-quality software patents, from Amazon’s 1-Click checkout system to Twitter’s pull-to-refresh feature on smartphones. The GAO estimates that more than half of all patents granted in recent years are software-related. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court continues to hold, as in Parker v. Flook, that computer software algorithms are not patentable, and has begun to push back against the Federal Circuit. In Bilski v. Kappos (2010), the Supreme Court once again held that abstract ideas are not patentable, and in Alice v. CLS (2014), it ruled that simply applying an abstract idea on a computer does not suffice to make the idea patent-eligible. It still is not clear what portion of existing software patents Alice invalidates, but it could be a significant one.
  • Supreme Court justices also recognize the Federal Circuit’s insubordination. In oral arguments in Carlsbad Technology v. HIF Bio (2009), Chief Justice John Roberts joked openly about it:
  • ...17 more annotations...
  • The Opportunity of the Commons
  • As a result of the Federal Circuit’s pro-patent jurisprudence, our economy has been flooded with patents that would otherwise not have been granted. If more patents meant more innovation, then we would now be witnessing a spectacular economic boom. Instead, we have been living through what Tyler Cowen has called a Great Stagnation. The fact that patents have increased while growth has not is known in the literature as the “patent puzzle.” As Michele Boldrin and David Levine put it, “there is no empirical evidence that [patents] serve to increase innovation and productivity, unless productivity is identified with the number of patents awarded—which, as evidence shows, has no correlation with measured productivity.”
  • While more patents have not resulted in faster economic growth, they have resulted in more patent lawsuits.
  • Software patents have characteristics that make them particularly susceptible to litigation. Unlike, say, chemical patents, software patents are plagued by a problem of description. How does one describe a software innovation in such a way that anyone searching for it will easily find it? As Christina Mulligan and Tim Lee demonstrate, chemical formulas are indexable, meaning that as the number of chemical patents grow, it will still be easy to determine if a molecule has been patented. Since software innovations are not indexable, they estimate that “patent clearance by all firms would require many times more hours of legal research than all patent lawyers in the United States can bill in a year. The result has been an explosion of patent litigation.” Software and business method patents, estimate James Bessen and Michael Meurer, are 2 and 7 times more likely to be litigated than other patents, respectively (4 and 13 times more likely than chemical patents).
  • Software patents make excellent material for predatory litigation brought by what are often called “patent trolls.”
  • Trolls use asymmetries in the rules of litigation to legally extort millions of dollars from innocent parties. For example, one patent troll, Innovatio IP Ventures, LLP, acquired patents that implicated Wi-Fi. In 2011, it started sending demand letters to coffee shops and hotels that offered wireless Internet access, offering to settle for $2,500 per location. This amount was far in excess of the 9.56 cents per device that Innovatio was entitled to under the “Fair, Reasonable, and Non-Discriminatory” licensing promises attached to their portfolio, but it was also much less than the cost of trial, and therefore it was rational for firms to pay. Cisco stepped in and spent $13 million in legal fees on the case, and settled on behalf of their customers for 3.2 cents per device. Other manufacturers had already licensed Innovatio’s portfolio, but that didn’t stop their customers from being targeted by demand letters.
  • Litigation cost asymmetries are magnified by the fact that most patent trolls are nonpracticing entities. This means that when patent infringement trials get to the discovery phase, they will cost the troll very little—a firm that does not operate a business has very few records to produce.
  • But discovery can cost a medium or large company millions of dollars. Using an event study methodology, James Bessen and coauthors find that infringement lawsuits by nonpracticing entities cost publicly traded companies $83 billion per year in stock market capitalization, while plaintiffs gain less than 10 percent of that amount.
  • Software patents also reduce innovation in virtue of their cumulative nature and the fact that many of them are frequently inputs into a single product. Law professor Michael Heller coined the phrase “tragedy of the anticommons” to refer to a situation that mirrors the well-understood “tragedy of the commons.” Whereas in a commons, multiple parties have the right to use a resource but not to exclude others, in an anticommons, multiple parties have the right to exclude others, and no one is therefore able to make effective use of the resource. The tragedy of the commons results in overuse of the resource; the tragedy of the anticommons results in underuse.
  • In order to cope with the tragedy of the anticommons, we should carefully investigate the opportunity of  the commons. The late Nobelist Elinor Ostrom made a career of studying how communities manage shared resources without property rights. With appropriate self-governance institutions, Ostrom found again and again that a commons does not inevitably lead to tragedy—indeed, open access to shared resources can provide collective benefits that are not available under other forms of property management.
  • This suggests that—litigation costs aside—patent law could be reducing the stock of ideas rather than expanding it at current margins.
  • Advocates of extensive patent protection frequently treat the commons as a kind of wasteland. But considering the problems in our patent system, it is worth looking again at the role of well-tailored limits to property rights in some contexts. Just as we all benefit from real property rights that no longer extend to the highest heavens, we would also benefit if the scope of patent protection were more narrowly drawn.
  • Reforming the Patent System
  • This analysis raises some obvious possibilities for reforming the patent system. Diane Wood, Chief Judge of the 7th Circuit, has proposed ending the Federal Circuit’s exclusive jurisdiction over patent appeals—instead, the Federal Circuit could share jurisdiction with the other circuit courts. While this is a constructive suggestion, it still leaves the door open to the Federal Circuit playing “a leading role in shaping patent law,” which is the reason for its capture by patent interests. It would be better instead simply to abolish the Federal Circuit and return to the pre-1982 system, in which patents received no special treatment in appeals. This leaves open the possibility of circuit splits, which the creation of the Federal Circuit was designed to mitigate, but there are worse problems than circuit splits, and we now have them.
  • Another helpful reform would be for Congress to limit the scope of patentable subject matter via statute. New Zealand has done just that, declaring that software is “not an invention” to get around WTO obligations to respect intellectual property. Congress should do the same with respect to both software and business methods.
  • Finally, even if the above reforms were adopted, there would still be a need to address the asymmetries in patent litigation that result in predatory “troll” lawsuits. While the holding in Alice v. CLS arguably makes a wide swath of patents invalid, those patents could still be used in troll lawsuits because a ruling of invalidity for each individual patent might not occur until late in a trial. Current legislation in Congress addresses this class of problem by mandating disclosures, shifting fees in the case of spurious lawsuits, and enabling a review of the patent’s validity before a trial commences.
  • What matters for prosperity is not just property rights in the abstract, but good property-defining institutions. Without reform, our patent system will continue to favor special interests and forestall economic growth.
  • Gary Edwards on 13 Sep 14
     
    "Libertarians intuitively understand the case for patents: just as other property rights internalize the social benefits of improvements to land, automobile maintenance, or business investment, patents incentivize the creation of new inventions, which might otherwise be undersupplied. So far, so good. But it is important to recognize that the laws that govern property, intellectual or otherwise, do not arise out of thin air. Rather, our political institutions, with all their virtues and foibles, determine the contours of property-the exact bundle of rights that property holders possess, their extent, and their limitations. Outlining efficient property laws is not a trivial problem. The optimal contours of property are neither immutable nor knowable a priori. For example, in 1946, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the age-old common law doctrine that extended real property rights to the heavens without limit. The advent of air travel made such extensive property rights no longer practicable-airlines would have had to cobble together a patchwork of easements, acre by acre, for every corridor through which they flew, and they would have opened themselves up to lawsuits every time their planes deviated from the expected path. The Court rightly abridged property rights in light of these empirical realities. In defining the limits of patent rights, our political institutions have gotten an analogous question badly wrong. A single, politically captured circuit court with exclusive jurisdiction over patent appeals has consistently expanded the scope of patentable subject matter. This expansion has resulted in an explosion of both patents and patent litigation, with destructive consequences. "
  • Paul Merrell on 14 Sep 14
     
    I added a comment to the page's article. Patents are antithetical to the precepts of Libertarianism and do not involve Natural Law rights. But I agree with the author that the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit should be abolished. It's a failed experiment.
Gonzalo San Gil, PhD.

How to configure peer-to-peer VPN on Linux - Xmodulo - 0 views

xmodulo.com/re-peer-to-peer-vpn-linux.html

how to configure vpn linux networking virtual private network web GNU_Linux

shared by Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 10 Oct 14 - No Cached
  • Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 10 Oct 14
     
    "Last updated on October 9, 2014 Authored by Dan Nanni Leave a comment A traditional VPN (e.g., OpenVPN, PPTP) is composed of a VPN server and one or more VPN clients connected to the server. When any two VPN clients talk to each other, the VPN server needs to relay VPN traffic between them. The problem of such a hub-and-spoke type of VPN topology is that the VPN server can easily become a performance bottleneck as the number of connected clients increase"
  • Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 10 Oct 14
     
    "Last updated on October 9, 2014 Authored by Dan Nanni Leave a comment A traditional VPN (e.g., OpenVPN, PPTP) is composed of a VPN server and one or more VPN clients connected to the server. When any two VPN clients talk to each other, the VPN server needs to relay VPN traffic between them. The problem of such a hub-and-spoke type of VPN topology is that the VPN server can easily become a performance bottleneck as the number of connected clients increase"
Gonzalo San Gil, PhD.

Shutting Down Pirate Sites is Ineffective, European Commission Finds | TorrentFreak - 0 views

torrentfreak.com/ropean-commission-finds-150514

alledged pirate sites shutdown does not work Intellectual Property enforcement miss just censorship

shared by Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 15 May 15 - No Cached
  • Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 15 May 15
     
    " Ernesto on May 14, 2015 C: 0 Breaking Shutting down pirate websites such as The Pirate Bay is high on the agenda of the entertainment industries. However, according to research published by the European Commission's Joint Research Centre, these raids are relatively ineffective and potentially counterproductive."
  • Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 15 May 15
     
    " Ernesto on May 14, 2015 C: 0 Breaking Shutting down pirate websites such as The Pirate Bay is high on the agenda of the entertainment industries. However, according to research published by the European Commission's Joint Research Centre, these raids are relatively ineffective and potentially counterproductive."
Gonzalo San Gil, PhD.

Thanks for the Really Counter-Productive DMCA Complaints | TorrentFreak - 1 views

torrentfreak.com/ductive-dmca-complaints-150524

thanks dmca counter-productive complaints

shared by Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 25 May 15 - No Cached
  • Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 25 May 15
     
    " Andy on May 24, 2015 C: 0 Opinion While plenty of sites infringe copyright on a regular basis, this site is never one of them. However, that doesn't stop copyright holders from trying to disappear our pages from Google search. Sadly, the latest sorry efforts only attracted our attention to even bigger mistakes, such as the Web Sheriff trying to take down a movie's own Kickstarter page."
  • Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 25 May 15
     
    " Andy on May 24, 2015 C: 0 Opinion While plenty of sites infringe copyright on a regular basis, this site is never one of them. However, that doesn't stop copyright holders from trying to disappear our pages from Google search. Sadly, the latest sorry efforts only attracted our attention to even bigger mistakes, such as the Web Sheriff trying to take down a movie's own Kickstarter page."
Paul Merrell

WSO2 adds Google Gadgets to mashup server | InfoWorld | News | 2008-07-21 | By Paul Krill - 0 views

www.infoworld.com/...wso2-google_1.html

foss google gadgets mashups

shared by Paul Merrell on 22 Jul 08 - Cached
  • WSO2 is releasing on Monday WSO Mashup Server Version 1.5, an open-source product for deploying mashup services featuring Google Gadgets support and interfaces to relational databases and other data sources.
  • The mashup server uses JavaScript to describe logic for acquiring information, combining data, and exposing it to a user. Information can be acquired from sources such as Web services and scraped pages and published as a new Web service, feeds, Web pages, or notifications. Version 1.5 features stubs and templates for Google Gadgets, which can be hosted within Mashup Server or externally such as in an iGoogle page. A beta dashboard add-in is featured for hosting Google Gadgets within Mashup Server. Google Gadgets enable dynamic content to be placed on a Web page. Data services enhancements provide Web services interfaces to relational databases and other data sources such as Excel spreadsheets and comma-separated values.
  • Paul Merrell on 22 Jul 08
  • anonymous on 02 Oct 13
     
    Most quality online stores. Know whether you are a trusted online retailer in the world. Whatever we can buy very good quality. and do not hesitate. Everything is very high quality. Including clothes, accessories, bags, cups. Highly recommended. This is one of the trusted online store in the world. View now www.retrostyler.com
Paul Merrell

Microsoft debuts early test version of Oxite open source blogging engine | Open Source ... - 0 views

blogs.zdnet.com/open-source

Microsoft oxite cms blogging

shared by Paul Merrell on 10 Dec 08 - Cached
  • WordPress has more competition to be. Microsoft’s Codeplex team has developed an open source blogging engine that can support simple blogs and large web sites such as its own MIX Online.
  • “Oxite was developed carefully and painstakingly to be a great blogging platform, or a starting point for your own web site project with CMS needs,” according to Microsoft.com.
  • Oxite offers support for multiple blogs per site.  ”Oxite includes the ability to create and edit an arbitrary set of pages on your site. Want an ‘about’ page? You got it. Need a special page about your dogs, with sub-pages for each of those special animals? Yep, no worries,” Microsoft continues. “The ability to add pages as a child of another page is all built in. The web-based editing and creation interface lets you put whatever HTML you want onto your pages, and the built-in authentication system means that only you will be able to edit them.
  • Paul Merrell on 10 Dec 08
     
    The ability to create child pages of a parent page is something I haven't seen before in a blogging app. There are a ton of CMS that offer such features, but blogs have been an exception.
Paul Merrell

The Self-Describing Web - 0 views

www.w3.org/...ibingDocuments-2008-12-03.html

W3C TAG finding self-describing documents

shared by Paul Merrell on 04 Dec 08 - Cached
  • Abstract The Web is designed to support flexible exploration of information by human users and by automated agents. For such exploration to be productive, information published by many different sources and for a variety of purposes must be comprehensible to a wide range of Web client software, and to users of that software. HTTP and other Web technologies can be used to deploy resource representations that are in an important sense self-describing: information about the encodings used for each representation is provided explicitly within the representation. Starting with a URI, there is a standard algorithm that a user agent can apply to retrieve and interpret such representations. Furthermore, representations can be grounded in the Web, by ensuring that specifications required to interpret them are determined unambiguously based on the URI, and that explicit references connect the pertinent specifications to each other. Web-grounding reduces ambiguity as to what has been published in the Web, and by whom. When such self-describing, Web-grounded resources are linked together, the Web as a whole can support reliable, ad hoc discovery of information. This finding describes how document formats, markup conventions, attribute values, and other data formats can be designed to facilitate the deployment of self-describing, Web-grounded Web content.
Paul Merrell

Rapid - Press Releases - EUROPA - 0 views

europa.eu/...pressReleasesAction.do

Intel antitrust DG Competion

shared by Paul Merrell on 13 May 09 - Cached
  • The Commission found that Intel engaged in two specific forms of illegal practice. First, Intel gave wholly or partially hidden rebates to computer manufacturers on condition that they bought all, or almost all, their x86 CPUs from Intel. Intel also made direct payments to a major retailer on condition it stock only computers with Intel x86 CPUs. Such rebates and payments effectively prevented customers - and ultimately consumers - from choosing alternative products. Second, Intel made direct payments to computer manufacturers to halt or delay the launch of specific products containing competitors’ x86 CPUs and to limit the sales channels available to these products.
  • Intel awarded major computer manufacturers rebates on condition that they purchased all or almost all of their supplies, at least in certain defined segments, from Intel: Intel gave rebates to computer manufacturer A from December 2002 to December 2005 conditional on this manufacturer purchasing exclusively Intel CPUs Intel gave rebates to computer manufacturer B from November 2002 to May 2005 conditional on this manufacturer purchasing no less than 95% of its CPU needs for its business desktop computers from Intel (the remaining 5% that computer manufacturer B could purchase from rival chip maker AMD was then subject to further restrictive conditions set out below) Intel gave rebates to computer manufacturer C from October 2002 to November 2005 conditional on this manufacturer purchasing no less than 80% of its CPU needs for its desktop and notebook computers from Intel Intel gave rebates to computer manufacturer D in 2007 conditional on this manufacturer purchasing its CPU needs for its notebook computers exclusively from Intel.
  • Furthermore, Intel made payments to major retailer Media Saturn Holding from October 2002 to December 2007 on condition that it exclusively sold Intel-based PCs in all countries in which Media Saturn Holding is active.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • In its decision, the Commission does not object to rebates in themselves but to the conditions Intel attached to those rebates.
  • Intel structured its pricing policy to ensure that a computer manufacturer which opted to buy AMD CPUs for that part of its needs that was open to competition would consequently lose the rebate (or a large part of it) that Intel provided for the much greater part of its needs for which the computer manufacturer had no choice but to buy from Intel. The computer manufacturer would therefore have to pay Intel a higher price for each of the units supplied for which the computer manufacturer had no alternative but to buy from Intel. In other words, should a computer manufacturer fail to purchase virtually all its x86 CPU requirements from Intel, it would forego the possibility of obtaining a significant rebate on any of its very high volumes of Intel purchases. Moreover, in order to be able to compete with the Intel rebates, for the part of the computer manufacturers' supplies that was up for grabs, a competitor that was just as efficient as Intel would have had to offer a price for its CPUs lower than its costs of producing those CPUs, even if the average price of its CPUs was lower than that of Intel.
  • For example, rival chip manufacturer AMD offered one million free CPUs to one particular computer manufacturer. If the computer manufacturer had accepted all of these, it would have lost Intel's rebate on its many millions of remaining CPU purchases, and would have been worse off overall simply for having accepted this highly competitive offer. In the end, the computer manufacturer took only 160,000 CPUs for free.
  • Intel also interfered directly in the relations between computer manufacturers and AMD. Intel awarded computer manufacturers payments - unrelated to any particular purchases from Intel - on condition that these computer manufacturers postponed or cancelled the launch of specific AMD-based products and/or put restrictions on the distribution of specific AMD-based products. The Commission found that these payments had the potential effect of preventing products for which there was a consumer demand from coming to the market. The Commission found the following specific cases: For the 5% of computer manufacturer B’s business that was not subject to the conditional rebate outlined above, Intel made further payments to computer manufacturer B provided that this manufacturer : sold AMD-based business desktops only to small and medium enterprises sold AMD-based business desktops only via direct distribution channels (as opposed to through distributors) and postponed the launch of its first AMD-based business desktop in Europe by 6 months. Intel made payments to computer manufacturer E provided that this manufacturer postponed the launch of an AMD-based notebook from September 2003 to January 2004. Before the conditional rebate to computer manufacturer D outlined above, Intel made payments to this manufacturer provided that it postponed the launch of AMD-based notebooks from September 2006 to the end of 2006.
  • The Commission obtained proof of the existence of many of the conditions found to be illegal in the antitrust decision even though they were not made explicit in Intel’s contracts. Such proof is based on a broad range of contemporaneous evidence such as e-mails obtained inter alia from unannounced on-site inspections, in responses to formal requests for information and in a number of formal statements made to the Commission by the other companies concerned. In addition, there is evidence that Intel had sought to conceal the conditions associated with its payments.
  • Paul Merrell on 13 May 09
     
    This is an uncharacteristically strong press release from DG Competition. I still must read the order, but the description of the evidence is incredible, particularly the finding of concealment of its rebate conditions by Intel.
Gary Edwards

Sun pitches new cloud as 'Open Platform' * - 0 views

www.theregister.co.uk/...sun_cloud_platform

Cloud-Computing Cloud-API sun tim-bray

shared by Gary Edwards on 03 Apr 09 - Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 03 Apr 09
     
    Sun takes on the problem of interoperability and portability of applications in a world where there will be many many clouds. At the roll out of the Sun Cloud, key executives explain Sun's implementation of Open Cloud API's and what they see as a pressing need for management tools that will allow some standardization across clouds.

    Sun's Open Cloud API plan is a clean reuse of existing Open Web API's.

    "..... The underpinning of the Open Cloud Platform that Sun will be pitching to developers is a set of cloud APIs, the creation of which is focused under Project Kenai and which has been released under a Community Commons open source license. Sun wants lots of feedback on the APIs and wants these APIs to become a standard too, hence the open license. These APIs describes how virtual elements in a cloud are created, started, stopped, and hibernated using HTTP commands such as GET, PUT, and POST...."

    "...... The upshot is that these APIs will allow programmatic access to virtual infrastructure from Java, PHP, Python, and Ruby and that means system admins can script how virtual resources are deployed. The APIs, as co-creator Tim Bray explains in his blog, are written in JavaScript Object Notation (JSON), not XML. The Q-Layer software is a graphical representation of what is going on down in the APIs, and you can moving virtual resources into the cloud with a click of a mouse using the dashboard or programmatically using the APIs from those four programming languages listed above. (PHP support is not yet available, but will be)....."
  • David Corking on 08 Apr 09
     
    I can see why Sun picked those four languages first. Can I assume that with a bit of work, this API will be usable from any language with a C "foreign function interface", such as Perl, Common Lisp, Bourne shell, Squeak Smalltalk, and others that your server application might be written in?
  • David Corking on 08 Apr 09
     
    I read this comment that largely answers my question at: http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2009/03/16/Sun-Cloud "So right now JSON out of a shell tool is not so good. More things like this will create pressure for development of tools to change that, but years of widespread XML/HTML deployment have only produced a few oddly maintained tools. Perhaps that's because you can scrape quite a bit of the web with a couple sed passes, and if I were to have to deal with the mentioned tools, that's probably the route I'd take." (seth w. klein) In other words, with a bit of work, _anything_ that can talk text over HTTP can do this with a bit of work, but an object-oriented is likely to be more at home with JSON (JavaScript Object Notation)
Paul Merrell

Reset The Net - Privacy Pack - 1 views

pack.resetthenet.org

surveillance state digital-privacy NSA-reform Reset-the-Net

shared by Paul Merrell on 03 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • This June 5th, I pledge to take strong steps to protect my freedom from government mass surveillance. I expect the services I use to do the same.
  • Fight for the Future and Center for Rights will contact you about future campaigns. Privacy Policy
  • Paul Merrell on 03 Jun 14
     
    I wound up joining this campaign at the urging of the ACLU after checking the Privacy Policy. The Reset the Net campaign seems to be endorsed by a lot of change-oriented groups, from the ACLU to Greenpeac to the Pirate Party. A fair number of groups with a Progressive agenda, but certainly not limited to them. The right answer to that situation is to urge other groups to endorse, not to avoid the campaign. Single-issue coalition-building is all about focusing on an area of agreement rather than worrying about who you are rubbing elbows with.  I have been looking for a a bipartisan group that's tackling government surveillance issues via mass actions but has no corporate sponsors. This might be the one. The reason: Corporate types like Google have no incentive to really butt heads with the government voyeurs. They are themselves engaged in massive surveillance of their users and certainly will not carry the battle for digital privacy over to the private sector. But this *is* a battle over digital privacy and legally defining user privacy rights in the private sector is just as important as cutting back on government surveillance. As we have learned through the Snowden disclosures, what the private internet companies have, the NSA can and does get.  The big internet services successfully pushed in the U.S. for authorization to publish more numbers about how many times they pass private data to the government, but went no farther. They wanted to be able to say they did something, but there's a revolving door of staffers between NSA and the big internet companies and the internet service companies' data is an open book to the NSA.   The big internet services are not champions of their users' privacy. If they were, they would be featuring end-to-end encryption with encryption keys unique to each user and unknown to the companies.  Like some startups in Europe are doing. E.g., the Wuala.com filesync service in Switzerland (first 5 GB of storage free). Compare tha
  • Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 04 Jun 14
     
    "This June 5th, I pledge to take strong steps to protect my freedom from government mass surveillance. I expect the services I use to do the same."
  • Paul Merrell on 07 Jun 14
     
    I wound up joining this campaign at the urging of the ACLU after checking the Privacy Policy. The Reset the Net campaign seems to be endorsed by a lot of change-oriented groups, from the ACLU to Greenpeac to the Pirate Party. A fair number of groups with a Progressive agenda, but certainly not limited to them. The right answer to that situation is to urge other groups to endorse, not to avoid the campaign. Single-issue coalition-building is all about focusing on an area of agreement rather than worrying about who you are rubbing elbows with.  I have been looking for a a bipartisan group that's tackling government surveillance issues via mass actions but has no corporate sponsors. This might be the one. The reason: Corporate types like Google have no incentive to really butt heads with the government voyeurs. They are themselves engaged in massive surveillance of their users and certainly will not carry the battle for digital privacy over to the private sector. But this *is* a battle over digital privacy and legally defining user privacy rights in the private sector is just as important as cutting back on government surveillance. As we have learned through the Snowden disclosures, what the private internet companies have, the NSA can and does get.  The big internet services successfully pushed in the U.S. for authorization to publish more numbers about how many times they pass private data to the government, but went no farther. They wanted to be able to say they did something, but there's a revolving door of staffers between NSA and the big internet companies and the internet service companies' data is an open book to the NSA.   The big internet services are not champions of their users' privacy. If they were, they would be featuring end-to-end encryption with encryption keys unique to each user and unknown to the companies.  Like some startups in Europe are doing. E.g., the Wuala.com filesync service in Switzerland (first 5 GB of storage free). Com
Gonzalo San Gil, PhD.

Save, Create and run your own pirate bay - 0 views

openbay.isohunt.to

IsoHunt open source The Pirate bay save create run your own future can be stopped people cmuters network hope life share

shared by Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 22 Dec 14 - No Cached
  • Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 22 Dec 14
     
    [... Create and run your own pirate bay We, the team that brought you Isohunt.to and oldpiratebay.org, are bringing you the next step in the torrent evolution. Open Pirate Bay source code. History of torrent sites such as Isohunt and The Pirate Bay gives us a lesson that would be a crime not to learn. The era of individual torrent sites is over. That is why we created Pirate Bay open source. It's free for everyone. Now you can create your own copy of The Pirate Bay! Update and change this code to make it better for everyone. We give you three simple options: ...] [# ! While... # ! … there were Pe@ple, computers and #networks, there is #hope. # ! #Life is #Share.]
  • Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 22 Dec 14
     
    [... Create and run your own pirate bay We, the team that brought you Isohunt.to and oldpiratebay.org, are bringing you the next step in the torrent evolution. Open Pirate Bay source code. History of torrent sites such as Isohunt and The Pirate Bay gives us a lesson that would be a crime not to learn. The era of individual torrent sites is over. That is why we created Pirate Bay open source. It's free for everyone. Now you can create your own copy of The Pirate Bay! Update and change this code to make it better for everyone. We give you three simple options: ...]
Paul Merrell

U.S. Says It Spied on 89,000 Targets Last Year, But the Number Is Deceptive | Threat Le... - 0 views

www.wired.com/...foreigners-targeted-for-spying

surveillance-state NSA FBI stats 2013

shared by Paul Merrell on 29 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • About 89,000 foreigners or organizations were targeted for spying under a U.S. surveillance order last year, according to a new transparency report. The report was released for the first time Friday by the Office of the Director of Intelligence, upon order of the president, in the wake of surveillance leaks by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. But the report, which covers only surveillance orders issued in 2013, doesn’t tell the whole story about how many individuals the spying targeted or how many Americans were caught in the surveillance that targeted foreigners. Civil liberties groups say the real number is likely “orders of magnitude” larger than this. “Even if it was an honest definition of ‘target’—that is, an individual instead of a group—that also is not encompassing those who are ancillary to a target and are caught up in the dragnet,” says Kurt Opsahl, deputy general counsel of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
  • The report, remarkably, shows that the government obtained just one order last year under Section 702 of FISA—which allows for bulk collection of data on foreigners—and that this one order covered 89,138 targets. But, as the report notes, “target” can refer to “an individual person, a group, an organization composed of multiple individuals or a foreign power that possesses or is likely to communicate foreign intelligence information.” Furthermore, Section 702 orders are actually certificates issued by the FISA Court that can cover surveillance of an entire facility. And since, as the government points out in its report, the government cannot know how many people use a facility, the figure only “reflects an estimate of the number of known users of particular facilities (sometimes referred to as selectors) subject to intelligence collection under those Certifications,” the report notes.
  • “If you’re actually trying to get a sense of the number of human beings affected or the number of Americans affected, the number of people affected is vastly, vastly larger,” says Julian Sanchez, senior fellow at the Cato Institute. “And how many of those are Americans is impossible to say. But [although] you may not think you are routinely communicating with foreign persons, [this] is not any kind of assurance that your communications are not part of the traffic subject to interception.” Sanchez points out that each individual targeted is likely communicating with dozens or hundred of others, whose communications will be picked up in the surveillance. “And probably a lot of these targets are not individuals but entire web sites or companies. While [a company like the Chinese firm] Huawei might be a target, thousands of emails used by thousands of employees will be swept up.” How many of those employees might be American or communicating with Americans is unknown.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • Also revealed in today’s report is the number of times the government has queried the controversial phone records database it created by collecting the phone records of every subscriber from U.S. providers. According to the report, the government used 423 “selectors” to search its massive phone records database, which includes records going back to at least 2006 when the program began. A search involves querying a specific phone number or device ID that appears in the database. The government has long maintained that its collection of phone records isn’t a violation of its authority, since it only views the records of specific individuals targeted in an investigation. But such searches, even if targeted at phone numbers used by foreigners, would include calls made to and from Americans as well as calls exchanged with people two or three hops out from the targeted number.
  • In its report, the government indicated that the 423 selectors involved just 248 “known or presumed” Americans whose information was collected by the agency in the database. But Opsahl says that both of these numbers are deceptive given what we know about the database and how it’s been used. “We know it’s affecting millions of people,” he points out. But “then we have estimated numbers of affected people [that are just] in the three digits. That requires some effort [on the government's part] to find a way to do the definition of the number [in such a way] to make it as small as possible.”
  • One additional figure today’s report covers is the number of National Security Letters the government issued last year to businesses to obtain data on accountholders and users—19,212. NSLs are written demands from the FBI that compel internet service providers, credit companies, financial institutions and others to hand over confidential records about their customers, such as subscriber information, phone numbers and e-mail addresses, websites visited, and more. These letters are a powerful tool because they do not require court approval, and they come with a built-in gag order, preventing recipients from disclosing to anyone that they have received an NSL. An FBI agent looking into a possible anti-terrorism case can self-issue an NSL to a credit bureau, ISP, or phone company with only the sign-off of the Special Agent in Charge of their office. The FBI has merely to assert that the information is “relevant” to an investigation into international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities.
  • The FBI has issued hundreds of thousands of NSLs over the years and has been reprimanded for abusing them. Last year a federal judge ruled that the use of NSLs is unconstitutional, due to the gag order that accompanies them, and ordered the government to stop using them. Her ruling, however, was stayed pending the government’s appeal.
  • According to the government’s report today, the 19,000 NSLs issued last year involved more than 38,000 requests for information.
Gary Edwards

Box, Dropbox rethink future in midst of price war - San Jose Mercury News - 0 views

www.mercurynews.com/...rethink-future-midst-price-war

wordSDK Office-365

shared by Gary Edwards on 12 Sep 14 - No Cached
  • "Right now there is a huge arms race between Apple, Google, Microsoft, and now Amazon has thrown their hat in the ring," said Vineet Jain, co-founder and CEO of Egnyte, a Mountain View company that sells software that allows companies to store data both in the cloud and on premise. "These four guys are capable of making it free or nearly free, and the price points that you're seeing from these vendors such as Box will have to come down, or they will have a shrinking user base. You cannot out-compete Microsoft and Google on price -- you just can't."
  • For Box and Dropbox -- and the investors who have poured millions of dollars into them -- there's a lot of money on the line. In 2013, cloud storage companies raised $1.2 billion from venture capitalists, compared to $427 million in 2010 and $185 million in 2009, according to the Dow Jones. Silicon Valley cloud storage companies accounted for 14 of the top 20 venture-backed deals, with Box leading with more than $350 million in funds raised; Dropbox raised $250 million.
  • "The problem is pricing on storage has just been collapsing," said Randy Chou, CEO and co-founder of Panzura, which sells hardware and software that allows businesses to collaborate on massive documents, and counts Electronic Arts and the U.S. Department of Justice among its customers. "Whatever anyone is paying today, they'll pay half next year, and half the year after that."
  • Gary Edwards on 12 Sep 14
     
    Commentary on the expected Box and Dropbox IPO, which are being delayed. The author explains the delay, but misses the incredibl eimpact Office 365 is having on the mobile Cloud Productivity platform. And this is the platform war of all wars. It is the race to dominate the 3rd Wave of computing. "It wasn't long ago that cloud storage companies such as Box and Dropbox were among the hottest startups in Silicon Valley, blessed with vast amounts of venture capital and poised to go public in blockbuster IPOs. But now, thanks to a price war launched by Google, Amazon and other tech giants, almost anyone with a laptop or tablet can get cloud storage for less than the price of a latte. That means Box and Dropbox, which sell software for businesses and consumers to store and use files on the Internet rather than a machine, are confronting a precarious future: They must figure out how to go head-to-head with the world's most powerful tech companies. The jockeying has forced both startups to rethink their plans to go public -- Box filed for an IPO in March, but has delayed trading, and Dropbox, once poised to be one of the biggest tech IPOs of the year, may not have a public offering in its immediate future."
Gonzalo San Gil, PhD.

How to Create Virtual Machines in Linux Using KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine) - Part 1 - 0 views

www.tecmint.com/all-and-configure-kvm-in-linux

how to create Virtual Machines linux GNU_Linux GNU kvm kernel based virtual machine

shared by Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 27 Jan 15 - No Cached
  • Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 27 Jan 15
     
    "This tutorial discusses KVM introduction, deployment and how to use it to create virtual machines under RedHat based-distributions such as RHEL/CentOS7 and Fedora 21."
  • Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 27 Jan 15
     
    "This tutorial discusses KVM introduction, deployment and how to use it to create virtual machines under RedHat based-distributions such as RHEL/CentOS7 and Fedora 21."
Gonzalo San Gil, PhD.

Cybercriminals ​boost sales through 'data laundering' | ZDNet - 0 views

www.zdnet.com/...-sales-through-data-laundering

Cybercriminals cybercrime ​boost sales data launderingc data laundering business profiting from crime as usual politics inaction

shared by Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 16 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 16 Mar 15
     
    "There is a term for this: "Data laundering", which has been defined as "obscuring, removing, or fabricating the provenance of illegally obtained data such that it may be used for lawful purposes"."
  • Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 17 Mar 15
     
    "There is a term for this: "Data laundering", which has been defined as "obscuring, removing, or fabricating the provenance of illegally obtained data such that it may be used for lawful purposes"."
Paul Merrell

What's Scarier: Terrorism, or Governments Blocking Websites in its Name? - The Intercept - 0 views

firstlook.org/...terally-blocking-websites-name

censorship-crimes web-site-blocking terrorism™ civil liberties discrimination War-on-Muslims

shared by Paul Merrell on 19 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • Forcibly taking down websites deemed to be supportive of terrorism, or criminalizing speech deemed to “advocate” terrorism, is a major trend in both Europe and the West generally. Last month in Brussels, the European Union’s counter-terrorism coordinator issued a memo proclaiming that “Europe is facing an unprecedented, diverse and serious terrorist threat,” and argued that increased state control over the Internet is crucial to combating it. The memo noted that “the EU and its Member States have developed several initiatives related to countering radicalisation and terrorism on the Internet,” yet argued that more must be done. It argued that the focus should be on “working with the main players in the Internet industry [a]s the best way to limit the circulation of terrorist material online.” It specifically hailed the tactics of the U.K. Counter-Terrorism Internet Referral Unit (CTIRU), which has succeeded in causing the removal of large amounts of material it deems “extremist”:
  • In addition to recommending the dissemination of “counter-narratives” by governments, the memo also urged EU member states to “examine the legal and technical possibilities to remove illegal content.” Exploiting terrorism fears to control speech has been a common practice in the West since 9/11, but it is becoming increasingly popular even in countries that have experienced exceedingly few attacks. A new extremist bill advocated by the right-wing Harper government in Canada (also supported by Liberal Party leader Justin Trudeau even as he recognizes its dangers) would create new crimes for “advocating terrorism”; specifically: “every person who, by communicating statements, knowingly advocates or promotes the commission of terrorism offences in general” would be a guilty and can be sent to prison for five years for each offense. In justifying the new proposal, the Canadian government admits that “under the current criminal law, it is [already] a crime to counsel or actively encourage others to commit a specific terrorism offence.” This new proposal is about criminalizing ideas and opinions. In the government’s words, it “prohibits the intentional advocacy or promotion of terrorism, knowing or reckless as to whether it would result in terrorism.”
  • If someone argues that continuous Western violence and interference in the Muslim world for decades justifies violence being returned to the West, or even advocates that governments arm various insurgents considered by some to be “terrorists,” such speech could easily be viewed as constituting a crime. To calm concerns, Canadian authorities point out that “the proposed new offence is similar to one recently enacted by Australia, that prohibits advocating a terrorist act or the commission of a terrorism offence-all while being reckless as to whether another person will engage in this kind of activity.” Indeed, Australia enacted a new law late last year that indisputably targets political speech and ideas, as well as criminalizing journalism considered threatening by the government. Punishing people for their speech deemed extremist or dangerous has been a vibrant practice in both the U.K. and U.S. for some time now, as I detailed (coincidentally) just a couple days before free speech marches broke out in the West after the Charlie Hebdo attacks. Those criminalization-of-speech attacks overwhelmingly target Muslims, and have resulted in the punishment of such classic free speech activities as posting anti-war commentary on Facebook, tweeting links to “extremist” videos, translating and posting “radicalizing” videos to the Internet, writing scholarly articles in defense of Palestinian groups and expressing harsh criticism of Israel, and even including a Hezbollah channel in a cable package.
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  • Beyond the technical issues, trying to legislate ideas out of existence is a fool’s game: those sufficiently determined will always find ways to make themselves heard. Indeed, as U.S. pop star Barbra Streisand famously learned, attempts to suppress ideas usually result in the greatest publicity possible for their advocates and/or elevate them by turning fringe ideas into martyrs for free speech (I have zero doubt that all five of the targeted sites enjoyed among their highest traffic dates ever today as a result of the French targeting). But the comical futility of these efforts is exceeded by their profound dangers. Who wants governments to be able to unilaterally block websites? Isn’t the exercise of this website-blocking power what has long been cited as reasons we should regard the Bad Countries — such as China and Iran — as tyrannies (which also usually cite “counterterrorism” to justify their censorship efforts)?
  • s those and countless other examples prove, the concepts of “extremism” and “radicalizing” (like “terrorism” itself) are incredibly vague and elastic, and in the hands of those who wield power, almost always expand far beyond what you think it should mean (plotting to blow up innocent people) to mean: anyone who disseminates ideas that are threatening to the exercise of our power. That’s why powers justified in the name of combating “radicalism” or “extremism” are invariably — not often or usually, but invariably — applied to activists, dissidents, protesters and those who challenge prevailing orthodoxies and power centers. My arguments for distrusting governments to exercise powers of censorship are set forth here (in the context of a prior attempt by a different French minister to control the content of Twitter). In sum, far more damage has been inflicted historically by efforts to censor and criminalize political ideas than by the kind of “terrorism” these governments are invoking to justify these censorship powers. And whatever else may be true, few things are more inimical to, or threatening of, Internet freedom than allowing functionaries inside governments to unilaterally block websites from functioning on the ground that the ideas those sites advocate are objectionable or “dangerous.” That’s every bit as true when the censors are in Paris, London, and Ottawa, and Washington as when they are in Tehran, Moscow or Beijing.
Gonzalo San Gil, PhD.

Taylor Swift Threatens To Sue Her Fans - Digital Music News * - 0 views

www.digitalmusicnews.com/...aylor-swift-threatens-sue-fans

taylor swift sue music fans more Intellectual Property paranoia

shared by Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 13 Feb 15 - No Cached
  • Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 13 Feb 15
     
    [*more "Intellectual Property" paranoia... 'suing fans is how musicians want to make a living...?] "I'm sure by now you've read about how Team Swift has been on a trademarking rampage, filing phrases from her most recent album such as "This Sick Beat""
  • Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 13 Feb 15
     
    [*more "Intellectual Property" paranoia... 'suing fans is how musicians want to make a living...?] "I'm sure by now you've read about how Team Swift has been on a trademarking rampage, filing phrases from her most recent album such as "This Sick Beat""
Gonzalo San Gil, PhD.

Open Source Software List: 2015 Ultimate List - Datamation - 0 views

www.datamation.com/...list-2015-ultimate-list-1.html

open source software ultimate list 2015 datamation.com

shared by Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 14 Jan 15 - No Cached
  • Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 14 Jan 15
     
    "Every month, Datamation highlights a list of open source software related to a particular category, such as security, cloud computing, small businesses, big data, games, etc."
  • Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 14 Jan 15
     
    "Every month, Datamation highlights a list of open source software related to a particular category, such as security, cloud computing, small businesses, big data, games, etc."
Gonzalo San Gil, PhD.

New Report Says How Much Advertising Is Going to Piracy Sites | Adweek - 1 views

www.adweek.com/...sing-going-piracy-sites-155770

report says much advertising piracy sites

shared by Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 22 Oct 14 - No Cached
  • Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 22 Oct 14
     
    "In the longstanding fight to combat online piracy, there's been growing pressure on the advertisers whose ads appear on sites that steal copyrighted material. The Obama administration has called for private-sector actions to reduce piracy. The 4As and ANA have adopted best practices to keep their members' ads off such sites, and industry leaders have spoken forcefully on the subject. "
  • Gonzalo San Gil, PhD. on 22 Oct 14
     
    "In the longstanding fight to combat online piracy, there's been growing pressure on the advertisers whose ads appear on sites that steal copyrighted material. The Obama administration has called for private-sector actions to reduce piracy. The 4As and ANA have adopted best practices to keep their members' ads off such sites, and industry leaders have spoken forcefully on the subject. "
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