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"As we move away from the pay-for-music debate, we enter into a world of millions of publicly available songs that no one wants to listen to. Literally. Now that anyone can release her music to the world with simply an internet connection, why is so much music being ignored?"

"Skype on Linux is a much debated topic that unfortunately remains largely unchanged. Skype is something that most people just have to use, but the client's official support for Linux is pathetic to say the least. The client version is old, buggy, and only available in 32-bit. Add the fact that the API is closed-source, and we are left with no alternatives as there can be no open source implementation that will allow us to chat with our Skype friends. However, there are some workarounds that can work for Linux users depending on the particular system used and the specific needs."

(Traducción de David Bogado y Katitza Rodríguez) La Tasa Cero (o Zero Rating en inglés) se ha convertido en la punta de lanza del debate sobre la neutralidad de la red. Recientemente, India decidió rechazar los planes de tasa cero tales como la plataforma Free Basics de Facebook, mientras que en los Estados Unidos las compañías de telecomunicaciones empujan los límites con sus experimentos de tasa cero como los planes Binge-On de T-Mobile (que dio lugar a una disputa pública entre John Legere, CEO de la compañía, y la EFF sobre nuestra crítica al servicio, lo que causó que Legere haya pedido disculpas por sus expresiones), así como los planes Sponsored Data de AT&T, FreeBee de Verizon y Stream TV de Comcast.

"This past year has been very eventful one for the music industry. The major debates centered on royalties, the freemium model and the place of YouTube in the industry. This piece takes a look at the main digital challenges for the industry over the course of 2016."

[By Cory Doctorow at 3:30 am Saturday, Feb 11 Today is the day of global protest against ACTA, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, a copyright treaty negotiated in secret (even parliaments and other legislatures weren't allowed to see the the working drafts), and which many governments (include the American government) are planning to adopt without legislative approval or debate. ACTA represents a wish-list of legislative gifts to the entertainment industry, and will seriously undermine legitimate users of the Internet. It imposes criminal sanctions -- with jail time -- for people who violate copyright, including remixers and other legitimate artists and creators. ...]

[ Who are we? FAQ Tools Contact Press room English Français La Quadrature du Net La Quadrature du Net Internet & Libertés Participate Support us Newsletter RSS Identi.ca Twitter Dossiers Net Neutrality ACTA Anti-sharing directive - IPRED Net filtering Online Services Directive Proposals Tools general Printer-friendly version Send to friend Français Political Memory Political Memory is a toolbox designed to help reach members of the European Parliament (MEPs) and track their voting records. You may find the list of Members of the European Parliament: by alphabetical order by country by political group by committee For each Member of Parliament or European MP are listed contact details, mandates, as well as their votes and how they stand on subjects touched on by La Quadrature du Net. If you have telephony software installed on your computer, you can call them directly by clicking on "click to call". Wiki The wiki is the collaborative part of this website where anyone can create or modify content. This is where information on La Quadrature's campaigns (such as those about the written statement on ACTA or the IPRED Consultation), highlights of the National Assembly1 debates, pages relating to ongoing issues tracked by La Quadrature, as well as analyses, illustrations and more can be found. Mediakit The Mediakit is an audio and video data bank. It contains interventions of La Quadrature's spokespeople in the media as well as reports about issues La Quadrature closely follows. All these media can be viewed and downloaded in different formats. Press Review The Press Review is a collection of press articles about La Quadrature du Net's issues. It is compiled by a team of volunteers and comes in two languages: English and French. Articles written in other languages appear in both press re

[The European Commission is today launching a public consultation seeking answers to questions on transparency, switching and certain aspects of internet traffic management, with a view to its commitment to preserve the open and neutral character of the Internet. These questions have emerged as key issues in the "net neutrality" debate that has taken place in Europe over the past years, including the recent findings of the Body of European Regulators of European Communications (BEREC). ...]

"La Corte Europea de Derechos Humanos arguye que si el copyright entra en conflicto con derechos fundamentales, éstos deben prevalecer Libertad de expresión El Tribunal Europeo de Derechos humanos dictó el pasado 10 de enero una sentencia de capital importancia para el complejo debate entre derechos relacionados con la producción cultural: básicamente los derechos de acceso a la cultura y libertad de expresión frente a los derechos de auto"

"El Acuerdo de Asociación Transpacífico (TPP por su nombre en inglés) propuesto entre 12 gobiernos, pregonado como uno de los mayores acuerdos de "libre comercio" de la historia de EEUU, enfrenta dificultades a medida que el público se informa al respecto. La semana pasada 151 demócratas y 23 republicanos de la Cámara de Representantes escribieron a los negociadores jefes de EEUU expresando su oposición a un procedimiento de "Vía Rápida" para votar sobre la propuesta de acuerdo. El procedimiento limitaría el papel del Congreso y el debate sobre un acuerdo que ya ha sido negociado y firmado por el poder ejecutivo, que el Congreso tendría que aprobar o rechazar sin enmiendas."

" 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."

"... warned that the rules would lead to a world where internet service providers like Comcast and Verizon can sell special treatment to web companies like Google and Netflix, charging extra fees to deliver their online videos and other content at fast speeds, and he urged viewers to bombard the FCC website with protests, ..."

"View Current Issue (Volume 49 Issue 2 April 2014) Advance AccessBrowse the ArchiveView all Supplements Published 4 times a year and circulated in more than 80 countries, the leading international journal in its field, covering a wide range of topics, reviewing significant developments and providing a forum for cutting-edge debates about theory and practice. It adopts a broad definition of community development to include policy, planning and action as they impact on the life of communities. It seeks to publish critically focused articles which challenge received wisdom, report and discuss innovative practices, and relate issues of community development to questions of social justice, diversity and environmental sustainability."

I'll need to read the proposed rule, but this doesn't sound good. the FCC majority tries to spin this as options still being open, but I don't recall ever seeing formal regulations changed substantially from their proposed form. If their were to be substantial change, another proposal and comment period would be likely. The public cannot comment on what has not been proposed, so substantial departure from the proposal, absent a new proposal and comment period, would offend basic principles of public notice and comment rulemaking under the Administrative Procedures Act. The proverbial elephant in the room that the press hasn't picked up on yet is the fight that is going on behind the scenes in the Dept. of Justice. If the Anti-trust Division gets its way, DoJ's public comments on the proposed rule could blow this show out of the water. The ISPs are regulated utility monopolies in vast areas of the U.S. with market consolidation at or near the limits of what the anti-trust folk will tolerate. And leveraging one monopoly (service to subscribers) to impose another (fees for internet-based businesses to gain high speed access) is directly counter to the Sherman Act's section 2.   http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/15/2

"If there was ever any doubt about whether Microsoft or Google would win the war of office suites, there should be no longer. Within the last several weeks, Microsoft has pulled so far ahead that it's game over. Here's why. When it comes to which suite is more fully featured, there's never been any real debate: Microsoft Office wins hands down. Whether you're creating entire presentations, creating complicated word-processing documents, or even doing something as simple as handling text attributes, Office is a far better tool. Until the last few weeks, Google Docs had one significant advantage over Microsoft Office: It's available for Android and the iPad as well as PCs because it's Web-based. The same wasn't the case for Office. So if you wanted to use an office suite on all your mobile devices, Google Docs was the way to go. Google Docs lost that advantage when Microsoft released Office for the iPad. There's not yet a native version for Android tablets, but Microsoft is working on that, telling GeekWire, "Let me tell you conclusively: Yes, we are also building Android native applications for tablets for Word, Excel and PowerPoint." Google Docs is still superior to Office's Web-based version, but that's far less important than it used to be. There's no need to go with a Web-based office suite if a superior suite is available as a native apps on all platforms, mobile or otherwise. And Office's collaboration capabilities are quite considerable now. Of course, there's always the question of price. Google Docs is free. Microsoft Office isn't. But at $100 a year for up to five devices, or $70 a year for two, no one will be going broke paying for Microsoft Office. It's worth paying that relatively small price for a much better office suite. Google Docs won't die. It'll be around as second fiddle for a long time. But that's what it will always remain: a second fiddle to the better Microsoft Office."

Google acquired "Writely", a small company in Portola Valley that pioneered document editing in a browser. Writely was perhaps the first cloud computing editor to go beyond simple HTML; eventually crafting some really cool CSS-JavaScript-JSON document layout and editing methods. But it can't edit native MSOffice documents. It converts them. There are more than a few problems with the Google Docs approach to editing advanced "compound" documents, but two stick out and are certain to give pause to anyone making the great transition from local workgroup computing, to the highly mobile, always connected, cloud computing. The first problem certain to become a show stopper is that Google converts documents to their native on-line format for editing and collaboration. And then they convert back. To many this isn't a problem. But if the document is part of a workflow or business process, conversion is a killer. There is an old saw affectionately known as "Reuters Law", dating back to the ODF-OXML document wars, that emphatically states; "Conversion breaks documents." The breakage includes both the visual layout of the document, and, the "compound" aspects and data connections that are internal to the document. Think of this way. A business document that is part of a legacy Windows Workgroup workflow is opened up in gDocs. Google converts the document for editing purposes. The data and the workflow internals that bind the document to the local business system are broken on conversion. The look of the document is also visually shredded as the gDocs layout engine is applied. For all practical purposes, no matter what magic editing and collaboration value is added, a broken document means a broken business process. Let me say that again, with the emphasis of having witnessed this first hand during the year long ODF transition trials the Commonwealth of Massachusetts conducted in 2005 and 2006. The business process broke every time a conversion was conducted "on a busines

"And Business Insider recently wrote about the debate over whether ads slow down web pages. Naturally, advertisers blame publishers for being unsophisticated; and publishers blame advertisers for clogging up their pages with heavy downloads."

Our system of government does not expect that every criminal will be apprehended and convicted. There are numerous values our society believes are more important. Some examples: [i] a presumption of innocence unless guilt is established beyond any reasonable doubt; [ii] the requirement that government officials convince a neutral magistrate that they have probable cause to believe that a search or seizure will produce evidence of a crime; [iii] many communications cannot be compelled to be disclosed and used in evidence, such as attorney-client communications, spousal communications, and priest-penitent communications; and [iv] etc. Moral of my story: the government needs a much stronger reason to justify interception of communications than saying, "some crooks will escape prosecution if we can't do that." We have a right to whisper to each other, concealing our communicatons from all others. Why does the right to whisper privately disappear if our whisperings are done electronically? The Supreme Court took its first step on a very slippery slope when it permitted wiretapping in Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 438, 48 S. Ct. 564, 72 L. Ed. 944 (1928). https://goo.gl/LaZGHt It's been a long slide ever since. It's past time to revisit Olmstead and recognize that American citizens have the absolute right to communicate privately. "The President … recognizes that U.S. citizens and institutions should have a reasonable expectation of privacy from foreign or domestic intercept when using the public telephone system." - Brent Scowcroft, U.S. National Security Advisor, National Security Decision Memorandum 338 (1 September 1976) (Nixon administration), http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/nsdm-ford/nsdm-338.pdf   

"Linux is a very functional operating system. It "led to the collapse of the infrastructure decision debates of many IT shops," said Guy Smith, chief strategist for Silicon Strategies Marketing. "Before Linux, ..."

" 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."

"Abstract: The anti-counterfeiting trade agreement (ACTA) was originally meant to harmonise and enforce intellectual property rights (IPR) provisions in existing trade agreements within a wider group of countries. This was commendable in itself, so ACTA's failure was all the more disappointing. In this article, I wish to contribute to the post-ACTA debate by proposing a specific analysis of the ethical reasons why ACTA failed, and what we can learn from them. I argue that five kinds of objections- namely, secret negotiations, lack of consultation, vague- ness of formulation, negotiations outside any international body, and the creation of a new governing body outside already existing forums-had only indirect ethical impli- cations. "