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John Lemke

Surprise: ASCAP and Music Labels Colluded To Screw Pandora | Techdirt - 0 views

www.techdirt.com/...-labels-to-screw-pandora.shtml

2014 ASCAP music infringement copywrong copyright law legal litigation scam labels

shared by John Lemke on 13 Feb 14 - No Cached
  • A key part of this was that the major labels, key members of ASCAP, suddenly started "dropping out" of ASCAP in order to do licensing directly. At first we thought this was a sign of how the labels might be realizing that ASCAP was obsolete and out of touch, but it has since become clear that these "removals" were all something of a scam to force Pandora into higher rates.
  • What happened was that ASCAP and Pandora had first negotiated a higher rate than Pandora had agreed to in the past -- reaching a handshake agreement. However, before that agreement could be finalized, these labels started "withdrawing" from ASCAP in order to negotiate directly. As part of that, both ASCAP and the labels refused to tell Pandora which songs had been withdrawn, meaning that if Pandora accidentally played one of the withdrawn songs (again, without knowing which songs were withdrawn),
  • Your Honor, by the time Pandora asked for this information on November 1st, both ASCAP and Mr. Brodsky [Sony Executive VP] had in their possession this very list. The deposition testimony from ASCAP was that this list as is could have been delivered to Pandora within 24 hours were it only to get the go-ahead from Sony to do so. ASCAP never received the go-ahead. We cited much of the internal back-and-forth on this in our briefs... My favorite is the following exchange between Mr. DeFilippis and Mr. Reimer of ASCAP on December 19th, 2013, PX 193. You see the question being asked by Mr. DeFilippis: why didn't Sony provide the list to Pandora? Mr. Reimer's response: Ask me tomorrow. Mr. DeFilippis: Right. With drink in hand. And the inference here is just incredible. This data was sitting there, your Honor, and nobody was willing to give it to Pandora.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • There's a lot more in there, but it seems abundantly clear that these labels "withdrawing" from ASCAP had nothing to do with competition or market rates. It appears that it had little to do with even withdrawing from ASCAP. Instead, it seems to have been designed from the start to basically screw over Pandora, in what certainly smells an awful lot like collusion, by forcing Pandora to pay exorbitant rates or suddenly face a massive copyright liability because no one would tell them what songs were being "withdrawn" from an existing licensing agreement.
John Lemke

Snowden Keeps Outwitting U.S. Spies - The Daily Beast - 0 views

www.thedailybeast.com/...till-outwitting-u-s-spies.html

2014 indienationnews legal law security Snowden Spying

shared by John Lemke on 11 Feb 14 - No Cached
  • First, it assumes that Snowden’s master file includes data from every network he ever scanned. Second, it assumes that this file is already in or will end up in the hands of America’s adversaries. If these assumptions turn out to be true, then the alarm raised in the last week will be warranted. The key word here is “if.”
    • John Lemke
      John Lemke on 11 Feb 14
       
      The two asumptions
  • One U.S. intelligence official briefed on the report said the DIA concluded that Snowden visited classified facilities outside the NSA station where he worked in Hawaii while he was downloading the documents he would eventually leak to journalists Glenn Greenwald and Barton Gellman. On Tuesday, Clapper himself estimated that less than 10 percent of the documents Snowden took were from the NSA.
    • John Lemke
      John Lemke on 11 Feb 14
       
      Seems not many of the documents were actually NSA documents.
  • assume
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • DIA director Gen. Michael Flynn put it this way on Tuesday in testimony before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence: “We
  • that Snowden, everything that he touched, we assume that he took, stole.”
  • The U.S. intelligence official briefed on the report said the DIA was able to retrace the steps Snowden took inside the military’s classified systems to find every site where he rummaged around. “Snowden had a very limited amount of time before he would be detected when he did this, so we
  • assume
  • he zipped up the files and left,” this official said.
  • Bruce Schneier, a cybersecurity expert and cryptographer who Greenwald has consulted on the Snowden archive, said it was prudent to
  • assume
  • that lest some of Snowden’s documents could wind up in the hands of a foreign government.
  • In June, Greenwald told the Daily Beast that he did not know whether or not Snowden had additional documents beyond the ones he gave him. “I believe he does. He was clear he did not want to give to journalists things he did not think should be published.”
    • John Lemke
      John Lemke on 11 Feb 14
       
      He is not willing to release stuff he felt that journalist should not publish...
  • Snowden, however, has implied that he does not have control over the files he took. “No intelligence service—not even our own—has the capacity to compromise the secrets I continue to protect,” he wrote in July in a letter to former New Hampshire Republican senator Gordon Humphrey. “While it has not been reported in the media, one of my specializations was to teach our people at DIA how to keep such information from being compromised even in the highest threat counter-intelligence environments (i.e. China). You may rest easy knowing I cannot be coerced into revealing that information, even under torture.”
John Lemke

Want to remotely control a car? $20 in parts, some oily fingers, and you're in command ... - 0 views

www.theregister.co.uk/...ome_oily_fingers_and_its_yours

2014 control car hack security automobile indienationnews

shared by John Lemke on 08 Feb 14 - No Cached
  • untraceable, off-the-shelf parts worth $20 that can give wireless access to the car's controls while it's on the road.
  • Illera and fellow security researcher Javier Vazquez-Vidal said that they had tested the CAN Hacking Tool (CHT) successfully on four popular makes of cars and had been able to apply the emergency brakes while the car was in motion, affect the steering, turn off the headlights, or set off the car alarm.
  • currently only works via Bluetooth,
John Lemke

Snowden documents show British digital spies use viruses and 'honey traps' * The Register - 0 views

www.theregister.co.uk/..._using_viruses_and_honey_traps

2014 documents indienationnews law legal spying yourrights surveillance

shared by John Lemke on 08 Feb 14 - No Cached
  • "deny, disrupt, degrade and deceive" by any means possible.
  • A PowerPoint presentation from 2010 states that JTRIG activities account for five per cent of GCHQ's operations budget and uses a variety of techniques. These include "call bombing" to drown out a target's ability to receive messages, attacking targets in hotels, Psyops (psychological operations) against individuals, and going all the way up to disrupting a country's critical infrastructure.
  • According to reports in Der Spiegel last year, British intelligence has tapped the reservations systems of over 350 top hotels around the world for the past three years to set up Royal Concierge. It was used to spy on trade delegations, foreign diplomats, and other targets with a taste for the high life.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Targets can also be discredited with a "honey trap", whereby a fake social media profile is created, maybe backed up by a personal blog to provide credibility. This could be used to entice someone into making embarrassing confessions, which the presentation notes described as "a great option" and "very successful when it works."
  • John Lemke on 08 Feb 14
     
    All that evil spy stuff in the hands of the government.   Big Brother is real.  Too Fin' real.
John Lemke

Feathered dinosaur death site is an "animal Pompeii" | Ars Technica - 0 views

arstechnica.com/...eath-site-is-an-animal-pompeii

2014 dinosaur site indienationnews archaeology science

shared by John Lemke on 05 Feb 14 - No Cached
  • The fossils of the Jehol Biota are from the Early Cretaceous period, about 130 million years ago, and they comprise a wide variety of animals and plants. So far, about 60 species of plants, 1,000 species of invertebrates, and 140 species of vertebrates have been found in the Jehol Biota.
  • One of the most remarkable discoveries to arise from these fossils came in 2010, when Michael Benton of the University of Bristol found color-banding preserved in dinosaur fossils. These stripes of light and dark are similar to stripes in modern birds, and they provided further evidence that dinosaurs evolved into birds. Benton also found that these fossils had intact mealnosomes—organelles that make pigments. This discovery allowed paleontologists to tell the colors of dinosaurs' feathers for the first time.
John Lemke

New Zealand Spy Agency Deleted Evidence About Its Illegal Spying On Kim Dotcom | Techdirt - 0 views

www.techdirt.com/...llegal-spying-kim-dotcom.shtml

2014 new zealand zealand spy evidence yourights privacy dueprocess indienationnews IN-Pub

shared by John Lemke on 05 Feb 14 - No Cached
  • I have to admit that I'm consistently amazed at just how badly law enforcement in both the US and New Zealand appeared to screw up the raid and the case against Kim Dotcom. I've said it a few times before, but it really feels like authorities in both places actually believed the bogus Hollywood hype being spread by the MPAA about how Dotcom was really a James Bondian-villain, and acted accordingly, while ignoring any evidence to the contrary.
  • John Lemke on 05 Feb 14
     
    "I have to admit that I'm consistently amazed at just how badly law enforcement in both the US and New Zealand appeared to screw up the raid and the case against Kim Dotcom. I've said it a few times before, but it really feels like authorities in both places actually believed the bogus Hollywood hype being spread by the MPAA about how Dotcom was really a James Bondian-villain, and acted accordingly, while ignoring any evidence to the contrary."
John Lemke

Java-based malware driving DDoS botnet infects Windows, Mac, Linux devices | Ars Technica - 0 views

arstechnica.com/...ects-windows-mac-linux-devices

2014 malware ddos windows mac linux technology tech security botnet

shared by John Lemke on 29 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • takes hold of computers by exploiting CVE-2013-2465, a critical Java vulnerability that Oracle patched in June. The security bug is present on Java 7 u21 and earlier. Once the bot has infected a computer, it copies itself to the autostart directory of its respective platform to ensure it runs whenever the machine is turned on. Compromised computers then report to an Internet relay chat channel that acts as a command and control server.
  • The botnet is designed to conduct distributed denial-of-service attacks on targets of the attackers' choice. Commands issued in the IRC channel allow the attackers to specify the IP address, port number, intensity, and duration of attacks.
John Lemke

Why The Copyright Industry Is Doomed, In One Single Sentence | TorrentFreak - 0 views

torrentfreak.com/-in-one-single-sentence-140126

2014 indienationnews copyright industry privacy yourrights law legal tech

shared by John Lemke on 27 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • In order to prevent copyright monopoly violations from happening in such channels, the only means possible is to wiretap all private digital communications to discover when copyrighted works are being communicated. As a side effect, you would eliminate private communications as a concept. There is no way to sort communications into legal and illegal without breaching the postal secret – the activity of sorting requires observation.
  • Therefore, as a society, we are at a crossroads where we can make a choice between privacy and the ability to communicate in private, with all the other things that depend on that ability (like whistleblower protections and freedom of the press), or a distribution monopoly for a particular entertainment industry. These two have become mutually exclusive and cannot coexist, which is also why you see the copyright industry lobbying so hard for more surveillance, wiretapping, tracking, and data retention (they understand this perfectly).
  • Any digital, private communications channel can be used for private protected correspondence, or to transfer works that are under copyright monopoly. In order to prevent copyright monopoly violations from happening in such channels, the only means possible is to wiretap all private digital communications to discover when copyrighted works are being communicated. As a side effect, you would eliminate private communications as a concept. There is no way to sort communications into legal and illegal without breaching the postal secret – the activity of sorting requires observation.
John Lemke

Little red lawsuit: Prince sues 22 people for pirating his songs | The Verge - 0 views

www.theverge.com/...-people-for-pirating-his-songs

prince lawsuit 2014 legal law YouTube Blogger litigation intellectualproperty indienationnews

shared by John Lemke on 27 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • The case, filed as Prince v. Chodera in the Northern District of California, reads, "The Defendants in this case engage in massive infringement and bootlegging of Prince's material." Only two defendants are named in the suit, however — the rest are listed as John Does, though eight do have the distinction of being regarded by their online handles. Nevertheless, Prince, based on "information and belief," alleges that each of the individuals worked together on Facebook and Blogger to conduct infringing activity, and lists extensively the mirror sites and blogs each used to distribute copies of his work. He has thus demanded $1 million with interest in damages from each of the defendants, along with a permanent injunction to prevent all of them from doing further harm.
John Lemke

Chinese rover may freeze to death on the moon | The Verge - 0 views

www.theverge.com/...ay-freeze-to-death-on-the-moon

indienationnews tech 2014 moon rover china technology

shared by John Lemke on 27 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • Observers say the equipment failure may have disabled the electrical motors needed to close the rover's solar panels, which would have disastrous effects as the rover heads into the two-week "lunar night." If the panels cannot be closed, the rover will almost certainly freeze during the two week span.
John Lemke

Snowden hints at new revelations of industrial espionage by the NSA | The Verge - 0 views

www.theverge.com/...ndustrial-espionage-by-the-nsa

law legal 2014 espionage nsa indienationnews spying yourrights IN-Pub

shared by John Lemke on 27 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • "I don't want to pre-empt the work of journalists," he said, "but there's no question the US is engaged in economic spying. If there's information at Siemens that they think would be beneficial to the national interests (not the national security) of the United States, they'll go after that information."
  • While evidence shows the NSA has spied on Brazil's Petrobras oil company, the US government has never been conclusively linked to the surveillance or theft of trade secrets on an international stage. If true, the revelations would have a grave diplomatic impact, particularly the government attempts to regain the trust of allied nations.
  • John Lemke on 27 Jan 14
     
    Honestly, should we be shocked?
John Lemke

OverDrive Dumps WMA, Announces all Audiobooks Sold to Libraries Will be in MP3 Format - 0 views

www.writerswrite.com/oks-sold-to-libraries-12620141

2014 indienationnews wma IN-Pub format MP3

shared by John Lemke on 27 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • The MP3s do not have DRM (Digital Rights Management), as the WMA formatted books do.
  • OverDrive told librarians that it will work with them to get libraries' old WMA format books converted for free.
  • This is in response to user preferences,
  • John Lemke on 27 Jan 14
     
    Quote "This is in response to user preferences" ... also of note they are going to work with libraries on getting the old WMA converted.
John Lemke

Daft Punk wins Album of the Year at the Grammys | The Verge - 0 views

www.theverge.com/...bum-of-the-year-at-the-grammys

2014 wins album Grammy IN-Pub

shared by John Lemke on 27 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • John Lemke on 27 Jan 14
     
    Nice
John Lemke

File-Sharing Boosts Creation of New Hit Music, Research Finds | TorrentFreak - 0 views

torrentfreak.com/it-music-research-finds-140102

2014 legal law technology tech p2p music sales IN-Pub hit

shared by John Lemke on 02 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • It is clear that file-sharing encourages the distribution of existing music, and in a paper titled “A Case Study of File Sharing and Music Output” the professor examines what the connection is between music piracy and the creation of new music.
  • The paper provides empirical evidence that file sharing did not reduce the creation of new hit songs. Instead, more new music entered the hit charts, an effect that’s driven by existing artists.
  • The data shows that the output from existing artists increased, while new artists appeared less frequently in the hit charts. However, since the new material from existing artists was greater than the loss from new artists, the “creation” of new music increased overall.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • “Specifically, the [result] suggests that the 58.92 percent decline in record sales would be associated with a net increase of 20.6 new songs in the study’s sample annually, all else constant,” Professor Lunney writes.
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