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One of the long-running jokes in the free software world is that this
year will finally be the year of open source on the desktop - just like
it was last year, and the year before that. Thanks to the astounding
rise of Android, people now realise that the desktop is last decade's
platform, and that mobile - smartphones and tablets - are the future.
But I'd argue that there is something even more important these, and
that is the widespread deployment of open source in China.
On
Open Enterprise blog.
As Techdirt has reported, the attempts to extradite Kim Dotcom from New
Zealand to the US have turned into one of the most catastrophically
bungled legal cases in a long while. One of the biggest scandals to
emerge was that New Zealand citizens had been wiretapped
in an effort to gain evidence against Dotcom, since domestic spying was
forbidden there just as it is in the US (oh, wait...). Unfortunately,
rather than rapping knuckles and telling the local spooks not to do it
again, the New Zealand government has instead just brought in new legislation to make it legal in the future.
On
Techdirt.
As more and more countries start introducing Web blocks, some people
console themselves with the "at least there's always Tor" argument.
Politicians may be slow, but they are not all completely stupid, and
they are beginning to get the message that Tor and other anonymous
services potentially render their Web blocks moot. It's then not a huge
leap for them to move on to the next stage -- banning or blocking Tor
-- as Russia now seems to be contemplating, according to this article on Russia Today:
On
Techdirt.
When Techdirt wrote recently about yet another secure email provider opting to close down
its service rather than acquiesce in some future US government demand
to spy on its users, we noted that Cryptocloud has promised something
similar for a while -- what it terms "corporate seppuku":
On
Techdirt.
Two years ago, Techdirt reported on a very troubling ruling
in the UK courts that BT had to block access to the Usenet service
provider Newzbin2. At the time, many feared that this would be the thin
end of the wedge, giving copyright companies an easy way to shut down
other sites. And with that power, of course, would come the inevitable
errors, blocking completely unrelated sites. Just how seriously those
mistakes could be is shown by this recent case of massive overblocking, reported here on PC Pro:
On
Techdirt.
Techdirt has published a number of posts that explore the issue of whether art organizations
can stop people sharing images of works in their collections when the
latter are indisputably in the public domain. Even if museums might be
able to claim copyright in their "official" photographic images, the
more important question is whether they ought to. The good news is that
some institutions are beginning to realize that using copyright
monopolies in this way contradicts their basic reason for existing -- to
share the joy of art. Here, for example, is a wonderful statement of
that principle from the Getty Museum entitled "Open Content, An Idea Whose Time Has Come":
On
Techdirt.
You may remember a rather wonderful court case from 2012 that pitted
copyright lawyers against patent lawyers over the issue of whether
submitting journal articles as part of the patenting process was fair
use. Well, we now have the judge's decision, as GigaOm reports:
On
Techdirt.
The use of Web blocks -- usually "for the children"
-- is becoming depressingly common these days. So much so, that many
people have probably come to accept them as a fact of online life. After
all, the logic presumably goes, we can't do much about it, and anyway
surely it's a good thing to try to filter out the bad stuff? Techdirt
readers, of course, know otherwise, but for anyone who still thinks that
well-intentioned blocking of "unsuitable" material is unproblematic,
the following cautionary tale from the British blogger W.H. Forsyth may prove instructive:
On
Techdirt.
A couple of months back, Techdirt wrote about Australia's proposals to shift from the current fair dealing approach to fair use
as part of wide-ranging reform of copyright there. When something
similar was mooted in the UK as part of what became the Hargreaves
Review, it was shouted down by the copyright maximalists on the grounds
that it would lead to widespread litigation.
As Mike pointed out at the time, that's nonsense: the existence of a
large body of US case law dealing with this area makes it much easier to
bring in fair use without the need for its contours to be defined in
the courts.
On
Techdirt.
Techdirt has noted the increasing demonization of hackers (not to be
confused with crackers that break into systems for criminal purposes),
for example by trying to add an extra layer of punishment on other
crimes if they were done "on a computer." High-profile victims of this
approach include Bradley Manning, Aaron Swartz, Jeremy Hammond, Barrett Brown and of course Edward Snowden.
On
Techdirt.
One of the central problems of laws that deal with copyright is that
they are essentially products of a time when the distinction between
creator and audience was clear-cut. The move to digital and the rise of
the Internet has changed all that, allowing hundreds of millions of
people to become new kinds of creators. They may not write entire
symphonies or paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, but what they
lack in scale and intensity they make up for in frequency and
spontaneity.
On
Techdirt.
Around the world, we have been watching the gradual taming
of social media, especially in countries where governments keep
mainstream media on a tight leash. But even against that background,
this news from the Bangkok Post about Vietnam's latest moves to censor online content is pretty extraordinary:
On
Techdirt.
Last week we wrote about how the Russian equivalent of SOPA had been amended in order to ban swearing
online. Although that was worth noting for its entertainment value,
probably more important is the fact that the same law -- originally
brought in to take down sites about drugs, suicide and child pornography
-- has also been widened to include copyright infringement, as TechWeekEurope reports:
On
Techdirt.
One of the heartening recent developments in the world of digital
copyright is that we have moved on from manifestly biased surveys about
the evils of piracy and how the solution to everything is harsher
punishment for infringement and longer copyright terms, to independent
analyses that seek to understand rather than judge and lecture. There's
also been a new focus on learning what the public thinks might be an
appropriate balance for modern copyright -- something that nobody cared
about in the past.
On
Techdirt.
One of the myths perpetuated by governments taking part in major
international treaty negotiations like ACTA, TPP and TAFTA/TTIP is that
somehow no national sovereignty is given up during the process, and that
therefore the public shouldn't worry about what goes on in those secret
meetings. That's clearly absurd, because negotiations involve
concessions, usually by the weaker parties, which often touch on
national competences.
On
Techdirt.
As a recent DailyDirt noted, opinions on the safety of genetically modified organisms (GMOs)
are sharply divided. But that heated argument tends to obscure another
problem that Techdirt has often written about in other fields: the use
of patent monopolies to exert control, in this case over the food chain.
By inserting DNA sequences into plants and animals and obtaining
patents, the biotech industry is granted surprisingly wide-ranging
powers over how its products are used, as the Bowman case made clear. That's potentially problematic when those products are the foods that keep us alive.
On
Techdirt.
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