Democracy Now! reports (audio) that According to the U.S. Census Bureau, one in eight Americans and almost one in four African Americans lived in poverty last year. It was the first year the poverty rate did not increase since President Bush took office. Just under sixteen percent of the population, or 46.6 million people, had [...]
The RIAA’s latest attempt at convincing people to not illicitly share copies of music comes under fire. The RIAA’s educational video teaches nothing about fair use—exceptions to the restrictions in copyright law which allow people to make copies of copyrighted works for certain uses. According to CNet news, the video narrator claims Making copies for [...]
The EFF says another court refuses to dismiss NSA spying case and that’s always good news. Two things for you to do to help: Call your Congresspeople and stop Sen. Spector from passing S. 2453 which would curtail exactly this kind of judicial oversight. Consider using GPG—the GNU Privacy Guard—if you feel the need to [...]
In what’s sure to be an ongoing series here about undemocratic control over institutions, I direct you to an article from MSNBC on Patricia Dunn, HP’s Board Chair, spying on her boardmembers home phone records in order to find out who’s been leaking info about HP’s plans to the press. One HP boardmember, Tom Perkins, [...]
The BBC reports that Sisvel is targetting SanDisk for not paying their MP3 licensing fee. It’s a warning to users as well; users can be sued for patent infringement too. Paul Heckel, a software developer who held patents which allegedly covered something which was done in Apple’s Hypercard program. When Apple wouldn’t license his patents [...]
CODEPINK’s latest essay on “bird-dogging” Sen. Hillary Clinton is worth reading; it exposes some of the little-known myths about Clinton’s record: It turns out that Hillary has done a tremendous job—of getting New York Democrats to assume that because right-wing Republicans hate her she must oppose the war. Most New York Democratic voters also don’t [...]
Andrew Rosenthal writes about the absence of political dissent in the New York Times. When I cross the quad of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign I am reminded of how there is no serious, organized, national opposition to the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Perhaps there are a few conversations amongst like-minded friends here [...]
GNU Software Freedom Law Center FSF blogs Electronic Frontier Foundation Nina Paley Richard Stallman