The BBC news website carries Michael Geist’s critique of American publisher’s copyright demands on the majority of the rest of the world. There is a fair bit of propaganda language involved there: “protection“ “intellectual property“ “digital rights management“ which should prompt you to ask the timeless question “Who benefits?”. Hint: it’s not you. As the [...]
Cindy Sheehan, board member of the Progressive Democrats of America, a group which tries to bring progressives into the Democratic party fold, recently challenged Democrats to impeach the President (3m5s of audio; a transcript follows). Thanks to Fred Nguyen and WBAI for the audio. Today’s Democracy Now! mentioned Sheehan’s statement, but did not play the [...]
The RIAA wants to avoid court and get the accused to agree to settlements. To that end, the RIAA has sent a letter to ISPs asking for information and offering a possible discount (“opportunity for an early decreased settlement amount”) to would-be defendants (“targeted users”). In a letter (which has the recipient information blacked out) [...]
Congratulations to the Electronic Frontier Foundation which just won an important judgement against drug giant Eli Lilly. Eli Lilly tried to stop a number of websites from publishing leaked documents about Zyprexa, Eli Lilly’s top-selling drug. The judgement is available and the zyprexa.pbwiki.com wiki which challenges Eli Lilly is still online. From EFF’s press release [...]
John Walsh on who was left out of the recent anti-war demonstration: What is the matter with Democratic politicians, you may say. Nothing, as such. And the politicians speaking at the rally were among the best that the timid Dems have to offer – Maxine Waters, John Conyers and Dennis Kucinich, for example. But these [...]
It looks like the BBC is gearing up to distribute their work with DRM using a player that only runs on Microsoft Windows. Cory Doctorow on BoingBoing.net has more. If you pay for the BBC or if you want to see how viewer-funded public television can turn on the audience it is supposed to serve, [...]
While I sympathize with Robert Accettura that discrimination of this sort against web browsers is objectionable (particularly when important services like disaster relief service forms only allow Microsoft Internet Explorer users), there are many stronger reasons to object to Wal-Mart; we barely need to get into how their website won’t let Firefox users view movies. [...]
The American hypocrisy on nuclear weapons says that the US is allowed to have and build nuclear weapons, sell or give them to our wholly-owned subsidiary, Israel, but Iran (and probably every other country) cannot have nuclear weapons. America can’t bully those who already have nuclear weapons, hence the hypocrisy of how the US dealt [...]
“DVD Jon” Johansen’s DRM blog responds to the recently published Apple open letter (where Jobs tries to justify digital restrictions management and place Apple in the position of unwilling proprietor). Steve Jobs on Music Steve Jobs’ misleading statistics Steve Jobs on licensing Apple digital restrictions management—I don’t agree that licensing this more broadly is a [...]
While hardly surprising that the MPAA misrepresents its own figures, claims losses that aren’t theirs, and tries to convince us fair use doesn’t exist (the last one courtesy of Jack Valenti, invited guest to the Roger Ebert movie festival a few years ago when he spoke in the Pine Lounge of the Illini Union), it’s [...]
GNU Software Freedom Law Center FSF blogs Electronic Frontier Foundation Nina Paley Richard Stallman