13 replies to this topic

[abarbarian]

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120107/...sketching.shtml

Either way, at least most such places only prohibit photography. BoingBoing recently highlighted this even-more-ridiculous notice found at the Art Institute of Chicago:
In case you can't see the image, it is a sign listing several things that are "NOT permitted" inside the exhibit: "Photography, Flashes, Tripods, Video Camera, Sketching."

Utter madness  

http://www.tgdaily.com/security-features/6...itter-worldwide

Along with other government agencies, the FBI has been wanting to scrape social networks for some time, claiming the information's publicly accessible and voluntarily generated.

Since 2005, the CIA's Open Source Center has been monitoring blogs, chatrooms and social networking sites, as well as radio and television programs, according to documents released to the Electronic Frontier Foundation in 2010 following a Freedom of Information request. It's accessible to 15,000 local, state and federal government employees,

http://www.blacklistednews.com/EU_signs_AC.../38/38/Y/M.html

Today, the European Union and 22 member states signed the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced. They have now joined the US and seven other nations that signed the treaty last October.

Both ACTA and TPP were developed without public input and outside international trade groups, like the World Trade Organization and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

ACTA Violates Magna Carta and US Constitution

Like PIPA and SOPA, two domestic internet censorship bills that prompted major websites to blacken their name or website in a Jan. 18th protest, ACTA allows accusers of copyright infringement to bypass judicial review.  Lack of “due process” makes these bills and ACTA unconstitutional and violates the Magna Carta, a charter signed in 1215 on which most Western law is based, including the US Constitution.  It is often cited as the most important legal document in the history of democracy.

What a wonderful world we could all live in if we let the powers that be control every aspect of out lives.



Maybe we should do what these snow leopards did and take direct action.  

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-16758434

Two of the young snow leopards also managed to remove one of the automatic cameras

Edited by abarbarian, 27 January 2012 - 12:38 PM.

[Temmu]

frogs in water on the stove top.  

no state's rights, no nation's rights:  captivity for one and all.  hope you all enjoy it.

[LilBambi]

[abarbarian]

There is hope. If them snow leopard cubs can fight back so can we.  

[Cluttermagnet]

Utter control freak madness running rampant on the planet.

One can only hope that the pendulum swing will eventually include
a planet-wide racial revulsion at this anti-social sort of behavior.

Edited by Cluttermagnet, 07 February 2012 - 08:33 AM.

[Temmu]

someone will come to save the planet.
he'll be just like the majority - no dad, bad mom, no particular culture - a complete blend
he has all the answers.  he will feed everyone, and heal the sick, raise the dead.
and as much as "we" depend on our government for everything today,
most everyone is ready to receive him with open arms.

but given 3 years of all that, you won't like what follows.

[abarbarian]

http://daggle.com/watch-snl-hilarious-down...bey-sketch-2964

You Can’t Watch SNL’s Hilarious “Downton Abbey” Sketch Legally Online, So NBCUniversal Pirates Itself

So Time is helping support the same type of unauthorized posting of content that its parent Time Warner is concerned about — and happy to blame Google for — and doing all this while earning some money from Google.

Wait. iVillage is owned by NBCUniversal? You mean that NBCUniversal might be argued to have helped pirate itself?

You betcha. Here’s the page:

There’s the unauthorized video, embedded at the bottom of a story on an NBCUniversal web site.

[abarbarian]

Big brother will be watching you and you and you

Feds step up domestic drone surveillance



Indeed, the FAA currently estimates 30,000 drones will likely be flying over American skies by 2020.

No more skinny dipping folks  

[abarbarian]

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/20...dy-complies.ars

Takedowns run amok? The strange Secret Service/GoDaddy assault on JotForm (updated)

Popular site JotForm doesn't host music or movies or child pornography, all of which have led US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to seize other Internet domain names without advance warning (sometimes making serious mistakes). JotForm also doesn't create content itself. Instead, it helps customers create online forms that can then be embedded in their websites for easy data collection.

But that didn't spare the site from having its entire business shuttered without warning yesterday as the site's domain name was shut down at the request of the US Secret Service. JotForm's domain name registrar, GoDaddy, redirected the site's nameservers to NS1.SUSPENDED-FOR.SPAM-AND-ABUSE.COM—and with that, JotForm.com became unreachable and the site's two million user-created forms all broke.

"The agent told me she is busy and she asked for my phone number, and told me they will get back to me within this week," he wrote in an explanation post on Hacker News. "I told them we are a Web service with hundreds of thousands of users, so this is a matter of urgency, and we are ready to cooperate fully. I was ready to shutdown any form they request and provide any information we have about the user. Unfortunately, she told me she needs to look at the case which she can do in a few days. I called her many times again to check about the case, but she seems to be getting irritated with me."

"We are a multimillion dollar Canadian company that has used jotform the last year for customer inquires," said another. "They have been very reliable. However because of what has happened now we will have to implement an internally hosted solution to guarantee this will not happen again and ensure we will not loose [sic] our data. I will now have to question purchasing any more services from US internet related providers."

Terry Gilliam's Brazil is looking more and more like a documentary  

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088846/

[abarbarian]

Anything you americans can do we can do better  

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/20...imited-fine.ars

Police: download a file, go to jail for 10 years and pay an "unlimited" fine

The 70,000 daily visitors to popular music site RnBXclusive.com were met with a purposely terrifying message on Tuesday and part of Wednesday. The UK's Serious Organized Crime Agency (SOCA) took the site down, arrested its operator, and threw up a splash page that warned downloaders of "up to 10 years imprisonment." Thought statutory damages of up to $150,000 per infringement in the US were ludicrous? SOCA warns that downloaders from the site could face an "unlimited fine under UK law."

While RnBxclusive.com might have been a hive a scum and villainy, SOCA agents hardly give the impression of acting as neutral agents of justice. The takedown was clearly pushed by the recording industry, which in itself is fine; all sorts of private parties complain to police when laws have been broken. But the SOCA warning page on RnBxclusive.com went well beyond a mere legal statement and warning.

Even the US government, which we have criticized repeatedly for the process and errors behind their own "Operation In Our Sites" domain takedowns, has recently been a model of professionalism by contrast.

By all means, police should enforce the law and the government should prosecute those who violate it. But there's a line between enforcing the law and becoming the publicly funded enforcement arm of a particular industry, uncritically promoting their loss estimates, arguments, and websites.

Mind you what can you expect in a country that has been run by criminals for the last few decades.  

[LilBambi]

Wow!

How can a site take care of the problem quickly for the rest of their site owners, who are legitimate, if they are taking the site down without even having a definitive issue for which they are taking it down??  How can site owners comply and be fair to the rest of their legitimate customers if the government is being unrealistic?

Wow...that sucks for those legitimate owners. And apparently GoDaddy is a terrible choice for hosting...

Did you see the update on the JotForm article?

Update: Secret Service spokesman Brian Leary has confirmed to Ars that, after further investigation, his agency is indeed involved in the JotForm case. The Secret Service has also launched an internal review to "make sure all our policies and procedures were followed" in the matter, he added. He could not comment on any other issues surrounding the case, including whether a court order had been obtained.

[Temmu]

fear not, this thing we used to know at the internet will be safe and secure in the all-knowing all-watching hands of the world government.

[abarbarian]

Wow!

How can a site take care of the problem quickly for the rest of their site owners, who are legitimate, if they are taking the site down without even having a definitive issue for which they are taking it down??  How can site owners comply and be fair to the rest of their legitimate customers if the government is being unrealistic?

Wow...that sucks for those legitimate owners. And apparently GoDaddy is a terrible choice for hosting...

Did you see the update on the JotForm article?

I did indeed.  

[LilBambi]

Tragic! How many businesses will they force of out business through their heavy handed tactics!