Recent Posts

4676

General Software Discussion / Re: Nuance PDF Reader - Acresso-FLEXnet agent is Annoyware/Adware WARNING.

« Last post by IainB on September 30, 2012, 09:31 AM »

...I see that Gizmo's Best Freeware site lists PDF-XChange Viewer as its top pick:
http://www.techsupportalert.com/best-free-non-adobe-pdf-reader.htm.

-cyberdiva (September 30, 2012, 08:28 AM)

Thanks for that link.   
I found it super-useful because it gives a quick comparison between several of the alternative-to-Adobe PDF readers, some of which have been mentioned in this discussion thread (above).

4677

General Software Discussion / Re: Nuance PDF Reader - Acresso-FLEXnet agent is Annoyware/Adware WARNING.

« Last post by IainB on September 30, 2012, 09:15 AM »

...While this stuff can be annoying, and is a bad way of informing users about software updates, it is hardly a crime against humanity.
Yet another case of paranoia runs deep.
If you really want to see unacceptable behaviour, install anything from NCH software. This stomps all over your registry and imposes file associates with just about anything and everything, resulting in all manner of popups and invitations to install, and buy, yet more NCH software.

-michaelkenward (September 30, 2012, 06:17 AM)

The issue does not seem to be our opinions regarding the degree of "badness" of the software, but simply that it has been designed to do the spammy/adware stuff that it does.
Regarding Nuance PDF Reader, there was no suggestion of ranking it alongside "crimes against humanity" or suggesting the need to be paranoid. The absurd association and hyperbole that you mention thus does nothing to defend the software from, or refute, the real evidence uncovered by myself and others (QED) as to just how much of a NU-IS-ANCE the thing actually is, out there in the field.
All spammy/adware garbage like Nuance PDF Reader and the execrable NCH software that you mention seems to survive not only by being borderline illegal at worst (e.g., NCH does a "bait and switch"), but also because it is not a crime for software to put "hooks" into the OS or "stomp all over the registry" as you put it - Norton/Symantec products arguably being amongst the the worst offenders of the latter.

The only protection we users seem to have against this is information and communication - by users/potential suckers warning each other "caveat emptor" - e.g., some of the users otherwise would seem to be blissfully unaware of what has been going on with the software on their computers (QED re Nuance PDF Reader).

That was why I opened the discussion: NCH Software - "There Be Dragons", and reported on my quick install/de-install of the software in the discussion Re: Norton Identity Safe -- Free Download.

4678

General Software Discussion / Re: In search of ... RAMdisk opinions

« Last post by IainB on September 30, 2012, 06:33 AM »

..., I take a suck-it-and-see approach.

-IainB (September 28, 2012, 09:58 PM)

Unless one is an arctic monkey, the term is suck in and see.

Thank you for the link to explaining Ready Boost - I never got it to do anything noticeable for me. Instead I have been using eBoostr, and is satisfied with this. Of course only because I merely have 4GB RAM - on my next PC I sincerely hope to access much more memory.

-Curt (September 29, 2012, 05:46 PM)

The term I used was correct use of English for the purpose intended:

suck it and see
UK informal
Definition
to try something to find out if it will be successful
I'm not sure whether this paint is the right colour for the bedroom - we'll just have to suck it and see.

(Definition of suck it and see from the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary & Thesaurus © Cambridge University Press)
http://dictionary.ca...tish/suck-it-and-see

I don't think I had heard of the Arctic Monkeys' song of the same name before.

Thank you for the mention of eBoostr - I don't think I had heard of that before, either. Am doing some research on it now...

EDIT: 2012-10-01 1552hrs (NZT)
With all this talk of "sucking", I wonder if it is worth referring also to the old adage about "Teaching your grandmother to suck eggs."?...   

4679

Living Room / Re: Internet freedoms restrained - SOPA/PIPA/OPEN/ACTA/CETA/PrECISE-related updates

« Last post by IainB on September 30, 2012, 04:11 AM »

Seriously good thinking on Lauren Weinstein's Blog:
Free Speech, the Internet, and a Very Big Lie

Spoiler

September 26, 2012

A dangerous and decidedly false meme has been floating around in media and elsewhere in recent days. It's actually not a new concept at all, but we're now seeing calculated efforts being deployed to leverage recent world events toward the achievement of an ancient and evil goal -- the control of public and private speech in their various guises and forms.

The catalyst for this newly energized push to muzzle the world is of course the vile anti-Islamic YouTube video, which I have discussed previously in YouTube Blocking the Anti-Islamic Video: Censorship or Responsible Stewardship? and elsewhere.

I will not here and now discuss this particular case in much more detail, except to note that trying to understand the reactions to this video, without a comprehensive understanding of the geopolitical and social history of the Mideast, is like attempting to figure out how a smartphone works by staring intently at its miniaturized circuit board components.

Of great concern are the comments and editorial opining now appearing, suggesting that the U.S. puts too much stake in "free speech" concepts, that we must be "tolerant" of other countries' sensibilities about speech restrictions, and that perhaps global censorship of unpopular concepts and ideas can be justified in the name of community good and world peace.

Implicit (and sometimes explicit) in these arguments is the assumption that censorship leads to happier, more peaceful populations, where conflicts that would otherwise occur will instead be tempered or eliminated by the unavailability of particular types of information and content.

Attempts to impose such controls on speech are now of global extent, and have massively accelerated with the evolution of the Internet.

Some countries ban what they consider to be "sacrilegious" materials in a religious context. Others ban Nazi imagery, or negative comments about the ruling government or monarchs. In some nations, violations of associated speech laws can result in decades-long prison sentences. Even here in the U.S., multiple legislative attempts have been made to try ban a wide variety of broadly defined content from the Net, on the grounds of it supposedly being "inappropriate" for children.

But the question that is hardly ever asked is fundamentally a simple one.

Ethical questions aside for the moment, does government-imposed censorship -- or government-inspired self-censorship -- actually have the "desired" results?

As a thought experiment, imagine that Google had acceded to demands that the anti-Islamic video be immediately blocked globally on YouTube, instead of taking what I believe was the appropriate course of instead only implementing highly targeted and narrow blocking.

Would global blocking have avoided the violence? Would the leaders calling for such blocking have then been satisfied?

The answer to both questions clearly appears to be no.

In fact, most of the violence in reaction to the video has been from persons who have not even seen it. Most don't even personally know anybody who has seen significant amounts of the actual video. Rather, they have "heard" about it -- second hand, third hand, characterizations, rumors, bits and pieces from other sources.

This is a clue to the Very Big Lie of censorship.

Censorship is not actually about preventing violence, or keeping people happy, or even improving the economy.

Censorship is essentially a *political* act. It is a mechanism of political control and political empowerment of existing leaders, not an effective mechanism for improving people's lives -- other than the lives of rulers and politicians themselves.

If YouTube had blocked the video in question globally, various leaders would have crowed that they had bullied Google into submission, but so long as the video existed anywhere, in any form, protests and violence would continue, with many of these leaders tacitly or even directly urging protesters on, fanning the flames of emotion.

For it is the very *existence* of information, not *access* to information per se, that is at the heart of censorship demands.

And in the age of the Internet, information has become much like energy itself. It can be hidden, changed in form, but information has become virtually indestructible. And like a chain reaction in a pit of uranium-235, the suppressed energy of information can explode across the Internet in a relative instant, impossible to control around the planet.

Demands to censor the Net, to somehow limit or marginalize free speech as some sort of American aberration, are ultimately doomed.

Censorship proponents dream of the days before the Net -- before television, radio, newspapers, and the printing press, when information could not be easily duplicated, transmitted, and widely disseminated.

When the printing press was invented, church leaders in particular were horrified. Much like politicians and leaders today, they knew that the technology could serve them well, but the last thing they wanted was such communications powers in the hands of the common folk.

The Internet of today has become the fulfillment of would-be censors worst nightmares. It provides the ability of virtual "nobodies" to reach vast audiences with unapproved ideas of all sorts, at any time, in all manner of ways -- written, audio, video.

Without the Internet, you would obviously not be reading these words, nor would you likely even be aware of my existence. Multiply this effect by millions -- that's the technological marvel that is a terror to those who would control information, communications, speech, and ideas themselves.

The U.S. has plenty of problems when it comes to its own handling of free speech. Related government hypocrisies are as old as the union, and largely independent of which political parties are ascendant at any given time.

But the Founding Fathers, fresh from the repression of monarchy, wrote words of genius when they created the First Amendment to the Constitution, and ensconced freedom of speech firmly into the fabric of their new nation. That their foresight, in a largely agrarian society, is even more valid and important today, in a time of instantaneous global communications within a highly technological milieu, is a wonder of the ages.

We must firmly reject the claims of persons who assert that there's too much free speech, that perhaps censorship isn't so bad, that the world at large must cower to the lowest common denominator of narrow minds and political expediencies.

They are wrong, and unless they're willing to cut themselves off from the Internet entirely -- and perhaps not even then -- the Net will ultimately foil their efforts to impose "dark ages" sensibilities onto our world of now.

We're all well into the 21st century -- not the 13th.

Get used to it -- or learn the lessons of history the very hard way indeed.

--Lauren--

4680

Living Room / Re: Internet freedoms restrained - SOPA/PIPA/OPEN/ACTA/CETA/PrECISE-related updates

« Last post by IainB on September 30, 2012, 04:11 AM »

Former Copyright Boss: New Technology Should Be Presumed Illegal Until Congress Says Otherwise
http://www.techdirt....says-otherwise.shtml
"Commercial exploiters of new technologies should be required to convince Congress to sanction a new delivery system and/or exempt it from copyright liability. That is what Congress intended."

-TaoPhoenix (September 29, 2012, 09:19 PM)

Some people (not me you understand) might say that all this probably proves is that some US departments and associated bureaucracies may employ more than the lion's share of congenital idiots, and that this could perhaps explain something about the US' apparent progressive spiral into a dysfunctional state over the last few decades.
If this were true, then maybe there is even an Equal Employment Opportunity policy in place that demands that such people have to be employed to meet a target of (say) 20% of all employees. Who knows?     

4681

General Software Discussion / Nuance PDF Reader - Acresso-FLEXnet agent is Annoyware/Adware WARNING.

« Last post by IainB on September 29, 2012, 05:03 AM »

On 2011-02-26 I downloaded Nuance PDF Reader ($FREE) via an email from digitalriver.com that said:

Thank you for your interest in Nuance PDF Reader.
To access your download of Nuance PDF Reader software, click here.
By confirming your email address and downloading the file, you are signing up to receive periodic follow-up emails regarding the Nuance PDF Reader.
Any emails we send you will contain unsubscribe information, and you may opt-out of future emails at any time.
________________________________

What wasn't explained to me was that Acresso/FLEXnet "marketing" software would be silently installed at the same time as Nuance PDF Reader, but I fortunately became aware of this as soon as it first tried to phone home, which caused my Windows 7 Firewall Control to ask me what permissions I wanted to grant it - so I disabled all of its outbound access. This effectively ring-fenced the problem software.

I nevertheless determined to stick with it and give the Nuance PDF Reader a fair trial anyway, despite the above detestable marketing practice.

My conclusions on Nuance PDF Reader:

• Primarily, it seems to be an annoying 5th column marketing teaser, offering no particular advantages, for which you pay the price by letting it in through the door in the first place and then regret later. It has its advertising contained inside the application.
• It seems to be cuckoo software and persistently takes over the file association to PDF files across your system (including Firefox), which you then have to restore manually.
• It offers arguably less and certainly little or nothing more than Adobe Reader (also $FREE and with no Annoyware/Adware).

So here it is, over a year later. I had been putting it off until I felt strong enough to confront the de-lousing of my system of the Nuance PDF Reader parasite. Yesterday I had a quick google about it and after reading this:

How to remove Nuance PDF reader from Firefox (& short review)

If like some people you install the free Nuance PDF reader, then uninstall it but it's still taking over PDFs in Firefox, here is how I got rid of it. It worked for me, but your mileage may vary... (read the rest at the hyperlink above)

- I took control and:

• used RevoUninstaller to remove Nuance PDF Reader.   
• This promptly caused it to try to phone home again (I blocked that too) - thanks Windows 7 Firewall Control.   
• However, I had to manually delete the Acresso/FLEXnet Connect agent software bits - which had been buried away in a couple of separate parts of the OS. I used Unlocker to forcefully delete any open files/folders that had been locked by residual running processes. Unlocker can also kill the locking processes at the same time as deleting the files/folders.   
• Just in case, I checked for and expunged any and all residual Registry traces/hooks of these proggies (Nuance, Acresso/FLEXnet Connect) from the Registry, using CCleaner.   
• I doublechecked that the system was all clear by searching for relevant files/folders using Locate32.   

As regards the extent of OS hook embedding and OS damage, I would estimate Nuance PDF Reader as rating about 4 or 5 on a scale of 1 (low) to 10 (high), where any Norton/Symantec product would be 10. So Nuance PDF Reader is rather like a relatively harmless trojan/virus.

Nuance PDF Reader is clearly a common Nuisance. For example, on the Microsoft Answers forum there is this post:

What is Acresso software manager agent and how do I get rid of it?
GerodS [MSFT] replied on August 18, 2011
Did you install Nuance PDF Reader recently?  In my case this was the culprit.  I foundt his out by going to C:\ProgramData\FLEXnet\Connect and looking at the date of the folders in there.  Then I found the "installed on" column in "Add remove programs" to find what I installed on the date.  I found in my case that it was the Nuance PDF Reader.

Then I found this Via Bing:
http://www.killdeal....f-converter-pro-6-0/
Check out the first comment at the bottom:  "To my surprise, the ’software vendor’, Nuance in this case, decided to remove the ‘disable automatic…’ option and, whether I wanted it or not, my computer was going to call Nuance every day at 10 a.m., just to say ‘hi’, I suppose. To their credit, ACRESSO has an ‘uninstall’ utility at their own site and, hopefully, the the process was successful but I do NOT appreciate Nuance’s insistence of staying in touch with my computer, whether I wanted it or not and without asking for my permission. The Reference Guide does not mention ACRESSO, FLEXnet Connect or the fact that some third party software was installed."
I did not find good directions for uninstalling this on this Accresso site, so I am in the middle of uninstalling the PDF Reader instead...

4682

General Software Discussion / Re: In search of ... RAMdisk opinions

« Last post by IainB on September 28, 2012, 09:58 PM »

I've been following this discussion thread with interest but without so far being able to contribute much that I thought could be of real use/help to it, until, perhaps, this last couple of weeks.
The subject could perhaps be more accurately restated as a general "Making greater use of available RAM for efficiency and performance iprovement", rather than just focussing on one approach to doing this - ie., RAMdisk.

The main advantage of a RAMdisk (or RAMdrive) is performance improvement. Though I had used memory optimisers and the IBM DOS RAMdisk in laptops since years ago, I have trialled them but not really used them (seemed too kludgy or flaky or of no real advantage) in later Windows GUI operating systems. In DOS they certainly did have a noticeable effect on performance, largely because they could reduce latency by reducing the HDD read/write activity in HDD TEMP and paging operations, and they also took advantage of any unused "upper memory". So, I knew that RAM drives could offer real potential performance benefits under some circumstances.

For some time I have coincidentally been trialling potential performance-improving tweaks - hardware/software. The single most significant performance improvement achieved so far in this (and which I posted about in detail in the DC Forum as Test: Does latency reduction via RAM upgrade lift software performance?) came about after bumping up the DDR3 RAM to the max 8Gb (on available slots) on two laptops.
Suffice it to say that the performance improvement was significant in terms of raising the WEI (Windows Experience Index) "Memory operations per second" subscore, but not the overall Base Score (which is determined by the lowest subscore).

However, from a user perspective

..."everything seems to run faster"...I have also now turned on (previously turned off most) all the settings for max graphics quality - on both laptops - which, theoretically should place extra load on the CPUs. However, the user experience is that display quality/resolution has improved and there has been no perceptible waiting/latency from any processes.

Thus, as a general rule, anything you can do to push operations requiring physical HDD activity into RAM are going to reduce latency and enable an improved real speed of operation from the user perspective.

The laptops are:

• a DELL Inspiron with an AMD Phenom II X3 N850 (triple-core) CPU and a 5,400RPM HDD, OS Win7-64 Home Premium.
• an HP ENVY 14 with an Intel i7 (4x2=8-core) CPU and a 7,200rpm HDD, OS Win7-64 Home Premium.

With all that extra RAM, I have been trying to apply the above general rule by seeing what other operations I can push into RAM - for example, having the Firefox cache in RAM:

• refer post: Speed Up Firefox by Moving Your Cache to RAM, No RAM Disk Required
• refer post: Speed up Firefox page loading time without using a RAM disk
• refer group discussion: moving cache to RAM instructions making the rounds
  

  I have long ago dispensed with the disk cache as it just slows things down, and overworks my HD. I have 4GB of RAM, and seldom use more than half of it for everything that is running.  I have always deleted the disk cache after a session anyway as I don't want old data.  Some of us don't WANT to restore a session.
  Bottom line, this is an advantage (the hack) for many users, not so much for others.  May slow some users, or have other repercussions, but I haven't seen any, yet.
  

So much opinion! So, in the absence of facts, I take a suck-it-and-see approach. My HP ENVY's Firefox about:config thus currently has been (and is still being) tweaked to something similar to these trial settings for RAM/disk caching utlilisation: (caveat - might not suit everybody's needs though)



Also, over the last couple of weeks, what I have been doing (in piecemeal fashion, because it is "when I have the time") is trialling the standard Windows ReadyBoost facility in Win7. This was prompted by my reading @Stephen66515's very informative post (displaying most of the Windows Help file details on ReadyBoost): Using memory in your storage device to speed up your computer.
There are several other posts in the DC Forum referring to the ReadyBoost Windows feature.

Whilst I have so far made no objective measures of the effects of using ReadyBoost, I can report that it certainly seems to work as it should, and that it seems to provide some latency reduction, though I do not yet understand how to make the most of this. Presumably the max read/write speed of the USB RAM ("memory stick" or whatever you might call it) is a constraint, and so measuring that would seem to be useful.
Gaining a better understanding of the constraints/limitations should enable me to better understand how to take best advantage of any ReadyBoost potential benefits.

NB: Whilst one of the potential disadvantages of a RAMdisk or RAM caching might be (for some) the loss of the RAM-based contents on power-down (Shutdown), it is not necessarily so relevant for laptop users who keep the laptop in "Sleep mode" most of the time when not using it, rather than Shutdown. Also, for those that might want it, there will probably be ways to make a backup HDD copy of files in a RAM disk/cache - if necessary - before terminating the process or before Shutdown. (Though I haven't played around with this yet.)

4683

Living Room / Re: DOTCOM saga - updates

« Last post by IainB on September 27, 2012, 12:06 AM »

I's a right mess, innit !?!

-tomos (September 26, 2012, 01:48 PM)

Hahaha, yes.   
I guess that's why the NZ Herald referred to it as "a cockup" - it's an aptly descriptive term - but it has become rather farcical and could have potentially serious political outcomes for the NZ government and especially the current NZ Prime Minister.

Cynically, I have started to wonder whether the thing hadn't been deliberately engineered to bring him down. It's inexplicable. Serial execution errors. A clusterfark. I find it difficult to believe that this has all been screwed up entirely by accident.
Still, stranger things have happened at sea, I suppose.

4684

Living Room / Re: Internet freedoms restrained - SOPA/PIPA/OPEN/ACTA/CETA/PrECISE-related updates

« Last post by IainB on September 26, 2012, 11:53 PM »

New bill attempts to curb Big Brother’s ability to snoop and squelch free speech online
http://www.pcworld.c...e-speech-online.html

-Tinman57 (September 26, 2012, 08:39 PM)

Wow! Let's hope they go through OK. Looks like it might be two seriously intelligent and hopeful pieces of proposed legislation:

• H.R. 6529 - ECPA 2.0 Act of 2012: This act seeks to reform the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), which was enacted in 1986.
  
  
• H.R. 6530 - Global Free Internet Act of 2012: This bill seeks to establish a formal process for the U.S. government to evaluate policies that "pose threats to Internet users and online services".
  

If I was an American, their proposer, Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren (California Democrat) would get my vote for that.

4685

Living Room / Re: Internet freedoms restrained - SOPA/PIPA/OPEN/ACTA/CETA/PrECISE-related updates

« Last post by IainB on September 26, 2012, 07:07 PM »

The only positive thing about this EFF.org post that I can think of is that, for a change, it confirms that it is the EU and not just the US that seems to be so Hell-bent on eroding Internet and other freedoms - but then, we probably already knew that. (Sigh.)
(Copied below sans numerous hyperlinks - so please see the actual post for those.)

Cleansing the Internet of Terrorism: Leaked EU Proposal Would Erode Civil Liberties
by Jillian C. York and Katitza Rodriguez

A new project aimed at “countering illegal use of the Internet” is making headlines this week.  The project, dubbed CleanIT, is funded by the European Commission (EC) to the tune of more than $400,000 and, it would appear, aims to eradicate the Internet of terrorism.

European Digital Rights, a Brussels-based organization consisting of 32 NGOs throughout Europe (and of which EFF is a member), has recently published a leaked draft document from CleanIT.

On the project’s website, its stated goal is to reduce the impact of the use of the Internet for “terrorist purposes” but “without affecting our online freedom.”  While the goal may seem noble enough, the project actually contains a number of controversial proposals that will compel Internet intermediaries to police the Internet and most certainly will affect our online freedom. Let’s take a look at a few of the most controversial elements of the project.

Privatization of Law Enforcement
Under the guise of fighting ‘terrorist use of the Internet,' the “CleanIT project," led by the Dutch police, has developed a set of ‘detailed recommendations’ that will compel Internet companies to act as arbiters of what is “illegal” or “terrorist” uses of the Internet.

Specifically, the proposal suggests that “legislation must make clear Internet companies are obliged to try and detect to a reasonable degree … terrorist use of the infrastructure” and, even more troubling, “can be held responsible for not removing (user generated) content they host/have users posted on their platforms if they do not make reasonable effort in detection.”

EFF has always expressed concerns about relying upon intermediaries to police the Internet.  As an organization, we believe in strong legal protections for intermediaries and as such, have often upheld the United States’ Communications Decency Act, Section 230 (CDA 230) as a positive example of intermediary protection. While even CDA 230’s protections do not extend to truly criminal activities, the definition of “terrorist” is, in this context, vague enough to raise alarm (see conclusion for more details).

Erosion of Legal Safeguards
The recommendations call for the easy removal of content from the Internet without following “more labour intensive and formal” procedures. They suggest new obligations that would compel Internet companies to hand over all necessary customer information for investigation of “terrorist use of the Internet.” This amounts to a serious erosion of legal safeguards. Under this regime, an online company must assert some vague notion of “terrorist use of the Internet,” and they will have carte blanche to bypass hard-won civil liberties protections.

The recommendations also suggest that knowingly providing hyperlinks to a site that hosts “terrorist content” will be defined as illegal. This would negatively impact a number of different actors, from academic researchers to journalists, and is a slap in the face to the principles of free expression and the free flow of knowledge.

Data Retention
Internet companies under the CleanIT regime would not only be allowed, but in fact obligated to store communications containing “terrorist content,” even when it has been removed from their platform, in order to supply the information to law enforcement agencies.

Material Support and Sanctions
The project also offers guidelines to governments, including the recommendation that governments start a “full review of existing national legislation” on reducing terrorist use of the Internet. This includes a reminder of Council Regulation (EC) No. 881/2002 (art. 1.2), which prohibits Internet services from being provided to designated terrorist entities such as Al Qaeda. It is worth noting that similar legislation exists in the US (see: 18 U.S.C. § 2339B) and has been widely criticized as criminalizing speech in the form of political advocacy.

The guidelines spell out how governments should implement filtering systems to block civil servants from any “illegal use of the Internet.”

Furthermore, governments’ criteria for purchasing policies and public grants will be tied to Internet companies’ track record for reducing the “terrorist use of the Internet.”

Notice and Take Action
Notice and take action policies allow law enforcement agencies (LEAs) to notify and act against Internet companies, who must remove “offending” content as fast as possible. This obligates LEAs to determine the extent to which content can be considered “offensive.” An LEA must “contextualize content and describe how it breaches national law.”

The leaked document contains recommendations that would require LEAs to, in some cases, send notice that access to content must be blocked, followed by notice that the domain registration must be ended. In other cases, sites' security certificates would be downgraded.

Real Identity Policies
Under the CleanIT provisions, all network users, whether in social or professional networks, will be obligated to supply their real identities to service providers (including social networks), effectively destroying online anonymity, which EFF believes is crucial for protecting the safety and well-being of activists, whistle-blowers, victims of domestic violence, and many others (for more on that, see this excellent article from Geek Feminism). The Constitutional Court of South Korea found an Internet "real name" policy to be unconstitutional.

Under the provisions, companies can even require users to provide proof of their identity, and can store the contact information of users in order to provide it to LEAs in the case of an investigation into potential terrorist use of the Internet. The provisions will even require individuals to utilize a real image of him or herself, destroying decades of Internet culture (in addition to, of course, infringing on user privacy).

Semi-automated detection
The plan also calls for semi-automated detection of “terrorist content.” While content would not automatically be removed, any searches for known terrorist organizations’ names, logos or other related content will be automatically detected. This will certainly inhibit research into anything remotely associated with what law enforcement might deem “terrorist content,” and would seriously hinder normal student inquiry into current events and history! In effect, all searches about terrorism might end up falling into an LEA’s view of terrorist propaganda.

LEA Access to User Content
The document recommends that, at the European level, browsers or operating systems should develop a reporting button of terrorist use of the Internet, and suggests governments draft legislation to make this reporting button compulsory for browser or operating systems.

Furthermore, the document recommends that judges, public prosecutors and (specialized) police officers be able to temporarily remove content that is being investigated.

Banning languages
Frighteningly, one matter up for discussion within the CleanIT provisions is the banning of languages that have not been mastered by “abuse specialists or abuse systems.” The current recommendation contained in the document would make the use of such languages “unacceptable and preferably technically impossible.”

With more than 200 commonly-used languages and more than 6,000 languages spoken globally, it seems highly unlikely that the abuse specialists or systems will expand beyond a select few. For the sake of comparison, Google Translate only works with 65 languages.

At a time when new initiatives to preserve endangered languages are taking advantage of new technologies, it seems shortsighted and even chauvinistic to consider limiting what languages can be used online.

What is terrorism, anyway?
While the document states that the first reference for determining terrorist content will be UN/EU/national terrorist sanctions list, it seems that the provisions allow for a broader interpretation of “terrorism.” This is incredibly problematic in a multicultural environment; as the old adage goes, “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.” Even a comparison of the US and EU lists of designated terrorist entities shows discrepancies, and the recent controversy in the US around the de-listing of an Iranian group shows how political such decisions can be.

(Conclusion)
Overall, we see the CleanIT project as a misguided effort to introduce potentially endless censorship and surveillance that would effectively turn Internet companies in Internet cops. We are also disappointed in the European Commission for funding the project: Given the strong legal protections for free expression and privacy contained in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union [PDF], it’s imperative that any efforts to track down and prosecute terrorism must also protect fundamental rights. The CleanIT regime, on the other hand, clearly erodes these rights.

4686

Living Room / Re: DOTCOM saga - updates

« Last post by IainB on September 26, 2012, 09:44 AM »

Update copied below: (sans embedded hyperlinks/images)

Top secret review ordered for Dotcom documents
By Edward Gay
7:09 PM Wednesday Sep 26, 2012

An independent lawyer will be called in to look at top secret spy documents and decide whether they should be released to Kim Dotcom's legal team.

The internet mogul was back at the High Court at Auckland today where his lawyers asked for the "independent eyes'' of a senior lawyer to inspect evidence gathered by Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB).

Crown lawyer John Pike agreed a senior lawyer needed to be cleared and said that although the information would be divulged, the spy agency's sources and channels would be protected.

The court had selected David Jones QC, but he indicated he would not be available and a replacement will need to be selected.

The move is similar to that adopted in the case of Algerian refugee Ahmed Zaoui where lawyer Stuart Grieve QC was appointed special advocate to review information from the Security Intelligence Service.

The case dragged on for five years and resulted in the security risk certificate against Mr Zaoui being dropped.

Outside court, Dotcom said he understood the FBI had been able to view information gathered by the GCSB.

He said intercepted phone calls and information on his internet use could have been added to the US indictment which will be the subject of an extradition hearing in March.

"If they got it and if it was illegal that might indicate that parts of the indictment are also tainted by this.''

Earlier, his lawyer Paul Davison QC told the court that information from the Crown suggests there could have been more spying by the GCSB.

"Material from the FBI may well have been sourced by the GCSB and having been sent to the FBI may have come back,'' Mr Davison said.

The GCSB was spying on Dotcom unlawfully after being told by police that he and his associates were foreign nationals

Police gave the assurance all four were foreign nationals despite Dotcom and his Dutch co-accused Bram Van Der Kolk being permanent residents of New Zealand.

The GCSB is forbidden by law to spy on New Zealand citizens or permanent residents.

Chief High Court judge Justice Helen Winkelmann said she was "concerned'' the GCSB did not know Dotcom's residency status.

Mr Pike replied that there was an investigation underway.

The wrangle over the GCSB's involvement is the latest in a series of legal missteps by police and other agencies involved in the January 20 raid on Dotcom's Coatesville mansion.

The courts have also heard legal arguments over the use of search warrants later found to be invalid and the seizure of Dotcom's cash, cars and property using a court order which should never have been granted.

Information about the GCSB's involvement was kept secret last month as Acting Prime Minister Bill English had signed a "ministerial certificate'' which effectively suppressed it.

That certificate was released to APNZ today and shows Mr English directing the police not to disclose any information concerning the GCSB's involvement.

Mr English said doing so would "likely prejudice New Zealand in relation to the detection or prevention of serious crime by inhibiting the free and candid flow of information to and from the Bureau...''

Dotcom, van der Kolk, Finn Batato and Mathias Ortmann are accused of being behind the world's biggest criminal copyright violation through the file-sharing website Megaupload, which carried about 4 per cent of the world's internet traffic. The men deny the charges.

4687

Find And Run Robot / Re: Latest FARR Release v2.200.01 - Sep 25, 2012

« Last post by IainB on September 26, 2012, 03:36 AM »

Thankyou!

4688

Living Room / Re: DOTCOM saga - updates

« Last post by IainB on September 26, 2012, 03:21 AM »

Amusing cartoons from the NZ Herald:

4689

Living Room / Re: DOTCOM saga - updates

« Last post by IainB on September 26, 2012, 03:18 AM »

Actually, I do think it would be hard to make up such a comedy, so maybe we should all gratefully sit back and watch it unfold as a gift of original and creative theatrical farce - similar in type to the Whitehall farces by Brian Rix in the UK, years ago.
The NZ Listener article below covers the "cockup" (as it seems to be). I have copied the post sans embedded links/images, but have inserted the YouTube video of Dotcom's generous fireworks display for Auckland, as I happened to have watched it with my family, having a superb view of the event over the city, from the vantage point of our balcony.

The related video of Prime Minister's Question Time in the NZ Parliament (Wednesday Sep 26, 2012) makes for interesting viewing, [url=http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/video.cfm?c_id=1&gal_objectid=10836635&gallery_id=128143]here.

Kim Dotcom: a NZ resident - GCSB didn't know, but US did?
Link: http://www.listener....know-but-the-us-did/
By Toby ManhireToby Manhire | Published on September 26, 2012 | Online Only
Tags: kim dotcom

The NZ residency of Dotcom and Bram Van Der Volk is noted in the January 5 US indictment.
A quick note on the latest explosion of Kim Dotcom snafu-itis on the part of the New Zealand authorities.

Picture: Kim Dotcom's modest residency celebration [of a $500,000 2011 Auckland New Year Fireworks display over Auckland, as a gift from Dotcom.]

The GCSB seemingly were comfortable with the assurance of NZ police that Kim Dotcom and co-accused Bram Van Der Kolker were not New Zealand permanent residents (or were “foreign nationals”, of which more later) and hence exempt from prohibitions on domestic surveillance, and so, it’s been reported, they happily continued to intercept the communications of the men up until January 20, the day of the big fist-pumping raid in Coatesville.

And yet their friends in the US seemed not to be troubled by such confusion.

In the big indictment filed in a US court against MegaUpload and a number of its executives, among them Dotcom and Van Der Kolker, and dated January 5 – that’s more than a fortnight before the raid, and the apparent cessation of what now appears to have been illegal surveillance – the two men are clearly labelled as NZ residents.

KIM DOTCOM, who has also been known as KIM SCHMITZ and KIM TIM JIM VESTOR, is a resident of both Hong Kong and New Zealand, and a dual citizen of Finland and Germany …

BRAM VAN DER KOLK, who has also been known as BRAMOS, is a resident of both the Netherlands and New Zealand.

Kim Dotcom is widely reported to have formal Hong Kong residency. I’m assuming BvdK has formal Dutch residency. But all the same, you might argue that “resident” in this sense could be read as referring simply to where the individuals happen to be resting their heads – rather than any formal status. I doubt that, but either way, should it not have set alarm bells ringing among NZ’s spooks and police?

A final thought: the citizen-status description of Dotcom and Van Der Kolker above would tend to support their categorisation as “foreign nationals”. According to reports “the GCSB asked for assurances the men were all foreign nationals”.

But the “foreign national” status – which according to legal expert Graeme Edgeler is not a term widely used in New Zealand law – and is in this sense arguably not mutually exclusive from a permanent resident.

Is it possible the cockup, if we take the optimistic view that it was a cockup, stemmed from this?

4690

Living Room / Re: MegaUpload Comeback?

« Last post by IainB on September 24, 2012, 08:29 PM »

What was done (with questionable legality) once can be done again. I don't think he - or Megaupload - are out of the woods just yet...

-40hz (September 24, 2012, 06:15 PM)

Yup. Well put.

4691

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« Last post by IainB on September 24, 2012, 07:29 AM »

Copyright lawyers...

4692

Living Room / Re: DOTCOM saga - updates

« Last post by IainB on September 24, 2012, 06:48 AM »

"You seem to think rationality will preval".   

-TaoPhoenix (September 24, 2012, 12:15 AM)

Eh? What? Was that directed at me?
If it was, then no, I don't expect rationality to prevail. I mean, it seems to have been generally irrational most of the way so far, so why should that change? However, I would hope that the NZ judiciary could be rational about it though, and so far they don't seem to have done too badly.
No-one should expect sanity at a Mad Hatter's tea party.

4693

Living Room / Re: DOTCOM saga - updates

« Last post by IainB on September 23, 2012, 10:37 PM »

Interesting. A very belated announcement (claims he was told by the director of the GCSB on 2012-09-17) by NZ Prime Minister John Key regarding illegal GCSB spying in the Dotcom case.
This has now given rise to the not unreasonable question as to whether John Key may actually find it difficult to maintain (as he had done) that he had no prior knowledge of the Dotcom raid - stating that he had not heard of Mr Dotcom until the day before the police raid was carried out. This could have seemed quite surprising to the majority of Kiwis, considering the international implications of the Dotcom raid.

Thin ice. If he can't solidly support his statements with some compelling facts or otherwise pull a rabbit out of his hat, then I suspect that he may run the risk of becoming dog tucker come the next election. He has been evasive, if not dissembling, on at least one other matter, I gather.
(NZ Herald post Copied below sans embedded hyperlinks.)

Dotcom: Illegal spying revealed
Updated 2:31 PM Monday Sep 24, 2012

An inquiry is to be launched into the illegal interception of communications by the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) during the Megaupload case, Prime Minister John Key says.

Mr Key said he had requested the inquiry by the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security into the circumstances of unlawful interception of communications of certain individuals by the GCSB.

Mr Key said the Crown filed a memorandum in the High Court in the Megaupload case advising the court and affected parties that the GCSB had acted unlawfully while assisting the police to locate certain individuals subject to arrest warrants issued in the case.

The bureau had acquired communications in some instances without statutory authority.

The Prime Minister was told about the matter by the director of the GCSB on September 17 and referred the bureau's actions to Inspector-General Paul Neazor.

The inspector-general is an independent statutory officer with the power to enquire into any matter related to a government intelligence agency's compliance with the law.

Mr Key expressed his disappointment that unlawful acts had taken place.

"I expect our intelligence agencies to operate always within the law. Their operations depend on public trust.''

Mr Key said he has also asked the inspector-general to recommend any measures he considered necessary to prevent such acts from happening again.

"I look forward to the inspector-general's inquiry getting to the heart of what took place and what can be done about it.

"Because this is also a matter for the High Court in its consideration of the Megaupload litigation, I am unable to comment further,'' he said.

Labour leader David Shearer said the alleged illegal spying amounted to a "shocking breach" of New Zealand law.

He said Mr Key needed to explain a claim he had not heard of Mr Dotcom until the day before a police raid was carried out at his Coatesville mansion.

Mr Key would have been called on to authorise monitoring carried out by the GCSB, Mr Shearer said.

"While it's been revealed that 'some' bugging was done illegally, it is not credible to think that other monitoring by the agency was not signed by the Prime Minister before the raid was carried out.

"This is not about national security. This is about John Key's own word and whether he has told the truth to New Zealanders."

New Zealand First leader Winston Peters said Mr Key had failed in his responsibility to oversee the GCSB and the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service.

His actions showed a "mega disregard" to his role and his actions amounted to "dereliction of duty", Mr Peters said.

"The taxpayers of New Zealand are about to pay a fortune to Mr Dotcom because of the Prime Minister's cavalier disregard for his responsibilities.

"Mr Key appears not to care about the security of New Zealanders, and is instead more concerned with photo opportunities, three-way handshakes at rugby games, and prancing down fashion runways."

Shortly after Mr Key made the announcement this afternoon, Dotcom tweeted: "The NZ equivalent of the CIA has spied on me UNLAWFULLY''.

Last week the Court of Appeal reserved a decision on whether Dotcom would receive disclosure from the US Government in its case against him.

The US government had lodged an appeal against a ruling that required them to disclose all evidence in its internet piracy case against him in order for a fair extradition hearing.

Dotcom, Finn Batato, Mathias Ortmann and Bram Van Der Kolk are defending accusations of copyright infringement and money laundering.

4694

Living Room / Re: Ubuntu will now have Amazon ads pre-installed

« Last post by IainB on September 23, 2012, 07:37 PM »

...If ubuntu is bad, I wonder why not Mozilla is bad. sigh.

-mahesh2k (September 23, 2012, 07:07 PM)

Not "bad". I had always considered Ubuntu to be essentially "useful/good" - very good, actually. Same goes for Mozilla.
The issue for me is the degree to which anonymity/privacy can be maintained. That seems to be under threat - e.g., from things such as affiliate marketing systems, because of (see above).

It seems ironic that I use a non-proprietary browser (Firefox) which apparently operates some kind of affiliate marketing model, but before I start to use it I have to burden it with a swathe of add-ons and scripts in an attempt to protect my anonymity/privacy, and even then it's unlikely to be 100% effective. At least Firefox allows me to do this relatively easily, unlike the proprietary IE, and now (with increasing difficulty) the proprietary Google Chrome - both of which seem to be designed to tightly control the user's freedom of action to avoid/frustrate affiliate and other marketing.

Long live Ubuntu! (Though I have only used it a bit.)

4695

Living Room / Re: Internet freedoms restrained - SOPA/PIPA/OPEN/ACTA/CETA/PrECISE-related updates

« Last post by IainB on September 23, 2012, 06:37 PM »

Well, it could have been an M.C. Hammer song: "You can't stop this!"
If this post (see below) is true, then I am unspeakably annoyed by it as it looks like US Totalitarianism. Generally the only way to fight Totalitarianism is by revolt.
Just more of @Renegade's "cockroaches", I suppose.
(I've only copied just the start of the post to give you some idea. You can read the rest at the link if you are interested.)

Simulated Cybersecurity Threats That Pave the Way for Internet Restrictions
by Activist
Susanne Posel, Contributor
Activist Post

Janet Napolitano, Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, spoke to the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee meeting this week and confirmed that the Obama administration is circumventing Congress and drafting an “inter-agency process” which is “close to completion depending on a few issues that need to be resolved at the highest levels.”

John Brennan, assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism and chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation has planted the concept that a cybersecurity executive order will give the Obama administration power over the future of the internet in ways the passage of legislation would never be able to provide. In a letter to Senator Jay Rockefeller, Brennan said that Obama is “exploring issuing an executive order to direct federal agencies to secure the nation’s critical infrastructure by working with the private sector to develop security standards.”
(Read the rest at the link.)

4696

Living Room / Re: Ubuntu will now have Amazon ads pre-installed

« Last post by IainB on September 23, 2012, 06:18 PM »

Interesting comments, and surprisingly like-minded too!

On a somewhat related topic: am I the only one that purposefully removes affiliate links from URLs before purchasing things, unless I deliberately want to support a particular person?

-f0dder (September 22, 2012, 09:50 AM)

------------------------------

And remove the the link tracker extension when reposting a link

-Fred Nerd (September 22, 2012, 07:46 PM)

------------------------------

Though I have to confess, I'm not sure exactly why I do -- seems like it would hurt no one to give some affiliate credits to someone.

-mouser (September 22, 2012, 08:44 PM)

------------------------------

...I think at least some links aren't just sending affiliate info, they're sending identifiable user info of various kinds along with it...

-TaoPhoenix (September 22, 2012, 09:34 PM)

------------------------------

...I've always found affiliate marketing distasteful...

-Renegade (September 23, 2012, 12:23 AM)

------------------------------

• +1 - a bit like @f0dder, I always at least consider whether to remove affiliate links from URLs on the rare occasion that I might be using them to purchase things. The reason I do that is to protect my anonymity as much as possible. For example, the affiliate links could be used to build up a profile of your browsing/purchasing habits and interests. Marketers pay for that information, because it is so useful in that regard.
  
  
• +1 - like @Fred Nerd, I try to always remove any link tracker extension when reposting a link.
  
  
• +1 - a bit like @mouser, I now do it automatically without thinking, but that's on the basis of a deliberate blanket approach. I prefer risk avoidance ("better safe than sorry") and not wishing to waste time thinking about the merits/risks of each individual case.
  
  
• +1 - like @TaoPhoenix, I work on the basis of avoiding the risk that some links aren't sending only affiliate info, but could also be sending identifiable/tracking user info of various kinds along with it (how would you know for sure in each case?).
  
  
• +1 - like @Renegade, I generally find affiliate marketing to be distasteful. As a marketing practice, it does not have much to commend it. It is opportunistic and random, and seems to push people into the desperate mindset of followers, slaves and the unempowered. (Refer also "Competing for the Future", by Gary Hamel and C. K. Prahalad.)

Mind you, I suppose we could all be quite wrong about this...    

Bit of a long read, but here's some interesting and relevant background that got me thinking more about Internet privacy/anonymity, etc.: Junkbusters (Dr. Jason Catlett) Testimony Before the Senate Commerce Committee on 2001-07-11.doc

4697

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: Onetastic - Multi-purpose add-in for Microsoft OneNote

« Last post by IainB on September 23, 2012, 08:46 AM »

I was reading about this a few days ago, and I thought it looked pretty good, but then I read that it won't do for my OneNote 2007 version:

Minimum System Requirements: You must be using OneNote 2010. Onetastic does not work with OneNote 2007. Also minimum OS requirement is: Windows 7 or Windows Vista with SP2 and Platform Update for Windows Vista.

Quel dommage. (Sigh.)

4698

Living Room / Re: Internet freedoms restrained - SOPA/PIPA/OPEN/ACTA/CETA/PrECISE-related updates

« Last post by IainB on September 22, 2012, 08:01 AM »

I often wonder:

• Why do governments increasingly seem to be so Hell-bent on instituting regulation and control over the Internet freedoms that previously existed?
• Surely it can't all be only because the **AA are lobbying for it?
• What are the drivers for it all?
• If one main objective is (the usual) money/power, then what does it (regulation/control over the Internet) achieve for governments in that regard?

I subscribe to a website called GaryNorth.com, mostly to pick up any thoughts he may have on economics on his public pages (he has a members-only paywall for other pages). He often has interesting comments in his public pages, and I thought this post (copied below) was particularly interesting due to its relevance to the effect of Information Technology on the communication of Establishment propaganda. (Echoes of George Orwell's 1984.)

Digital Technologies vs. Truth Suppression
(Copied in the spoiler below as-is, with some emphasis of mine. There are no embedded hyperlinks. The website is worth a look as well.)

Spoiler

Digital Technologies vs. Truth Suppression
Gary North
Reality Check (Sept. 21, 2012)

I am going to tell you some stories. To make it interesting, I will begin with one which could make one of my readers the deal of a lifetime. It ends on September 30. He who hesitates is lost.

I begin with the obvious: the falling cost of Internet communications is revolutionizing the spread of knowledge. In doing so, it is undermining every establishment. Every establishment rests mush of its power on official views of the past. This is seen in the novel by George Orwell, "Nineteen Eighty-Four." The tyrant who enforces the totalitarian state says this. "Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past."

The cost of controlling the past has risen exponentially since 1995: the year that the graphics browser was introduced. Then came Google.

I know Orwell said this, because I just verified it on several websites. That took under one minute. There is some debate over punctuation: period, colon, or semicolon. I think I will not go to the trouble of looking it up in my library, which is in a special room miles away.

The cost of research is a tiny fraction of what it was in 1995. The Web has changed everything.

This leads me to my special offer. In the late nineteenth century, only those people who lived near Boston could research the history of American Puritanism. Only there were the primary sources available: Harvard University's library and the collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society. You had to go to Yale after you were finished in Boston. There were other collections that were scattered across the region. The main one was at the American Antiquarian Society in Worcester, Massachusetts. According to the AAS,

    Clifford K. Shipton, who became librarian in 1940, improved access to primary sources through partnerships with technology companies. The Early American Imprints microprint edition provided scholars with images of pages of books and pamphlets printed in America before 1801. Researchers around the world were soon eagerly reading the contents of imprints housed in libraries miles away.

Understand what this means: everything printed in colonial America from 1639 to early 1801. Then a follow-up collection was published: 1801-1811. I wrote my PhD. Dissertation in Riverside, California, based mainly on that microcard collection. That was over 40 years ago. I do not know how much the University of California's library paid for that set. I think it was a lot.

Then came microfiche. You could make crude photocopies of these microfiche. You could not with microcards. You had to take notes by hand. I still have mine in one long note card box. Historians never toss out their notes.

The price of the microcards fell to zero. A man I knew 20 years ago found out that the publishing firm was going to use the sets for land fill. They did not want competition for the microfiche edition. He made the company a deal. He would buy them. He wiuld sell them only to research organizations and private high schools that would not buy the microfiche sets. The company agreed.

My Institute for Christian Economics bought the set for $10,000. It paid $8,000 for a complete set of all the newspapers, 1780-1800. I got five readers. In today's money, that is at last $30,000. I overpaid.

Then came digitization and online searching. The microfiche are worth nothing.

ICE gave the microcard set to a private Christian day school. But it has run out of space in its library. It is going to give the set away. For the price of a trip to northwest Arkansas and renting a 16-foot truck, someone can own the set.

If no one wants it, it will return to land fill. Ashes to ashes, plastic to plastic.

With this set, you can train students to do primary source research. Or you can do such research yourself.

You have all the newspapers of the American Revolution. You can verify anyone's footnotes.

You get a complete index. This is an ideal tool for any day school that focuses on America's Christian history.

For a private high school that advertises itself as an academic institution for college-bound students. This set on the library's walls says "this institution is serious."

Deadline to apply: September 30, 2012. That is the email inquiry date deadline. If you are interested, send a note to Art Cunningham, [email protected].

CRITICS WITH DIGITS
It is getting close to impossible for any establishment group to get its version of the past accepted. There are rival sites that provide links to evidence that undermines the establishment's view.

In the good old days -- pre-1995 -- an establishment did not face a major challenge. It cost too much to research the facts. It cost too much to typeset a book, print it, store it, advertise it, and get distribution. The few that did this got a tiny market. It could be easily dismissed: "conspiracy theory." The old tactic is still used: "conspiracy theory." But it's a hard sell, because so many documents are online disproving the establishment's view. Too many people are not buying it.

The common man may not have an opinion about what did happen, but he has doubts about the official view. In the case of 9-11, people ask: "Where is the evidence that a plane crashed in one spot in Shanksville?" There was zero debris. There is video evidence of an empty hole. "Let's roll!" is inspiring. A missile shot by an Air Force jet isn't. But debris scattered over miles conveys a message: "This plane fell apart in the sky, not on the ground."

Conspiracy theory? You bet!

If the official view is clearly impossible regarding 25% of 9-11, how about 50%? Where was the debris at the Pentagon? Why was the hole so small? How did anyone navigate the required turn?

If we get to 50%, what about New York City? Why did Building 7 come down so fast? Why did a tiny paper fire bring down this building? And so forth.

Conspiracy theories? You bet!

Doubts regarding the official stories lead to doubts regarding all official stories. Doubt undermines legitimacy. Without legitimacy, an establishment must substitute power for authority, external government for self-government. The cost of forcing people to behave is too great for any government. Without widespread self-government to enforce its demands, an establishment becomes just another competing interest group.

This is why the World Wide Web is the biggest threat in history to every government-supported special-interest group. They all know this. There is hardly anything they can do about it. They rail against conspiracy theories, but the mantra is not working any more. It worked when the average person did not have access to books. He did not have access to supporting evidence one click away. Now he does. There is nothing that the various establishments can do about this, other than invoke the mantra: "Conspiracy theory."

It is a case of a government-subsidized pot calling a privately funded kettle black.

THE MISES INSTITUTE
The Ludwig von Mises Institute was the first comprehensive website to make available a comprehensive alternative to the Keynesian/monetarist establishment in the economics guild. It offers books, articles, and videos produced by scholars who reject this establishment view of economic cause and effect.

The department titled "Literature" offers hundreds of classic rejections of the Keynesian/monetarist outlook: in theory, in policy, and in economic history. Only the largest research libraries have even half of these books. These books are in PDF format and other e-book formats. The student can download all of them free of charge.

The student can also buy print-on-demand copies for about $20 each. This printing technology has broken the cartel of the book publishers. They never had to burn books. They only had to return the manuscripts to authors. This was so much more urbane than book-burning. Book-burning was so "National Socialist, 1936. "These days, any author can typeset his book with Microsoft Word $100) or Open Office Write (free). Or, if he wants to go big-time, he can buy a copy of inDesign and climb the learning curve. The point is, the barrier is merely a cheap software program and learning time. The barrier is no longer money.

"Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one." That was what radical activist A. J. Liebling said in the 1950s. Now anyone with an Internet connection who wants one can lease one free of charge. You can post anything on Scribd. It stays up, free of charge.

The Mises Institute has found that giving way PDFs of books sells lots of printed books. Book readers suffer from what I call Picard's syndrome. They just have to hold a book to enjoy it. A PDF or a Kindle is not good enough. (http://www.lewrockwe.../north/north228.html)

Even worse from the Keynesian/monetarist establishment's outlook is the power of YouTube. The Mises Institute posts all lectures delivered at its meetings. Then the video manager uses the YouTube embed feature to post it on the Institute's site. Somehow, I never see any ads. The videos begin at the beginning of the lecture session.

Videos are a good way for people to get a quick overview of any topic. The student can decide if it's worth pursuing. If he thinks it is, he can use the Literature section of the site to get started.

People like videos. They watch lots of them. They can more easily and more rapidly pick up new information in a well-delivered speech than in a book. The speeches stay on the site permanently.

The traffic that the Mises.org site receives is greater than the traffic on the site of the American Economic Association, the most important academic organization in the field of economics. Its site is rated as 140,000 on Alexa. The Mises site is rated at 17,000. There is no comparison.

The strategy of the Mises Institute is to give everything away. This strategy is working.

CONCLUSION
The Internet has overcome the establishments' distribution systems. Information delivery systems present numerous outlets to anyone with an Internet connection. Very skilled communicators can now overcome what would have been nearly impenetrable barriers to entry in 1995.

The quality of the broad mass of digits is low, but the quality at the top is very high. Open entry has produced outlets for people with very great skills in both research and expression.

This process will accelerate. Every establishment will come under fire intellectually and rhetorically. They will eventually suffer major reversals.

It is happening today. The ability of any establishment to manipulate the relevant climate of opinion among younger Web users is limited and shrinking. As these users get older, they will pay less heed to the opinions of the establishments.

I could be wrong, of course, but I optimistically interpret the last line of the conclusions as suggesting that a real/potential benefit of Internet freedoms is that people using the Internet could tend to become better able to think critically for themselves (independence of thought) and form opinions based on good information and reason rather than on the dumbed-down propaganda they get fed, thus making them less amenable to manipulation by others (including the State).

4699

Living Room / Re: Internet freedoms restrained - SOPA/PIPA/OPEN/ACTA/CETA/PrECISE-related updates

« Last post by IainB on September 21, 2012, 08:22 PM »

Useful factual input to the debate?
There's quite a lot been said/written about opinions as to how or why we need all this regulation for copyright or control or whatever for the Internet, and opinions to the contrary. However, it generally seems to have been all a bit light on transparent and rigorous reasoning. (Too much secrecy and made-up stuff on the Pro side, and not enough information on the Con side.)

Here is what appears to be some open and genuine research/thinking - the first that I have seen on the subject - and it presents a reasoned contrarian view and argues for rational, evidence-based policy on the matter.
(Copied below sans embedded hyperlinks.)

Stopping the Campaign of Misinformation: New Study Affirms Less Copyright Restrictions Benefit the Economy

A new study from Australia presents the latest evidence that loosening copyright restrictions not only enables free speech, but can improve an economy as well. The study, published by the Australian Digital Alliance, indicated that if Australia expanded copyright exceptions like fair use, along with strengthening safe harbor provisions, the country could potentially add an extra $600 million to their economy.

In addition, the report details how vital copyright exceptions are to the Australian economy as a whole. As ADA’s executive officer and copyright advisor Ellen Broad told EFF, "Australia's sectors relying on copyright exceptions currently contribute 14% of our GDP, around $182 billion and they're growing rapidly. It's essential that Australia's copyright policy framework adequately support innovation and growth of these sectors in the digital environment.”

Given how much Australia’s burdensome and confusing copyright law has held up innovation, EFF is encouraged by the fact that copyright reform is being considered and debated in the public sphere.

But more broadly, this is just the latest evidence disproving a major talking point used by the MPAA and RIAA anytime copyright laws come up for a vote: that tough copyright laws are good for the economy. During the SOPA debate, organizations such as the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) claimed over and over again that the restrictive law are needed to save and create jobs. Yet the Australian study confirms similar research done by CIAA in the US, showing how important fair use exceptions are to the economy. In fact, fair use accounted “for more than $4.5 trillion in annual revenue” in the US and exceeding the economic benefits of copyright laws themselves.

Unfortunately, this new evidence probably won’t stop the MPAA and RIAA from continuing to peddle misinformation about the economics of copyright law in Australia, the US, or elsewhere. Currently, the MPAA is distributing materials to members of the US Congress—perhaps in another attempt to gin up support for SOPA 2.0—extolling how important new, restrictive laws will allegedly to help them create jobs.

But these new talking points are short on statistics—perhaps for a reason. MPAA and RIAA have used drastically exaggerated numbers and discredited studies for years to claim that laws like SOPA and PIPA—or agreements like the Trans-Pacific Partnership—are vital for the economy. In reality, SOPA would’ve cost many more jobs than it saved, given it would have weakened or eliminated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) safe harbors that have allowed Internet companies like Google and Facebook to thrive for the last decade. That’s why when a survey was taken of venture capitalists, they “overwhelmingly” indicated they would stop investing in tech companies—the one of the economy’s fastest growing sectors—if SOPA were to pass.

Since the economic numbers don’t add up, advocates for draconian copyright laws have resorted to other misleading arguments. For example, this week, a Fox News editorial erroneously argued that intellectual property protection is a “forgotten” constitutional right and “it is the obligation” of Congress to pass laws like SOPA to protect rightsholders. Of course, the problem with SOPA was that it was written so broadly it would’ve ended up censoring millions of Americans who never even thought about copyright, but that’s beside the point. The US Constitution does mention intellectual property but not in the context of an individual right or mandate to Congress. Specifically, it says:

   Congress shall have power . . . To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.

A plain reading of the clause indicates Congress has the authority to use copyright law to promote creativity—if they so choose. There’s no mandate for Congress to pass any copyright law that comes their way, and there’s no clause guaranteeing the rights of movie studios and record labels to maximize their profits. Meanwhile, creativity—far from being stifled without more copyright laws on the books—is currently thriving. There’s been a market increase in the amount of movies, music, and books produced over the last decade, as this comprehensive study done by CCIA and Techdirt’s Mike Masnick shows.

So while huge legacy corporations may find it harder to keep a grip on their market share, it’s not because people have stopped creating and selling art. It’s quite the opposite: they’re creating more by incorporating fair use, cutting out the middlemen, and bringing their art directly to their fans through the Internet.

Unfortunately, all too often copyright maximalists, like the author in the Fox News editorials, put forth the idea that “lawlessness” prevails on the Internet, even though in the US and abroad there are many copyright laws already on the books. In the US alone, Congress has passed fifteen separate laws in the last thirty years alone strengthening the powers of rightsholders.

Most notably, the US DMCA gives power to copyright holders to force websites to take down any of their protected material. In fact, the DMCA gives disproportionate power to the rightsholders, often leading to abuse, and in turn, censoring material that is clearly protected free speech. As Techdirt noted, in Australia, their outdated and burdensome copyright system “is ill-equipped to cope with key Internet activities like search and indexing, caching and hosting, since they all involve incidental copying.”

Both countries would be better served by evidence-based policy that promoted the intended balance of copyright. After decades of unbalanced legislation, the evidence is clear, and points to relaxing copyright restrictions, not strengthening them.

For more on the debate over the economics of copyright see here and here.

4700

Developer's Corner / Re: Amazon Allows Eliminating Ads on Kindle - Is this idiotic?

« Last post by IainB on September 21, 2012, 09:27 AM »

Here's an older Goodereader review of the earlier Kindle WiFi (with keyboard) + special offers, from 2011:

The one I looked at reviews of and then tried to buy was the newer Kindle, Wi-Fi, 6” E Ink Display with special offers (Google that and you get lots of informative hits and reviews), from Amazon.com, price US$79.00, but it was only for sale in the US.

The one I ended up buying was the newer Kindle, Wi-Fi, 6” E Ink Display (but without special offers), from Amazon.com, price US$109.00 (P&P was $12.00 extra).

So this special offers thing has been going on for over a year, with a price differential as described - i.e., significantly cheaper if you buy the special offers Kindle. Most of the reviews seemed to think it was a good deal and that Amazon were probably using it as a loss-leader.

As I wrote above:

...the adverts...were non-intrusive, and did not interfere with the reading experience - at least, not according to the detailed reviews that I read anyway.

Nor did I see in the reviews or other comments that I read that any protests/objections to the special offers scheme, and I certainly had no objections, which is why I wrote above:

I'm not sure I understand what the issue is here.