Topic: Internet freedoms restrained - SOPA/PIPA/OPEN/ACTA/CETA/PrECISE-related updates (Read 325,705 times)
<---- Waiting for the "Pound them into the sand" US response...
<---- Waiting for the "Pound them into the sand" US response...
You got that right! Once Hollywood, the pocket fillers of politicians starts crying, the U.S. will get nasty....
If it was, then presumably those of us who advocate the unfettering of restraints on, and an increase in Internet freedoms, might also fall into the same life-shortening, labelled bucket as MLK. Of course, killing lots of people is out, but if you can make life a living hell for them, then they just might oblige by killing themselves. But that surely couldn't happen, could it?
Oh, but wait...it just has: US justice system ‘overreach’ blamed in suicide of Internet-freedom activist
Re: Investigation, etc.
Thanks so very much to all of you who've had a chance to donate. We have some real momentum now: Our allies in the House and Senate are on the verge of introducing a new-and-improved version of Aaron's Law, and an investigation in the House is moving forward.
We're asking for your help one more time, so we have the resources we need to keep pressing forward. Here's the email we sent a couple of days ago:
---
It's been a very tough few weeks, and there's a lot of work in front of us.
Please click here if you're able to chip in 5, 10, or 20 dollars so we can keep on fighting.
Millions of people across America -- and the world -- are calling for justice.
We're leading the charge for an investigation into Aaron's prosecution and the firing of his prosecutors, for reform to the CFAA and other cybercrime laws, and for Internet freedom and more open access.
We can't do all of this on our own: We need your support now more than ever.
"Our allies in the House and Senate?" This sounds like they are at war - they have allies in the US Government.
If it is a war, then who is the enemy? The US Government?
But that can't be right, can it?
"Our allies in the House and Senate?" This sounds like they are at war - they have allies in the US Government.
If it is a war, then who is the enemy? The US Government?
But that can't be right, can it?
... Others in the house/senate that have the opposite opinion...
...It might be such simple practicalities, or citizens' unfounded opinions, or their religio-political ideologies that make them potentially Enemies of the Constitution: (refer the post in the spoiler below, and read the interesting comments too)
...One of the things that confuzzles me is that I had thought (perhaps mistakenly?) that US lawmakers and federal and local government officials - including the President, Senators, the judicary, sherifs, etc. - held office on condition/promise that they would serve and protect the people, and uphold and defend the Constitution, or something. So, if they are not doing that - for whatever reason - then does it mean that they secured their position in the first place under false pretences? If that is the case, then does that mean that they are removed from office and that the bad laws they pushed through will be repealed? I don't get any sense that either of these things happen in practice...
It looks like The ACTA Blog is monitoring a developing EU-US situation:
ACTA rises?
In the film The Corporation, they reviewed the personality disorder "psychopathy". (A psychopath is a person with chronic psychopathy, esp. leading to abnormally irresponsible and antisocial behaviour.)
They gave this checklist of criteria to identify the disorder:
1. Callous unconcern for the feelings of others.
2. Incapacity to maintain enduring relationships.
3. Reckless disregard for the safety of others.
4. Deceitfulness: repeated lying and conning others for profit/financial gain.
5. Incapacity to experience guilt.
6. Failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behaviours.
In the film, these criteria were shown to be met by many/most of the legal entities (legal persons) known as "corporations", thus demonstrating that society has legalised these special kinds of psychopaths to operate in society, where they can and do cause tremendous harm - e.g., including such things as economic dependency and control of communities, or a deadly (toxic) environmental footprint - sometimes both, as in the case of the US corporation Exide in their factory in Mexico.
@Renegade: Yes, you may well be right, but the criteria are different:
Psychopathy is defined as a personality disorder in which the following traits or exhibited:
- 1) Glib and superficial charm,
- 2) Grandiose exaggeration of self,
- 3) Need for stimulation,
- 4) Pathological lying,
- 5) Cunning and manipulativeness,
- 6) Lack of remorse or guilt,
- 7) Shallow affect,
Callousness and lack of empathy,
- 9) Parasitic lifestyle,
- 10) Poor behavioral controls
- 11) Sexual promiscuity,
- 12) Early behavior problems,
- 13) Lack of realistic long-term goals,
- 14) Impulsivity,
- 15) Irresponsibility,
- 16) Failure to accept responsibility for own actions,
- 17) Many short-term marital relationships,
- 18) Juvenile delinquency,
- 19) Revocation of conditional release,
- 20) Criminal versatility.
Furthermore, Psychopaths typically do not show signs of having a conscience and are highly intelligent individuals.
...Here's a good run-down (reformatted for clarity): ...Ah, that's the other list that I was looking for, thanks.
The European Court of Human Rights has declared that the copyright monopoly stands in direct conflict with fundamental Human Rights, as defined in the European Union and elsewhere. This means that as of today, nobody sharing culture in the EU may be convicted just for breaking the copyright monopoly law; the bar for convicting was raised considerably. This can be expected to have far-reaching implications, not just judicially, but in confirming that the copyright monopoly stands at odds with human rights.
Last year, we saw more battles in Congress over Internet freedom than we have in many years as user protests stopped two dangerous bills: the censorship-oriented SOPA, and the privacy-invasive Cybersecurity Act of 2012. In 2013, Congress will tackle several bills--both good and bad--that could shape Internet privacy for the next decade. Here's what's ahead in the upcoming Congress.
Defense Firm Develops Software That Tracks People on Social Media
February 11, 2013
A multinational security firm has secretly developed software capable of tracking people's movements and predicting future behaviour by mining data from social networking websites.
A video obtained by the Guardian reveals how an "extreme-scale analytics" system created by Raytheon, the world's fifth largest defence contractor, can gather vast amounts of information about people from websites including Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare.
Source: The Guardian. Read full article. (link)
Sorry, duplication: I didn't realise that here was a separate post about this Raytheon software, on DCF: Rapid Information Overlay Technology (Riot) - Tracks Users from SNSes
CISPA Wouldn't Actually Solve The Reasons Congress Is Giving For Why We Need CISPA
by Mike Masnick
As expected, Representatives Mike Rogers and Dutch Ruppersberger have reintroduced CISPA, exactly as it was when it passed the House last year. Incredibly, we've been hearing that they've brushed off the massive privacy concerns by claiming that those were all "fixed" in the final version of the bill that got approved. This is highly disingenuous. While it is true that they made some modifications to the bill at the very end before it got approved, most privacy watchers were (and are) still very concerned. They did convince one organization to flip-flop, and they seem to think that's all they need.
But, here's the thing that no one has done yet: explain why this bill is needed. With President Obama's executive order in place, the government can more easily share threat info with companies, so really the only thing that CISPA piles on is more incentives for companies to cough up private information to the government with little in the way of oversight or restrictions on how that information can be used. And given how frequently the government likes to cry "cyberattack" when it's simply not true, it's only a matter of time before they start using claims of "cyberthreat!" to troll through private information...
(Read the rest at the link.)
Posted by timothy on Saturday February 23, @04:30PM
from the accept-only-genuine-chocolate-chip dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Stanford researcher Jonathan Mayer has contributed a Firefox patch that will block third-party cookies by default. It's now on track to land in version 22. Kudos to Mozilla for protecting their users and being so open to community submissions. The initial response from the online advertising industry is unsurprisingly hostile and blustering, calling the move 'a nuclear first strike.'"
Original address: https://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=31569.0
