http://www.techdirt.com/articles/201...shtml#commentsGermany Increases 'You Are All Pirates' Tax On Solid State Media By 2000%
Techflaws alerts us to an announcement by ZPÜ, the organization responsible for setting the levy on storage media in Germany, that fees will rise rather significantly (German original). For a USB stick with a capacity greater than 4 Gbytes, the tax would increase from 8 eurocents (about 10 cents) to 1.56 euros (about $1.93), a rise of 1850%; for a memory card bigger than 4 Gbytes, the fee would go up from 8 eurocents to 1.95 euros (about $2.42), an increase of 2338%.
No justification for such a huge jump was offered, but since one of the cons uent members of ZPÜ is the German music collection society GEMA, which seems to have an unlimited sense of en lement when it comes to demanding money from the public, that's hardly a surprise.
In particular, no rationale is given for including memory cards, which are used almost exclusively in cameras to record content produced by end-users -- so the idea that the levy is somehow justified as a way of compensating creators for revenue supposedly "lost" by piracy is manifestly absurd.
Basically, this outdated and insulting approach treats all Germans using digital storage as if they were pirates. Of course, arbitrarily imposing 2000% tax hikes on storage is probably the quickest way to turn them into something much more dangerous to GEMA and its friends: ardent supporters of the German Pirate Party....
EU Commissioner Reveals He Will Ignore Any Rejection of ACTA
Dupple tips a story at Techdirt about comments from EU commissioner Karel De Gucht, who made some discouraging remarks to the EU International Trade committee about the opposition to ACTA: "If you decide for a negative vote before the European Court rules, let me tell you that the Commission will nonetheless continue to pursue the current procedure before the Court, as we are en led to do. A negative vote will not stop the proceedings before the Court of Justice. ... If the Court questions the conformity of the agreement with the Treaties we will assess at that stage how this can be addressed." De Gucht also spoke about proposing clarifications to ACTA if Parliament declined to ratify it, which, as Techdirt points out, doesn't make much sense: "Remember that ACTA is now signed, and cannot be altered; so De Gucht is instead trying to fob off European politicians with this vague idea of 'clarifications' — as if more vagueness could somehow rectify the underlying problems of an already dangerously-vague treaty."
So, basically, old uncreative white executives want to legislate a new distribution model out of existence instead of adapting to it.... not a surprise, tbh....
Kim Dotcom: Joe Biden Ordered the Megaupload Shutdown
Kim Dotcom says he knows who ordered the shutdown of his company and related sites. The Megaupload founder informs TorrentFreak that he has insider information which reveals that none other than Vice President Joe Biden directed attorney Neil MacBride to target the site. Biden is known to be one of the best friends of former Senator Chris Dodd, who’s now heading the MPAA.
When Megaupload was raided in January, questions were raised as to why the U.S. Government acted so aggressively against a company that seemingly played by the rules.
It’s no secret that the MPAA provides the authorities with “leads” for criminal investigations on a regular basis, but considering the size and location of the company Megaupload was not an ordinary target.
Soon after Kim Dotcom was released from custody he pointed the finger at Washington, arguing that the Mega investigation was a ‘gift’ to Hollywood, facilitated by corrupt Government forces. In the months that followed Dotcom and his team researched the motivations of the U.S. Government which resulted in some revealing findings.
While Megaupload’s founder is cautious about revealing too much early on, he says he has information which shows that it was none other than Vice President Joe Biden who called for the Megaupload takedown.
more...
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/6578/125/On October 23, 2007, the U.S., E.U., Canada, and a handful of other countries announced plans to the negotiate the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. The behind-the-scenes discussions had apparently been ongoing for several years, leading some countries to believe that a full agreement could be concluded within a year to coincide with the end of the Bush administration. Few paid much attention as the agreement itself was shrouded in secrecy. ACTA details slowly began to emerge, however, including revelations that lobby groups had been granted preferential access, the location of various meetings, and troubling details about the agreement itself.
As the public pressure mounted, the talks dragged along with participating countries increasingly defensive about the secrecy and the substance. ACTA was ultimately concluded in 2010 - years after the initial target - and some of the most troubling provisions were abandoned. Yet the final agreement still raised serious concerns, both for the way the agreement was concluded as well as for the substance.
When ACTA was formally signed by most participants in October 2011 in Tokyo, few would have anticipated that less than a year later, the treaty would face massive public protests and abandonment by leading countries. But with tens of thousands taking to the streets in Europe earlier this year, ACTA became the poster child for secretive, one-sided IP agreements that do not reflect the views and hopes of the broader public. This morning, the European Parliament voted overwhelmingly against the agreement, effectively killing ACTA within the EU. The vote was 478 against, 39 in favour, with 165 abstentions This is a remarkable development that was virtually unthinkable even a year ago. Much credit goes to the thousands of Europeans who spoke out against ACTA and to the Members of the European Parliament who withstood enormous political pressure to vote against the deal.
The European developments have had a ripple effect, with the recent Australian parliamentary committee recommendation to delay ACTA ratification and the mounting opposition around the world. ACTA is not yet dead - it may still eke out the necessary six ratifications in a year or two for it to take effect - but it is badly damaged and will seemingly never achieve the goals of its supporters as a model for other countries to adopt and to emerge as a new global standard for IP enforcement. That said, ACTA supporters will not take today's decision as the final verdict. In the coming weeks and months, we can expect new efforts to revive the agreement within Europe and to find alternative means to implement its provisions. That suggests the fight will continue, but for today, it is worth celebrating how the seemingly impossible - stopping a one-sided, secretly negotiated global IP agreement - became possible.
http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/1...the-pirate-bayBitTorrent usage increases in Europe, following the blockade of The Pirate Bay
In a twist that will surprise no one except the RIAA, MPAA, BREIN, and other anti-piracy lobbies, the amount of BitTorrent traffic has stayed the same or increased in Europe following the blockade of The Pirate Bay in the UK, Netherlands, and other countries.
This news comes from XS4All, one of the largest European ISPs, which has published a graph of the network traffic associated with the BitTorrent protocol (pictured below). The left side of the graph is January 2012, the right side is June 2012, and the red line signifies February, when Dutch ISPs were ordered to block The Pirate Bay. While it’s hard to make a qualified decision without seeing data from 2011, it definitely seems like traffic hasn’t decreased — and might have even increased slightly. This data aligns with research from the University of Amsterdam, which also found that the Dutch Pirate Bay blockade had no effect on the total amount of BitTorrent traffic.
...
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/0...eally-best-wayuly 10, 2012 | By Carolina Rossini Is the TPP - framed as a "21st century" agreement - the best way to build a 21st century society?
Last week, at the latest round of Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations in San Diego, California, the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) announced that it has proposed a new provision on limitations and exceptions to copyright. It's nice to hear about a proposal that seems to expand limitations like fair use, and it is also nice to see that – finally - the USTR is listening to the technology industries. However, the draft treaty itself is still secret so the implications of this new provision are in fact ambiguous. We can’t know what their proposal means for copyright without knowing what’s in the rest of the chapter. It could be good, it could be bad, it could be indifferent, it could be LOLCATs.
The TPP agreement has been framed by the USTR as a 21st century agreement, but we’re still not convinced it’s an agreement adequate for 21st century society-- especially in an environment where the public, Congress, and civil rights organizations are denied access to the treaty’s official text, while corporate representatives have full access to it. In a world where you can access the complete state code of Utah in Github to engage citizens in legislative drafting, secrecy and backroom deals are not exactly a 21st century way to build the 21st century society.
Rethinking How Congress Pushes Copyright Laws
"Lamar Smith just can't get a break. The Texas congressman and widely despised author of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) ruffled the Internet's feathers once again this week with the quiet unveiling of a new piece of legislation that's drawing criticism for being plucked out of SOPA's language and rushed through Congress. The Intellectual Property Attaché Act (IPAA) would streamline the process by which the U.S. protects its intellectual property by enforcing U.S. copyright law abroad through specially assigned diplomats or attachés. These officers would report to a new agency-level position, the Assistant Secretary for Intellectual Property and push agendas that, according to the bill's language, are 'consistent with the economic interests of the United States, both domestically and abroad.'"
Related:
Washington Needs to Rethink How it Pushes These Copyright Laws
SOPA Critics Cry Foul Over IP Attache bill
IP ATTACHE ACT
https://torrentfreak.com/pirate-bay-...orrentfreak%29Earlier this year the sentences against the Pirate Bay defendants were made final. Aside from prison sentences, they will have to pay damages to the entertainment industries, including €550,000 to several major music labels. The court awarded the damages to compensate artists and rightsholders for their losses. However, it now turns out that artists won’t see a penny of the money, as the labels have allocated it to IFPI to fund new anti-piracy campaigns.
http://www.slate.com/articles/techno...aw.single.htmlImagine being invited to formally offer input on a huge piece of legislation, a proposed international agreement that could cover everything from intellectual property rights on the Internet to access to medicine to investment rights in the agreement’s signatory countries. For 10 minutes, you’d be able to say whatever you’d like about the proposed law—good, bad, or indifferent—to everyone involved in the negotiations. But there’s a caveat: All of your questions, all of your input, on what may be the most controversial part of the package, would have to be based on a version of the proposed international agreement that was 16 months old. And in that 16-month period, there were eight rounds of negotiations that could have changed any and all of the text to which you had access, but no one could tell you if that version was still accurate.
Would you still take the deal? This is not a hypothetical question; rather, this is the take-it-or-leave-it offer made to the public in May by the United States Trade Representative regarding the intellectual property rights chapter of the massively important but little-known Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP).
Unfortunately, this modest but sad excuse for public participation was the best offer to ask questions and offer input to TPP negotiators since the public phase of the negotiations began more than two years ago. So civil society groups, academics, experts (“nerds”), and regular Joe concerned citizens said yes.
The above Kafkaesque scenario reveals a truly odd and disturbing 21st-century situation. Asking informed questions is probably man’s oldest form of letting someone know his views. But in 2012, with all of the technology that allows for unprecedented (if not totally unfettered) flows of information, the vestiges of 20th-century secrecy continue to permeate international lawmaking, as reflected in the negotiations of TPP.
New U.S. Limitations and Exceptions Proposal
The big copyright news from this round was that the U.S. publicly announced a new limitations and exceptions proposal consistent with, but apparently different from a standard used in previous free trade agreements and treaties (called the “three-step test”). The U.S. did not, however, release the text of this new proposal for public review and discourse.
While including limitations and exceptions in the agreement is a positive development, Public Knowledge remains concerned that the provision could be too limited or restrict countries’ ability to adopt new legitimate limits and exceptions to copyright for the public’s benefit. Of course, it’s extraordinarily difficult for PK or any other civil society group to provide meaningful input without knowing what the U.S. proposal actually says.
At the End of the Day? Still No Text.
On transparency, the bottom line has not changed. The text of the TPP is still hidden from the public while hundreds of corporate interests have ample access and influence. Even members of Congress are frustrated that the USTR won’t give them reasonable and convenient access for them and the trade experts on their staff.
The stakeholder engagement events did have value, but they do not and cannot replace an actual dialogue where the U.S. gives information to the public, in addition to receiving information from the public.
The outcry against the secrecy surrounding the TPP negotiations grows louder by the day and harms the U.S.’s credibility on other important issues. The next round of negotiations will start September 6th in Leesburg, VA. The U.S. should use the time it has before then to open a dialogue, meaningfully engage with the public, and try to reclaim some legitimacy for the TPP
http://www.publicknowledge.org/blog/...o-negotiations
TTP legalizes UCA as beyond the reach national laws while giving UCA the right to sue the out of everybody in foreign countries.
http://www.article-3.com/privacy-or-...e-senate-98083The much discussed Cybersecurity Act of 2012, scheduled for a Senate vote this week, would make it easier for businesses to share information about cyber threats with the government. Essentially, the Act provides avenues for companies to collect sensitive user information that has the potential to be subject to government scrutiny. While some may concede to the notion that there is no such thing as privacy in a digital world, others are pushing for stricter regulation to ensure that privacy is indeed a top priority
Civil liberties groups say this bill is far better than others, such as CISPA, that have been put on the table this year, but there are still some major problems to be grappled with. Internet rights advocacy and lobbying group, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), argues that:
The most significant problem…has to do with the language around monitoring and countermeasures. Currently, the bill specifically authorizes companies to use cybersecurity as an excuse for engaging in nearly unlimited monitoring of user data or countermeasures…this language is overly broad and…we’re going to be throwing our weight behind amendments to address these ongoing flaws.
Such amendments would ensure that the information companies share are only used for cybersecurity purposes and investigating cybercrimes — not for prosecuting drug crimes, tax dodging, etc. As Forbes puts it, “once a company gives the government cyberthreat information, the government shouldn’t be able to say ‘Hey, this email doesn’t have a virus. But it does say that Michael is late on his taxes. I’m going to send that to the IRS’.”
Also on the radar of privacy groups are the amendments proposed by Senator John McCain and Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison that would place the National Security Agency (NSA) in charge of the cybersecurity systems, instead of civilian agencies. Cybersecurity policy is “inescapably tied to our online civil liberties”, writes EFF, so expanding NSA’s access from military intelligence to information about domestic communications undermines transparency in an area or policy in which accountability is essential.
File sharing is like an STD. You will never completely eliminate it and it will always feel good sharing it.
And I will do my part to help keep this going.
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/201...es-album.shtmlUniversal Music Uses Bogus DMCA Claim To Take Down Negative Review Of Drake's Album
from the free-speech? dept
We keep talking about how the DMCA takedown process, all too frequently, is used to stifle speech, and defenders of the system claim that it's ridiculous to bring up the First Amendment in a discussion on copyright. But here's yet another (in a very long list) of examples. Henry Adaso wrote a short, but marginally negative review of Drake's album Take Care. The review was posted to About.com last November. The entire review reads:
Drake - 'Take Care'Not particularly positive, but not particularly scathing either. He also posted another post on About.com that merely pointed to that review, but included no additional content other than that he wrote a 50-word review.
A briefly entertaining, occasionally ponderous, sometimes lazy, sometimes brilliant, slow-rolling, rap-singy, bulls-eye missing, kitten-friendly, runway-ready, mega corny, lip-smacking, self-conscious, self-correcting, self-indulging, finely tuned, Houston infatuated, crowd pleasing, delightfully weird, emotionally raw, limp, wet, innocuous, cute, plush, brooding, musical, whimsical, exotic, pensive, V-necked, quasi-American, strutting, doting, cloying, safe alternative to sleeping pills.
Best Song: "Lord Knows"
Release Date: November 15, 2011
Either way, both of those links are gone from Google's search. Why? Because just as someone filed a bogus DMCA to take down one of our key SOPA posts, Universal Music, via the BPI (British RIAA) filed a DMCA notice with Google claiming that both of those pages were infringing. That's clearly a false takedown, and pretty clearly designed to stifle a negative review.
Adaso discusses all of this in his own blog post, in which he suggests that perhaps Universal and BMI are purposely trying to take down negative reviews, though it's equally likely that they're just incredibly incompetent. Still, whether incompetence or malice, it's clear that the DMCA is being used to censor and stifle speech, and in this case it just so happens to be speech in the form of a negative review of a Universal Music Artist (a Universal Music artist who has also expressed displeasure with how Universal has used copyright law against his own best interests).
From the ” expressed displeasure” link:
” .....as I'm sure people will quickly point out, he signed a contract with Universal, and that means he almost certainly handed over the rights to the music in question. To some extent, you can argue that if he was doing it for the people instead of for Universal Music, he shouldn't have signed a deal that gave all the rights to Universal Music.”
He pointed it out before I could quickly point it out.
This is a pretty good article:
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2...t-went-insane/
good article. foreshadowed/explains this: http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/201...aming-service/
misfiled, but what the hey:In a somewhat ironic move, the U.S. government has entered into an ebook deal with Apple that will see a range of government reports, do ents, and ebooks published in Apple’s iBookstore. The partnership, which was announced earlier this week, coincides with the Department of Justice’s latest legal filings in its anti-trust suit against Apple.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/09/0...ple-customers/Hackers with the amorphous protest movement “Anonymous” and “AntiSec” said Monday night they caught the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) red-handed spying on Apple customers, and published over 1 million unique device identification numbers they allegedly pulled out of an FBI database.
In all, the hackers claimed that the FBI files they accessed had more than 12 million Apple UDIDs, the unique identifier associated with every iPhone and iPad that comes off the production line. They also said that most UDIDs in the FBI’s database had names, cell phone numbers and addresses attached to them, which were edited out before publication. Apple has sold nearly 200 million iPhones and more than 50 million iPads since both devices’ debut.
Apple has been phasing out the UDID standard, and recently made changes to prevent third-party applications from sending users’ UDIDs to unknown parties. Apple told a congressional inquiry in 2010 that it cannot track iPhones in real time, but a hacker named Eric Smith noted that third party applications can transmit UDIDs, which could potentially be linked to the owner and used to track that person.
And that’s precisely what hackers with Anonymous think the FBI was doing.
They claimed to have tapped into a Dell laptop owned by Special Agent Christopher K. Stangl, an FBI cyber security expert. They downloaded several files, including one that contained “12,367,232 Apple iOS devices including Unique Device Identifiers (UDID)” and other personal information, they wrote in a text file published online. “[The] personal details fields referring to people appears many times empty leaving the whole list incompleted [sic] on many parts. no other file on the same folder makes mention about this list or its purpose.”
While it’s not immediately clear what the FBI is doing with the Apple UDIDs and detailed information on device owners, Gizmodo pointed out that the acronym “NCFTA” could stand for the National Cyber-Forensics & Training Alliance, a nonprofit that acts as an information-sharing gateway between private industry and law enforcement.
WH...
Off topic, but why do I only notice you here after 3AM Pacific time?
I get up early these days. Occasionally I'll pull an all-nighter.
Well, I get off work 23:30 Pacific time, or later if I work OT. I'm just surprised to see you here, and until about 11AM sometimes.
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