Archive for the 'Politics' Category

An Engadget Article Chronology of the DRM Wars on HD-DVD and Blu-Ray

Wednesday, June 20th, 2007
  • Engadget - Hackers discover HD DVD and Blu-ray “processing key” — all HD titles now exposed
  • Engadget - DRM: the state of disrepair
  • Engadget - AACS cracked again: WinDVD key found
  • Engadget - AACS hacked to expose Volume ID: WinDVD patch irrelevant
  • Engadget - AACS patch for WinDVD, HD DVD and BD players: update or never watch movies again
  • Engadget - Newest AACS circumvented: The Matrix Trilogy set free
  • Engadget - BD+ DRM is now available for Blu-ray
  • An Engadget article chronology of the DRM wars on HD-DVD and Blu-Ray. My Opinion: Use eMule / BitTorrent or just go without, or else you will be buying a new player every year or two. Plus your many of your legal discs will eventually be stolen (TSA from luggage; house burglary). If copies are stolen, then who cares??

    Copyleft License (GPL; GPL v3; GFDL; L-GPL; CC-by-sa; DSL; AgainstDRM) Info and Comments

    Tuesday, February 20th, 2007
  • Freedom Defined Wiki - Licenses
  • Free Software Foundation - Licenses
  • Free Software Foundation - GNU General Public License (V2)
  • Free Software Foundation - GPL V3 Draft 2 Comments
  • Free Software Foundation - Design Science License (Mirror)
  • FreeCreations.org - Against DRM 2.0
  • Creative Commons - License Picker
  • Creative Commons should expand their permision dimensions. I don’t know how to make such changes user-friendly to designate (CC-by-sa or CC-by-nc-noderiv or CC-by) though.

    Attribution:
    ——————–
    Copyright notice only
    Basic credit (Name of author and/or source)
    Deluxe credit (Link back to author’s site or complex crediting directions)

    Deriviative Works:
    ——————–
    Unrestricted
    Weak Share-Alike (Weak copyleft; The way CC works now)
    Strong Share-Alike (Strong copyleft; Integration into a larger work requires the entire work to have this license or to have a compatible license)
    Nothing (NoDeriv / No Derivitive works)

    Commercial Use:
    ——————–
    Unrestricted
    Non-profiting commercial-use only (marketing ads, catalogs, commercial web-sites ok, but no sales or other direct profit exploitation such as $50 CDs or $40/yr members-only sites or site-sections or $200/yr medical journals)
    None (NonCommercial)

    Extras:
    ——————–
    No distributing with technical obstructions to distributee’s copying ability (No-DRM)
    Require source-code, source-material, or other modification-transparent copy (.html vs .chm; .doc vs .pdf; .psd vs .jpg) with distribution of verbatim or modified copies
    Extend license permission-grants and restrictions through media-domain transfers (songsheet->CD recording->public performance->concert ‘cam’->concert xvid)

    Comments:

    My preferences are ‘basic credit’, Strong Share-Alike, Non-Profiting commercial use only, No-DRM, source/transparent copy (except digicam photos), and multi-domain rights grant/transfer. I would be flexible for copyright notice only, and full commercial use (with the hope of free-copying volume to render profiting-sales unpractical) for compatibility with the rest of the open-source / copyleft community. Their is no license to match either version really. CC-By-SA is weak copyleft and acks rights transfer, No-DRM and modifiable source or transparent content. DSL is weak copyleft and the ‘new’ name requirement is very hassling for minor changes. So far it is a toss-up between the GPLv3 (draft) and the ‘Agaisnt DRM 2.0′ license. But a generic strong copyleft license with ‘yes’ on all the columns (CopyLeft, practical modifiability, attribution, related rights, anti-drm) in the table on the FreedomDefined license page is what I’d love.

    For No-DRM clauses I prefer it to only affect the ability of the distributee to re-distribute the work, with source/transparent copy (if required). The work (if software) should be able to operate a DRM scheme for data or media that it crunches, but if accompanying source code is required, it will be unpractical, as the source will be exploited and the DRM cracked in no-time (good cracking educational tool though!). The No-DRM clause should also not block the software from running a closed-source program that operates a DRM-scheme within itself (ITunes on Linux; assuming the music isn’t No-DRM copylefted). It should only pertain to the distributee’s ability to re-desitribute the direct-licensed work without the need to crack or loophole-exploit any DRM.

    Non-P2P DRM / Copyright News Comments 2006-12-29

    Friday, December 29th, 2006
  • P2PNet - Korea ’superforward’ in DRM
  • digital-lifestyles.info - DRM-Interchange Alive And Living In Korea
  • Well ZDNet’s primary reason for not having DRM is non-interoperability. Looks like South Korea is not affected by Apple’s tyranny or example, but still affected by the RIAA. But interchangable DRM that works and isn’t buggy may sway me because I am relativily lazy and undisciplined. But I need to be have more than 1-3 copies (Home, possible 2-3rd home, Work, 2-3 laptops, multiple portables) though and shouldn’t have to pay for 1-3 copies. And I still like free-for-all sharing on Emule.

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  • P2PNet - DRM is lame: Bill Gates
  • TechCrunch - Bill Gates On The Future Of DRM
  • Hey Bill Gates admitting that DRM is bad. Suggest buying CDs and ripping them. Works at least while non-DRM CDs last. Doesn’t affect Windoze at all. I dare him to say ‘buy a DVD and rip it’. Oh no! That requires cracking the CSS. Oooh illegal by the DMCA. Of course people are going to do it anyway :)

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  • CNet News.com - Time to rewrite the DMCA
  • The copyright mafia are getting their way so much that it may eventually turn into a world that a public library would have to pay a royalty every time a patron takes out a book or photocopies a page of an article. Hey come let eMule be your library. Unlimited take out, unlimited borrow time, book always available (no more reserving books), and NO FINES!. FUCK THE LAW!!! The MAFIAA owns and controls the law now!. eMule is easy. Have it in 20 minutes! Faster than going to the store (or library)!

    Paranoia / Politics News Comments 2006-12-29

    Friday, December 29th, 2006
  • Washington Post - Illegal Workers Arrested In 6-State ID Theft Sweep
  • That looks lucrative. Buy stolen identy-pieces from phishers and database hackers, assemble them to complete stolen identities and then resell them to illegal immigrants or to their smugglers / smuggling rings.

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  • Slyck - The Pirate Party Ramps up for 2008
  • Looks like the Pirate Party USA (PPUS) wants to get into the elections. Looks like you can become a ‘card carrying’ member of the party now. Not sure what that means. The only official party membership I know is that party’s name being stamped on your voter registration, which I was unable to do..

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  • P2PNet - US spy chip passports
  • Schneier on Security - Renew Your Passport Now!
  • Wired Magazine - How To: Disable Your Passport’s RFID Chip
  • RFID Journal - United States Sets Date for E-Passports
  • SecurityFocus - RFID enabled e-passport skimming proof of concept code released (RFIDIOt)
  • Guardian Limited - Q. What could a boarding pass tell an identity fraudster about you? A. Way too much
  • Riscure - Privacy issues with new digital passport
  • RFIDIOt (sample RFID hacker tool) Site
  • It appears that the new e-Passport’s RFID scanning range is more than an inch or two and people have already figured out how to hack them with a nearby laptop! I think RFID should be limited to 5 centimeters / 2 inches and no cheating allowed (dumbing down receiver sensitivity), because this is how hackers get to read them from a foot or two away. Still better to hack poorly secured databases if you need bulk, but their is some need for some need for targetted identity theft. Likley people to go through the effort of eavesdropping your RFID are political or personal enemies, goverments, the mob, and private investigators.

    Ah The Good ol’ Chinese Communist Party Tyrants Censoring Away and Boosting Piracy

    Thursday, December 14th, 2006

    Ah good on Chinese Communist Party Tyrants Censoring Away and Boosting Piracy

  • P2PNet - China online music clamp down
  • China tightens control over online music
  • Emule and BitTorrent exempt. Not by chinese censor desire though :) Censorship will foster more piracy though :)

    So:

    Unblock all the damned imports. This is preferred by me and maybe the RIAA and MPAA too because it means more $$$ for them and possibly substantially less piracy due to availability of legit product. China will very likely NOT do this. Mafia / black market pressing plants / Piracy-4-Money will probably be vastly affected so they won’t like it.

    -or-

    Block Emule and BitTorrent and make it a chore to hack unlike the web censorship. Fits China’s tyrannical nature better. RIAA / MPAA probably indifferent - piracy somewhat curbed but no $$$ from legit sales either. Definitely the preferred choice for the piracy-4-money folk and the mafia in addition to the communist party too.

    -or-

    Unblock all the damned imports, but block P2P. I wouldn’t like it. I’m an Emule Addict. The Mob wouldn’t like it - availability of legit product affects them more than file sharing. The RIAA / MPAA’s dream come true!!! China would be wishy-washy, especially if they learn of the politically sensitive material on the P2P networks. They may non like sex and porn, but they hate things that encourage resentment of the party’s tyranny more than any actual moral value.

    -or-

    Just leave things as it is. Indifferent choice to me. The MPAA and RIAA definitely won’t like this - No $$$, rampant piracy amplified by lack of legit product supply. The mafia and illegal pressing plants are impacted as well but at least legit product is still scarce so they still have a market. The communist party will probably be content with this too.

    in summary:
    
    Unblock legit product imports & stop censoring:  Me +1; Mob -1; RIAA/MPAA +1; China -1 = +1 / 0 / +1 /  0
    Keep censoring and black out P2P:                Me -1; Mob +1; RIAA/MPAA  0; China +1 = -1 / 0 /  0 / +1
    Stop censoring but black out P2P:                Me -1; Mob -1; RIAA/MPAA +1; China 0 = -1 / -2 / -1 / -1
    Keep censoring and leave P2P Alone:              Me  0; Mob  0; RIAA/MPAA -1; China +1 =  0 / 0 / -1 /  0

    Winner (Me only): Unblock legit product imports and stop censoring
    Winner (Me+Mob): No Winner; 3-Way Tie
    Winner (Me+Mob+RIAA/MPAA): Unblock legit product imports and stop censoring
    Winner (Me+Mob+RIAA/MPAA+China): Keep censoring and black out P2P

    So Fuck you China-Gov!! ??Unblock legit product imports and stop censoring??? wins in 2 out of 4 scenarios! (Freedom 2; Tyranny 1; Status-Quoe Polarity-Reversal: 0; Status-Quoe: 0). Now this isn???t fair because I didn???t do all 16 combinations of the superset (Me, Mob, RIAA/MPAA=MAFIAA, China commy anti-god bio-terrorists), but I really don???t give a damn about china???s communists, or the RIAA / MPAA to give them their fair share.

    Non-P2P DRM / Copyright News Comments 2006-12-08

    Friday, December 8th, 2006
  • ZDNet - iPod podcast menus, navigation depicted in new Apple patent app
  • US Patent & Trademark Office - United States Patent Application # 20060265637 - Utilization of podcasts on portable media devices
  • Apple is trying to patent a menuing scheme!! Don’t expect me to buy an Ipod. I guess that, if the patent is issued, you can expect to hear from apple’s lawyers if your software uses a menuing scheme with a similar flowchart and involves automated transfer of content between devices.

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  • P2PNet - AllofMP3.com defies US
  • CNet News.com - Russia agrees to shut down Allofmp3.com
  • MediaServices - U.S. Consumers are Likely Legally Purchasing Music From AllofMP3.com (PDF; hosted on P2PNet)
  • I really don’t care if the allofmp3.com site lives or dies. AllOfMP3.com is Piracy-4-Money, unlike the PirateBay who is Piracy-4-Free (Their donation income bobs above and below their operating expenses).

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  • P2PNet - Can links be outlawed?
  • TechDirt - Is Linking Or Embedding Infringing Content Illegal?
  • WebTVWire - TV Show Directory QuickSilverScreen.com Threatened by Fox
  • Lawsuits against linkers to pirated content is not new. It appears the rate of secondary scatter-sueing over copyright infringement (sueing linkers to a host of infringing conent) is on the rise. I’m not sure if P2PNet is being threatened over links to a site with warez or links to a site with a commercial product that is accused of infringing copyright or maybe just to a site or article accused of libel or something? Only details given is “In August, a heavyweight associated with a major Canadian political party threatened p2pnet with a nasty lawsuit unless we took down links to a site mentioned in another law suit. This person also demanded information about the publishers of the site we’d pointed to.”. The rest, including the reference links, is just tangent-filler. It does appear to be libel or political rather than piracy, patents, and copyright by this - “p2pnet refused to cooperate. We can’t for the moment go into more detail because we haven’t yet had a response to our refusals and we mention it only because demands being made by individuals and companies wanting to censor the Net by forcing sites to take down links look like becoming a major issue.”. They are probably better off not responding to the ‘legal threats’ and throwing them in the garbage. Look at the Pirate Bay. They ridicule them and then put them up in a mockery exhibit (‘the legal threats page’). I’d probably publish them with less mockery if i’m not lazy, otherwise just thow them away, but either way never actually officially reply.

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  • P2PNet - TiVoToGo .tivo to .mpg
  • TUAW.com - TiVoToGo DRM cracked, and that’s not necessarily a good thing
  • Tivo Lovers Blog - TiVoToGo Encryption - cracked?
  • Alt.org PHP Wiki - Ti Vo To Go
  • PVRBlog - TiVoToGo cracked
  • TivoDecode Web Site
  • PCSurveillance - Professional DVR Cards > DVS Hardware Compression
  • PVRblog - Beyond TV: A PC PVR for Mortals
  • They cracked TivoToGo’s DRM!!! Yeah! If you didn’t have DRM in the first place (A custom PC-DVR kit) you wouldn’t even need to crack the DRM to begin with! PCSurveillance is just from a quick google search. I didn’t do any price shopping yet. These guys appear to sell spy cameras (cops / PIs / digruntled spouses / paranoid people) too and the DVR cards are design for security camera footage, but they should work for DRM-free TV-Ripping too though I knot sure if these hardware-compression hardcore cards will work with PVR/DVR tv-guide software. But if normal PC-PVR cards will be forced to listen to broadcast flags, these security-camera designed DVR cards will be overlooked by the law.

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  • P2PNet - P2p footie streaming a No-No
  • P2PNet - BT’s live soccer
  • P2PNet - Bayern Munich takes on YouTube
  • BBC News (UK) - Illegal net sport faces crackdown
  • BBC News (UK) - Goal footage warning for website
  • P2PNet - Coming soon: p2p TV streaming
  • BlogFC - Premier League comes after football bloggers
  • The only thing that the German and British Football authorities have to become as bad as the RIAA is to start sueing video posters, bloggers, and file sharers with an automated ’sue em all’ campaign with semi-precise targeting with no target circumstance discrimination (some signs of income discrimination though, prefering upper-lower to middle-middle class who both will be too collectable to let the case go to default judgment without fear and decent lawyers will be unaffordable unless very long payment plans are involved) with a totally currupt subpoena system (process of converting IP/Filename to name/address), followed by no-mercy pre-litigation settlement ‘collections’, and finally, no-mercy but bully-cowardish litigation (They quickly back down and run if anything that looks like a meaningful defense is demonstrated).

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  • TheBlogJoint - Top 10 Open Source Programs
  • Free (Beer + Freedom), Open Source. Good top 10. Creative Commons is not a software work though. They are an organization like the FSF.

    Paranoia / Politics News Comments 2006-12-08

    Friday, December 8th, 2006
  • P2Pnet - psiphon: anti-censor software
  • Psiphon Homepage
  • Here is some software that might make it easier to cheat up-line firewall censorship (should work on corporate firewalls in addition to China).

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  • ZDNet - IRS taxation of online game virtual assets inevitable
  • All the better reasons to stay away from MMORPGs. It was probably a good thing that I was taxed out of town in Star Wars Galaxies. I was obsessed for over a year. Protests only helped my Droid Wal-Mart business, but being in a town where new mayor (old mayor grew increasingly inactive on Bria and eventually stepeed down) was the only competitor was bad. I hope CopyBot can keep values down in Second Life for the IRS to stay away. I hate artificial scarcity.

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  • P2PNet - Iran Net bars NYT, YouTube
  • Reporters WIthout Borders - Youtube and New York Times sites blocked as Iran steps up censorship of foreign content
  • Daily Times - Censorship fears rise as Iran blocks access to top websites
  • Iran is really jumping on the censorship wagon. George Bush’s desire for war will eventually ovcome him so he’ll probably be invading Iran, at least in the air, by the time he leaves office. I’d rather see mass defiance though with a flurry of black-market broadband connections from China and Russia, but I think Bush is going to drop the bombs nontheless (at $50,000 per guided bomb and $2 million per cruise missle). I really wish there would be more Iraqis on Emule though. I wonder how Iran’s censorship will affect Iranian Emule users? Emule is robust with 144k cellphone modems, and it will most likely work just fine with 128k connections and 28.8k / 33.6k / 56k connections as long as they don’t cut in/out or stall, as long as not too many downloads are activated at one time (I’ve download rather large files from an australian 56k user on Emule). China’s censorship obviously doesn’t work all that well on Emule and the ‘Great Firewall’ is easily bypassed with some easy to use script-kiddy tools.

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  • P2PNet - Malaysia may go after blogs
  • AsiaMedia - MALAYSIA: Malaysia considering laws to rein in errant bloggers
  • P2PNet - More citizen journalists jailed
  • Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) - Internet fuels rise in number of jailed journalists
  • Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) - Journalists imprisoned (Historical Charts, Graphs, and Profiles)
  • P2PNet - 15 Enemies of the Net (2005)
  • Reporters Without Borders - The 15 enemies of the Internet and other countries to watch (2005)
  • P2PNet - RWB Net enemies list (2006)
  • Reporters Without Borders - List of the 13 Internet enemies in 2006 published
  • Reporters Without Borders - Enemies of the Internet Profiles Site
  • More countries trying to crackdown on ‘loose cannon’ bloggers. Added stuff on the ‘roll of shame’ / ‘enemies of the internet’ / ‘internet black hole’ from Reporters Without Borders, P2P (mostly quoting rsf.org), and Committee to Protect Journalists

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  • P2PNet - Dear p2pnet: Suha Arafat
  • P2PNet - 419 scammers US extradition
  • P2PNet - Nigerian 419 scam town
  • P2PNet - Nigerian scammers nailed
  • P2PNet - Microsoft: 419 cop
  • P2PNet - p2pnet’s lottery windfall
  • Wikipedia - Suha Arafat
  • CNet - Four men charged in Nigeria e-mail scam
  • Silicon.com - Nigeria enlists Microsoft to fight 419 scammers
  • I get so many of these now (today), after the busts and extraditions, that I can’t be bothered with sending back terrorist buzzwords (Nuke, bomb, blow up, etc…) because it has gotten too boring to be a vigilante asshole with these anymore (The FBI has automated but highly lagged terrorist buzzword analysis systems and monitoring policies that could be exploited to help nail fraudulant spammers).

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  • P2PNet - Big Music wants royalties lowered
  • Radio and Records - Labels Seek Lower Royalty Rate
  • It appears that the RIAA wants to sham artists some more using internet piracy for leverage! They screw both artists and consumers. This one is about the artist end.

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  • P2PNet - Uncle Sam wants YOUR data!
  • P2PNet - Bush targets, well, everyone
  • Toronto Star - U.S. tracks Canadians for terror traits
  • Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) - American Travelers to Get Secret ‘Risk Assessment’ Scores
  • Goverment Docket - From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [DOCID:fr02no06-51]
  • ZDNet - U.S. to create ‘risk assessments’ of air passengers
  • NukeStrat - USS GreenFish - Several Declassified Documents leaked by former crew redactment free
  • Hmm I wonder what my terror score is? Steve Jolley? Chungy (Mark Chung)? Landon Donovan and the rest of the National Team? My father (Served on the Nuclear-Torpedo USS Greenfish as an electrician)? How about Joe Eigo or Team Ryouku (Both in Toronto; Chungy has family ties in Toronto as well; All Asian at least partially)? I bet my Terror score may be a litte high from my vigilante asshole-ness with scam-spammers, my modest hoard of stuff on nuclear weapons, my dabblings with area 51, my bad attitude with government secrecy, piracy disposition, and I am probably being watched because I was stuck in NYC during 9-11 and I made disturbing comments about being lucky it wasn’t a Nuke (as in spies planting nukes in enemy cities in the game Civilization). Also I think people like airlines can’t differentiate FBI flags for piracy (50 burnt DVDs + 50 unburnt DVDs in luggage) vs terrorism (especially since the CBP is managing and using the ratings). I’ve flown in X-Plane in airports also. Playing Scorched 3D (3D tank-artillery game) in an airport disturbs some people also. Oh yeah my father also has top-secret clearance (I think he got it while in the Navy) but both he plus the rest of the greenfish crew and the public have been lied to like crazy while sub was in service and the warheads on the torps have no unintended detonation safegaurds and they hide it by only putting in the tube and it goes completly undetected because nobody looked for a nuke (imagine how easy it would be to float a nuke in on a container and detonate it on the ship while in harbor) and his bunk was right on top of one of the nuke torps (warshot) when it was in storage, and the torps were meant for harbor busting in addition to convoy (carrier group) busting.

    Non-P2P DRM / Copyright News Comments 2006-11-22

    Wednesday, November 22nd, 2006
  • P2PNet - BitTorrent video store delay
  • Light Reading - BitTorrent Video Store Delayed
  • Oh, BitTorrent’s video store is going to use Microsoft’s DRM? Happy cracking with FairUse4WM!!! This is probably what the delay is really over.

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  • P2PNet - Bayern Munich takes on YouTube
  • Heise Online (Germany / English) - Bayern Munich takes on YouTube
  • I guess fans and players should boycott bayern munich if they start flinging out their lawsuits. Most of the infringing content is likely on Emule. YouTube is easily browser cache ripped also.

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  • P2PNet - DRM is good for you
  • PC World - Is DRM Good Or Bad For Consumers?
  • DRM good for consumers because more selection will be available??? Yeah right. I won’t buy it. I never had any DRM thing on my computer ever except some SQL Server Zinio magazines. It had a 3-PC limit and the reader was slow and clumsy. Ordering or pirating a SQL Server Magazine Master CD is far better. Non-DRM .chm file.

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  • P2PNet - Japanese harp player nailed
  • Mainichi Daily News - Elderly harmonica player arrested for performing copyrighted songs at bar
  • Better not be playing Nickelback or Disturbed on your guitar where neighbors can hear you or the RIAA’s thugs are going to have you arrested (after you ignore several cease and decist letters, a court order / injunction, and several more cease and decist letters)!!

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  • TorrentFreak - MPAA sues company for selling pre-loaded iPods
  • Electronic Fontier Foundation - Movie Studios Sue to Stop Loading of DVDs onto iPods
  • Piracy-4-Money sucks. The justification for the consumer paying the profit margin markup is the copied hollywood movies.

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  • TorrentFreak - Asia ??pirates??? out of necessity, not choice
  • CNet Asia Blogs - Do you want more frickin’ pirates?
  • Wired News - IPod Gray Market Booms in India
  • The third-world low-income of asia is actually is what is allowing Piracy-4-Money (coounterfeit DVDs etc) to be more widespread over Piracy-4-Free (P2P filesharing, F2F sneakernet). Legal restrictions and red-tape promote all kinds of piracy, whether it is excessive tarrifs (import taxes), power or moral or import-regulation bans, or over-regulation. P2P file sharing and F2F darknets and F2F sneakernet over snail-mail will fill all supply-voids. Rich and middle-income countries have individuals using it (common citizen can afford PC and internet), while the rest have decentralized organized-crime doing it instead, and making profit off of the sales.

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  • P2PNet - RIAA bog paper
  • Jinks - RIAA Toilet Paper (Buy it here)
  • RIAA CRAP! Next Halloween Wipe your ass with it and then TP the car or house with it! (Not worth the money if you don’t like egging / TPing on halloween)

    Paranoia / Politics News Comments 2006-11-22

    Wednesday, November 22nd, 2006
  • Washington Post - Alternative Minimum Tax Targeted
  • I think the AMT (Alternative minimum tax) should be the primary tax. Lower deduction (20-30K), lower percentage (15-20%) or non deuction and very low percentage (10-15%). Then the tax law will fit in a commoner-understandable 20-page pamplet rather than needing 3 laywers and a whole bookcase full of humoungous law-books. It appears that the AMT’s slowly lowering deduction allowance actually is the transition mechanism to make this the primary tax method.

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  • P2PNet - Black Christmas for EMI?
  • Times Online (UK) - EMI: Heat on for Christmas
  • P2PNet - EMI uncovers Brazil fraud
  • Bloomberg - EMI Identifies Accounting Fraud Affecting Brazil Unit’s Results
  • BBC News (UK) - Brazilian fraud hurts EMI Music
  • Guardian Unlimited (UK) - EMI uncovers fraud at its Brazil business
  • I could care less if EMI’s currupt and incompetant management drives the company so low that it goes bankrupt and ceases operations.

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  • P2PNet - Microsoft’s Zune scam
  • Apple Matters - Zune Marketplace’s Absurd Pricing Scheme
  • Cool concept. 0.8 exchange rate ($1 = 0.8M$P). First create illusion of 79 cent songs with the exchange rate (stupid people will fall for it). Then add a minimum purchase block size of $5. Free loans in at least a collective total of $10 million (averaging $2 per user, 5 million users). Thats actually not much in MS’s scale though. In the P2PNet article I would alter #5 from “5. Say ’screw it’ and go buy an iPod.” to “5. Say ’screw it’ and go buy an generic portable MP3 player”.

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  • P2PNet - Warner Bros dumps China
  • IMDb - Warner Bros. Withdrawing From Theater Biz in China
  • Law in the way from you getting your movie or song legit, whether it is against you or the company that wants to sell it? No problem! Emule (and BitTorrent) to the rescue!!

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  • P2PNet - MS EULA nets Dell user $90
  • Network World - Dell customer gets Windows refund
  • Linux Journal - Getting a Windows Refund in California Small Claims Court
  • Damn, refusing an EULA and actually getting a refund for it must be so difficult, that you’ll get news coverage if you succeeed!! The user here is a Linux user. My opinion — Too much effort.. Go download something else from Emule or share your copy on Emule or just don’t bother or do anything. Emule is easy. Linux users should refuse to buy any machine that has a Microsoft tax on it.

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  • Fresno Bee - Two Valley men get different prison terms in child porn cases
  • I think a lot of plea bargains that still result in a lot of prison time involve the 10, 20, and 30+ year barriers. Remaining sentences of 10-19 years require a minimum low security prison, 20-29 medium, 30+ high (PMITA penintentiary). The higher the security, the more hardened the crinimals in the other inmates. For kiddy porn, the crime is on the lowest of the respect scale, so hardened criminals are more likely to beat and kill you regardless of you social ability and ability to adapt to prison culture. I think most non-murdering sex offenders end up in medium security, but white-collar-only sex offenders are often in low security prisons.

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  • Yahoo News - US economy fears mount as housing starts dive
  • An economy should not be dependent on housing inflation or the continued indebting and reckless spending of already indebted consumers. Minimal saving outside of productive investments and minimal debting is what an economy should depend on. I hope the housing market drops rock-bottom, and I hope that indebted consumers pay off their credit card debt. I hope they don’t go further and hoard money in a savings account though as most of that goes to house mortagaes and car loans (Many non-new-purchase mortgage procedes go to credit card companies, medical insurance middlement, and lawyers). Mutual funds and Stocks or starting your own business (if it doesn’t suck or rely on gambling, lottory, beer, liquour, ciggarettes, drugs, or welfare handouts) is better. Or donate to open source software projects or science research, or do self-funded research or write your own open source software. If you start spending more again, stay away from parties, impulse-services, and tourist-trips and buy durable toys (guns, bows, steroes, tvs, telescopes, computers, weight machines, home theater, independant renewable energy like solar panels and windmills) and actually keep them for awhile or have a hand-me-down or donation plan.

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  • P2PNet - RWB Net enemies list
  • Reporters Without Borders - List of the 13 Internet enemies in 2006 published
  • This is the list of the internet censorship baddy countries. Belarus, * Burma, * China, * Cuba, Egypt, Iran, * North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, * Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Vietnam . Egypt was added in the most recent update, while Libya, * Maldives, and Nepal. The countries with a * had a solid triangle before the country’s name instead of a dash. The pattern seems to be how much of the internet is censored or how much of the population is banned from the internet alltogether, not effectivness or toughness of censorship or harness of punishment of dissidents.

    CopyBot and Second Life. Yippee!!

    Monday, November 20th, 2006
  • IEET - Second Life, Economic Evolution and the CopyBot
  • CNet News.com - ‘Second Life’ faces threat to its virtual economy
  • Mashable - Second Life Faces Lawsuit Threat over CopyBot
  • CNet News.com Blog - The death of Second Life?
  • New World Notes - IN SEARCH OF COPYBOT’S VICTIMS
  • ZDNet Blogs - In Second Life, those on ??Candid Copybot??? aren???t smiling
  • Wired News - Second Life Will Save Copyright
  • LibSecondLife - Your World, Your Imagination, Your protocol
  • LibSecondLife - libsecondlife and CopyBot
  • Raph Koster’s Website - CopyBot
  • SLUniverse - Using CopyBot - what can and can’t be done
  • Second Life - Copyrights and Content Creation in Second Life
  • Second Life - Use of CopyBot and Similar Tools a ToS Violation
  • Second Life - Copybot Action
  • Yippee for CopyBot! If you exclude the plagarism and commercial abuse - mostly virtual but real-world from selling the linden-dollars also. I only like the Emule-equivilent benefits of it. Having anything you want for free and having no artificial-scarcity barriers on you bragging and spreading your own creations.

    Copybot seemed cool. The official version was crippled to prevent abuse. The headline making was obviously done by source-modded versions. The headlines are probably being created because people are using it to plagiarize and re-sell non-free virtual items at deep undercutting prices (Piracy-4-money). I’ll look on Emule. Hopefully I’ll remember. The mods are probably chaotic and I would probably need friends in the second life world to get a version that copies anything. I would prefer the original creator to be left intact (for attribution) and that I only get my free copy and to have the ability to give out free copies and people to be able to get free copies from me (Piracy-4-Free with no plagiarism). But I probably won’t even get to messing with CopyBot myself as Second Life needs slow-broadband and I only have semi-broadband (144kbps up/down cellphone modem) and I saturate that with Emule traffic.

    Looks like LibSecondLife is going to keep open source, but make it a lot less convenient to get the source, probably CVS-only with login required. They might as well close the source if they are *that* paranoid. It is still legal (at least for GPL, CC-by-sa, DSL) to copy the source code as an intact archive to my heart’s content if I go through the hassle of downloading source files one by one. I haven’t actually tried to bulk-download a CVS with GetRight browser, possibly with a regex-in-TextPad manipulated intermediate local html file, which is how I bulk-rip pictures from MLS, wackywet, and swimmingfullyclothed. If I do get my hands on CopyBot (the uncrippled mutant versions) preferred) I’ll share it up on Emule, along with it’s source if I can get a complete archive.

    Non-P2P DRM / Copyright News Comments 2006-10-19

    Thursday, October 19th, 2006
  • P2PNet - AllofMP3.com press conference
  • P2PBlog - Allofmp3: We will survive
  • Slyck - RIAA asks AllofMP3 to Come Clean?-
  • P2PNet - Music for the Masses
  • NY Times - Moscow Music Site Defends Free Downloads
  • IFPI - International music rights owners set the record straight on Allofmp3.com
  • P2PNet - AllofMP3 conference transcript
  • I just wish AllOfMP3’s prices could be legal. Even Wal-Mart and Best Buy are fed-up. $2-4 albums, 25c Songs. Oh well. Back to Emule.

    ****************************************

  • P2PNet - GooTube copyright troubles?
  • P2PNet - Big 4 labels buy into GooTube
  • NewsWireless.net - net.wars: GoogTube lawsuits!
  • Guardian Unlimited - Google faces copyright fight over YouTube
  • Guardian Unlimited - Music companies have $50m stake in YouTube
  • Some articles on the YouTube stuff. I want YouTube to stick around un-mutated. But Emule works just fine for homebrew short-movies too.

    ****************************************

  • P2PNet - DRM and ‘frustrated’ consumers
  • PC Magazine - MPAA: Frustrated Consumers Will Pirate
  • ZDNet - Frustrated consumers forced into piracy
  • I’ve seen the same thing happen with games. Someone buys a game and becomes mildly annoyed at having to have the disc in the drive each time the want to play it (even though all the game content is stored on their hard drive). They do a little research and discover a world of cracks and patches. All that it takes is someone being “mildly annoyed”. That, and the satisfaction of sticking it to the man and defeating a copy protection technology which cost the company a small fortune in a few seconds using free tools. That crack didn’t cost the games industry anything, but again it introduced a legitimate consumer to methods of acquiring games for nothing. That hurts the games industry.

    I like this part of the ZDNet article.

    “I understand that if we frustrate the consumer, they will simply pirate the content,” he said. “The issue we face today is that consumers are buying content that uses specific DRM and that, in turn, is gradually creating a world of separate DRM systems.”

    He isn’t conceeding completely. Just on the proprietary nature of current DRM schemes pioneered by oh glorious (not) proprietary Apple. Even open, inter-operable DRM will frustrate some customers if the restrictions are too tight.

    ****************************************

  • Cornell University - Copyright Term and the Public Domain in the United States 1 January 2006
  • Here is a nice comprehensive USA copyright term table (Reality not fantasy or wannabe).

    ****************************************

  • P2PNet - Microsoft reams out Africa
  • Business Times - Software piracy costs Africa billions
  • Angola - Microsoft decries rampant piracy in Africa
  • Only South Africa, Nigera and Algeria have much measurable presence on Emule. Get more Africans on Emule so piracy-4-free can put piracy-for-money out of business.

    Paranoia / Politics News Comments 2006-10-19

    Thursday, October 19th, 2006
  • Washington Post - Farm Program Pays $1.3 Billion to People Who Don’t Farm
  • Washington Post - Crop Insurers Piling Up Record Profits
  • You think curruption and wast is bad with the farm subsidies? Before whining, go dig in to Medicare. It is far worse. Go dig into the great curruption and waste on the part of large organized charities, FEMA, and local governments with hurricane Katrina. That dwarfs most medicare curruption and waste.

    ****************************************

  • Washington Post - Bush signs bill on port security, online gambling
  • I am neutral with the gambling ban. Casino profit margins in online gambling is often higher than in brick & mortar casinos because software is more riggable than a table dealer or a fully mechanical slot machine (the fully electronic slot machines are no better than internet/PC-software slots). Gambling is an economic waste-away. But at the same time, it is limiting the freedom for somebody to wast away their life if they should choose. Putting the enforcement burden on banks has the effect of limiting internet gambling to overseas based internet gambling in addition to domestic. Oh yeah, Poker doesn’t have to use real money for the skill element, though real money does add motivation to developing and fully utilizing that skill. Poker is no different than blackjack for skill vs luck really. If you want more skill than casino table games, try Magic the Gathering. Be careful though, WoTC are intellectual property tyrants like the RIAA, but target consumers less especially with the OGL, more anticompettive IP tyranny - competing with the D20 system or Magic the Gathering.

    ****************************************

  • P2PNet - China freedom of speech clampdown
  • China Daily (China/English) - New rules to quash Internet rumours
  • Looks like China is making spreading Rumors and posting defamitory satirical remarks or media clips an equivilant of a class B misdomeanor (1st offence non-extreme DUI). Wonder how consistant enforcement will be? China does not have a good track history. It is a tyrannical law, but both legit and tyrannical law enforcement in china fluctuates between non-existant and iron-fist, often just guided by intrique (Somebody wants to get somebody out of the way or just hates him) with the occasional crackdown. It probably means that for this law, a very chronic offender will have a 5-10% chance of getting busted over 5-10 years.

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  • P2PNet - Online sales unfair: retailers
  • MacNewsWorld - Retailers Pressure Studios to Match iTunes Deal
  • Whine Whine Whine. If it costs too much, Don’t buy It! Buy it from the guys who are getting it cheaper if your vendor is undercutting you that much (or just don’t buy it all)! Buy IP tyrrany (copyright licensing - non transferrable clauses) may prevent that from being done legally though.

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  • P2PNet - Wal-Mart the Mighty vs the Big 4
  • Ars Technica - Wal-Mart to RIAA: We’re not gonna take it!
  • Rolling Stone - Wal-Mart Wants $10 CDs
  • RIAA + MPAA = MAFIAA! Wal-Mart pays $17 for DVDs and $12 for CDs! This is the studio’s take!! Wal-Mart buys direct from the stuios! They are barely budging with the music! I want $2-4 CDs and $3-6 DVDs!!! Special features and fancy packages are not neccesary. The Rolling stone article has an itemized excuse-breakdown from the RIAA on why they can’t lower the prices. Who gets paid Publishing royalties? Middlemen? The overhead features can be reduced. Wal-Mart definitly doesn’t need $3.89 retail overhead. Emule and YouTube can give free marketing.

    ****************************************

  • P2PNet - McDonalds McMalWare
  • TheRegister - Spyware infection prompts McDonalds MP3 recall
  • Gizmondo - McDonalds: “I’m Lovin’ Malware”
  • Hey this employee carelessness and inter-department non-communication is why they are being sued over their french fry advertising! All fits the same pattern. Poorly configured computer and reckless computer submits infected software image to flash-memory manufacturing. I do like McDonald’s Dollar menu (AZ version includes Big N’ Tasty, Sausage McMuffin w/ Egg, Big & Spicy Chicken, and Double Cheeseburger, some missing in CA, most in WA) though. Nobody should be running off with millions with this unless death or permanent disability is involved.

    ****************************************

  • P2PNet - $11.3M online defamation award
  • USA Today - Jury awards $11.3M over defamatory Internet posts
  • WebWire - Sue Scheff And Florida Company Win Empty Victory Over New Orleans Mom
  • You want $10mil in free money or at least some of it? Sue somebody out of state who don’t have a car and makes a low income!! This will have to be hate driven because you’re not going to get much from your garnishment efforts. You may only get vengeful ’satisfaction’ from having your victim be mentally distressed and constantly on the run because she is a collections fugitive (Like a at-large felon fugitive except they want your money/assets instead of you)..

    ****************************************

  • P2PNet - Restaurant owner’s bad night
  • OregonLive - Restaurant owner says songs may cost him his business
  • If a cover band tries to play songs in your eating joint without you having an extensive red tape, expensive prior agreement with the RIAA, call the COPS! Or the RIAA mafia is going to sue your ass out of business!!

    Non-P2P DRM / Copyright News Comments 2006-10-13

    Friday, October 13th, 2006
  • P2PNet - MP3s, teens and uncertain times
  • Mecury News - Google seeks rivals’ data for lawsuit over libraries
  • Bloomberg - Google to Subpoena Yahoo, Microsoft on Book Scanning (Update1)
  • I didn’t get my check card until I was 19 beause the first bank to offer them required me to have a checking account in good standing for 6 months before they would issue me one. A kid can get a VISA check card as young as 14 with parental support though. 16-17 without. Banks often require waiting periods for depositors with no history to go on.

    ****************************************

  • P2PNet - Oz pirates worth $10K each!
  • Australian IT - Pirate hunters double reward
  • Looks like the BSAA doubled the standard piracy bounty to help motivate the people to can’t be bothered with all the bullshit red-tape required to claim the reward and not get screwed into reporting it for free.

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  • P2PNet - Google goggles YouTube
  • TechCrunch - Completely Unsubstantiated Google/YouTube Rumor
  • CBC.ca - Google buys YouTube for $1.65 billion US
  • ZDNet - Google makes video play with YouTube buy
  • P2PNet - Google swallows YouTube
  • WebWire - Google To Acquire YouTube for $1.65 Billion in Stock
  • Nobody is going to mess with Google. he he.. Google is becoming more Microsoft-like though.

    ****************************************

  • P2PNet - YouTube and UMG make up
  • MarketWire - Universal Music Group and YouTube Forge Strategic Partnership
  • ZDNet - YouTube cuts three content deals
  • YouTube is going to be A-OK, at least until they start sueing over the rampant cache-ripping (Viewing a cache-ripped video bypasses advertising). Then when they all sue YouTube into oblivion for that, then the Videos will only have Emule as a place to go.

    Paranoia / Politics News Comments 2006-10-13

    Friday, October 13th, 2006
  • P2PNet - New Jersey taxes downloads
  • Macenstein - NJ to start charging iTunes tax this Sunday (October 1st)
  • Emule and BitTorrent piracy rates may go up a little. ITunes purchases in NJ will drop significantly though, which the RIAA will attribute entirely to piracy in their propaganda. The actual piracy increase will be majorly dampened by the plentiful availability of rippable music-CDs. Looks like the socialist republic of New Jersey is really having money problems.

    ****************************************

  • P2PNet - US mugs AllofMP3.com
  • Reuters - U.S. pushes Russia in WTO talks to close mp3 Web site
  • Why does Russia want the WTO membership so much? I dont know much about it. I should look it up. Are the benefits worth all the adjustments that have to be made? Is China in the WTO? Piracy is far worse in China than in Russia. Maybe the MPAA will have China kicked out if they are already a part of the WTO?

    ****************************************

  • P2PNet - Help! says Google to MS, Yahoo
  • The world is so evil. Following the RIAA’s example, McGraw-Hill (who’s SQL server books are merely mediocre, but have above-average file-sharing presense on Emule) is sueing around at everbody, including evil. Now come one, Google’s full-view books are all in the 1800s. This is really stupid.

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  • P2PNet - Apple and The Masked Blogger
  • The Masked Blogger
  • First, I don’t want to pay the costs of luxury customer service (cost is added to product price markups). Second I fully support Sainbury’s use of an automated system, if most or all of the cost savings are shaved off of the product prices. But their automated system DOES NOT WORK!! Then this Apple employee is too damned paranoid of getting canned for blogging about it using very general examples of his comany’s policy and he isn’t even bashing Apple or even close to leaking their stupid secrets! One does not want to work for Apple.

    ****************************************

  • BBC (UK) - N Korea test - failure or fake?
  • If it was really 0.5 kilotons, I would think it would be a failed blast. Mini-TacNukes is like 3rd or 4th generation nuke technology. They could’ve stolen some of it from Russia though. Faking 0.5 kilotons with conventional bombs would be difficult underground I think. 500 tons of TNT is 1,000,000 lbs of TNT. ****************************************

  • BBC (UK) - ‘Guantanamo abuse boasts’ probed
  • BBC (UK) - Profile: Guantanamo Bay
  • Hey you could hang them up off the floor in chains and litterally turn them into punching bags! Especially the ones who have already had mental breakdowns. Make sure to use boxing gloves and to not obstruct their body’s ability to swing or you could get busted for murder if you make one hemmorage to death internally. Might as well if they gone so far as head bashing heads onto cell doors and ciggarette burning.

    Non-P2P DRM / Copyright News Comments 2006-10-06

    Friday, October 6th, 2006
  • P2PNet - Remix Hollywood movies …
  • IMDB - A Legal Way To Censor Movies?
  • P2PNet - Movie sanitizers sanitized
  • E-Online - Judge Scrubs Movie Sanitizers
  • This is really good expample a enefficieny of HFOG (’Heavy Foot of Goverment’) and HFOG boosting effect of cranking up the opressometer (security at the expense of freedom). The site’s target market is ‘over the air’ movie censors (profanity, nudity, gore, time limitations). Mixing with copyright and the fact they didn’t give a location to get the original, and probably didn’t inform end users of the editing, and the lack of quality of the censorship (mid-sentence cut off, dead air), I think I would agree with the studios beating down on ClearPlay. Now they exploit a copyright loophole, requiring additional effort, and ‘Cuts inc.’ is born. Hopefully the censoship is higher quality, and there is information given to the end viewer about the censorship.

    ****************************************

  • Washington Post - On the Trail of ‘Wag the Dog’
  • I like this - “In its battle for truth, justice and bigger revenue stream” he he.. Looks like the doggies can only smell the presense of polycarbonate, which is what DVDs are made out of, not specific pressing plant scents or burned media ink. The doggies might also smell polycarbonate safety goggles and eyeglasses with polycarbonate lenses (lighter and scratch & break less) and point out as DVDs. With the rate of theft of small, portable valuables (A case with 32 dvds with can be sold for $100-200 and cost 400-600 to buy legit) from luggage, I wouldn’t want to put DVDs in my checked luggage if I paid for them though. Maybe the dogs are trained only to point out a certain minimum strength of polycarbonate scent so that bags with only a few DVDs in them won’t get searched. But a few dozen (including full portable CD/DVD cases) or more, would get searched, and possibly stolen.

    ****************************************

  • News.com - Symantec: Microsoft won’t give us key Vista tech
  • Microsoft must either be passing it around in its internal bureauracracy or have provided links, but made them very obscure and convoluted that few will find it. Maybe the APIs will be on Emule before Norton and McAffee gets their legal copies? Norton and McAffee should look on Emule for the APIs. Maybe Microsoft wants them to get them from P2P (like the RIAA does to the radio stations - ’shipping’ music via limewire) so they can turn around and sue them for breach of contract/copyright rather than being sued for anti-trust violations.

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  • P2PNet - DVD Jon eyes Apple
  • GigaOM - DVD Jon Fairplays Apple
  • He’s going to get sued for the reverse engineering of FairPlay instead of DRM cracking. I don’t know if copyright can ban reverse engineering (Patents definitly can). Business profits only make him more sue-able. He needs to crack them Blu-Rays for us.

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  • P3PNet - British Library on DRM
  • PC Pro - British Library shouts out against unfair DRM
  • News.com - British Library calls for digital copyright action
  • ZDNet UK - British Library calls for digital copyright action
  • Copyright law serves publishers and labels more than consumers and artists. That was probably ok when home mass-production of copies didn’t exist and the internet didn’t exist and the publisher was absolutely neccesary to sell more than a dab of copies and it took a major investment to make money off of counterfeiting (printing presses). Copyright in its current form is obsolete, DRM’s permant nature (in the case there isn’t any hacker motivated to crack it), and the anti-DRM circumvention clauses of the DMCA and its clones make it all worse. Copyright needs to be a default of a copyleft (GPL, DSL, CC), which protects free distribution and the actual ‘intellectual ownership’, but doesn’t protect revenue strreams. Full protection should require registration. DRM should be legal, but it shouldn’t be illegal to crack it. It should be required to provide DRM strippers for a DRM-ed work when its full-copyright expires or the courts won’t hear any infringement cases on your other copyrights. The term of full protection should only be 5 years with possible 5-year renewals to 20 years that are not guarenteed. When a full copyright expires, it reverts back to a basic copyleft. Basic copyleft would last the durations that current copyrights do now.

    ****************************************

  • P2PNet - Censored Apple Wi-Fi hacker
  • BoingBoing - Speech given by censored Apple WiFi hacker at ToorCon
  • Censored Speech Text
  • Put the speech with all the hacker techy stuff into a PDF and share it on Emule! I have several shares that get more traffic on Emule than they do on the web, and they mostly game addons are authored by me. Most notable is my X-Plan popular mechanics design contest submission. It got disqualified and ‘normal’ (people with pilot licenses and fly real planes) pilots in the X-Plane circle can’t fly it, but pleny of ‘wierdo’ (bedroom geeks with no pilot training and only know things about airplanes and ony fly in video games) pilots can fly it as it has over 15 complete sources much of the time and it is my second most downloaded perma-share despite all the other seeds. So share it on Emule. File Sharers won’t give a damn what apple says or think.

    ****************************************

  • Next Generation - Stardock Questions Copyright Survey
  • Galactic Civilizations II DOES have copy protection. It has activation. I havn’t messed with it to know if they have a phone activation exploit (it is neccesary for offline folk, but then again they are selling expansions online-only) or if a activation-keygen is available. People HATED activation in Windows XP (and Vista). Doesn’t seem to be complaints here. What sets GalCiv2, and X-Plane apart is the ability to copy and plant copies of the installed game directy and have it just work. Most games don’t do this! Where they differ is that X-Plane has a CD-dongle and GalCiv2 has activation. GalCiv2’s activation has less lasting inconveniance than X-Planes CD-Dongle, but X-Plane’s DVDs are easily copied. X-Plane is updated too frequently for NoCD cracks to keep up. I havn’t tested to see if a GalCiv2 installed with a keygen-generated key will pass activation. They don’t with MS WinXP because MS keeps a database of issued keys (WGA adds continual monitoring for invalidated keys). StarDock is pushing bulshit that it doesn’t use copy protection. They chose to use activation. They chose to do away with mandatory use of installer (copies of installed games just work and upgrade patches work), CD-Dongles and CD-copy protection. X-Plane uses CD-Dongles but not with mandatory use of installer, activation or CD copy-protection. Most games use CD-Dongles and mandatory use of installer. Some also have CD-copy protection. Hardly any games require activation

    ****************************************

  • P2PNet - Pan-Europe Pirate attack
  • Out-Law.com - Swedish pirates plan pan-European party
  • Looks like the European Pirate Parties are banding together to try to influence EU-level elections. Good look! I support the action but don’t think they will get far.

    ****************************************

  • P2PNet - New Sony revenue ploy
  • People pay out of their asses for skins and objects for the Sims and Sims 2. People will buy sony’s shit too. They are complete idiots. I won’t though. For game addon content, it is either Legally free (Emule or web), Illegally free (Emule), or I won’t get it at all.

    ****************************************

  • P2PNet - Evanescence and mp3s
  • It appears these are MP3s in the .asf container that can be downloaded by basic mms:// capable downloaders (ones that don’t hack into your NIC or proxy through IE). The .asf encapsulation appears to be easy to remove to expose a bare .mp3 file. I’ll just look on Emule.

    ****************************************

  • P2PNet - TiVo Series 3: sans TiVoToGo
  • Electronic Frontier Foundation - Who Killed TiVoToGo?
  • Another somewhat cool feature bites the dust. All the more reason to get a DiY DVR system for your PC and to use open source DVR software

    ****************************************

  • P2PNet - We DO have choices
  • I like this. Imagine scaling to a multistellar environment with a pan-galactic cybernet with Star-Trek style replicators that can materialize copies of almost anything from downloaded, scanned-in, or self-made schematics:

    “The lowest common denominator will look like a community-based wireless network. Each house will have a cheap tin can antenna ($3 to $7), which will participate in mesh networking of every neighbor’s computer, and giving everyone broadband access that is 10 times as fast as the telco/cable monopolies’ offerings.

    VoIP, videoconferencing, telemedicine, and all the other services anyone wants, will be freely available.

    P2P networking will thrive and become as ubiquitous as email. Independent Artists are now uploading and making their live concerts, gigs, and songs in video formats. They’ve found that using unencumbered (by patents) file formats such as .ogg, they can guarantee their creative works will live on, in spite of any corporate threats to make them illegal.”

    Military / Terrorism News Comments 2006-10-06

    Friday, October 6th, 2006
  • TheLocal (Sweden / English) - Porn pics ‘endangered military security’
  • The american millitary is far worse… Drugs, sex everywhere. Power curruption.

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  • Wired News - The Great No-ID Airport Challenge
  • I’ve lost my bag with my ID in it by forgetting it in a bus stop in Spokane in 2005, but it is good that I’ve already read a lot of articles like the above and several blogs about flying with no ID. The key to flying without ID is the fact that you will not get your boarding pass without the confirmation number and correct answers to one or two questions about your itinerary if you don’t have ID (I only know Southwest airlines’s no-ID boarding pass rules; other airlines may vary), and that you will be screened and searched like hell at the checkpoint. Your Boarding pass will also have ‘No ID’ or a different sticker than the ID passes (depends on the airport) on it, written either by the airline person that gave you the boarding pass, or by the TSA ID pre-checker in the checkpoint line. You will also get color coded (Orange in Spokane) cubby bins instead of normal gray ones if you either have no ID or they somehow deem you an elevated risk even with ID. Spokane airport (GEG) did not allow a queue bypass for no-ID passengers. They just check the boarding pass two or three times (they do in phoenix also) as you pass through the stages in the checkpoint. I think the best thing is to do it like brazil - passengers are allowed to carry small caliber pistols (9mm or less i think, maybe <9mm) onto the planes! Pilots should carry large caliber pistols in open holsters (they are current required to go through half-ass sky martial training and to go through special concealment and inspection procedures). No band of 4-5 guys with kitchen knives and pocket knives is going to hijack an aircraft with two high-caliber armed pilots and 20-30 passengers (and probably flight crew also) also packing some iron. The terrorists (or even classic ransom hijackers) will quickly die (probably along with a quarter to a third of the passengers) without achieving their objectives.

    ****************************************

  • Wired News - DIY Nuke Detector Patrols SF Bay
  • Once you are done with being able to scan for nukes after the ship pulls into port, now prevent nukes from detonating while the ship is pulling into port! I had a bad dream with 12 white mushroom clouds in major American ports several months ago. These DIY freelancers might have the technology to spot nukes (possibly only poorly concealed ones) 10-20 miles out at sea. I think while false alarms are low, they are very decoy-able, and maybe could still get false alarms from legal lab equipment or something. The gamma-ray detector pillars should be mandatory to pass through, and be able to keep speeds up. Traffic jams are bad. Also it appears in the article that intellectual property concerns are greatly affecting contract decisions. Thank you Apple! Thank you RIAA! You all suck! We need efficient, smart security that minimizes the impact on civil liberties or the flow of business and doesn’t cost too much. Poor track history so far, though TSA at airports doesn’t seem too bad though, but I am clueless of costs. Everywhere else, forget it.

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  • BBC News (UK) - Plane diversion reveals raw nerves
  • They divert flights over old hags having an anxiety attack with some contraband hand-cream. She probably got put in the nuthouse. Out within a month with an incompetancy label (like a felony with a very short prison term) and some free disability checks. Most nuthouses is too full of people who don’t responed to the quick-fix drugs or who have gotten more crazy from the side effects of the quick-fix antipsychotic drugs (sorta like brain-fry from weed and booze, but more of a different kind of psycho than just fried). Probably mixing some of the nut-drugs with street drugs (especially ectasy, shrms, and acid/LSD) probably turn the whole brain into meaningless mush.

    ****************************************

  • The Electric New Paper - Hijacker entered cockpit not long after take-off
  • I don’t think he ever intended to or actually did take control of the aircraft. He botched up an attempt to get attention via exploiting anti-terrorist paranoia / procedures. Ge deserted from the turkish army and wanted to defect to and get ayslum from albania. They probably can’t even get hijacking charges on him. He will probably get more time in Turkey for the desertion. Real prospective terrorists should take example from the first half-hour of ‘Chronicles of Riddick’ (Drop, slide, climb, bop from under, quick move, fighter pilot not paying attention, panics, and ejects) and start practicing it with the X-Plane-Freeware Project’s uber-realistic 737 addon in X-Plane. It is probably why the USA uses 2 F-16 escorts and not just 1 escort like Greece did with the Turkish defector.

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  • Wired News - One Million Ways to Die
  • This article is meant to lower anxiety on being killed by terrorist attack. Numbers are for America, not Iraq, Indonesia, etc..

    Paranoia / Politics News Comments 2006-10-06

    Friday, October 6th, 2006
  • P2PNet - Apple puts dibs on ‘pod’
  • MacWorld - Apple legal ‘pod’ protection continues
  • Wired Blogs - Apple Hits Podcast Ready with Nastygram
  • MacNews World - Apple’s ‘Pod’ Police Dropping Hammer on Trademark Offenders
  • Engadget - Apple pays woman to “de-Pod” her product
  • Engadget - No POD for you: Apple keeps close tabs on brand name
  • Just a Random Review Blog - Engadget Shop
  • P2PNet - Pro baseball dumps iTunes
  • Damn apple is really using it’s iron fist. If they think they can win, sue, if not, bribe, but if they don’t take the bribe, then they sue anyway. The ‘engadget store’ is a more valid trademark violation. Apple is leveraging its lawyers against free content podcasts. They seem to be just downloadable .mp4 files (sometimes you have to hack through raw xml to get .urls to feed to GetRight (a download manager), other times it is direct), but Itunes probably can just ferry it directly and automatically to the Ipod and has automated publicity in the Itunes store. Some of these guys are so scared that they ask permission to scan the legal letters and put them online! The pirate bay doesn’t bother, and they ridicule them too. They probably make paper airplanes or other funny things if once they have scanned to paper threats he he…

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  • Washington Post - Hollywood Says Piracy Has Ripple Effect
  • Looks like the MPAA is emphasizing ‘jobs’ and ‘tax revenue’ now. If they want judicial and legislative decisions in their favor, then need to try to research and pre-choose judges, house reps, and senators, who aren’t themselves downloading all kinds of Moviez, Muzic, Bookz, and Warez (or even clazzified secretz) themselves at home he he… if they can (I don’t know how the courts work). Goerge W Bush seems to do this well with is congressional posse (even has a minority of democrats!). P2P filesharing in itself, specially ones with open source authorship, is a threat to capitalism at its foundations. Capitalism works well when volume capable home personal production factories (Today, the PC, way future tomrrow, nanofacs or even trekky replicators) with cheap raw materials (network bandwidth or blank writable media) is not feasable. P2P is far more socialist than capitalist, but people-centric and libertarian rather than goverment centric and totalitarian (communism).

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  • P2PNet - Sony’s battered batteries
  • MarketWatch - Sony battery recall hurts brand, business - analysts
  • Yeah, Sony can take their hack-job battery factories and shove it up their ass. Sony laptops break twice as often as HP and Dell laptops at work. Sony Tivos’ modems break within 6 months. Sony has a subsidiary movie company that is a member of the evil MPAA. Sony is also has a subsidiary that is a member of the ultra-evil RIAA that also tried to put viral DRM in their music CDs. The PlayStation 3 also appears to have a looming major DRM fiasco. They want to sell gutted PS3 games and then charge your huge sums for the content (with a somewhat cost effective bundle being included in a premium edition). Then watch the PS3s have exploding batteries, flaky RAM chips, and Blue Laser LEDs that last an average of 6 months (Blue LEDs in LED Christmas lights start going out after 3 onths of always-on and 2/3 of them will be out within a year, while the rest last like the redder LEDs).

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  • Heise Online (Germany / English) - CCC warns against ban on “hacker tools”
  • Hey the crinimals will have the hackers tools anyway. There is no sense in completely banning them. The crinimals will have more defensless victims to attack. It is just like the guns. At the very least, allow legal possesion with a license and make up a good working system with consistent and clear, but not too restrictive, criteria in obtaining and keeping such a license. That may reduce the fringe script-kiddie hackers, but not criminalize the security review firms and good-natured hackers.

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  • ZDNet - Microsoft to lock pirates out of Vista PCs
  • ZDNet - What Microsoft still isn???t saying about WGA and Volume Activation 2.0
  • P2PNet - MS Vista PC Police software
  • Boston Globe - New Windows OS to include antipiracy features
  • Seattle Post Intelligencer - Microsoft to step up anti-piracy stance
  • The ZDNet is twisting Vista activation to be like a WGA ‘kill switch’. The XP activation had a much harder ‘kill switch’ than what is planned with Vista. What Vista is doing is integrating WGA into the activation process. Adobe Photoshop has done this long ago, with less information to the consumer! It checks the validity/stolen tag of the serial upon initial activation if it is done online and not via ‘phone’,which most activation keygens exploit, and also periodically whenever the machine is connected online. XP w/ WGA and Vista will inform you if your serial is rejected. Photoshop just devalidates the activation if you used a serial-keygen and a phone-activation-keygen (which is why warez-archives with bundled activation cracks are better than activation keygens - bundled or separate) and makes you activate again and will immediatly expire the trial period if it hasn’t elapsed yet. Photoshop has a ‘kill switch’ and I don’t hear any bitching about it. You should either get coding with the crack or just switch to linux or just eat it.

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  • P2PNet - Apple, Wal-Mart alliance
  • Variety.com - A slice of Apple’s pie - Wal-Mart flexes DVD muscle over iTunes profits
  • ZDNet - Bootlegging returns with Superman sequel
  • Apple is threatening to stop selling DVDs if the studio lets Apple and it’s DRM undercut DVDs? Why doen’t the studios just make DVD supply-costs cheaper? They don’t wanna do that… Isn’t lowering prices and undercutting competitors supposed to be the wal-mart way? It sounds hypocritical when they bitch and whine when somebody may undercut them. I want my $4-6 new-release hollywood DVDs at my local Walmart! Old DVDs for $1-3! The package is already over-elaborate. Slim platic cases with basic labels (like music CDs without the credit/lyric books inside) are just fine with me. Wal-Mart does have $1 DVDs, package is just fine though the content really sucks. Most of Wal-Mart $5 DVDs suck too (B and C often family/educational movies). The good non-new release movies are $10-14. Superman Returns is being sold at an MSRP of $1.75 (basic) or $2.75 (special) in China. It is to be $30 or $35 in America. I want Wal-mart to have it for $5! Profitably!!

    I hate the MPAA! “Customers who throw a disc in their shopping carts spend an average of $75 per trip to the store “. I fit this category of customers, though I probably wouldn’t buy less if I didn’t get any DVDs. I am a major single-store (per trip with loyalty tendancies) deal hunter and sale-leprechaun (big sale — really cheap price as opposed to a gimmicky yellow tag on an elevated regular price = major stock up). I am mildly prone to impulse shopping, which is the worst at Wal-Mart. The MPAA charges Wal-Mart $17 per disc!. That means Wal-Mart sells many DVDs at a significant loss! Fuck the MPAA!! I can’t enjoy wal-mart cheapness without knowing that they are losing money over it! Smart cheapness is being cheap with profit! Wal-Mart can stop selling DVDs for all I care! I can get my movies from Emule!!

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  • P2PNet - The Knack go on copyright rampage
  • LA Weekly - Run, DMC ?Run!
  • Eweek Weblog - ‘My Sharona’ Creators Sue Yahoo, Apple, Amazon and Run DMC for Copyright Infringement
  • Sue Sue Rob Streal Lawyer Litigation. The United States is crumbling. Sue everybody you can imagine as even remotely connected, taking example from the RIAA and the other big corporation USA falls into great depression and mass bickering and rioting, and China is just waiting to pounce and pounce. Oil Oil Oil gimme gimme gimme mine mine mine (i’m like that with file sharing I admin but I don’t need to kill, rape, or rob to get my files). You do what I say or I’ll sue or bomb you. No only if the communist goverment can fall and the country become more christian (non-religion-currupt) before the Chinese do rule the world so the world won’t be under iron hand rule. This music is over 20 years old and the statute of limitations is only 3 years! ‘I never heard of the music (lie), I’m sueing anyway!’.

    Somebody Wants To ‘Get Rid’ of This Guy. The Meadow is The Current Exploit Tool.

    Tuesday, October 3rd, 2006
  • Jason Rohrer - Nature on Trial
  • I sent him this email with the subject “Meadow trial / double jeopardy acquittal appeal’. I think it is worth repeating here. I largely used question asking to attempt to fill-in gaps in my legal knowledge, which are fairly large. Knowledge vacu-sucking can be assisted by offering up knowledge or secrets in return, but I don’t think I have much to offer other than tangent-leads.

    Here’s the body:

    I got some things you may want to look up things on for helping figure out what loophole your opposing lawyer may be exploiting:

    ???which cannot be appealed by the government in the U.S. because of double jeopardy protections??? ??C Does ??government of the U.S. include any subset government of the US ??C State, County, City/Municipal?

    What is the penalty of a guilty verdict? Is it a sizable fine and easier pathway to a civil lawsuit victory? Oh yea, is the case criminal or civil? Most HOAs file civil suits after extended non-compliance, which losing means garnishment of non-exempt assets, which usually include houses (for ‘legal and court costs’). A municipality is obviously not an HOA though, but yours seem to surely act like one (that caters to ??investment??? homeowners). Acquittal on a civil suit is more difficult than criminal suit though and ??beyond a reasonable doubt??? suggests that your case is criminal.

    If it is criminal, does double jeopardy / no appeal, assuming it covers county / municipal jurisdiction, apply to all trials, or only jury trials? Your trial was obviously a bench trial. Maybe a bench trial acquittal is equivalent, or manipulate-able to be legally a dismissal? Maybe, municipal criminal trials may be considered civil for purposes of appeals / double jeopardy as municipal penalties usually cannot be more than civil violations? I know that double jeopardy doesn’t apply to civil lawsuit trials.

    I???m pretty sure, whatever it is, it isn’t over your meadow. Your meadow is just an exploit to get rid of you. You have the looks of an undesirable stereotype (long hair, metal-head-ish look), you deliberately don’t belong, and you are big-time open source, and you author P2P software. If you win in court over the meadow, or get rid of the meadow, they will probably just find something else. Your enemy could be the lawyer himself, or some of his friends, ranging from a group of religious nuts, greedy homeowners, to even the RIAA.

    I also like these links that I picked out of this guy’s site:

  • Essay - Free Distribution
  • The Bedroom Coder???s Business Model - More Fun, Less Ferrari
  • The Digital Art Auction (In development)
  • Making Money when Information Wants to be Free
  • Mute P2P File Sharing (Open Source)
  • He is a bit over idealistic wanting everything public domain. Copyleft is better. People will take your work and sell it as their own (or just integrate many works and sell it) if it is Public Domain. No-litigation (notice/humilation only for violators) Copyleft doesn’t eliminate it but it does reduce it.

    Paranoia / Politics News Comments 2006-09-29

    Friday, September 29th, 2006
  • Above Top Secret - U.S. CONCENTRATION CAMPS FEMA AND THE REX 84 PROGRAM
  • APFN - Concentration Camp Locations in Southern California
  • Mindfully - FEMA Concentration Camps: Locations and Executive Orders
  • Freedom Flies - FEMA’s 911 Concentration Camps
  • Greater Things - Concentration Camps in U.S.
  • Wikipedia - Rex 84
  • United States COngressman Jim McDermott - MARTIAL LAW CONCERNS
  • Washington Post - U.S. Can Confine Citizens Without Charges, Court Rules
  • Washington Post - Wiretap Bill Moves Closer to Passage
  • Washington Post - Detainee Measure to Have Fewer Restrictions
  • Washington Post - House Approves Bill on Detainees
  • Martial law is coming! George Bush wants the throne but he probably won’t get it, but he is driving more momentum for this country to become a tyrannic despotic/corporate fascist state. Rex84 would definitely kick off if and when the YellowStone caldera erupts, or if the USA goes to war with China and decides to crack down on P2P file sharing (and BitTorrent and the darknets) to curb espionage and embargo violations, or if simply mass protests and some rioting start incase these new rules on detainees spread to citizens combined with Bush or a future president like Bush’s war-making. The releaser group courier population alone will fill a few of the concentration camps. The stubborn portion of the P2P population will probably fill another dozen or so. They are really meant for large sums of looters, rioters, and maybe all of the peaceful protesters if rioters/looters are among them and the protest is ‘undesirable’. But some of the camps are already handling overflow population of some military and civilian federal prisons though.

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  • BBC News - (UK) - Free speech, libel and the internet age
  • TVNz - Police powerless to stop defamer
  • These two articles are mostly opposite, except the deliberate, overt, chronic, and very deceptive defamer in the 2nd article is not doing it online. P2PNet is indirect via readers and reply-article, neutral/apathetic (doesn’t care if it libelous or not), and is not chronic or overly deceptive.

    Non-P2P DRM / Copyright News Comments 2006-09-20

    Thursday, September 21st, 2006
  • P2PNet - eBay, grannies and copyright
  • InfoWorld - Embroidering On a Copyright Shakedown Theme
  • InfoWorld - Embroidery Piracy and EBay/PayPal Privacy
  • Looksl ike the ESPC is following the RIAA’s example, but making it worse! “The ESPC says they are just following what the music industry has been doing to those who download copyrighted music,”. The example-warping may be from downloaders being sued by the RIAA because of the mandatory sharing of the incomplete and incoming folders in Emule and BitTorrent. It is quite a lucrative legal-loophole legalized racketeering thing! Grannys who unknowningly buy pirated embroidary design CDs off of ebay are getting legal letters to pay up $300 or else…

    I like this reader comment — “Granny had better make sure that those cookies are based on a recipe from a legally purchased cookbook; or, have her attorney do a patent/copyright search to make sure that her original family recipe doesn’t infringe someome else’s. And, if the recipe is from a cookbook, she’d better check to see if her “license” allows distribution of the cookies outside her immediate household.” This one is cool too - “And my initials would be F & Y. :) And I would enclose $300 in monopoly money.” ‘Monopoly Money’ is the fake money in the monopoly boardgame. Color photocopies of the fake monopoly money might be cooler :)

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  • Ars Technica - Prof told to pull podcasts
  • The Chronical of Higher Education - N.C. Professor Stops Selling Lecture Recordings Online After a Dean Raises Questions
  • I think its that the university doesn’t want the professor collecting revenue outside of the institutionalized system of the school and that some of the target audiance is chronic class ditchers. They may also be concerned with people who havn’t paid thousands of dollars to North Carolina State University’s bursar’s office getting free or low-cost lectures. I think, being a state school, that the primary fear is insurance rules & premiums and civil liability / litigation / lawsuits. Definitly citing a partial target audiance of chronic ditchers raises a liability concern - sueing the school after he fails using the reason that ‘I recieved a license to ditch’. I wouldn’t be concerned that the .mp3 lectures would be a license to ditch class in itself. I’d fear piracy only modestly. But it only takes one or two big lawsuits, and you’re out of business. The lectures may be back up after a big ol’ liability waiver and intellectual property license agreement is drafted by the legal agreement, and it will probably be for current students only (maybe not neccessairly enrolled in his class), and free (possibly with Schrag recieving a small grant or bonus from the institution). If it is locked to be internall access only, hopefully the students and put them up on Emule. Emule doesn’t have that many university lectures outside of special lectures from very famous figures. I would love to be able to pirate college for free. Web classes at MCC aren’t that much better than feeding off of pirated lecture MP3s and pirated textbook .pdfs.

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  • P2PNet - No iTunes movies for Asia
  • Forbes - Apple rules out iTunes movie service for Asia ex-Japan
  • Hmm, Chines, Thai, Indonesian user connect over to Itunes USA via a proxy server (b/c of IP2Country usage), lie about their address (if needed - I never signed up on Itunes), and buy them that way, if they can even afford it. One could get them from the filesharing networks, but it is more lagged and filesharing does hurt counterfeit sales (mostly China - SE asia doesn’t have the connectivity yet), so these organized counterfeiters and their bootlegger sellers need more current sources. So if Apple doesn’t sell to Asia, 100% of the content will be pirated, instead of 80-90%, as the internet is GLOBAL.

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  • P2PNet - RealNetworks, SanDisk deal
  • P2PNet - RealNetwork’s new DRM
  • Boston.com - RealNetworks, SanDisk teaming up
  • Another single-vendor DRM music player hits the vendor! Won’t play Itunes or Microsoft DRM music (no Napster or Rhapsody either). Why no fussing? Well theres Emule (LimeWire\n, BearShare, Kazaa, BitTorrent too) and CD Ripping. No problemo. Buy the CD and rip it, or buy the DRM-ed song and then download it. Ripping a purchased CD is more legal. The RIAA would love to get rid of unprotected CDs (Sony-BMG rootkits) if they could…

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  • P2PNet - Online indies vs major labels
  • The download industry is still to much for the big labels to care. But te fact that Emusic is exceeding napster is promsing. But Itunes is the target. Most of the law-abiding techno-dumb without significant techy friends use Itunes. The rest of the law-abiding either rip CDs or have their friend do it for them. The real test, is when, and if, unprotected CDs become extinct… And they havn’t yet. CD-ripping and Itunes are both major obsticals for a no-DRM download shop’s prosperity. The techno-dumb grow content over the DRM while the others find it easier to CD-rip or to buy from Itunes or buy a CD and then download from P2P.

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  • P2PNet - EMI goes after The Beachles
  • BoingBoing - EMI wants millions and your IP address in revenge for Beachles
  • The beachles are obviously violating copyright it a profiting manner. The RIAA is definitly abusing copyright, also. If copyright law was meant to enhance creativity by preserving the ability to make relativitly prosperous living off of intellectual or artistic creations, then the RIAA is warping it so they can become the sole provider of artistic creations with dictatorial like dominion over their customers and crushing fledgling competitors who do one thing even slightly wrong, and thus is actually supressing creativity rather than promoting it.

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  • P2PNet - UMG threatens YouTube
  • ZDNet - YouTube, MySpace at risk: UMG seeks millions of dollars from ‘copyright infringers’
  • New York Post - TARGET: YOUTUBE
  • I love browser-cache ripping YouTube movies :) . And just like on Emule, I could care less if they are patented, copyrighted, or commercial / state secrets. I don’t rip as much as I should though. I’m too glued to Emule. Emule won’t go away even if YouTube (or even MySpace) is sued into oblivion!

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  • P2PNet - Ritek fish-and-chips spyware
  • Ars Technica - New chip to thwart DVD piracy is a long way off and faces considerable challenges
  • ITNews (Australia) - DVD chips ‘to kill illegal copying’
  • I doubt it. It may hurt the for-profit counterfeiters, but for the Emule user, it don’t matter. The AACS is a bigger obstacle against ripping. The RFID won’t hold any encryption keys or anything, otherwise it may be used to assist in cracking AACS for ripping.

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  • P2PNet - RIAA targets XM Satellite Radio
  • Radio World Online - Songwriters Support RIAA in Suit Against XM
  • PC Pro - US songwriters pitch in to help RIAA sue XM Satellite Radio
  • I think the RIAA’s lawsuit is supid. Subscription dependant saving, can’t move off of device at all. I won’t buy an XM for that. Definitly looks like it fits ‘audio home recording’ law to me, unless that law explicitly limits to cassette tapes. Only problem, is that XM is providing the recording devices, which is probably not covered by that law. Its like 98KUPD providing free or just selling tape recorders (especially if they are rebranded with 98KUPD rather than Sony or something) with the intent for users to use it mainly for cassete-recording its broadcasted music. Don’t know if thats legal or not, and XM don’t have an explicit license for it. If it was third-party recording devices rather than XM’s own, XM would snake right through. Its just an ugly, cruel, evil world. I think I should be able to non-DRM MP3-record from anything streamed, period. Wi-Fi enabled IPods do have that exploit now, and the Ipod owner don’t have a broadcasting license. I wonder if the RIAA will start sueing Wi-Fi broadcasting IPod owners?

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  • P2PNet - Germany’s Pirate Party
  • TorrentFreak - Yet Another Pirate Party
  • Pirate Parties are everywhere now! 10 Countries and Counting. The P2PNet article has links to all of them.

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  • P2Pnet - Swedish Pirates: 33,000 votes
  • Ars Technica - Pirate Party falls short of Swedish election goals, blames faulty procedures
  • Wired - Voters Keelhaul Pirate Party
  • Looks like the Swedish Pirate Party didn’t make the 4% cut. Oh well. It probably just means that Sweden will more peacefully sucummb to corporate intellectual tyranny.

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  • P2PNet - FairUse4WM: unDRM
  • If the RIAA could remove unprotected and rippable CDs without tremendous consumer backlash, they would in a hot second. Right now, the RIAA is playing microsoft and just waiting it out for CDs to become obsolete on their own accord. Then its DRM on proprietary devices only and only open devices and formats will be like the flash advance carts for Game Boy Advance or region-free DVD players or pirate sattelite smart cards — illegal, but relativitly open black-market accessible with only basic connections or some intelligent web surfing / patient googling (to get around all the bogus sites and not get ripped off).

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  • P2PNet - FairUse4WM Take Down orders
  • Ars Technica - Microsoft tells web site owners to take down FairUse4WM
  • FairUse4WM got enough of microsoft’s attention to get canned cease and desist letters. The Pirate Bay ignores, actually mocks, them. FairUse4WM can probably do the same. FairUse4WM doesn’t import encryption keys, so it won’t cracked pirated, DRM material, though you can pirate out the cracked material. Its better to just not buy the DRM material to begin with, especially with non-DRM music CDs are still abundant.

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  • P2PNet - Make a killing by killing YouTube
  • RedSwoosh Blog - How to Kill YouTube and make $10MM in 30 days
  • Red Swoosh outlines a mafia-like corporate exploitation of the america civil court system… Severely harm YouTube’s open nature for 10 million in your own pocket, and the other $10M goes the buddies that you need help from because you’re a random nobody that doesn’t own any of the copyrights seeking to act on other companys’ behalf.

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  • CopySense - New Video Services Rip From YouTube
  • You don’t need PeekVid or KeepVid to rip Google Video or YouTube. KeepVide cannot rip JobingTV - flash-streaming of .flvs encoded in Sorenson Squeeze that doesn’t allow caching in the browser (it keeps clients coming back rather than taking the videos and putting it on their site which I hate but the clients don’t pay for the production). YouTube can be ripped through the browser cache. Google video can be ripped with the aid of GetRight (assemble the url via the source to the video and put it into getright) and probably can be cache-ripped too. If you have Media Player classic and Flash installed, it will play .flv files, as long as you have the codec of the movie inside the .flv (.flv is a container format not a particular codec). The K-Lite Mega Codec Pack can help you there, even for the Sorenson encoded videos. YouTube has to be ripped from the browser cache (this is easier to do manually than you think, especially if you clear the cache before ripping). Their flash player applet loads the video based on the referrer or something.

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  • P2PNet - MySpace gets ink —–
  • P2PNet - MySpace targets indie music
  • EarthTimes - Snocap, MySpace in music store agreement
  • NYTimes - MySpace to Sell Music From Nearly 3 Million Bands
  • MySpace is going to sell DRM-free indie music (major labels won’t go near it). I hope it can win over the stupid people (especialy the tecno-stupid). Thats if the RIAA doesn’t take out MySpace (because people put copyrighted RIAA-member music in their profiles) before their open music retailing gets popular. DeviantArt does this with artists. I don’t they any artists make enough money to live off. Some make a significant supplemental income though (double ‘fun’ money but still can’t pay the bills). Hopefully MySpace will fare better. Hopefully, the ‘distribution fee’ isn’t too high, as their is both MySpace and SnoCap that need to get paid.

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  • P2PNet - Warner Music does YouTube
  • Reuters - YouTube signs partnership with Warner Music
  • Ars Technica - Warner Music coming to YouTube
  • ZDNet - YouTube partners with Warner Music
  • The RIAA is allowing free-for-all direct and derivitive use of its music and even putting all of it’s music onto YouTube themselves?? Wow. Thats if Universal doesn’t take out YouTube first. And if YouTube doesn’t go bankrupt. Maybe the RIAA will have a corporate civil war. Warner could backslide. Warner is not the alpha corporation in the RIAA. And YouTube is easily ripped through the browser cache, requiring the same computer ability as ripping an non copy protected music CD (most are not copy protected unlike DVDs) with CDEX (lightweight freeware CD ripping program). In addition to warner getting a cut in ad revenue, they are probably going to rip-off the videos themselves (at least samples and clips) too.

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