You Can Make A Difference: MEPs Will Debate Copyright Law on 10/10/17. Write To Them.

On 10th October 2017, the JURI (Legal Affairs) committee in the European Parliament will vote on future copyright law. You have the ability to influence their vote on the five issues they will be debating this Tuesday.

Dotcom, Copyright, And What Went Wrong

I've been following the Kim Dotcom saga ever since MegaUpload was taken down by the FBI on the orders of the MPAA with little in the way of due process and sod all evidence. The case is winding down because they've got nothing. This is what happened.

2017 - Fear, Uncertainty, And Doubt

The way we see each other

I wish you all a happy new year. May it be a prosperous one for all of us. Such sentiments are expected but already 2017 is turning into a nightmare, hence the photo. This is the view that many of us have of each other due to divisive see-saw politics and slanted news reports. Expect it to get worse. If 2016 is any kind of indicator, people are going to work harder for less and hate each other more. I'm hoping for a light at the end of the tunnel but I can't see it yet. Let's take a look back at 2016 to get an idea of where we're going this year.

Dotcom Case: The Evidence Is Deteriorating In Storage, Server Discs Need Repairing

Four years after MegaUpload was shuttered following a violent raid on the New Zealand mansion of German national Kim Dotcom, his woes continue. According to reports in Torrent Freak, accusations of infringement are still being referred to Google (as reported on Lumen) even though they are provably false and the evidence that might exonerate him is deteriorating in the ageing servers. You'd think that the answer would be to copy the information but

 a) there's a lot of it
 b) the costs are prohibitive since Dotcom has limited access to funds due to court actions so can't pay for the copying himself
 c) there are privacy implications (not to mention the risk of tampering with the evidence) if the MPAA and RIAA were permitted to attend to this themselves
 d) it has yet to be decided who will pay for this

so District Court Judge Liam O’Grady has agreed with the defendants' suggestion that hosting company Cogent repair the drives. Meanwhile, Kim Dotcom is awaiting the outcome of his appeal, which is due to be heard later on this summer.

If the data is allowed to be lost because no one can be bothered to pay to preserve it, will the extradition proceedings, which were always on shaky ground, proceed, or will the US government just quietly drop the case?

Google V Oracle: Everyone Wins — For Now

Oracle's lawyer Annette Hurst is getting absolutely battered on Linked In for her butthurt blog post about Oracle's loss in its case against Google. Basically, her arguments not only demonstrate a lack of understanding of how software actually works in operation, they depend on ignorance. Since maximalists tend to use such arguments, it's worth taking a look at them and discuss what it means for open source and freeware.

Honey, I Started A War - When Collateral Damage Hits Home

If there is anything more creepy than a Tony Blair fanboi, I honestly don't want to know. Anyone who can blithely dismiss the deaths of hundreds of thousands with "Which law was broken by Tony Blair, again?" or "Just an honest mistake" leaves me checking my neck for puncture marks, I'm telling you. I seem to be finding a lot of examples of giants in the playground lately. Let's take a look at some of them.

Oracle V Google: When Does Something That's Free To Use Have to Be Paid For?

Parker Higgins and Sarah Jeong have been live-tweeting from the courtroom and Ars Technica's own Joe Mullin has a seat in the press gallery. Hats off to these fine people for providing a running commentary of the case. Judge William Alsup and the jury will decide whether or not APIs are copyrightable and if they are, was Google's use of Java in Android fair use?

Oracle V Google: "API Is Property"

Oracle and Google are back in court fighting over the API used in Google's Android operating system. The implications are huge; allowing copyright on API effectively puts a tollbooth on innovation and any item with Java code in it is vulnerable to charges of infringement. Can you imagine the consequences? I can. Let's take a closer look.

Fear My Boogeyman! The Politics Of Authoritarian Enforcement

I got annoyed when one of my "lefty-lefty" friends retweeted a meme about class war. As I've pointed out on many occasions, there is no "class" as such. Society stratifies according to the wealth, and power of its members and wealth enables mobility. So why do they keep harping on about it and what does this mean for the general election in 2020?

The Psychology Of Copyright

A lawyer who specialises in taking down kiddie fiddlers has taken an interest in copyright. However, since her main source of information is a maximalist lobby group, she's been writing twaddle about it. On Psychology Today.

#Copyright is Free Speech https://t.co/yrVtz0NiRh via Robin Sax

— Copyright Alliance (@copyright4u) May 4, 2016

Being a lawyer and loving movies doesn't qualify you to discuss copyright effectively, and I'm really uncomfortable with the fact that it's been published on a psychology blog since it implies that those of us who disagree with her are not just criminal apologists, we're nuts.

How Reputation Affects Legislation

I hate being told what to do by people who don't care about me. It's why I'm anti-authoritarian despite the fact that I'm socially conservative. I firmly believe in the importance of the rule of law but we'll only have that if the law is upheld and the Twofold Principle

The individual must be free to act and the will of the people must be respected.

is at the heart of law-making. When it's not, legislation can actually cause more problems than it solves. I've discovered some examples of this recently.

How Mass Surveillance Trickles Down

Mass surveillance is no longer the talk of the tinfoil hat brigade. It is all-encompassing and all-pervasive. Laws enacted in the wake of the 9/11 atrocity that were intended to prevent terrorism are now being used for a plethora of purposes. Let's take a closer look at the main ones.

EU Takes A Swipe At Google - But Why?

The EU Commission has a bit of a gripe with Google over its size and reach, and is currently in the throes of taking it to court on anti-trust grounds. But why? Other internet provision services exist, right?

Can You Trust Consumer Review Sites Like Pissed Consumer?

Given my recent experiences of consumer review sites you could forgive me, I'm sure, for giving them no more credibility than a public toilet wall. That said, Techdirt has a lot of good things to say about Pissed Consumer that has got me thinking again about their value to the internet and online life in general. Let's take a closer look.

How To Resurrect Your Reputation: Five Steps To Success

So you've made a huge fool of yourself and the evidence is on the first page of the search results on your name. You can't show your face anywhere without running into jeering, pointing, and laughing. Now what? I have a few ideas.

Do People Who Do Dodgy Things Have A Right To Get Them Forgotten?

We all do things at some point in time that, on reflection, we wish we hadn't. And there are times when someone's opinion of our conduct differs from our own perceptions thereof.  Let's be honest here, it's funny when people go all King Canute and order the tide to stop coming in* only to end up with wet feet, particularly when they do it on the internet. The attempts of one Dr. Janice Duffy of Adelaide, Australia, are a case in point.

Plagiarism: A Pirate Response

I'm not a big lover of copyright and think the laws we have are extreme and unfair. That said, it's not right when some random toerag, who does not deserve the honour of being linked here on my blog, wholesale copies my posts and reposts them on his own blog to populate it with content that he hasn't produced himself, that's not on.

Binary Politics: The Deadly Addiction And How To Counter It

Every day online I end up in a discussion with someone about politics in which I'm pretty much expected to join them or forever hold my peace, style of thing. Mise?¹ Not a chance! I'm having none of it because I insist on thinking for myself. Why choose either side of a bad coin? Get another coin, I say. Here's how.

Ten Neoliberal Lies And How To Counter Them

Neoliberalism is a poisonous political religion that threatens our personal freedom, our health, our jobs, and our lives by degrading the democratic process and handing over control to multinational corporations. It is behind the dangerous FTAs (free trade agreements) like CETA and TTIP that I'm helping to fight at the moment. Let's take a closer look at it.

The Newspeak Agenda: How To Push Back

The Charleston shooting is being co-opted by a range of special interest groups, each of which is out to score political points. What annoys me is that people I know are being sucked into the game. The only reason I know better is that I'm aware of the tricks they use to balkanise their audience and play them off each other in a bid to increase their influence. This is what they're up to.