Kono kanji…

Now that judge Kimba Wood has ruled that the popular filesharing software Limewire infringes on copyright, the recording industry lawyers have asked US courts to order LimeWire owner Mark Gorton to pay $1,500,000,000,000 (that’s 1.5 Trillion) for 200,000,000 alleged downloads of the Limewire software as reported by the P2PNet news site (go there and read it, it’s quite informative).

A quick Google search of US GDP shows the US Gross Domestic Product (in current US dollars and not adjusted for inflation) in 2008 as 14.6 Trillion dollars. So Limewire has cost the recording industry 10% of the 2008 US GDP…??!?!? Has the industry even made that much in it’s entire existence?

Read more

According to a recent Wired article; Federal prosecutors in Los Angeles are seeking 6 months in prison for a man who pleaded guilty to one misdemeanor count of uploading pre-release Guns N’ Roses songs.

I know it is making available and not downloading, but I always thought that copyright violations were (and should be) a civil issue (I mean it’s not technically stealing since the victim has not lost the original copy, although I am not making the case that it is acceptable). I suppose I feel that the punishment should fit the crime (in this case punitive damages and not jail time). After all it is merely copying data (the article calls it a misdemeanor) and not equivalent to a violent crime. I really hope that article got it wrong and they don’t really mean prison.

Read more

ARS Technica reports the Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights Act of 2008 (s3325) got approval from the Senate Judiciary Committee by 14-4 vote. If passed into law this empowers the Justice Department of the USofA to litigate civil suits (and seize property) on behalf of IP owners (corporate interests).

ARS Technica reports “Critics have blasted this provision as a gift of free, taxpayer-funded legal services to content owners”.

Read more

Watch the videos and read the article, I am really too busy to summarize this one, but if you live in the USofA it is important. This has to do with vote swapping on modern voting systems.

Read more

Ohio sues Diebold over voting machines that ‘drop’ votes, finally! Election Systems & Software (formerly Diebold) manufactures voting machines and they have gotten a lot of bad press, but nobody I know really seems to care.

A paper ballot system can be audited by any rational adult. An electronic ballot system can not… you can’t see the source code and Diebold doesn’t want you auditing their software (because it’s a trade secret). Even if you have access to the computer’s source code, are you sure that it is the same as the binary running on their machines? Are you a computer programmer who understands both security and election rules? I’m not… I can count though. I could count ballots and be accurate.. I’d even let you look over my shoulder and watch to make sure that I’m being honest.

Read the article for yourself, I’m not going to write a good summary… you do the work this time! These are your freedoms here… Don’t expect anyone else to do the work for you!

Read more

Trusting your data to Hushmail, an email service that provides encryption may not be as secure as you may think. Recently Cryptome noticed that Hushmail’s encryption program is not actually the same as the source code that they make available. Hopefully this is an error and not an attempt to intentionally mislead their users.

When coupled with the fact that Hushmail handed over 12 CDs worth of data to law enforcement, I would suggest using your own email encryption like Thunderbird/Enigmail/GnuPG (GPG) for sensitive data. If another party has your secret keys, they are less likely to fight for your right to keep the keys and data secret as you are. Nobody should ever have accecss to your secret encryption keys but you (hence calling them ‘secret keys’ and not ‘public keys’). While you are at it, download the Lightning extension to add calendar support to the Thunderbird email client, and the WebMail extension to check your web based email account (e.g.: Hotmail, GMail, Lycos, etc…).

Ok, I was going to vote for Barack Obama, he seemed like the ‘big-time’ candidate that had more of my interests at heart. Then he voted for the recent FISA Amendments Act of 2008 that grants telecoms immunity for helping the government break the law. This floored me… A law that protects lawbreakers. This just didn’t make sense… FISA already had rules in place for spying on Americans (FISA established a secret court a long time ago…), the government has been ignoring them for some time now. Now he wants to grant immunity from prosecution for companies (telecoms) that broke the law. He made some statements after voting trying to explain why he voted the way he did, but they are meaningless; the vote counts, not the words.

Read more

I have tried to remain optimistic about the Olympic games being held in Beijing, China. Despite their repeated human rights violations, the policy towards Tibet, the horrible oversght on manufacturing quality in their exportable goods (melamine [poison] in the dog food, contaminated heparin, etc…). I had hoped that the International Olympic Committee (IOC) knew what they were doing when they decided to have the games there.

The promises of unrestricted web access to reporters and to clean up the air quality may not have been as sincere as we had hoped. It appears the IOC has made a deal with china that allows internet censorship after all, and the air quality reports are mixed at best.

Read more