Tag Archives: Intellectual Poverty

Online Renegade, Wanted in U.S., Shakes Up New Zealand Election

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“Mr. Dotcom, 40, is fighting extradition to the United States, where he is wanted on racketeering charges stemming from his file-sharing site Megaupload, now defunct.  While out on bail as he appeals the case, he has introduced a new company,Mega; confronted the prime minister in Parliament; released an album; and founded the Internet Party.  The party advocates decriminalizing marijuana, setting a national goal of 100 percent sustainable energy generation by 2025, repealing surveillance legislation, and amending copyright laws to protect Internet companies from ‘civil liability arising from the action of their users,’ a fix that could shield hosting services like Mega.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/19/world/asia/kim-dotcom-online-renegade-shakes-up-new-zealand-election.html

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Legal Marijuana: China Competing With U.S. Cannabis Companies?

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“The battle over marijuana may become East vs. West since Dr. Luc Duchesne, an Ottawa-based businessman and biochemist, claims Chinese medical marijuana may be the biggest competitor in the U.S.:  ‘Because cannabis in Western medicine is becoming accepted, the predominance of Chinese patents suggests that pharmaceutical sciences are evolving quickly in China, outpacing Western capabilities. CTM [Chinese traditional medicine] is poised to take advantage of a growing trend. The writing is on the wall: Westernised Chinese traditional medicine is coming to a dispensary near you.’ According to WIPO, Chinese firms have filed 309 of the 606 patents relating to medical marijuana.”

http://www.inquisitr.com/1404612/marijuana-legalization-may-have-chinas-big-pot-competing-with-american-cannabis-companies/

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Supreme Court puts TV-over-Internet startup Aereo out of business

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“Aereo, a TV-over-the-Internet startup whose legal battles have been closely watched, has been ruled illegal by the Supreme Court today. If the company survives at all, its business model will have to change drastically, and it will have to pay fees to the television companies it has been fighting in court for more than two years.  In a 6-3 opinion (PDF), Aereo was found to violate copyright law. According to the opinion, the company is the equivalent of a cable company, which must pay licensing fees when broadcasting over-the-air content.  The court’s majority accepts the copyright arguments of the TV broadcasters who initiated the lawsuits against Aereo.”

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/06/supreme-court-puts-aereo-out-of-business/

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Spanish Firm Uses Copyright to Silence Ecuador’s Critics

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“A shady law firm in Spain called Ares Rights has found a way to take advantage of US law in order to remove content that originated in Ecuador, sending Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown notices on behalf of several Ecuadorian state officials, targeting documentaries, tweets, and search results that include images of those officials, alleging copyright infringement. Most of the companies receiving these requests, including Google, Twitter, and Vimeo, have unfortunately responded by automatically removing the content.  Some have re-instated removed works after a successful counter-notice was filed by the uploaders.”

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/05/state-censorship-copyright-spanish-firm-abuses-DMCA

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Man who beat NSA in T-shirt parody case wins against Clinton group

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“The Ready for Hillary organization, a group that’s laying the groundwork for a potential presidential campaign by Hillary Clinton, has backed down from its demand that a parody T-shirt and related items be removed from an online store.  The T-shirt reads: ‘I’m Ready for Oligarchy,’ a parody of the group’s slogan: ‘I’m Ready for Hillary.’  The maker of the shirt, a Minnesota-based activist named Dan McCall, had previously won a bid to make and sell T-shirts parodying the National Security Agency. Paul Alan Levy, McCall’s attorney, said that he was informed of Ready for Hillary’s intention to drop the demand late Thursday.”

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/06/man-who-beat-nsa-in-t-shirt-parody-case-wins-against-ready-for-hillary/

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Peoria mayor’s quest to unmask a foul-mouthed Twitter user

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“Could your town’s mayor spark a police investigation into your activities that ends with town cops rifling through your mobile phone, your laptop, and the full contents of your Gmail account—all over an alleged misdemeanor based on something you wrote on social media? Not in America, you say? But you’d be wrong. Here, based on e-mail records provided by the city of Peoria to Ars Technica, is what that sort of investigation looks like.  The entire farcical situation concluded without charges; Peoria County State’s Attorney Jerry Brady declined to prosecute anyone over the Twitter account.”

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/05/how-a-mayors-quest-to-unmask-a-foul-mouthed-twitter-user-blew-up-in-his-face/

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Chilling Effect: Oracle Wins Appeal Against Google to Copyright Java APIs

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“The federal appeals court that handles U.S. intellectual property cases ruled that APIs can be copyrighted, a finding that may have significant consequences for cloud computing, software interoperability and innovation in general.  The decision came as part of a ruling in Oracle’s favor in its appeal against Google over the use of Java APIs in Android. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit today overturned an earlier ruling in the Oracle-Google fight over whether or not software application programming interfaces, or APIs, are subject to copyright.  Judge William Alsup ruled in Google’s favor in 2012, stating that APIs were purely functional.”

http://readwrite.com/2014/05/09/google-oracle-java-copyright-appeals-court

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Court Orders YouTube To Delete Every Copy Of ‘Innocence Of Muslims’

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techdirt1

“While the video had been out for months prior to the controversy, once it started generating so much attention, Garcia tried pretty much every trick in the book to make the movie disappear. She sued both the producer and YouTube in California state court. That failed. Then she moved on to federal court, where she claimed that the movie violated her copyright, an argument that is and has always been laughable. We assumed, naturally, it would fail quickly — and it did. However, she and her lawyers kept arguing, and in a somewhat shocking — and incredibly troubling — move, the 9th Circuit appeals court has ruled in her favor, in a ruling written by Judge Alex Kozinski.”

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140226/12103626359/horrific-appeals-court-ruling-says-actress-has-copyright-interest-innocence-muslims-orders-youtube-to-delete-every-copy.shtml

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Mozilla caves to pressure, will enable HTML5 DRM in Firefox

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“The organization is partnering with Adobe to make the change. Mozilla will provide the hooks and APIs in Firefox to enable Web content to manipulate DRM-protected content, and Adobe will provide a closed source Content Decryption Module (CDM) to handle the decryption needs.  In a more technical post, Mozilla CTO Andreas Gal outlines some of the ways that the Firefox developers have tried to isolate the Adobe CDM to ensure that this closed source black box cannot breach user privacy or undermine system security. HTML5’s DRM system also includes a unique identifier that content providers can use to identify devices. Mozilla has taken pains to make this as minimally invasive as possible.”

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/05/driven-by-necessity-mozilla-to-enable-html5-drm-in-firefox/

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Would you download a car? Man 3D prints life-size Aston Martin DB4

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“Using just a $500 3D-printer and a free wire-frame model downloaded from the internet, Ivan Sentch is printing out his own car. It’s a response years in the making to the notorious anti-piracy advert that shouted at would-be pirates that they ‘wouldn’t steal a car‘. The standard response – ‘well I would if I could download it’ – is now a step closer to reality.  And this isn’t just any car – Sentch hasn’t stinted and is now about three quarters of the way through printing a 1961 Aston Martin DB4.  Sentch, a programmer from Auckland, New Zealand, began his project by downloading a fan-made 3D model of the car.”

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/would-you-download-a-car-man-3d-prints-lifesize-aston-martin-db4-8744159.html

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