Earth: Mostly Harmless

Self-serve

Sometimes, the corporate interests of tech companies and those of copyfighters intersect. For some, it’s a relatively transparent case of self-interest: Google and Microsoft are sued continually - and harangued by Old Content industries - for their various activities which rely on Section 107 or 108 of the U.S. Copyright Act. Others have a foot in both camps. Apple pays lip-service (in public, at least) to sympathy for the content industries’ perceived ‘piracy’ crises.

All of which makes the composition of companies involved in the Computer & Communications Industry Association’s “Defend Fair Use” campaign especially telling.

Continue reading Self-serve…

Alberto Gonzales: Treating the American Constitution like toilet paper since 3rd February 2005

Gonzales’ latest remarks are indicative of the contempt shown by the current American administration for one of the greatest political documents and institutions of the past five hundred years.

I Am Not A Lawyer, nor an American, ergo he may be factually and legally correct. But arguing for this position is beyond the pale.

I rest my case.

Whither privacy?

A number of things have popped up on the radar (read: RSS reader) from sources such as 27B Stroke 6, BoingBoing and EFF: Deep Links that have sounded to me like extremely Bad Things from a privacy/individual rights point of view. These sorts of things come out of such sources all the time, but it seems to me that in the last few months some particularly concerning ones have arisen which are either (a) so concerning in the first place that they warrant a Tin Foil Hat and or (b) have conspicuously failed to go away.

Some notable examples from the past few days’ media coverage:

Swedes favour more bugging
Supreme court refuses to hear challenge to air passenger identification requirements
The continuing air passenger data-sharing disagreement between the EU & USA
US Visitor Fingerprints To Be (Perhaps) Stored by FBI
Bush says feds can open mail without warrant

I personally find some of these developments to be more than a little disturbing: however I am conscious that, particularly outside the United States (where many of the most egregious challenges to civil liberties occur nowadays), people don’t seem to care about privacy any more. Or else, they see these developments as inevitable and (to some extent) a necessary compromise.

Continue reading Whither privacy?…

Lawsuits? We don’t need no stinkin’ lawsuits!

You gotta love the Pirate Bay guys for pure guts and obnoxiousness.

Pirate Bay trying to buy Sealand, offering citizenship:

Cory Doctorow:

The Pirate Bay is raising money to buy the tiny, bankrupt “island” of Sealand. Sealand is the abandoned drilling platform gun battery near the UK that was occupied, declared soveriegn, and turned into a offshore data-center for sensitive information. Sealand’s owners have put the “country” on the block, and the Pirate Bay, Sweden’s gutsy, notorious BitTorrent tracker, is soliciting donations to buy it. They’re even promising citizenship to donors. If they don’t get enough to buy Sealand, they’re promising to buy another island somewhere.

Link

(Via BoingBoing).

The price of education?

Laura brought this to my attention: worrying stuff in the current difficult civil rights climate. The video included below appears to show Mostafa Tabatabainejad, a UCLA student, being violently restrained and shocked with a taser gun after refusing to show staff his I.D. card in the UCLA library. Tabatabainejad is arrested, and refuses to stand up. He is tasered again. The cycle is repeated several times until a final confrontation in the library lobby results in cops (now in greater numbers) dragging Tabatabainejad away.

Several students admirably take up Tabatabainejad’s cause, repudiating the officers’ advances, and (as the video proves) recording the events so that ample evidence now exists for a high-profile lawsuit.

Laura writes:

The questions I would ponder are:

1) Would the reaction on the part of the security staff had been as fierce if the student was white and/or female?

2) Were the actions of the student and the police influenced by the large number of students gathering to see what was going on?

I’d be interested to know what you think.

It’s a shocking video, and a brutal indictment of the police involved and the climate of hysteria which exists in some circles in the U.S. regarding Arab-Americans.

More: Detailed coverage from Andy Sternberg; BoingBoing’s first and second post on this; Pictures of Friday’s student protests at UCLA over this incident; UCLA chancellor’s response

I have included Laura’s post below, along with the video of the arrest. Don’t watch if you’re squeamish.

I originally saw this video posted on kensei’s journal. It shows a student being tasered by security staff at a university library. Apparently it is policy for people to be IDed in the library after 11pm for the safety of the students.

Personally I’m wondering if this incident would have happened if the student was white. Or female for that matter.