Wikileaks: Anonymous stops dropping DDoS bombs, starts dropping science. If this image is to be believed—and I have no reason not to, other than that I found it on the internet—the rebel squadrons behind Anonymous (attn. "news" hacks - that would be an entirely different group from Wikileaks and/or Wikipedia) are about to change their approach.
So far, as we've witnessed, they have been launching point-and-click distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks at companies perceived as the enemies of Wikileaks. Those targets included Mastercard, Paypal, and Visa (companies that froze donation funding), and Amazon (which denied hosting services). The new approach suggests more sophisticated thinking. This new mission, apparently, is to actually read the cables Wikileaks has published and find the most interesting bits that haven't been publicized yet, then publicize them. In my opinion, this action would have far more positive impact. EFF on US domain copyright seizures. The Electronic Frontier Foundation's Corynne McSherry's got great commentary on the Department of Homeland Security's seizure of 82 domain names -- this act of quasi-legal confiscation and censorship is not only ineffective at combatting infringement, it also sucks up scarce DHS resources: First, these seizures may be just a short preview of the kind of overreaching enforcement we'll see if the Congress passes the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA).
That bill, which was approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee on Nov 18, gives the government dramatic new copyright enforcement powers, in particular the ability to make entire websites disappear from the Internet if infringement, or even links to infringement, are deemed to be "central" to the purpose of the site. U.S. Government Seizes 82 Websites: A Glimpse at the Draconian Future of Copyright Enforcement?
Steampunk's founding fathers talk shop. A reader writes, "Tim Powers, James Blaylock, and K.W. Jeter, all Cal State Fullerton alumni, give their university's paper an interview about their creation of steampunk, their friendship with Philip K. Dick, writing bad poetry for the paper when they attended the school, and Powers' book 'On Stranger Tides' being optioned for the next 'Pirates of the Caribbean' movie. " "There's at least several steampunk conventions now, and they don't really have many books in the dealers room," Powers said. "They have tons of costumes and goggles and ray guns.
It's more of a costume phenomenon, which has always been a big part of science fiction fandom. Next 'Pirates' movie based on book by CSUF alumnus (Image: Janelle Conner/Daily Titan) The Master Switch: Tim "Net Neutrality" Wu explains what's at stake in the battle for net freedom. Tim Wu's The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires is as fascinating, wide-ranging, and, ultimately, inspiring book about communications policy and the information industries as you could hope to find.
This is, of course, no surprise: Wu is one of America's great information policy scholars and communicators, probably best known for coining the term "Net Neutrality" (like many great Americans, Tim is, in fact, Canadian -- we attended the same elementary school in Toronto, where we enthusiastically traded Apple ][+ software and killed each others' D&D characters). Wu's great strength is in the breadth of his scholarship and in his ability to use humor, clear language, and innovative arguments to connect diverse ideas. The uniqueness of communications as an industry means that regulation and markets fail more often around them, and that the failures are worse.
The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires. PIRACY: Jesus Did It. Major Canadian copyright text is now a free download. UK government ready to abolish consumer protection agencies as "waste" Jim Killock from the UK Open Rights Group says, "Late last week, staff at Consumer Focus in the UK heard that they are facing the sack, as the government has decided to abolish them to save 'waste'. Only this is the public body charged with protecting consumers against things like energy pricing rip-offs and the Digital Economy Act. Last year, Consumer Focus briefed Lords and MPs alongside human rights campaigners Liberty and the Open Rights Group, telling government that cutting people off the Internet without a fair trial would be - yes - bad for consumers.
The reward for their sage advice is to face the axe. Consumers don't need protection, apparently, and government does not think it needs advice about consumers. No, private organisations can write policy briefings and conduct consumer research, if they think something is so important. Lobby your MP (Thanks, Jim!) Intel + DRM: a crippled processor that you have to pay extra to unlock. Intel's latest business-model takes a page out of Hollywood's playbook: they're selling processors that have had some of their capabilities crippled (some of the cache and the hyperthreading support are switched off). For $50, they'll sell you a code that will unlock these capabilities. Conceptually, this is similar to the DRM notion that I can sell you a movie that you can watch on one screen for $5 today, and if you want to unlock your receiver's wireless output so you can watch it upstairs, it'll be another $5.
I remember the first time someone from the studios put this position to me. It was a rep from the MPAA at a DRM standards meeting, and that was just the example he used. This idea, which Siva Vaidhyanathan calls "If value, then right," sounds reasonable on its face. Moreover, it's an idea that is fundamentally anti-private-property. If there's one industry where "If value, then right," is a dead letter, it's computing.
(Image: Engadget/Brian) 'A Film Unfinished': Nazi propaganda meta-documentary. On the Submitterator, tcd004 points us to Israeli director Yael Hersonski's "A Film Unfinished. " It's about found footage from a Nazi documentary rough cut, produced by the Goebbels Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda. Goebbels had a two-fold urgency to his work: short-term use as war propaganda, but also long-term use as historical propaganda of a race of people he thought would soon be extinct. He sent crews out to film extensively before the Warsaw ghetto and others were liquidated. The vast majority of this footage was lost, and the footage in question was found in an East German archive in 1954. Hersonski discovered through first-hand reports that alleged documentary scenes were heavily staged: hand-picking people for crowd scenes, and "casting" subjects who represented archetypes.
Goebbels was that most unfortunate of souls, the hack visionary. . , one of my top ten all-time documentaries about film. A Film Unfinished website [afilmunfinished.com] Net Neutrality Showbiz Showdown: Hollywood unites against Google/Verizon proposal. [PHOTO: "One Wilshire," a CC-licensed image by Xeni Jardin] If you have been following the recent Google/Verizon moves regarding net neutrality, there's even more wonktastic action this week as an interesting Hollywood showdown is developing.
This past Thursday, four major creative guilds and the MPAA submitted a joint reply comment to the Federal Communications Commission. This show of solidarity is rare as everyone in Hollywood tries to figure out how to deal with massive revenue losses in the face of copyright infringement. The WGAw then issued their own competing statement taking the opposite position. In the words of Double Rainbow Guy, what does this meeeeeaaann? The fun started in 2007 when it was learned that Comcast had been quietly blocking/throttling BitTorrent traffic on their network.
In a nutshell, MPAA, AFTRA, SAG, DGA and IATSE essentially advocate the telco position that reclassifying broadband as a communications service is a bad idea. EFF's take on Verizon and Google's Net Neutrality Proposal.