Posts tagged law

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Posted 3 months ago

zapp645:

The House I Live In Official Trailer. A must-see trailer from the director of Why We Fight.

In “Why We Fight,” Jarecki included a clip of a former raking CIA employee saying something along the lines of, when war becomes profitable, you’re going to see more of it.

That’s the kind of insight this movie is also bringing to the table, this time about the “war on drugs. The “drug war” is obviously not working, but there’s one angle from which it could be seen as a triumph by those in power: it’s putting a bunch of people that are perceived as social problems in jail and removing them from “Society,” instead, of course, of fixing the problems themselves.

Anyway, this looks fantastic.

via zapp645
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Posted 5 months ago
The House on Wednesday unanimously passed a Senate resolution calling on the United States to oppose the United Nations gaining control of the internet.

Congress Demands United Nations Keep Hands Off the Internet | Threat Level | Wired.com.

I can finally say that our tax dollars are being put to good work in the House!

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Posted 6 months ago

Copyright and Planned Obsolescence: The Shady World of Repair Manuals

infoneer-pulse:

Tim Hicks is a 25-year-old Australian with an interesting hobby: He trawls the nooks and crannies of the internet looking for manufacturer service manuals and posts the PDFs online for free. Hicks was frustrated that there wasn’t a single website out there with every laptop service manual. He started the site – aptly named “Tim’s Laptop Service Manuals“ – because he fixes laptops himself.

Tim’s site now streams over 50 gigabytes of manuals every day. Or rather … it used to. In a recent strongly worded cease-and-desist letter, Toshiba’s lawyers forced Tim to remove manuals for over 300 Toshiba laptops.

Tim’s many fans have expressed surprise at Toshiba’s onslaught – check out some of the Reddit commentary — and I’m outraged, too. Not just because of this specific case, but because of what it means for the lifetime of our devices, the future of repair and e-waste, and the abuse of copyright law as a weapon for planned obsolescence.

Keeping manuals off the internet ensures the only path for beleaguered customers is sending broken devices back to high-priced, only-manufacturer-authorized service centers. By making it so expensive and inconvenient to repair broken electronics, this policy amounts to planned obsolescence: many people simply throw the devices away.

Toshiba has discovered a new way to enforce such planned obsolescence by cutting the repair market off from critical service information. But the cost to society is significant: The e-waste problem is growing; we’re losing thousands of domestic jobs as independent repair shops shut down; and consumers are being forced to replace their hardware much frequently than they should have to.

» via Wired

via infoneer-pulse
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Posted 1 year ago
Anyone can talk about teaching Creationism as a scientific theory or advocate for it. The catch would be that, before they go into the debate, the city hall meeting, or the tv show, they would head to a computer, press a button, and one of the many creation stories would pop up on screen for them to use. So on any given day, or television set, you would see people advocate for teaching kids that the world was created by Odin and the human race emerged from between his toes, or that the Titans are trapped in Tartarus and the human race was created when Gaea the Earth banged Uranus the Sky, and so on. Not only would it add a great deal of variety and novelty to the debate, it would neatly separate out those who think Creationism has scientific merit and those who just want to teach their own religion.

10 Science Policies We Wish the Government Would Enforce.

Great little thought experiments from io9. I particularly like this one.

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Posted 1 year ago
Proposition 8 serves no purpose, and has no effect, other than to lessen the status and human dignity of gays and lesbians in California, and to officially reclassify their relationships and families as inferior to those of opposite-sex couples. The Constitution simply does not allow for laws of this sort.

Calif. same-sex marriage ban ruled unconstitutional - The Washington Post.

Couldn’t have said it better myself. The ruling is super specific, so it’ll be interesting to see what effect it will have long-term and outside of California. But it’s good to have an appellate court putting this kind of thing in the official reporter of decisions.

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Posted 1 year ago
How the Internet blackout affected congressional support for PIPA/SOPA - Boing Boing. This is all very interesting. Even if SOPA/PIPA might still be popular, supporting SOPA/PIPA in congress is unpopular. And that’s more important. Zoom

How the Internet blackout affected congressional support for PIPA/SOPA - Boing Boing.

This is all very interesting. Even if SOPA/PIPA might still be popular, supporting SOPA/PIPA in congress is unpopular. And that’s more important.

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Posted 1 year ago
Stars Blink Out: the Struggle for Relevance: Golan v. Holder and SOPA: A Lesson In Civics A BLOG POST! I haven’t done one of these in what feels like forever. This one’s about how the SOPA protests and the decision today in Golan v. Holder both stand for the same proposition: we need to start holding our congresspeople responsible for the copyright law policies they enact on our behalf. Hope it’s at least somewhat interesting!

Stars Blink Out: the Struggle for Relevance: Golan v. Holder and SOPA: A Lesson In Civics

A BLOG POST! I haven’t done one of these in what feels like forever. This one’s about how the SOPA protests and the decision today in Golan v. Holder both stand for the same proposition: we need to start holding our congresspeople responsible for the copyright law policies they enact on our behalf. Hope it’s at least somewhat interesting!

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Posted 1 year ago
The truth is that Congress is the one who could fix this by actually fixing copyright law and making it clear that the Court’s interpretation was wrong. But, instead, because Hollywood pays the bills, they only make copyright law worse.

Supreme Court Chooses SOPA/PIPA Protest Day To Give A Giant Middle Finger To The Public Domain | Techdirt.

It’s a great quote. And it encapsulates the major problem with expecting the court to fix copyright. It’s just plain NOT THEIR JOB. We need to use our SOPA-protest-like mechanisms and mentalities to fix things like this, not our faith in 9 people in robes. I have more to say, coming soon!

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Posted 1 year ago
McSweeney’s: PROTEST SOPA.

McSweeney’s: PROTEST SOPA.

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Posted 1 year ago
Internet SOPA/PIPA Revolt: Don’t Declare Victory Yet | Threat Level | Wired.com. This is a partial victory. It’d be wrong to say that the people speaking out made politicians think SOPA is bad policy. But it probably IS accurate to say that these protests made politicians realize that pushing this through would be bad for their careers. And that’s a much more serious victory. Plus, awareness is up! So that’s awesome! Zoom

Internet SOPA/PIPA Revolt: Don’t Declare Victory Yet | Threat Level | Wired.com. This is a partial victory. It’d be wrong to say that the people speaking out made politicians think SOPA is bad policy. But it probably IS accurate to say that these protests made politicians realize that pushing this through would be bad for their careers. And that’s a much more serious victory. Plus, awareness is up! So that’s awesome!