2009 has just started and various international authorities are already launching new programs to deny digital freedom. And this is only the beginning.
India
The new The Information Technology (Amendment) Bill, 2006 [PDF], passed on Dec 23, 2008, introduces a variety of astounding legal restrictions to Indian internet users. The text of the amendment is unreadable legalese […]
John has just done a hell of a write-up of the Anomos protocol we came up with last summer, complete with pretty pictures of fancy graphs. This is just a teaser for before we drop the real-deal, of course, but at least we can let the protocol be publicly audited and publicized. FTA:
Anomos is a […]
There is an imminent threat to all internet users in westernized countries! If two pieces of proposed legislation go through, which they likely will unless we really, really fight against them, file-sharing copyright infringement will essentially change from being a civil offense to a criminal offense and will create a body to enforce those laws. […]
Stanford University, once home to Creative Commons founder Lawrence Lessig, has just changed it’s campus network policy to actively report all DMCA infringements to the copyright overlords.
According to my friend George, a Stanford freshman: dude. shit is fffffucked up at stanford
This article from the Stanford Daily covers today’s story.
This drastic change now requires the university […]
(This part is a cross-post from the BU Free Culture blog.)
Tim Westergren, founder of Pandora.com, which provides custom radio stations based on user preferences is coming to speak on 2/27 at Morse Auditorium! Here’s the info from the facebook invite:
Name:
Pandora.com Founder Tim Westergren Talks about Digital Music
Tagline:
Radio, Access, Industry, Internet and Music!
Host:
BU Free Culture
Type:
Music/Arts - […]
I sent an email to Sam Bayard of the Citizen Media Law Project telling him about Paul’s RIAA woes. I asked him if linking was a crime and his verdict was no. Of course, this is still just one man’s opinion, but he is a very well informed man.
I’m assuming he’s not going to mind […]
My friend and housemate Paul Sawaya is the author one of the better Facebook applications, Jukebox, which lets users add an MP3 player to their profiles with a nice user interface (and thankfully no autoplay). It’s a nice, quick way to recommend and play music for your friends, and it has ~30,000 users.
Yesterday, Paul received […]
HR4137, a bill requiring colleges to implement network filtering passed the house. Learn more about it here on OpenCongress. Ars Technica has done the best write-up covering the story, so you should read about it here:Controversial college funding bill passed—P2P proviso intact.
I was interviewed for our college paper about this before it passed. That article […]
Excellent news, science fans!
A new law, HR2764, has been passed and signed by the Presdient (link to the press release), requiring all research funded by the National Institute of Health to be openly accessible to the public via PubMed within a year. This seems to be largely in part due to a group (which I’d […]
The BUFC Blog is up and running, and our first meeting will be this Thursday. Check the blog and the flier for more info!
I’ve got a couple of articles I really want to write about international torrenting and about possible improvements to the Science Commons, but I’m really bogged down by school and Star Trek […]
