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Europe just voted to wreck the internet, spying on everything and censoring vast swathes of our communications - 13 septembre 2018
Lobbyists for "creators" threw their lot in with the giant entertainment companies and the newspaper proprietors and managed to pass the new EU Copyright Directive by a hair’s-breadth this morning, in an act of colossal malpractice to harm to working artists will only be exceeded by the harm to everyone who uses (...)
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Not in our name : Why European creators must oppose the EU’s proposal to limit linking and censor the internet - 10 septembre 2018
The European Copyright Directive vote is in three days and it will be a doozy : what was once a largely uncontroversial grab bag of fixes to copyright is now a political firestorm, thanks to the actions of Axel Voss, the German MEP who changed the Directive at the last minute, sneaking in two widely rejected (...)
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The future is here today : you can’t play Bach on Facebook because Sony says they own his compositions - 10 septembre 2018
James Rhodes, a pianist, performed a Bach composition for his Facebook account, but it didn’t go up — Facebook’s copyright filtering system pulled it down and accused him of copyright infringement because Sony Music Global had claimed that they owned 47 seconds’ worth of his personal performance of a song whose (...)
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Company town + Internet of Things + Drones = total surveillance of remote mine workers - 15 décembre 2016
Rio Tinto is a giant UK/Australian mining corporation that operates many facilities in Australia’s remotest reaches, where there is no housing for workers, so the company ends up building "company towns" where their laborers live, closing the loop between home and worklife, and putting them both under control of a (...)
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Google reaches into customers’ homes and bricks their gadgets - 16 mai 2016
Revolv is a home automation hub that Google acquired 17 months ago ; yesterday, Google announced that as of May 15, it will killswitch all the Revolvs in the field and render them inert. Section 1201 of the DMCA — the law that prohibits breaking DRM — means that anyone who tries to make a third-party OS for Revolv (...)
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23andme & Ancestry.com aggregated the world’s DNA ; the police obliged them by asking for it - 21 octobre 2015
When 23andme and Ancestry.com began their projects of collecting and retaining the world’s DNA, many commentators warned that this would be an irresistible target for authoritarians and criminals, and that it was only a matter of time until cops started showing up at their doors, asking for their customers’ most (...)
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Kindle user claims Amazon deleted whole library without explanation - 22 octobre 2012
According to Martin Bekkelund, a Norwegian Amazon customer identified only as Linn had her Kindle access revoked without warning or explanation. Her account was closed, and her Kindle was remotely wiped. Bekkelund has posted a string of emails that he says were sent to Linn by the company. They are a sort of (...)
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WIPO’s Broadcasting Treaty is back : a treaty to end the public domain, fair use and Creative Commons - 14 août 2012
The UN’s World Intellectual Property Organization’s Broadcasting Treaty is back. This is the treaty that EFF and its colleagues killed five years ago, but Big Content won’t let it die. Under the treaty, broadcasters would have rights over the material they transmitted, separate from copyright, meaning that if you (...)
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ACTA crash-landing in the EU - 1er juin 2012
Earlier today, three European Parliament committees studying the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement - the Legal Affairs Committee (JURI), the Committee for Industry, Research and Energy (ITRE) and the Committee for Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE) - all voted against implementing ACTA. The (...)
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Eric Schmidt : If you can’t use your real name, don’t use Google+. - 30 août 2011
At the Edinburgh International TV Festival, NPR’s Andy Carvin asks Google Exec. Chairman Eric Schmidt about privacy, nymwars, and Google+.
Andy (@acarvin) has done some innovative and valuable journalism on the Twitter platform this past year, retweeting, curating, and factchecking tweets from activists, (...)
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Federal judge says you can break DRM if you’re not doing so to infringe copyright - 26 juillet 2010
Here’s some remarkable news : a judge in a New Orleans-based 5th Circuit Appeals Court has ruled that the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s ban on breaking DRM only applies if you break DRM in order to violate copyright law. This is a complete reversal of earlier rulings across the country (and completely opposite (...)
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US Army : alleged Wikileaks source Manning faces 52 years - 7 juillet 2010
Earlier today, Boing Boing reported news that the U.S. has filed formal charges against Pfc. Bradley Manning, the 22-year-old Army Intelligence Specialist who is believed to have leaked damning classified data to Wikileaks. The "charge sheet" published on Boing Boing specified 8 federal criminal violations, (...)
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Yet another Facebook privacy risk : emails Facebook sends leak user IP address - 7 mai 2010
We’ve been covering the mounting privacy violation woes for Facebook users here on Boing Boing in recent weeks"”here’s another issue to be aware of. Facebook base64-encodes your IP address in every emailed event that you interact with.
Matt C. at Binary Intelligence Blog explains that Facebook’s automated email (...)
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School used student laptop webcams to spy on them at school and home - 20 février 2010
According to the filings in Blake J Robbins v Lower Merion School District (PA) et al, the laptops issued to high-school students in the well-heeled Philly suburb have webcams that can be covertly activated by the schools’ administrators, who have used this facility to spy on students and even their families. The (...)
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Are terms-of-service enforceable ? - 13 décembre 2009
The Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Ed Bayley has written an excellent introductory white-paper on whether click-wrap, browse-wrap, and other online terms of service are enforceable :
In other words, it’s not merely clicking the "I Agree" button that creates the legal contract. The issue turns on reasonable notice (...)
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Facebook and the Social Dynamics of Privacy - 15 novembre 2009
James Grimmelmann of New York Law School has written a terrific essay on privacy issues and social networks services entitled Facebook and the Social Dynamics of Privacy.
Grimmelmann is trying to do nothing less than re-shape our attitude towards privacy on social networks, building an erudite and extensively (...)
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Comment Facebook a mis fin à mon mariage - 15 novembre 2009
"Une tentative malencontreuse d’augmenter notre vie privée s’est retournée affreusement contre nous il ya quelques jours, quelques semaines seulement avant notre mariage.
Ma fiancée et moi avons décoché la case des relations personnelles dans Facebook pour rendre notre vie personnelle un peu plus privé.
Sans se douter (...)
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WhatTheInternetKnowsAboutYou : your browser is giving away your history - 3 septembre 2009
We just launched a new Web-privacy-related webapp, and want to show it off to you.
The app is an example of using browser history detection to determine personal preferences of Web browser users and is located at http://whattheinternetknowsaboutyou.com. The history detection hack has been known for quite a while (...)
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Ask Google to guarantee privacy for the future of reading - 25 juillet 2009
As Google expands its Google Book Search service, adding millions of titles, it will dramatically increase the public’s access to books. More and more people will soon be browsing, reading and purchasing books online. But Google may be leaving out the privacy we have come to expect, with systems that monitor the (...)
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Thomas Crampton : How Facebook ended my marriage - 28 juin 2009
Facebook has implemented fixes that should prevent this from happening again, but — tech journalist Thomas Crampton experienced an unfortunate side effect of that Facebook personal profile bug I blogged about here yesterday. Thomas says :
A misguided attempt to increase our privacy backfired horribly a few days (...)
