For the first week of May, 2012: There will be a Bradley Manning demonstration on the 24th in Pasadena, The UK Government scolds The Pirate Bay, today is “A Day without DRM”, and Mozilla breaks the ice, and criticizes CISPA.
Audio Files
Download OGG
Download MP3
Copyright
©2012 Poobah Records, available under the terms of an Attribution license.
Source
May 4th 2012 / The Tom Coston Show with Red Rosie
Partial Transcript
For the first week of May, 2012: There will be a Bradley Manning demonstration on the 24th in Pasadena, The UK Government scolds The Pirate Bay, today is “A Day without DRM”, and Mozilla breaks the ice, and criticizes CISPA.
- Demonstration for Bradley Manning in Pasadena this month on Thursday the 24th at the Military Recruiting Center (1513 E. Colorado Blvd, Pasadena) At 3 to 6 p.m. write letters, sign a petition, and sign making. 6 to 6:30 p.m. is a march to Pasadena Memorial Park. 6:30 to 8:00 p.m. food, general assembly, and candle light vigil.
- UK Internet providers have been ordered by the high court to block access to the most resilient file sharing website The Pirate Bay this Monday because it breaches copyright laws, some have raised concerns about the lack of there being a trial. The UK government is acting irresponsibly. In 2010, a Swedish independent filmmaker exclusively used The Pirate Bay and bittorrent for their video distribution of their film title, “Nasty Old People”. Many other free culture films have used bittorrent and the site legally, such as: “Route 66 – An American Nightmare”, “Code Rush”, “Sintel”, “Oceania”, “Elephants Dream”, “Big Buck Bunny”, and “Valkaama”. This last year the Pirate Bay has helped promote George Barnett and Dan Bull, and over 5000 artists are lining up for a Pirate Bay boost. For many independent artists obscurity is a bigger problem than “illegal” distribution. This only reveals how superficial the UK governments understanding is on this issue, and are turning criminals into heroes. On the Pirate Bay blog, WinstonUK writes, “The Western countries of the world all [complain] about the censorship in Iran, China, Saudi Arabia and so on. But they are really the worst culprits themselves [...]“. Richard Stallman in his Political Notes writes: “[...] People in Britain will still be able to access the site through proxies, and its new data base format is small enough that they may simply get copies of it. [...]” Some are reporting that the site is accessible at tpb.pirateparty.org.uk and pirateproxy.net. You can use a virtual private network, VPN, service such as VPNReactor or iPredator, or use surveillance protection proxy software such as Tor or I2P. A Pirate Bay insider told TorrentFreak this week that their site has received a twelve million jump to visitors than ever before, and are using the attention as an opportunity to educate the public. This Tuesday, I met someone also interested in this at the May Day Protest and she mentioned that Sweden, the home to those who run The Pirate Bay, is known for their freedom of information culture, as well as the Church of Kopimism that believes the act of sharing information through copying, is akin to a religious service.
- Today, May 4th, 2012, is “A Day without DRM”. DRM stands for Digital Restrictions Management and is used as a way to lock access to music after you have a copy. Naturally analog media is such digital restriction management, and need not worry about any such perversion. DVDs you might get nowadays have DRM in the form of Content Scramble System (CSS), it’s encrypted and only licensed players can read it. You can not distribute an operating system with the ability to decrypt a DVD without getting a license. On Ubuntu, for example, you can not by default play a DVD movie, you need to install libdvdcss from their software repository. DRM is a threat to our solidarity, and should be rejected, at all costs. Do not buy or rent, or copy any DVD, CD, music or movies that uses DRM, it’s a scam.
- In correction to last weeks report on CISPA in haste, the definition of cybersecurity crime states, “(B) the violation of a provision of Federal law relating to computer crimes, including a violation of any provision of title 18, United States Code, created or amended by the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986″. It does not include all of the lengthy title 18 United States Code, though it is not specific to which is considered a computer crime. This still does not explain the reason that “the protection of national security of the United States” is included one of the ways that information can be used. It’s sliding in extra use for information sharing outside the interests of Internet security. And other parts are too vague: System or network could include personal computers, routers, and servers. “Efforts to degrade” could be interpreted as using too much bandwidth. These grey areas can all be abused, and is far too faithful to the responsible parties. The existence of vague language is covering the fact that these issues can be solved in the laws that govern software systems — programming. So instead of getting security from sharing source code to improve the system collectively, like we can improve our laws as a society, many of the companies backing this bill would rather invade our privacy to protect their system. Let us shed light upon the secrets of their injustice.
- Mozilla breaks the eerie silence from the Valley, and makes a statement this week against CISPA: “While we wholeheartedly support a more secure Internet, CISPA has a broad and alarming reach that goes far beyond Internet security. The bill infringes on our privacy, includes vague definitions of cybersecurity, and grants immunities to companies and government that are too broad around information misuse. We hope the Senate takes the time to fully and openly consider these issues with stakeholder input before moving forward with this legislation.”
- Take action against CISPA and call our California Senators. Dianne Feinstein LA phone (310) 914-7300 and Washington D.C. (202) 224-3841, For Barbara Boxer, LA (213) 894-5000 and DC (202) 224-3553. For other numbers call the capital switchboard at (202) 224-3121, (888) 818-6641 and (888) 355-3588