A double standard is better than no standard

I figured this would be a more cheerful way of presenting news & views, this time the "Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act", a bill proposing that the US Department of Justice can shut down any site that is accused of being involved in copyright infringement.

Google are not big fans of anonymity

I have to admit I choked on my morning coffee when I read this eerie article on Google CEO Eric Schmidt's views on privacy and anonymity.

I mean, what the hell? Is this Schmidt guy some DDR era reject who fled to the US after the fall of the Berlin wall? His thoughts sure are very similar to those of the DDR regime.

"Privacy is incredibly important," Schmidt stated. "Privacy is not the same thing as anonymity. It's very important that Google and everyone else respects people's privacy. People have a right to privacy; it's natural; it's normal. It's the right way to do things. But if you are trying to commit a terrible, evil crime, it's not obvious that you should be able to do so with complete anonymity. There are no systems in our society which allow you to do that. Judges insist on unmasking who the perpetrator was. So absolute anonymity could lead to some very difficult decisions for our governments and our society as a whole."

And my favorite part:

According to ReadWriteWeb, Schmidt said of anti-social behavior, "The only way to manage this is true transparency and no anonymity. In a world of asynchronous threats, it is too dangerous for there not to be some way to identify you. We need a [verified] name service for people. Governments will demand it."

In other words bye bye freedom of speech, hello self-censorship and thought control. And Google are not about to stand up for people's rights, it seems, which is really scary considering the amount of data this guys have collected on practically every Internet user in the world. Whatever happened to that "don't be evil" catchphrase?

I guess the first thing you could do to protect yourself against Google is installing the GoogleSharing Firefox plugin, which will prevent Google from tracking your searches and what websites you visit. And if you need to open a Google account I would seriously consider using some kind of anonymization software when logged on to that, so it can't be traced to your regular IP address. Of course you'll have to remember to always run the anonymization software whenever logging into the Google account. I'm no Internet security expert, but those seem like two good starting points.

Photo: Mikey G Ottawa

Internet Wars: Wikileaks vs The Pentagon

The Internet Wars for dummies (or those who just don't have time to read up on the subject).

No room for Internet censorship in a democracy

"There's no room for Internet censorship in a democracy. The EU should impose Internet censorship."

In other words, the EU should not be considered a democracy. This might not be what Folkpartiet politician Cecilia Wikström meant to say, but it's the message she's communicating in this letter, where she promotes Internet censorship as a means of fighting child pornography despite of her own reasoning that censorship will have little or no effect. That's like saying "we know banning action films from TV won't stop the violence, but we still want to do it". Why?

What's with these Folkpartiet Cecilias who are hellbent on Internet censorship without being able to present any credible argument that it is in fact a good idea? Stop hiding behind the ridiculous "think about the children" tactics and just come out and tell us who's paying you to stick to a stance that you don't even believe in.

The alternatives to Internet censorship have been discussed a million times before, so I won't go into details, but keywords are due process, shutting down and prosecute the offenders if they're found guilty. That's the way of a democracy.

Photo: Wikimedia.

Cleanternet

Offering some "support" to EU commissioner Cecilia Malmström, a firm believer in censorship and the useful idiot of the entertainment mafia:


Found on idg.se

Steve Jobs: "Want freedom? Buy Android"

According to Apple CEO Steve Jobs people who want porn or political satire should choose an Android phone instead of an iPhone. Because Apple has a "moral responsibility". You know, just like those Iranian priests have a "moral responsibility" to ban anything they find morally offensive (which is basically everything). In addition Jobs bans applications that are too similar to functionality already found in the iPhone, or applications that could perhaps in some way maybe be used to perform copyright infringement. Or applications he just doesn't like.

So I couldn't agree more with Jobs, if you want freedom on your phone instead of a "moral police" filtering out applications that they deem "inappropriate" for whatever reason, go buy an Android phone. I did.

Photo: barockschloss

Who's trying to control the web?

Google have just released this nice little tool showing us which country's governments have made requests for Google to release user data, and who has made requests to have information removed from the web.

"Of course many of these requests are entirely legitimate, such as requests for the removal of child pornography. We also regularly receive requests from law enforcement agencies to hand over private user data. Again, the vast majority of these requests are valid and the information needed is for legitimate criminal investigations. However, data about these activities historically has not been broadly available. We believe that greater transparency will lead to less censorship."

googleblog

"Good job, China!"

Swedish prime minister Fredrik Reinfeldt met with Chinese vice-president Xi Jinping, and discussed among other things the Chinese censorship of the Internet. Might we assume that the conversation went something like this:

Fredrik: Hey Xi, great job you're doing on that Internet censorship.
Xi: Why, thank you.
Fredrik: We're actually working on a similar project ourselves, but being a democracy we're don't really have a long history in restricting the public's opportunity to share thoughts and information. Perhaps you could share some experiences with us? We would like to have it in place by 2012.
Xi: Sure, no worries, with your technology and eagerness to restrict the public's access to information you consider "inappropriate" this could be up and running in no time.
Fredrik: Cool.

A taste of what is to come

The Americans got a little taste of what is to come in the near future when due to a DNS error they ended up behind China's "Great Firewall". This meant websites with inappropriate content were blocked.

Personally I don't understand what the fuzz is all about. I mean, they better get used to it as both the US and the EU are planning to incorporate similar Internet filtering, where the governments will be able to decide what information their citizens should be allowed to part-take in, and what should be considered "inappropriate" and blocked.

If all goes according to plan, the EU will join the likes of Iran, North Korea, Australia and China by 2012, with the US probably not far behind. Congratulations, you miserable enemies of freedom.

More Google evil

As if deleting blogs due to a claim of copyright infringement and censorship in China isn't enough, Google are now even censoring critics of the US government.

Seriously, Google, that "don't be evil" motto just seems out of date. Why don't you just change it to something more believable, like "don't be free" or "be censored"?

"Don't be evil" my ass

Do you own a blog hosted by blogger or blogspot? I do. And if I weren't too lazy I would move it away from these Googled-owned services asap, since these days they seem to be arbitrary deleting (yes, actually deleting all content, not just suspending the accounts!) blogs that they claim infringe on copyright. You know, if you happen to publish the lyrics to the chorus of your favorite song, or a picture you took at a concert. Those kinds of nasty crimes.

If you're like me, too lazy to actually move your blog, at least do a proper backup in case Google decides to go ahead and just delete it.

First the censorship scandal in China, and now this? "Don't be evil" my ass.

Bono says: Look to China!

U2 front man and tax refugee Bono comes out of the closet as a firm believer in China style censorship (more comments on this article are here, here, here and here). Who would have thought a guy who's based his image over the last decade on being some kind of human rights activist, would do a U-turn like this and embrace oppression:

We’re the post office, they tell us; who knows what’s in the brown-paper packages? But we know from America’s noble effort to stop child pornography, not to mention China’s ignoble effort to suppress online dissent, that it’s perfectly possible to track content.

Sure, why not. Let's make a "noble effort" to monitor all user's Internet traffic (and just forget about details like multiple computers sharing the same ip address and other minor details...) in order to protect an outdated industry refusing to renew itself and instead demanding special legislation in order to keep the profit growing. Yeah, that's the noble thing to do. You complete moron.

I also love the part about the rich, evil Internet service providers and the poor songwriters:

A decade’s worth of music file-sharing and swiping has made clear that the people it hurts are the creators — in this case, the young, fledgling songwriters who can’t live off ticket and T-shirt sales like the least sympathetic among us — and the people this reverse Robin Hooding benefits are rich service providers, whose swollen profits perfectly mirror the lost receipts of the music business.

Swollen profits? Lost receipts? You might wonder what was in that pipe Bono just smoked. If anyone's making profit ripping off the "poor songwriters" it's the rotten to the core record labels. So please, Bono, stop embarrassing yourself by writing absolute bullshit about stuff you know nothing about, and stop promoting oppression and abolishing human rights in order to boost the profit of a vicious industry. It's really bad for your image.

If you want to read an intelligent piece of text on the subject, go read David Byrne's Survival Strateglies for Emerging Artists here. You don't have to be a slave to the CD manufacturing industry just because you want to write and/or perform music.

Or, if you're a friend of oppression, like Bono himself, read about how the Belarus are about to handle the "problem" of free speech and sharing of information. There are some good ideas to be found there.

Tuva Novotny on censorship

It's always refreshing to read a piece on Internet censorship that the author has clearly put some thought into. It's all the better when the author is a well known actress, as it lends a certain weight to it. As opposed to the not-so-intelligent rants of another female "artist", best known for her boobs, which seem to be out in the open more than not. Has anyone ever actually heard one of her songs?

Google censorship "a mistake"

Apparently last week's decision to exclude thepiratebay.org from Google search results was a "mistake". Riiiight.

In the meantime the entertainment industry mafia is doing what it does best: Bullying and threatening perfectly legitimate businesses.

It's David fighting against Goliath again. Good versus evil. Small entrepreneurs versus a global mafia(a).

Google censorship policies

Search engine Google is no stranger to sacrificing freedom of speech on the altar of mammon and censoring links to content found objectionable by various oppressive regimes in order to gain market shares. This censorship has up until now been limited to specific countries, which is bad enough, but not half as bad as the global censorship they've launched today, based on the demands of a global, oppressive regime (see picture on the right).

I've already removed Google from my Firefox searchbar, and I expect a lot of freedom loving people will do the same (you can find other search engine plugins here). Since money and market shares is the only language these people understand, I guess a decline in traffic may have an impact. Now if only I could summon the know-how and enthusiasm to move my blog away from Google that would be swell...unfortunately I don't. Not at the moment, anyway.

Field trip to China

The brilliant newspaper The Local, bringing us Swedish news in English, has been censored by the Chinese government because of an article deemed to be inappropriate.

The brilliant website The Pirate Bay, bringing us all kind of culture from all over the world, has been censored by the Swedish government because certain links on the website are deemed to be inappropriate.

Unfortunately the Swedish government, relatively new to the world of Internet censorship, have not yet developed sufficiently sophisticated methods to actually keep "inappropriate" websites out of sight for long. I would suggest Swedish politicians take a field trip to China to study what they do there.

The Pirate Bay regarding Stockholms Tingsfel

Speaking of the Pirate Bay censorship scandal, the TPB crew's press release is simply hilarious.

A lesson in irony

Today's lesson in irony:

The ISP Black Internet pulls the plug on The Pirate Bay, making it inaccessible for Internet users.

The Internet users pull the plug on Black Internet.

Personally I don't see how one is worse than the other. Both these acts of sabotage harm a lot of innocent people, cost a lot of money and threaten the infrastructure of the Internet. Of course the ones who should really have their plugs pulled - big time - are the mafiosos of the entertainment industry and the ever-so-corrupt and incompetent Stockholm tingsrätt.

I never seem to repeat this often enough: Stop feeding this monster. Let it crawl under a rock and die for the benefit of the entire free world.

The free Internet is dead in Sweden

Stockholm tingsrätt have, by ordering the censorship of a website that has not been proven illegal, once again proved they are not only criminally incompetent, they are also setting a new precedent when it comes to Internet censorship in Sweden. In short, they're choosing the totalitarian approach, where "unwanted" websites are closed at will, joining the ranks of freedom loving and friendly countries like China, North Korea and Iran - with the exception that in the case of Sweden it's not at all about ideology, it's all about money.

From now on it appears any powerful organization or corporation can get a court order to block the access to websites they feel are a threat to their business. The free, uncensored Internet we've been used to in these parts of the world has just been replaced by a corporation controlled censorship system.

Kverulant.se puts the whole spectacle into perspective by showing how this mindless court ruling could impact the Internet.

If my blog is gone tomorrow at least you know what's happened.

Why exactly should I buy this crap?

I read a comparison of various cell phones in today's DN, and not surprisingly the hysterically over-hyped Iphone 3GS won the competition, together with the far superior, yet cheaper, Samsung Omnia HD.

Let's have a look at Iphone 3GS's selling points, according to the article:

• It can send and receive MMS.
• It's got bluetooth.
• It's fitted with a 3 megapixel camera, without flash.
• It's got a compass.
• You can copy and paste text from for example an e-mail.
• It's got support for the Swedish special characters ÅÄÖ (although the keyboard is "still hard to use").

All these new "features" are really the bare minimum you would expect from even the cheapest cell phone sold in the last 2-3 years, possibly with the exception of a compass. On the other hand, when have you ever been in a situation where you thought "damn, I really wish my phone had a compass"?

Why on earth should I literally pay through my nose for yesterday's news, when I could get a state of the art phone for almost half the price, and at the same time avoid the infamous Apple lock-in effect and the AppStore censorship madness?