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Links for 2013-07-26

  • France Kills Three Strikes

    Missed bookmarking this news —

    After years of debate and controversy the French Government has finally backtracked on the law which allowed errant subscribers to be disconnected from the Internet. This morning a decree was published which removed the possibility for file-sharers to have their connections cut for copyright infringement. Instead, those caught by rightsholders will now be subjected to a system of automated fines.

    (tags: france legal ip piracy filesharing three-strikes)

  • BBC News – Chinese firm Huawei controls net filter praised by PM

    Talk Talk’s porn-filtering, system praised by David Cameron in the UK as a model for porn filtering for the country’s ISPs, is operated by Huawei. Of course, there’s no possible problems with allowing Huawei, with its alleged close ties to the Chinese government, operate a state-wide internet censorship system in the UK without any functioning oversight, right? ;) Also worth noting: all TalkTalk traffic passes through the Huawei filtering infrastructure, even when the customer has “opted in”.

    (tags: huawei talk-talk oversight overblocking politics china uk david-cameron filtering censorship)

  • Branded to death | Features | Times Higher Education

    The most abominable monster now threatening the intellectual health and the integrity of pure enquiry as well as conscientious teaching is the language of advertising, or better, the machinery of propaganda. Any number of critics from within university walls have warned the people at large and academics in particular of the way the helots of advertising and the state police of propaganda bloat and distort the language of thoughtful description, peddle with a confident air generalisations without substance, and serenely circulate orotund lies while ignoring their juniors’ rebuttals and abuse.
    Relevant to this argument — http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/07/the-webs-longest-nightmare-ends-eolas-patents-are-dead-on-appeal/ notes that ‘the role of the University of California [was] one of the most perplexing twists in the Eolas saga. The university kept a low profile during the lead-up to trial; but once in Texas, Eolas’ lawyers constantly reminded the jury they were asserting “these University of California patents.” A lawyer from UC’s patent-licensing division described support for Eolas at trial by simply saying that the university “stands by its licensees.”‘

    (tags: branding advertising newspeak universities third-level eolas higher-education education research university-of-california ucb patents ip swpats)

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