In the debate about the American “Stop Online Piracy Act”, some have hailed the decade-old American DMCA as a law that was somehow beneficial for the development of new services on the net. This is not only a complete misconception, but a very dangerous one at that. The DMCA was basically a wet dream come true for the copyright industry, and the “safe harbor” provisions have gradually shifted the environment to suppress free speech and expression in favor of the suppressing industries: the copyright industries.

Här har vi alltså ett kontroversiellt avtal, med lagstiftningsliknande effekter. Utlåtandet om huruvida det är lagligt eller ej hemligstämplas. Diskussionen förs bakom stängda dörrar. Alla som kan ha invändningar luras att tro att frågan inte kommer att behandlas i dag. Och när det ändå sker, då tillåts utskottet inte ens rösta om huruvida mötet skall vara offentligt eller bakom stängda dörrar.

Sedan undrar våra ledare villrådigt och bekymrat vad de skall göra åt EU:s demokratiska underskott...

Google knows it. Viacom knows it. The Chamber of Commerce knows it. Internet democracy groups know it. BoingBoing knows it. But, the Internet hasn't been told yet -- we're going to get blown away by the end of the year. The worst bill in Internet history is about to become law. Law is very real here in the United States and legal language is often different than stated intentions -- this law would give government and corporations the power to block sites like BoingBoing over infringing links on at least one webpage posted by their users. Believe the EFF, Public Knowledge, Google when they say this bill is about much more than copyright, it's about the Internet and free speech everywhere.

2011 råder det inga tvivel om hur de friserade sanningarna staplades på rad för att driva igenom kriget mot terrorismen och invasionen av Irak. Men där vi åtminstone i Sverige har haft lätt att fälla kritiska omdömen om de ansvariga politikerna för deras agerande, har vi haft så mycket svårare att betrakta nöjesindustrins aktörer som medansvariga för det samhälle som vi nu håller på att skapa. Där vi gång på gång väljer slutenhet i stället för öppenhet och kontroll i stället för frihet.

“Child pornography is great,” the man said enthusiastically. “Politicians do not understand file sharing, but they understand child pornography, and they want to filter that to score points with the public. Once we get them to filter child pornography, we can get them to extend the block to file sharing.” The date was May 27, 2007, and the man was Johan Schlüter, head of the Danish Anti-Piracy Group (Antipiratgruppen). He was speaking in front of an audience from which the press had been banned; it was assumed to be copyright industry insiders only. It wasn’t. Christian Engström, who’s now a Member of the European Parliament, Oscar Swartz, and I [Rick Falkvinge] were also there.

This map has been created by compiling reports from trusted accounts on Twitter. Nonetheless, these reports are in general unconfirmed. This information should be considered in the context of there being absolutely no independent media in Libya at this time. This map is not automatically produced. Each posting is considered before it is mapped. These considerations have evolved over time as conditions on the ground have changed. If you have any questions you can contact me via Twitter @Arasmus.

After World War II, the military industrial complex became another key component in the twisted road to police state practices, based on the premise of permanent war making, with a cold war arms race, the sending of troops, and the establishment of military bases across the globe. This is another defining feature of a police state: a nation placed in an ongoing state of mobilization to prepare and fight wars throughout the globe. Police states, incorporate war-making into normalized state functions. Permanent war making translates into the global subversion of democracy. Supplementing the military in undermining democracy overseas, the CIA was one of many federal agencies during the second half of the twentieth century that was carrying out an essentially antidemocratic mission in the name of national security.

In sum, Manning has been subjected for many months without pause to inhumane, personality-erasing, soul-destroying, insanity-inducing conditions of isolation similar to those perfected at America's Supermax prison in Florence, Colorado:

all without so much as having been convicted of anything.

In an e-mail sent to BSD project leader Theo de Raadt, former NETSEC CTO Gregory Perry has claimed that NETSEC developers helped the FBI plant "a number of backdoors" in the OpenBSD cryptographic framework approximately a decade ago.

Perry says that his nondisclosure agreement with the FBI has expired, allowing him to finally bring the issue to the attention of OpenBSD developers. Perry also suggests that knowledge of the FBI's backdoors played a role in DARPA's decision to withdraw millions of dollars of grant funding from OpenBSD in 2003.

...

The e-mail became public when de Raadt forwarded it to the OpenBSD mailing list on Tuesday, with the intention of encouraging concerned parties to conduct code audits. To avoid entanglement in the alleged conspiracy, de Raadt says that he won't be pursuing the matter himself. Several developers have begun the process of auditing the OpenBSD IPSEC stack in order to determine if Perry's claims are true.

The United States has announced plans to host World Press Freedom Day in 2011 as part of its efforts "to support and expand press freedom and the free flow of information in this digital age."

Well, the free flow of information not embarrassing to the US, anyway.