Eeyores news and view

Copyright laws threaten our online freedom
By Christian Engström Published: July 7 2009 18:10 Last updated: July 7 2009 18:10
If you search for Elvis Presley in Wikipedia, you will find a lot of text and a few pictures that have been cleared for distribution. But you will find no music and no film clips, due to copyright restrictions. What we think of as our common cultural heritage is not “ours” at all.
On MySpace and YouTube, creative people post audio and video remixes for others to enjoy, until they are replaced by take-down notices handed out by big film and record companies. Technology opens up possibilities; copyright law shuts them down.
EDITOR’S CHOICE
Curb on content threatens France Telecom - Jul-07.E-retailers find big brands hard to touch - Jul-07..This was never the intent. Copyright was meant to encourage culture, not restrict it. This is reason enough for reform. But the current regime has even more damaging effects. In order to uphold copyright laws, governments are beginning to restrict our right to communicate with each other in private, without being monitored.
File-sharing occurs whenever one individual sends a file to another. The only way to even try to limit this process is to monitor all communication between ordinary people. Despite the crackdown on Napster, Kazaa and other peer-to-peer services over the past decade, the volume of file-sharing has grown exponentially. Even if the authorities closed down all other possibilities, people could still send copyrighted files as attachments to e-mails or through private networks. If people start doing that, should we give the government the right to monitor all mail and all encrypted networks? Whenever there are ways of communicating in private, they will be used to share copyrighted material. If you want to stop people doing this, you must remove the right to communicate in private. There is no other option. Society has to make a choice.
The world is at a crossroads. The internet and new information technologies are so powerful that no matter what we do, society will change. But the direction has not been decided.
The technology could be used to create a Big Brother society beyond our nightmares, where governments and corporations monitor every detail of our lives. In the former East Germany, the government needed tens of thousands of employees to keep track of the citizens using typewriters, pencils and index cards. Today a computer can do the same thing a million times faster, at the push of a button. There are many politicians who want to push that button.
The same technology could instead be used to create a society that embraces spontaneity, collaboration and diversity. Where the citizens are no longer passive consumers being fed information and culture through one-way media, but are instead active participants collaborating on a journey into the future.
The internet it still in its infancy, but already we see fantastic things appearing as if by magic. Take Linux, the free computer operating system, or Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Witness the participatory culture of MySpace and YouTube, or the growth of the Pirate Bay, which makes the world’s culture easily available to anybody with an internet connection. But where technology opens up new possibilities, our intellectual property laws do their best to restrict them. Linux is held back by patents, the rest of the examples by copyright.
The public increasingly recognises the need for reform. That was why Piratpartiet – the Pirate party – won 7.1 per cent of the popular vote in Sweden in the European Union elections. This gave us a seat in the European parliament for the first time.
Our manifesto is to reform copyright laws and gradually abolish the patent system. We oppose mass surveillance and censorship on the net, as in the rest of society. We want to make the EU more democratic and transparent. This is our entire platform.
We intend to devote all our time and energy to protecting the fundamental civil liberties on the net and elsewhere. Seven per cent of Swedish voters agreed with us that it makes sense to put other political differences aside in order to ensure this.
Political decisions taken over the next five years are likely to set the course we take into the information society, and will affect the lives of millions for many years into the future. Will we let our fears lead us towards a dystopian Big Brother state, or will we have the courage and wisdom to choose an exciting future in a free and open society?
The information revolution is happening here and now. It is up to us to decide what future we want.
The writer is the Pirate party’s member of the European parliament
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/87c523a4-6b18-11de-861d-00144feabdc0.html

U.S. mortgage fraud 'rampant' and growing-FBISAN FRANCISCO, July 7 (Reuters) - U.S. mortgage fraud reports jumped 36 percent last year as desperate homeowners and industry professionals tried to maintain their standard of living from the boom years, the FBI said on Tuesday.
Suspicious activity reports rose to 63,713 in fiscal year 2008, which ended last September, from 46,717 the year before. California and Florida, centers of the housing bust, had the highest numbers of suspicious reports as foreclosures jumped, the stock market dropped and credit dried up.
"These combined factors uncovered and fueled a rampant mortgage fraud climate fraught with opportunistic participants desperate to maintain or increase their current standard of living," the Federal Bureau of Investigation said in its report.
"Industry employees sought to maintain the high standard of living they enjoyed during the boom years of the real estate market and overextended mortgage holders were often desperate to reduce or eliminate their bloated mortgage payments," it said.
http://www.reuters.com/article/bondsNews/idUSN0751853920090707

White House among targets of sweeping cyber attack
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The powerful attack that overwhelmed computers at U.S. and South Korean government agencies for days was even broader than realized, also targeting the White House, the Pentagon and the New York Stock Exchange.
An early analysis of the malicious software used in the attack found its targets also included the National Security Agency, Homeland Security Department, State Department, the Nasdaq stock market and The Washington Post. Many of the organizations appeared to successfully blunt the sustained attacks.
The Associated Press obtained the target list from security experts analyzing the attack. It was not immediately clear who might be responsible or what their motives were.
The attack was remarkably successful. Some of the affected government Web sites -- such as the Treasury Department, Federal Trade Commission and Secret Service -- were still reporting problems days after it started during the July 4 holiday.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Government-Web-sites-attacked-apf-1342411279.html?x=0&.v=5

Two Canada hog workers hit by new non-pandemic flu
SASKATOON, Saskatchewan, July 7 (Reuters) - Two farm workers in Western Canada have become infected with a new flu virus, health officials said on Tuesday, stressing the strain was not related to the H1N1 pandemic.
The two workers, both employees at a hog barn operation in the province of Saskatchewan, have fully recovered. A third case is under investigation.
The new virus contains genes from a seasonal human H1N1 flu strain and a flu virus common in the swine population called triple reassortant H3N2, said Dr. Greg Douglas, Saskatchewan's chief veterinary officer.
The virus is not connected to the H1N1 strain, sometimes referred to as swine flu, that has killed more than 400 people worldwide. That strain is believed to have begun in Mexico and has been labeled a pandemic by the World Health Organization.
There are no signs of increased illness in the hog herd, Douglas added.
"This is a human health issue," he said. "Saskatchewan pork continues to be safe ... This is not a food safety issue at all."
Concern about the issue of pigs becoming infected with the H1N1 flu has been heightened in Canada since a herd in Alberta became infected in April. A human worker who had visited Mexico was initially suspected as the source but was later ruled out.
The Saskatchewan farm is not under quarantine, but the owner has agreed not to move the pigs, said Dr. Frank Plummer, chief science adviser for the Public Health Agency of Canada.
The virus would likely not have been detected at all if not for heightened influenza testing as a result of the pandemic, Plummer said.
"Any time there's a new influenza A strain, we have to be concerned about it, but these events occur and are almost always dead ends," he said.
All workers on the hog farm are being vaccinated. Douglas said he expects the hogs will eventually go to slaughter as they normally would.
The workers have been in Saskatchewan for about one year and had not recently traveled, said Dr. Moira McKinnon, Saskatchewan's chief medical officer.
Plummer said the new virus was likely transmitted from the pigs to the workers, but said the source of transmission of the pandemic H1N1 virus on the Alberta hog farm, which was quarantined in April, was probably human.
More than a dozen countries have banned Canadian hogs or pork since the quarantine.
Bob Harding, executive director of the Canadian Swine Health Board, said there is concern that markets could misinterpret the new virus's connection to swine.
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N08342126.htm