The U.N. Threat to Internet Freedom
Robert McDowell:
On Feb. 27, a diplomatic process will begin in Geneva that could result in a new treaty giving the United Nations unprecedented powers over the Internet. Dozens of countries, including Russia and China, are pushing hard to reach this goal by year’s end.
Supreme Court Says Congress May Re-Copyright Public Domain Works
Wired:
Congress may take books, musical compositions and other works out of the public domain, where they can be freely used and adapted, and grant them copyright status again, the Supreme Court ruled Wednesday. In a 6-2 ruling, the court ruled that just because material enters the public domain, it is not “territory that works may never exit.”
Defend our freedom to share (or why SOPA is a bad idea)
Great TED talk by Clay Shirky on the problem with SOPA and PIPA.
Call to Action: Oppose H.R. 3699, a new bill to block public access to publicly funded research (Right to Research Coalition)
Right to Research:
This bill would erase years of progress from the NIH policy – which makes 90,000 papers per year freely available through PubMed Central – and prohibit students and taxpayers from having guaranteed access to research they paid for in the first place.
Lockdown: The coming war on general-purpose computing
Good read of Cory Doctorow’s keynote speech to the Chaos Computer Congress in Berlin.
Hackers planning homespun anti-censorship satellite internet
Daniel Cooper at Engadget:
SOPA is making ordinary, decent internet users mad as hell, and they’re not gonna take it anymore. Hacker attendees of Berlin’s Chaos Communication Congress are cooking up a plan to launch a series of homemade satellites as the backbone of an “uncensorable (sic) internet in space.”
