Seen on craigslist:

We are look­ing for some­one part time with very neat hand­writ­ing who is able to write quickly but neatly.
We have the let­ter con­tent pre­pared but will require some­one to write many hand writ­ten let­ters on a weekly basis.
Please con­tact me if you might be inter­ested in mak­ing some extra cash, we are look­ing for some­one to start as soon as possible.

If ever a job list­ing cried out for an included mail­ing address, it’s this one.

Despite hav­ing been out of Qual­ity Assur­ance for almost ten years, I still found myself writ­ing two bug reports at the same time as my film scan­ner was scan­ning this photo.

His­tory of Copy­right [Falkvinge on Infopol­icy]

Given the recent fuss raised by cor­rupt politi­cians (SOPA and ACTA) and thugs enforc­ing the “laws” of the Evil Empire on its pup­pet states, its inter­est­ing to look at this seven part series on the his­tory of copyright.

Rules of Amer­i­can jus­tice: a tale of three cases. The Rules of Amer­i­can Jus­tice are quite clear:

(1) If you are a high-ranking gov­ern­ment offi­cial who com­mits war crimes, you will receive full-scale immu­nity, both civil and crim­i­nal, and will have the Amer­i­can Pres­i­dent demand that all cit­i­zens Look For­ward, Not Backward.

(2) If you are a low-ranking mem­ber of the mil­i­tary, you will receive rel­a­tively triv­ial pun­ish­ments in order to pro­tect higher-ranking offi­cials and cast the appear­ance of accountability.

(3) If you are a vic­tim of Amer­i­can war crimes, you are a non-person with no legal rights or even any enti­tle­ment to see the inside of a courtroom.

(4) If you talk pub­licly about any of these war crimes, you have com­mit­ted the Gravest Crime — you are guilty of espi­onage – and will have the full weight of the Amer­i­can crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem come crash­ing down upon you. [Glenn Green­wald]

It’s pretty obvi­ous that the U.S. legal sys­tem really has noth­ing to do with jus­tice except through the occa­sional coin­ci­dence, in much the same way that the U.S. Con­sti­tu­tion has noth­ing to do with the U.S. government.

Seen on Twitter:

The Irish Copy­right Act appears to have been copied almost ver­ba­tim from the UK Copy­right Act. How ironic.

@sensiblestu

That’s prob­a­bly because the copy­right indus­try lob­by­ist who wrote the act sent the same file to the politi­cians he bought in each country.

Yet Another Reminder That Democ­racy Is An Illu­sion. On the exact same day that every­one was cel­e­brat­ing vic­tory over SOPA/PIPA, the US gov­ern­ment sim­ply used another set of reg­u­la­tions to nab Dot­com and seize his assets. The fact that SOPA was scrapped turned out to be com­pletely irrel­e­vant, they just found other rules to apply (or break).

As usual, it’s prob­a­bly not legal. But such tech­ni­cal­i­ties don’t mat­ter in the ‘guilty until proven inno­cent’ sys­tem in which we live. Exec­u­tive agen­cies exer­cise extreme lat­i­tude when con­fis­cat­ing assets, and vic­tims often don’t have the oppor­tu­nity to address the mat­ter in front of a judge for years, if ever.

[…]

You see, we don’t live in a rep­re­sen­ta­tive democ­racy. Democ­racy is an illu­sion to make peo­ple believe that they’re free. Instead, it’s blocs of large cor­po­ra­tions who are really in con­trol. If the enter­tain­ment busi­ness wants Kim Dot­com to go away, the gov­ern­ment will invent or break any law nec­es­sary to make it hap­pen. They’re all in bed together.
What’s more, it doesn’t mat­ter which group or party is in power. Demo­c­rat or Repub­li­can, Labour or Con­ser­v­a­tive, Lib­eral or New Demo­c­ra­tic… they’re all for sale. Cit­i­zens con­cern them­selves with the out­come of elec­tions, invest­ing heavy emo­tional and finan­cial sup­port for ‘their guy’. Com­pa­nies just wait it out and buy off whichever can­di­dates win. [Busi­ness Insider]

Today is SOPA black­out day, as many promi­nent web­sites protest a bill which, if passed, would allow the copy­right indus­try to shut down any site that links to another site which con­tains links to what they con­sider copy­right infringe­ment, such as The Pirate Bay. There would still be ways around it, so I decided to exer­cise one of them today: I saved a backup copy of every post here, and inserted it into Freenet, where it is impos­si­ble for any gov­ern­ment to remove it.

This year’s pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates span the polit­i­cal spec­trum. They are both pro-abortion and anti-abortion. They have both embraced and opposed bans on assault weapons. They have both accepted and rejected the idea of human-induced cli­mate change, both pro­moted and derided a gov­ern­ment takeover of health care, sup­ported both amnesty for ille­gal aliens and build­ing a giant wall on the border.

And that’s just Mitt Romney.

A. Bar­ton Hinkle