People should not fear their governments; governments should fear their people.
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.