CRTC- failings. Copyright-failings

arctic fiber internet possibility

2012-01-25T19:11:00.000-08:00

Interesting article on a companies plan to put in a new Japan(Asia) to Europe(via the Canadian Arctic) global fiber optic cable. The starting first phase of its network in 2013, a fibre optic line that will run from Newfoundland(simply: Canada's fiber hub to the U.S. for the international line) to Iqaluit. The Canadian north/arctic would have various hubs on the network, which would eventually lead to spur lines to various communities and reduce the reliance on satellites.

http://www.nunatsiaqonline.ca/stories/article/65674is_fibre_optic_cable_on_its_way_to_the_canadian_arctic/
Starting in 2013, Arctic Fibre plans to lay a fibre optic cable line that would run from Japan under the Pacific Ocean to the Northwest Passage, where it would connect to a number of Nunavut communities: Cambridge Bay, Gjoa Haven, Taloyoak, Igloolik, Hall Beach, Cape Dorset and Iqaluit.
From there, the line would continue across the Atlantic, via Newfoundland, to link up to Europe.....
...But it’s the cost of the plan that has some skeptical of its success: Arctic Fibre's, Cunningham pegs the capital cost of the sweeping telecommunications plan at $640 million.....

Cost issues, along with monopoly carriers, will always be a stumbling block to expansion of true high speed Internet in Canada's wilderness. And some of that wilderness is apparently 3 miles away from major cities that already have true high speed Internet. Another stumbling block is usually not a big enough pipe(backhaul) being put in first, to ensure needed future capacity.

So if the taxpayer were to pay for part of this line, hopefully a rock solid contract of actual connections to the locals within 6 months of the line passing by(via the exact fiber hub locations,, via third party ISP's) will be mandated by law. Too many times various corporations have said they were going to do 'extras', only for those extras to be eliminated due to the "screw you" mentality of corporations executives who have zero fear of being prosecuted and sent to prison for their ignoring of what the contract entailed for the massive tax payer subsidy to be dealt out. Cost overruns should also not be allowed to go above 10% of the initial cost projections, otherwise the government(public) could always take over ownership, should a corporation try to declare bankruptcy to prevent using their own money for whatever the build might be.

is sopa censorship coming to canada or is it here

2012-01-23T18:42:00.000-08:00

SOPA.
PIPA.
ACTA.
They all are what is called "censorship legislation".
Shut the people up and continue to rape and pillage for many more years. Rape is a harsh word, but in big business, rape is a term of how you totally destroyed a person or company, who was cutting into your already massive profit margin.

http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/6257/125/
The Internet battle against SOPA and PIPA generated huge interest in Canada with many Canadians turning their sites dark (including Blogging Tories, Project Gutenberg Canada, and CIPPIC) in support of the protest. In writing about the link between SOPA and Canada, I noted that the proposed legislation featured an aggressive jurisdictional approach that could target Canadian websites. Moreover, I argued that the same lobby groups promoting SOPA in the U.S. are behind the digital lock rules in Bill C-11.

Now what is interesting about all this, is that when MegaUpload(cyber locker) was blasted off of the Internet, is the Feds did not need any unconstitutional laws(like SOPA) to attack and arrest the operators of the site. The U.S. Justice Department, ooop's, I mean the copyright mafiaa's international police force, used various existing laws to eliminate that one cyber locker off of the Internet(for a couple of days), in order to cause other cyber lockers to block North America from accessing their sites. It's like where national guardsmen shoot some peaceful protesters and kills some, or a police force beats and pepper sprays the crap out of peaceful protesters, in order to make all the other protesters to run away and stop protesting. 'We the People' call that murder and violent assault(punishable by the law), but politicians call that, "shut the f*ck up or you will be killed/assaulted too".

So in the case of MegaUpload, there were other reasons to take the owner down than just the given excuse of 'condoning and hosting copyrighted file sharing', bla bla bla. So a site that was 'supposedly' pulling down copyrighted files and had no public search engine to find files on the site(each user had their own code to get at their files), gets blasted by the copyright mafiaa. [sarcasm]Copyright violation is so much more a serious offense and mandates instant prison sentences without courts, than that defrauding of investors in a prior business. As we all know, is that capitalism and it's greed is above any law that normal people have to abide by.[/sarcasm] Geeeezzzzz.

There are lots of shady business people, doing shady business everyday. Except that some shady business people with friends in high places, get a free pass from having the Feds kicking their doors down for anomalies in their business practices.

The copyright mafiaa: Massive profit is much better than furthering civilization. And yes that movie or auto-tuned music album sucked crap, but people are stupid and continue to buy the copyrighted crappy product.

A follow up:
Was MegaUpload destroyed in order to stop their new music service from giving people a choice over the high priced junk that is pushed by the copyright mafiaa?
http://techcrunch.com/2012/01/24/was-megaupload-targeted-because-of-its-upcoming-megabox-digital-jukebox-service/
However, yesterday, a new theory surfaced that indicates Megaupload’s demise had less to do with piracy than previously thought. This theory stems from a 2011 article detailing Megaupload’s upcoming Megabox music store and DIY artist distribution service that would have completely disrupted the music industry.

Artists getting the majority of money/profits from their own creations... What a concept.

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So how is that extension of copyright going? Micky Mouse was the little bugger that kept extending copyright.
So now there is a back door movement to make products that are now open source, as in: books, movies, music, etc., to go back into copyrighted, in order for someone(a greedy rich guy) to make a large profit by demanding payment for use and suing others who thought they were using an open source product from 70 years ago and further back in history. The rich guy(who has no prior history to that product) getting that newly reapplied copyright, thanks his servants(politicians) for giving him that copyright.

sopa pipa and old farts of the copyright mafiaa

2012-01-18T16:11:00.000-08:00

sopa(stop online piracy act).
pipa(protect intellectual property act).
two dangerous tools for the copyright mafiaa to wipe out due process and the courts, in order to call themselves the judge, jury and executioners of the internet.
edit: also, acta(anti-counterfeiting trade agreement). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/anti-counterfeiting_trade_agreement

private business can never be allowed to control free speech.
free speech is what the copyright mafiaa and certain politicians are trying to eliminate from this world.

http://www.ctv.ca/ctvnews/saskatoon/20120118/wikipedia-shuts-down-120118/
a comment from the link: no one is saying that piracy is ok.
the wording of the bill would allow them to shut down any site that is merely accused of infringing. also, if i didn't like your site for some reason i could post a link to pirated material in your comments section and report it. under the new law they would be not be required to ask you to remove it (currently safe harbour requires that they notify the infringer and ask them to remove it). they would simply shut your site down.

www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/18/idUS398428468720120118
....in the space of a couple of days, hollywood and its content creators lost the public relations war over internet piracy sopa legislation -- which now appears poised to crumble into a million bits of dust.
....it seems that hollywood still does not realize that it is in the information age. knowledge moves in real time, and events move accordingly. the medium is the message in a fight like this. ........

http://sopablackout.org/learnmore/
link to video at vimeo
http://vimeo.com/31100268

by the way...... capitalization may be a violation of someones patent or copyright, so no capitalization in this post..
but wait, the links words have copyrighted/trademarked names. oh oh. this is why this censorship legislation will cause the internet to go dark and dictatorships to rise and crush the people. don't even think about putting links or hotlinking to a site that will be considered evillll under draconian bills.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/01/copyright-wars-escalate-britain-to-extradite-student-to-us-over-link-site.ars
...o'dwyer's attorney argued that the student had not broken british law. tvshack was no different from sites like google and yahoo that sometimes link to infringing content, he said.....
well yea, sites like google and yahoo and bing would be outlawed since some of their links go to sites that host a pic of cute kittens on the sidewalk, with an infringing background of someone selling their own purchased cd's on the sidewalk(the copyright mafiaa wants to outlaw you selling your music/movie collection).
do you want to perform and sing your favorite bands song on youtube? that would be illegal. youtube would be illegal.
heres a good writeup on the above scenario's.
http://www.gamesradar.com/internet-under-sopa-and-pipa-sneak-preview/

http://theoatmeal.com/sopa/
you may wonder why the animated gif would cause the site to be banned? the images. the images came from somewhere. the images would cause the site to be shut down for piracy. even governments could have their sites shut down too for infringing items(probably an exemption for governments). even that cute little avatar profile pic of yours that is chilly willy or a movie star, would get the site you posted it on, to be banned.
an update: http://theoatmeal.com/blog/sopa_results

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lets add this interesting tidbit(also should apply to canada and other countries as well):
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/01/23/mpaa_bribery_petition_white_house/
former senator, chris dodd, now current ceo of motion picture association of america: “those who count on quote ‘hollywood’ for support need to understand that this industry is watching very carefully who’s going to stand up for them when their job is at stake," dodd told fox news. "don’t ask me to write a check for you when you think your job is at risk and then don’t pay any attention to me when my job is at stake.”
the comments caused a huge stir, and prompted a petition, hosted on the white house's "we the people" opinion-seeking site, that calls for an investigation of the mpaa on bribery charges.

for you see, there is lobbying to further your justifiable cause. then there is lobbying to wipe out peoples rights and freedoms with illegal laws to make an insane profit via those illegal laws and illegal regulations.

is your isp a hacker

2012-01-14T17:18:00.001-08:00

Why is it that some ISP's have to hack your Internet connection in order to insert data into your web page for notifications like 'your ISP hacked you at this moment to tell you your bill is due soon', or to throttle or 'interrupt' your data streams?

This particular thread talks about Rogers and the behind the scenes fiddling with peoples data.
https://secure.dslreports.com/forum/r26769277-Extreme-Plus-Seemingly-still-shaping-torrent-downloads

The user says how his torrents(which do include fully legal downloads) are being throttled on Rogers, but not on another ISP. Another user points out how Rogers can claim 'no throttles of downloads', but Rogers apparently fiddles/deletes/blocks with the 'download confirmation data packets' that are sent in the upload direction(which acknowledge the download data is being received). https://secure.dslreports.com/forum/r26769773-
That still can be considered download throttling, since without an upload confirmation, your download will stop(a variable of depending on protocol, but could lead to corrupted downloads).
small update: https://secure.dslreports.com/forum/r26793541-CRTC-Enforcements-Division-finds-Rogers-guilty

Comcast in the States, to stop P2P, was inserting 'data terminated packets' in order to stop the P2P downloads. And that brought about 'net neutrality regulations' when people started examining why their downloads kept stopping. For you see, it was 'hacking of the users data stream'. A crime punishable by 3 years in prison, according to some court cases. But no executives of Comcast ever went to prison for it. Being Rich is no excuse for breaking the law and violating peoples Rights and Freedoms.

There are many threads on DSL Reports and other sites that detail how people thought they had bought an open connection to the Internet, but instead got a connection through a hacker(also known as a 'man in the middle attack').

Did you mistype a web address and instead got a search engine webpage with your ISP's name at the top? Well that is hacking of your connection, due to the ISP using redirection to make money, instead of the user getting a proper error page. Redirection breaks the Internet. New protocols for DNS(domain name system) to ensure that the website you are going to is legit, also cause the ISP's hacking attempt(DNS redirection) to not work anymore, due to the new security protocol(DNSSEC). https://secure.dslreports.com/shownews/Comcast-Finishes-DNSSEC-Rollout-117793

How many years is it going to take for people to see through the curtains of bull shit? Please help Rogers(or any other corrupt ISP) executives be sent to prison after conviction at their trial for hacking their users data streams. A billionaire should not be allowed to do the same thing a hacker goes to jail for, but the billionaire does not care about the laws that only apply to the commoners.
The billionaire considers a 1 million dollar fine(or more) to be a 'routine business expense', easily paid for by Interest on the billion or more dollars in the bank account.

Another article on how ISP's are violating Network Neutrality.
https://secure.dslreports.com/shownews/Canadian-Network-Neutrality-Complaints-Rise-Sharply-117870

But what do the numbers truly say on how peoples Internet data is being corrupted by an ISP? Well it says: Not enough people complaining, that could potentially complain. So crawl out from under that rock and file your complaint against your ISP today.
Do not allow an ISP to insert data into your web pages. A program called WireShark, to see your in and out data in real time. https://www.wireshark.org/ It is used to debug your connection. There is a learning curve required to properly read the data shown, but there are also forums to help you debug a buggered data stream.
There is also this online tool that does some analyzing and gives a result. http://netalyzr.icsi.berkeley.edu/
Do not allow an ISP to heavily throttle your P2P without justification for the heavy throttle.
Do not allow your ISP to have a tiny amount of GB's allowed per month, in order to sell 'overage insurance' at an easy profit.
If you go over the monthly GB limit(and know that you did not) and the ISP tries to charge you fee's for each GB over, have them prove that their GB meter is accurate. Court is fun.
Do not allow an ISP to 'rent' you a modem, when you are using your own modem or purchased a modem from the ISP itself. Renting, without justification of a rental being needed, is a scam. It is called 'under the line' pricing, which means the ISP can advertise one price in advertising, but the bill can have $10 or more added per month, for mystery objects to actually 'use' the service.
An ISP that supplies the modem as a 'free' rental is the only way to go.
ISP's that force only the use of a ISP supplied combination 'router/modem'(all in one) without any way of 'bridging' it for the user to use their own router is not secure and is not safe. ISP's have backdoors into those combination unit's for, ummmm ahhhh ohhhhhh, firmware upgrades and tech support. Your LAN(local area network) is in a danger zone of outside attack due to a combination unit 'accidentally' resetting to 'open factory default'. Your own router could reset to default, but not without a strange power glitch or someone knowing/hacking your passwords and encryption keys to reset it.

DD-WRT An alternate operating system for your router. Search the router data base for your model. Search the forums for issues with your particular router. Beware of bricking(making the router permanently dead) from a failed 'flash' of the DD-WRT to it. It also comes with a bandwidth used graph. Very nice to see whats what in your data usage, compared to your ISP's meter.
http://www.dd-wrt.com/site/index

Never, never, never allow an ISP call support agent to remotely connect to your computer to 'assist' you in whatever your issue is.
Never, never allow an ISP call support agent to 'make you' reinstall your operating system to deal with whatever issue.
They are not certified to work with anyones computer and you may end up losing all that data on your computer due to their negligence and your sheepishness to allow it.
If an ISP disconnects your Internet for a supposed virus or botnet? Demand proof of the infection. ISP data logs, etc. When your system is clean and they keep nagging you, fight back. Defend yourself from incompetence.
An alternate operating system for an old computer. Free. Linux. Won't work with your propitiatory Windows junkwares(there are many free Linux alternatives) NetFlix does not work on it, at this time.
http://www.ubuntu.com/

All these places below have a complaints form. Some may ignore you. The more people that complain about how a company treats them, makes changes in the long run.

Complaints:::

CRTC.
http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/contact.htm

Commissioner for complaints for Telecommunications services
http://www.ccts-cprst.ca/

Office of Consumer affairs(Industry Canada).
http://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/oca-bc.nsf/eng/home

Privacy Commissioner.
http://www.priv.gc.ca/index_e.cfm

Competition Bureau
http://www.competitionbureau.gc.ca/eic/site/cb-bc.nsf/eng/home

Advertising standards.
http://www.adstandards.com/en/

Industry Canada. Weights and measures. They refuse to make sure your ISP's bandwidth usage meter is accurate to prevent numbers fraud(inaccurate measuring causing overage charges from false data usage).
http://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/mc-mc.nsf/eng/home

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Michael Geist's law blog. For information on how Canadians are being royally screwed over by the government, in the digital age.
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/

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A thread on how Rogers has a nasty habit of merging peoples accounts without permission. Including merging accounts with strangers or family at the same address.
https://secure.dslreports.com/forum/r26723199-Help-Rogers-took-my-money

Another thread:
http://www.howardforums.com/showthread.php/1753642-Rogers-changed-ownership-of-account-twice-without-permission

usa blacklist a country for not making censorship

2012-01-05T16:12:00.000-08:00

Yea, just too disgusting to threaten a country for not bending over and giving all available media dollars to a private business that makes billions of dollars already.
The copyright mafiaa needs to be left to fail like other companies, when they can not modify their business plan to suit the future. Ahh wait a second, the copyright mafiaa has a business plan of putting politicians in their back pocket to use to make billions of dollars in greedy profit.

https://torrentfreak.com/us-threatened-to-blacklist-spain-for-not-implementing-site-blocking-law-120105/
US Threatened To Blacklist Spain For Not Implementing Site Blocking Law
In a leaked letter sent to Spain’s outgoing President, the US ambassador to the country warned that as punishment for not passing a SOPA-style file-sharing site blocking law, Spain risked being put on a United States trade blacklist . Inclusion would have left Spain open to a range of “retaliatory options” but already the US was working with the incoming government to reach its goals.

update: Canada to be banned from entering into the 'Trans Pacific partnership' discussions, unless Canada agrees to put draconian copyright laws into effect. Dangerous copyright laws that guarantee easy profits for the copyright mafiaa(a private business) without needing to change their business plans from the ancient practices from the times of analog.
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120116/22360917430/entertainment-industry-lobbyists-dont-want-to-let-canada-into-secret-tpp-negotiations-until-canada-passes-more-bad-laws.shtml
from the crazy-town dept
We've discussed, at length, the ridiculousness of the Trans-Pacific Partnership -- the international trade agreement that is the "son of ACTA" and seeks to push through (in secret, of course) plenty of the things that were cut out of ACTA.

canadian government is pirating

2012-01-01T17:39:00.001-08:00

Suits in government say that an IP address is worth an instant conviction without any '100% court admissible evidence of the actual wrong doer' needed.

Seems Canada's parliament has been pirating.
https://torrentfreak.com/busted-canadian-parliament-hosts-bittorrent-pirates-120101/
Several IP-addresses assigned to the Canadian House of Commons have been caught pirating copyrighted material.

http://www.michaelgeist.ca/tags/c-11
Supreme Court Securities Act Constitutionality Ruling Throws Digital Laws into Doubt
Thursday December 22, 2011
The Supreme Court of Canada this morning ruled that the federal government's plan to create a single securities regulator is unconstitutional since it stretches the federal trade and commerce clause too far into provincial jurisdiction. The ruling is a wake-up call on the limits of federal powers,.....

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Frances government has been pirating as well. But they will check to make sure that their denial of their systems being incapable of doing pirating is actually working or not, but they also generally say 'no conviction of government possible, based on a flimsy IP address evidence'. For you see that for Government to admit that an IP address does not equal a person, and an IP address does not mean a violation took place, and why should the government lose their Internet connection due to violating the three strikes policy multiple times. What was that about laws applying to everyone, including government, police and private companies that write the laws that ensure billion dollar profits continue?
https://torrentfreak.com/zut-alors-french-government-deny-bittorrent-piracy-allegations-120101/
Mid-December, data from YouHaveDownloaded was used to show that several illegal downloads had taken place in the palace of French President Sarkozy. These, however, were just the tip of the iceberg. More than 250 further IP addresses belonging to the French Ministry of Culture have now been linked to illegal downloads but the government, unsurprisingly, say they are completely innocent. OK, so prove it.

copyright mafiaa says no guilt via ip

2011-12-22T09:01:00.000-08:00

the copyright mafiaa says that an IP address is not a person.
In your court case(or extortion shakedown) when they say that your IP address was found to be downloading copyrighted material on the Internet, is you, well you tell them what they said themselves and screw up their plan to treat you like crap.

The legal system is for Rich people, and not Poor schmucks. Some court cases are designed to bankrupt poor people, while the rich people laugh and laugh at how you had to spend tens of thousands of dollars to defend yourself from bogus charges.

Don't panic, is your first plan of defense against billionaires attacking you.

https://torrentfreak.com/riaa-someone-else-is-pirating-through-out-ip-addresses-111221/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+Torrentfreak+Torrentfreak
A few days ago we reported that no less than 6 IP-addresses registered to the RIAA had been busted for downloading copyrighted material. Quite a shocker to everyone – including the music industry group apparently – as they are now using a defense previously attempted by many alleged file-sharers. It wasn’t members of RIAA staff who downloaded these files, the RIAA insists, it was a mysterious third party vendor who unknowingly smeared the group’s good name.

https://secure.dslreports.com/shownews/Data-Shows-Piracy-at-DHS-RIAA-Headquarters-117549
The entertainment industry and Department of Homeland Security have been working hand in hand for the last few years creating controversial and potentially dangerous new laws around the globe in the hopes of stopping piracy.

This also applies to Canada, due to Rich people deciding the Poor peoples fate with unjust laws and unjust regulation.

great firewall of canada part two

2011-12-09T16:52:00.000-08:00

Politicians continue to write unjust laws that are being mandated by the copyright maffiaa.

The Chinese say how good is Internet censorship is.
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111208/07411217009/chinese-internet-users-relish-irony-sopas-great-firewall-america.shtml
Chinese Internet Users Relish Irony Of SOPA's Great Firewall Of America
from the shoe-on-the-other-foot dept

Some sanity in the sea of putrid vomit that is being written as illegal laws in our lands.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/12/censorship-foes-roll-out-antipiracy-plan-say-stop-butchering-the-internet.ars

It's a battle of the Congressional antipiracy acronyms. In one corner are SOPA and PROTECT IP, the House and Senate bills that would bring site blocking, search engine de-listing, and more to the US in an effort to stop "rogue" sites. In the other corner, today's challenger: the Online Protection & Enforcement of Digital Trade Act, called the "OPEN" Act (PDF).

OPEN has been spearheaded by Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), who released draft text of the plan today on a special website that invites citizen comment and reaction before the text is finalized.

But then you say that all those links go for the U.S.A.... Well what the U.S.A. does, so does Canada. It sucks donkey balls, but thats the corruption in our legal systems. Just be careful of that deal between the U.S. and Canadian governments to allow U.S. police officers into Canada to do stuff. The military is expanding it's martial law to homeland soil even more. But you will still not see soldiers patrolling our streets,,,, yet.

Canada being an independent country does not exist.

Swiss government tells copyright maffiaa to adapt

2011-12-02T19:24:00.000-08:00

The copyright maffiaa the world over(actually based in the U.S.A.) continues to claim poverty as they wipe their butts with pocket change from the billions of dollars in profits.

The Swiss government tells the copyright maffiaa to either change their ancient business model or to go die in a fire.

The Artists? At times they don't make much. You see some of it has to do with who owns the Rights to the music made by the Artists. The Artists could distribute it themselves, in order to own 100% copyright, but some Artists sold their creative souls to the copyright maffiaa and depending on the contract, the Artists can lose their lifes works in a heartbeat. It's not fair, but billionaires at times really don't care about the peasants contributing to the private profit chain.

https://torrentfreak.com/swiss-govt-downloading-movies-and-music-will-stay-legal-111202/
One in three people in Switzerland download unauthorized music, movies and games from the Internet and since last year the government has been wondering what to do about it. This week their response was published and it was crystal clear. Not only will downloading for personal use stay completely legal, but the copyright holders won’t suffer because of it, since people eventually spend the money saved on entertainment products........
.......The overall suggestion the Swiss government communicates to the entertainment industries is that they should adapt to the change in consumer behavior, or die. They see absolutely no need to change the law because downloading has no proven negative impact...

governments sure love your personal information

2011-11-17T13:39:00.000-08:00

Why does the government and police refuse to acknowledge that they 'do' need warrants to get at your personal data? Governments love the excuse of: 'it is not your personal data, since it is your personal data held by a company, so it is the company's data instead'.

Canada wants to log all our Internet data(plus what else?, and from what other devices as well?), just in case you might attempt to commit a crime in the future, that then the government/police could then use your past data to see that you possibly planned to commit a serious crime of spitting on the sidewalk at a future date. Or maybe the illegally stored data actually came from someone else using your connection, without your permission? An IP address does not identify the person using the connection.

We no longer have any safe guards to protect us from the government and police intrusion into our personal, private, legally abiding lives.

http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2011/11/16/judge-declares-law-governing-warrantless-cellphone-tracking-unconstitutional/
In a succinct one-page ruling, U.S. District Court Judge Lynn N. Hughes of the Southern District of Texas declared that the law authorizing the government to obtain cellphone records without a search warrant was unconstitutional.
“The records would show the date, time, called number, and location of the telephone when the call was made,” Judge Hughes wrote in the decision, dated Nov. 11. “These data are constitutionally protected from this intrusion.”

cell phones with provider rootkits

2011-11-17T13:34:00.001-08:00

Does your cell phone have a rootkit in it? who put it there? was it the cell phone maker? was it your cell phone service provider? was it someone who exploited a weakness in the operating system of the phone?

http://www.techdirt.com/blog/wireless/articles/20111115/01592616774/do-tons-sprint-verizon-phones-contain-rootkit-potentially-tracking-all-sorts-info.shtml
Do Tons Of Sprint And Verizon Phones Contain A Rootkit, Potentially Tracking All Sorts Of Info?
from the privacy,-what's-that? dept
Security researcher Trevor Eckhart has put out a report suggesting that a ton of Sprint and Verizon Wireless mobile phones have what is effectively a rootkit installed on them. Specifically, he's talking about CarrierIQ, a bit of software intended to monitor device usage, supposedly for the purpose of understanding problems that a user might be having and helping to troubleshoot remotely.

https://secure.dslreports.com/shownews/Verizon-Sprint-Using-CarrierIQ-Rootkits-On-Devices-117081

And you wonder why some providers don't like phones that are 100% user controlled(including the boot sector).

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An update....... Seems some people don't like people knowing about the rootkit....

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/11/carrieriq-censor-research-baseless-legal-threat
Carrier IQ Tries to Censor Research With Baseless Legal Threat

Last week, security researcher Trevor Eckhart posted an analysis of software produced by Carrier IQ, which describes itself as "the world's leading provider of Mobile Service Intelligence solutions." Eckhart concluded that the software, which comes by default on many mobile devices and runs quietly in the background, logs extensive details about users' activities. Eckhart not only documented the functionality of the software, but learned even more about how it works through training materials posted on the Carrier IQ website. Fearing the company would take the files offline after he posted his analysis, he mirrored the training materials to let others independently verify his conclusions.

Eckhart was right: Carrier IQ immediately made the files unavailable, but it didn't stop there. Carrier IQ fired off a cease-and-desist letter (pdf) to Eckhart, claiming that he infringed its copyrights and made unspecified "false allegations" about its software. Among other things, the company demanded that Eckhart turn over contact information for every person who had obtained the files from him, and that he replace his analysis with a statement—written for him by Carrier IQ—disavowing his research.

Happily, Eckhart was not cowed by this ham-fisted effort to suppress his findings. Instead, he reached out to EFF. We're glad he did. As we explained in a letter (pdf) to Carrier IQ today, Eckhart's research is protected by fair use and the First Amendment right to free expression. He posted the training materials to teach the public about software that many consumers don't know about, even though it monitors their everyday activities and raises substantial privacy concerns. As the Copyright Act says, "the fair use of a copyrighted work . . . for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting . . . or research, is not an infringement of copyright." Furthermore, Eckhart's analysis is just the kind of speech that that the First Amendment is meant to protect—public commentary that will help consumers better understand the products they use and help researchers investigate those products.

Given the weakness of its legal position, we have to conclude that Carrier IQ's real goal is to suppress Eckhart’s research and prevent others from verifying his findings. But as we've long said, the best way to counter speech you don't like is more speech—not baseless legal threats to silence your critics. Carrier IQ didn't get the memo on this. (Nor, apparently, has it heard of the Streisand Effect.) Hopefully it has now.

An update.............................
http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-57331150-264/carrier-iq-apologizes-drops-threat-to-security-researcher/?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20

Another update.......
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/11/secret-software-logging-video
But now he’s released a video actually showing the logging of text messages, encrypted web searches and, well, you name it.

Another update for canadian cell phones.
http://mobilesyrup.com/2011/12/02/uh-oh-carrier-iq-found-on-the-rogers-lg-phoenix/

Yet another update... Was the FBI(law enforcement) using the Carrier IQ debugger/rootkit to spy on the phone's user data?
http://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2011/dec/12/fbi-carrier-iq-files-used-law-enforcement-purposes/

January 2012 update............. India loves all that cell phone data. yum yum.
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/india/have-rim-nokia-apple-provided-indian-military-with-backdoor-access-to-cellular-comm/838

how far can your isp see into your private network

2011-11-14T19:40:00.000-08:00

Interesting discussion on how far your ISP(or government) can get into the private (LAN) portion of your network behind the modem/router unit.

https://secure.dslreports.com/forum/r26548570-Add-TR069-to-the-CRTC-ruling-and-kiss-internet-freedom-bye-

Having a software firewall on each computer will help to keep a probing ISP out of each computer on your LAN(local area network). So that your private files stay private.

ISP's will claim that they can only access the WAN(wide area network, which is the Internet facing portion of the modem/router), but have you ever seen an update to a modem/router or a accidental remote reset, that causes your secure settings to be reset to the insecure default?

Smart people refuse to use an ISP supplied modem/router combination unit. Business's should never ever use a combo unit. What you want is a 'modem' only and then use your own router to manage your private network(LAN).
Using a user supplied router behind a modem/router unit will cause 'double NAT'(network address translation), which can cause issues with some programs or online games.
Cable companies combo units can be changed to a 'bridge' setting, but you have to call in for the combo unit to change to bridge. And sometimes the 'bridge mode' can revert back to non-bridge mode.

fight back against censorship

2011-11-12T08:32:00.000-08:00

Private business's continue to remove your Rights and Freedoms in this World. Online and in public spaces. Fight back against the censorship. It's your Right.

Oh you may wonder what this bill has to do with Canada? Canada is being censored just the same. The name's on the bills may be different, but unless you fight back, you are nothing but a Sheeple.
Don't let a private business dictate how our laws are made. Censorship is a crime.

http://www.americancensorship.org/

https://www.eff.org/

http://torrentfreak.com/the-internet-revolts-against-anti-piracy-censorship-111110/
In response to the pending SOPA (“Stop Online Piracy Act”), leading civil liberties and tech policy organizations are calling for a Internet-wide day of protest against censorship.

The event is dubbed “American Censorship Day,” because it will take place on the day of House hearings on the legislation that will introduce web censorship in the U.S.

a copyright tax to our internet

2011-11-11T12:09:00.000-08:00

The copyright maffiaa wants a filesharing tax added to peoples internet connections. It is a scam and is used to prop up an failing ancient business model.
It can also be called an unjust tax, to punish innocent users who never fileshare(copyrighted works) and don't even download internet content.

http://torrentfreak.com/music-rights-group-bills-internet-providers-for-piracy-licence-11110/
Belgian music royalty collecting agency Sabam has once again stepped up to enforce their strict copyright regime. Today the group announced that it will bill Internet providers for allowing subscribers to play and download copyrighted songs. Sabam claims it is entitled to this compensation based on existing copyright law, and is demanding 3.4 percent of the monthly fee paid by subscribers.

Royalty collection agencies are known for going to extremes as they go about claiming money on behalf of artists and music composers.

For your information: Many Artists and Composers don't get much(if at all) royalties for their creations. Due to the copyright maffiaa taking most of the incoming funds and keeping it for whatever reasons.

copyright maffiaa and illegal takedowns

2011-11-11T12:04:00.000-08:00

Does anyone make sure that the supposed copyrighted material that is being told to be taken down, actually belongs to the company ordering the takedown?

Corruption is costly.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/11/warner-admits-it-issues-takedowns-for-files-it-hasnt-looked-at.ars
In a Monday court filing, Warner Brothers admitted that it has issued takedown notices for files without looking at them first. The studio also acknowledged that it issued takedown notices for a number of URLs that its adversary, the locker site Hotfile, says were obviously not Warner Brothers' content.

do you trust your cell phone service company

2011-10-28T20:23:00.000-07:00

This has been going on for a while, where countries that RIM operates in, want access to the users confidential emails and data.
The main issue first to hit RIM is with a particular countries users data being sent to another country for processing. That then led to countries wanting to ban RIM for not allowing those countries to snoop on the users data, with in-country data centers. Then RIM said they would put servers in those countries to avoid being banned.
This is total bull shit by letting countries snoop on their users data streams. Did RIM not want to lose tens of thousands of customers, for not allowing the snooping? Whats more important? Security of privacy of the person? Or allowing government to stomp all over the people?

Government is watching and companies are bending over backwards to allow the government to watch. No criminal activity needed for a government to monitor it's people data, even though the Constitution is supposed to protect us from unlawful snooping by anyone.

Why yes, other cell phone companies are allowing governments to snoop, and even without a proper legal warrant.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/10/28/blackberry_help_indian_government_sip_data/
RIM has opened a monitoring center in Mumbai to help the Indian government sip data from Blackberry users there, said the Wall Street Journal today, quoting unnamed sources.
The Canadian firm opened the small facility earlier this year to deal with requests from Indian intelligence agencies, the paper reports. RIM will hand over messages and emails from suspect individuals to the Indian government – providing it is satisfied that the demands are legally justified.

http://in.reuters.com/article/2011/10/28/idINIndia-60167920111028
India saw the move as a positive step, but would prefer an arrangement where it has the ability to decode messages itself, so that it can conduct surveillance without disclosing the names of suspects to RIM, the Journal reported.
India still has no method to intercept and decode BlackBerry enterprise email, which is used by corporate customers and features a higher level of encryption than consumer email and instant messaging, the report said.

Adding another link about Indonesia and their want to access peoples encrypted information(among other details).
http://www.totaltele.com/view.aspx?ID=469843
Indonesia has threatened to cut data services used by millions of BlackBerry customers, the industry body said Saturday, in an ongoing spat over infrastructure and government access to information.
The industry regulator said it would block internet services to the smartphones in the biggest market for Research In Motion Ltd.--which makes the BlackBerry--outside North America if RIM did not comply with its demands.

government is owned by the copyright mafiaa

2011-10-28T20:06:00.000-07:00

After all, Canada is America jr.
With a republican in charge of Canada, we shall have our rights and Freedoms murdered, in order for Billionaires to profit over our dead bodies.

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111026/12130616523/protect-ip-renamed-e-parasites-act-would-create-great-firewall-america.shtml
As was unfortunately expected, the House version of PROTECT IP has been released (embedded below) and it's ridiculously bad. Despite promises from Rep. Goodlatte, there has been no serious effort to fix the problems of the Senate bill, and it's clear that absolutely no attention was paid to the significant concerns of the tech industry, legal professionals, investors and entrepreneurs. There are no two ways around this simple fact: this is an attempt to build the Great Firewall of America. The bill would require service providers to block access to certain websites, very much contrary to US official positions on censorship and internet freedom, and almost certainly in violation of the First Amendment.
Oh, and because PROTECT IP wasn't enough of a misleading and idiotic name, the House has upped the ante. The new bill is called: "the Enforcing and Protecting American Rights Against Sites Intent on Theft and Exploitation Act" or the E-PARASITE Act (though, they also say you can call it the "Stopping Online Piracy Act")

Oh and of course for your amusement,,,, Politician who says regulating the Internet with 'black lists' is bad, but still she sponsors the bill. Maybe she is a supporter of the 1%er's.
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111027/15411816543/rep-blackburn-co-sponsor-e-parasite-explains-why-regulating-internet-is-terrible.shtml

isp fighting copyright trolls

2011-10-28T17:02:00.000-07:00

https://torrentfreak.com/isp-boss-brands-copyright-trolls-scum-vows-to-stop-them-111028/

The chief executive of a leading Australian ISP says his company will almost certainly invest a huge some of money to stop their customers being targeted by so-called copyright trolls. John Linton of Exetel has branded those attempting to blackmail his subscribers as “scum” and says that his company would almost certainly make changes to their systems to bring the trolls’ activities to an end.
In early October it became clear that Australia would be the next country to be targeted with so-called pay-up-or-else file-sharing settlement schemes

throttling practices in north america

2011-10-21T21:52:00.000-07:00

Interesting on how providers are throttling P2P.

https://torrentfreak.com/bittorrent-throttling-internet-providers-exposed-111020/
Since the start of the measurements Rogers has continuously throttled more than three-quarter of all BitTorrent traffic, and there are no signs that this will stop.
During the first quarter of 2010 the two other large Canadian ISPs, Bell and Shaw, were throttling 16 and 14 percent respectively. Videotron on the other hand has never slowed down more than 7 percent, and only 3 percent during the last measurement year.

According to the comments, the other two big ISP's Telus and Novus do not throttle. TekSavvy had issues of Bell being allowed to throttle TekSavvy traffic, which should been a privacy violation, but does government actually care about privacy anymore? Would you let your neighbor open your mail and quickly screen the contents before you get it?

March 2008:
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/2782/125/
Update: Bell has now reportedly confirmed that full throttling will be in place by early April. It claims that it is entitled to do so based on its contractual terms. Note that several people have written to emphasize the anti-competitive effects of this policy, given its impact on resellers servicing the business market.

The proper way to throttle is based on peak times and targeting the heaviest data users, instead of throttling certain traffic almost 24/7.
ISP's need to make sure that the system can handle the amount of subscribers on the system at peak times.

Some providers put hard caps on how much data you can do in one month, with high dollar amount overage charges.

Another link.......
https://secure.dslreports.com/shownews/MLab-Data-Highlights-the-Evolution-of-ISP-Throttling-116699

republican draconian copyright laws in canada

2011-10-19T14:44:00.000-07:00

Canada's republican/conservative government is destroying your electronic Rights of Fair Use.

Don't allow the 1% to destroy your Rights and Freedoms. Support the 99% for fair laws and fair use.

The copyright maffiaa doesn't care about fair use. All they care about is massive billion dollar profits.

The copyright mafiaa will use many tricks to squeeze every penny out of the Artists and some get screwed in the end. Support giving Artists 100% of their life's work back to the Artists, for ownership of their own material.

Stop allowing copyrights to be continuously extended for centuries. Billionaires have profited on a massive scale via endless copyrights and patents.

Mankind's advancement will soon stall, due to greedy old pigs(GOP) and relentless lawsuits that prevent competition and prevent similar products.

http://www.ccer.ca/speakout/
URGENT: Canadian DMCA To Become Law

On September 29th, 2011 the Government reintroduced the Copyright Modernization Act, Bill C-11 (previously Bill C-32). The Government which now holds a majority seems poised to expedite the passage of this legislation into Canadian law by taking actions to limit debate and engage in only hasty committee hearings.

It is essential that your Member of Parliament hear from you on this topic and it is to this effect that the CCER has updated its online letter writing tool. This could be your last chance to speak out on this issue so it is imperative that you send a letter to Ottawa today even if you have spoken out in the past.

Although Bill C-11 appears to be more flexible than the previous attempts at copyright reform, this bill is flawed to its core by the inclusion of strict, anti-circumvention provisions. Understandably Canadians are concerned at how easily their rights are trumped by the overriding protection for digital locks included in this legislation.

Bill C-11 includes provisions to address consumer activities such as format and time shifting, however these are all subject to digital locks. For example, consumers will now be permitted expressly by law to rip tracks from a CD into an MP3 and then transfer it their iPod or to make a backup copy of digital content to protect against loss or damage. However it would be illegal for a Canadian to transfer a legally obtained DVD movie onto their iPad for later viewing since all commercially available DVD movies employ digital locks and circumventing these locks is prohibited under Bill C-11. It is precisely this blanket protection for digital locks that overrides the rights of Canadian consumers and creators, including any newly granted rights provided by Bill C-11.

The Ministers responsible for this portfolio and your Member of Parliament need to know where you stand on the issue regardless of your views and even if you have already told them before. It is essential that Canadians speak up with their concerns about Bill C-11 while it is still open to amendments. Send your letter now and share this tool with your friends, family and co-workers while we have the opportunity.

Rogers deep packet inspection injection

2011-10-17T11:34:00.000-07:00

People are still complaining about how Rogers Internet keeps fucking up their data streams.

https://secure.dslreports.com/forum/r26423826-delayed-HTTP-requests

World Of Warcraft players had updates downloading issues, since W.O.W uses P2P as it's updater, which of course triggers Rogers P2P throttle system.

Many Rogers threads.
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/rogers

You can complain about Rogers throttling practices to:

Commissioner for complaints of telecommunications services.
http://www.ccts-cprst.ca/

C.R.T.C.
http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/home-accueil.htm

Your local police will refuse to investigate and refuse put forward charges to prosecute your ISP for tampering with your data streams. Hackers go to jail for doing the same things that your ISP does, so why doesn't your ISP get prosecuted and it's executives put in jail?

If your ISP injects system notices in to your data stream... That is called 'Hacking' and it's illegal.

If your ISP blocks certain sites.... That's censorship and violates the Canadian Constitution(Freedom of Communication).

Why do these ISP's get away with committing criminal acts? Well billion dollar corporations write the rules, so we are all fucked, unless we stand up and say 'no more'.

Occupy the World.

antipiracy maffiaa and fraud

2011-10-17T10:42:00.000-07:00

The propaganda by the Rich people of the copyright mafiaa and the anti-piracy outfits, sure is destroying our Rights and Freedoms.

This article shows the copyright mafiaa is the ones who are making the government rules on how people can use their purchased media.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/10/copyright-czar-cozied-up-to-big-content-e-mails-show.ars
Top-ranking Obama administration officials, including the US copyright czar, played an active role in secret negotiations between Hollywood, the recording industry and ISPs to disrupt internet access for users suspected of violating copyright law, according to internal White House e-mails.
The e-mails, obtained via the Freedom of Information Act, (.pdf) show the administration’s cozy relationship with Hollywood and the music industry’s lobbying arms, and its early support for the copyright-violation crackdown system publicly announced in July.
One top official even used her personal e-mail account at least once during the negotiations with executives and lobbyists from companies ranging from AT&T to Universal Music.

***********************

This article shows how the anti-piracy people are busy trying to shut up people and trying to erase their destruction and manipulation of our legal system for their own gain. But guess what? Once things get on to the Internet, they are very hard to delete and some of us will fight back and make it very, very public on the illegal activities that some companies and governments are doing to people. There are companies out there, like Sony and Apple, who will gladly sue people out of existence, to try and make quiet any releases of bad security of the company. Security starts by patching vulnerabilities.
Suing people for disclosing vulnerabilities is a violation of the Freedom Of Speech/Communication.
Even security companies who give the vulnerable company 4 weeks to fix the security hole, will find themselves being portrayed as the bad guy for showing how easy it is to copy a shit load of user data, due to the security holes. And yes, there are some politicians who believe that the users data is more important, than the big company pretending a security hole does not exist.
https://torrentfreak.com/anti-piracy-outfit-tries-to-erase-history-111015/
Anti-piracy outfit AiPlex Software made the news last year when their boss was quoted in the press admitting that his company launched DDoS attacks against several torrent sites. This confession resulted in an avalanche of negative PR and several retributive attacks from Anonymous. Today, a year later, AiPlex are attempting to erase these events from history by asking bloggers to take down their reports.
While there have always been suspicions that anti-piracy outfits are actively DDoSing torrent sites, when the boss of the Indian company AiPlex Software admitted to using these tactics in public it still came as a shock.
“When we detect a website offering a link or a download, we contact the server hosts and intimate them about the illegal activity. They issue a notice to the site owner,” said AiPlex’s Girish Kumar in an interview with DNA.
The above is nothing out of the ordinary, but where other content protection companies stop, AiPlex takes it up a notch. Uncooperative sites are not ignored but can expect to be taken offline by force.
“The problem is with torrent sites, which usually do not oblige. In such cases, we flood the website with requests, which results in database error, causing denial of service as each server has a fixed bandwidth capacity.”
“At times, we have to go an extra mile and attack the site and destroy the data to stop the movie from circulating,” Kumar said.
In other words, AiPlex admitted to breaking the law by DDoSing several websites.

*******************

The U.K.(England) government admits that using bull shit laws to make sure than people can not make backup copies of their media, is total fraud. The three strikes systems are designed to not allow a 'notice of copyright infringement' to be disputed. And the notices of infringement are only an 'accusation' and not a court trial showing all evidence of infringement by evidence that 'proves beyond a shadow of a doubt' that the user is the one guilty of infringement.
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111013/04232716334/uk-government-admits-that-it-has-no-evidence-zip-zilch-zero-to-support-its-claims-draconian-copyright-law.shtml

*******************

Corrupt Republican government of Canada signs ACTA.
Or in better words: Billion dollar corporations write a very bad law, that allows for higher profit margins and attacks on people without proper legal protection safe guards.

https://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/240664/acta_will_be_signed_saturday_us_and_japan_say.html
Public Knowledge, a digital rights group, called on U.S. President Barack Obama's administration to make it clear that ACTA will not change U.S. law, including protections for ISPs and websites in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. "We believe such a statement is necessary because there are still sufficient ambiguities in some parts of the agreement that could conflict with U.S. law," Gigi Sohn, president and cofounder of Public Knowledge, said last week.

*********************

** Here is how the Law is supposed to work: Someone accuses you of a crime. The police get called. The police investigate and see if any evidence of wrong doing and get a warrant if needed, with the warrant showing grounds and evidence to get the warrant. Police then determine if charges need to be filed.
Do not allow anyone who is not an official police officer to enter your residence for a warranted search. Apple was looking for another lost Iphone prototype and went to a residence with their employee's(4 San-Francisco police officers and 2 Apple security guards). The resident was then threatened for deportation by the officers(resident has brown skin). The Apple security guards did not identify themselves as non-police. The resident then allowed the Apple security(not knowing they were not the police) to enter and search, """Without Warrants"""". The real police officers waited outside. Also the officers did not do proper official paperwork, showing themselves in the employment of Apple. And not doing proper paperwork allowed for the officers to manipulate the resident to allow the illegal search.
A badge is not allowed to commit crimes in order to threaten people to obey.

** Now here is how the copyright mafiaa thinks the law works: Accuse a IP address(sometimes in error) and collect $1500 via a threat of going to court. Or the copyright mafiaa will file a infringement notice with an ISP, resulting in a users connection being terminated, by just an accusation.

Some of these pay up or be sued lawyers, will drop anyone who challenges the extortion attempt. But you never know unless you tell them to fuck off first, instead of sending a check to some profiteering lawyer firm. Profiteering: Judges get annoyed when a lawyer firm makes it's money via a cut of the profits of the extortion letters. And that can get a lawyer barred from practicing for 2 months or more, as punishment.
Some of these lawyers are also dropping accusations against certain IP address's. Like police stations and government buildings.

******

Do not forget that an IP address does not identify a person. It only identifies the IP address that is assigned to a particular subscriber. Also make note of, if system clocks are not synchronized, is that the wrong subscriber could be accused of another subscribers infringement.

And never forget.... There are honeypots out there, that are run by the copyright maffiaa, in order to trick people in to downloading files. Some files are also mislabeled in order to fool people in to thinking that they are downloading open source files, but instead will download a copyrighted file, which results in a notice of infringement being sent to the registered owner of a particular IP address, at the time.

Government trojan horse virus germany

2011-10-11T16:30:00.000-07:00

http://redtape.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/10/11/8274668-german-officials-admit-using-spyware-on-citizens-as-big-brother-scandal-grows
A government surveillance software scandal that erupted in Germany this weekend has spread beyond that nation's borders, raising questions about how far government officials around the globe might go to monitor citizens through spyware.
On Saturday, as reported on MSNBC.com, the German-based Chaos Computer Club announced it had examined a Trojan horse program allegedly spread by government officials to secretly spy on citizens' Internet travels, e-mail, chat and more. The software, originally intended only to help officials intercept Internet phone calls through legal wiretaps, went far beyond those permissible purposes, the hacker group alleged. The group called the government's use of the software outrageous and demanded it be destroyed immediately.

The computer club that found the Trojan.
http://www.ccc.de/en/updates/2011/staatstrojaner

An interesting bit in the article, is how the U.S. government was/is/have willing to infect users computers at international entry points. Maybe the Canadian government is participating as well?? After all, the Canadian government is controlled by the U.S. government, but you are not supposed to know that Citizen.
Don't let your computer out of your sight, otherwise you may have to throw it away or do a major virus scrub for root-kits, in order to be sure your computer/cellphone are not infected with a government virus, that some virus detection companies may not be allowed to write a definition for to find it.
Or what's that extra piece of hardware plugged into your system. Not like you would of opened your own laptop to see the insides, after your laptop disappeared for a couple of hours, in the hands of the terrorists known as 'homeland security'(their motto of: All people are guilty, except themselves and their controllers). And the People tell homeland security: Constitution. Civil Rights. Middle finger. Don't fuck with us or we shall occupy everywhere, in order to remove the trolls that find the People to be irritating to profits.

Another article. Person went through an airport where the infection was installed.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-15253259
The CCC had analyzed a laptop allegedly belonging to a man accused of illegally exporting pharmaceuticals. His lawyer claims the Trojan program was installed on his client's computer when it passed through airport customs.

The digital world has made criminals of us all, including real criminals.
Oh look, one person was caught, but 1 million people were subjected to abuse, to catch that one person.
Nanny State supporters start screaming that all people should be subjected to instant searches and routine detainment(as with canadian police roadblocks looking for criminal activity), in order to keep the profits rolling in for the Corporations in charge of this planet. Well if you Nanny Staters feel that way... Go to some other country that will make you enjoy being detained for 3 days to life or death. People disappear all the time. And the paperwork, if the body shows up, notes suicide or routine accident.

how the copyright mafiaa manipulates the world

2011-10-03T16:49:00.000-07:00

https://torrentfreak.com/private-anti-piracy-investigator-spills-the-beans-111003/

All around the world Hollywood is influencing politics and law enforcement, mainly through local anti-piracy groups. Aside from lobbying, they also employ private investigators to track down and bust copyright infringers. Today, one of them spills the beans. Gavin “Tex” Warren reveals how he was instructed to boost statistics, link piracy to drug trafficking, and manipulate the police in order to secure more interest for the war on piracy.

Hollywood goes to extremes to protect its interests worldwide. By now it’s public knowledge that MPAA-funded groups are lobbying at the highest political levels, but when it comes to law enforcement they have their ways of being heard too.

Not all people realize that the police, at times, are nothing but glorified security guards for corporations and the copyright mafiaa. One version of the law for them and UP AGAINST THE WALL!!!, Citizen.
Some Politicians also are puppets of the copyright mafiaa. Or have people not noticed all those news articles(what the public is allowed to see), where People in high places, have a nice retirement job waiting for them, at quite a good salary for their years of work, for the Slave Masters.

IP address does not identify a person

2011-09-22T16:32:00.000-07:00

https://torrentfreak.com/movie-institute-feels-pain-of-ip-address-only-piracy-evidence-110922/
The Swedish Film Institute (SFI) is in the middle of a crisis after an anti-piracy company revealed that it had tracked several leaked movies on The Pirate Bay, back to its servers. Desperate to deflect the accusations, today the SFI made a long statement. It turned out to be a perfect illustration that allegations of piracy based on an IP address and nothing else, simply must be backed up by something more solid.
....
An IP address is not a person, and unless anti-piracy companies want to let their ‘evidence’ be seen and tested in public, perhaps it’s better if they keep their allegations to themselves.

---------------

Edit: September 28 2001: Interesting.
https://torrentfreak.com/nhls-montreal-canadiens-accused-of-pirating-the-hurt-locker-110928/
Last month it became clear that having developed their pay-up-or-else file-sharing settlement scheme in the United States, the makers of the Hurt Locker had moved north. In their new phase of targeting Canadian IP addresses for cash settlements, Voltage Pictures have included an interesting target in their latest batch – the Montreal Canadiens hockey team.

So will they or won't they? Or shall the potencial lawsuit disappear. But hey, It's too late now. The people know and if Montreal's hockey team gets away without paying, then what about others? You know.. The poor people, who don't have millions of dollars to spend on lawyers, to dismiss flimsy evidence, like the Montreal Canadiens.

ISP and hijacking of your searching

2011-08-05T19:51:00.000-07:00

There is money to be made, without your knowledge, by your ISP. Hack. Hack. Hack. Oh and your ISP is hacking/harvesting your data stream, to collect for selling it to others for revenue. Insert. Insert. Insert. ??? Oh an Ad insertion into your webpage by your ISP telling you of nothing that couldn't be done via emails. Why yes, you just got hacked by your ISP via DPI(deep packet inspection/insertion). So how about calling someone, who will automatically arrest your ISP's head boss........ But that will never happen. Money makes the World go round and since you have no money, you can't do anything that will bring down a multi-millionaire.

You might see news articles of hackers doing this or that. But do you see many news articles where Executives of your ISP are being arrested for hacking/modifying your data stream? No? That is because they are filthy Rich and can buy the necessary people to keep their Executive ass's out of jail.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/07/widespread-search-hijacking-in-the-us

A report in New Scientist today documents that the traffic is being rerouted through a company called Paxfire. This blog post, coauthored with one of the teams that discovered the phenomenon, will explain the situation in more detail.

Who is rerouting this search traffic?

The published research papers did not identify the controller of the proxy servers that were receiving the traffic, but parallel investigations by the ICSI Networking Group and EFF have since revealed a company called Paxfire as the main actor behind this interception. Paxfire's privacy policy says that it may retain copies of users' "queries", a vague term that could be construed to mean either the domain names that they look up or the searches they conduct, or both. The redirections mostly occur transparently to the user and few if any of the affected ISP customers are likely to have ever heard of Paxfire, let alone consented to this collection of their communications with search engines.

The proxies in question are operated either directly by Paxfire, or by the ISPs using web proxies provided by Paxfire. Major users of the Paxfire system include Cavalier, Cogent, Frontier, Fuse, DirecPC, RCN, and Wide Open West. Charter also used Paxfire in the past, but appears to have discontinued this practice.

The article continues..............................

PEOPLE SHOULD NOT FEAR THEIR GOVERNMENT, GOVERNMENT SHOULD FEAR ITS PEOPLE - signed V

canada pirate party

2011-04-19T17:22:00.001-07:00

https://www.pirateparty.ca/

https://www.pirateparty.ca/uncategorized/press-release-pirate-party-secure-browsing

Blog

PRESS RELEASE: Pirate Party to provide secure browsing services to protect Canadians from potential Conservative majority

April 19th, 2011

During the 2011 revolution in Tunisia, internet access was monitored and censored, and popular networking sites like Facebook and Twitter were blocked. Dissidents relied on secure browsing services to access the full internet. In support of the people of Tunisia, the Pirate Party of Canada launched its own VPN service to provide them with free and secure uncensored web browsing. After the internet filters were removed, the services were continued, making them available to citizens of other countries subject to censorship and monitoring.

If given a majority government, the Conservatives are promising to ram through a bill that would provide unprecedented systematic interception and monitoring of Canadians’ personal communications. In short, Canada will soon join the growing list of countries subject to invasion of privacy and internet censorship. Therefore, the Pirate Party is preparing to extend the services presently offered to residents of repressive regimes to protect the people affected by the aspiring dictator right here at home.

“We will provide VPN service to Canadians at a rate of $10 / 200GB. For every paid account we open, we will also provide a free VPN account to a citizen of a nation with censored internet,” said party leader Mikkel Paulson today. “This allows us to simultaneously provide protection to Canadians and expand our humanitarian support abroad. We won’t keep logs of the activity, although we will of course cooperate with law enforcement in the event of abuse of our services.”

Until such a time those in power begin to respect the rights of those they claim to represent, the Pirate Party will work to defend Canadians from the abuses of their government. Interested parties can send an e-mail to vpn @ pirateparty.ca for information on how to pre-order.

The Pirate Party of Canada is a federal political party focused on open government, copyright and patent reform, and defending Canadians’ right to privacy. We support genuine democracy, civil liberties, and freedom of the internet. You can find us online at www.pirateparty.ca

fire canadian government officials and appointees

2011-04-01T10:58:00.000-07:00

Rant Mode.................

It's about time the people of Canada started to clean house of all these elected and appointed representatives who are so totally corrupt. Oh and when there is an election? Make sure that all their "promises" are kept if elected.

What use is a Constitution and Civil Rights if these corrupt officials and representatives keep making rules and legislations and laws that violate our Rights and Freedoms.

UBB(usage based billing). It was a rule being made by Bell to eliminate competition by the Independent ISP's who use "last mile wireline, from the main TelCo/CableCo" for Internet as an independent ISP. UBB never applied to people using the bigger TelCo/CableCo ISP's, as those companies are allowed to set their pricing and GB's per month anyway they want. But UBB was a nice scapegoat by the big ISP's to drop monthly GB limits and then make expensive overage charges(a GB is about 1 cent to 3 cents in cost to the ISP, while the user is being charged from $1 to $2 to $3 per GB over, etc.). The independents can also set their own pricing, well unless Bell objects to that competition, then the independent is so screwed over.
And then since Government(Industry Canada) actually over-ruled the corrupt CRTC, UBB(against the user) was declared dead and removed by Bell. So then Bell submits AVP(aggregated volume pricing)(against the independent ISP), to remove the user from the equation(about a 1/2 million petition signatures against UBB), and use AVP to go after the independent ISP with a monthly GB limit for the ISP as a whole.
The only good thing about AVP? The users get 41GB per month, instead of 25GB's per month. And then the bad parts of, no 'cost effective' overage allowed(independent ISP has/had plans of 300GB per month, while Bell had a small amount of 25 GB's per month) or the independent ISP can end up paying a large dollar amount per each GB over the set "top GB limit", or charge the users a high dollar amount to access more GB's.

Corruption and people working at the CRTC who have no clue on how to foster competition in Canada. And people at the CRTC who have no clue on technology. But then again, who is pulling the strings of the CRTC, an organization that is run by former TelCo and former CableCo people.
And then you have "protectionism" to make sure that no foreign company and no foreign owner can come into Canada to make actual competition with competitive pricing.
And then those scummy Lobbyists who will put out propaganda to make Rich People even more rich. Some government officials are nothing but Parrots, who keep repeating what they have been told by Rich people who want profit over any proper consumer protections that the Public need.

Canada even tried to remove the "truth in news" laws, to bring FoxNews style TV(SunTV) to Canada. Former U.S. President Ronald Reagan removed "truth in news casts " laws during his term. FoxNews is nothing but propaganda by the Republican party and a bunch of Rich People, to overthrow the Majority and to remove all the 'Socialist' laws, that have been enacted by Democratic governments over the years, that actually protect and support the people of the U.S..

The Republican Governments in some States are actually out-lawing Unions, via Laws that remove collective bargaining and removing having to pay Union dues. DeJaVu, like in BC where the Liberal Government destroyed Government Union contracts and told Union People that jail was a possibility for trying to stage a strike. Teachers should of stayed out for months, instead of coming back to a destroyed education system of over crowding and other crappy things. But the FerryMans Union had the ultimate power, by not showing up for work and knowing it would take at least 3-7 days to get replacement crews in place and trained for the runs. So they got a decent deal.
Government is so corrupt in destroying our Rights and Freedoms. And the Sheeple keep eating their feed and cower in the shadows, as the government orders the police to look for them to illegally arrest and RAPE(strip search) them, for protesting(Rights to peaceful protest). OH wait a minute, Government denies having any control over the police, so how can the police arrest people who have not broken any laws? Oh right, it's a fascist order by the government to the police to "rough up" the protesters and take "innocent people to jail for the crime of, dumdumdum, peaceful protest". Did you notice the protester next to you, who just got some command in his ear or a visual signal and started to smash stuff? Well thats because he was an undercover police officer, sent into the crowd to cause a disturbance to allow the uniformed police to "intervene" in the "riot". It's done the World over, as well as in Canada.

Government says to conform or the police will be sent in to violate you in many ways. Contracts are supposed to be binding(with negotiated 'out' clauses), but the Government just tears them up to make budget cuts on the backs of the workers.

And then there is Satellite TV and illegal laws and illegal legislations that make it illegal(NOT) to get U.S. satellite TV in Canada. The Heritage Minister needs to be jailed for their crime against the People of Canada. And whatever government officials allowed those illegal legislations and illegal laws to prevent Canadians Rights of "Freedom of Communication".

The Canadian government even allowed Shaw and Rogers and Bell to buy up most of the Media outlets in Canada,,,, for competition... So don't always trust what you see or read on Canadian Media news sites, who are now owned by Rich People who can now manipulate the news so you don't hear about various happenings in Canada or in the World. Since reporting certain news items may cause a loss of profit for the Networks owners.

************************************

Want some unbiased World news? Try AlJazeera.
http://english.aljazeera.net/

And live streaming news.
http://english.aljazeera.net/watch_now/

**********************************************

Pledge your support to the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association. They are so busy trying to support your Rights and Freedoms, yet can only take on a small amount of cases, due to a corrupt government who makes a hell of a lot of work in defending the People of BC and Canada.
https://www.bccla.org/donateform.html

Is Network Neutrality in Canada possible?

2011-01-08T15:20:00.000-08:00

http://openmedia.ca
Openness

An open media system is essential to our democracy. Every Canadian should enjoy basic communication rights, including freedom of expression, privacy and access to information online and off, without gatekeepers or discrimination. We advocate for Net Neutrality rules that ensure Canadian Internet users have open access to the applications and content of their choice. Open standards should be adopted for telecommunication networks, data, documents, software, maps, governance and other media wherever possible.

http://openmedia.ca/about-us

Freedom of Communication is a Right. Yet there are still many websites out there that are blocked to Canadians. And the Canadian Government refuses to uphold our Right to Freedom of Communication.

We also need to get rid of the Heritage Minister position, to allow Canadians to be able to receive World content. And not be subjected to low quality "Canadian Content", via censorship of world media.

And lets put a permanent stop to the Police of Canada wanting two years of rolling data of our online lives. And that data would also include VOIP. For you see, the police do not believe in the Right of Innocence. And the Right to be secure against unreasonable search and seizure.
Is it still Law that the police need a warrant to be able to get the data on or in your ISP account? Seems the police are tired of getting a warrant, via factual evidence, that would allow that warrant to be issued.

-----------------------------------------------------

For many tech news articles on how our Freedoms are being destroyed.

http://www.michaelgeist.ca/

Some news items may barely get mentioned in the main stream media.

-----------------------------

http://dissolvethecrtc.ca/
Now on Facebook and Twitter.

CRTC gets one decision right

2010-09-03T12:21:00.000-07:00

Too bad the CRTC does not make Consumer Rights decisions like this all the time.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100831/wr_nm/us_crtc

The broadband escrow fund was a tax on MaBells phones in order to allow VOIP to proliferate across Canada.
It is now being returned to the rightful owners. The users. Half of the money will go to expand wire-line Internet, as the decision does not allow for wireless, like Bell wanted to do quick and easy with low GB caps.
EDIT: Bell avoids having to expand DSL internet and can instead expand via Wireless internet. So the people who had the illegal VOIP tax on your regular phone service, you just subsidized new Cell Phone towers for Bell. What a crock of shit.

"Canada's established telecom companies must spend more than half of a C$770 million (US $727 million) fund kept in escrow to expand broadband Internet to rural and remote communities and return the remainder to urban customers, the communications regulator said on Tuesday."

Protect yourself from Extortion

2010-06-07T09:37:00.000-07:00

Protect yourself from Extortion

Do not allow your ISP to freely give out your account details, without a proper court warrant. Which is based on court enforceable evidence of wrong doing. Privacy laws apply. And if a crime was committed, a warrant should be submitted to identify the users.

http://www.eff.org/press/archives/2010/06/02
June 3rd, 2010

EFF Asks Judges to Quash Subpoenas in Movie-Downloading Lawsuits

Predatory Copyright Infringement Cases Violate Rights of Thousands

Washington, D.C. - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) asked judges in Washington, D.C., Wednesday to quash subpoenas issued in predatory lawsuits aimed at movie downloaders, arguing in friend-of-the court briefs that the cases, which together target several thousand BitTorrent users, flout legal safeguards for protecting individuals' rights. Public Citizen and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Foundation joined EFF on the briefs filed Wednesday.

The lawsuits are the brainchild of a Washington, D.C., law firm calling itself the "U.S. Copyright Group" (USCG). USCG investigators have identified IP addresses they allege are associated with the unauthorized downloading of independent films, including "Far Cry" and "The Hurt Locker." To date, USCG has filed seven "John Doe" lawsuits in D.C., implicating well over 14,000 individuals, and has issued subpoenas to ISPs seeking the names and addresses of the subscribers associated with those IP addresses. Several ISPs have complied, but Time Warner Cable moved to quash the three subpoenas it received, arguing that USCG is abusing the discovery process.

In briefs filed in support of the cable giant, EFF says the John Doe defendants are being deprived of a fair chance to defend themselves by the strategies adopted by the USCG.

"By requiring those sued to defend these cases in D.C., regardless of where they live, and by having thousands of defendants lumped into a single case, the USCG has stacked the deck against the defendants," said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Corynne McSherry. "In addition, the First Amendment mandates that each defendant be given notice and opportunity to quash a subpoena and that the plaintiff offer sufficient evidence of infringement about each defendant individually."

"If USCG wants to sue thousands of people, it needs to give each defendant a fair chance to fight the accusations," added EFF Civil Liberties Director Jennifer Granick. "Instead, USCG is taking shortcuts that will result in innocent people getting tangled up in the dragnet."

USCG's strategy appears to be to threaten a judgment of $150,000 per downloaded movie -- the maximum penalty allowable by law in copyright suits and a very unlikely judgment in cases arising from a single, noncommercial infringement -- in order to pressure the alleged infringers to settle quickly for about $2,500 per person. USCG unapologetically explains this strategy on its website: "As a practical matter each individual infringer lacks the assets, net worth and earning capacity to make civil prosecution practical...until the SaveCinema.org efforts of the US Copyright Group." USCG has also said it plans to target thousands more individuals for legal action in the coming months.

"We've long been concerned that some attorneys would attempt to create a business by cutting corners in mass copyright lawsuits against fans, shaking settlements out of people who aren't in a position to raise legitimate defenses and becoming a category of 'copyright trolls' to rival those seen in patent law," said EFF Legal Director Cindy Cohn. "We're asking the court to step in now and force USCG to follow the rules that apply in all other cases."

Support the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association.

Ask for their assistance or to find a qualified lawyer.

http://www.bccla.org

DRM coming to Canada

2010-06-03T16:33:00.001-07:00

DRM, also known as Digital Rights Management, is a curse to users. And does not stop Piracy.

http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/5080/125/

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/06/canadian-dmca-defends-drm-legalizes-dvrs.ars

It can be dangerous, as some forms like to put government approved spyware or rootkits into peoples computer systems. Some do not allow play unless connected to the Internet to approve the playing of the product.

Just say "NO" to DRM.

CopyRight Mafia's potential future crimes

2010-04-15T20:07:00.000-07:00

CopyRight Mafia's potential future crimes.

Any Politician that allows the Recoding Industry(or any private group) to dictate the law, needs to be fired. And no vote needed to do it.

http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/04/entertainment-industrys-dystopia-future
Commentary by Richard Esguerra

We're not easily shocked by entertainment industry overreaching; unfortunately, it's par for the course. But we were taken aback by the wish list the industry submitted in response to the Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator's request for comments on the forthcoming "Joint Strategic Plan" for intellectual property enforcement. The comments submitted by various organizations provide a kind of window into how these organizations view both intellectual property and the public interest. For example, EFF and other public interest groups have asked the IPEC to take a balanced approach to intellectual property enforcement, paying close attention to the actual harm caused, the potential unexpected consequences of government intervention, and compelling countervailing priorities.

The joint comment filed by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and others stands as a sharp contrast, mapping out a vision of the future where Big Media priorities are woven deep into the Internet, law enforcement, and educational institutions.

Consider the following, all taken from the entertainment industry's submission to the IPEC.

"Anti-infringement" software for home computers

There are several technologies and methods that can be used by network administrators and providers...these include [consumer] tools for managing copyright infringement from the home (based on tools used to protect consumers from viruses and malware).

In other words, the entertainment industry thinks consumers should voluntarily install software that constantly scans our computers and identifies (and perhaps deletes) files found to be "infringing." It's hard to believe the industry thinks savvy, security-conscious consumers would voluntarily do so. But those who remember the Sony BMG rootkit debacle know that the entertainment industry is all too willing to sacrifice consumers at the altar of copyright enforcement.

Pervasive copyright filtering

Network administrators and providers should be encouraged to implement those solutions that are available and reasonable to address infringement on their networks. [This suggestion is preceded by a list of filtering methods, like protocol filtering, fingerprint-based filtering, bandwidth throttling, etc.]

The entertainment industry loves widespread filtering as a "solution" to online copyright infringement — in fact, it has successfully persuaded Congress to push these technologies on institutions of higher-education.

But this "solution" is full of flaws. First, even the "best" automated copyright blocking systems fail to protect fair use. Worse, these techniques are unlikely to make any lasting dent on infringing behavior, but will instead just invite the use of more encryption and private "darknets" (or even just more hand-to-hand sharing of hard drives and burned DVDs). But perhaps the most pernicious effect may be that copyright protection measures can be trojan horses for consumer surveillance. In an age of warrantless wiretapping and national censorship, building more surveillance and inspection technologies into the heart of the Internet is an obviously bad idea. In the words of the Hollywood movie, "if you build it, they will come."

Intimidate and propagandize travelers at the border

Customs authorities should be encouraged to do more to educate the traveling public and entrants into the United States about these issues. In particular, points of entry into the United States are underused venues for educating the public about the threat to our economy (and to public safety) posed by counterfeit and pirate products. Customs forms should be amended to require the disclosure of pirate or counterfeit items being brought into the United States.

Does that iPod in your hand luggage contain copies of songs extracted from friends' CDs? Is your computer storing movies ripped from DVD (handy for conserving battery life on long trips)? Was that book you bought overseas "licensed" for use in the United States? These are the kinds of questions the industry would like you to answer on your customs form when you cross borders or return home from abroad. What is more, this suggestion also raises the specter of something we've heard the entertainment industry suggest before: more searches and seizures of electronic goods at the border. Once border officials are empowered to search every electronic device for "pirated" content, digital privacy will all but disappear, at least for international travelers. From what we've learned about the fight over a de minimis border measures search exclusion in the latest leaked text, ACTA might just try to make this a reality.

Bully countries that have tech-friendly policies

The government should develop a process to identify those online sites that are most significantly engaged in conducting or facilitating the theft of intellectual property. Among other uses, this identification would be valuable in the interagency process that culminates in the annual Special 301 report, listing countries that fail to provide adequate and effective protection to U.S. intellectual property rights holders. Special 301 could provide a focus on those countries where companies engaged in systematic online theft of U.S. copyrighted materials are registered or operated, or where their sites are hosted. Targeting such companies and websites in the Special 301 report would put the countries involved on notice that dealing with such hotbeds of copyright theft will be an important topic of bilateral engagement with the U.S. in the year to come. (As noted above, while many of these sites are located outside the U.S., their ability to distribute pirate content in the U.S. depends on U.S.-based ISP communications facilities and services and U.S.-based server farms operated commercially by U.S.-based companies.)

Some background: the Special 301 process is a particularly unpleasant annual procedure by which the United States Trade Representative (USTR) pressures other countries to adopt tougher intellectual property laws and spend more for IP enforcement. In the Special 301 report, the USTR singles out particular countries for their "bad" intellectual property policies, placing them on a watch list, and threatening trade sanctions for those that deny "adequate and effective protection" for US IP rightsholders or restrict fair and equitable market access for US intellectual property.

Before this year, the US Trade Representative only sought input from the entertainment and pharmaceutical industries for these rankings, resulting in unbalanced assessment criteria. Countries have been listed for failing to sign on to controversial international treaties or for not mirroring certain parts of US law. For example, Chile was named for considering fair use-style exceptions to its copyright law; Canada was listed for requiring that its customs officers have a court order before seizing goods at the border; and Israel was highlighted for refusing to adopt DMCA-style anti-circumvention provisions after legislative debate concluded that anti-circumvention laws would have no effect on copyright infringement.

The creative communities' proposal imagines that the US Trade Representative should become a glorified messenger for Big Media, using its resources to pressure countries that "harbor" websites and Internet services that facilitate copyright infringement. In other words, they believe that the USTR should put US IP rightsholders' interests at the center of its foreign policy, ignoring other foreign policy goals such as regional security, and promoting innovation and competition.

Federal agents working on Hollywood's clock

The planned release of a blockbuster motion picture should be acknowledged as an event that attracts the focused efforts of copyright thieves, who will seek to obtain and distribute pre-release versions and/or to undermine legitimate release by unauthorized distribution through other channels. Enforcement agencies (notably within DOJ and DHS) should plan a similarly focused preventive and responsive strategy. An interagency task force should work with industry to coordinate and make advance plans to try to interdict these most damaging forms of copyright theft, and to react swiftly with enforcement actions where necessary.

This is perhaps the most revealing of the proposals: big Hollywood studios deputizing the FBI and Department of Homeland Security to provide taxpayer-supported muscle for summer blockbuster films. Jokes have been made about SWAT team raids on stereotypical file-sharers in college dorm rooms — but this entertainment industry request to "interdict...and to react swiftly with enforcement actions" brings that joke ridiculously close to reality.

What next?

Of course, these comments are just an entertainment industry wishlist, an exercise in asking for the moon. But they reveal a great deal about the entertainment industry's vision of the 21st century: less privacy (with citizens actively participating in their own surveillance), a less-neutral Internet, and federal agents acting as paid muscle to protect profits of summer blockbusters.

ACTA leaked 3 strikes type policy

2010-02-22T13:27:00.000-08:00

ACTA leaked 3 strikes style policy.

http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/4808/125/
An excerpt.
Several months after a European Union memo discussing the ACTA Internet chapter leaked, the actual chapter itself has now leaked. First covered by PC World, the new leak fully confirms the earlier reports and mirrors the language found in the EU memo. This is the chapter that required non-disclosure agreements last fall.

The contents are not particulary surprising given the earlier leaks, but there are three crucial elements: notice-and-takedown, anti-circumvention rules, and ISP liability/three strikes.

Why do we have to be convicted by a private company like the copyright mafia. An aleged infraction is enough to get you on the road to disconnection of your Internet, without even having to go to court for your supposed crime.

WiFi hotspots will have to be by password only, to get your full name, in case someone from the copyright mafia 'alleges' that you downloaded some copyrighted content via their WiFi service.

The funny part about this ACTA type stuff, is the mafia is somehow presenting that only the alleged file sharer in the home will lose Internet access. Meanwhile the rest of the family will still be able to use the Internet. But thats not how Internet dis-connections work. So if someone hacks into your wireless router, well you may lose your Internet by only the accusation by the copyright mafia.

Courts are so expensive, so why bother using them and just have the copyright mafia's Government officials make illegal laws and illegal rules to avoid the courts.

Canadian recording industry pirates artists

2009-12-08T09:07:00.000-08:00

Canadian recording industry pirates Artists

So you know all those compilation albums that the recording industry puts out? Well the artists are not being properly paid for them and proper permission is not being given by the Artists for the compilations that the music is being put on.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/12/artists-lawsuit-major-record-labels-are-the-real-pirates.ars

Artists' lawsuit: major record labels are the real pirates

.........Between $50 million and $6 billion may be owed to musicians and artists in Canada, but not from your run-of-the-mill file sharers. The Canadian recording industry itself is being accused of massive copyright infringement, and the list of miffed artists just keeps getting longer.

Story continues............

January 11 2011 update:
http://torrentfreak.com/record-labels-to-pay-45-million-for-pirating-artists-music-110110/

$45 million settlement to artists.
But Music industry can still pirate the Artists, even after the settlement?

ACTA

2009-11-24T10:41:00.000-08:00

ACTA.
Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement

We don't want it, since it bypasses our right to access the courts and it also violates our rights to privacy.
It also allows a private company(Copyright Mafia) to get a users name details from their ISP from just a assumption of guilt, without hard evidence of a crime. And thats illegal. No warrants needed(also illegal). Remember that an IP address can not convict, since people can spoof it or hack into someones wireless connection to use it. And some ISP are in error on who had an IP at the time of the infraction, due to system clocks being set wrong.

It has been negotiated in secret by various countries including Canada and the United States.
If people are aware of what the act is made of, people would not allow it to come into effect.
3 Strikes and you are disconnected from the Internet(ISP), from just an 'accusation'. And thats illegal. Courts would not allow that, but no courts involved.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Counterfeiting_Trade_Agreement

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20091123/1541197061.shtml

Oh, look. European Union says that people have rights. As well as the right to court for any accusations of committing a crime.
http://torrentfreak.com/european-commission-no-3-strikes-without-judicial-oversight-091124/
European Commission: No 3 Strikes Without Judicial Oversight

Story continues......

Copyright lobby implements user censorship in England

2009-11-21T15:25:00.000-08:00

Copyright lobby implements user censorship in England.

So whats with the title, you say?
In the eternal battle against the CopyRight Mafia. But England has decided to ignore the court system and kick users offline for file sharing infringement. And no real, court admissible evidence needed, since no courts are involved. Which makes all the new rules ILLEGAL.
It does not matter if someone hacked into your wireless connection to do the infringement.
It does not even matter if it was not your IP address at the time of the infringement.
It does not matter if the government starts to snoop into the traffic that you are doing on your Internet connection. Well, to ensure that you are not infringing.
The police in Canada want access to your sign up information for your ISP. Name, email address, as well as store your Internet data. Including your VOIP and emails. It is based on the French system of 'Guilty until proved innocent'.

Boy oh boy. Will this be awesome when it comes to Canada.
Ummm. Where is the privacy Minister again? http://www.priv.gc.ca/contactUs/index_e.cfm
Ummm. Where are our Constitutional Rights and Freedoms of Communication. And to be ensured access to the courts for any accusation of a crime? And in the courts, the plaintiff would have to prove 'who' did the filesharing. And not just an instant conviction from a IP, that anyone could of had access to.
And no instant warrants to search your house either. Since someone could of parked in the street to hack and use your wireless connection.
And with Spyware going to be made legal in Canada, you can get your system full of all sorts of crapware that takes over your computer and causes crimes on the Internet, since anti-spywares and anti-virus will be illegal under the new CopyRight Mafia reign of terror.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8366255.stm

The government has laid out its plans to deal with illegal file-sharers as part of its Digital Economy Bill, outlined in the Queen's Speech.

It includes the power to disconnect persistent pirates.

But its broadband tax is not mentioned and will be launched as part of the Finance Bill, due next year.

Other elements of the bill include a shake-up of the radio spectrum and a classification system for video games.

The bill will, according to the government, "ensure communications infrastructure that is fit for the digital age, supports future economic growth, delivers competitive communications and enhances public service broadcasting".

The plans for tackling illegal file-sharing, detailed earlier this year, will be a two-stage process. Initially the government will aim to educate consumers and, those identified as downloading illegal content, will be sent letters.

If this proves insufficient, technical measures which will include the powers to disconnect persistent pirates, will be introduced in the spring of 2011.

Chief executive of music industry body the BPI, Geoff Taylor, welcomed the bill.

"It is good news for fans of British music that government is now introducing legislation to tackle illegal downloading. The creative sector in the UK needs new measures implemented urgently that address this problem for now and the future if the UK is to lead Europe in giving consumers innovative and high quality digital entertainment," he said.

But not everyone believes the plans are a good idea.

Lobby organization The Open Rights Group is urging people to contact their MP to oppose the plans.

Some more details at.
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/11/20/britains-new-interne.html

Meanwhile the CopyRight Mafia continues to do the same business model that is useless in the digital age.
Other forms of entertainment have adapted, but the Mafia just wants money, money, money. Oh and the Mafia will kick a few bucks back to the Artists. Just a way of thanking the Artists, for making the Copyright Mafia rich. And never mind the , ummmm, donations to some politicians.

Users Internet traffic harvesting

2009-10-29T09:39:00.000-07:00

Users Internet traffic harvesting.

A very illegal method of an ISP using Phorm or Nebuad or Front Porch, etc , to monitor users 'Private' Internet traffic, in order to impose Ad's on the users webpages(not the Ad's that came with the webpage), or to sell the users surfing information to other companies to use the information to market products to users in some form or another.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/10/29/eu_phorm/
The UK government today came a step closer to international embarrassment over its failure to act against BT and Phorm for their secret trials of mass internet snooping technology.

The European Commission said it had moved to the second stage of infringement proceedings after the trials, revealed by The Register, exposed failings in the UK's implementation of privacy laws.

BT and Phorm intercepted and profiled the web browsing of tens of thousands of broadband subscribers without their consent in trials in 2006 and 2007.

Story continues..........

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phorm

Phorm, formerly known as 121Media, is a Delaware, United States-based digital technology company known for its advertising software. Founded in 2002, the company originally distributed programs that were considered spyware, from which they made millions of dollars in revenue. It has since stopped distributing those programs after complaints from groups in the United States and Canada, and announced it was talking with several United Kingdom Internet service providers (ISPs) to deliver targeted advertising based on the websites that users visit.

The company's proposed advertising system, called Webwise, is a behavioral targeting service (similar to NebuAd or Front Porch) that uses deep packet inspection to examine pages. Phorm says the data collected will be anonymous and will not be used to identify users, and that their service would even include protection against phishing (fraudulent collection of users' personal information). Nonetheless, World Wide Web creator Sir Tim Berners-Lee and others have spoken out against Phorm for tracking users' browsing habits, and the ISP BT Group has been criticised for running secret trials of the service.

The UK Information Commissioner's Office has voiced legal concerns with Webwise as it is currently implemented, and has said it would only be legal as an "opt-in" service, not an opt-out system. The European Commission has called on the UK to protect Web users' privacy, and opened an infringement proceeding against the country in regard to ISPs' use of Phorm. Some groups, including Amazon.com and the Wikimedia Foundation (the non-profit organization that operates Wikipedia and other collaborative wiki projects), have already requested an opt-out of their websites from scans by the system.

More at Wikipedia.........

Content Neutrality

2009-10-27T10:19:00.000-07:00

Content Neutrality

http://www.convergedigest.com/DSL/lastmilearticle.asp?ID=28806&ctgy=
The American Cable Association, which represents cable network operators, is calling on the FCC to stop content providers from using wholesale arrangements to restrict consumer access to lawful content. ACA cited Disney's ESPN360.com as an example where the most powerful sports programmer denies access to content, unless a consumer subscribes to a particular broadband provider.
Story continues.........

So in Canada, when you try to go to a U.S. station's website, to see the latest shows on the web. But then up pops a notice that Canadians are banned from seeing that content, due to 'exclusive deals', that block Canadians from that content. Violating Canadians Right to 'Freedom of Communication'.
Another excuse to the blocked content is that some Canadian owns the content rights. But since the owner is cheap, the owner makes people in Canada watch the same rerun, over and over again, till the user's quit watching TV.

Internet providers rules

2009-10-22T10:27:00.000-07:00

Internet providers rules.

What this is missing is any 'Privacy' rules.
And here is Canada, we are banned from parts of the Internet, due to copyright holders in Canada. So where is this free and open Internet without borders we keep hearing about?

An excerpt.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/10/fcc-proposes-network-neutrality-rules-and-big-exemptions.ars

The draft rules are short, taking up less than two pages of text. At their heart are the four existing "Internet freedoms" that the FCC approved back in 2005:

Consumers are entitled to access the lawful Internet content of their choice
Consumers are entitled to run applications and use services of their choice, subject to the needs of law enforcement
Consumers are entitled to connect their choice of legal devices that do not harm the network
Consumers are entitled to competition among network providers, application and service providers, and content providers.

The proposed rules make the principles binding, but they also add two new items to the list: nondiscrimination and transparency.

A provider of broadband Internet access service must treat lawful content, applications, and services in a nondiscriminatory manner
A provider of broadband Internet access service must disclose such information concerning network management and other practices as is reasonably required for users and content, application, and service providers to enjoy the protections specified in this rulemaking

Legalized rootkits and spyware

2009-10-17T19:28:00.000-07:00

Legalized rootkits and spyware in Canada?

Yes, you read that right. The CopyRight Mafia wants to put Rootkits and Spyware on software and music in Canada, without the users permission.
And the Lobbyists want Scumware to be fully legal as well, which would make your Anti-Virus and Anti-Spyware and Anti-malware programs illegal.

From:
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/4464/125/

Friday October 16, 2009

As I posted earlier today, the Electronic Commerce Protection Act comes to a conclusion in committee on Monday as MPs conduct their "clause by clause" review. While I have previously written about the lobbying pressure to water down the legislation (aided and abetted by the Liberal and Bloc MPs on the committee) and the CMA's recent effort to create a huge loophole, I have not focused on a key source of the pressure. Incredibly, it has been the copyright lobby - particularly the software and music industries - that has been engaged in a full court press to make significant changes to the bill.

The copyright lobby's interest in the bill has been simmering since its introduction, with lobbyists attending the committee hearings and working with Liberal and Bloc MPs to secure changes. The two core concerns arise from fears that the bill could prevent surreptitious use of DRM and block enforcement initiatives that might involve accessing users' personal computers without their permission.

The DRM concern arises from a requirement in the bill to obtain consent before installing software programs on users' computers. This anti-spyware provision applies broadly, setting an appropriate standard of protection for computer users. Yet the copyright lobby fears it could inhibit installation of DRM-type software without full knowledge and consent. Sources say that the Liberals have introduced a motion that would take these practices outside of the bill. In its place, they would define computer program as, among other things, "a program that has as its primary function...inducing a user to install software by intentionally misrepresenting that installing that software is necessary to safeguard security or privacy or to open or play content of a computer program." This sets such a high bar - primary function, intentional mispresentation - that music and software industry can plausibly argue that surreptitious DRM installations fall outside of C-27.

Even more troubling are proposed changes that would allow copyright owners to secretly access information on users' computers.

PIPEDA currently features a series of exceptions to the standard requirements for obtaining consent for the collection of personal information (found in Section 7). Bill C-27 includes a provision that bars those exceptions in cases involving computer harvesting of email addresses and the "collection of personal information through any means of telecommunication, if the collection is made by accessing a computer system or causing a computer system to be accessed without authorization." In other words, email harvesting and spyware would not be permitted and would not qualify for the PIPEDA exceptions found in Section 7.

The copyright lobby is deeply concerned that this change will block attempts to track possible infringement through electronic means. The Section 7(1)(b) exception in PIPEDA currently states that collecting personal information without consent or knowledge of the individual is permitted if it is reasonable to expect that the collection "would compromise the availability or accuracy of the information" and the collection is "related to investigating a breach of an agreement or a contravention of the laws of Canada."

One can well imagine how this exception could be used for investigations targeting the violation of a user agreement or alleged copyright infringement. With the changes in C-27, the exception would no longer apply to harvesting email addresses or to accessing personal information on computers without authorization. For the copyright lobby, this would block investigations that involve capturing user information on computers without knowledge or consent. In response, sources advise that the Liberals have tabled a motion that would exclude Section 7(1)(b) from C-27 - effectively restoring the exception in these circumstances.

On top of these provisions, sources say the Liberals have also tabled motions to extend the exemptions for telecom providers. The bill currently includes an exemption for telecom providers where they act as intermediaries in the transmission of a spam message (Section 6(6) of the bill). This obviously makes sense as telecom providers should not be treated as the message sender when they are merely the messenger. Yet there is a proposed motion that would also create an exception for telecom providers to the requirement to obtain express consent before users install programs on their computers. It states that the section does not apply to telecom providers providing a telecom service, which is defined to include:

"providing computer security, user account management, routing and transmission of messages, diagnostics, technical support, repair, network management, network maintenance, authorized updates of software or system firmware, authorized remote system management, and detection or prevention of the unauthorized, fraudulent or illegal use of a network, service, or computer software, including scanning for and removing computer programs"

These proposed changes are simply outrageous and it is disappointing that the Liberals have brought forward motions on behalf of the lobby in this manner. With the hearing on Monday, it is critical for Canadians to speak out - yet again - to ensure that C-27 does not leave the door open to private surreptitious surveillance. Write to Industry Minister Tony Clement, your MP, or the members of the Industry Committee today asking them to reject these changes. The members of the committee include:

No 100% high speed Internet coverage in Canada

2009-10-08T16:33:00.000-07:00

No 100% high speed Internet coverage in Canada.

Speeds in some areas are dead slow from the providers not spending enough on their Internet backbones.
Speeds in other areas are slow due to heavy throttling of traffic flows.
Some providers even say one number for your maximum speeds and then they throttle you back to less than half those speeds.
Satellite as 100% coverage???? Can you afford the install? Can you afford the higher monthly plans? Can you put up with 1000ms ping times?(as opposed to 40ms ping times). Can you put up with the slowdowns during the evenings in some areas? Maybe satellite coverage in a few years will be worthwhile, but not so much with the current offerings.

And lets not forget about the ISP's who hack your DNS, to be able to serve you Ad's on your webpages. Once again, Hackers go to jail when they modify your DNS, so why not the ISP's?

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/blogs/globe-on-technology/the-state-of-canadas-broadband-terrific-or-terrible/article1317269/
An excerpt...
Now another study has come along. The Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford released an analysis based on some 24-million broadband speed test records. The survey concludes that Canada is 17th in the world for broadband leadership, a category that combines broadband speeds and access. The survey puts Canada 30th or 31st for upload speed, download speed and broadband quality. Globally, the study says Japan and South Korea are among the world leaders.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9898118-7.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20
200Kbps speeds are no longer considered "broadband." Until this point, the FCC has considered any service that produces 200Kbps speeds in the upload or download direction to be "high speed." With Wednesday's vote, that methodology is no more. Now, 768Kbps, which is the entry-level speed offered by major DSL providers like Verizon, will be considered the low end of "basic broadband," a range that extends to under 1.5Mbps.

Dissolve the CRTC Petition site

2009-09-10T15:12:00.000-07:00

Dissolve the CRTC Petition site

Interesting site.
The people who work for the CRTC may have skill's, but Who's interests are they upholding? The consumers or big business?

http://dissolvethecrtc.ca/

Dear Minister of Industry,

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) was created for the purpose of ensuring broadcasting and telecommunications systems serve the Canadian public and ensure that Canadians have a wide variety of options to create and view works of media or communicate across the country and the entire world.

We, the undersigned, believe that the CRTC has become a burden on the Canadian public and are failing to perform their duties in the interest of the Canadian public and that of a fair and unbiased telecom policy.

http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Bell-Canada-Creates-Canadian-CounterMovement-104394

Oh and Net-Neutrality please.
An open Internet without filters.
And without DNS hacking by the ISP.
And no Internet tax to be paid to greedy Recording Industry Executives who's goal in life is to become rich, via giving Artists a fraction of what the Artist is due for their work. How much money is an Artist given for each album or Single?

Government Internet Filters

2009-09-09T20:14:00.000-07:00

Government Internet Filters.

Some Fascist Governments around the world are creating Internet Blacklists for their citizens.
So whats this mean and whats it for?
Governments use the excuse of blocking 'graphic illegal content'. You know the kind I mean. The stuff that gets someone branded for life and put in jail for a few months and then the convict gets released to live under a bridge, since there is no residence far enough away from schools and day cares.
Or maybe there is a picture of your family at the picnic. It has happened and the site got blocked. The filter is not very smart. And it is very hard to contest the blockage.
Some sites get blocked via the amount of pink skin showing. Since it must be some type of nudity.

But Governments decide that these Blacklists content are too be 'confidential' and keep the sites that are blacklisted away from the public. But innocent sites get banned also. Like video game sites and sites that are critical of Government and their secrecy against the citizens. Even a site that shares a IP, With a BAD site, on a Web Host can get blocked.

'Freedom of Communication' is a right and Government can not just take it away, via a 'Safety' initiative.

China blocks many sites that oppose Government. And China even puts Citizens in jail for being critical of Government. Some people just disappear for ever.

Australia is trying to force a nearly 50 Million dollar(or maybe a 100 Million dollars) Internet filter on it's people, with the goal of making the Internet PG13.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_Australia

A Scandinavian country trying to filter Internet traffic from other countries that flow through it's country. Many Internet providers then rerouted their traffic to avoid the country.

Censorship is the most devastating thing to do to people and society as a whole.
Don't let it happen in Canada or the United States. Whether done by the Government or the ISP's.

http://arstechnica.com/old/content/2008/10/australias-internet-filter-could-legal-content-be-banned-too.ars

And you might say there is an 'Opt Out' function. Well not really. There is a part of the filter that will always be on. And opting out can get you investigated for the crime of 'opting out'.

There is software that you can put on your system to block Web content that is over PG13. Beware of some of them, as they will send out your personal surfing information to it's servers to be sold to the highest bidder(advertisers).
China tried to Mandate a personal computer software filter to go with the 'Great Firewall of China' ISP software. That has actually failed before it was launched. Even the software could call home to report on you. The software was also reported to possibly have stolen code of a companies own filter software. And there also was a very large security risk in the software that could allow a hacker to gain control over millions of Chinese computers.

If you want to have the Internet filtered? Do it on your own machine and quit trying to tell the rest of the world what to do.
There is lots of crap on the Internet, but for the most part, no one see's it. Well except for the law enforcement agents who shut down the Host Server of the site, instead of making it a goal to always take down the sites creator. Otherwise the sites creator just moves to a different host, again and again.

update 17

2009-09-07T17:59:00.000-07:00

update 17.

Just in case the CRTC is open to seeing the failings in an Internet tax.

There are many sites out there, that point out how a failed business model like the Music Industry, will try to bleed money out of innocent people to keep the Industry big shots in their lap of luxury.
Oh but the money goes to deserving artists... Kind of... Artists get very little of the money from their bad contracts with the recording Industry. Young bands are lured into a "take it or leave" contract. While those that try to go independent get shut out of certain music outlets. Some independent artists are doing quite well with the "pay what you think the music is worth" system.

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1532648/music-industry-calls-filesharing-tax
Music industry calls for filesharing tax

Everyone will have to pay them

By Nick Farrell

Monday, 7 September 2009, 10:45

THE LATEST CUNNING PLAN of the music industry is to get the government to bring in a tax to pay what it claims to have lost to 'pirates'.

Story continues on the site..........

Lets see. I don't file Share, so why should I or many others have to pay a tax to some greedy organization? A tax on a non-existent product purchase is illegal, many would say. If we were to buy 1 gallon of milk and then get taxed for a $600 sofa, that would not be legal.

How about the CRTC in all it's glory, find out just how much tax money is coming in on current taxes and then see what money actually makes it back to "the artists, who live off of peoples taxes". Can I live off of peoples taxes as well? I can make some great Canadian content of me blowing horn type noise's through my hands... Insert sarcasm icon here.....
Artists may only get about 5% to10% of the tax money. So where o where is the rest of the money going to?
Hey look with some simple math, you too can see where all that tax money is going to.
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090914/1830116188.shtml

Another news story from
http://torrentfreak.com/canadians-caught-as-copyright-consultation-nears-conclusion-090908/

To put the story short. Canadians are about to get shaft from the Recording Industry via our oh so bendable Canadian Government.
Just like in the States. Town hall meetings are packed, on purpose, with the Recording Industry and not us regular people.
We are all just waiting for our Internet bills to come with an attached 10 dollar surcharge to be paid to the recording industry and maybe a few bucks will make it into politicians pockets, Oh and maybe they will kick in a few bucks for the Artists, that the illegal tax is supposed to be for.
Illegal tax?? Well do you file share copyrighted music and videos? NO! Well then you are having a crime committed against you. It will even be a crime to crack your purchased 'Digital Rights Management' in the music, so you can keep the music for life. Because if the musics server goes down that verifies that you own the copy of music, Well you just lost your paid for product. But you can buy it again and again and again.

Fair use is supposed to allow you to make a backup copy of your purchased music and movies. Well not for long.
And soon your DVR(digital video recorder) may be deemed illegal. As it makes a copy of a TV program to watch later in the month. Or the other possibility is that your DVR will automatically erase the show after a one week period. It's happening already.

update 16

2009-07-30T11:20:00.000-07:00

update 16

Telus Mobility(cell phones) changes it's terms of contract.

http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,22787909

Arbitration is to be a third party with no interest in either client. But, you do have the right to a lawyer, in case the Arbitrator is flawed, and no contract can suppress that.

You Are allowed access to any class-action lawsuit. And no contract can suppress that fact.

DPI is an invasion of privacy, and soon the Police will have access to all your electronic data.

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/Technology/Feds+give+cops+Internet+snooping+powers/1706191/story.html
Canadian Feds to give police full powers to snoop at all your electronic data. And some data can be seen without a warrant. Which is actually illegal, but what you don't know can hurt you that much better.

update 15

2009-07-29T20:07:00.000-07:00

update 15

WOW. Shaw Cable/Internet/VOIP has sunk to new low levels. The big guy steps on the new guy.
And it will be interesting if customers or potential customers of Shaw in other areas jam the phone lines looking to get the same deal as well.

http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Shaw-Drops-Pricing-Bomb-To-Destroy-Local-Fiber-ISP-103670

Canadian cable operator Shaw has dropped a bit of a pricing bomb on consumers and competitors in Vancouver. The operator is offering some unheard of deals, including 15Mbps service with a 100GB cap for $9.95 ($9.13 US), 200 channels of TV service (with 25 high-definition channels) for $9.95, or digital phone service with free installation, also for $9.95 a month. The catch? You have to live in an area served by Novus Entertainment, a Canadian fiber to the home operator that's currently wiring Vancouver apartment buildings..........

update 14

2009-07-24T12:06:00.000-07:00

update 14

Google once again violates Net Neutrality.

Google is now redirecting the news link on the Google search page to Canadas Google version. The Canadian tech stories are crap too.
When someone types in a .com page, they expect to go to that page and not be redirected to another page(.ca).

For U.S. Google search page.
http://www.google.com/webhp

For Google news pages, without the crappy Canadian version of tech news stories.
http://news.google.com/news?ned=us

Stop the Internet censorship Google. You wave the flag of Net Neutrality and then you keep pulling redirects on people.

Yahoo is also guilty in this redirect B.S.

update 13

2009-07-14T19:37:00.001-07:00

update 13

Most Canadians don't know what Internet traffic shaping is(traffic management) or how it's done and what protocols are almost banned to dialup speed and at what times.

http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/showthread.php?s=1c14338c2ed4a01d77f60a5d4a211cd0&p=954748#post954748

update 12

2009-07-06T16:25:00.000-07:00

update 12

CRTC wanting to tax us poor television watchers more, to support crappy local programming.
I, for one, soon will be getting rid of my television signal provider. I can't afford any more censorship based taxes. If a station can not operate in a profit margin? Close the doors and go sell flowers on the street corner.
This tax is on top of other proposed taxes to also subsidize Canadian television stations programming that cable/satellite companies sell on to viewers, without paying money to the stations. About 50 cents per channel was noted. Can we soon pick out only stations that we want? Otherwise it's time to pull the plug on TV.

http://www.digitalhome.ca/content/view/3860/279/
The CRTC today announced that it will tax cable and satellite companies 1.5% of their gross revenues(or more) in the upcoming broadcast year in order to fund its recently created Local Programming Improvement Fund (LIPF)............................

update 11

2009-06-29T09:10:00.000-07:00

update 11

Rogers Cable Internet continues to 'Hack' consumers Internet connections, by injecting content such as ad's and notices for the user.
Hackers go to jail for this type of 'Crime'. So why not Rogers?

http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/4083/125/

http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Consumer-Groups-Want-Deep-Packet-Inspection-Hearings-103168

And lets not forget that the Police of Canada want free access to all your 'Private' Internet data, just in case you might do something criminal. And that includes 'all' your Internet data, Like emails, VOIP, Websites visited, files downloaded, etc.
And no stinking Warrants needed.
Fascism rules the Roost in Canada.

A quote from Benjamin Franklin:::
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.

update 10

2009-06-24T09:30:00.000-07:00

update 10.

So you are surfing video's/TV shows on the Internet. You see a video that looks good. You click on it. And up pops a warning that "This video is not allowed to be viewed from your Country, due to copyright restrictions".

Shouldn't the Canadian copyright holders be only entitled to actual TV channels as the format of redistribution copyright? Or have they magically gotten a worldwide media copyright to be able to censor other countries videos?
The Internet is supposed to be a free domain. A place where you can experience the World. Does this mean if you watch a U.S. channel with Rabbit Ears, that you are violating some rich Canadians copyright? And you now owe him 50 cents? You only wanted to see the original video without being tortured by mindless and much repeated Canadian commercials. Or else the video is not available on any Canadian website.
And you know that your 'Freedom of Communication' is being violated 100%. But where o where is the part of the Government that is supposed to enforce our Constitutional Rights? Does not exist...... Especially with Supreme court Judges being possibly threatened with Demotion for not ruling in favor of Un-Constitutional rules..... Well you can't just fire a Judge. That would be too obvious. So up comes an announcement of family or health matters as the reason the Judge has to step down.

Keep it up Canada. Keep turning inward. Keep using Heritage protection as your excuse to suppress the people of this country(for the mega profits of only a few Canadians).

update 9

2009-06-22T08:49:00.000-07:00

update 9

Canada to allow police to monitor Canadians Internet connections. ISP's will also be required to store users Emails, VOIP, webpage queries, etc. Just in case the users might anger the Fascist overlords.

http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Canada-Cooks-Up-Their-Own-Patriot-Act-103066
Canada Cooks Up Their Own Patriot Act
New bills drastically reshape Canada's surveillance powers...
09:15AM Monday Jun 22 2009 by Karl Bode
tags: legal · business · privacy

Apparently feeling envious of the surveillance powers of their neighbors to the south, Canadian lawmakers have proposed two radical new surveillance bills that shares more than a few similarities to the USA Patriot Act. The two new proposals, if passed, would force ISPs to implement broad new snooping technologies, and require they hand over customer name, address, IP address, and email address information upon request without court oversight. As in the States, concerns about modernizing telecom surveillance laws run smack into privacy advocates and those concerned about government abuse. The viewable bills: C-46 and C-47.

update 8

2009-06-15T14:08:00.001-07:00

update 8.

The Internet is slowly being declared a 'Human Right'. Must be to do with that 'Freedom of Communication' thing, that government keeps trying to suppress.
http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article6478542.ece
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,525993,00.html
Les sages – the wise men – as the council is known, took the teeth out of the law. They ruled that "free access to public communication services online" is a right laid down in the Declaration of Human Rights, which is in the preamble to the French constitution. It also said the law breached privacy by enabling the HADOPI agency to track people's internet activity.

It agreed that the law reached the separation of powers because if gave an administrative authority power to impose justice. And to boot, it violated the presumption of innocence because alleged pirates would be cut off without being able to defend themselves, the council said

The more knowledge you gain, the more the government or police get nervous of a future uprising, to protect those new found rights.
Maybe next we could have true network neutrality in Canada. Then we could go to any world website to see anything on that website without being given messages of the content being censored to Canadian users.

And in other news.

You can not convict a user of file sharing on just an IP address. Even though the CopyRight Mafia only needs to 'accuse' a user of File Sharing in order to make money without any court needed.
http://torrentfreak.com/court-rules-that-ip-address-alone-insufficient-to-identify-infringer-090615/
Oh, you may wonder why did I not call it Illegal file Sharing? I could of easily called it copyright Infringing File Sharing, But Who's committing the 'Major crime' here? A user who may download a few songs or the CopyRight Mafia who will hit up the user for thousands of dollars for that same few songs that cost only $5.00 online at a music store. Maybe the user should of bought those songs in the first place. Or maybe if the user had violated copyright, maybe the CopyRight Mafia, should of gone to the police and had them press charges against the user. But then again, you can't convict a person based on just an IP address. You can't even get a search warrant based on just an IP address, to find the computer with the copy right infringing files to use as evidence in court. Even though it happens, but with all these wireless routers around, how does anyone know 'where' the real user on that IP is?

update 7

2009-05-31T15:52:00.000-07:00

update 7

Torrent Freak, the Free voice of the Internet brings us another awesome piece of news.

Seems that it is indeed illegal to conduct bag searches at Canadian movie theaters($10,000 illegal). Now as the Judge says, a sign has to be up, promoting that bag searches are done.... But..... Movie theater staff can not put their sticky little hands in people bags/purses/person. It is a visual search only. Open the bag and show your innocence. Hmmmm. Seems having to prove your innocence, without evidence of a crime, is against the Constitutions 'Right of Innocence'.
But there is an interesting thing with some movie theaters that have 'no outside food' signs. Some say any food consumed on the premises, must be bought on the premises. So if you have outside food and do not eat it, you are not guilty of anything. If you are a diabetic and have your own special snacks? No crime.

Maybe your camera phone to be confiscated next. But don't let them take your phone. People have found that their phones have been 'harvested' of any information in them. Which is a crime.
And theaters that 'jam' cell phone signals can be construed as a violation of your 'right to communication', as long as that communication does not interfere with other patrons viewing pleasures.

http://torrentfreak.com/search-for-movie-piracy-equipment-was-invasion-of-privacy-090531/

Search For Movie Piracy Equipment Was Invasion of Privacy

Written by enigmax on May 31, 2009

A Canadian court has ordered a cinema to pay $10,000 damages after staff searched a family’s bags looking for camming equipment, but ended up breaching their privacy. The search by staff also turned up something embarrassing in older daughter’s bag. Mom had no idea. Not impressed.

A little while ago we reported on a case in the UK where a woman went to the cinema and claimed she was “treated like a criminal.” Searching for movie camming equipment, staff instead found some candy. Because she wouldn’t hand it over, they called security to deal with her and the whole thing descended into farce.

Well, it seems the Canadians have been at it too.

These days cinemas believe that all paying movie-goers are potential Scene pirates, so when a woman took her two daughters to Cinema Guzzo in Montreal to watch Shrek the Third in 2007, they were searched for camming kit. Big trouble ensued.

Finding a stash of illicit smuggled snacks, staff ordered them returned to their vehicle, to be locked securely away so it would be impossible to consume them while watching the movie. The trio complied.

The search of the bags continued and then, jackpot! Although staff didn’t find the latest DV camera, they did find some birth control pills in the older daughter’s bag, an event that didn’t go unnoticed by her mother. Until this point, she had absolutely no idea her child took them. Understandably angry, the mother sued the cinema for invasion of privacy, demanding $60,000 CAD.

Last week a judge ruled that the staff did indeed breach the privacy of the family and ordered the cinema to pay $10,000 CAD ($9,000 USD). Signs at the point of ticket purchase must clearly state that there is a bag search in place and staff must not put their hands inside people’s bags. Cinema Guzzo failed on both counts, not to mention causing sensitive problems within a family and guaranteeing that they never, ever come back as customers. Fail all round then.

update 6

2009-05-30T15:10:00.000-07:00

update 6

StarChoice(now called ShawDirect), exercises CENSORSHIP and blocks Fox News Channel, due to comments about Canada's military in Afghanistan. And Canada should get out of someone elses war.
So the channel is now Opt-In for those that still want the biased news channel. It is not Shaw Directs choice to censor a TV station in this way. That is up to the court system.

Heres a forum with some views on it.
http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/showthread.php?t=106520

Heres a thread that states things very simply. It's up to the user to block certain channels from view and not the Television signal providers choice.
http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/showpost.php?s=75b77301b6295f428f0bac95ffa26dba&p=924384&postcount=6

There are lots of Shaw Direct Porn stations that are not blocked from view, especially the titles. But those don't get blocked. Even the Gay stations free previews were censored after two days. Oh but the softcore porn stations programming was temporarily censored and then returned after the notice on how to block the channel. Censorship is a bad thing. And illegal as well.

I don't know if this applies, since it for for Telus and Internet(which the Government refuses to say they control).
http://opennet.net/bulletins/010/
This poses questions as to whether the Canadian
Telecommunications Act has been followed to the letter. Section 36
of the Act states that, without the approval of the Canadian Radio-
Television and Telecommunications Commission, a "Canadian carrier
shall not control the content or influence the meaning or purpose of
telecommunications carried by it for the public," and Section 27(2) of
the Act prohibits a Canadian character, in providing a
telecommunications service, from "unjustly discriminat[ing] or
giv[ing] an undue or unreasonable preference toward any person,
including itself, or subject[ing] any person to an undue or
unreasonable disadvantage

EDIT july 15 2009 . Well FoxNews is on a free preview. Did one of you tell them they were breaking the law?

Update 5

2009-05-27T19:09:00.000-07:00

Update 5.

Canadians are stupid. Yes thats right. They hear something and without checking the source, they run with it in a widespread panic. What freaking puppets we are.

BSA's Canadian Piracy Numbers Based On Hunches, Not Actual Surveys

from the bogus-stats-as-always dept

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090527/1125035034.shtml

------------------------------------------------------------------

Support the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association.
http://www.bccla.org

Update 4

2009-04-24T09:01:00.000-07:00

Update 4.
Deep Packet Inspection by your ISP.

(note story error..... DPI is being used to throttle Internet traffic in all of North America). Even Rogers Internet is using it to serve ad type material. Whether that may be a rerouted search engine request or system messages.
May 1 2009 Rogers hacking from address IP of 64.71.251.10 as reported by frustrated Rogers Internet users.

http://www.techworld.com/security/news/index.cfm?newsID=114856&pagtype=all
Deep packet inspection could be outlawed in US.

While DPI can be used to filter spam and identify criminals, the technology raises serious privacy concerns, Boucher said. "Its privacy-intrusion potential is nothing short of frightening," he added. "The thought that a network operator could track a user's every move on the Internet, record the details of every search and read every email ... is alarming."

"In our view, deep packet inspection is really no different than postal employees opening envelopes and reading letters inside,"

update 3

2009-02-28T19:02:00.000-08:00

update 3

http://torrentfreak.com/riaa-sued-for-fraud-abuse-and-legal-sham-090301/

RIAA Sued for Fraud, Abuse and Legal Sham

It’s been a rough week for the RIAA as massive layoffs are about to cost many employees their job. On top of that, the anti-piracy outfit is being sued for abusing the legal system for its war on piracy, civil conspiracy, deceptive trade practices, trespassing and computer fraud.

update 2

2009-02-27T12:26:00.000-08:00

update 2

CopyRight Mafia wants 3 strikes policy in Canada. Noting that the policy does not use our legal court system. If a member of the Copyright Mafia accuses you of Infringement, your connection is terminated in 1, 2, 3 easy steps. The third time is a ban from an Internet connection. All without a federal court Judge to rule over it. Since what the CopyRight Mafia is doing is illegal. You can not accuse someone of an illegal act and then by-pass the courts and punish that person on just an accusation. Doesn't Canada have some type of Gang Law against that type of activity?
The Insurance Corporation of BC(ICBC) accuses and fines people of being dangerous drivers without a Judges ruling. Thats also illegal.

http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/3706/125/

update 1

2009-02-26T15:33:00.000-08:00

update 1

http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/The-CRTC-Getting-An-Earful-101082

The CRTC Getting An Earful.

Government of British Columbia in favor of network neutrality.......

Google Against Net Neutrality

2009-01-18T20:10:00.000-08:00

Google Against Net Neutrality

Another victim of Googles censorship of it's U.S. websites to those outside of the United States is Youtube.com .
It is now country code specific. Meaning that you get a website that was not the one that you wanted. Re-directs like this are censorship. Some may argue that the content is the same. But it isn't.

To get to google.com, you type in
http://www.google.com/webhp

Hopefully Google will add a code to get to the real YouTube.com and not some knockoff site.
Underneath "Broadcast Yourself" is an option to get YouTube.com, but it is cookie based, so therefor is useless to those of use security minded people who delete all cookies.

Shame on you Google for censoring the Web in the name of country specific sites.

----------------------------------------------------

Then there is Yahoo.com and the MyYahoo pages.. Why is there French content, when the user is viewing the site in U.S. English?
More censorship................

The Great Firewall of Australia

2008-12-31T13:07:00.000-08:00

The Great Firewall of Australia.

To us this is...
Illegal? Yes.
Censorship? Yes.
Secret Government policy's without public representation? Yes.
Fascism? Yes.
Any chance it could happen in Canada? Possibly. On a small scale to start. Like what is happening now, via Canadian TV networks blocking U.S. websites(and TV channels), via special contracts.

http://www.inquisitr.com/12909/great-firewall-of-australia-whats-not-mentioned-makes-it-even-more-scary/

To sum it up..... Australians are screwed. Censorship via 'Blacklists' that are not for the public to see. All users Internet activity monitored for content(and some of it actual illegal content). England also monitors content. Why such a need to 'spy' on the public without legal warrants? Sweden was going to(and may still) monitor all Internet content in it's borders. Only problem was Sweden was also going to monitor all Internet traffic 'just passing through' it's country from other countries. So Sweden almost lost the privilege to be on the World Wide Web.
The ISP's are fighting this censorship, but since the Government there is very dumb. And having spent hundreds of millions of dollars to get to 'almost' implementing it.... Yes.... Just setting it up.... The Government does not want to be embarrassed for spending all that money and not implementing the filters.

The Great Firewall of Canada watches in anticipation..........

Freedom of Communication is a Right.
Not just an option, as Government and Police would have you believe.

3 strikes law

2008-12-13T23:28:00.000-08:00

3 strikes law.

Could a 3 strikes for copyright infringement on your Internet connection come to Canada?
Quite possibly.
The best part is no court needed. You will be automatically judged guilty by the Recording Industry without court approved evidence or even a court trial with an actual Judge.
How will the Recording Industry find you?
Well simply by monitoring all your Internet communications citizen.

People scam other people on the Internet daily. Yet where is the Government in this regard?

Thank you President Obama for your openness to show corruption of our legal systems in North America. U.S.A. and Canada.

http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/12/mpaa-obama

December 11th, 2008

MPAA Asks Obama for More Copyright Surveillance of the Internet

Legislative Analysis by Tim Jones

As part of their commitment to transparent and open government, the Obama Transition Team is posting the lobbying agendas of the groups it meets with for public review and comment. One of the more interesting documents to be found there is the Motion Picture Association of America's "international trade" agenda.

Some of the MPAA's agenda is reasonable, such as cracking down on commercial optical disc piracy. But much of it, if adopted, would result in a substantially less free and safe internet, at little or no actual benefit to the artists and workers the MPAA claims to represent.

Of course, this may not be immediately clear when reading the document, since it's all couched in DC lobbyist-speak. Here, then, is a guide to understanding what's really being talked about.

First:

"Achieving inter-industry cooperation in the fight against online piracy, including through automated detection and removal of infringing content is imperative to curb the theft of online content...

This kind of automated-detection technology has long been a favorite fantasy of the MPAA and affiliates. They've pushed for it on US campuses, in US states, in US trade law [PDF], and in Europe, so it's hardly surprising to see them pushing for country-wide requirements at the federal level.

The MPAA's faith in "filtering" is pure magical thinking. It presupposes invading the privacy of innocents and pirates alike by monitoring every packet on the Internet (which is bad enough when the NSA does it). And it ignores the reality of strong encryption, which will utterly defeat network filtering techniques (thus necessitating more intrusive alternatives — how about a copyright surveillance rootkit on every PC?). Sacrificing our privacy for the pipe-dreams of one industry is a bad idea.

These reasons and more were outlined by EFF in a 2005 white paper, and again last January in a memo to European lawmakers [PDF].

Next up:

"MPAA views recent efforts by the Governments of France and the United Kingdom to protect content on-line and facilitate inter-industry cooperation as useful models.

Here, the MPAA is advocating for a number of things, the most problematic of which is a "three strikes" internet termination policy. This would require ISPs to terminate customers' internet accounts upon a rights-holder's repeat allegation of copyright ingfringement. This could be done potentially without any due process or judicial review. A three-strikes policy was recently adopted by legislation in France, where all ISPs are now banned from providing blacklisted citizens with internet access for up to one year.

Because three-strikes policies do not guarantee due process or judicial oversight of whether the accusations of copyright infringement are valid, they effectively grant the content industry the ability to exile any individual they want from the internet. Lest we forget, there is a history of innocents getting caught up in these anti-piracy dragnets. (Copyfighter Cory Doctorow has wondered what would happen if the MPAA's erroneous notices were subject to a similar three-strikes law.)

Thankfully, members of the European Parliament vehemently rejected these measures, resolving that "The cut of Internet access is a disproportionate measure regarding the objectives. It is a sanction with powerful effects, which could have profound repercussions in a society where access to the Internet is an imperative right for social inclusion." Let's hope the US government's decisions on this are as wise.

EFF outlined these concerns and more in our September 2008 comments to the US Trade Representative [PDF].

And, finally:

"MPAA has identified the following countries for priority trade policy attention in 2009: Canada, China, India, Mexico, Russia and Spain.

Translation: Not satisfied with wrecking the internet for US citizens alone, the MPAA would like the US government to pressure foreign governments to adopt the same harmful measures. This is made explicit by a look at, for instance, the International Intellectual Property Association's 2008 one-sheets on Canada [PDF] and Spain [PDF]: The MPAA wants these governments to institute mandatory internet filtering and three-strikes laws. Canada is being singled out by the MPAA because of its sensible rejection of the Canadian version of the US's deeply flawed Digital Millenium Copyright Act. In Spain, the MPAA is frustrated with rulings in 2006 that failed to punish Spanish citizens sufficiently harshly for file-sharing.

This week in the San Jose Mercury News, Ed Black, CEO of the Computer & Communications Industry Association, described how adoption of the MPAA's international trade demands would deeply set back US innovation and foreign policy.

How the Obama administration will react to these demands remains to be seen. The adoption of a Creative Commons license for Change.gov content indicates that there just might at long last be a seat at the table in the White House for smart thinking on copyright issues. Hopefully the Obama Administration will prove strong enough to stand up to the MPAA's lobbying, and instead institute positive reforms of US copyright law.

If you'd like to share your thoughts on this matter with the Obama Transition Team, the MPAA's agenda is open to public review and comment on Change.gov.

CRTC Ignorant

2008-11-20T15:06:00.000-08:00

The CRTC is Ignorant in allowing Bell Internet to kill the competition of other re-sellers of DSL on the Bell DSL network.

Just how can the CRTC make such a decision based on information that shows BELL committing a crime against competition. We know that the CRTC in Canada is in the pockets of the Big Boys. Especially with decisions such as this. There is no congestion proven on the Bell network. Bell soon to launch Bell TV downloads, possibly un-throttled.... Hey Bell.. Either stop throttling the competition or stop selling bandwidth to the competition.

http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/3530/125/

For the full story....
http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/CRTC-Rules-Against-Indie-ISPs-In-Throttling-Dispute-99206

Excerts...

"Based on the evidence before us, we found that the measures employed by Bell Canada to manage its network were not discriminatory -- Bell Canada applied the same traffic-shaping practices to wholesale customers as it did to its own retail customers," said Konrad von Finckenstein, Q.C., Chairman of the CRTC.

Finckenstein appears to not understand either the definition of discriminatory, or how throttling wholesale ISPs (not just resellers) kills off Bell competition on multiple fronts. Bell's decision effectively eliminated the right of independent wholesale ISPs to offer an un-crippled connection if they're willing to pay for the bandwidth. It also gives Bell Canada's un-throttled video store an unfair advantage over Canada's more limited field of competing P2P Internet video services.

In other words, after delaying a request by concerned independent ISPs several times, they're ruling in favor of Bell Canada, and effectively offloading any additional discussion of the issue until summer. They're also supporting Bell Canada's argument that congestion made this move necessary, despite no real evidence by the Canadian incumbent. The move gives incumbent operators in Canada a blank check in their efforts to derail competition and limit consumer choice under the false specter of network congestion.

Contact the CRTC and file a complaint in any area to get through.. ..Use 'Other' on the second page of the form..
http://www.crtc.gc.ca/RapidsCCM/Register.asp?lang=E
Then send a copy to...
http://www.globaltv.com/globaltv/ontario/features/consumer_sos/index.html
And also to the Prime Minister of Canada at...
pm@pm.gc.ca

Freedom of Communication a Farce?

2008-10-30T14:19:00.000-07:00

Freedom of Communication a Farce in Canada?

Reading an article from...
http://www.digitalhome.ca/content/view/3031/279/

The article(Government) calls innocent Canadians,, that just want to see uncensored American Television,, criminals.

Now what is strange is that the Judges are 'not' upholding our rights. Why Not? Are Judges being threatened with demotion for upholding the Constitution? We have the Right of 'Freedom of Communication' and no one shall remove that right. And any Judge that gets threatened with demotion for upholding our rights must announce that threat against them to the public.. No matter what confidentiality clause the Government throws at the Judges.
To suppress information about an illegal act is to declare Martial Law on the people of Canada.

There is an old phrase from the United States.....
Give me liberty or give me death.

If the Government of Canada continues these unlawful actions. Maybe the Canadian Government should then ban all United States Content Programming off of Canadian stations. No more Primetime shows from ABC or NBC or CBS. Including all the specialty stations from the States. Even non-North American TV..... Hitler would of been proud of the Canadian Government for turning inward and purifying the Canadian Culture.... Has no one learned anything from History?????

-------------------------------------------------------------

Heres another Group that is fighting the CopyRight Mafia.

The Copyright Mafia never dared to practice their criminal ways at Harvard Law school. Too many well educated future lawyers.. So Harvard got bored and went out looking to protect people and restore how law is supposed to work.
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20081030/0203582685.shtml

Some excerpts. But simply put,, The CopyRight Mafia is acting like the Police, Judge and Jury..Lots of money exchanged hands with the Government to allow them to act like this.

Big Guns Come Out In Effort To Show RIAA's Lawsuits Are Unconstitutional

In essence, Plaintiffs are using the prosecution of Joel Tenenbaum to extort other accused infringers: the accused are told to either pay the settlement, or else be exposed to the protracted litigation and potentially astronomical damages that Joel now faces. See Milford Power Ltd. Partnership by Milford Power Associates Inc. v. New England, 918 F.Supp. 471 (D. Mass. 1996) (holding that "the essence of the tort of abuse of process is the use of process as a threat to coerce or extort some collateral advantage not properly involved in the proceeding"). The intimidation tactics are working: of the 30,000 accusations the RIAA has leveled against individuals, only a single defendant has made her case in front of a judge and jury... (that sole defendant is now awaiting a new trial).

The RIAA intimidates and steamrolls accused infringers into settling before they have their day in court and before the courts can weigh the merits of their defenses. The inherent dangers in allowing a single interest group, desperate in the face of technological change, led by a voracious, cohesive, extraordinarily well-funded and deeply experienced legal team doing battle with pro se defendants, armed with a statute written by them and lobbied and quietly passed through a compliant congress, to march defendants through the federal courts to make examples out of them should lead this Court to say "stop."

Hyperlinking is Legal.

2008-10-29T19:15:00.000-07:00

Hyperlinking is Legal.

To do with a former Green Party organizer, and his claim that anyone linking to sites that he does not approve of , constitutes calling him a bad person.

http://torrentfreak.com/p2pnet-wins-landmark-hyperlink-case-081029/

The file-sharing oriented news website, P2Pnet, has won its case against the Canadian businessman Wayne Crookes. The 'British Columbia' Supreme Court ruled that linking to defamatory material doesn’t constitute as publishing. Since the case is about linking, the outcome will have implications for all websites on the Internet, including BitTorrent sites.

So if you have a site that all you have on it is links to find information, You can not be held criminal for what information is on those sites.... Nice to see the courts upholding our rights to freedom of speech online. The public does need to be notified of things like this. Our rights have been suppressed for far too long.

But what is scary is this person is suing anybody who links. This is also called being a bully and is illegal in Canada as well. I do not know what is being said about this person, but maybe he should be going after the authors of whatever was originally written. And then he can prove that what was written is defamatory in a 'court of law' .. That also gives the author a chance for a retraction if the information they published was not correct... Some people drop lawsuits in peoples laps and then expect payment. That is how the Music Copyright Industry is operating. Pay this amount now or pay this larger amount in court(But don't tell the defendant that the plaintiffs case shows no chance of winning in an actual court).

Crookes has clearly lost this battle, as he is still involved in lawsuits with Google, Yahoo! and several weblogs including Michal Geist’s. For now things are looking good for our freedom of speech online, let’s hope it stays that way.

This case could of shut down the Internet in Canada, by outlawing search engines. So how would you find a site then??? Suppression of the media is a crime...
You could imagine getting your morning paper and some news articles have been cut-out, due to a story not being liked by the person in the story.. I seem to remember a commercial like this by the Media or Civil Liberties Associations. Your paper gets dropped on the front porch and then someone cuts out sections that they don't want you to see and then runs away to the next house...

Support the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association.
http://bccla.org/

CRTC moves to regulate the internet

2008-10-16T20:27:00.000-07:00

CRTC moves to regulate the internet.

http://www.digitalhome.ca/content/view/2972/280/

Link to the CRTC where you can enter your opposition to any more censorship of the Internet in Canada.
http://crtc.gc.ca/eng/NEWS/RELEASES/2008/r081015.htm

The Great firewall of Canada must be taken down and destroyed forever.

All the CRTC needs to regulate, is for the removal of censorship blocks put on various websites by the Canadian Television Industry. The Internet is not supposed to have borders.
And with all the Multi-Cultural B.S. that the government spews out.... We can not be Multi-Cultural without free access to other parts of the worlds websites and media.....So complain to the person in charge...The Canadian Heritage Minister... And you know who else supported Content rules?? Hitler, thats who.

And really the only thing that needs to be regulated is the 'Up To' B.S. that ISP's use to commit fraud against their users. The ISP's should be made to print the users real world speeds on the system.

A code of practice for ISP's..
http://www.ofcom.org.uk/telecoms/ioi/copbb/copbb/

And what is the definition of 'Highspeed'..
http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9898118-7.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20

200Kbps speeds are no longer considered "broadband." Until this point, the FCC has considered any service that produces 200Kbps speeds in the upload or download direction to be "high speed." With Wednesday's vote, that methodology is no more. Now, 768Kbps, which is the entry-level speed offered by major DSL providers like Verizon, will be considered the low end of "basic broadband," a range that extends to under 1.5Mbps.

'Freedom of Communication' is a right. But your government does not care about rights..

Michael Geist Internet Law Blog.
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/

Canadian content 'Rules' are illegal under the Constitutions 'Freedom of Communication'.

Secret Government Treatys

2008-09-19T10:32:00.000-07:00

Secret Government Treatys.

So you think that the Internet is not regulated in Canada?
The goal is for Copyright protection...But who really is controlling the Internet? The government? Or the Various recording industries? People are being treated as criminals, with many John or Jane Doe Subpoena's . But if the users pay a high 'Copyright' fee to the Recording industry, for protection from prosecution from the Recording Industries lawsuit..... Quotes from the Internet call this Mafia style enforcement. Pay up, without court or get bankrupted with a massive private penalty. Even though the evidence against you is sometimes so flimsy, that some Judges would deny the lawsuit against you... And buy your music if the album is worth it. Some bands put their music online with a nice request for donation if you like the music. And single music tracks being offered as well, instead of having to buy an album of crap for one good song. This business model actually works......

Big Brother is watching.
Remember that the next time a certain data traffic pattern is throttled to dead slow speeds.

http://www.eff.org/press/archives/2008/09/17

September 18th, 2008

U.S. Trade Office Withholds Documents on Secret IP Enforcement Treaty

Public Kept in the Dark About Serious Civil Liberties and Privacy Issues

Washington, D.C. - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and Public Knowledge have filed suit against the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR), demanding information about a secret intellectual property enforcement treaty that the government has put on a fast track to completion.

The United States, Canada, the European Community, Switzerland, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, Mexico, Jordan, Morocco, and the United Arab Emirates are currently negotiating the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). The full text of the treaty remains secret, but a document leaked to the public shows that ACTA could include criminal measures, increased border search powers, and encouragement for Internet service providers to cooperate with copyright holders. Despite the significant impact ACTA could have on consumers and the lack of official information available to the public, treaty proponents want a deal signed by the end of the year.

"ACTA raises serious concerns for citizens' civil liberties and privacy rights," said EFF International Policy Director Gwen Hinze. "This treaty could potentially change the way your computer is searched at the border or spark new invasive monitoring from your ISP. People need to see the full text of ACTA now, so that they can evaluate its impact on their lives and express that opinion to their political leaders. Instead, the USTR is keeping us in the dark while talks go on behind closed doors."

Because of the questions raised by ACTA, EFF and Public Knowledge filed a request under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) in June for records on the treaty and the negotiations surrounding the deal. EFF and Public Knowledge later clarified the scope of their request in July in response to concerns raised by the USTR. But the USTR still failed to provide any relevant documents.

"The lack of transparency in this process is incredibly alarming," said Public Knowledge Staff Attorney Sherwin Siy. "Whatever form ACTA eventually takes, we can be sure it will be used to justify further international agreements and laws. The agreement text needs to be made public to ensure that it doesn't encroach upon the rights of users, consumers, and citizens to access knowledge, information, and content."

Earlier this week, EFF and Public Knowledge joined more than 100 public interest organizations from around the world calling for answers about ACTA. The coalition is asking for treaty negotiators to immediately publish the draft text of the agreement, as well as pre-draft discussion papers.

For the full complaint:
http://www.eff.org/files/filenode/EFF_PK_v_USTR/USTRcomplaint.pdf

For more on ACTA:
http://www.eff.org/issues/acta/

Contacts:

Gwen Hinze
International Affairs Director
Electronic Frontier Foundation
gwen@eff.org

Art Brodsky
Communications Director
Public Knowledge
abrodsky@publicknowledge.org

Related Issues: Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement

Related Cases: EFF and Public Knowledge v. USTR

It is illegal to routinely stop people to check for evidence of criminal activity, when no criminal activity is evident.

2008-04-14T22:28:00.000-07:00

The CRTC is allowing Canadian TV stations and even some
Canadian Websites to Censor United States websites. With
Re-directs or even notices from the United States websites
of non-entry for Canadians.

It is illegal to do this activity, as the internet is
supposed to be free to all peoples and not subject
to greedy corporations.

The Canadian Television stations(like CTV) say they
own the rights to air purchased programs in Canada.
So now they are blocking some American websites completely
with re-direction to Canadian websites(not affiliated with
the United States website). The below site has
been blocked(ComedyCentral.com) and does not even
allow access to non-video, site features.
Our television access to United States stations have
been partly blocked for years and now this Blatant
Censorship.

....I hate censorship.....


The article on the early part of the censorship of
Comedy Central.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20071025.WBmingram20071025105250/WBStory/WBmingram/



This clip from an article From a while back, to do
with Telus blocking the website of striking workers.

http://www.opennetinitiative.net/bulletins/010/ONI-010-telus.pdf

And a quote from the article......

This poses questions as to whether the Canadian
Telecommunications Act has been followed to the
letter. Section 36 of the Act states that, without
the approval of the Canadian Radio-
Television and Telecommunications Commission, a
"Canadian carrier shall not control the content
or influence the meaning or purpose of
telecommunications carried by it for the public,"
and Section 27(2) of the Act prohibits a
Canadian character, in providing a
telecommunications service, from "unjustly
discriminat[ing] or giv[ing] an undue or
unreasonable preference toward any person,
including itself, or subject[ing] any person to
an undue or unreasonable disadvantageage



The CRTC says that they do not regulate the internet.
Yet they stand there and allow Canadian stations and
web-sites to blatantly commit the crime of censorship
by not stopping the actions of the TV stations
and web-sites.And then the CRTC refuses to take in
complaints against these criminals.
In 2009, the CRTC will be having hearings on
how to further censor the internet by
'legally'(not really) allowing Canadian broadcasters
to stop all foreign video,etc. content access from
being seen by Canadians on the internet. Does this
mean that even Youtube.com will be censored?
'The Great Firewall of Canada'.


So be a good Canadian and take it up the ass, to ensure
that you do not become tainted by the evil United States
ways of living.
So ordered by your Canadian Heritage Minister.
And of course the advertising revenues on Canadian TV.
$

**********************************

And lets not forget about Rogers Cable. They pioneered
many devises to censor American TV. If a Canadian
Channel had a show on at the same time as the American
channel, Rogers was allowed to over-ride the American
signal, and impose the Canadian channel on the
American channel. This was allowed for the poor
Canadian advertiser(actually Rogers) to make money
by having a forced audience to watch their poor
quality, over played commercials.

Rogers has even started to impose user messages on
users web-pages on their internet service. And
have now gone as far to over-ride a web-pages ad's
with it's own. Something that Rogers perfected on
American television specialty channels. Once again
for Rogers profit.
Lets also note that this type of 'Invasion of
Privacy' 'should' be declared illegal in an actual
court of law. Even if a machine is the only
one looking at your internet traffic data, it
still knows what you are doing to be able to
target ad's at you. Also meaning that someone
could access this data and target you personally.

Meanwhile the CRTC waves it's white cane in
the air and asks, "Did someone fart?".

What use is a Constitution with
"Freedom of Communication" ,
if we can not use it and it is not enforced.

*********************

Then there is Shaw Cable, who own controlling stock
in Star Choice Satellite TV. People have noticed
that Canadian ad's are being injected over American
commercials(Fox Spokane is one. channel 373).
Or if you live within so many Kilometers of a Canadian TV
station. That station will be allowed to over-ride
the American station.
No choice any more.

*********

CTV network is actively blocking Comedycentral.com ,
with an exclusive deal of redirecting Canada's and
Americas users to their own countries web-sites. Yes it's
illegal to censor the internet in this way. Why? Freedom
of Communication, is the reason. If I wanted to go to
CNN.com and I got re-directed to CTV.ca ? That would be
censorship. Canada's news media is biased and fails to
report on some stories. CNN Reports on a variety of
subjects, that are not constrained to one country. I read
a Canadian blog from the Maritime's, about how a student
had been assaulted by a principal, by choking. Only one
non-local paper printed the story, while no mention of
the assault in any other paper.

*****************************

An example on how Canadian government allows censorship.

From
http://www.digitalhome.ca/content/view/2485/206/

On one hand, Jim Shaw and Ted Rogers, who have become
billionaires thanks to federally legislated cable
monopolies, told the CRTC cable operators should
be subject to less regulation. On the other hand,
Ivan Fecan and Leonard Asper the CEO's of
CTV Globemedia and CanWest Globalrespectively, 
who companies earned billions thanks to
protectionistlaws forbidding U.S. programming
and commercials, argued for more regulations.



Thanks Heritage Minister and
the CRTC and Canadian Governments for censoring
our Television and Internet.

Will there also be separate bathrooms for the
people as well? Short people go here.
Ugly people go there.
People with last names starting with A through
L , can shop in this store only. People with
the last names starting with M through Z can buy
at another store, where there is limited product
and quality is not too good.
Oh and lets not forget that people are not
allowed to vote for a third political party,
unless it's a Wednesday, with the wind blowing
out of the east, while hopping on one foot and
playing the Bag Pipes.


So why even watch Television anymore?
Boycott American Stations while they are being
over-ridden by Canadian signals.
Boycott Canadian Television for censoring
American channels.

Freedom of communication is a right. Not an option.

*******

Yahoo.com , now redirecting Canadian users to a
Canadian website version of Yahoo. If people wanted
to go there, they would type in Yahoo.ca .

****

And the censorship of the web continues.
The great Firewall of Canada.
Affiliated with "The Great Firewall of China".

***********

How about this bit of information. NBC in
the United States puts old programs on the
internet for free. Canada publicizes the fact
in it's media. Guess what? Site content is
Censored in Canada... Oh look. ABC has shows on
their site. Censored to Canadians... TV Land has
old movie promos. Yet again, banned to Canadians.
Want to complain to the CRTC about it? The
CRTC does not give a damn. For you see, the
internet is not regulated in Canada. But wait
a minute.???? Why can these stations then censor
content of other countries then? When censorship,
such as this, is illegal under the constitutional
right of "Freedom of Communication".

*******

..For those Government agents reading this blog...

Canadians do not like being forced to watch
Canadian content. It is like putting someone in
a room all their life and only letting them read
one book and only letting them watch the CBC. And
No windows to look out either.
These are the same people who only get 1 week
of learning the Canadian Constitution in grade 6.
Canadian Governments keep spouting off about
Multiculturalism, yet do not allow access to
other Cultures media.

********

Illegal digital device searches.

OK, lets add about the Canadian border
guards(and maybe the police), Saying they
will search digital devices for illegal music.
Also known as copyright infringements. This is
100% illegal, even with legislation or laws.
You can not be searched without evidence of
crime. Very simple..Canadians should quit being
a bunch of useless sheep. And the government
should stop violating the Constitution. Bribes
are just sailing in to the government.
Ooop's. I mean Campaign funds...

********************************

July 24 2008.
Rogers Cable/Internet now censoring peoples DNS.
http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/showthread.php?t=89219
If you mistype a web address, with Rogers using
deep packet inspection, will redirect you
to Rogers Search engine. The redirect can
sometimes happen without an error. It causes
your VPN to your work to fail. It can censor
Microsofts search engine. It displays
a fake 404 error page. Censorship at
it finest.