GreenPirate422

Rather than copy paste it here, I'd like to fish for your comments on this. You can read the post at TorrentFreak.

Long story short, torrents are perhaps the last place people can easily find the design for a fully printable gun. No, I don't like that anybody can easily have access to a gun this way, but I do not feel it is a good idea to ban data because of "what if" scenarios.

Just as DRM only affects paying customers, the way this design has been banned only affects people who are not pirates. I am concerned, not for pirates, but for those life forms lagging behind the times who are not pirates and will ultimately end up having their rights or privileges taken away by some entity that is attempting to censor data because of how that data may be applied.

Read the article, of which I am excited to say I wrote the first half, and post your thoughts. Data must remain free! Agree or disagree?

Kim Dotcom, the innovator behind the popular file locker called Mega, is currently #2 on the Time 100 list following President Mohamed Morsi of Egypt. Dotcom has a vested interest in fighting for the same internet rights that many pirates, tech professionals and innovators recognize as being imperative to the future of the internet and economy.

Recently, the man who is currently holding the #1 position, "Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi has threatened military force against thousands of student protesters through one of the very mediums used to liberate the country in 2011: Twitter."

Vote up Kim Dotcom and help bring the discussion for internet rights to a broader audience. http://time100.time.com/2013/03/28/time-100-poll/slide/kim-dotcom/

A Green Pirate Remix

If you don't count the $100 drill I bought myself last Valentine's Day, this was a fairly inexpensive alternative to most of the tablet holders I've seen. It was also fun to remix a few common items for a new purpose. Great for supporting a Nook on your desk. Hands-free. At head level.



As you see in the above image, this stand consists of three main parts. Here are the ingredients:

1. Flexible lamp from a thrift store. $5-$6 (probably cheap or free if it's not working)
   
2. An inexpensive, simple book stand. May generally be more expensive. This was a score at Half Price Books. $4
   
3. An aluminum gutter hanger. $2
   
4. A couple of screws and bolts.

In addition to these parts you'll need access to a drill, clamp, and some safety gloves and glasses because you will produce a few aluminum shards.

You can likely figure it out on your own. Dismantle the lamp to salvage the base and flexible shaft of the stand, removing the light socket and power cord. You may need to cut the cord to remove it, but you can save this for later if you like.

Bend your gutter hanger to the appropriately shapes aluminum strip. Use the clamp and a pair of pliers if you have trouble straightening this by hand. Mark where will need to drill holes in order to attach it to the stand.

Clamp the aluminum strip and drill holes where you previously marked it. Screw a third hole through the middle where it will be mounted to the shaft.

Screw holes through the front and back of the plastic book stand where the aluminum strip is to be attached.

Piece it all together with the nuts and the bolts and the pudding!

Hold onto that cord because you may want to run it back up the shaft and modify it as a local USB charger input or something. Maybe a book light. Maybe... both! It's a really simple, effective, adjustable, desktop book or tablet stand! Sham. Fucking. WOW!

Alright, we are going for Inception now. Here's one from ITzExpress:


And here is one from Merpi Brown (Full size image):

Via Green Pirate

The title reads "Return the Statue of Liberty to France until the Patriot Act is repealed" in what may be one of the most concise petitions to have appeared on the site. The body of a new whitehouse.gov petition consists of a single sentence.



The creator of this petition, referred to on the site as S.T., says his motivation for creating this petition came when he "... was watching a video of a press conference of Joe Biden talking about intellectual property, someone commented we don't deserve the statue of liberty anymore and I agreed."

The video mention features Vice President Joe Biden introducing Victoria Espinel, U.S. Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator. Her opening statement describes workers, artists, engineers, scientists and small businesses as being concerned that they are going to lose jobs because of overseas counterfeiting. Also, the entertainment production workers and technicians, whose pension funds are at risk of being drained by piracy. Pension funds?

She outlines six broad categories for fighting against the erroneous term "intellectual property" infringement. The fallacy of this term must be pointed out here to ensure that the false assumption this plan is built on is apparent. Please take time to read this work by Dr. Richard Stallman regarding some of the problems that stem from the use of the nonsensical term "intellectual property". BTW, consider including the words "intellectual property" in any links you share to this page so that search engines will be better able to direct users to this page based on searches that include this term.

The first category is to lead by example. This can likely be taken as a request to the U.S. House of Representatives to stop downloading and sharing movies and music that are subject to copyright. Which makes sense. If you were waging an all out war on copyright infringement, you wouldn't to have 800 government pirates leading by a contrasting example, would you?

The second strategy is to be transparent, which is described as "making sure the public has good information about our policies and our actions." With this statement, Victoria Espinel gives the impression that she doesn't understand that transparency means making sure that the publis has all information about their policies, not just the good information. The whole purpose of transparency is to allow for criticism from the public when they propose terrible, costly and dangerous strategies based on an unfounded threat.

The third item is simply to improve coordination to improve efficiency and effectiveness. This is extended to the fourth which is to work with foreign governments to enforce American rights overseas. Ah, nothing quite like the old fashioned enforcement of U.S. civil law on foreign countries. Exactly the type of thing that makes the U.S. so popular with the rest of the world. Specifically, shutting down foreign websites that violate American "property" rights and prioritizing enforcement of these laws in China are mentioned. Considering that in 2011 we saw China named world's top patent filer, there is a good chance this could backfire and the world will come to learn the the U.S. has been violating China's patents all along! Who knew?

The fifth agenda under the umbrella of protecting the erroneous term called "intellectual property" is to give law enforcement more authority to invade your privacy, encourage the private sector to police the public for civil torts such as copyright infringement (see the six strikes policy) to reduce infringing "products" from entering our country through our borders and over the internet. You know, if it can enter our country over the internet, it is not a product. This is a huge assumption deserving serious consideration from recognized experts who have dedicated their lives to the development and study of the internet. It also deserves consideration of the organizations dedicated to protecting the human rights and freedoms that have been swept aside by this agenda.

That last part of this very broad endeavor attack on global freedoms is to gather better information and data to make sure their methods are effective as possible in combating theft of ideas and creativity. WTF? Did somebody steal Victoria Espinel's ideas and creativity? This must be the case because, short of physically stealing her brain, there is no way to steal her ideas or creativity. Is that really what we're waging this expensive war against? The childish presumption that pirates are going to steal our ideas and creativity? The "better data" that is to be gathered should relate to assessing the actual threat, or complete lack thereof, that piracy poses to our nation. This should then be compared to the extraordinary costs that have been allocated to fighting this phantom threat.

On the one hand, piracy has been blamed for unverified claims of lost revenue and the unverified claims of unverified jobs lost or the potential of jobs lost.

On the other hand, file-sharing pirates buy more. That is verified, increased revenue that is directly related to file-sharing. The only money lost here is the money spent to attack this source of revenue.

Another way anti-pirates are harming the economy is buy attacking innovation in the industry built on providing access to works (not properties) of art and intellect. This means that not only are actual jobs lost as budding solutions are raped by a callous anti-pirate regime, but any jobs these solutions would grow to create are being prevented. We are not only losing jobs to anti-piracy, but we are also prevented from gaining jobs and growing an industry that would improve our economy.

"To state is very bluntly and obviously, piracy hurts. It hurts our economy to the tune of billions. Some argue tens of billions of dollars in lost private sector profit and government revenue," Biden claims.

Why, yes. That is an obviously blunt statement. In so many words, the figures pertaining to the actual damage cause by piracy are unverified. It could be billions. It could be tens of billions, depending on who is arguing. Why, it has even been argued that the cost of fighting piracy is far more detrimental to our economy and human rights than any actual threat piracy may pose. Got a roach problem? Burn the fucking house down, baby!

"Counterfeits kill! Counterfeits kill!" Threats to safety are erected like scarecrow by the Vice Pres. in order to ward off any doubts against these attacks on file-sharing. Counterfeit medicine and auto parts are going to destroy us all unless we stop internet piracy! Counterfeit products are in no way related to your freedoms and right to a fair trial over a civil tort related to file-sharing. It is completely uncalled for to attack civilian rights which in no way contribute to these counterfeit problems.

Oh yeah, counterfeits also stifle creativity. Because if somebody copies you, fuck it! There goes your ability to think of something new! u4t has stolen your creativity and sold it on ebay.

Well, considering all this bullshit is being pushed based on a clearly false assumption of "intellectual property," debating anything beyond that is a waste of time. Below you may watch the video that inspired the petition to return our great symbol of liberty which now seems to be a representation of the ideals this country once lived by to the country that gave it to us. That country is France, home of HADOPI which allows those who infringe copyright online to be severely punished by having their internet service disconnected. Hopefully, all of France will lost their internet connection and they can spend their time maintaining their returned gift, the Ghost of Liberty.



The petition can be found here:
Return the Statue of Liberty to France until the Patriot Act is repealed.

Here is a video of Cory Doctorow's talk at his Decatur, Georgia stop of his tour for his new book Homeland. Video courtesy of Andrew Norton of Politics & P2P.

There is some good information in this talk about the difference between the law as it is legislated and the law as it is decided by the judicial system, which is not always what you would expect based on the written law. The story of Aaron Schwartz is told, from his jstor case to his involvement in raising awareness of SOPA.

Take a look at the video below and if you are in the Austin, TX area you can come see Cory Doctorow speak at Book People tonight, 02/22/13 7:00PM.



If you can't make that, you can find the last few stops of the Homeland tour schedule at tor.com.


- Video Embedded at GreenPirate.org

Update: Part of the speech that is missing covered how schools used student laptops to spy on internet usage of the students and their families.

More on this can be found at http://boingboing.net/2010/02/17/school-used-student.html

Having jumped into a discussion between Dr Richard Stallman and some Pirate Party leaders, it came to a point in the discussion where examining this particular license seemed appropriate. So here it is, hopefully with more responses from Pirate Party International affiliates and RMS to follow. If you would like to read previous posts by others, follow future discussions until the end of February or even leave your own response, you may do so at the PPI General Mailing List archive. If you are reading this GPL WordPress blog and don't recognize the name Richard Stallman, minimal research will probably show you that his work is already a part of your life.

---

Is it ever appropriate for works of opinion and art be limited to a no derivative (ND) licenses?

Thank you, Richard, for the helpful responses and consideration. While I have the opportunity, thanks for FSF and GPL as well! Thanks to everyone here for taking a moment to go back to basics.

Please consider that these questions and observations are motivated by an effort to understand why RMS, who has expressed a wish to preserve his message, has chosen this license. It is also an attempt to really clarify what limits are still imposed by such licensing, who they are imposed upon and whether it is to be considered an actual imposition at all. ( "Imposition" Def. 1b http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/imposition )

/* The freedom to use works as defined by http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/3.0/us/ */

########## Questions! Questions Everywhere! ##########
Under this license you are free to share and free to make commercial use of work, yet the work must always remain in its original context. It demands that, as far as the law is observed, an original copy of the work as intended will be produced.

For each copy that is made, it is mandatory that the original context and message expressed by the author or artist is preserved and disseminated without distortion. This seems similar to the spirit or intent that once inspired copyright law. A clear difference apparent in the CC BY-ND license is attempt to clearly provide safe harbor to users in a way that creates a few layers of security against much of the abuses the modern copyright law allows for. Copyright troll lawyers and the use of copyright as a tool for censorship being two examples of how such licensing is exploited.

This is a most honorable intention which may be lost on copyright, but does it find legs to stand on in the CC BY-ND license? If, from the dawn of copyright hitherto, CC BY-ND had been adopted as the popular license to apply toward works of our time, the public position that is growing as a response to harsh copyright law in our actual time line may not exist today to include the minority of individuals are currently limited by the license. Most of us would be content.

What are the limits of the freedoms of a ND license?

/* Definitions http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/2.0/legalcode
b. "Derivative Work" means a work based upon the Work or upon the Work
and other pre-existing works, such as a translation, musical
arrangement, dramatization, fictionalization, motion picture version,
sound recording, art reproduction, abridgment, condensation, or any
other form in which the Work may be recast, transformed, or adapted,
except that a work that constitutes a Collective Work will not be
considered a Derivative Work for the purpose of this License. For the
avoidance of doubt, where the Work is a musical composition or sound
recording, the synchronization of the Work in timed-relation with a
moving image ("synching") will be considered a Derivative Work for the
purpose of this License. */

Because this license is designed to preserve existing fair use and fair dealing or good faith rights, it seems that this is where the real limits of the license are to be found. Fair use and fair dealing, as they are legislated in the US, may deserve some scrutiny, but that falls outside the scope of this license.

Who is the individual whose usage of CC BY-ND licensed work is being limited?

Based on the preservation of fair use rights in the US, the individual being limited by CC BY-ND licensing appears to be the remix artists who intend to produce a commercial derivative work without the permission of the producer of the work. Or is this lending too much credit to what fair use allows? What does fair use allow in other regions? The way this license is applied seems as though it has the potential to vary quite a bit.

Is this interpretation accurate? Of whom else does this license limit freedom of use?

Under fair use in the US, derivative works could be made for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, or research.

Under the terms of ND licensing, a high value is placed on preserving and sharing the message embodied in the work of an artist, author or speaker.

Is ND licensing intended to or does it, in fact, interrupt the production of non-commercial works derived from CC BY-ND licensed works? It seems like derivative works are restricted only by the limits of regional fair use and fair dealing.

Is this an accurate interpretation of the license? It is what you had previously expected from this license?

Shortly you will have the opportunity to post whatever question your heart desires to Jon and Sean, the duo known as Analgesic Productions who developed the game Anodyne. The game received sensational support from the pirate community after a one of the developers, Sean, left a positive comment on the upload of an Anodyne torrent at The Pirate Bay .

After news that the torrent had been removed broke at TorrentFreak, Sean engaged with readers and a few of them suggested they upload it themselves and add whatever info they wanted to the torrent.

This became a great opportunity to request support for their ambition to get the game on Steam. Soon after, they were picked up by TPB's Promo Bay and featured on the front page of the popular torrent site.

Perhaps the most exciting part of all this is that the devs have had such great communication with the community and have been so transparent about this event that they have done a great service to their entire industry and, quite possibly, other creative industries as well. You can read the recent results of being featured on Promo Bay at the Anodyne Devblog. You can also read Sean's first-hand account after discovering the game was pirated and the risks he considered while making his decision.

Now that you know the background of the story, feel free to come ask Analgesic Productions anything at http://www.reddit.com/r/iama (direct link not available. Try F5 at 5:00PM CST :P)

Update: Direct link http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/18ugd9/we_are_sean_hogan_and_jon_kittaka_and_made_the/

There's really only one reason to follow Green Pirate on twitter and that is because occasionally this happens, which is mildly amusing.



My favorite thing about that response is how clearly the tone of "not sure if troll or really that stupid" comes across with the response.

Anyway, the documentary is a great introduction to the whole pirate movement thing as well as a fun glimpse at the personalities of the founders of The Pirate Bay. If you haven't seen it yet, go search for TPB-AFK on Duck Duck Go or some other search site that doesn't break your search results by filtering out torrents.

Yes. Yes you did just read a blog post about a tweet.

Ehrmagherd! Look at all these Valve games available on linux now. I haven't been able to try any yet, but seeing games like Counter-Strike and Half-Life ported over to linux is really cool.

This means a lot for linux based operating systems as game support has long been a big hangup for people who might otherwise use some of the more competitive linux based operating systems such as Ubuntu and Mint. Granted, it will be a while before we see just how much game these systems can handle and how far companies like Valve are willing to take their support for linux.

In the meantime, this is a huge jump-start to putting linux gaming on the map and may possibly serve as a statement to other popular game devs who could have a likewise response.

To kick things off they are offering these titles for a big discount price. Each linux release is offered for %50 to %75 off the price previously available for Win/Mac users.

If you happen to try any of these games on your linux machine, drop a comment and let the rest of KAT.PH know how it's running.

http://store.steampowered.com/sale/linux_release
Green Pirate

After finding out about a copy of his game being released on The Pirate Bay, Sean Hogan responded quite positively in the torrent comments. Read the TorrentFreak article for details on that. As you'll see in the TorrentFreak article, the original torrent has since been removed.

A super duper top secret insider at The Pirate Bay tells me that the account of the user, Frewyrn, who uploaded the game was banned by mistake, most likely getting caught up in a flood of fakes TPB mods are constantly battling to remove. (On a side note, modding is not only a lot of work, but it is volunteer work so please buy your TPB mods beer if you ever get the opportunity.)

At some point during the comments of the TF article, Sean engaged with other readers a bit. At least a couple of people suggested that Sean upload a torrent of the game and it appears that he has taken heed of the communities desire to access Anodyne and uploaded a torrent of the game using the account name seagaia, the same he had earlier used to comment on the first torrent.

Without drawing this update out any further, here is the new, official torrent along with a big Green Pirate thanks to Sean for being awesome.

Thanks to Frewyrn as well. If not for that torrent, I never would have found out about this amazing looking game which stirs up nostalgic memories of StarTropics and Secret of Mana.