Episode: 1341
Title: HPR1341: TGTM Newscast for 2013-08-25
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1341/hpr1341.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-17 23:51:04

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You are listening to TGTM News No. 1 or 2 recorded for a Sunday, August 25, 2013.
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Hello again and welcome back.
I'm Poki with your talk geek to me news, Tech News Roundup.
From TechDirt.com dated August 15 by Mike Maznik.
Microsoft uses DMCA to block many links to competing open office.
From the total DMCA failure department.
Another day, another example of excessive DMCA takedown actions.
The latest is that Microsoft has been issuing DMCA takedowns to Google
directing the search engine to remove links to open office.
Open office, of course, is the open source competitor to Microsoft.
And Microsoft has no copyright related rights over it.
As 200 freaks points out, this does not appear to be a one-off occurrence.
In June, Microsoft filed more than a dozen takedown notices
that took down links to open office.
Again, it is likely that what happened was yet another case of a really broken automated system.
But that's no excuse at all.
We're talking about flat-out censorship
by abusing a legal process to attack a direct competitor of Microsoft.
But because there's no real punishment for filing completely bogus DMCA notices,
Microsoft can get away with this and continue to file identical notices
with no real recourse.
From torrentfreak.com dated August 10 by Ernesto.
Pirate Bay releases Pirate Browser to thwart censorship.
The Pirate Bay is taking a stand against the increased censorship efforts it
faces in several European countries.
On its 10th anniversary, the infamous BitTorrent site is releasing its,
quote, Pirate Browser and, quote,
a fully functional web browser that allows people to access the Pirate Bay
and other block sites just fine.
The current release is Windows Only,
but torrentfreak is informed that Mac and Linux versions will follow soon.
The Pirate Bay is arguably the most censored website on the internet.
Courts in the UK, the Netherlands, Italy, and elsewhere
have ordered internet providers to block subscriber access to the torrent site
and more are expected to follow.
Up until now, the Pirate Bay has encouraged users affected by the blackout
to use proxy sites.
However, on its 10th anniversary, they are now releasing a special Pirate Browser,
which effectively bypasses any ISP blockade.
Quote,
It's a simple one-click browser that circumvents censorship and blockades
and makes the site instantly available and accessible.
No bundled adware, toolbars, or other crap,
just a pre-configured Firefox browser.
And, quote, the Pirate Bay explains,
The browser is based on Firefox 23, bundled with a Tor client
and some proxy configurations to speed up loading.
It is meant purely as a tool to circumvent censorship,
and unlike the Tor browser, it doesn't provide any anonymity for its users.
Quote,
This browser is just a circumvent censorship
to remove limits on accessing sites.
Governments don't want you to know about.
And, quote, the Pirate Bay notes,
Pirate Browser works like any other web browser
and comes pre-loaded with several bookmarks for block sites,
which aside from the Pirate Bay includes Easy TV,
Kickass Torrents, BitSnoop, and H33T.
The browser also lists the alternative.union addresses for both the Pirate Bay
and Easy TV as backups to access these sites.
The Pirate Bay is not alone in its efforts to keep the internet open and accessible.
The Obama administration has spent millions of dollars on similar projects
allowing citizens of oppressed regimes to access blocked websites.
I'll be it for different reasons.
The Pirate Bay team informs Torrent Freak
that Pirate Browser is just the first step in their efforts to fight web censorship.
They are also working on a specific BitTorrent powered browser,
which lets users store and distribute the Pirate Bay and other websites on their own.
In theory, this will allow sites to exist and update,
even without having a public-facing website.
As a result, it will be virtually impossible to block or shut them down.
The first version of this new software is currently being tested,
but there is currently no firm launch date.
In the meantime, the development of Pirate Browser will also continue.
From TechDirt.com dated August 14 by Mike Maznick.
Yet another newspaper paywall goes bust.
SF Chronicle gives up after just four months.
From the not-the-panicia you've been expecting, department.
I know that within newspaper circles, it's become popular to claim that we've now entered the
era of the paywall. Paywall supporters love to point to the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal,
along with claims from various paywall companies that more and more newspapers are moving over to such a model.
However, we've been hearing plenty of stories suggesting that for most every newspaper that isn't a
major national or international brand, the paywalls are looking like dismal failures.
Very, very, very few, at times shockingly few, people are signing up.
And by setting up the paywall, they're actually losing a fair number of online visitors.
This isn't a surprise. As we've been arguing for years, a paywall is the exact wrong strategy for
most newspapers since the real business they're in is building a community and then selling that
community's attention. Yet a paywall makes it much, much harder to build a community, first by
putting up a toll booth, and then making it nearly impossible for readers to share the news and
bring others into that community. So what should come as little surprise that the SF Chronicle,
here in San Francisco, has apparently killed its paywall after just four months.
The quickness with which it's been pulled certainly suggests that the number of signups was
appallingly low, and someone finally did the math and realized what a colossal disaster this was
going to be. For your typical Metro Regional newspaper, all a paywall really does is open up a huge
market for online competitors. It looks like the Chronicle found that out the hard way.
From EFF.org dated August 12 by Dan Hourback. Google Fiber continues awful ISP tradition of
banning servers. In a wired piece published recently, Ryan's single of sales Google's new
found hypocrisy when it comes to net neutrality. And he's right. Having spent many years fighting to
stop internet service providers from discriminating between different types of internet traffic,
the tech giant is now perpetuating a longstanding form of that discrimination with Google Fiber,
its own ISP, by adopting a terrible terms of service clause that bans the use of, quote,
servers, end quote. Google's ban on servers is sadly not a departure from the norm.
As similar prohibitions can be found within the terms of service of other large ISPs.
The relevant network management guide snippet for Google Fiber, quote,
Your Google Fiber account is for your use simple reasonable use of your guests. Unless you have
a written agreement with Google Fiber permitting you to do so, you should not host any type of server
using a Google Fiber connection. You should Google Fiber account to provide a large number of
people within an access, or you should Google Fiber account to provide commercial services to third
parties, including the non-limited juice salving internet access to third parties.
End quote. From Comcast Xfinities Acceptable Use Policy, quote, dot, dot, dot.
Use for one dedicated standalone equipment or service from the premises that provide network,
content or any other services to anyone outside of your premises, local area network,
premises man, also commonly referred to as public services or servers. Examples of prohibited
equipment and service include, but are not limited to, email, web hosting,
file sharing and proxy services and servers. End quote. Verizon's terms of service, quote,
You also may not, dot, dot, dot. Use the service to host any type of server. End quote.
Cox's Acceptable Use Policy, quote, You may not operate or allow others to operate servers of
any type or any other device equipment and or software providing server like functionality
in connection with Cox's high-speed internet SM service on a expressly authorized by Cox.
End quote. AT&T's Acceptable Use Policy considers it a network security violation to, quote,
Use your accounts for the purpose of operating a server of any type. End quote.
This norm is unreasonable. It is a power grab by ISPs that damages user freedom and chills
innovation of different types of internet based technologies that don't follow the traditional
centralized model. What's a server anyway? The first problem with prohibiting servers is that
there's no good definition of a server. The notions of servers and clients can be very useful when
illustrating how many basic web services work, but the distinction quickly gets blurry in practice.
When you run a peer to peer service like BitTorrent, your computer is acting both as a client
and a server. And these services aren't limited to BitTorrent, as the peer-to-peer approach has
garnered attention as a distribution mechanism for traditional media as well. And is part of the
architecture of many mainstream services like Skype and Spotify. Should all these budding and
varied forms of peer-to-peer distribution be prohibited by Comcast or Google Fiber? Or should
these ISPs get to selectively enforce their terms of service only against services that they
don't like because they involve some aspect of running a quote server and quote. No ISP will come
forward with a tighter definition of server because they want to give themselves leeway to ban
users and technologies that they deem to be troublemakers. This strategy of making incredibly
broad vague and one-sided contracts is deeply problematic and unfair towards users and it's
disheartening to see Google follow this well-trodden path. Why shouldn't we run servers? Beyond the
vagueness of what makes a server. The next natural question is why this prohibition against servers
should exist in the first place. Users have a diverse set of needs and many of us regularly make use
of servers that we run on home networks. There can be major privacy and security benefits to
running your own server. Running an SSH or VPN server allows me to remotely connect to a home
computer and a trusted network. And running a mail server allows me to store my email locally,
hence enjoying greater constitutional protections for my email. Moreover, projects like Freedom Box,
which aim to enhance security and privacy by giving users more control over their communication
and social networking data, very much depend on users being able to run programs that could
easily be deemed as servers. Servers can be used in all sorts of clever ways. If the ban on
running servers were lifted, ordinary internet users would be able to do a multitude of interesting
things with fewer barriers spurring innovation. This will be even more true in the coming years,
especially if IPv6 adoption obsolete a technology called NAT, which stands for network address
translation, that currently creates a barrier to running some types of servers, like web servers,
from home networks. Arguments that ISPs need to have this anti-service policy for business reasons
are spacious, as a variety of business models exist that would allow users to pay a fair price
without severely restricting the freedom to use their internet connection in reasonable ways
that they choose. But like it or not, the ban on servers continues from all major ISPs,
and now Google Fiber as well. We are disappointed in Google and hope that the search giant
re-thinks this decision. After all, improving internet access in this country isn't just about
giving users greater connection speeds, it's about giving them greater freedom too.
From torrentfreak.com, dated August 10th by Andy.com, surveillance and copyright extremism will
cost United States dearly. In response to growing fears of government spying,
yesterday, Kim.com announced that parts of his company will relocate to Iceland,
if that means keeping customers data secure. Speaking with torrentfreak.com says that continued
broad surveillance will have serious financial consequences. Quote,
mass surveillance and copyright extremism will cost the US economy more than any terrorist attack
or piracy, and quote, he predicts. As the Edward Snowden Fallout continues,
yesterday, Kim.com revealed that if certain new surveillance laws are passed in New Zealand,
he will have little choice but to relocate some of Megas operations overseas. Privacy and security
have become a hot topics, sick, for.com. He was a surveillance target not only for the United
States, but also for local security service, GCSB.com is tied up in a legal battle with the latter
after a court found they monitored him illegally. With Megabildes quote, the privacy company,
end quote.com has invested interest in battling the level of spying that can be carried out by the
New Zealand government. Speaking with torrentfreak.com explains why he sees the powers granted by these
proposed new laws as a threat. Quote, the US government and the other five eyes partners, UK, Canada,
Australia and New Zealand have an agreement to push for new spy legislation that will provide them
with backdoors into all internet infrastructure and services. The New Zealand government is currently
aggressively looking to extend its powers with the GCSB and the TICS Act which will force
service providers with encryption capabilities to give them secret decryption access and quote.com
explains immediately. It's clear why this is an issue for.com. All files uploaded to mega are
encrypted to the point where not even the company knows the data it's carrying. Should the new
legislation be introduced? All that would have to change. But dot com says that isn't going to
happen. Quote, mega doesn't have decryption keys by design and we never will. Privacy companies
like mega will have to look for jurisdictions that care about basic human rights like privacy and
freedom of speech and quote. He says dot com doesn't go into detail on a full list of good candidates
but says that smaller nations particularly those with few enemies that don't need a large spy
apparatus could be a good choice. However one in particular stands out quote. Iceland is a friendly
small country without enemies. They don't spy on the world and they don't care. It's countries
like Iceland that will see a rise in internet services. There is a huge opportunity for smaller
nations because the business that is going to leave the US is looking for a new home and quote
he predicts. But while the small flourish dot com says that the approaches taken by the five
eyes countries will see them ruin the growth of their own IT industries and it seems that the
United States will suffer the most. Quote, I expect that more and more internet businesses will find
the hostile US environment unbearable and will move their business elsewhere who wants to store
any sensitive data on US based servers anymore. Over the next 10 years you will see a decline of US
internet giants and the rise of non US internet companies that care about user privacy. We will not
see a strong NSA like before the Snowden leaks again. The truth is out there and when politicians
and laws can't protect our basic human rights, innovation and friendly jurisdictions will save us
and quote he says. But can a country like Iceland cope with such a large influx of technology
companies given their current infrastructure? Quote, Iceland has limited connectivity and quote dot com
says quote but for now it's a great option. Others will arise I am sure of that. We have already
set up a company in Iceland and quote so with preparations already underway should the worst case
scenario present itself does it follow that mega will desert the land of the Kiwis entirely?
dot com told Torrent Freak that eventually it is unlikely but if any of their services face
government demands for back doors they will relocate elsewhere. Rest assured though that won't be
in the United States. Quote, the US is on a path of destroying its massive lead in the internet
economy. Mass surveillance and copyright extremism will cost the US economy more than any terrorist
attack or piracy dot com says quote the US is on a path of destroying its massive lead in the
internet economy. Mass surveillance and copyright extremism will cost the US economy more than
any terrorist attack or piracy and quote dot com says quote remember move your internet business
to small nations that are free of conflict and therefore don't have a massive spy agenda.
Look for countries that have robust privacy and human rights laws. Stay out of the US. Don't
even host a single server there end quote dot com concludes. Other headlines in the news to read
this story follow the link in the show notes. Email service used by Snowden shuts itself down
warns against using US based companies. Staffed and produced by the TGTM news team
editorial selection by DeepGeek views of the story authors reflect their own opinions and not
necessarily those of TGTM news or its readers news from tech dirt dot com i w w dot com
maggie McNeil dot wordpress dot com and all gov dot com used under arranged permission
news from torrent freak dot com and dff dot org used under the permission of the creative
commons by attribution license news from wl central dot org used under permission of the creative
commons by attribution non commercial no derivatives license news sources retain their respective
copyrights thank you again for listening to talk geek to me news and have a good day thank you
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