dork lotus

This and Ninite are the closest we Windows people have to a Linux-like one-click installation repository. I’m keeping this one in my important bookmarks.

The internet chapter of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, a secret copyright treaty whose text Obama’s administration refused to disclose due to “national security” concerns, has leaked. It’s bad. It says:

That ISPs have to proactively police copyright on user-contributed material. This means that it will be impossible to run a service like Flickr or YouTube or Blogger, since hiring enough lawyers to ensure that the mountain of material uploaded every second isn’t infringing will exceed any hope of profitability.

That ISPs have to cut off the Internet access of accused copyright infringers or face liability. This means that your entire family could be denied to the internet — and hence to civic participation, health information, education, communications, and their means of earning a living — if one member is accused of copyright infringement, without access to a trial or counsel.

That the whole world must adopt US-style “notice-and-takedown” rules that require ISPs to remove any material that is accused — again, without evidence or trial — of infringing copyright. This has proved a disaster in the US and other countries, where it provides an easy means of censoring material, just by accusing it of infringing copyright.

Mandatory prohibitions on breaking DRM, even if doing so for a lawful purpose (e.g., to make a work available to disabled people; for archival preservation; because you own the copyrighted work that is locked up with DRM)

Looks great.

According to a poll conducted in the UK, people who admit to illegally downloading music also spend more money on music every year than those who don’t. None of this changes the legality of downloading copyrighted content, of course, but if the same is true for most file sharers across the globe, it seems like something the music industry and the RIAA might want to consider in their crusades against file sharing. [The Independent via Download Squad]

Richard, whose wife had her Hotmail account swiped by a hacker, was able to get it back by calling Xbox Live customer service, of all people.

I think parents need to take a lot more responsibility than they do about whether it’s OK for their children to go to Resident Evil or any other movie with violence or sex or whatever. It’s really easy to blame Hollywood for violence having an effect on kids, but movies would have no power if parents would just set their own standards. And it’s the same with video games.