e dot dot dot
a mostly about the Internet blog by

October 2021
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
         
           


Filecoin Foundation Ensuring That SecureDrop Can Continue To Help Whistleblowers And Journalists

Furnished content.


Earlier this year we were excited to see the Filecoin Foundation give the Internet Archive its largest donation ever, to help make sure that the Internet Archive is both more sustainable as an organization, and that the works it makes available will be more permanently available on a more distributed, decentralized system. The Internet Archive is a perfect example of the type of organization that can benefit from a more distributed internet.Another such organization is the Freedom of the Press Foundation, which, among its many, many projects, maintains and develops SecureDrop, the incredibly important tool for journalists and whistleblowers, which was initially developed in part by Aaron Swartz (as DeadDrop). So it's great to see that the Freedom of the Press Foundation has now announced the largest donation it has ever received, coming from the Filecoin Foundation for the Distributed Web (the sister organization of the Filecoin Foundation):

Today, for the first time, that calculus has changed. We're thrilled to announce the largest grant in the history of Freedom of the Press Foundation that will ensure SecureDrop survives and thrives for years to come. The Filecoin Foundation for the Decentralized Web a new grantmaking organization whose mission is to permanently preserve humanity's most important information is funding FPF at over $1.7 million for each of the next three years, for a total of $5.8 million.The funding will largely go towards sustaining and expanding our SecureDrop team, funding the development of the next-generation of the system, including exploring a new zero-trust architecture for the decentralized servers. This grant will ensure that SecureDrop will not only be sustainable over the long term, but will be easier to use and hopefully safer than ever. In short, it will have a game-changing impact on how we can build and improve SecureDrop for journalists around the world. You can read about some of our technical plans for the future here.
This is great to see as SecureDrop is another one of those tools that is so key, but as an open source project is often in a precarious position without the financial support to make sure that there is active development.

Read more here

posted at: 12:00am on 08-Oct-2021
path: /Policy | permalink | edit (requires password)

0 comments, click here to add the first



Suess Estate And ComicMix Copyright Case Settles In The Saddest Possible Way

Furnished content.


Readers here will know that we've followed the trademark and copyright lawsuit filed by the estate of Dr. Seuss against ComicMix LLC, creators of the mashup book Oh, the Places You'll Boldly Go! The entire thing has been a multi-year rollercoaster designed to be serpentine, with ComicMix arguing that the mashup book was transformative and covered by fair use, and winning on that front, only to have the copyright portion of the argument overturned on appeal. Go and read Cathy Gellis' writeup on the appeal; it's incredibly detailed and informative.But if anyone was hoping to see this case progress up the federal court ranks, they will be both disappointed and sad. Disappointed because the parties have now settled the case with ComicMix agreeing to acknowledge that the book did, in fact, infringe on Suess' copyrights.

Dr. Seuss Enterprises LP and the makers of the Dr. Seuss/"Star Trek" mashup book "Oh, the Places You'll Boldly Go!" have settled Seuss' copyright infringement claims, according to a Tuesday filing in San Diego federal court.In an agreement filed with the court, the parties agreed that the book infringes Seuss' copyrights and permanently bars ComicMix LLC, former "Star Trek" writer David Gerrold, illustrator Ty Templeton and others from selling it, while Seuss agreed to drop any claims for damages or attorneys' fees.
The court document is embedded below so you can see it for yourself. This is normally where I would rant and rave about how these settlements, which might make sense for one or both sides of a given conflict, are actually very bad for the larger public as they do not properly resolve the open questions contained in the dispute. In this case, the full weight of the court and legal system has not had its say on whether the mashup book infringed Suess' copyrights. Two courts have disagreed and this could have progressed further, potentially up to the Supreme Court, but the settlement puts a stop to that process.That said, it's difficult to be to rant-y and rave-y about this particular settlement given the reason it was sought out. Remember that part I said above about this being sad? Well...
The defendants' attorney Dan Booth of Dan Booth Law said in a statement that his clients settled because of Templeton's diagnosis of Stage 3 colorectal cancer earlier this year."After five years of litigation and with the pre-trial deadlines looming, as Ty's collaborators and friends, we refuse to put him through any additional stress that would in any way impinge on his health and recovery. To the credit of the people at Dr. Seuss Enterprises, they didn't want to put Ty through that either," Booth said. "So we joined in a motion to end the suit the day before Ty's surgery, in order to alleviate the less serious pain in his butt."
Two things I absolutely have to mention. First, I appreciate the hell out of Booth including a butt joke in a statement about his friend having colorectal cancer. I imagine that he knows Ty would be okay with such a joke, in which case this is just plain good comedy. Second, and more important, the proper framing of this news story should be that the Dr. Seuss Estate extracted a settlement over a copyright dispute for a book that very much did the estate no harm because it was bullying a cancer patient. Somehow, one imagines Suess himself not being in love with this idea, but that is pure speculation.What isn't speculation is that, as Cathy made the point in the earlier post, this represents a culture loss. Mashup art is not rare and has become, to some discernable level, a part of our culture. This settlement manages to add another bit of ammunition from protectionists who want to control and license every last thing related to their works, whether fair use ought to apply or not.I understand why this settlement was reached... but it both sucks and is sad.

Read more here

posted at: 12:00am on 08-Oct-2021
path: /Policy | permalink | edit (requires password)

0 comments, click here to add the first



October 2021
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
         
           







RSS (site)  RSS (path)

ATOM (site)  ATOM (path)

Categories
 - blog home

 - Announcements  (0)
 - Annoyances  (0)
 - Career_Advice  (0)
 - Domains  (0)
 - Downloads  (3)
 - Ecommerce  (0)
 - Fitness  (0)
 - Home_and_Garden  (0)
     - Cooking  (0)
     - Tools  (0)
 - Humor  (0)
 - Notices  (0)
 - Observations  (1)
 - Oddities  (2)
 - Online_Marketing  (0)
     - Affiliates  (1)
     - Merchants  (1)
 - Policy  (3743)
 - Programming  (0)
     - Bookmarklets  (1)
     - Browsers  (1)
     - DHTML  (0)
     - Javascript  (3)
     - PHP  (0)
     - PayPal  (1)
     - Perl  (37)
          - blosxom  (0)
     - Unidata_Universe  (22)
 - Random_Advice  (1)
 - Reading  (0)
     - Books  (0)
     - Ebooks  (0)
     - Magazines  (0)
     - Online_Articles  (5)
 - Resume_or_CV  (1)
 - Reviews  (2)
 - Rhode_Island_USA  (0)
     - Providence  (1)
 - Shop  (0)
 - Sports  (0)
     - Football  (0)
          - Cowboys  (0)
          - Patriots  (0)
     - Futbol  (0)
          - The_Rest  (0)
          - USA  (0)
 - Technology  (1049)
 - Windows  (1)
 - Woodworking  (0)


Archives
 -2024  March  (164)
 -2024  February  (168)
 -2024  January  (146)
 -2023  December  (140)
 -2023  November  (174)
 -2023  October  (156)
 -2023  September  (161)
 -2023  August  (49)
 -2023  July  (40)
 -2023  June  (44)
 -2023  May  (45)
 -2023  April  (45)
 -2023  March  (53)
 -2023  February  (40)


My Sites

 - Millennium3Publishing.com

 - SponsorWorks.net

 - ListBug.com

 - TextEx.net

 - FindAdsHere.com

 - VisitLater.com