GoDaddy Bleeding Domains Thanks To SOPA Support
From Drew Olanoff at TheNextWeb regarding the GoDaddy SOPA support fiasco:It’s going to get worse before it gets better for domain registration company Go Daddy. Yesterday, we reported that Go Daddy had reversed its decision to support SOPA. Its customer service reps are even taking to the phones to beg you to keep your domains with the company.
It looks like these PR moves to save face, and business, are completely futile. According to TheDomains, 21,054 domains were transferred away from Go Daddy on Friday alone. At $6.99 a pop, that would make for a loss of $147,167, not taking future renewals into account. The day before wasn’t a good one for the company either, with 15,000 people taking their domains elsewhere. That means that even though Go Daddy changed its stance, people have had enough.
I have never liked GoDaddy. They always seemed pretty shitty, like they were trying to scam their customers and take advantage of people. Even if they never did any of that, the perception I get from their site, their advertising and their corporate image is that they are in the game for abuse. It is nice to see karma working the right kind of wonders for a change. (via TBR)
The individuals who linked arms and actively resisted, that in itself is an act of violence,” UC police Capt. Margo Bennett said. “I understand that many students may not think that, but linking arms in a human chain when ordered to step aside is not a nonviolent protest.
UC cops’ use of batons on Occupy camp questioned.
I have been leery of the entire occupy movement, mainly because of the lack of a coherent message, but this is just unbelievable. Do the police really think this line of reasoning is going to stand? (via reddit)
[t]he freedom of individuals verbally to oppose or challenge police action without thereby risking arrest is one of the principal characteristics by which we distinguish a free nation from a police state.
Appeals Court: Arresting Guy For Filming Cops Was A Clear Violation Of Both 1st & 4th Amendments.
Finally a court with some common sense.
Kindle title-sharing is not available just to owners of the hardware e-reader device, but to users of Kindle software on Mac, PC, iPad, iPhone, BlackBerry, and Android. Unfortunately, only customers living in the U.S. can loan out a title; international users may or may not be able to accept loans, depending on the publishing rights of the title in their respective countries.
Amazon implements Kindle e-book sharing but with huge restrictions. These so-called “publishing rights” are nothing but a cancer to digital goods like books, music and movies. If I can lend a physical book to a friend, regardless of where he lives, then why can’t I do the same with the digital version of the title?
Thanks to how tight-assed the copyright cartels act, I find it hard to believe we will see any relaxation of digital rights anytime within the near future. They will continue to use these “publishing rights” to force harsher policies on customers in the name of the artists when in fact its merely a ploy to increase revenue by any means necessary.
Does anyone truly believe the publishers, RIAA and MPAA could care about anything other than maximizing revenue?
Web Browsers Leave 'Fingerprints' Behind as You Surf the Net
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF):
New research by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has found that an overwhelming majority of web browsers have unique signatures — creating identifiable “fingerprints” that could be used to track you as you surf the Internet.
The findings were the result of an experiment EFF conducted with volunteers who visited http://panopticlick.eff.org/. The website anonymously logged the configuration and version information from each participant’s operating system, browser, and browser plug-ins — information that websites routinely access each time you visit — and compared that information to a database of configurations collected from almost a million other visitors. EFF found that 84% of the configuration combinations were unique and identifiable, creating unique and identifiable browser “fingerprints.” Browsers with Adobe Flash or Java plug-ins installed were 94% unique and trackable.
So much for all the hoopla and fuss about cookies tracking your every online movement. ☁
How to protect your reputation online
As social sites with user-generated content such as Facebook, Twitter and WordPress continue to grow in popularity, and with Google’s announcement of real-time search, you must be aware of and manage your online reputation carefully now. “Social media has made our lives very transparent,” Laratro says. “If you maintain a professional persona, this can be something positive, but if you’re unaware of comments or pictures online that you wouldn’t even want your mother to see, it can be terrible.”
Several free tools can help you keep tabs on what’s being said about you online. One of the most popular tools is a Google Alert for your name, which will automatically inform you when you’re referenced on a website.
(via sgtstretch)
Put simply, blocking access as envisaged by this clause would both widely disrupt the Internet in the UK and elsewhere, threatening freedom of speech and the open Internet, without reducing copyright infringement as intended. To rush through such a controversial proposal at the tail end of a Parliament, without any kind of consultation with consumers or industry, is very poor law making.
