How copyright is irreparably, fundamentally incompatible with privacy
Copyright and privacy cannot coexist. Society is at a crossroads where only one of these will exist in the future, and the copyright industry has been working hard to erode…
General Privacy News
BitTorrent is fifteen years old. What would a file sharing technology developed today look like?
BitTorrent was developed in 2001: today's file-sharing technology predates the launch of Facebook, Twitter, and the iPhone. In those fifteen years, surveillance and repression technologies have advanced massively. If we…
Paramount Pictures agrees to end geoblocking in Europe
Paramount Pictures has agreed to stop seeking geoblocking restrictions “when licensing its film output for Pay-TV to a broadcaster” within the European Economic Area (EEA), according to a European Commission…
Use a VPN to bypass the VoIP ban in the UAE and you could get fined up to $544k
The vast number of United Arab Emirates (UAE) residents that use a VPN to bypass the VoIP ban could soon be in incredibly hot water. The VoIP ban means that…
The utter futility of the legal attack on KickassTorrents
The operator of the torrent site KickassTorrents has been arrested in Poland on an extradition request from Hollywood, and the domains seized. This action, while deplorable, shows that the copyright…
China will start prohibiting ad blocking on September 1st
The ad blocking industry is facing a stark challenge from the Chinese government. China’s new Internet Advertising laws includes wording that explicitly prohibits “tampering with or blocking other businesses’ advertisements.”…
France issues formal notice to Microsoft about Windows 10: “stop collecting excessive data and tracking browsing by users without their consent.”
The French National Data Protection Commission (CNIL) has issued a formal notice to Microsoft regarding Windows 10 privacy and security concerns. The agency, along with the other European countries in…
European Supreme Court says “Maybe” to mass surveillance of innocents
The European Court of Justice (ECJ) says that mass surveillance of innocent people may be legal in a preliminary ruling issued today. The ECJ is the highest court in the…
US Department of Justice seeks to overturn recent Microsoft ruling; allow search warrants to be served internationally
In spite of a recent court ruling to the contrary, the US Government still wants to serve search warrants to companies outside of its legal national jurisdiction. According to a…
A History of Media Control and Media Blackouts in Coups d’Etat
With the information disarray coming out of Turkey during the (seemingly failed) military coup, we see the same pattern of attempting to control media as we've seen for the past…