Tag Archive for: This

Have an older iPhone or Mac? Don’t miss this security warning

Apple products are known for having tight security. That’s a double-edged sword for some users. While it protects your device against malware and other issues, the Target length: 500-600 words.
mac hacker – read more

This Week In Techdirt History: October 4th – 10th

Five Years Ago

This week in 2015, the TPP negotiators pulled an all-nighter to finish the latest draft of the agreement, though of course it still remained secret. An announcement from New Zealand, however, confirmed that it would extend copyright terms and lock-in terrible anti-circumvention rules, leading us to reiterate that it’s not a “free trade” agreement but rather a protectionist one. Then, at the end of the week, Wikileaks released the final intellectual property chapter (and it was basically as bad as expected).

Ten Years Ago

Before the TPP, it was ACTA. This week in 2010, negotiators announced that ACTA was nearly complete and that the final text would be released by the end of the week — yet somehow (shocking!) the MPAA was able to announce that it was in favor of the current text it wasn’t supposed to have seen. Many in the EU Parliament were not at all happy about the agreement, and in Mexico the Senate actually voted unanimously to remove the country from negotiations. When the text was released on Wednesday, it had shed some of the worst aspects of earlier versions but was still full of problems, and for some reason the negotiators were still obsessing about secrecy in their briefings about the now-public text.

Also, just to hammer home how long this thing’s been going on, here’s a 2010 post about some of the early blows in the fight between Oracle and Google.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2005, the Grokster decision was just one factor in the messy fight over the criminality of writing software, the USPTO was busy producing anti-piracy propaganda, and DRM-makers were espousing the importance of DRM even though, as usual, numbers suggested that file sharing is good for sales. The recording industry was demanding too much in its negotiations with tech companies and setting its sites on satellite radio as its new target, not to mention trying out new arguments against fair use. But we saw one great ruling from Australia, where the Supreme Court found that mod-chipping consoles does not violate anti-circumvention laws.

Techdirt.

This Week In Techdirt History: September 27th – October 3rd

Five Years Ago

This week in 2015, while many sites were going to war with ad blockers, we unveiled the ability to turn off ads on Techdirt in your user settings. Various emerging info revealed sketchy behavior by the Secret Service, the State Department’s success in planting anti-Wikileaks questions in the 60 Minutes interview with Julian Assange, and the surveillance failures of the Postal Service. Rightscorp was telling its copyright-trolling targets that they need to hand their computers over to police, PETA was defending its supposed right to represent the selfie-taking monkey, and — though it seems minor compared to what’s going on right now — we talked about the increasing number of attacks on Section 230.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2010, Citibank was abusing the DMCA to try to hide its comments on Obama’s bank reform policy, a city council was claiming copyright infringement over one councilor posting meeting clips to YouTube, and the EFF was countersuing Righthaven. Meanwhile, Congress was pushing the COICA anti-infringement bill, and we took a look at all the technologies it would have blocked in the past, then all the current technology it was likely to interfere with, while Tim Berners-Lee stepped up as an opponent to the bill (and the RIAA, of course, stepped up as a hysterical supporter) — and by the end of the week, the bill was shelved.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2005, the ever-changing world of mobile phone etiquette was grappling with Bluetooth headsets while some restaurants were splitting into phone and no-phone sections. The pessimism about cameraphones was faltering as a new music video was shot entirely with a phone, and some early battles over transit map apps were popping up, while Motorola’s CEO was whining about the iPod Nano and Seagate’s CEO was making the case for hard drives over flash memory — while SanDisk made a much-anticipated announcement about flash storage that turned out to be… new copy protection technology. Professors were following in the shoes of doctors and freaking out about online reviews, Warner Music was foolishly overestimating its power in negotiations with Apple, and Sony was repeating its past ways by trying to block developers from hacking the PSP.

Techdirt.