If you don't now what ACTA is, search the Internet for ACTA, that should let you find your own sources. If you do know what it's about then you are likely to be against it (unless you are part of the 1%).

On February 11 2012 you can protest against ACTA with us. Get information about your local protest here and join in.

In the meantime, you can also do a couple of things while keep your rear end glued to your chair:

• Send a letter to your representatives(EU)
• Sign this massive Avaaz petition

I'll see you there.

EFF and Carpathia have joined forces to help Megaupload users who stored non-infringing files retrieve what they can. The only limitation is that this is only directed to users that are based in the United States (of America, North America).

If you are concerned by this than visit MegaRetrieval.com to see what can be done.

Now if you are NOT in the U.S.A. you might want to consider participating in this joint complaint organised by Pirates de Catalunya and endorsed by many other Pirate Parties as well as the EFF.

Stella GNU/Linux is finally born. It is a desktop focused, Gnome2 based Centos 6 remix (exact words of the maintainer). The features look really neat if you are looking for a CentOS/RPM based OS that is rock stable rather then bleeding (buggy) edge...

You can get it here (1 Gbps, IPv4, IPv6).

Yesterday (or still today in certain time zones) was Data Privacy Day.. I was made aware of this by a doodle on DuckDuckGo.

Of course I opened a new tab and rushed to see what the search engine that I used to use before they became evil had drawn for the event... And well, funny story, Google has totally avoided the subject and instead put up a doodle celebrating the 125th birthday of the biggest recorded snowflake.. p.s. please install Chrome.. Like WTF right ?

As you may know, if you have a Gaccount (Google account), Google has changed their terms of service so that now everything "G" is unified, and what you do in Youtube directly impacts the adverts in your emails, and things you search for.. . etc etc.. And all this with the magic wandish words like "simple", "easy" and "yada yada".

So why has Google omitted Data Privacy Day ? Maybe because data privacy is irrelevant in a system where your personal data lives across over 60 different services.. .. Perhaps I am wrong and it is just an innocent obsession with snowflakes..

BTW, this does not affect you if you do not have any account with Google, so for those rare people out there, bravo. : ]

Demand Progress has started an open letter to twitter and asked its subscriber's to sign it, the letter is short and as follows:

While I am against any for of censorship I am also against telling Twitter how to run their business. In this case they aren't abusing employees, nature or other such things. If you (Demand Progress or anyone else) are not happy with their new terms and conditions you are always free to not use their services.

That said, after reading Twitter's Tweets still must flow post it seems almost kosher.. They claim they will attempt (that is the word I dislike) to mark censored posts as such, so to inform the user they are being censored according to their government's laws. If true it could actually somehow have a positive effect, imagine people's reaction when clearly seeing how much information is withheld from them.

I would also like to correct Demand Progress on one point, Twitter is not an "Open Platform", I cannot interact with twitter users in any way unless I create an account with Twitter. Open platforms are services that use Status.net (Like Identi.ca), Friendica, Diaspora and the like, they allow users to communicate between independent nodes and hence avoid any central policing and/or control of it's users and their personal data.

In conclusion I must add that if Twitter's new rules upsets anyone it's actually a good reminder that Twitter does not belong to its users nor is it a public service. Their terms of service clearly stipulate that users accept that Twitter reserve the right to remove any content, and all of Twitter's users have accepted those terms.

Source code for Symantec's pcAnywhere has been borrowed.. . back in 2006, but they have finally had time to get around to that and now are advising their clients to disable the software.

Why ? What is the security problem with having your source code exposed ? There are many users, including myself, who use software for which the source code is published all over the Internet.

In this case it seems like Symantec had a security breach that they were aware of and only decided to address because they heard about a leak of their source code. Something obviously doesn't add up, either they don't bother to patch their products, even when they know it's insecure OR they have their reasons for making insecure products..

Moral of the story, using non-Free software is a very big security issue. You never know what it really does nor who it's intended to really serve.

O2, a UK phone operator, seems to be sending along in the HTTP headers of their clients http requests the user's mobile phone number! Lewis Peckover has discovered this and set up a test page for people to see what information their mobile ISP is actually sending to websites.

To test, disable your mobile phone's Wifi and visit this page. There you should see the usual stuff, user-agent, IP, languages, etc.. If you see other things like your mobile phone number you might want to ask your ISP for explanations.

Another thing that Lewis notes is that O2 modifies content, he claims they downgrade images and insert JavaScript links. If true, this is really really bad, this is basically tampering and altering private communications. It's just like if the post office opened your letters, made reduced photocopies so your letters are lighter and then passed that on to you.

I am guessing this shouldn't work using HTTPS, however I would like to ask Lewis what is the deal on this as I do not have a mobile phone and hence cannot test this at all. I also don't have a Twitter account so... . If you do, ask him. Khtxbye : ]

Update: I found this old thread about the same sort of thing affecting other customers on other mobile networks. This is really not new and this is not an 02 issue but rather a mobile phone ISP issue.

How can the USA authorities take down a Hong-Kong based company and arrest people in New-Zealand ? Ars Technica explains, it turns out that the actions are based on the fact that Megaupload's clients were often in the USA, they ran adverts there and interacted with the USA market actively. In a way they are considered to have been running at least part of their business on USA grounds.

Fair or not, it seems that that is how the cookie crumbles, and crumbling it is. Personally I don't care for such websites and Kim Dotcom, aka Kimble Special Agent, seems far from being an angel. However it's still hard to accept that they can be taken down in an instant drug lord style. It doesn't seem like the accusations are half as bad as some towards companies that have either leaked petrol all over the world or have bankrupted families.. ...(insert long list of companies that messed up way more seriously and have in some cases even been bailed out).

In reaction to such news, an other "upload" service provider called Uploaded.to has decided to close it's service to the USA, this should help avoid breaking USA law on USA territory.

This whole abusive world policing attitude could earn the USA some Interweb censorship, but not from SOPA/PIPA this time, but simply from websites that do not want to have to deal with USA law. It's true that this Megaupload takedown happened right after the anti-SOPA strike, the what when why questions have been talked about all over the Internet, but now I am wondering if this isn't exactly what the USA wants, a censored Internet, like China and Iran, but censored voluntarily by website owners in fear of a possible breach of USA law and it's possible effects on one's postal address.

Update: In the past couple of days, many companies that provide the same services as Megaupload have either limited their services, closed their services to the U.S.A. or even just plain closed. Torrentfreak's report on the disturbance in the ecosystem.

A new book to be released in a few hours (I think this is on USA time): No Safe Harbor. This book is released by the United States Pirate Party, it features many interesting people and ideas.... .. and yes, it's licensed under the Creative Commons license. You can buy it or download it. Etc. You can even read it.

I just heard about Global Censorship Checkpoints, it's aim is to document various projects around the world that want to police the Internet. On this site you can see, which polices are implemented or under study in each country, there are also links to local organisations that warn about the dangers and such.

MegaUpload.com was just shut down and executives arrested, data centres violated, etc etc. The FBI it seems has the right to arrest people all over the world (New Zealand, Germany, Canada, etc etc).

At the same time the MPAA, RIAA and Department Of "Justice" websites are also down, I am guessing their websites were hosted on one of MegaUpload's servers. Ha, ha.

More details on TorrentFreak and/or TechLand if you are afraid of links that contain the word "torrent".

It's no news that Fox News is mostly made up of real geniuses who always deliver properly researched, reliable and fair information. Today they published an article on how"savvy moron surfers circumvent Wikipedia blackout.

The article goes on about how people have found ways of getting access to knowledge by using alternative sources (other websites!!) but the most striking part was that they announced how to get actual content from the Wikipedia itself.. ORLY!

For the diehard Wiki-fan who simply cannot do without Wikipedia, there is even a way to circumvent the blackout, using a system that relies on Google's cache of online sites.

This is how: Enter a search item in Google's search box, click on the double gray arrow that will appear when you hover your mouse on the right side of the search results. When a snapshot shows up on the right, click on "cache" ... and voila! ... you will be directed to the last snapshot of your search item in Wikipedia.

Of course, you could also click on the "Learn more" link provided by the blacked out Wikipedia page and find a simpler solution like:

During the blackout, Wikipedia is accessible on mobile devices and smart phones. You can also view Wikipedia normally by disabling JavaScript in your browser, as explained on this Technical FAQ page. Our purpose here isn't to make it completely impossible for people to read Wikipedia, and it's okay for you to circumvent the blackout. We just want to make sure you see our message.

Of course, for Fox News it is much easier to relay the stupidest crap on earth then to go read 4 sentences.