I agree very much with this article. This is probably why: David Cameron and Boris Johnson refuse to attribute any socioeconomic context to the events

This image reveals something about the motivations.

This is relates to this.

Cleanfeed is the system BT (British Telecom) has set up a few years ago. It's main goal is to block content to sites listed on the Internet Watch Foundation’s “Child Abuse Images” database.

As of a few days ago BT will now be obliged to use their Cleanfeed system to block Newzbin2.

So I found this page called Cleanfeed: the facts which explains what Cleanfeed is supposed to be.

A few interesting points:

It's interesting because even in Saudi Arabia they inform users when they are blocked by government filtering.

As a matter of fact, Cleanfeed will not block anything that is not specifically HTTP over port 80, in other words ONLY non-encrypted standard web content.

Impressive. Believe ?

Scope creep is a serious risk

• The Home Office originally indicated to BT that Cleanfeed might be employed to block access to other undesirable content
• Wannadoo has already been approached by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) about implementing a system similar to Cleanfeed so as to block access to works allegedly infringing copyright.
• BT says that if the pressure to extend the scope of Cleanfeed became too great it would simply cancel the project.

It can seem as if BT does not want to filter such content (alleged copyrighted stuff), probably not so much for ethical reasons as much as technical and commercial reasons, indeed, if BT is now the only ISP that has to block Newzbin2.... .. .

So, will BT cancel the project ?

A new plugin for Firefox can alert you when you are visiting a Murdoch tainted website. Download Murdoch Alert here.

For Chrome/Chromium, there is Murdoch Block.

A victory for the creative industry, finally. A British court has ruled that BT (British Telecom) must block access to Newzbin2 (if you can't access it check via Herdict).

Some say this is good news for the audiovisual entertainment industry as they will finally be able to pay their bills and such. Indeed it is well known that the industry behind the MPA (Motion Picture Association) have been in complete financial decline since the popularisation of the Internet.. check the numbers. They have been selling approximately the same amount of tickets every year for the past 15 years yet the revenue has doubled, that means they are doing bad right ?

Others say this is an attack on our Freedom of w4r3z.. .. People need w4r3z, that's why the Internet was invented.

And others, more seriously, point out the issues between having ISPs enforce content filtering, websites being blocked more and more easily, innocent bystanders... and websites getting blocked for "copyright" reasons when it will in reality be for other reasons, like political for example.

Worse comes to worse, they block all of this stuff from the Internets and people will have no choice but to do other things with their lives. I think that because I doubt people will spend more on music and movies than they already do. Because people already spend a lot of money as it is..

Read more at Guardian/filesharing.

Apple has revised their App Store terms, now these apps cannot contain any links, like to send users to a web page to then make a purchase outside the i-app. All sales from within the i-app mean 30% to Apple.

Companies like Kobo and the Wall Street Journal have refused to accept the new terms, they now no longer sell content via their i-app. Also, Google has removed their book selling app, they have now put it back in the app-store but without the "buy" function, same for Amazon.

Apple's marketing techniques are just like those of crack dealers... .. . Now that so many people/companies have become captive of the i-App-store it's time to see how much they can squeeze out of it.

Today's paper (The Sun of course) was very interesting, they changed it when they finally could but you can still see it here. Good guess, Lulzsec has not really retired it seems and has pulled a nice one today.

This was probably timed with the Murdoch's having to face a parliamentary committee.

Today Avaaz among others where there to greet him and express concerns. I went down to Westminster Abbey to join these fine people.

Last night I received a "google+ link", something about a conversation etc etc.. I was assuming that even though I don't have a google account I could probably read and maybe even participate in the conversation. Not. I was obnoxiously invited to create a gaccount.

This morning I followed a friend's link to an article on google+, it says that google+ will force facebook to be more open to other platforms. Of course the previous experience showed me that I will absolutely need a gaccount before touching anything.

First reaction to the article is, IF and really IF google does anything to "open" other online social networks then we must note that they are very far from being the first to help. Just the fact that it is not by default designed from ground up on that basis is already a problem. Actually, I don't see any mention of their platform even remotely wanting to be capable of interacting with other servers (Alert: could be wrong).

For me the projects that will have had anything to do with opening anything up are:

• GNUSocial and StatusNet
• Friendika (used to be Mistpark)
• CrabGrass
• Diaspora

Recently Microsoft bought Skype and then Skype started to break down and have many little issues here and there. Of course the expected result has been confirmed in the FSF's latest mail.

Read more about these Skype replacement projects at the FSF website.