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Hi Techdirt! I'm known to this and other tech blog communities as sophisticatedjanedoe (or SJD). I run an anti-shakedown, anti-copyright-troll opinion blog Fight Copyright Trolls, which, I'm sure, most of you know: Techdirt often links to my posts, especially recently, since we all have been watching an illustrious show of SS Prenda sinking slowly but steadily.
For this week's awesome stuff, we've got three different projects that just caught my eye for being different and interesting in a design sense.
It's sad to note how collective humanity has done an ostrich on the warnings about the machines.
Crossposted from Questioncopyright.
You may recall Judge Beryl Howell, the former RIAA lobbyist who helped author the DMCA, and also went against a very large number of other judges dealing with copyright trolling lawsuits by ruling that it was perfectly fine to lump over 1,000 John Doe defendants into a single lawsuit and then get discovery on them for the purpose of shaking them down for payment.
You may have heard about a fair bit about Attorney General Eric Holder testifying before the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday morning.
Once the UK recording industry realized that UK courts would order ISPs to block websites it didn't like, it appears that the industry, led by BPI and PPL began putting together a list of over two dozen sites that they're asking to have blocked by all UK ISPs, even though many of the sites on the list have never been tried in a court of law or convicted of copyright infringement.
Although New Zealand's decision not to allow patents for programs "as such" was welcome, other moves there have been more problematic.
The New Yorker has announced a new anonymous document sharing system called Strongbox, that will allow people to anonymously and securely submit documents to reporters from the New Yorker.
We've discussed GEMA's antagonistic attitude towards, well, pretty much everyone other than itself.