Paypal Sucks; Yahoo Blows; Fuck Facebook; Screw Apple; Patent Trolls; Censor Shit; Cana-Duh; Broad Bunt; Copy Fights; NSA Spies

Paypal Sucks

• GlassUp raised $100K on Indiegogo — but PayPal is refusing to pay up
• PayPal unfreezes $45,000 cancer donation—Only did so when the media start asking why they blocking it in the first place.
• PayPal freezes $45,000 of Mailpile's crowdfunded dollars—"Demands 'itemized budget' from Iceland-based team before releasing funds." The utter gall. What is with Paypal and crowdfunding?

Yahoo Blows

• Yahoo hands user data to Australian government
• 'WTF! MORONS!' Yahoo! Groups! redesign! traumatises! users!—It's fuglier and harder to use.
• Yahoo's 30-day logo reveal finally comes to a close—They made us wait for this?

Fuck Facebook

• Facebook will not tolerate boobies of any kind
• Facebook's privacy policy won't be finalized for another week
• Facebook employees reveal the worst things about working for the social network—"Facebook employees, including engineers and software developers, have criticised Mark Zuckerberg's allegedly 'holier than thou' attitude and lack of professionalism at the company."

Screw Apple

• Workers' rights 'flouted' at Apple iPhone factory in China—"New, cheaper device being produced illegally, non-profit organisation China Labor Watch claims."
• Apple escapes App Store restrictions in e-book conspiracy punishment
• Apple Prevents Omni Group From Offering Discounted Mac App Store Upgrades
• Apple Tries to Trademark the Word 'Startup'
• Steve Jobs' Email Shows Apple Changed In-App Purchasing Rules Specifically To Retaliate Against Amazon—Here's a very mild defense of in-app purchases.

Patent Trolls

• New gov't report on patent lawsuits is tepid, but shows a clear trend—"No shock: data show software patent suits are on the rise, driven by trolls."
• Intellectual Ventures opens DC office to push $1M lobbying effort—"World's biggest 'patent troll' has grown to 800 employees, 70,000 patents."
• Patenting everyday life: "Business method" lawsuits are growing fast—"41 percent of troll-spawned suits now involve patents on how to run your business."
• 'Patent trolls' put brakes on S.F. transit app
• Report on startups versus patent trolls
• The patent troll crisis is really a software patent crisis
• US shops and restaurants fight patent trolls—"The Internet Association is among a group of US trade bodies behind a new campaign calling for politicians to take action over patent trolls."
• "Shopping cart" patent troll tries to save itself, gets pounded by Newegg—"Newegg lawyer calls it a desperate attempt to turn a typo into a second chance."
• Minnesota: Patent Trolls Are Not Welcome Here
• New Zealand bans software patents

Censor Shit

• Massive Patent Troll Lodsys Drops Its Bogus Patent Lawsuit Which Was Filed To Silence A Critic
• Comcast Threatens to Sue TorrentFreak for Copyright Infringement—They withdrew their DMCA-abusing complaint.
• Microsoft Censors OpenOffice Download Links—Go download LibreOffice instead.

Cana-Duh

• Fake Cable Ad Apparently Hits Too Close To Home; Bogus Defamation Claim Censors Video In Canada
• Big 3 mobile carriers under fire from Ottawa—"Industry minister and Quebecor chief say anti-Verizon campaign misleads the public."
• Consumers lose out as Verizon pulls plug on Canadian expansion

Broad Bunt

• Snubbed by Google Fiber, mad at Comcast, Baltimore seeks its own fiber—"No competition means no reason for Comcast to up speeds, lower prices."
• Comcast Fights Google Fiber in Provo With New Pricing
• Sorry, Comcast and Verizon customers: RCN delivers faster Netflix—"That free Netflix caching service big ISPs refuse to use may be working wonders."

Copy Fights

• International Criticism Escalates Against TPP as Negotiations Go Further Underground
• American Government Propose SOPA Revival Amidst Piracy Increase Claims
• White House Copyright Czar Jumps to Industry Anti-Piracy Group
• Ministry of Sound sues Spotify—"Dance record label Ministry of Sound is suing music streaming service Spotify, claiming Spotify playlists copy its compilation albums." Suing over playlists, not the songs.
• Report: WTC naming rights sold for $10 in 1986—Now the "Port Authority pays $10,000 a year to use the words 'World Trade Center.'"
• Dear It's Parenting – Content Scraping is Stealing!
• Kim Dotcom resigns from Mega to focus on extradition battle, politics

NSA Spies

• Of course NSA can crack crypto. Anyone can. The question is, how much?—"The known unknowns of NSA's crypto cracking."
• Court Decision Allows NSA to Search its Database for American Records Without a Warrant—Kevin Drum may have a change of heart over what he wrote.
• Brazilian TV show says U.S. spied on state-run Petrobras oil firm, cites NSA documents

Aaron Swartz; Copyfight; PayPal; Facebook; Google; Data Caps; Trouble with Telcos; Media Manipulation; Hoaxes and Scams

Aaron Swartz

• Remember Aaron Swartz
• RIP, Aaron Swartz
• Lessig: Prosecutor as bully
• Remember Aaron Swartz by working against government abuses--"The internet activist was an advocate for open society who faced an abusive prosecution from the government. He will be missed."
• The inspiring heroism of Aaron Swartz
• MIT Responds to Death of Activist Aaron Swartz, Begins Internal Investigation
• Expert witness describes Aaron Swartz's "crimes"--The US AG wanted to jail him for 30 years.

Copyfight

• "Buffy vs Edward" remix is back online, but no fallout for Lionsgate--""I'm happy that 'Buffy vs Edward' is back on YouTube but what's to stop this sort of thing from happening again? Will Lionsgate face any repercussions for abusing YouTube's system and sending this bogus DMCA takedown? "
• Public domain: Access denied
• Why There Are Only 100 Copies Of The New Bob Dylan Record--"Only available in Europe, Dylan's new, limited-edition compilation aims to extend the copyright on unreleased material from the beginning of his career."

PayPal

• Jay Lake v. PayPal--"Yet I cannot help wondering how this would have gone without my own social media footprint and widespread network of friends and fans. Would I be looking at weeks of paperwork and a continually frozen account, as my friend has experienced?"
• PayPal "guilty until proven innocent" account freeze
• PayPal Demands Invites to Private BitTorrent Trackers

Facebook

• Monetization on steroids: Facebook's $100 experiment
• Facebook UK loses 600,000 users in December
• Reverse trolling sweeps American schools with craze for Facebook pages dedicated to anonymous compliments

Google

• Does Constant Googling Really Make You Stupid? 
• Google's ultrafast Internet draws startups to KC
• Plus-One This: Proof That Google Plus Will Prevail--They're also innovating more quickly.

Data Caps

• Why Data Caps Suck: The Animated Examination
• Cable Industry Draws Scrutiny For Putting Internet Users On A Scale
• FCC Hires New Cap Loving Chief Economist--"Steven Wildman previously used by ISPs to justify caps."

Trouble with Telcos

• How the iPhone 5 prompted my divorce from AT&T and new life with Verizon
• Do You Really Need a Voice Plan with That Fancy Smartphone?
• Why Consumers of U.S. Wireless Carriers Need a Google

Media Manipulation

• I Was a Paid Internet Shill: How Shadowy Groups Manipulate Internet Opinion and Debate
• Don't read the comments! Online communities shape risk perception--"More people get science news from blogs, where commentary shapes opinions."
• Vietnam admits deploying bloggers to support government

Hoaxes and Scams

• After a half-decade, massive Wikipedia hoax finally exposed
• Watch How A 4chan Hoax Happens--"BuzzFeed sat in on a private chatroom full of anonymous 4chan members as they put together a follow-up prank to their #Cutting4Bieber Twitter hoax...."
• Internet Bieber hoax fuelled vicious cycle--"Prank a sign of cynicism, experts say."

McKinnon extradition repudiation; Your Rights Online, Copyfight, Surveillance, Do No Track, Tech Tracking, Privacy, DMCA, Piracy, DRM, Paypal

Gary McKinnon extradition to US blocked by Theresa May--"Mrs May said the sole issue she had to consider was his human rights."

Your Rights Online

• CISPA Author Ramps Up The FUD: Claims He Can't Sleep At Night Due To 'Unusual Source' Threatening Us--One that's so secret even he can't talk about it.
• German Gov't Inadvertently Reveals Police Monitor Gmail, Skype, Facebook & Use Snooping Malware
• Saudi Arabia Suggests Global Internet Regulations To Preserve 'Public Order'
• Australia: Govt censors pre-prepared data retention bills
• Cybercrime law is suspended by Philippines court

Copyfight

• Canada-EU Trade Agreement Replicates ACTA's Notorious Copyright Provisions
• UN IP group tells Pirate Party: You can't even watch--"In Germany, the Pirate Party has sent a candidate to a state senate; in Sweden, the party has actually elected members of the European Parliament. But whatever its successes, the Pirate Party still won't be able to sit in on proceedings of the World Intellectual Property Organization...."
• Megaupload server seizures finally run into mega-due-process
• Judge Says Fair Use Protects Universities in Book-Scanning Project
• YouTube finally offers a meaningful ContentID appeal process--"But takedown policies are still favorable to large copyright holders."
• ICE Reluctantly Releases A Small Number Of Heavily Redacted Domain Seizure Docs, Holds The Rest Hostage

Surveillance

• The New Zealand institutions that broke our trust--"[T]hat's not a story about Kim Dotcom, that's a story about New Zealand institutions who got it wrong, so wrong, they even broke the law."
• Supreme Court Terminates Warrantless Electronic Spying Case--Giving the telcos the gift of immunity.
• FBI Rolling Out Hi-tech 'Big Brother' Monitoring System
• Why Is The Government Afraid Of This iPhone App?
• The Danger To Privacy Isn't Corporate Data-Mining Or Governmental Surveillance – It's Both Combined

Do Not Track

• Think tank's website rejects browser do-not-track requests
• Ad industry calls IE10's 'Do Not Track' setting 'unacceptable'
• The Do Not Track standard has crossed into crazy territory
• US Congress' Privacy Caucus says DAA's anti-'Do Not Track' stance puts "profits over privacy"
• Europe's Internet chief: Policy makers are compromising privacy with Do Not Track bickering
• Do Not Track is drawing advertisers' fire NYT
• Advertisers launch $1 million campaign to combat privacy concerns

Tech Tracking

• How much do Google and Facebook profit from your data?
• How to stop Verizon (and AT&T) from selling your location data and other usage stats to advertisers
• Verizon iPhone owners have 30 days to opt-out of sharing location, search data and more with advertisers
• Verizon draws fire for monitoring app usage, browsing habits
• Apple: How to opt out of interest-based ads from the iAd network
• An always-on Siri: MindMeld listens to you talk, finds what you need
• Amazon’s Next Big Business Is Selling You

Privacy

• FTC Releases Google Privacy Report – Minus The Juicy Details
• Google accused of spying on Gmail users
• Reading someone's Gmail doesn't violate federal statute, court finds--"SC court says Gmail not "electronic storage" by Stored Communications Act."
• Google told to fix privacy policy by EU data regulators
• Rent-to-Own Laptops Secretly Photographed Users Having Sex, FTC Says
• Students Refusing Tracking ID Cards Unable to Vote for Homecoming?

DMCA

• Microsoft DMCA Notice 'Mistakenly' Targets BBC, Techcrunch, Wikipedia and U.S. Govt
• "Online Thug" DMCAs Critic's Site Off The Internet Over 16-Word Quote
• How a single DMCA notice took down 1.45 million education blogs

Piracy

• Artist Can’t Get Pirated Music Off iTunes, Google and Microsoft Stores--"When The Flashbulb, aka Benn Jordan, found out that another artist was selling a “copy” of his music, he learned that it is pretty much impossible to get it removed. According to Jordan the mainstream music industry only cares about profits, not the actual artists."
• Copyright Scofflaws Beware: ISPs to Begin Monitoring Illicit File Sharing--Six strikes and you're out, but not before you get a little reeducation.
• File-Sharers Buy 30% More Music Than Non-P2P Peers
• Swedish Pirate Party Surges After File-Sharing Host Facility Raided--"Following a police raid on the hosting facility PRQ that coincided with technical problems at the iconic The Pirate Bay, the Swedish Pirate Party is surging in member and activist count."

DRM

• Going blind? DRM will dim your world--"Many of us will start losing our eyesight as we age. The digital world can help get round some of these physical impediments - but not if digital rights management and the like blocks our accessibility."
• Übertroll firm bags DRM patent for 3D printing
• PSP Comic Store closing October 30--"PSP and PSP Go owners... will not be able to re-download most comics purchased."

Paypal

• Paypal bans users from joining class action suits
• PayPal Wants to Limit Your Legal Rights Against Them, Here's a Way Around That
• Paypal suspends domestic transactions in Argentina--"Locals were setting up two accounts under different email addresses and transferring money between the two, exchanging local currency pesos for dollars in the process."

Online Customers, Free, Reviews, Lost & Found, Patent Trolls, Apple, Techie

Online Customers

• Has adaptive design failed? Of course not
• The Web Is a Customer Service Medium
• Tech Companies Leave Phone Calls Behind--"Increasingly, social technology businesses are taking an antisocial attitude to callers, making themselves available to customers via e-mail, Twitter messages and Web sites." NYT
• eBay bans 'intangible' items including spells, curses and advice
• Uber Screwed Me (But At Least It Bought Me Breakfast!)--It's also having problems problemsx setting up in NYC.
• PayPal Screws Over a Small Businessman
• Why I Hate Buying Tickets

Free

• The Cost Of Free Doughnuts: 70 Years Of Regret
• People Who Pay For A Service Are A Lot Nicer Than Those Who Don't
• Going broke with success: how an app with 200,000 downloads led to developer homelessness

Reviews

• Authors Behaving Badly: How I Pissed Off Legions of Emily Giffin Fans
• The Best Book Reviews Money Can Buy--"Mr. Liu estimates that about one-third of all consumer reviews on the Internet are fake. Yet it is all but impossible to tell when reviews were written by the marketers or retailers (or by the authors themselves under pseudonyms), by customers (who might get a deal from a merchant for giving a good score) or by a hired third-party service." NYT
• Three Arrests In China Over Baidu "Post-Deleting" Services--"It is alleged that the employees accepted money in exchange for removing negative feedback left on Baidu's forum service. The company had already fired four people for misconduct before three of them were arrested."

Lost & Found

• David Pogue Has Lost His iPhone--And how it was found.
• Bike Thief Gets Owned
• Australia: Court ponders 'trespass' by triggering iPad alarm--"A court has been asked to decide whether a man trying to find his allegedly stolen iPad was acting unlawfully when he tracked it down to a north Canberra townhouse using Apple's anti-theft app and a GPS."

Patent Trolls

• Chinese company uses leaked photos to copy, patent iPhone 5 design--And they're already on sale.
• Eolas strikes again: sues Facebook, Wal-Mart, and Disney over UC patents
• Cost of the Uniloc Lawsuit

Apple

• Confessions from the Most Corrupt Apple Store in America
• Will Apple's Tacky Software-Design Philosophy Cause A Revolt?
• Am I An Outlier, Or Are Apple Products No Longer Easy To Use?

Techie

• To Recruit Techies, Companies Offer Unlimited Vacation
• Vizio reboots the PC: a quiet American success story takes on sleeping giants
• Digg's new look shows the virtues of slowing down and savoring the Web--And while they're working on restoring its archives for its old users, seven years of Internet history are down the toilet.

Customer Diss-service, Consumer Information, Tickets, Tech Cases, HDMI Hoodwinks, Credit Card, Paypal

Customer Diss-service

• Chile Daily Must Pay Readers For Exploding Churros
• Russia: Autistic children denied Oceanarium visit – as they 'disappoint' the visitors
• UK: Wedding photographer ordered to pay compensation for 'dreadful' £350 video

Consumer Information

• Retailers Rush to Adjust to Price-Smart Shoppers NYT
• Shrouded Attributes, Consumer Myopia, and Information Suppression in Competitive Markets
• 13 Step Method For Buying A Car While Controlling The Sale And The Price
• Is It Better To Buy Or Rent
• Downloads: 'It's cheaper to pay a wage, fly to the US and back twice'--"Australians are paying 50 per cent more than American shoppers for downloaded music and games, as well as computer software and hardware, consumer watchdog Choice says."

Tickets

• A Band Battles Ticketmaster on Sales Fees--String Cheese Incident buys $20,000 of its own tickets to sell back to fans without Ticketmaster's gouging fees. NYT
• Louis C.K. Shuns Ticketmaster For New Tour--He's also looked into a way to beats back scalpers.
• LCD Soundsystem Thwarts Scalpers

Tech Cases

• Microsoft forbids users from joining class action lawsuits
• Japan whistleblower wins in Supreme Court in nation first as judge dismisses Olympus appeal
• Jury finds Toshiba guilty of LCD price-fixing

HDMI Hoodwinks

• Apparently This Matters: $1,300 HDMI cables
• Expensive HDMI cables make no difference - the absolute proof
• Is There Anyone Stupid Enough to Believe That This Cable Has Anti-Virus Protection?

Credit Card

• Should we fear a cashless society? Salon
• For Credit-Card Issuers, a Silver Lining in the CARD Act
• Recurring Credit Card Charges Horror

Paypal

• Paypal Does it Again
• Embarrassing security failure at PayPal
• Paypal Restores Account of BitTorrent Friendly VPN
• PayPal Bans Major File-Hosting Services Over Piracy Concerns--Putlock says that, "[t]hey basically wanted access to the backend to monitor all the files being uploaded, and listing all files of users if they wanted, regardless of the privacy setting that the user might have selected."
• PayPal Narrows Boycott of 'Obscene' Publishers--Because they're the guardians of morality.

¡Feliz Cinco de Mayo! Eurozone, Corruption in Canada, World News, Right-Wing, Racism, Slavery

Eurozone

• Latest suicide shows Greece is in desperate straits – but it won't spark a revolution
• Austerity drives up suicide rate in debt-ridden Greece
• Dutch government falls in budget crisis

Corruption in Canada

• Conservative Party pleads guilty to campaign overspending, Liberals ask if Tories bought the election
• PayPal ordered to give info in Canada robocall search
• A recap of the Harper government’s first year scandals

World News

• Death for blogging: Tehran uses trumped-up porn charges to target netizens
• Portugal judge: U.S. fugitive won't be extradited
• Sarkozy announces crackdown on Internet hate sites
• Journalist seeking truth about Khmer Rouge 'fears for his life'
• Japan's 1,000-year-old warning--"When the tsunami struck Miyatojima island, a story passed down through generations meant residents knew what to do and kept many safe."

Right-Wing

• Europe's far right marches on--Are they gaining ground? Salon
• Anders Breivik's World: How Sick Is Norway's Mass Murderer?
• Far right hardcore 'willing to prepare for armed conflict'

Racism

• Police face racism scandal after black man records abuse--"Crown Prosecution Service reviews decision not to charge officers heard boasting of strangling 21-year-old black man."
• British man jailed for racist tweet
• Racist woman on UK train arrested
• South Africa: Wouter Basson to answer misconduct case--"As head of the military's chemical and biological warfare division, he is accused of creating viruses that would only attack black people."
• Dirty secret of black-on-Asian violence is out
• Study shows that more than one-third of restaurant servers discriminate against African-American customers
• Australia Aboriginal burial site vandalised

Slavery

• Baseball strikeouts help free child slaves – The CNN Freedom Project: Ending Modern-Day Slavery
• Fishing as Slaves on the High Seas--"For some Indonesian workers, commercial fishing in the seas off New Zealand became a nightmare of abuse aboard foreign-chartered vessels."
• Slave-like conditions' on Swedish army base

Consumer Protection, Monsanto, Unfriendly Skies, Paypal, Bad Company

Consumer Protection

• Give consumers their day in court--"A string of Supreme Court rulings in favor of companies that force wronged consumers into arbitration instead of allowing them to pursue lawsuits shows change is needed. A Senate bill aims to do that."
• When big business and human rights collide: A case before the U.S. Supreme Court may deny victims abroad recourse against corporate-sanctioned abuse.
• Pro bono lawyers rescue scienceblogger from naturopath's SLAPP legal threats
• LA Fitness dealt a knockout blow over unfair gym contracts
• National Consumer Protection Week 2012--Learn more on how to combat bad business practices.

Monsanto

• White House refuses to reveal ties with Monsanto
• Monsanto Is a Lobbying Powerhouse
• Judge tosses suit against Monsanto--He said that "There is no evidence to suggest that plaintiffs are infringing defendants' patents, nor have plaintiffs suggested when, if ever, such infringement will occur." Filed away for future reference.
• Court: Monsanto Guilty of Chemical Poisoning in France
• Monsanto Forced Out of Costa Rica
• Monsanto, Agent Orange Creator, Returns To Vietnam: Monsanto ready to sell GM crops and weed-killing chemicals in Vietnam; Many outraged--They've reentered South America as well.
• AntiSec dumps Monsanto data on the Web

Unfriendly Skies

• Spanish police rescue Ryanair's Michael O'Leary from angry mob
• American Airlines announces 13,000 job cuts
• CWA President Larry Cohen Is Pissed at Senate Democrats--"Senate Democrats averted another Federal Aviation Administration shutdown by passing a "compromise" funding bill that will fund the agency through 2014 and modernizes the country's air traffic control system. [...] It passed 75 to 20—and has incensed union leaders, who condemn its provisions making it harder to organize workers in the airline and rail industries."
• Australian airline runs out of money, stranding thousands
• Hungarian airline's bankruptcy causes ripple effects in Southeast Europe

Paypal

• How PayPal beat communists and civil servants at logic
• "Rather than have the violin returned to me, PayPal made the buyer DESTROY the violin in order to get his money back."
• Legal Censorship: PayPal Makes a Habit of Deciding What Users Can Read--They've been pretty been acting like moral police.

Bad Company

• Ikea 'paid police for files on complaining customers'
• Oh No! Car Dealers Might Have To Deal With Informed Customers! That Must Be Illegal!
• The Impact of Bad Bosses--"New research has found that bad bosses affect how your whole family relates to one another; your physical health, raising your risk for heart disease; and your morale while in the office."
• Gareb Shamus Accused Of Trying To Get Artist Fired From Their Day Job
• I Was a Warehouse Wage Slave: My brief, backbreaking, rage-inducing, low-paying, dildo-packing time inside the online-shipping machine