I hope everyone had a great International Day Against DRM. Digital Rights Management deserves more attention than a single day’s worth and a lot of groups work year round to protect users and fight against restrictions imposed by corporations on the use of digital media. The Eletronic Frontier Foundation, Free Software Foundation, and Creative Commons … Continue reading »
Earlier this month Creative Commons, OpenGameArt, and the Free Software Foundation announced The Liberated Pixel Cup (LPC), a Free-as-in-Freedom game creation competition. The first phase of the project is the artwork that’s “dual licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 and GPLv3 and stylistically consistent.” After the first phase, the project hopes to create games licensed under … Continue reading »
The ACLU is alway front and center in helping netizens to understand bills going through congress that pose a threat to the public. True to form they are all over CISPA. I’ve posted about CISPA (The Cybersecurity Information Sharing and Protection Act) before but was far less concerned about its traction. Now, dissent is gaining … Continue reading »
The United States government is at it again. The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) is as bad as SOPA but in a different way. Unlike, SOPA, the co-sponsors of the bill are actually willing to go back and rewrite the bill based on the concerns that activists and advocates have regarding the lack … Continue reading »
Geeks rejoice! There’s finally completely free and open non-proprietary digital/online comicbook format! The file format is called ACBF (Advanced Comic Book Format) created by Robo Pastierovic. It’s licensed under the GNU Public License (GPL) and CC-BY-SA (Creative Commons- Attribution-ShareAlike: if you make a derivative of the format you have to share that with the world … Continue reading »
According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, textbook publishing powerhouses Macmillan, Pearson, Cengage are suing a relatively small open textbook start-up called Boundless Learning. I have to admit I’m biased here (as always). Textbooks are a big issue for me. Being a struggling college student, Boundless almost brings a tear to my eye with their … Continue reading »
An article I’ve written for possible publication in Sounds for a Democratic Society, a central Florida-based zine by the UCF Students for a Democratic Society. Open Everything: An Appeal Technology has now become pervasive in modern society. There is no doubt about its importance in everything we do. Some of the most self-sustaining among us … Continue reading »
In Costa Rica between the 11th and 16th of March of this year at the 43rd international meeting, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) met with the Government Advisory Committee (GAC) to accept and outline the ways in which ICANN will help to curb piracy and copyright infringement. The group will now … Continue reading »
Today is Document Freedom Day!! What is Document Freedom Day? It’s a day to celebrate Open Standards. Open standards are extremely important, especially now as we mature in the age of the Open Web. In order for a standard to be open it must be: subject to full public assessment and use without constraints in … Continue reading »
The Obama administration’s Eric Holder approved a set of guidelines which include the increase of the amount of time the National Counter-terrorism Center (NCTC) can keep innocent civilian information in their databases. The guidelines specify that for United States residents, even if they have no connection to terrorism of any kind, the limit is extended, … Continue reading »
