Archive for April, 2015

Mike – Please Call Now for GPL’s Funding Approval

Thursday, April 30th, 2015

Today I glanced at my spam folder and noticed an odd one:

Subject: Mike – Please Call Now for GPL’s Funding Approval

Though not a subject line fitting the style of either, for a moment I thought mail from Karen Sandler or Bradley Kuhn of Software Freedom Conservancy might have been misfiled.

Nope, it’s just spam:

Mike,I wanted to send you a quick reminder to let you know that I still have an opening today to get GPL instantly qualified for 1-2 times your gross monthly revenue, up to $500,000. There is no personal guarantee or collateral required. If you have $180,000+ per year in gross revenue and have been in business for 12 months, you could qualify for this program.

If you can, please give me a call before 6:00 pm CT today so I can get you in the system, 888-###-####. Over 90% of applicants qualify for this special program, but I need to get your application in.

But I smiled. GPL’s funding approval will have to come from you, dear reader. The Conservancy fundraising effort for enforcement of GPL compliance I mentioned last month met its goal, but with more support we could further ramp up compliance work (my mention last month explained why all sorts, including GPL lovers, haters, and exploiters, ought want this). Donate in support of compliance work or become a general Conservancy supporter!

Hello World Intellectual Freedom Organization

Saturday, April 25th, 2015

Today I’m soft launching an initiative that I’ve been thinking about for 20 years, obtained a domain name for in 1998, blogged about once in 2004, and the last few years have been exploring on this blog without naming it. See the first items in my annual thematic doubt posts for 2013 and 2014: “protecting and promoting intellectual freedom, in particular through the mechanisms of free/open/knowledge commons movements, and in reframing information and innovation policy with freedom and equality outcomes as top.”

I call it the World Intellectual Freedom Organization (WIFO).

Read about its theory, why a new organization, proposed activities, and how you can help/get involved.

Why today? Because April 26 is World Intellectual Freedom Day, occupying and displacing World Intellectual Property Day, just as intellectual freedom must occupy and displace intellectual property for a good future. Consider this 0th World Intellectual Freedom Day another small step forward, following last year’s Without Intellectual Property Day.

Why a soft launch? Because I’m eager to be public about WIFO, but there’s tons of work to do before it can properly be considered launched. I’ve been getting feedback from a handful of people on a quasi-open fellowship proposal for WIFO (that’s where the activities link above points to) and apologize to the many other people I should’ve reached out to. Well, now I’m doing that. I want your help in this project of world liberation!

Video version of my proposal at the Internet Archive or YouTube. My eyes do not lie, I am reading in an attempt to fit too much material in 5 minutes.

I’ll probably blog much less here about “IP” and commons/free/libre/open issues here from now on, especially after opening a WIFO blog (for now there’s a Discourse forum; most of the links above point there). Not to worry, I am overflowing with idiosyncratic takes on everything else, and will continue to post accordingly here, as much as time permits. ☻

Be sure to celebrate the 0th World Intellectual Freedom Day, even if only momentarily and with your lizard brain.

Great Crimes, Again and Again

Friday, April 24th, 2015

Title refers to Medz Yeghern (Armenian: Մեծ Եղեռն, “Great Crime”), a name for the Armenian Genocide (April 24 is remembrance day), and the empty slogan never again.

I recommend the English Wikipedia article on the Armenian Genocide. It’s a good long read; I learned a fair bit from it that should stick with me. I did not realize that the vast majority of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire lived a helot existence (I only knew that there were prominent Armenian elites in the Empire; indeed the remembrance day is the anniversary of rounding up of 250 Armenian intellectuals in Constantinople), that there was a mass expulsion of Muslims from the Balkans in the years prior to the genocide, that the genocide was widely reported in the West as it was in progress, and that it was witnessed directly by many (Central Power allies) Germans, possibly creating a direct line to some elements of the Holocaust.

I’ve only done naive searches for and skimming of genocide prevention material but my general impression is that it all takes an international perspective. That’s necessary and fine, but given how abysmal and nationalistic international governance is (including with regard to remembering genocides), I’d love to read more about how potential perpetrator and victim groups within jurisdictions have attempted to prevent genocide or its direct preconditions. I know when they have failed (documented genocides), but am almost completely ignorant of what attempts have been made, including any that have been successful, and how such attempts might inform the actions of people under threat today. I’m not talking about simplistic hypotheticals (e.g., what if someone killed Hitler before the war), nor heroic actions to save some people during a genocide. I’m wondering for example the extent of Turk liberal and Armenian elite efforts toward equal rights for all, Armenian elite efforts to protect Armenian helots, Armenian helot efforts to organize, and how such efforts could have been made more effective.

Previously regarding the Armenian-Assyrian-Greek genocide.

“Within jurisdictions” implies “improve yours” (in my case, the U.S.), which indeed I take as highly effective and necessary. A few past posts: Stop Killing Them and Invasion Ethics (present), Robot Gang Memorial Day (future), and Independence′ Day (remembrance).

Addendum 20150501: The English Wikipedia Signpost’s traffic report for April 19-25:

And much more sobering, but also in the Report for the first time, is the Armenian Genocide (#10 added: 631,960 views), which commenced 100 years ago this week. Farther down the list on the Top 25, it is worth noting that Adolf Hitler (#23), who famously asked who remembered the Armenian Genocide, also appears in the Top 25 for the first time. While World War II related topics often make the charts, for some reason Hitler himself has not since the Top 25’s debut in January 2013.

uBlock now blocks newsletter tracking links

Wednesday, April 15th, 2015

A year ago I wrote that most email newsletters are spam, file accordingly. Glad to see that someone agrees. Sometime between versions 0.9.10 and 0.9.30 of uBlock, the ad-blocking extension started blocking the tracking links commonly found in email newsletters (the ones I mentioned in previous post and many more are matched by the EasyPrivacy list included in uBlock). If you mistakenly subscribe to such a newsletter and click one of its links with a recent uBlock version installed, below is what you’ll see.

The Firefox Addons site has an old version of uBlock. Get it from the uBlock releases page instead.

Newsletter senders, including many from well-meaning organizations, please read my previous post and stop being jerky to your customers, fans, constituents, subscribers, patrons, or however you think of people receiving your newsletter — give them transparent, untracked links.

Or you could play cat and mouse with the uBlock and EasyPrivacy developers. This would be further evidence that your organization is a misallocation of resources.