The European Union has been reconsidering its copyright laws for several years, and for months we’ve been trudging towards a final vote. Well, that vote is scheduled for Tuesday, and if approved it could mean the end of the open internet as we know it. Specifically, there are two troubling provisions in the EU’s new Read more about Wikipedia and Reddit Stage Eleventh-Hour Protest Against Alarming EU Copyright Plan[…]

Juncker said he was opting for French because “slowly but surely English is losing importance in Europe and France has elections this Sunday and I want the French people to understand what I am saying about the importance of the EU.” The Commission president tackled the row that erupted over a private meeting he had Read more about Jean-Claude Juncker: ‘English is losing importance’ – so only the French get to hear his views on the EU[…]

The minister states that he thinks (his vision is backed by a bunch of closed source software vendors [Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, KPN, CapGemini, Ordina, ATOS, CGI and IBM]) that not having to buy licenses is offset by the costs of having to manage and pay for the deployments of open source software (OSS). Which is Read more about NL Minister Blok takes flying leap from reality in criticism of open source[…]

Despite the seemingly strong empirical support in previous studies for theories of majoritarian democracy, our analyses suggest that majorities of the American public actually have little influence over the policies our government adopts. […] When the preferences of economic elites and the stands of organized interest groups are controlled for, the preferences of the average Read more about US Is an Oligarchy Not a Democracy, says Scientific Study | Common Dreams[…]

The French have much stricter anti-hate speech laws than the US, so some Jewish students thought they would go after Twitter when users of their service posted anti-semitic content. Twitter removed the content, but didn’t identify the culprits. The students feel they have the right to personal retaliatiin or something and went crying to a Read more about French students sue Twitter $50 Million After Refusing To Identify Authors Of Racist And Anti-Semitic Tweets[…]

They’ve put him on the same status as Al Quaida, so who knows, will they try to assassinate him? And if US personell try to talk to Wikileaks employees, they’re spies and will be shot (I guess). US calls Assange 'enemy of state'.

A project sponsored by the Austrian Science Fund FWF has made a detailed investigation on what viewers understand and how they evaluate the statements of politicians during televised debates. To this effect, software-assisted conversation analysis established how the individual social knowledge of viewers nurtures the interpretations – and reinterpretations – of political statements. For the Read more about Discursive Politics – Language with a Spin[…]

A study of 61 million Facebook users finds that using online social networks to urge people to vote has a much stronger effect on their voting behavior than spamming them with information via television ads or phone calls. via 'Social Voting' Really Does Rock the Vote – ScienceNOW.

Adhocracy is a policy drafting tool for distributed groups. It allows members of organizations or the public to compose or vote documents that represent the policy of the group. In order to allow cooperation, Adhocracy uses LiquidDemocracy, a set of ideas that include delegating a user’s voting rights to another to enable both active and Read more about Parliament for the people! Adhocracy / LiquidDemocracy / LiquidFeedback[…]

From the start of March, the new Citizens’ Initiative Act will come into force. According to the new law, a required minimum of 50,000 citizens of voting age can launch a bill that Parliament then has to process. On the Open Ministry website, anyone can present an idea for a law initiative. If the idea Read more about Open Ministry: Finnish crowd sourced lawmaking[…]

Some idiots think that the city of Amsterdam should do anything to set up a .amsterdam global top level domain to market the city (so you could have www.stupid.amsterdam as a web address). 'Gemeente moet topleveldomein .amsterdam claimen' | Webwereld. That, hoewever, costs $185,000 New gTLD Applicant guidebook, ch. 1.5 as well as having to Read more about Idiot .Amsterdam politico wants to spend fortune on gTLD.[…]

Basically the PVV, backed by Mark Rutte, the Dutch prime minister, have a few sensationalist headlines from a religious magazine that no-one knows (Reformatiorich Dagblad) or reads and a few from a more serious newspaper (AD) that aren’t so sensationalist, and on the basis of this they’ve decided to open up a Hitlerite plan to Read more about NL .gov opens anonymous portal to tell on Midden and Eastern Europeans[…]

Aside from the fact that NL is a trading nation and thus has a disproportionate amount of people living and working outside of the Netherlands and thus having multiple nationalities, it makes it seem like having the Dutch nationality is like being a member of some kind of exclusive club. What nonsense! Being a member Read more about NL gov wants to revoke NL nationality for expat Dutch people[…]

PvdA zweert reparatie van netneutraliteit | Webwereld.

It looks like where copyright goons and the NL are failing by wanting to turn our society into a surveillance society, the unelected EU Court may come to citizens’ rescue: Advocate General Cruz Villalón considers that the installation of that filtering and blocking system is a restriction on the right to respect for the privacy Read more about European Court of Justice To Outlaw Internet Filtering; Esp. For Copyright Enforcement[…]

The law obliges a range of e-commerce sites, video and music services and webmail providers to keep a host of data on customers. This includes users’ full names, postal addresses, telephone numbers and passwords. The data must be handed over to the authorities if demanded. This means that the data which is handed over can Read more about Net giants challenge French data law that stores your password as plaintext[…]

Like wikileaks for the Middle East, it shows concessions made by the Palestinians weren’t good enough for Israel and the US was running around showboating, not doing much constructive. The story behind the Palestine papers | World news | The Guardian.

Under the new law, a government-appointed media council will have the power to decide whether a publication has broken rules on what it calls balanced and ‘moral’ reporting, and can issue heavy fines. Print and Internet media can face fines of more than $100,000 and broadcasters nearly $1 million, if, for example, their coverage is Read more about Hungary goes dictatorship – crazy media law requires “balance” (whatever that is) or huge fines[…]