Facebook, Google, eBay, and others own vast swaths of Web activity and have unprecedented power over us, inspiring an effort to re-decentralize the Web.[…]
Berners-Lee’s new project, underway at his MIT lab, is called Solid (“social linked data”), a way for you to own your own data while making it available to the applications that you want to be able to use it.

With Solid, you store your data in “pods” (personal online data stores) that are hosted wherever you would like. But Solid isn’t just a storage system: It lets other applications ask for data. If Solid authenticates the apps and — importantly — if you’ve given permission for them to access that data, Solid delivers it.
[…]

[…]
The InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) takes a different approach. It starts from the conviction that even having web pages identified by a pointer to the server that stores them is too centralized. Why not instead go the way of BitTorrent and let multiple computers supply parts of a page all at the same time? That way, if a web server goes down, it won’t take all of the pages on it with it. IPFS should make the web more resilient, and less subject to censorship.

Source: How the father of the World Wide Web plans to reclaim it from Facebook and Google

If you want to downgrade back to an earlier version, you used to have 30 days time to consider it. Now they’re only giving you 10 days.

Source: Microsoft verkort bedenktijd Windows 10-upgrade

They REALLY REALLY want you to run their spyware for them!

A recent extension of UK copyright for industrially manufactured artistic works represents “a direct assault on the 3D printing revolution,” says Pirate Party founder Rick Falkvinge. The UK government last month extended copyright for designs from 25 years to the life of the designer plus 70 years. In practice, this is likely to mean a copyright term of over 100 years for furniture and other designed objects.
[…]
Falkvinge points out a crucial difference between the previous UK protection for designs, which was based on what are called “design rights” plus a short copyright term, and the situation now, which involves design rights and a much-longer copyright term. With design rights, “you’re absolutely and one hundred percent free to make copies of it for your own use with your own tools and materials,” Falkvinge writes. “When something is under copyright, you are not. Therefore, this move is a direct assault on the 3D printing revolution.”
[…]
“Moving furniture design from a [design right] to copyright law means that people can and will indeed be prosecuted for manufacturing their own furniture using their own tools,” Falkvinge claims.

Source: UK copyright extension on designed objects is “direct assault” on 3D printing

So aside from the (possibly) unintended consequences, who thought it would be a good idea to belly up before big business and extend copyright for such unearthly amounts of time? Why should copyright holders be able to stop working once they hold a successful copyright? Why should humanity have to kowtow to the whims of a copyright holder for years on end, when we could be advancing by building on existing designs?

While most of the media attention focused on the role of ISPs, there is an even more controversial proposal that has been largely overlooked. According to the report, pirated content should be banned on the operating system level.

“Other players that possess the potential ability to limit piracy are the companies that own the major operating systems which control computers and mobile devices such as Apple, Google and Microsoft,” one of the main conclusions reads.

“The producers of operating systems should be encouraged, or regulated, for example, to block downloads of copyright infringing material,” the report adds.

The report references last year’s Windows 10 controversy, noting that these concerns were great enough for some torrent sites to block users with the new operating system.

Source: Report: Operating Systems Should Actively Block Pirated Downloads – TorrentFreak

Really? Just like cassette and DVD players make decisions on what content to play? Oh wait they don’t. Is this a money making scam, forcing people to pay someone to certify their content or else the OS won’t download it? This is not a decision the OS should be making.

In an extraordinary judgment, the organization that hopes to take over running the top level of the internet later this year has been slammed by an independent review as at best incompetent and at worst deliberately mendacious.

The decision [PDF] by ICANN’s Independent Review Panel (IRP) over the organization’s decision to refuse “community” status for three applications covering business suffixes has exposed a level of double-dealing that many suspected occurred in the non-profit organization but has been difficult to prove.

Source: Simply not credible: The extraordinary verdict against the body that hopes to run the internet

This is an incredible story of lawyers who feel they are above the law, insider dealing and nepotism. What a mess at ICANN