● 03.31.16

● Links 31/3/2016: Bodhi Linux 3.2.0, Kirigami UI

Posted in News Roundup at 7:42 am by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

Desktop

• PC MAKER Acer has unveiled the Chromebook 14, a premium-looking Chrome OS laptop that claims a MacBook-rivalling 14-hour battery life.

• Acer, perhaps not best known for premium devices, added the aluminium-clad Chromebook 14 to its laptop line-up this week. This is Acer’s first all-metal Chromebook, and the chassis with rounded corners weighs just 1.55kg.

Kernel Space

• It is designed to provide software developers with knowledge about legal and licensing issues for building and using open source software.

• According to the Linux Foundation, complying with open source licences doesn’t have to be difficult, but “it does require training and is essential for anyone building or contributing to open source code bases today”.

• The Linux Foundation has opened up a free course for developers designed to help them understand legal and licensing issues when building and using open source software.

• The Linux Foundation, which has proven to be an effective steward for many open source initiatives, has announced that it will host the TODO Group, a cross-industry effort to focus on establishing best practices, tools and programs to support corporate open source engagement. The TODO Group was originally formed in November 2014, and the foundation will now be its steward.

• The Reiser4 file-system has been updated with support for the Linux 4.5 kernel.

• Edward Shishkin, the main Reiser4 developer left working on this out-of-tree file-system, today spun the Reiser4 patches for the Linux 4.5 kernel that also includes a few fixes/changes for satisfying the kernel and compiler. Aside from that, there’s nothing new to report today with regard to new Reiser4 file-system features nor any new attempt to try to mainline this file-system code.

• The Linux Foundation is unveiling plans to help organizations utilize and release open-source software. The foundation announced it will host the TODO Group, a cross-industry effort to focus on establishing best practices, tools and programs to support corporate open-source engagement.

• “From carmakers and banks to retailers and hospitals, every industry relies on open-source software, and every company is an Internet company,” said Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation. “The TODO Group reaches across industries to collaborate with open-source technical and business leaders to share best practices, tools and programs for building dependable, effective projects for the long term.”

• The open source movement can be traced back as far as 1997, when Eric Raymond published The Cathedral and the Bazaar. The paper reflected upon the hacker community and free software principles. It received significant attention in 1998, and was a key driving factor behind the decision to release the Internet suite, Netscape Communicator, as free software. The source code went on to become the backbone of many search engines, including the widely used Mozilla Firefox.

Graphics Stack

• Just a little more than a week after the release of the Nvidia 364.12 graphics driver for *NIX platforms, today, March 30, 2016, Nvidia released an updated version for its long-lived branch.

• Hitting the linux-firmware Git tree are updates to the firmware/microcode binary-only images for the graphics cards supported by the Radeon and AMDGPU DRM drivers.

• While not nearly as exciting as the changes to find with the latest NVIDIA 364 Linux driver series, the 361.42 Linux driver is out today as the newest version in the 361 long-lived driver series.

• New product support in the NVIDIA 361.42 point release includes bringing up the GeForce 920MX, GeForce 930MX, and Quadro M6000 24GB graphics processors.

Benchmarks

• For putting the open-source GeForce GTX 900 driver performance into better perspective from the results this week with the new support found on Linux 4.6 and compared to NVIDIA’s proprietary driver, hare are some benchmark results when comparing the Nouveau driver performance of the GTX 900 “Maxwell” graphics cards to that of the GTX 600/700 “Kepler” graphics cards with their experimental re-clocking support.

Applications

• QEMU 2.6-rc0 was tagged today as the first milestone leading up to the QEMU 2.6 release in the near future.

• QEMU 2.6 is bringing many ARM and MIPS improvements, support for new x86 CPU features, QEMU VFIO now supports AMD XGBE platform passthrough, performance improvements in VirtIO, SDL2 and SPICE now support OpenGL and VirGL, block device improvements, and more.

• Toonz is an animation software solution used by studios like Studio Ghibli and has been in development for more than two decades. Earlier this month it was announced Toonz would be open-sourced and then a few days back the code was published as OpenToonz. While Toonz/OpenToonz originally didn’t have Linux support, patches are emerging to allow this high-end animation software to run on Linux.

• For those still relying upon the FFmpeg-forked libav project, their libavcodec code has added new VA-API encoder support.

• With the Video Acceleration API (VA-API) largely backed by Intel, the Libav code-base is supporting GPU-accelerated H.264 encoding and H.265/HEVC encoding.

Proprietary

• Vivaldi’s Ruarí Ødegaard has announced earlier the release and immediate availability for testing of what appears to be one of the last snapshots before the final build of the upcoming Vivaldi 1.0 web browser.

Instructionals/Technical

Games

• Just three days ago, we reported about the latest stable Steam Client update Valve pushed to Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows users, which brought numerous Steam Controller and SteamVR features, and now a new Beta version is out.

• While there are around two thousand Linux-native games now available on Steam brought over by many different studios, it was just four years ago that many thought Valve bringing Steam to Linux was a joke or far-fetched rumor.

• Today marks four years to the day since Gabe Newell had emailed us about Linux driver problems in their porting of Source Engine games to Linux as part of their initial Steam Linux bring-up. Many didn’t believe it then, in part due to being close to April Fools’ Day, and even when in 2012 I went out to Valve’s HQ to talk with them about their Linux plans including what would become Steam Machines and SteamOS.

• When the PlayStation 4 was reportedly jailbroken not too long ago, it has become the preoccupation of some hackers to find and develop new ways on how to jailbreak Sony’s current generation gaming console in the least complicated manner possible.

• I have to give this a go, I just have to. I look forward to creating some true monstrosities.

• I have requested a key, so hopefully I will be able to show you what it’s like at release.

• I do wonder if he will detail any annoyances about Linux he had, as it would be useful for other developers to know I’m sure. Sounds like he came across annoyances on Mac as well.

• EVERSPACE is an incredibly beautiful looking 3D space shooter that takes elements from roguelikes that was funded on Kickstarter. They smashed their funding goal, and it’s heading to Linux now too.

Desktop Environments/WMs

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

• The latest version of digiKam has been added to the unofficial ports tree in area51. The unofficial ports tree is where the KDE-FreeBSD team works on ports in preparation for their inclusion into the official ports tree. The trunk of that repository is basically “what’s next” for the official ports tree from our point of view. There are other branches: mostly plasma5, for the upcoming (from a FreeBSD perspective, at least) KDE Frameworks 5 and Plasma 5; qt5.6 for testing the recently-released Qt 5.6. Official ports will remain Qt 5.5 for the time being.

• KDE has a long tradition of providing user interface components beyond the basics that are offered in Qt itself. With KDE Frameworks 5, these have become more easily available for Qt developers who are not part of KDE. Now, with KDE’s focus expanding beyond desktop and laptop computers into the mobile and embedded sector, our QWidgets-based components alone are not sufficient anymore. In order to allow developers to easily create Qt-based applications that run on any major mobile or desktop operating system (including our very own existing Plasma Desktop and upcoming Plasma Mobile, of course), we have created a framework that extends the touch-friendly Qt Quick Controls: Welcome Kirigami UI!

• While Qt 5.6 was just released after being delayed by months, Qt 5.7 was supposed to be a quick follow-on release but it too is already seeing delays.

• Qt 5.7 went into alpha while Qt 5.6 was still being prepared for release, but now the Qt 5.7 beta is going to be delayed by an unknown amount of time.

• Today, March 30, 2016, KDE, through Thomas Pfeiffer, has proudly announced a new framework for developers who want to build cross-platform Qt-based applications.

GNOME Desktop/GTK

• So, what’s new in Epiphany 3.20?

• First off: overlay scrollbars. Because web sites have the ability to style their scrollbars (which you’ve probably noticed on Google sites), WebKit embedders cannot use a normal GtkScrolledWindow to display content; instead, WebKit has to paint the scrollbars itself. Hence, when overlay scrollbars appeared in GTK+ 3.16, WebKit applications were left out.

• I previously reported that, although WebKitGTK+ releases regular upstream security updates, most Linux distributions are not taking the updates. At the time, only Arch Linux and Fedora were reliably releasing our security updates. So I’m quite pleased that openSUSE recently released a WebKitGTK+ security update, and then Mageia did too. Gentoo currently has an update in the works. It remains to be seen if these distros regularly follow up on updates (expect a follow-up post on this in a few months), but, optimistically, you now have several independent distros to choose from to get an updated version WebKitGTK+, plus any distros that regularly receive updates directly from these distros.

• GUADEC 2016 will be held for the first time in Karlsruhe, Germany. The conference will be held on August 12th-14th, with a day of workshops beforehand, and 3 days of BoFs and hackfests after.

Distributions

Bodhi

• Back in December I laid out a rough timeline of Bodhi events for 2016. Today I am happy to announce that we successfully met two of the first three. While some work related commitments prevented me from getting a Swami release out on time, we did successfully release version 0.2.0 of the Moksha desktop, and today I bring to you version 3.2.0 of Bodhi Linux. This is our last scheduled update release of the Bodhi 3 branch. Existing Bodhi 3 users do not need to reinstall to obtain this latest release – they simply need to perform all of their current system updates.

• Jeff Hoogland today announced the release of Bodhi Linux 3.2.0 featuring a new version of his Moksha desktop. The news of Ubuntu’s Bash on the next Windows 10 update has been filling the headlines for two days and today blogger Locutus called it “The Devil’s Spawn.” OpenOffice extensions are terribly outdated and SCO is back from the dead to file another appeal.

• Bodhi Linux developer and maintainer Jeff Hoogland is proud to announce the release of the Bodhi Linux 3.2.0 operating system, based on the Ubuntu 14.04.4 LTS Linux distribution.

• According to the release notes, Bodhi Linux 3.2.0 has been released mainly to promote the Enlightenment-based Moksha Desktop 0.2.0 desktop environment, which makes Bodhi unique and popular with the Linux community. It’s powered by Ubuntu 15.10′s Linux 4.2 kernel and adds some much-needed UEFI improvements.

Screenshots/Screencasts

OpenSUSE/SUSE

• The openSUSE Build Service (OBS) has a long history dating back to January 2007, when it was first announced. For the majority of its lifespan, OBS has enabled developers to easily build Linux packages for x86, but in recent years, ARM has become increasingly important.

• Now that the GNOME 3.20 desktop environment has been officially released, the time has come for it to land in the software repositories of some of the most popular GNU/Linux distributions.

• We’ve already told you that the latest development versions of the upcoming Parsix GNU/Linux 8.10 and Fedora 24 operating systems offer technical previews of the GNOME 3.20 desktop environment to those brave enough to become early adopters.

Red Hat Family

• Last week, Red Hat became the first open source company to cross the US$2 billion mark in annual revenue.

• Presumably, this means that the company will no longer have to depend on clients like the NSA for income.

• Last year, it was reported that XKEYSCORE — an application that the Intercept, the website run by journalist Glenn Greenwald, describes as NSA’s Google for private communications — was being run for the most part on Red Hat Linux servers.

• At the time, Red Hat had crossed the billion-dollar revenue mark. But the company could not summon up anyone to talk intelligently about why it was selling, and providing support, to an organisation that is surreptitiously conducting mass surveillance of the American population and a goodly portion of the rest of the world too.

• Raleigh open-source giant Red Hat (NYSE: RHT) announced a new strategic partnership Tuesday – this time with flash storage firm SanDisk Corporation (Nasdaq: SNDK). In a prepared statement, the company said the strategic alliance would bring the “combined benefits” of Red Hat technology and flash storage to enterprise customers.

• Ranga Rangachari, vice president and general manager of storage at Red Hat, says the announcement also validates a $175 million buy from two years ago – that of California-based open-source storage provider InkTank. The buy included Inktank’s flagship technology, then called Inktank Ceph Enterprise, which delivered storage software to businesses deploying public and private clouds. At the time, executives said the buy put Red Hat in a position to become “the leading provider of open software-defined storage across object, block and file system storage.”

• Red Hat and SanDisk have partnered to deliver flash-based Ceph storage solutions to enterprise customers.

Finance

Fedora

• A user with the IRC nick of CoffeeMan wanted to know how Fedora 23 and Korora 23 (Cinnamon edition) compared for resource usage because he was seeing performance differences between the two. There shouldn’t really be much in the way of differnces other than branding and themes… so I created two KVM VMs and installed them both side-by-side. While I realize that running two VMs at the same time isn’t really that bright when it comes to getting accurate performance metrics, it at least gives one an idea how of they compare… and things like the number of processes, CPU usage, RAM used, disk used, etc… shouldn’t really vary that much.

• Out of the six billion people in the world, only 339 million have English as a first language. The importance of English in global business increases the number of English speakers, but the people learning are taking English on as a second language. A notable number of users prefer products in their own language. Japan is a common example of this.

• Today, I received the Pizzelle badge in Fedora Badges. I was awarded with Pizzelle after a short “karma storm” in the EMEA Ambassadors meeting. After finding out I was awarded the badge, I had a light bulb sort of moment. As of this month, it has been a year since I first found myself wanting to get involved with the Fedora Project. I remember seeing the announcement for Flock 2015 and how that was right next to my soon-to-be university, the Rochester Institute of Technology. I remember lazily dismissing the idea of taking any further steps into Fedora until after Flock 2015. And now, a year later, I’m reflecting back on crazy of a past few months it has been.

• Last week I presented the process on how to apply to Google Summer of Code for the Fedora Project. It is the first time GSoC is presented in our college. I presented the process on how to apply t…

• It’s not Fedora if it ships on time. After a couple of delays, the Fedora community has announced the alpha release of Fedora 24, the next version of this free and open source Linux distribution.

• Fedora now comes in 3 versions, targeted at different use cases: Workstation for desktops; Server for (obviously) servers and Cloud for containers. For testing purposes, I downloaded the Workstation version and installation was easy, as is the case with most Linux distributions.

Debian Family

• I decided to take a couple of days of vacation next to Easter and obviously ended up with tons of time. I ended up channelling most of the (productive) time into improving Britney.

• DebConf16 will take place in Cape Town, South Africa in July 2016. We strive to provide an intense working environment and enable good progress for Debian and for Free Software in general. We extend an invitation to everyone to join us and to support this event. As a volunteer-run non-profit conference, we depend on our sponsors.

• Julian has written about their efforts to strengthen security in APT, and shortly before that notified us that Launchpad’s signatures on PPAs use weak SHA-1 digests. Unfortunately we hadn’t noticed that before; GnuPG’s defaults tend to result in weak digests unless carefully tweaked, which is a shame.

• I started on the necessary fixes for this immediately we heard of the problem, but it’s taken a little while to get everything in place, and I thought I’d explain why since some of the problems uncovered are interesting in their own right.

Derivatives

Canonical/Ubuntu

• Today, March 30, 2016, Ubuntu Make developer Didier Roche has announced the general availability of Ubuntu Make 16.03 for all supported Ubuntu Linux operating systems.

• For those not in the known, Ubuntu Make is an open-source command-line tool designed from the ground up to help developers and programmers install all sorts of third-party applications that aren’t available in the Ubuntu repos or don’t have a PPA.

• The company announced it is bringing the much-loved (by some) “bash” command prompt and its libraries to Windows 10.

• We can also expect to see some longtime Ubuntu users announcing that they’ll be ditching Ubuntu for another distribution.

• This is indeed a day to grab the popcorn. With the news that SCO is back and planning to appeal the dismissal of its case against IBM, this latest news makes today something of an all day double feature picture show.

Flavours and Variants

• Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) beta 2 has been released, along with the final beta of official flavors, including Ubuntu GNOME 16.04,Ubuntu MATE 16.04, Ubuntu Kylin 16.04, Ubuntu Studio 16.04, Kubuntu 16.04, Lubuntu 16.04 and Xubuntu 16.04.

• The second Beta build of the upcoming Black GNOME Linux 16.04 operating system has been released earlier today, March 30, 2016, bringing a significant amount of new features and improvements.

• Black GNOME Linux 16.04 Beta 2 highlights includes numerous software updates for the GNOME Stack, such as GNOME Shell 3.18, as well as most of the packages from the stable GNOME 3.18 desktop environment, because, after all, the distribution is based on the upstream Ubuntu GNOME 16.04 LTS Beta 2 operating system.

• The Emmabuntüs Community today announced the third maintenance release of Emmabuntüs 3, version 1.03, based on Xubuntu 14.04.4. Like its *buntu namesake, the distro ships with the Xfce desktop by default, but also includes LXDE as an option.

Devices/Embedded

• Advantech has launched a pair of modules based on a new, rugged, RTX 2.0 spec for computer-on-modules: the AM3352-based ROM-3310 and i.MX6-based ROM-3420.

• The ruggedized, open-spec RTX 2.0 (Rugged Technology eXtended) form-factor for ARM computer-on-modules is first being implemented in board-level products by Advantech. The company’s TI Sitara AM3352-based “ROM-3310” and NXP i.MX6-driven “ROM-3420” COMs both showcase the new spec’s highlights, including a tiny (and durably thick) 68 x 68 x 2mm foundation, optional -40 to 85°C support, wide-range, 5 to 24V power, and four vibration resistant 100-pin expansion connectors. In all these features, RTX exceeds the capabilities of the ARM-oriented Qseven and SMARC standards.

• Shiratech’s Linux-based “SparkGate-7 Open IoT Gateway” SBC, featuring WiFi, BT, 802.15.4, and optional cellular, is built around a “Spark-501” SMARC COM.

• Aviv Technologies Group´s Shiratech Embedded unit first tapped Atmel’s Cortex-A5-based SAMA5D3 processor in 2013 with a Linux-ready, SODIMM-style AT-501 computer-on-module in 2013. Shiratech has now followed this with a Spark-501, which appears to be the first SMARC form factor COM built around an Atmel SAMA5x SoC. The module also fuels the new “SparkGate-7 open IOT Gateway,” which uses a Yocto Project based Linux build.

• Good things come in small packages, and the VoCore Mini Linux Computer is proof. Get yours for just $39 at Escapist Deals-and while you’re at it, master Linux with the five-course Linux Power User Bundle, just $19, a savings of 97%.

Phones

Tizen

• Last year Tizen Experts exclusively revealed that the Samsung Z3 was going to be the next Tizen smartphone to be launched, after the Z1. The Z3 was seen as a huge improvement from the Z1 and therefore warranted skipping the Z2 model number.

• ConfirmTkt IRCTC Indian Rail Info is an app that lets you check Passenger Name Record (PNR) live status Information. The IRCTC app was developed by Confirmtkt and has already been downloaded more than 16,000 times from Google Play Store. Today, the app has finally become available in the Tizen Store for Samsung Z1 and Z3 smartphones. There are 2 more similar apps are available in Tizen Store PNRTrain and Indian Train Status and they are also available on Z1 & Z3.

Android

• Rugged computer maker Janam Technologies on Wednesday announced the XT2, a 10-oz. rugged device with a 5-in. touchscreen that runs Android 5.0 (Lollipop).

• The device could be called a rugged smartphone, since it comes with many smartphone features, including voice. It supports GSM and GPRS radio signals for voice, as well as 4G LTE for data — with a Chrome browser. But Janam also added in a Zebra barcode-scanning feature, the ability to withstand 5-foot drops and immersion in up to three feet of water.

• Instead of referring to it as a smartphone, Janam instead calls the XT2 a rugged touch computer and claims it is the lightest and most rugged in its class. Janam CEO Harry Lerner said it is “as sleek as a smartphone … with the most advanced technologies to meet the diverse needs of virtually any mobile worker.”

• The HTC 10 is set to be the company’s most powerful phone ever. The device is expected to offer cutting-edge hardware across the board, and a recent benchmark appears to back up those rumors.

• The latest list of specs comes from a recent performance test on GFXBench, where the device is referred to by its rumored “HTC 10” branding. It packs a 5.1-inch Quad HD display, a Snapdragon 820 processor and runs the latest version of Android 6.0 Marshmallow. The new phone is also equipped with 3.7GB of RAM, which will likely be rounded up to 4GB, and 24GB of storage (probably 32GB total).

Free Software/Open Source

• Software source codes and hardware designs tend to be closely guarded trade secrets. Not so with open-source products. For instance, the code of open-source software is freely available to all: the best known example is the Linux operating system. Not only are interested developers able to use the software, they can also further develop it and adapt it to their own needs.

• Apcera has remained among the more interesting companies differentiating themselves in the cloud computing space, as we explored in our recent interview with Apcera SVP of Product and Engineering Neeraj Gupta (shown here). Now, Apcera has announced it will extend its platform to support Kubernetes, which recently moved under the direction of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF). The company also announced that Apcera founder and CEO, Derek Collison, has joined the governing board for CNCF.

• What can a simple button do? Amazon’s Dash can re-order houeshold supplies. Domino’s will order you your favorite pizza. The open-source 1btn, on the other hand, is capable of doing a whole lot more.

• 1btn won’t be limited to performing a single action. You’ll be able to make it do just about anything you want via an easy-to-use web-based interface. No companion app is required to do it, either. You simply connect a Wi-Fi device to the hotspot that 1btn creates the first time you turn it on, launch a web browser, and point it to the 1btn’s built-in web server.

• Several popular services will be supported out-of-the-box, including Twilio to send SMS messages or emails. You’ll be able to set up URL-based actions like turning connected lights on and off, summon a ride to your front door, or start a pot of tea without putting your entire network at risk.

• While companies like Red Hat have managed to make a fortune by offering an open source solution, other open source developers have struggled to monetize what is commonly viewed as “free.” A Fair Source license could be a solution to help developers make money, while still upholding the spirit behind open source code.

• The proliferation of open source technologies, libraries, and frameworks in recent years has greatly contributed to the advancement of software development, increased developer productivity, and to the flexibility and customization of the tools landscape to support different use cases and developers’ preferences.

• To increase productivity and encourage a culture of autonomy and shared ownership you want to enable teams to use their tool(s) of choice. That being said, since the advent of agile development, we see large enterprises wrestle with striking a balance to allow this choice while also retaining a level of management, visibility, and governance over all the technologies used in the software delivery lifecycle. And this problem gets harder over time, because with every passing day new tools are being created and adopted to solve increasingly fine-grained problems in a unique and valuable way.

Events

• Open Source Data Center Conference (OSDC) is a conference on open source software in data centers and huge IT environments and will take place in Berlin/Germany in April 2016. I will give a talk titled “Continuous Integration in Data Centers – Further 3 Years Later” there.

Web Browsers

Mozilla

• At Mozilla, we believe encryption is critical to the health of the Web. It allows us to live, work and play on a more secure Internet. Encryption helps keep the Internet exceptional.

• Today, encryption is being threatened around the world. More and more governments are proposing policies that would harm user security by weakening encryption. From France to Australia to the UK, these suggested measures would thwart strong encryption for everyday Internet users. And in the U.S., the FBI was asking Apple to undermine the security of its own products.

SaaS/Back End

• The open-source effort hits general availability, enabling developers to manage and deploy containers.

• Rancher Labs today announced the general availability of its namesake platform Rancher 1.0, which provides tools that enable organizations to easily manage and deploy Docker containers.

• When I started contributing to OpenStack, almost five years ago, it was a small ecosystem. There were no foundation, a handful of projects and you could understand the code base in a few days.

• Fast forward 2016, and it is a totally different beast. The project grew to no less than 54 teams, each team providing one or more deliverable. For example, the Nova and Swift team each one produces one service and its client, whereas the Telemetry team produces 3 services and 3 different clients.

Databases

• Despite being assaulted from all sides, the relational model for databases is still the king of the hill and it looks like it will not only survive, but thrive as well.

• NoSQL databases have become increasingly popular and have been offering a number of data and deployment modes that have overcome the limitations – real or imagined – of their SQL cousins.

• NoSQL databases come in a number of guises, but essentially they are designed either to make the life of the programmer easier or to overcome the problem of distributing data at scale.

Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

• Since 2012 we at SourceForge have been proud partners of the Apache OpenOffice community. We’ve maintained both the Apache OpenOffice Extensions and Templates sites and made sure to spread the word about their latest news and developments.

• It’s been reported that extensions that haven’t been updated in a while are displaying this warning message:

• “This extension was not updated recently. It might not work with latest versions of OpenOffice.”

• For registered users, there’s an additional message that allows them to contact the original author and apply to be a co-maintainer. As co-maintainer they can edit the extension description and create releases.

CMS

• Can we save the open web? Dries Buytaert, creator of Drupal, talked to a group during SxSW Interactive about how he began the content management service (CMS) Drupal in his dorm room in 2001. Today, Drupal powers 1 out of 30 websites in the world. Technology has changed a lot from 2001 to 2016. Back in 2001, only 7% of the population had Internet access, there were only 20 million websites, and text messaging was just introduced. So, when we talk about the open web what we’re talking about is people having choice and transparency in their options.

Pseudo-Open Source (Openwashing)

• A natural result of the acquisition of Xamarin, now makes it possible to develop, emulate and target other mobile platforms such as Android and iOS from within Visual Studio.

FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

• BMW has sent Terence Eden a DVD containing GPL-licenced code used in its electric i3 model .

• Why should you care? Because Oxford resident Eden last month inadvertently caused something of a global stir when he pondered the quality of the i3′s software and the security of BMW’s update mechanisms. Along the way he noticed that the i3′s on-board “About” screen mentioned it uses some GPL-licenced code and idly wondered if the auto-maker complies with the licence.

• While the Free Software Directory has been and continues to be a great resource to the world over the past decade, it has the potential of being a resource of even greater value. But it needs your help!

Public Services/Government

• How much management and staff understand IT has a major influence on public administration’s large IT projects, writes Denmark’s ‘Government IT Project Council’ (Statens IT-projektråd). In its progress report on large IT projects, the Council recommends that public administrations improve project execution and project management competencies.

• OMB has published a draft policy to improve the way custom-developed government code is acquired and distributed by requiring that it be made available for reuse across federal agencies.

• MIT Media Lab, that 30-year-old tech innovation factory that has had a huge hand in churning out everything from LEGO MindStorms to the Guitar Hero video game, has now wowed the open source and free software crowd.

• Lab Director Joi Ito over the weekend revealed on the Medium blogging platform that MIT Media Lab has changed its approach to software releases to FLOSS (free/libre/open-source software) by default.

Licensing/Legal

Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

• Sustainable smart cities need to exchange best practices, focus on increasing citizen participation, and allow public and non-public delivery of innovative services. These are three of the policy recommendations in the ‘Smart Sustainable Cities – Reconnaissance Study’, published by the United Nations University in March.

Open Hardware/Modding

• Before the Industrial Revolution, if you wanted a new piece of furniture, you’d go to your local carpenter. Today, you’re more likely to buy a chair that’s made of Brazilian wood, designed by a Swede, and manufactured in China than one with even a single locally-produced nail. Enter Opendesk, a furniture company with a global network and local manufacturing model, which might just spark a new revolution in the industry.

Programming/Development

Leftovers

Health/Nutrition

• As the 3D printing community consumes vast amounts of plastic on a daily basis, it’s strange that recycling isn’t a more prominent theme in the community. To be sure, our failed prints are hardly responsible for filling the oceans and beaches of the world with non-degradable plastic, but as localized consumers of many different plastics, we could play a huge role in fighting plastic pollution. The only downside: not every plastic is easily 3D printable and recycling equipment is very costly. Fortunately, Dutch open source recycling initiative Precious Plastic has just launched an excellent alternative: they have provided all the blueprints and equipment necessary to set up your own recycling plant and allows you to reuse plastics, either as 3D printable filament or with DIY molding machines.

Security

• ESET researchers have spotted a new variant of malware, dubbed Remaiten, which combines different features from other families of malware and uses a unique method of distribution.

• A new and improved version of Kaiten, an Internet Relay Chat (IRC)-controlled malware typically used to carry out distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, is spreading, security firm ESET warns.

• Apple’s much-hyped rootless security mechanism in OS X can be evaded even in the latest version of the operating system, according to a top researcher.

• The Cupertino goliath fixed an exploitable bug in its rootless code in the latest round of patches for Macs and iThings. But that’s the not the end of the story, we’re told.

• Apple’s rootless design, aka System Integrity Protection (SIP), marks sensitive directories in the computer’s file system as being off-limits even to the root user.

Defence/Aggression

• Britain shows utter disregard to the right of self determination of the people of Diego Garcia, yet claims it as inalienable for the Falklanders. Evidently it is a vital universal right, except for rather dusky people.

• The corporate media have universally demonstrated their inability to understand any complex situation, in reporting the UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf’s determination on Argentina. Here is a quick guide to what really was decided.

• No, no, just kidding about Taylor Swift, but the other stuff is sadly, pathetically true.

• To understand this, you need to understand the State Department. The Department is made up of a few old people in senior positions, and lots of young people (“millennials.”) Think of the old people as your sad, old dad after a divorce, bugging you to explain to him stuff like Tindr and Molly that wasn’t around when he was “dating” but now suddenly seems like something he needs to “get down with.”

• So that’s what happens inside State. Old people are told to stop ISIS somehow. They ask the young staffers about this social media gadget they read about in AARP magazine and the young people, none of whom have a rat’s butt worth of overseas knowledge but have lived their whole lives within a media bubble, tells the olds “Let’s do something social media, or make a TV thing we can show on YouTube. We’ll get, like, seriously, a zillion hits. Anti-ISIS will go, literally, viral, you know.”

• Peter and Mickey open the program with a wide-ranging conversation with long-time social justice activist Medea Benjamin; the discussion covers topics from trade deals to drone warfare, as well as her latest project of trying to alert Americans about the human rights abuses committed by US ally Saudi Arabia.

• Iraq, the failed state that over 4,600 (and counting…) Americans died to free from some evil tyrant 13 years ago, is still ranking high internationally in something. Unfortunately, that something is corruption.

• A couple of other places where America has been intervening for freedom also made the list.

• Germany’s Transparency International released its newest corruption index for 2015, and as usual Iraq was on the list. The ten worst countries in its new study were Somalia, North Korea, Afghanistan, Sudan, South Sudan, Angola, Libya, Iraq, Venezuela, and Guinea-Bissau.

Transparency/Investigative Reporting

• But he leaves out his own administration’s actions as a big part of why the job of reporting has “gotten tougher.” While he came into office promising “the most transparent administration in history” and one of his first official actions as President was to tell the entire federal government to default to revealing information in response to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, as we’ve detailed over and over again, the administration has actually been one of the most opaque, setting records for denying FOIA requests, and making it nearly impossible to get any information out of the government without a lawsuit.

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• And then, of course, there are the criminal lawsuits. The Obama administration has used the Espionage Act against more journalists and leakers than every other President in history combined… and doubled. And, as of two years ago, he had put media leakers in jail for nearly 50 times as long as all other administrations combined.

• That is not supporting investigative reporting. That is threatening and intimidating journalists and their sources. Creating true chilling effects and scaring people away from doing the very work that the President insists the media should be practicing.

• Way back in 2011, I saw Daniel Ellsberg speak, and he speculated that a key reason why President Obama was so incredibly hostile to a free and open press was because he was embarrassed by his own actions that they were investigating. Ellsberg pointed out that the previous president, George W. Bush was known for widely abusing the power of his position, but he seemed proud of doing so. President Obama, on the other hand, got elected with promises of moving away from such abuses and restoring civil liberties. But that didn’t happen. Things went in the other direction under his watch and his command. So you could understand why the President remains less than keen about leaks and the media digging into things like mass surveillance of Americans, or secret drone bombing campaigns.

• Chicago Police Department stonewalls Better Government Association request for video of all fatal shootings by cops over past five years, so BGA takes agency to court.

• Mayor Rahm Emanuel ushered in a new age of law enforcement/city transparency recently by opening his mouth and saying words to that effect. This followed the city/law enforcement sitting on the recordings of a highly-controversial shooting by police officers for more than a year.

Environment/Energy/Wildlife/Nature

• Sea levels are set to rise by more than a metre over the next century – more than twice the previous forecast, according to alarming new research.

• The threat posed by rising sea levels is much greater than had been thought because scientists have underestimated the effect of atmospheric global warming on Antarctic ice sheets – having tended to concentrate more on climate change’s role in warming the water than increasing the air temperature.

• Warmer air, less frigid water and gravity may combine to make parts of Antarctica’s western ice sheet melt far faster than scientists had thought, raising sea levels much more than expected by the end of the century, according to a new study.

• New physics-based computer simulations forecast dramatic increases in melting in the vulnerable western edge of the continent. In a worst case scenario, that could raise sea level in 2100 by 18 to 34 inches (46 to 86 centimeters) more than an international panel of climate scientists predicted just three years ago.

• And even if the countries of the world control heat-trapping gases at the moderate levels they pledged in Paris last year, it would still mean three to 12 inches (8 to 31 centimeters) higher seas than have been forecast thought, according to a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature.

• The U.N. has reported that pollution caused by indoor stoves that use fire, coal, charcoal, or animal waste could account for as many as 4.3 million premature deaths annually. At the January 2016 summit, Ban noted that climate change disproportionately affects women and children, because they are the ones most directly exposed to these stoves and open flames. Furthermore, “It is women and girls who bear the brunt of collecting firewood and fuels,” argues Ban, activities that “limit their work and education opportunities.”

Finance

• The banks received state subsidies to the value of £35,000 from every man, woman and child in the UK. Yet it is unquestionable dogma that not even 0.1% of that can be given to aid manufacturing industry. I can think of no legitimate explanation of this duality.

• Today the Internet Association, a trade group representing major web companies including Google, Twitter, and Facebook, endorsed the controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement (TPP). Leading digital rights group Fight for the Future launched an online campaign in response, calling for the companies to drop their misguided support, and issued the following statement, which can be attributed to campaign director Evan Greer:

• A number of internet and software industry in the United States have come out in support of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiated by the Office of the US Trade Representative (USTR) last year.

• USTR sent a note to reporters today highlighting the trade associations that have supported TPP. The memo is reprinted below.

• Actually, it does no such thing; it’s a gimmick that is entirely useless except as a deceptive advertisement for Hillary Clinton.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• Anyone who pays attention to American “news” can see how “news” is used to control our perceptions in order to ensure public acceptance of the Oligarchy’s agendas.

• For example, Bernie Sanders just won six of seven primaries, in some cases by as much as 70 and 82 percent of the vote, but Sanders’ victories went largely unreported. The reason is obvious. The Oligarchy doesn’t want any sign of Sanders gaining momentum that could threaten Hillary’s lead for the Democratic nomination. Here is FAIR’s take on the media’s ignoring of Sanders’ victories: http://fair.org/home/as-sanders-surges-cable-news-runs-prison-reality-show-jesus-documentary/

• We can observe the same media non-performance in the foreign affairs arena. The Syrian army adided by the Russian air force just liberated Palmyra from ISIS troops that Washington sent to overthrow the Syrian government. Although pretending to be fighting ISIS, Washington and London are silent about this victory on what is supposed to be a common front against the terror group.

Censorship/Free Speech

• Last Thursday, an Israeli soldier was arrested after the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem posted horrific video of the soldier shooting a 21-year-old Palestinian man in the head from point-blank range, and killing him, even though he was already shot, wounded, and laying incapacitated on the ground. The killing took place in the occupied West Bank city of Hebron after the Palestinian man, Abed al-Fatah al-Sharif, stabbed an IDF soldier at a military occupation checkpoint.

• Jewish liberals and activists from the ACLU defended the Nazis’ right to march and display the swastika as a form of free speech.

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• Jewish liberals and activists from the ACLU defended the Nazis’ right to march and display the swastika as a form of free speech. The Illinois Supreme Court ruled that any ban was unconstitutional.

• China is increasingly making strides toward becoming a global environmental leader, but its continued censorship of critical discussion at home complicates this progress.

• There’s a new global censor in town, and it’s not China or Russia. It’s France. A ruling this month from a regulator in Paris threatens to limit an American’s or Korean’s access to information on the Internet.

Privacy/Surveillance

• APPLE IS NOT the only firm to be approached by the US authorities under the hoary All Writs Act, according to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), and the request has also gone the way of Google.

• Apple has been getting all the attention for defying demands under the All Writs Act in recent weeks, but an ACLU study found that 63 other requests had been directed at Google.

• The Tor Project makes a browser that allows anyone to surf the Internet anonymously. Tor stands for “the onion router” and that describes how the service works. Traffic is routed through a number of relays run across the Internet where each relay only knows the next hop (because each hop is enclosed in a cryptographic envelope), not the ultimate destination, until the traffic gets to the final exit node which connects to the website — like peeling the layers of an onion.

• The findings, from a poll of at least 1,000 people in each of 24 countries, come as policymakers and technology companies argue over whether digital privacy should be curbed to help regulators and law enforcement more easily thwart hackers and other digital threats.

• By now, the fact that transatlantic democratic capitalism, once the engine of postwar prosperity, has run into trouble can hardly be denied by anyone with the courage to browse a daily newspaper.

• Hunger, homelessness, toxic chemicals in the water supply, the lack of affordable housing: all these issues are back on the agenda, even in the most prosperous of countries. This appalling decline in living standards was some time in the making – 40 years of neoliberal policies are finally taking their toll – so it shouldn’t come as a shock.

• However, coupled with the spillover effects of wars in the Middle East – first the refugees, now the increasingly regular terrorist attacks in the heart of Europe – our economic and political malaise looks much more ominous. It’s hardly surprising that the insurgent populist forces, on both left and right, have such an easy time bashing the elites. From Flint, Michigan, to Paris, those in power have accomplished such feats of cluelessness and incompetence that they have made Donald Trump look like a superman capable of saving planet Earth.

• In the first segment of an interview with Chris Inglis, former deputy director of NSA, the Irari Report talks with him about his perceptions of Edward Snowden’s motivations and intentions in committing his acts of espionage. In the video segment, Inglis discusses his impressions of Snowden, and theorizes as to why Snowden left for China, and to where he intended to defect.

• Edward Snowden’s defection occurred during Inglis’ tenure as Deputy Director of NSA, and as such, Inglis was extremely involved in overseeing the investigation incident and mitigation of the resulting damage. Inglis states that Snowden was indiscriminate in his release of information, and is full of rage. When asked to comment on why Snowden has not released any documents about Russian or Chinese domestic surveillance efforts, which are plentiful throughout NSA, and would have been readily available to Snowden while he was at NSA, Inglis stated that Snowden lacks any courage to speak up about any concerns while he might be held accountable.

• Seven in 10 people say the “dark net” – an anonymous online home to both criminals and activists fearful of government surveillance – should be shut down, according to a global Ipsos poll released on Tuesday.

• The findings, from a poll of at least 1,000 people in each of 24 countries, come as policymakers and technology companies argue over whether digital privacy should be curbed to help regulators and law enforcement more easily thwart hackers and other digital threats.

• An upcoming European hearing over UK surveillance laws may result in a severe limitation on GCHQ’s powers.

• The Guardian reported yesterday that a European emergency hearing over the legality of such laws would be held for the first time on April 12th.

• In dispute are laws like the incoming Investigatory Powers bills or the 2014 Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Act (DRIPA), which makes telecommunications providers retain the data of customers for potential later use by security services.

• Both laws are widely condemned by privacy advocates for the violating powers that they grant the forces of national security.

• Tom Watson MP and David Davis MP, leading members of the Labour and Conservative parties respectively, brought a legal challenge against the Home Office last year, over the rushing through of DRIPA. The two MPs claimed that such a law directly conflicted with law which superseded the authority inherent in DRIPA, like the European Union Charter on Human Rights.

• Gen. Michael V. Hayden, former director of the National Security Agency and the CIA, said he was not surprised when four young protesters interrupted his remarks Tuesday afternoon at Duquesne University. He has had to make some difficult and controversial decisions in the war on terror.

Civil Rights/Policing

• The proposal is also accompanied by a heartfelt “Dear Colleague” letter that talks about cops “holding together the fabric of our nation” and how they’ve been “intimidated” by recent acts of violence. No statistics are cited to back up his insistence that this a real problem that needs to be addressed with legislation… because there aren’t any.

• The National Law Enforcement Memorial Fund’s stats show the number of officers killed in the line of duty has been decreasing over the last several years and appears to have hit a lower plateau of ~120/year for the past four years.

• The Hebron shooting last week was an extrajudicial execution, charged United Nations special rapporteur Christof Heyns on Wednesday, as he weighed in on the controversial incident in which an IDF soldier shot a Palestinian assailant as he lay apparently wounded and immobile on the ground.

• An Israeli soldier was detained last week after allegations that he shot and killed a wounded Palestinian man lying incapacitated on the ground. Moments earlier the Palestinian, 21-year-old Abd al-Fatah a-Sharif, along with another man, had allegedly stabbed and injured a soldier in the West Bank city of Hebron. The stabbing is one of the latest in a wave of attacks against Israeli soldiers and civilians in the past six months.

• Human rights groups said Wednesday that France should investigate the French-Israeli soldier filmed shooting a Palestinian attacker in the head and killing him while he lay motionless, if the Israeli justice system fails to convict him.

• Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called for the establishment of official diplomatic relations with Indonesia on Monday, as the world’s largest Muslim country continues to look eastwards to boost diplomatic and economic ties.

• Donald Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski has been charged with battering then-Breitbart reporter Michelle Fields.

• The incident occurred on March 8. Fields alleged Lewandowski forcibly yanked her after she asked Trump a question. Despite an eyewitness account from a Washington Post reporter corroborating her version of events, Lewandowski denied any involvement with the incident whatsoever and called Fields an “attention seeker.”

• And I don’t trust academies. Not one bit. I don’t trust any organisation that removes their employees’ right to unionise, or one that no longer values the trained over the untrained. If you don’t respect teaching qualifications, after all, then why should my child respect your teachers?

• The opinion dismantles the government’s arguments with aplomb, taking apart each assertion made to defend a drug bust predicated on something that doesn’t even approach “reasonable” suspicion. Extending the government’s logic to other possibly illegal acts, the court points out the government’s reliance on this terrible law is woefully misguided. Since the government can’t possibly know how many people looking at their phones while driving are performing illegal acts, it can’t base traffic stops on nothing more than the mere possibility something illegal may be happening.

• The family of Jean Charles de Menezes have lost a human rights challenge over the decision not to bring charges against British police marksmen over his death.

• Judges at the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled British prosecutors were right not to charge police officers over Brazilian electrician’s fatal shooting in 2005.

• It comes more than a decade after he was mistaken for a suicide bomber and shot dead by police marksmen on a London Tube train.

• Train conductors in Finland will walk off the job on Thursday in protest at the government’s transport policies, causing the cancellation of some 300 long-distance services. The move comes on the heels of the announcement that some 214 jobs could be lost as the state railways company VR looks to cut costs.

• Finland’s passenger train traffic is set to open up for competition in 2017, a move that will likely end years of market domination by the state-owned operator VR. The Ministry of Transport and Communications says over ten companies have expressed an interest in the prospect of a market share.

• FAIR contributor Adam Johnson noted recently how in this country discussion of US history, and that of its allies, is permitted a certain moral nuance, while official enemies are presented as essentially, unrelievedly evil. So it is with Cuba, where Barack Obama just paid the first visit by a sitting US President in 88 years. Any mention of, say, Cuba sending doctors overseas to help in crisis zones is nullified in elite US debate by the fact that—it’s Cuba! Where Castro lives! Few countries are drawn as cartoonishly, making a clear view of Cuba’s strengths and struggles, along with the meaning of any supposed thaw with the US, harder to come by.

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

• Last fall, Comcast added a new wrinkle to its plan to impose arbitrary and unnecessary usage caps on the company’s broadband customers. It began charging users a $30-$35 premium if users wanted to avoid caps, effectively turning the idea of unlimited data into a luxury option many could no longer afford. Caps continue to be a great way to impose price hikes on uncompetitive broadband markets, charge more money for the same service, with the added bonus of both curtailing — and cashing in on — the growing use of Internet video.

• As we just got done noting, Netflix recently admitted that it has been throttling the streams it sends to AT&T and Verizon wireless customers in order to lessen the impact of usage caps. While most everybody agrees that Netflix should have been transparent about the practice, most also agree that Netflix — an outspoken opponent of usage caps and supporter of net neutrality — was actually trying to improve the customer experience with the move. As such, no real harm was done, and nobody even noticed that Netflix had been doing it — for five years. Really not much of a story in and of itself.

• But the telecom industry and its allies, outraged by Netflix’s support of net neutrality, opposition to usage caps, and the threat it poses to legacy TV, have been desperately and hysterically trying to paint Netflix’s reveal as some kind of immense gotcha.

• The Romanian government has approved a draft law aiming to reduce the cost of broadband communication infrastructure. For example, the bill sets tariffs that give competitors access to physical telecommunications infrastructure. The law also defines a single point of information, to be managed by the Agency for Digital Agenda of Romania.

DRM

• A few years back, we wrote a few stories about the unfortunate move by the W3C to embrace DRM as a part of the official HTML5 standard. It was doubly disappointing to then see Tim Berners-Lee defending this decision as well. All along this was nothing more than a focus by the legacy content providers to try to hinder perfectly legal uses and competition on the web by baking in damaging DRM systems. Even Mozilla, which held out the longest, eventually admitted that it had no choice but to support DRM, even if it felt bad about doing so.

• There are, of course, many problems with DRM, and baking it directly into HTML5 raises a number of concerns. A major one: since the part of the DMCA (Section 1201) makes it infringing to merely get around any technological protection measure — even if for perfectly legal reasons — it creates massive chilling effects on security research. To try to deal with this, Cory Doctorow and the EFF offered up something of a compromise, asking the W3C to adopt a “non-aggression covenant,” such that the W3C still gets its lame DRM, but that W3C members agree not to go after security researchers.

Intellectual Monopolies

• The leaders of India and the European Union today in Brussels discussed a wide range of topics including intellectual property rights – including geographical indications – innovation, digital issues, and health and pharmaceuticals.

• But details on what was said were few.

• The 13th EU-India Summit was held on 30 March. The EU was represented by Donald Tusk, President of the European Council, and Jean-Claude Juncker, President of the European Commission. India was represented by Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi.

Trademarks

• Tam, who fronts the Asian-American band The Slants, petitioned the Federal Circuit for a writ of mandamus to instruct the director of the USPTO to publish his application, which the director opposed.

• The facts of the case are rather simple. In 2008, Taser International concluded an agreement with the Romanian company Gate 4 which obliged Gate 4 to assign to Taser International the Taser trade marks which Gate 4 had registered, or for which it had applied for registration, in Romania. The agreement contained a clause conferring exclusive jurisdiction on a court in the United States. Gate 4 refused to fulfil its obligations and Taser International sued it before the Tribunalul Bucureşti (District Court, Bucharest). Gate 4, despite the jurisdiction clause, entered an appearance before the Romanian court without challenging its jurisdiction. The Romanian court found for Taser and ordered Gate 4 to execute the formalities necessary to transfer the trade marks.

• Last year, we wrote about a lawsuit Lionsgate Studios had initiated against TD Ameritrade over a throwaway line at the end of one of the latter’s advertising spots. That commercial included the line, “Nobody puts your old 401(k) in the corner,” an imperfect parody of a famous line from Dirty Dancing, the rights for which are owned by Lionsgate. The fact that the ad was no longer running at the time of the lawsuit, nor the fact that Lionsgate was in no way involved in the investment business, failed to keep the studio from claiming this was trademark infringement. The studio even went so far as to hilariously claim that consumers would be confused into thinking that TD Ameritrade either had rights to the movie or was in some way affiliated with Lionsgate Studios.

Copyrights

• The UK government’s multi-million pound campaign to deter Internet piracy is now hoping to reach out to book fans. A new and rather pleasant video published under the Creative Content UK banner extols the virtues of buying books from genuine sources, but whether it will resonate with the younger generation more used to digital acquisition remains to be seen.

• Paramount Pictures and CBS Studios can’t claim copyright over the Klingon language, Vulcan’s pointy ears, or Phaser weapons, a court heard this week. This defense comes from the makers of crowdfunded Star Trek spin-off ‘Prelude to Axanar’, who were sued over their use of various well-known Star Trek elements.

• Both Congress and the Copyright Office continue to explore possible ways to reform copyright laws, and one area of interest to a lot of people is reforming the whole “notice and takedown” process in the DMCA. The legacy players have been pushing for a ridiculously stupid concept they’re calling “notice and staydown” in which they argue that once there’s a notice for a particular piece of content, a platform needs to proactively block any copies of that content from ever being uploaded again. This is dumb and dangerous for a variety of reasons, starting with the fact that it would place tremendous burdens on smaller players, while locking in the more dominant large platforms that can build or buy systems to handle this. But, even more importantly, copyright infringement is extremely context dependent. The same content may be infringing in one context, while protected fair use in another. But a notice and staydown process would completely wipe out the fair use possibilities, and potentially violate the First Amendment (remember, the Supreme Court itself has declared fair use to be the “safety valve” that allows copyright law to fit with the First Amendment).

• That should make people “respect” copyright more. Put ‘em in jail for violating ethereal rights. Or for contributing to terrorism. Or for making the government look bad. It’s all pretty much interchangeable as far as the government — and the backers of the government’s plan — are concerned. Stiffer penalties have done little to curb piracy elsewhere in the world and are frequently a PR nightmare when imposed. Piracy spread Nollywood’s influence throughout the world and allowed its films to be viewed by residents of other repressive nations whose governments have maintained local control of creative content.

• The minority represented here is hoping to control not only the distribution, but the content, of future creative works. Piracy may be the talking point, but government expansion and increased protectionism are the ultimate goals.

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