Italy: socialized university bookshop evicted in Milan

The Ex-Cuem self-managed anticapitalist bookshop was evicted by order of the dean of the Milan State University, Gianluca Vago. 

The former CUEM bookshop's closure caused the book business in the unviersity to become a monopoly of CUSL, an emporium linked to the fundamentalist-fascist organization Communione e Liberazione, heavily implicated in corruption scandals and strongly supportive of the neofascist Silvio Berlusconi.

For this reason students decided to occupy the former CUEM bookshop, offering many alternative and cheaper forms of access to literature for students, including book exchange schemes and availability of scanning of books into digital format. 

All them are deemed criminal by the Capitalist Regime as they threaten the profits of the big oligopolistic companies of the oligarchy.

Source: Struggles in Italy. 

Related: a similar eviction in Bologna University earlier this year.

Was Aaron Swartz murdered?

Ah Mephistophelis! has a most intriguing entry today on how a lot of evidence seems to point that Internet pioneer Aaron Swartz was murdered and did not kill himself.

Because of its interest, I reproduce the article in its entirety, including the many source links:

The 'Apparent Suicide' of Aaron Swartz: Must-Read Reading List

courtesy of cryptome

Make up  your own mind.  Take a moment, look at the picture above.  Even if you haven't been living under a rock, you might not have yet seen it. Look at that smile.  Under what conditions would you smile like that? How about while you were being raided by the Feds?  Surrounded by agents of your government, acting under orders to attempt to throw the book at you?
Did you know that Aaron H. Swartz

• had been offered a plea deal of only six months incarceration -- and turned it down?
• had been investigated by the FBI and gotten his dossier and posted it online in 2009?
• wrote the supposed 'suicide note' in 2007, when he was really sick (probably food poisoning), not because he was depressed but to feel better?
• did not do anything normally thought of as hacking in order to download the JSTOR files?
• got the attention nevertheless of the Secret Service, who personally took over his case, evincing a great interest in the hardware upon which the files had been copied?
• was 'killed,' according to his father?
• was not intended to have had the book thrown at him, according to the lawyer for the prosecution?
• joins two other young internet activists fighting for free speech and privacy who have committed suicide recently?

(...and in the above I avoid the more conspiracy-minded, hypothetical, or fringe.  In my opinion, or rather, my opinion of what should be the general opinion, which is to say, yours.)      
All of this in the links below, and even more, as of what I avoided above I include the choicest yet encountered.  All of which I also have made available for download as PDFs, links appended.  In case something were to, you know, get, uh, misplaced.

Aaron Swartz was Murdered – He Faced 3 Months in Jail Not 35 Years! « American Everyman Tom Dolan, Husband Of Aaron Swartz's Prosecutor, Defends Her On Twitter MIT hacking case lawyer says Aaron Swartz was offered plea deal of six months behind bars - Boston.com https://twitter.com/tomjdolan/status/291018637274390528 - Google Search Aaron Swartz: US attorney says she only sought six-month jail term | Technology | guardian.co.uk Wanted by the FBI (Aaron Swartz's Raw Thought) Reddit pioneer Aaron Swartz wrote 'suicide note' blog in 2007 Cannonfire Carmen Ortiz’s Case Didn’t ‘Kill’ Aaron Swartz | Cognoscenti Caught Red-Handed, Aaron Swartz Was Prepping For Key Federal Court Evidence Hearing | The Smoking Gun MIT and Aaron Swartz — Crooked Timber The Truth about Aaron Swartz’s “Crime” « Unhandled Exception Twitter Trackbacks for @mkapor Truly incredible that in their own son's obit they blame others for his death and make no mention of the 6-month offer. [twitter.com] on Topsy.com Twitter profile for tomjdolan - Topsy https://twitter.com/tomjdolan/status/291018637274390528 - Google Search Twitter / ggreenwald: Carmen Ortiz's husband, IBM ... Lame Cherry: The murder of Aaron Swartz Lame Cherry: Aaron Swartz Murdered Twice Done aangirfan: JEWISH HERO AARON SWARTZ; EXPOSING ELITE CHILD ABUSE

 boston_com_metrodesk_2013_01_14_mit_hacking_case_lawyer_says.pdf

 cannonfire_blogspot_com_2013_01_is_there_hidden_side_to_swar.pdf

 cognoscenti_wbur_org_2013_01_18_ortiz_swartz_eileen_mcnamara.pdf

 crookedtimber_org_2013_01_13_mit_and_aaron_swartz.pdf

 ggwald-re-swartz-lawyer-husbandtweets-.pdf

 mail_attachment_googleusercontent_com_attachment__ui_2_ik_83.pdf

 topsy_com_twitter_com_tomjdolan_status_291018637274390528 (2).pdf

 topsy-com.pdf

 unhandled_com_2013_01_12_the_truth_about_aaron_swartzs_crime.pdf

 Untitled document

 webcache_googleusercontent_com_search_q_cache_topsy_com_dolan.pdf

 webcache_googleusercontent_com_search_q_cache_topsy_com_twit.pdf

 willyloman_wordpress_com_2013_01_16_aaron_swartz_was_murdere.pdf

 www_aaronsw_com_weblog_fbifile.pdf

 www_huffingtonpost_com_2013_01_15_tom_dolan_aaron_swartz_n_2.pdf

 www_thesmokinggun_com_buster_secret_service_aaron_swartz_evi.pdf

   
  Be seeing you.

Source: Ah Mephistophelis!

RSS inventor kills himself after copyright political persecution

A. Swartz campaigning against copyright tyranny
(cc Daniel J. Sieradski)

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is to blame, according to the family of the victim, for the suicide of Aaron Swartz, 26, who, among other things, co-invented the RSS feed that we use so often these days.

Swartz was a dedicated activist for open access and open source, taking part at the tender age of 15 in the launch of the creative commons license format. As Wikipedian he was critical of the arrogance of Jimbo Wales, who famously claimed that all the open encyclopedia was created by a petty club of enthusiasts, demonstrating with facts how wrong Wales was (and is - never read any retraction and his claim is still often quoted, wrongly). 

He was crucial in the struggle against copyright madness legislation in the USA, founding Demand Progress, which fought against the SOPA/PIPA acts a few years ago.

As Internet activist, he championed the cause of open access by means arguably illegal, sharing online thousands of articles from MIT-owned publicator JSTOR. The publication did not push charges but MIT and Massachusetts state prosecutors did bringing Swartz to a very difficult emotional situation. 

He faced up to as much as 35 years in prison if convicted (plus a hefty fine of $1 milion). He was found dead by hanging on January 11.

Refs.

• Wikipedia: Aaron Swartz
• The Laboratorium: Aaron Swartz, he was 26 
• Aaron Swartz' blog: Raw Thought

Update: Matt Stoller has today at Naked Capitalism a very interesting obituary that describes Aaron as a very comitted activist, who fought intensely not just in the issue of intellectual property robbery but also in many other fields, creating a website that lists every single person who dies in USA for lack of free health care. It is an obituary that reclaims Swartz as a radical liberal* (and not an anarchist) but it is anyhow a very interesting (and only punctually emotional) read on the many merits of this young activist and computer genius pushed to death by the Capitalism he (vainly) hoped to improve.

*Liberal: in the USA rough equivalent to socialist or socialdemocrat. 

Update: Details on the non-crimes that Swartz committed are discussed in detail at Unhandled: apparently he only used what was given to him freely... automating the process. He did not break any conditions of use which were non-existent altogether. He was just a scapegoat for copyright fascism, championed by MIT this time.

Also a memorial archive collection can be found at the Internet Archive.

Against the crisis and the rising costs: peer-to-peer school books

The Pirate Party (several regional formations) is helping the parents in the State of Spain to get access to their childrens' schoolbooks for free by means of pan-European anti-copyright cooperation, so if the State wants to interfere applying the anti-piracy laws, they won't be able to cut the source pages, which are located in other European states. 

This initiative has been named "Parents 2 parents". 

Sources: Kaos[es], Pirata.cat[es/cat/gal]

Pirate Bay co-founder deported to Sweden

From Cambodia, via Thailand under escort of Swedish police who forced him to board the plane to Stockholm on September 2nd. Adding this case to that of Julian Assange, Sweden, once a haven for liberties, ratifies itself as a police state against freedom of speech: freedom of sharing data, knowledge.

The main accused at The Pirate Bay trial, beginning in 2006

From Asia Times Online:

Cambodia helps squeeze WikiLeaks
By Justine Drennan

PHNOM PENH - Earlier this week, Swedish national Gottfrid Svartholm Warg was deported from Cambodia to Thailand under the escort of Swedish officials who then forced him to board a plane to Sweden.

From his arrest in Phnom Penh two weeks ago up until Tuesday, Cambodian and Swedish authorities remained tight-lipped, saying only that Svartholm Warg was arrested for copyright infringement as a co-founder of major online file-sharing site, Pirate Bay.

Soon after Svartholm Warg arrived in Sweden, it became clear to his associates that he had been brought home for reasons beyond his one-year prison sentence and multi-million dollar fine for Pirate Bay's activities and that he could face charges related to his association with whistleblower website WikiLeaks. He was also charged on arrival with hacking tax records. 

(...)

But Femerstrand and Sunde's bigger fear is that Svartholm Warg will be charged as part of a wider international crackdown on WikiLeaks, Femerstrand said. Svartholm Warg at one point allegedly helped host the WikiLeaks site so that its files could be accessible on the web. Svartholm Warg is also rumored to be personally associated with Julian Assange, founder and promoter of WikiLeaks.  

(...)

... read full story at ATOL.

Link to The Pirate Bay.

USA: Congress approves Internet's permanent state of emergency (CISPA)

In the name of "National Security" the US Congress pased this Thursday the CISPA law, which allows for omni-present Internet snooping without any warrant or court approval. This of course not only affects US citizens but absolutely everyone on Earth because, let's not forget, the Internet is not a UN agency but a US-owned one. 

This is not really new, as the Electronic Frontier Foundation mentioned earlier this week:

... from 2003-2006, the FBI issued more than 192,000 National Security Letters to get Americans’ business, phone or Internet records without a warrant. These invasive letters—which come with a gag order on the recipient so they can’t even admit they received one—have been used to gather information about untold number of ordinary citizens, including journalists.

Of all those almost 200,000 Gestapo-style interventions of communications only one ended up in a conviction for terrorism, which hardly seems to justify the invasion of human and civil rights, never mind your privacy and the scrapping of all the guarantees traditionally applied to telephone and mail communications, requiring court order to intervene.

But even more worrisome is probably the relative lack of reaction: a lot of people just don't seem to care: they take what authorities say as a matter of fact and don't even raise an eyebrow when the fundamental rights on which freedoms and the so-called democracy are founded are being scrapped overnight. Hitler would not have been able to do better. 

It's not just the IBF or the NSA: the info they snoop on you ends up at your state or local police agencies in the name of "information sharing". So your local sheriff is probably aware of your whole Internet life, or he can if he so wishes. 

It's like going naked all the time, knowing that even the most intimate act of your online life will be observed, maybe mocked and very possibly used against you exactly like in Orwell's 1984, where the true crime was to think outside the box (crimethink, all the rest was just the cat playing with its food for greater humiliation and psychological destruction).

What does CISPA that was not done before? Antifascist Calling explains that:

Amongst CISPA's controversial provisions, the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), the Obergruppenführer of America's 16-agency Intelligence Community, "shall issue guidelines providing that the head of an element of the intelligence community may, as the head of such element considers necessary to carry out this subsection: (A) grant a security clearance on a temporary or permanent basis to an employee or officer of a certified entity; (B) grant a security clearance on a temporary or permanent basis to a certified entity and approval to use appropriate facilities; and (C) expedite the security clearance process for a person or entity as the head of such element considers necessary, consistent with the need to protect the national security of the United States."

Newspeak dictionary:  

• certified entity means you or any of your service providers where you think (wrongly) that you have some intimacy or security of any sort.
• cyber threat information means, among other things, whistleblowing because getting your hands on any information that is not your creation or has been declared public domain of some sort is intellectual property theft now. Under CISPA the celebrated hero-journalists of the Watergate scandal would be indicted and probably convicted of intellectual property theft, they and their papers legally gagged and Nixon would have been easily reelected without any negative news at all. 

Sources and more information: Antifascist Calling, the Electronic Frontier Foundation,  Cryptome. 

Megaupload raid: a total fiasco

Judge O'Grady establishes that the Megaupload international raid and attempt trial in the USA was a total fiasco. The cloud storage site (or "cyberlocker") was never provided with the necessary paperwork by US authorities as it was located outside of US jurisdiction. 

Last month the New Zealand High Court declared the decision to seize Dotcom's property (including Megaupload) null and void after it became obvious that the court order allowing it was irregular.

The trial will probably never happen, what does not mean that the harm is not already done. Certainly for all the people around the World who had files stored at Megaupload and saw them overnight taken from them, potentially losing lots of information or even being spied illegally by US police forces or secret services, the harm is done and will never be compensated most likely. 

Source: TorrentFreak.

From the Net: Internet freedoms or lack of them (comic)

Source: Saturday Morning Cereal Breakfast (hotlinking allowed and encouraged)

From the Net: 'Feds, Please Return My Personal Files Stored at MegaUpload!' (Torrent Freak)

Or is not the intellectual property of millions users worth protecting as well? So good for 'the cloud' concept.

From Torrent Freak:

The feds shut down MegaUpload a few hours ago.

Eight people we charged with criminal copyright infringement charges, and all files hosted on the site were pulled offline.

However, do the feds realize that hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of people used the site to share research data, work documents, personal video collections and much more?

What will happen to these personal non-infringing files?

People are outraged on Twitter and are demanding access to their files immediately. 

Source: Torrent Freak.

Massive imperial cyberwar operation against Megaupload

We all have probably used their services, even if just passively, by downloading something, normally user content. It's over: the FBI and similar Gestapo-like corps from the US Empire have taken down Megaupload and related services.

Although the company is based in Hong Kong, the site had been attacked first in Asia, with Hong Kong and mainland Chinese citizens unable to access the site since 2009. Since 2010 other states had attacked it sequentially: first Saudi Arabia, then Malaysia, later India and finally the USA and its horde of vassal states, which decreed the closure of the site yesterday. Subsequently, today, New Zealand arrested four executives of the company who lived near Auckland.

The accusation? Copyright infringement, go figure! What about YouTube for example? Copyright protection laws are used selectively and, while it is difficult to see a political intent in this particular case, it is most likely that competing companies have used the legal system to take out potential competence. Not in vain they were trying to expand their market share, which was already quite big (5% of Internet traffic and the 13th most visited site allegedly).

In addition to copyright infringement they are also accused of money laundering. This may warrant arrests but hardly such an attack against a major Internet hub where a lot of people has stored material of their own for sharing or whatever in the trust that it would be there for indefinite time, typically paying for the service (should customers pay for police bullying around the Internet?)

The difference between being a successful entrepreneur or a most wanted intellectual property criminal seems to be how well you pay for governmental protection rackets.

Anonymous has counter-striked and caused interruptions in the webpages of the US Department of Justice and Universal Music.

Sources: Público[es], Wikipedia, USDJ (if available).

New religion: Copyism

Or more exactly Kopimism because it has been recognized first in Sweden. The religion holds file sharing and open access as sacred and considers Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V as holy signs. Yea, why not: if a torture instrument or a meteorite can be holy icons, why not copy-paste symbology? After all, life and the world are for free and a clear case of imperfect copy-pasting, ask a bacterium if you don't believe me.

More at BBC (although be warned that it's a rather dismissive and stupidly negative article indicating the lack of spiritual respect by the author, much more concerned about that Capitalist robbery that is intellectual property wrongs).

The church's site is this one, although it's not available but as a static page as I write this, because of excessive sudden traffic.

Their last press release was:

The Church of Kopimism is recognized by the state of Sweden

Just before Christmas, the Swedish governmental agency Kammarkollegiet registered the Church of Kopimism as a religious organisation. This means that Sweden is the first country to recognize kopimism as a religion.

The Church of Kopimism have tried to become registered as a religious organisation by Kammarkollegiet for more than a year.

- Since Kammarkollegiet has been strict with formalities, we had to apply three times, a happy Gustav Nipe - board chairman for the organisation - says. He continues, I think it might have something to do with the governmental organisations abiding by a very copyright friendly attitude, with a twisted view on copying.

For the Church of Kopimism, information is holy and copying is a sacrament. Information holds a value, in itself and in what it contains, and the value multiplies through copying. Therefore, copying is central for the organisation and its members.

Being recognized by the state of Sweden is a large step for all of kopimi. Hopefully, this is one step towards the day when we can live out our faith without fear of persecution, says Isak Gerson, spiritual leader of the Church of Kopimism.

The Church of Kopimism is a religious organisation with roots from 2010. The organisation formalizes a community that's been well spread for a long time already. The community of kopimi requires no formal membership. You just have to feel a calling to worship what is the holiest of the holiest, information and copy. To do this, we organize kopyactings - religious services - where the kopimists share information with eachother through copying and remix.

Copy and seed.

Quick news review (Jul 1)

I'm a bit overwhelmed (as I imagine many of you are as well) with the flood of news on nuclear accidents, revolts and other stuff. So I'm going to be highly synthetic here:

Nuclear risk latest

Plutonium in tents, what next?

• Eroded dams upstream of nuclear power plants become extra threat. The camel is clearly overburdened even if the back has not yet broken (I understand).
• The Los Alamos irresponsible plutonium storage (photo above)
• Michio Kaku on Fort Calhoun (video): Fukushima in slow motion. 
• All children tested in Fukushima city have internal radiation.
• Los Alamos' trees are radioactive, they will release radiation as Chernobyl vegetation did last year if burnt.

Thanks to Energy News for the updated info.

Revolts

While Greece was burning in rage, so it happened for several (not really too different) reasons in Egypt and Senegal.

Other: Spanish late-fascist corruption as intellectual property mafia

Spain's intellectual property mafia (Sociedad General de Autores y Editores, SGAE) raided by police under major accusations of corruption. The denounce (implying money laundering and illegal appropriation of the society's funds) was made in 2007 by the following associations:

• Internauts' Association
• Internet Users' Association
• Association of Small and Middle-sized Companies of Informatics and New Technologies (APEMIT)
• Spanish Association of Hostelers Victims of the Canon (VACHE)

The SGAE was founded by the Fascist regime in 1941 and holds a practical monopoly in all related to taxing uses of intellectual property. It is a black beast of tavern owners because they attempt to collect illegal taxes for the use of music and such. It is in general hated by most people, including many artists. However artists who have criticized the SGAE have suffered corporate boycotts as result, so not many dare to speak out.

Finally some of the truth about this horrid mafia has been too stinky for the tribunals not to intervene and the society's see has been raided and at least director general Teddy Bautista has been arrested. 

However it is strange that the judicial intervention happened precisely the day when the mafia was having internal elections. Beware of what comes after these. 

Source[es]: Gara, Sare Antifaxista.


Update (Jul 3): according to Público[es], the infamous pseudo-rock-star from long gone times Ramoncín, a close friend of several of the arrested, has declared preventively that he will sue the first one who accuses him of being involved.

This made me think of that saying that goes excusatio non petita, accusatio manifiesta (excuses not asked, manifest (self-)inculpation) and that other so Castilian one that reads: el que se pica, ajos come (who itches ate garlic).

Surely Ramoncín should sue himself, if you know what I mean.

UK deports citizens to USA for copyright misdemeanors

Richard O'Dwyer

The United Kingdom has no dignity left whatsoever: after sending Asperger-sufferer Gary McKinnon to their imperial masters for peaking into the Pentagon's computers with no consequence and claiming that 9/11 was an inside job (apparently the true reason behind the extradition), now like any vassal Colombia it is set to deport yet another young man for comitting an Internet misdemeanor: linking to download sites. 

Anywhere else on Earth, nothing would happen, not even in the USA most probably, but in Britain Richard O'Dwyer now faces to end in one of those US extermination prisons just for posting links to downloads. 

Where is the European Court of Human Rights? Where is British dignity? Nowhere to be seen it seems to me: they must be too busy bombing universities in Tripoli or arming narco-criminals in Mexico and Colombia or kissing the hairy ass of Benjamin Netanyahu.

News story at The Guardian.