RashidVille

Civil Rights BitchSlap

It is 4am, and I can seemto sleep… Maybe we should check out all the civil liberties being taken away???

1. On orders from Senator John McCain’s security detail, Denver police escorted a 61-year-old woman away who was waiting in line to attend a so-called town hall meeting with McCain that was billed as open to the public.Video Here

2. In the united states, many security agencies are advocating that every airline passenger wears a taser bracelet. More Info

3. Julio Alonso, the founder of the leading Spanish blog network Weblogs SL, has been fined €9,000 plus legal costs for comments made by other people on his personal blog. More Info.

4. Some Dell laptops come with dissabled audio ports, after pressure from the RIAA. Dell will enable them for you for only $99. Bargain. More Info.

5. Using 1% of the earths desert and solar panels, we could make enough electricity to cover global energy demands and replace fossil fuels. More Info.

6. Under the new canadian copyright law, I could be breaking the law by posting this information., as I have copied the text directly from sources even though I have given them full credit.

7. Many bloggers are being sued, arrested, suspended, expelled, and fired across the world, because of the lack of the freedom of speach.

The world we live in, is one where civil liberties is starting to mean nothing.

-Rashid

Canadian Telecom Issues are Heating Up

The government authorized monopolies of canadian telecoms have created extremely high cell phone bills, internet bills, net neutrality issues, bandwidth throttling, and a range of other problems. Canadians pay a huge premium over many in other countries, and its time to fight back.

Rogers, who were suposed to release the iPhone on July 11th in conjunction with apple, will be left iPhone-less. Apple, disgusted at the way overpriced canadian iPhone plans, have [apparently]  decided to cancel canadian iphone shipments.

As a result, Canadian Apple Retail stores won’t be selling the new 3G touchscreen phones come Friday, representatives for the Cupertino-based company said during a private conference call on Monday evening. Instead, it will be up to Rogers and its partner Fido to lock subscribers into steep 3-year contracts that require a minimum monthly payment of $60 for just 150 minutes, 75 text messages, and 400MB of data.

Rogers got what they deserved. Or at least I hope they do! In other news of net neutrality, Jim PRentice, head of the outrageous copyright bill c-61, is hiding behind comittees and refuses to speak about his bill.

-Rashid

GWB PArdons himself for potential warcrimes…

George Bush has pardoned himself for potential warcrimes. If hat is not admitting guilt, i don’know what is! The legal system is really screwed up….

Michael Geist: Protecting Canadians.

Michael Geist is heavily combating serious issues in Canadian Society.Are you doing your part? Are you fighting for your freedoms?

Net Neutrality greatly threatens Canadian society, as some companies want to pay Internet service providers money to ensure their websites are faster and get priority over other websites, which could in turn lead to a tiered Internet service as cable is today…

Bill-C61 is the reformed to-be Canadian Copyright bill, which vows to be revolutionary and help consumers. This bill is in fact dangerous as it takes away rights. Many explain it using vague terms while ignoring the fact that the bill actually takes away our fundamental rights.

Here’s some stuff to love about the new bill, C-61::

• $500 per downloaded song
• No Fair Use rights for remix culture
• $20,000 for uploading content (youtube anyone?)

ACTA is an Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement proposed by the Governments of Canada, the United States, Korea, Japan, Austrialia, New Zealand, Mexico, and the European Commission. This agreement would let border guards search your electronic devices without warning. If you have a single mp3 that you did not buy, your ipod or even entire computer can be confiscated without warning, with no chance of appeal. Sounds to me like way too much power, and huge privacy concerns.

Enjoying your freedoms? Not for long, probably. It’s time to fight back. Spread the word, join the facebook groups, send a letter to your MP or even better, phone them or pay them a visit. I have been emailing mine a multitude of times.

-Rashid

America & Canada: Future Nazi States?

Has anyone read the news lately? And I don’t mean propaganda like CTV, CNN, FOX, the Star…. I mean real news, by real people?

Have you heard of all the unjustified arrests?

In the states, the RIAA can hack into your computer to see if you illegally downloaded songs.

In Canada, a new copyright bill looms to change everything… Here is a brief summary

• You are not able to break copy protection/encryption
• You are allowed to make backups of bought materials [unless it is copy protected] - that means the right to make backups [which we have had for a long time] is pretty much being taken away.
• 500$ in damages per incident! (How many songs have you downloaded….)
• parodies and satires are banned
• 20,000$ for commercial and non-commercial distribution
• The current law for songs going into the public domain is 50 years after publication. Now it could be life of copyright older + 50 years. [note that companies own the copyright, thus music will never enter the public domain!]

Need I say more? There will be DRM anti-circumvention for everything, infinite copyrights, criminalization for things you do on a daily basis, and huge fines.

What can you do? Contact your MP. Protest. Stop purchasing from big record labels. Buy independent.

If we don’t stop this now, what will be next? The Canadian patriot act?

-Rashid