"Any time someone puts a lock on something that belongs to you, and won't give you the key, that lock is not for your benefit."

StopTheMadness is a web browser extension that stops web sites from making your browser harder to use

The point of a pluralistic society, however, isn’t to find a single, absolute, dogmatic ideal. It is rather to discover ways of coexisting productively, despite and perhaps even in celebration of our differences.

Facebook has apologized to its users and advertisers for being forced to respect people’s privacy in an upcoming update to Apple’s mobile operating system – and promised it will do its best to invade their privacy on other platforms.

Facebook is warning developers that privacy changes in an upcoming iOS update will severely curtail its ability to track users' activity across the entire Internet and app ecosystem and prevent the social media platform from serving targeted ads to users inside other, non-Facebook apps on iPhones.

What's terrible and dangerous is a faceless organization deciding to arbitrarily and silently control what I can and can not do with my browser on my computer. Orwell is screaming in his grave right now. This is no different than Mozilla deciding I don't get to visit Tulsi Gabbard's webpage because they don't like her politics, or I don't get to order car parts off amazon because they don't like hyundai, or I don't get to download mods for minecraft, or talk to certain people on facebook.

They don't have to host the extension on their website, but it's absolutely and utterly unacceptable for them to interfere with me choosing to come to github and install it.

It's no less beyond the pale than when apple actively sabotaged people's devices to force them to upgrade or amazon deleted people's already bought and downloaded ebooks. It's completely unacceptable and frankly should fall under consumer rights laws.

This principle equally applies to the laws of our country; we should never violate basic rights even if the consequences aren’t immediately evident.

Something else that will never change is the right to freely self-host Matomo On-Premise; this way you can always host Matomo Analytics on your own servers without having to pay for it.

GDPR introduces a list of data subjects’ rights that should be obeyed by both data processors and data collectors. The list includes: Right of access by the data subject (Section 2, Article 15). Right to rectification (Section 3, Art 16). Right to object to processing (Section 4, Art 21). Right to erasure, also known as ‘right to be forgotten’ (Section 3, Art 17). Right to restrict processing (Section 3, Art 18). Right to data portability (Section 3, Art 20).

Right now, if you want to know what data Facebook has about you, you don’t have the right to ask them to give you all of the data they have on you, and the right to know what they’ve done with it. You should have that right. You should have the right to know and have access to your data.

Despite the successful resolution, it was still quite unsettling that a domain name could be transferred to another registrant and sinkholed for some perceived violation. I thought there would be more checks in place to confirm that a perceived violation was real before a domain could be transferred.

On5July2012,theUNHumanRightsCouncilalsoadoptedaresolutiononthepromotion,protection,andenjoymentofhumanrightsontheInternet,affirmingthathumanrightsapplytobothonlineandofflineactivities.

JeffJarvisproposedthatanybillofrightsshouldinclude,‘Wehavetherighttoconnect.Wehavetherighttospeak.Wehavetherighttospeakinourlanguages.Wehavetherighttoassemble.Wehavetherighttoact.Wehavetherighttocontrolourdata.Wehavetherighttoourownidentity.Whatispublicisapublicgood.TheInternetshallbebuiltandoperatedopenly.’

Thecharterincludesnineteenrightsandonesetofduties,whichareimportanttooutline

Themostimportantprinciplesthatevincedigitalrightsinvolvedfiverights:connectivity,access,capacity,security,governance,equity,anddiversity.[54]Thedocumentdoesnotspecifydigitalrightsassuch,butimportantlyitrecognizesthatwhatwasthencalled‘theinformationsociety’constitutesaninternationalresourceandthatthiscallsforinternationalresponsibility.Insubsequentinitiativesanddeclarations,thesefiverightshavebecomebuildingblocksofclaimingdigitalrights.

Wewanttoreadtheemergenceandtransformationsofthedigitalrightsmovementfromtheperspectiveofdigitalactsasoneofthenecessaryelementsformakingdigitalrightsclaims.Whethertheseactscumulativelyconstituteadigitalrightsmovementcomparabletoothersocialmovementswillconcernscholarsintheforeseeablefuture,andwecannotaddressthatquestionhere.Instead,wewanttogatherfromdisparateanddisperseddigitalactstherecognitionofadimlyemergingfigureasthesubjectofdigitalrights.Itistheemergenceofthisspecificpoliticalsubjectivityarounddigitalrightsandtheclaimsthroughwhichithasemerged—andtheopeningsandclosingsithasinstigated—thatformsthecentralquestionofthisbook.

Threerights—expression,access,andprivacy—haveemergedasthemostoftendebateddigitalrights.Tothese,opennessandinnovationhaverecentlybeenadded.Alltogether,thesefiverightshavecometoconstitutedigitalrightsincyberspace.

Toputitsimply,whiledigitalactstraverseborders,digitalrightsdonot.Thisiswherewebelievethinkingaboutdigitalactsintermsoftheirlegality,performativity,andimaginaryiscrucialsincethereareinternationalandtransnationalspacesinwhichdigitalrightsarebeingclaimedthatifnotyetlegallyinforceareneverthelessemergingperformativelyandimaginatively.Yet,arguably,someemergingtransnationalandinternationallawsgoverningcyberspaceinturnarehavinganeffectonnationallegislations.Toputitdifferently,theclassicalargumentabouttherelationshipbetweenhumanrightsandcitizenshiprights,thattheformerarenormsandonlythelattercarrytheforceoflaw,isnotahelpfulstartingpoint.

Thistraversingofactsproducesconsiderablecomplexitiesinbecomingdigitalcitizens.Second,weneedtospecifytowhatextentcertainrightsclaimedbydigitalactsareclassicalrights(e.g.,freedomofspeech),towhatextenttheyareanalogoustoclassicalrights(e.g.,anonymity),andtowhatextenttheyarenew(e.g.,therighttobeforgotten).

The prohibition on reporting bugs in systems with DRM makes those bugs last longer, and get exploited harder before they're patched. Last summer, the US Copyright Office collected evidence about DRM interfering with reporting bugs in tractors, cars, medical implants, and critical national infrastructure.

DRM exists to stop users from doing things they want to do and to stop innovative companies from helping users do things they want to do -- or would want to do, if they had the option. Your cable box, for example, will be designed to stop you from recording your favorite shows for long-term storage and viewing on the go.

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the nonprofit body that maintains the Web's core standards, made a terrible mistake in 2013: they decided to add DRM

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