Laurel L. Russwurm – Page 376

Stop Spying CSEC – Just say “No” to Five Eyes

Special Thanks to Edward Snowden

techDITZ 2014-02-11 13:31:52

Protect Our Privacy

Today We Fight Back

my Pinterest privacy board

my Pinterest Canada board

demand-progress: The NSA “is gathering nearly 5 billion records…

demand-progress:

The NSA “is gathering nearly 5 billion records a day on the whereabouts of cellphones around the world.” (Washington Post)

Join us in protesting the National Security Agency’s wide-ranging invasion of privacy.

Take action →

Unlike the Nigerian Scams that try to con people out of money by dangling a large mysterious financial windfall that the grifter will send after you give them a wad of cash, a “Phishing” attack uses bait to hook people, so they can get your personal information for Identity Fraud.

One things you can do to protect yourself when getting email that looks legitimate but that asks you to do something you shouldn’t ~ like giving personal information to a stranger ~ is to hover your cursor over the link you are supposed to click. If the text of the link is different than the actual link, don’t do it.

Phishing attacks pretend to come from someone we trust. In Canada we pay our taxes to the Canada Revenue Service, so when a Canadian gets an email from them we pay attention. Thiis is a phishing email I received that pretends to be from CRA:

*Claim Your Tax Refund Online*
We identified an error in the calculation of your tax from the last payment, amounting to $ 146.00. In order for us to return the excess payment, you need to create a Tax Gateway account after which the funds will be credited to your specified bank account.

Please click “Get Started” below to claim your refund:

Get Started <http://www.cunningruse.com/.tax/>

We are here to ensure the correct tax is paid at the right time, whether this relates to payment of taxes received by the department or entitlement to benefits paid.

An email from the Canada Revenue Agency is likely to make us a little nervous, because most of us will wonder what we have done wrong on our tax return. But when we read this, we discover it isn’t anything terrible, but an error in our favor which brings welcome relief. The amount owing isn’t big enough to look fishy, just a small correction.

The crooks who sent this hope our little bit of fear followed by relief will cloud our judgement, so we will click on the link that will take us to a place where they can extract our personal information. After all, we will be giving the information to the government.

The “Get Started” link actually will send you to a different web page… which hovering reveals leads to www Cunning Ruse dot com.

If your bank, or the government, or any reputable retailer wants your personal information, they will not ask for it through email, because email is not safe, private or secure. Anyone who asks for your personal information in unencrypted email is either foolish or a setting you up for a scam.

Don’t do it. Privacy Matters.

Technorati

Promotion is necessary to sell books. That’s one of the distasteful jobs traditional publishers saved novelists from. Although many self publishers have a hard time doing this, it needs to get done.

In today’s world, we need an online presence. Authors need blogs, whether we self publish or not. Registering our blogs with Technorati is supposed to help promote them. When you sign up with Technorati, you can fill in a profile. But to register your blog you need to “claim it” which you do by posting the unique code Technorati assigns to you (for this blog, it’s K76X4UNJWKR9 ) in a blog post. What this does is prove to Technorati that you have the keys to the blog you say you own, so Technorati validates that you do actually control it. Of course, this can be annoying, since once posted, the code needs to stay in the blog forever to guarantee your continued Technorati accreditation.

Another big part of self publishing is being your own boss. Self Publishers get to make our own decisions, and that includes learning to use our time effectively. Which is why I have not bothered to go through the rigorous Technorati process with all my blogs. In my experience there have always been glitches in the process.

For instance, today I upgraded my personal Technorati profile. There were several new fields to which I could add information if I chose, including links to various web platforms like Facebook. But after getting all the information, when I pressed the “save” button, Technorati didn’t like the facebook URL for my Facebook author page. But in rejecting it, all the other information I had added or changed in the profile was wiped out. This is a mistake common to many online forms, and it is always annoying and a waste of the user’s time. Silly me, I went through the whole process again, this time using my personal Facebook URL. But Technorati rejected that too, again wiping out everything I input. For my next attempt, I filled in the other info one field at a time, saving after each.

And again my Facebook URL was rejected. One of the things I have learned not to waste my time on is trying to contact a human being at giant web platforms like Facebook, since it’s generally pretty futile.

I decided at that point to “claim” this Libreleft Books blog on Technorati. Again, after accepting my g+ Libreleft Books page, Technorati refused the link to my Libreleft Books Facebook Page. This tells me something is broken, whether at Facebook or Technorati I can’t say.

Nor can I say whether having verified blogs has been particularly helpful or not. This might be different if I involved myself in Technorati in other ways, but I am spread too thin as it is. If you have any experience, I’d appreciate hearing Technorati feedback either way.

Ho ho ho…

We can be thankful we have people like Edward Snowden and Glenn Greenwald looking out for our privacy.

remix: umbrella table

During a barbeque this past summer, Terry converted this picnic table into an umbrella table. The table umbrellas are mounted on a pole runnung through the table into a base. Terry began with a sun umbrella that had no base.

He covered the top of the picnic table with a plywood cut to size, then drilled a hole — just large enough to accommodate the umbrella pole — through the plywood and the table below

Under the table he mounted a board to serve as the base for the umbrella.

The final touch was an extra piece of 2.4 for stability. Bravo Terry!

Just add tablecloth and serve!

Comment on DRM is BAD by Libreleft Books : Publishing DRM-Free

[…] interweb freedom: DRM is Bad […]

Publishing DRM-Free

Although I’ve always understood censorship to be a bad thing, like everyone else — particularly other creators — I grew up believing copyright was beneficial for authors and culture. It is only in recent years, as copyright maximalists have successfully lobbied for copyright terms extending into the realm of the ridiculous that that I’ve come to understand just how harmful copyright law actually is, both for people and our culture.

Free thought and free speech are incredibly important for human beings. When writers dare not reference our own culture for fear of legal copyright repercussions, “copyright chill” leads to self censorship, which serves only to stunt our culture.

So much of our culture is shared in digital formats these days that the mainstream media industry developed and embraced “digital locks” in order to “protect” its investment in the media content it distributes. Copyright law calls them “”Technological Protection Measures” (TPMs), but these measures used to control how we humans use our media an devices are commonly known as “DRM.”

To those employing digital locks, DRM means “Digital Rights Management,” because these producers, publishers, manufacturers and distributors are managing their intellectual property rights on the property they continue to control, even after we have purchased it.

To the rest of us, DRM is effectively “Digital Restrictions Management,”and what is being managed is us.

What is Digital Restrictions Management?

Digital Restrictions Management is technology that controls what you can do with the digital media and devices you own. When a program doesn’t let you share a song, read an ebook on another device, or play a single-player game without an internet connection, you are being restricted by DRM. In other words, DRM creates a damaged good. It prevents you from doing what would normally be possible if it wasn’t there, and this is creating a dangerous situation for freedom, privacy and censorship…

DRM gives media and technology companies the ultimate control over every aspect of what people can do with their media: where they can use it, on what devices, using what apps, for how long, and any other conditions the retailer wants to set. Digital media has many advantages over traditional analog media, but DRM attempts to make every possible use of digital goods something that must be granted permission for. This concentrates all power over the distribution of media into the hands of a few companies. For example, DRM gives ebook sellers the power to remotely delete all copies of a book, to keep track of what books readers are interested in and, with some software, even what notes they take in their books.

— Defective By Design: What is DRM

So it is no surprise that many mainstream publishing houses have embraced DRM, and early digital self publishing platforms required DRM. But authors and readers pushed back, and so today many independent authors and self publishers can choose to say “No” to DRM, when publishing.

In common with the rest of the mainstream media, traditional publishing houses are eager to reap the benefits of the new digital technology, while employing DRM in an attempt to turn back the hands of time and deny the benefits of digital innovation to every one else. Clinging to their outmoded business model, and worse, attempting to impose it on today’s digital world, is very likely not going to end well for these corporate entities, as suggested by the npr article, E-Books Strain Relations Beween Libraries, Publishing Houses

Libreleft Books are published DRM free

Like most self publishers, Libreleft publishes in as many formats and markets as possible, so it is possible that DRM may be applied without my my knowledge. In the event you purchase Inconstant Moon or any future Libreleft publication and find it is encumbered with DRM, Libreleft Books guarantees to replace it with DRM free copy.

One of the things I’ve been learning about in my self publishing adventure is DRM. We all encounter DRM every day in our digital world, but most of us don’t recognize it. There are no warning labels, so even if we know what DRM is, we have no way of knowing if it is even present. When our digital media or devices don’t work, it doesn’t occur to us that the manufacturer or publisher deliberately degraded their products with DRM.

I’ve written a fair bit about the dangers of DRM, and much of my opposition to Canada’s new copyright law was because it made DRM supreme. Following the lead (and substantial pressure from) the American Government, Canada and the UK have passed copyright legislation making it illegal to circumvent DRM — even to access material to which we are legally entitled. Such legislation makes it illegal to play a legally purchased DVD on a computer with a free software operating system, or to listen to, watch or read freely licensed or public domain books, music or movies on devices and platforms that employ DRM to prevent it.

Although Kindle reading devices are themselves encumbered with DRM, I decided that my debut novel, “Inconstant Moon” is not. My self-publishing imprint, Libreleft Books, will continue to publish this and all future offerings DRM-free. Readers are free to safely back-up their Libreleft books elsewhere. As well, you are free to use Calibre to convert your Libreleft Kindle eBook file to any other format.

In Amazon’s product details section, DRM-Free eBooks are identified by: “Simultaneous Device Usage: Unlimited” so you can check to see if the e-book you are buying is DRMed.
[Caution: Since Amazon retains the legal right to access your Kindle, for your own protection, all your ebooks should be backed up elsewhere, just as all digital files you have an interest in keeping should always be backed up on different media or devices.]

Libreleft Books does not and will never digitally lock up any books with DRM (or TPMs).

Which is why I am proud to have Libreleft Books listed in “The Guide to DRM-Free Living” in the Literature: Individual Authors and Books section. The Guide is published by Defective by Design, a campaign of the Free Software Foundation

Self Publishers can choose to publish DRM-Free because it gives us the freedom to choose.