Table of Contents

Welcome From The Chief Editor

1. ICYMI: Beware Of Malware That Take Over Legitimate Apps On Android

2. Inkscape Tutorial: Create A Paint Splatter

3. A Wider View On TunnelVision & VPN Advice

4. PCLinuxOS Recipe Corner: BBQ Steak Foldovers

5. Fair Use Still Protects Histories & Documentaries — Even Tiger King

6. Tip Top Tips: How To Install Canon PIXMA TS-81xx On PCLinuxOS

7. Good Words, Good Deeds, Good News

8. Big Tech To EU: “Drop Dead”

9. Create A Playable USB Flash Drive Full Of Your Ripped Audio Files

10. The FBI Is Playing Politics With Your Privacy

11. No Country Should Be Making Speech Rules For The World

12. Congress Should Just Say No To NO FAKES

13. PCLinuxOS Recipe Corner Bonus: Make-Ahead Meat-Lovers' Lasagna Rolls

14. PCLinuxOS Puzzled Partitions

15. Screenshot Showcase

From The Chief Editor's Desk...

Wow! It's nearly summer here, and I'm beginning to wonder if things will ever slow down!

We (my wife and I) feel like we've been running non-stop for an eternity. Let's see … between the end of the regular school year and the activities it brings, the start of summer school (during the month of June), birthday parties, Cub Scout graduation, gardening, yard work, and everything else going on, we feel like we've been “on the go” for a very long time with no reprieve.

Still to go are Cub Scout camps (my daughter will be attending Bear camp, and my son will be attending Webelos camp), and scheduling a time for a Cub Scout “Bike Hike.” My wife and I are the “hiking chairs” for our Cub Scout pack. Once a year we plan a “bike hike” to break the monotony. During last year's inaugural “bike hike,” the kids rode over eight miles on a local bike trail (4+ miles out, 4+ miles back, or a total of just over 12.9Km).

Scout Day At The K (Kauffman Stadium in Kansas City) to watch the KC Royals take on the Texas Rangers

Our Cubmaster started the monthly hikes within our Cub Scout pack during the pandemic, as an opportunity for the Cub Scouts and their families to get outside and do some “scout-worthy” outdoor activities. After the first year, he handed off the planning of the monthly hikes to the “hiking chairs” … which is my wife and me. Those hikes have become a monthly staple. And yes, we schedule a monthly hike during every month of the year, even during the winter. Participation is voluntary, meaning the monthly hikes are not compulsory.

This year, to spur attendance to the hikes (attendance had dropped off some), we came up with a “treasure chest.” That treasure chest is stocked by my wife and me with some relatively inexpensive things that can be used during their Scouting activities. So, the treasure chest, instead of having “toys” in it, contains campfire forks (for roasting hot dogs or making S'Mores), ponchos, fire starters, pocket knives, “survival” whistles, compasses, water bottles, Bandaids (for their first aid kits), bug wipes, bug wristbands, flashlights (complete with batteries), and camp eating utensils, among other things. Just in case you were wondering, the fire starters and pocket knives are allowed to be selected *only* IF their parent(s) agree.

Everything in the treasure chest is something that they can use during their Scouting activities, and most of the items are things they can use over and over again. After completing the hike, those in attendance get to pick an item out of the treasure chest. It has helped keep attendance good during our monthly hikes.

As you might imagine, we are frequent visitors to Dollar Tree, the clearance aisle at Walmart, Harbor Freight Tools, Academy Sports, and a few other stores, looking for items to restock the treasure chest. The Cub Scouts notice when we restock the treasure box with “new” items. When we first started “stocking” the fire starters, they were the hot ticket item. The same thing happened when we stocked the water bottles and campfire forks.

We'll probably keep on doing it for as long as the kids are in Cub Scouts. It's our way of contributing something to the Cub Scout pack, as a whole. Plus, it's only one hike per month. Having a child in Cub Scouts is definitely a family endeavor, requiring the participation of not only the child, but also their adult “partner.” When Ryan had to complete his “outdoor cooking” requirement for Webelos, we donated two dozen eggs (from our backyard flock of chickens, nonetheless). His den leader contributed the rest of the items to make tasty egg, sausage, and cheese burritos. All of the kids got a chance to help cook the meal.

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Whatever you do, DON'T look up! Nah! I'm just kidding! This month's cover “celebrates” World UFO Day, which is on June 24, 2024. This month's cover image is by Darwin Laganzon from Pixabay. Now, I wonder if “they” use PCLinuxOS, or if “they” are members of the PCLinuxOS forum?

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Until next month, I bid you peace, happiness, serenity, prosperity, and continued good health!

by Paul Arnote (parnote)

Image by Mike from Pixabay

Have you ever used SSH on your computer, but maybe forgot your SSH keys? If you're not sure how to view your SSH certificates, this article from TechRepublic walks you through the steps on Linux, as well as MacOS and Windows.

More than a century since the Titanic sank on its maiden voyage, this first-person testimony of survivor Frank Prentice remains a powerful and harrowing account of the sheer terror felt by those on board, according to an article from BBC. Frank Prentice was 23 when he survived the sinking of the Titanic. When interviewed by the BBC 67 years later, it was clear he was still haunted by that terrible night. More than 1,500 people died when the Titanic struck an iceberg in the Atlantic Ocean on 14 April 1912, causing the boat to sink.

While mass layoffs at large tech companies dominated the headlines throughout 2023, a new report suggests that they actually represented a minority, according to an article from the TechRepublic. The “2024 State of Tech Talent Report” from the Linux Foundation revealed that just 29% of organizations reduced their technical headcount last year.

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

You may know — and be on the lookout for — malware hiding in programs that act legitimate, but aren't. But what happens when apps that are legitimate are unwittingly taken over by malicious users, intent on hijacking their programs? It's precisely the situation this article from Lifehacker takes a look at. That's exactly what happened to a group of apps on Android: Microsoft first alerted the world to the issue, called “Dirty Stream,” which is a vulnerability that allows malicious apps to take over legitimate ones. Dirty Stream relies on a flaw in ContentProvider, the system that allows different apps to share the same data set. Without it, apps wouldn't be able to communicate with each other or use the same data, reducing functionality and convenience.

Rrrriiiiiiipppppppp! Have you ever wondered how Velcro came about? This article from New York Magazine demystifies its origins. In 1941, de Mestral was on a hunting trip and noticed that both his pants and his Irish Pointer's hair were covered in the burs from a burdock plant. Where many might have brushed them off in irritation, de Mestral decided to study the burs under a microscope, more out of curiosity than sensing a new business opportunity. “He was not a guy who was inspired by business,” says Velcro CEO Cameron. “He was inspired by science. If you need to know how something works, sometimes you just need to know. However he was constructed, he just really needed to know.” What de Mestral saw were thousands of tiny hooks that efficiently bound themselves to nearly any fabric (or dog hair) that passed by. De Mestral realized that if he could create a synthetic form of this fabric, it would allow for a new way to fasten things, a middle ground between buttons, zippers, and simply sewing stuff together. His idea was to take the hooks he had seen in the burs and combine them with simple loops of fabric. The tiny hooks would catch in the loops, and things would just, well, come together.

Google appears to be stepping up the fight against spam in Gmail, according to an article from TechRepublic. Starting in early 2024, Google tightened three enforcement efforts in the organization's ongoing fight against spam. First, bulk senders of email must authenticate email with domain-related email settings to ensure each email is actually from the sender specified. Second, large senders of email must offer a one-click unsubscribe option and process the request within two days, so people don't experience absurdly long delays or complicated opt-out processes when they unsubscribe. Third, Google will enforce a spam rate threshold, so people who send too many messages that recipients report as spam will be much less likely to reach your inbox.

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

An article from Lifehacker explains how to block companies from tracking you online. Did you know that services like TikTok and Facebook can track you, even if you don't have an account with them? Through ads and deals, data brokers are able to hide cookies, scripts, and “tracking pixels” on completely unrelated sites and even emails, which they can then use to find out your purchase history and other valuable data. And the perpetrators include more than TikTok—Meta is perhaps the most well-known, going so far as to publicize how it scrapes your data.

OpenAI and Microsoft are facing another lawsuit over the use of copyrighted material, according to an article from Information Week. Earlier this year, the New York Times sued the two GenAI powerhouses over the use of its articles to train their large language models (LLMs). Now, eight other newspapers have sued OpenAI and Microsoft for the use of copyrighted material. “This lawsuit arises from Defendants purloining millions of the Publishers' copyrighted articles without permission and without payment to fuel the commercialization of their generative artificial intelligence (“GenAI”) products, including ChatGPT and Copilot,” according to the complaint (PDF).

From the “No DUH!” department, a NIH official finally admits taxpayers funded gain-of-function research in Wuhan — after years of denials, according to an article from the New York Post. At long last, National Institutes of Health (NIH) principal deputy director Lawrence Tabak admitted to Congress Thursday that US taxpayers funded gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China in the months and years before the COVID-19 pandemic.

Image by Tumisu from Pixabay

Microsoft wants laptop users to get so comfortable with its artificial intelligence chatbot that it will remember everything you're doing on your computer and help figure out what you want to do next, according to an article from Fortune. The software giant on Monday revealed a new class of AI-imbued personal computers as it confronts heightened competition from Big Tech rivals in pitching generative AI technology that can compose documents, make images and serve as a lifelike personal assistant at work or home. Move along, there's nothing to see here. I'm sure that NOTHING bad will happen from this [/sarcasm]. It sounds a lot like spyware to me!

Facing an antitrust jury trial over claims it monopolizes online advertising, Google has chosen to do the most logical thing it can think of to avoid the case being heard by a jury: It's cut a check to the US Justice Department to get prosecutors to strike their damages claim, according to an article from The Register. According to a federal court filing (PDF) in Virginia last week, Google said it has offered the DoJ a check for an unspecified sum that covers “the full monetary damages it seeks.” By doing so, Google said it has solved the DoJ's claims for damages, and thus Uncle Sam's reason for asking for a jury trial. Sure … just buy your way out of trouble, Google!

Attention, Chrome users: It's time to update your browser, says an article from Lifehacker. Google dropped an update in mid-May for Chrome on Windows, Mac, and Linux, and while that “Update” button in the corner of your browser window can be all too easy to ignore, you really shouldn't. Chrome 125 includes patches for nine security vulnerabilities. While all security flaws are important to fix as soon as possible, one of the vulnerabilities in particular is of the most concern: This flaw is tracked as CVE-2024-4947, a “Type Confusion in V8,” which occurs when a piece of code doesn't verify the object it's being passed to. In other words, the wrong functions end up attached to the wrong code, which bad actors can take advantage of to potentially run their own code on your device.

Image by GraphicMama-team from Pixabay

We take the search function [on your PC] for granted — when it goes well. If you search for a particular email, photo, or document on your PC, and it pops right up, you don't think twice about it. But if you spend 10 minutes scouring your hard drive looking for that one file, you lose your mind. That's where Microsoft hopes its new Recall feature can help — even if it comes with some major security risks, according to an article from Lifehacker.

Did you know that you can use your Kindle ebook reader for more than reading ebooks? Few do, and that is the reason for the article from Lifehacker. While Amazon has a dedicated “Send To Kindle” program, there are multiple ways to wirelessly send reading material to your Kindle. The Kindle devices support .DOC, .DOCX, .HTML, .TXT, .PDF and .EPUB file formats.

Most of us around here “cut our teeth” on Microsoft Windows. With that, came a “reliance” on programs written in Visual Basic, otherwise known as VB. Well, Microsoft announced today that it will start deprecating VBScript in the second half of 2024 by making it an on-demand feature until it's completely removed, according to an article from BleepingComputer.

Image by Sanjeevi 777 from Pixabay

Earlier this month, NASA proved that it's getting serious about its investment into nuclear-powered rockets by moving a fission-based plasma rocket known as the pulse plasma rocket into Phase II funding under the NIAC program, according to an article from Popular Mechanics. This rocket could cut astronaut travel times to Mars down to just two months, or significantly increase payloads for resupply missions—both of which will be crucial for NASA's future Martian plans.

Google parent Alphabet's potential acquisition of HubSpot, a U.S. marketing software maker with a market value of $31 billion, would boost its ability to compete against Microsoft in offering cloud-based applications to companies, according to an article from Reuters. HubSpot, which makes marketing software for small and medium-sized businesses, is seeking ways to maintain sales growth in the face of a wider economic slowdown.

For many users with an adblocker employed, YouTube videos are suddenly starting to skip to the end of the video, according to an article from 9to5 Google. Over the past few months, YouTube has been enforcing its rule against the use of adblockers. That started last year with the platform displaying a message that would tell the user to turn off their ad blocking, in turn blocking videos from playing after that prompt was ignored. That led to many uninstalling their adblockers, as well as some clever workarounds popping up.

A new rearview camera for bikes uses AI to keep cyclists safe, according to an article from Global Cycling Network. The camera sends audible and visual warnings to a rider's phone when a car gets close to them. An Irish company, Luna Systems, is aiming to harness the power of AI in the name of cycling safety through a new rear-viewing camera for cyclists. The initiative is set to launch at the beginning of June, Luna Systems' new Luna Oculus camera is designed to shoot rear-viewing footage as a cyclist rides which is relayed to an app on a cyclist's phone, in what sounds like a similar design to a dash cam. That would appear to partly be the inspiration, at least judging by the company's mission “to empower cyclists with the kinds of safety technologies already deployed in modern cars.” However, far from a simple recording device, the camera detects when a car is getting close to the rider and sends both visual and auditory warning signals to an app on a phone. Riders get to choose at what point these alerts are triggered through customisable “warning zones”, which Luna Systems says can be adjusted according to a riders' “own level of comfort”. Currently, according to a demo video released by the company, these alerts will be in the form of a beeping noise and a red light on the screen, although it says the interface will change when the product is officially launched.

According to an article from the BBC, Internet access and use is consistently associated with positive wellbeing, a new study of data from 168 countries by the Oxford Internet Institute (OII) suggests. In many parts of the world, including the EU and UK, concerns about online harms have prompted new laws. The OII says some of its findings are “consistent” with reported links between social media use and depressive symptoms among young women. But it concludes the overall benefits of being online show regulators contemplating tougher laws should rely on data and not be “guided by anecdote.”

The Google Play Store begins highlighting apps that let you delete your account, according to an article from Android Authority. This makes it easy to request data or account deletion without needing to reinstall an uninstalled app. Google has mandated apps that create user accounts to also allow for account and data deletion within the app and through the web. The enforcement deadline for app developers is May 31, 2024, so it should be in place by the time you read this. Ahead of the deadline, the “Account deletion available” badge is now live in the Google Play Store within app listings. It highlights how you can request that your data or account be deleted. This makes it easy to easily delete app accounts and data without needing to reinstall an uninstalled app.

by Meemaw

I look on YouTube for tutorials occasionally. The other day I found a tutorial by a poster Rick Johanson on IronEcho Design's channel. This one creates a paint splatter using the Spray Can tool and the Tweak/Sculpt tool. It's pretty fun, and he does a great job.

You can start by choosing your page size (he uses A4) and making it Landscape orientation, with a black background. Then you need to make your splatter blobs. You can use a circle, but it will look more realistic if the blob is a bit irregular. The easiest way is to draw two or three circles and stack them unevenly, then combine them by selecting them all and using Path > Combine. Duplicate them and resize so you have at least three different sizes (paint doesn't all splatter the same size).

To use the Spray Can, you have to first select the item you want to spray, so choose the biggest blob first, then select the tool. You will see an options bar at the top of Inkscape. (Loads of options!) The first three are “Spray copies of the initial selection”, “Spray clones of the initial selection” and “Spray in a straight line”. You can spray copies of your blob, but it's more useful to spray clones. Spraying in a straight line might be useful, but not for this project. The next tools are parameters for your spray: Width, Amount (of blobs sprayed), Rotation, Scale, Scatter & Focus. IronEcho uses these settings: Width — 10, Amount — 50, Rotation — 50, Scale — 50, Scatter — 10 and Focus — 1. You can play with these.

Using your tool, spray clones of your blob. Then, using the other two sizes, spray more.

The reason we sprayed clones is that if we want to change the color of some of our blobs, we only have to change the color of the original blob.

If you get a splatter you don't like, you can do + Z and delete part of it, then start again. You can also select everything and size it down a bit, and add another layer of splatter.

Now, a paint splatter wouldn't be realistic without a couple of drips. We do that with the Tweak/Sculpt tool. First, however, we need to get rid of the clone aspect, or the sculpt tool won't work. Select everything, and click Edit > Clone > Unlink clones recursively. That changes all the clones to individual blobs. Choose one, and then click on the Sculpt tool. Again you will see a toolbar. Most of the choices involve pushing objects toward or away from something, shrink or rotate objects, roughen or blur or even delete objects. One of the tools looks like two lines that rise in the center, and is called “Push parts of paths in any direction”. We'll use that. Settings should be Width — 2, Force — 50, Fidelity — 75 or more. Grab the bottom of one of your blobs and drag down.

You might have to pull twice to get the length you want, and with a little practice, you can form a rounded drop at the bottom. You might push against the sides later to make the drip a bit thinner.

If you're happy with it, you're finished! Note that if you export it to use elsewhere, only the splatter will export. However, if you use it in some sort of paint-themed image or something like graffiti, it will work out great.

by Alexis Hancock and Cooper Quintin

Electronic Frontier Foundation

Reprinted under Creative Commons license

If you listen to any podcast long enough, you will almost certainly hear an advertisement for a Virtual Private Network (VPN). These advertisements usually assert that a VPN is the only tool you need to stop cyber criminals, malware, government surveillance, and online tracking. But these advertisements vastly oversell the benefits of VPNs. The reality is that VPNs are mainly useful for one thing: routing your network connection through a different network. Many people, including EFF, thought that VPNs were also a useful tool for encrypting your traffic in the scenario that you didn't trust the network you were on, such as at a coffee shop, university, or hacker conference. But new research from Leviathan Security demonstrates a reminder that this may not be the case and highlights the limited use-cases for VPNs.

TunnelVision is a recently published attack method that can allow an attacker on a local network to force internet traffic to bypass your VPN and route traffic over an attacker-controlled channel instead. This allows the attacker to see any unencrypted traffic (such as what websites you are visiting). Traditionally, corporations deploy VPNs for employees to access private company sites from other networks. Today, many people use a VPN in situations where they don't trust their local network. But the TunnelVision exploit makes it clear that using an untrusted network is not always an appropriate threat model for VPNs because they will not always protect you if you can't trust your local network.

TunnelVision exploits the Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) to reroute traffic outside of a VPN connection. This preserves the VPN connection and does not break it, but an attacker is able to view unencrypted traffic. Think of DHCP as giving you a nametag when you enter the room at a networking event. The host knows at least 50 guests will be in attendance and has allocated 50 blank nametags. Some nametags may be reserved for VIP guests, but the rest can be allocated to guests if you properly RSVP to the event. When you arrive, they check your name and then assign you a nametag. You may now properly enter the room and be identified as "Agent Smith." In the case of computers, this “name” is the IP address DHCP assigns to devices on the network. This is normally done by a DHCP server but one could manually try it by way of clothespins in a server room.

TunnelVision abuses one of the configuration options in DHCP, called Option 121, where an attacker on the network can assign a “lease” of IPs to a targeted device. There have been attacks in the past like TunnelCrack that had similar attack methods, and chances are if a VPN provider addressed TunnelCrack, they are working on verifying mitigations for TunnelVision as well.

In the words of the security researchers who published this attack method:

“There's a big difference between protecting your data in transit and protecting against all LAN attacks. VPNs were not designed to mitigate LAN attacks on the physical network and to promise otherwise is dangerous.”

Rather than lament the many ways public, untrusted networks can render someone vulnerable, there are many protections provided by default that can assist as well. Originally, the internet was not built with security in mind. Many have been working hard to rectify this. Today, we have many other tools in our toolbox to deal with these problems. For example, web traffic is mostly encrypted with HTTPS. This does not change your IP address like a VPN could, but it still encrypts the contents of the web pages you visit and secures your connection to a website. Domain Name Servers (which occur before HTTPS in the network stack) have also been a vector for surveillance and abuse, since the requested domain of the website is still exposed at this level. There have been wide efforts to secure and encrypt this as well. Availability for encrypted DNS and HTTPS by default now exists in every major browser, closing possible attack vectors for snoops on the same network as you. Lastly, major browsers have implemented support for Encrypted Client Hello (ECH). Which encrypts your initial website connection, sealing off metadata that was originally left in cleartext.

TunnelVision is a reminder that we need to clarify what tools can and cannot do. A VPN does not provide anonymity online and neither can encrypted DNS or HTTPS (Tor can though). These are all separate tools that handle similar issues. Thankfully, HTTPS, encrypted DNS, and encrypted messengers are completely free and usable without a subscription service and can provide you basic protections on an untrusted network. VPNs — at least from providers who've worked to mitigate TunnelVision—remain useful for routing your network connection through a different network, but they should not be treated as a security multi-tool.

BBQ Steak Foldovers

Serves: 4

INGREDIENTS:

Filling

2 teaspoons oil

1/2 green bell pepper, cut into thin strips

1/2 small onion, cut into thin strips

1/2 lb boneless beef sirloin steak, cut into 1x1/4-inch strips

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon pepper

2 tablespoons barbecue sauce

2 slices (1 oz each) provolone cheese, cut in half

Dough

2 cups Original Bisquick™ mix

1/2 cup boiling water

2 tablespoons milk

1 egg, beaten

DIRECTIONS:

In a 10-inch skillet, heat oil over medium-high heat. Cook bell pepper and onion in oil 3 to 4 minutes, stirring occasionally, until onion begins to soften. Sprinkle beef strips with salt and pepper; add to vegetables. Cook 5 minutes, stirring occasionally, until beef is thoroughly cooked. Stir in barbecue sauce; cook and stir 1 minute. Set aside.

Heat oven to 375°F. Spray cookie sheet with sides or 15x10x1-inch pan with cooking spray.

In a small bowl, stir Bisquick mix and water until dough forms. Divide dough into 4 pieces; roll each into a ball. Keep covered with plastic wrap until ready to use.

On a work surface sprinkled with additional Bisquick mix, roll 1 ball of dough into a 6 1/2-inch round. On half of the round, place 1/2 piece of cheese; top with rounded 1/3 cup beef mixture, leaving 1/2-inch border around the edge. Brush edges with milk. Fold dough over filling and seal with tines of fork. Place on cookie sheet. Repeat with remaining dough, cheese and beef mixture.

Brush egg over tops of fold overs. Bake 20 to 25 minutes, or until golden brown.

TIPS:

Make the sandwiches up to 2 hours ahead of time. Cover and refrigerate until ready to bake.

NUTRITION:

Calories: 450    Carbs: 45g    Fiber: 2g    Sodium: 1130mg    Protein: 21g

by Mitch Stoltz

Electronic Frontier Foundation

Reprinted under Creative Commons license

Copyright's fair use doctrine protects lots of important free expression against the threat of ruinous lawsuits. Fair use isn't limited to political commentary or erudite works — it also protects popular entertainment like Tiger King, Netflix's hit 2020 documentary series about the bizarre and sometimes criminal exploits of a group of big cat breeders. That's why a federal appeals court's narrow interpretation of fair use in a recent copyright suit threatens not just the producers of Tiger King but thousands of creators who make documentaries, histories, biographies, and even computer software. EFF and other groups asked the court to revisit its decision. Thankfully, the court just agreed to do so.

The case, Whyte Monkee Productions v. Netflix, was brought by a videographer who worked at the Greater Wynnewood Exotic Animal Park, the Oklahoma attraction run by Joe Exotic that was chronicled in Tiger King. The videographer sued Netflix for copyright infringement over the use of his video clips of Joe Exotic in the series. A federal district court in Oklahoma found Netflix's use of one of the video clips — documenting Joe Exotic's eulogy for his husband Travis Maldonado — to be a fair use. A three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit reversed that decision and remanded the case, ruling that the use of the video was not “transformative,” a concept that's often at the heart of fair use decisions.

The appeals court based its ruling on a mistaken interpretation of the Supreme Court's opinion in Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts v. Goldsmith. Warhol was a deliberately narrow decision that upheld the Supreme Court's prior precedents about what makes a use transformative while emphasizing that commercial uses are less likely to be fair. The Supreme Court held that commercial re-uses of a copyrighted work — in that case, licensing an Andy Warhol print of the artist Prince for a magazine cover when the print was based on a photo that was also licensed for magazine covers — required a strong justification. The Warhol Foundation's use of the photo was not transformative, the Supreme Court said, because Warhol's print didn't comment on or criticize the original photograph, and there was no other reason why the foundation needed to use a print based on that photograph in order to depict Prince. In Whyte Monkee, the Tenth Circuit honed in on the Supreme Court's discussion about commentary and criticism but mistakenly read it to mean that only uses that comment on an original work are transformative. The court remanded the case to the district court to re-do the fair use analysis on that basis.

As EFF, along with Authors Alliance, American Library Association, Association of Research Libraries, and Public Knowledge explained in an amicus brief supporting Netflix's request for a rehearing, there are many kinds of transformative fair uses. People creating works of history or biography frequently reproduce excerpts from others' copyrighted photos, videos, or artwork as indispensable historical evidence. For example, using sketches from the famous Zapruder film in a book about the assassination of President Kennedy was deemed fair, as was reproducing the artwork from Grateful Dead posters in a book about the band. Software developers use excerpts from others' code — particularly declarations that describe programming interfaces — to build new software that works with what came before. And open government organizations, like EFF client Public.Resource.Org, use technical standards incorporated into law to share knowledge about the law. None of these uses involves commentary or criticism, but courts have found them all to be transformative fair uses that don't require permission.

The Supreme Court was aware of these uses and didn't intend to cast doubt on their legality. In fact, the Supreme Court cited many of them favorably in its Warhol decision. And the Court even engaged in some non-commentary fair use itself when it included photos of Prince in its opinion to illustrate how they were used on magazine covers. If the Court had meant to overrule decades of court decisions, including its own very recent Google v. Oracle decision about software reuse, it would have said so.

Fortunately, the Tenth Circuit heeded our warning, and the warnings of Netflix, documentary filmmakers, legal scholars, and the Motion Picture Association, all of whom filed briefs. The court vacated its decision and asked for further briefing about Warhol and what it means for documentary filmmakers.

The bizarre story of Joe Exotic and his friends and rivals may not be as important to history as the Kennedy assassination, but fair use is vital to bringing us all kinds of learning and entertainment. If other courts start treating the Warhol decision as a radical rewriting of fair use law when that's not what the Supreme Court said at all, many kinds of free expression will face an uncertain future. That's why we're happy that the Tenth Circuit withdrew its opinion. We hope the court will, as the Supreme Court did, reaffirm the importance of fair use.

by swarfendor437

PCLinuxOS forum member shared his tip in the PCLinuxOS forum for installing the printer drivers for his Canon Pixma printer.

I just migrated to PCLinuxOS 24.04 KDE and needed to install the drivers (for my Canon Pixma printer). To do this I installed the rpm package from here:

https://www.canon.co.uk/support/consumer/products/printers/pixma/ts-series/pixma-ts8151.html?type=drivers&os=Linux%20(64-bit)

This downloads as cnijfilter2-5.50-1-rpm.tar.gz.

I used Ark to extract it, which produces the following:

Then in a terminal, I navigated to the Downloads/cnijfilter2-5.50-1-rpm directory, and then 'su' and typed:

./install.sh

This gave two options, 1 for USB, 2 for Network. If your printer is networked, DON'T choose this option (#2) as it won't find it. Choose the USB option first to install the printer, and then follow the prompts that appear in the terminal.

Now to make it networkable, open the properties of the printer:

Then click on the 'Change' button next to Device URI:

Now, this next step requires you to know what IP address has been assigned by the Router to your printer, which you can get from the settings pane on the Printer's LCD Panel. Click on the Cog to go to Settings, then LAN Settings | Wireless LAN | WLAN setting list — you will need to scroll down to view the IPv4 address of the Printer.

Having selected the 'Change' Button brings up this interface:

So you select the option highlighted in the screenshot, 'AppSocket/HP JetDirect' and you enter the IP address of the printer in the 'Host' field. Finally, click on Apply.

Job done!

compiled by Meemaw

Nine-Year-old Gets Help For Parents

In early May this year, Texas was pounded by several storms. Branson and his parents were trying to make it to a shelter in Dickson, TX when the worst happened.

The tornado lifted their truck and tossed it into some trees. His parents, who were sitting in the front row of the vehicle, suffered broken backs, necks, ribs, and other severe injuries. According to KNOE 8 News, the twister was classified as an EF4.

After the truck was thrown, Branson immediately got out of the vehicle, knowing it was up to him to perform a rescue. He ran more than a mile in the darkness, avoiding downed power lines as he made his way to a neighbor's home to find help.

The little boy's uncle recalled:

“The only way he found his way back was with lightning strikes that lit the road. He

ran as fast as he could, as hard as he could; he made a mile in ten minutes. That's

pretty impressive for a little kid. The last thing Branson told them was, 'Mom, dad,

please don't die. I will be back.'”

His parents are still recovering in the trauma ICU.

A GoFundMe has been set up for his parents. As of May 22, they had raised $90,361.

Boy Rewarded After Giving His Only Dollar To A Man He Thought Was Homeless

Television personality and sporting goods brand owner Matt Busbice was awakened early one morning to the sound of a fire alarm in his building. He grabbed some mismatched clothes, dressed and headed outside. Going down to a local coffee shop, he ordered a coffee then went out on the patio to pray. Kelvin saw him praying, and mistaking him for a homeless man, gave him a dollar.

Busbice recalled, Kelvin unfurled his clenched fist to unveil a $1 bill he had gotten from his father for earning good grades.

“And I go, 'What?'”

“'If you're homeless, here's a dollar,'” Kelvin recalled telling Busbice.

“I always wanted to help a homeless person, and I finally had the opportunity,” the boy said.

Of course, Busbice wasn't homeless — he is actually the owner of outdoors brands BuckFeather, Tectonic USA, and AccuBow and the host of Viral Outdoors on the Outdoor Channel.

So, he invited Kelvin to have breakfast with him. Kelvin got permission from his dad (he works next door to the coffee shop) and joined Busbice for breakfast and got a coffee for his father. During the conversation, he told Kelvin who he was and rewarded his generosity with a free shopping spree at his sporting goods store in Baton Rouge, LA.

“If you give, you're actually going to get more out of that,” Busbice said. “I couldn't grasp that as a kid. And if we can spread that around, everything changes.”

Although he was happy to receive the gifts, the nine-year-old said he was not searching for a reward when he tried to give away his dollar to someone in need.

“Joy, because I helped someone,” Kelvin said of how he felt. “Give something away, and you feel like you've got a lot of things from it.”

Commencement Speaker Gifts Each Graduate $1,000

Robert Hale Jr., the founder and CEO of Granite Telecommunications, spoke at the UMass Dartmouth commencement ceremony after receiving the UMass Dartmouth Chancellor's Medal for his “incredible philanthropy work”. During his speech, he told the crowd that the greatest joy he and his wife, Karen, have had in life has “been the gift of giving”. At the ceremony, he announced that each of the 1,200 graduates that came across the stage would receive an envelope with $500 for them to keep and use as they wished.

The businessman, who has a $5.4 billion net worth, according to Forbes, followed that comment up with a challenge. Each would be given an additional envelope containing $500, intended for them to use for a charity, someone in need, or a cause close to them.

“These trying times have heightened the need for sharing, caring, and giving,” the billionaire said to the graduates. “Our community needs you and your generosity more than ever.”

Good Samaritan Pays It Forward

PizzAroma in Iowa was left “holding the bag” recently after a woman called and ordered 16 pizzas to be picked up the next day. She called when she wanted to get them, and the shop made them, and then she never came in, and the pizzas had to be thrown away, resulting in a $112 loss to the store.

After the story showed up on social media, a nearby business owner called the store and said he wanted to pay for the original 16 pizzas, and ordered an additional two pizzas.

“I didn't believe it at first. I was thinking, 'Is someone trying to do it again?' He said he wanted to pay on the phone, so then I knew it was not a scam,” the owner recalled.

The “angel” was a nearby shop owner named Travis. In addition to paying for the large order, he also left a generous tip for the staff.

“Any time you can right a wrong, when you have the ability or luxury, why not do it?” he posed. “Life is too short, and as much bad as there is going on in this world, why not do something good?”

Preemie Goes Home After Six Months

Nyla was born on November 17th, at just 22 weeks gestation, and she weighed just one pound. Her mother NaKeya suffered from a dangerous blood pressure condition called pre-eclampsia, which precipitated the early birth.

Nyla was in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) for six months, and just got to go home on May 13th.

“I don't have the words, in all honesty. I'm just grateful that she's here, she's healthy, and she's doing amazing,” NaKeya told (the news media) as her daughter was released from the NICU.

“Even under the dire circumstances, Nyla came out fighting on the day she was born,” the neonatologist said to the station.

“She cried at birth. It was a little whimper, but it was a cry. Her heart rate always remained over 100, which, for us, is where we wanted it to be. She came out fighting right off the bat,” he said.

Only 30 percent of babies born at 22 weeks live long enough to go home. When Nyla went home, she weighed ten pounds. In her social media post, NaKeya said that “Nyla fought hard, defied every odd, and proved that God has the final say.”

by Cory Doctorow

Electronic Frontier Foundation

Reprinted under Creative Commons license

The European Union's new Digital Markets Act (DMA) is a complex, many-legged beast, but at root, it is a regulation that aims to make it easier for the public to control the technology they use and rely on.

One DMA rule forces the powerful “gatekeeper” tech companies to allow third-party app stores. That means that you, the owner of a device, can decide who you trust to provide you with software for it.

Another rule requires those tech gatekeepers to offer interoperable gateways that other platforms can plug into — so you can quit using a chat client, switch to a rival, and still connect with the people you left behind (similar measures may come to social media in the future).

There's a rule banning “self-preferencing.” That's when platforms push their often inferior, in-house products and hide superior products made by their rivals.

And perhaps best of all, there's a privacy rule, reinforcing the eight-year-old General Data Protection Regulation, a strong privacy law that has been flouted for too long, especially by the largest tech giants.

In other words, the DMA is meant to push us toward a world where you decide which software runs on your devices, where it's easy to find the best products and services, where you can leave a platform for a better one without forfeiting your social relationships, and where you can do all of this without getting spied on.

If it works, this will get dangerously close to the better future we've spent the past thirty years fighting for.

There's just one wrinkle: the Big Tech companies don't want that future, and they're trying their damnedest to strangle it in its cradle.

Right from the start, it was obvious that the tech giants were going to war against the DMA, and the freedom it promised to their users. Take Apple, whose tight control over which software its customers can install was a major concern of the DMA from its inception.

Apple didn't invent the idea of a “curated computer” that could only run software that was blessed by its manufacturer, but they certainly perfected it. iOS devices will refuse to run software unless it comes from Apple's App Store, and that control over Apple's customers means that Apple can exert tremendous control over app vendors, too.

Apple charges app vendors a whopping 30 percent commission on most transactions, both the initial price of the app and everything you buy from it thereafter. This is a remarkably high transaction fee —compare it to the credit-card sector, itself the subject of sharp criticism for its high 3-5 percent fees. To maintain those high commissions, Apple also restricts its vendors from informing their customers about the existence of other ways of paying (say, via their website) and at various times has also banned its vendors from offering discounts to customers who complete their purchases without using the app.

Apple is adamant that it needs this control to keep its customers safe, but in theory and in practice, Apple has shown that it can protect you without maintaining this degree of control, and that it uses this control to take away your security when it serves the company's profits to do so.

Apple is worth between two and three trillion dollars. Investors prize Apple's stock in large part due to the tens of billions of dollars it extracts from other businesses that want to reach its customers.

The DMA is aimed squarely at these practices. It requires the largest app store companies to grant their customers the freedom to choose other app stores. Companies like Apple were given over a year to prepare for the DMA, and were told to produce compliance plans by March of this year.

But Apple's compliance plan falls very short of the mark: between a blizzard of confusing junk fees (like the €0.50 per use “Core Technology Fee” that the most popular apps will have to pay Apple even if their apps are sold through a rival store) and onerous conditions (app makers who try to sell through a rival app store are having their offerings removed from Apple's store, and are permanently banned from it), the plan in no way satisfies the EU's goal of fostering competition in app stores.

That's just scratching the surface of Apple's absurd proposal: Apple's customers will have to successfully navigate a maze of deeply buried settings just to try another app store (and there's some pretty cool-sounding app stores in the wings!), and Apple will disable all your third-party apps if you take your phone out of the EU for 30 days.

Apple appears to be playing a high-stakes game of chicken with EU regulators, effectively saying, “Yes, you have 500 million citizens, but we have three trillion dollars, so why should we listen to you?” Apple inaugurated this performance of noncompliance by banning Epic, the company most closely associated with the EU's decision to require third party app stores, from operating an app store and terminating its developer account (Epic's account was later reinstated after the EU registered its disapproval).

It's not just Apple, of course.

The DMA includes new enforcement tools to finally apply the General Data Privacy Regulation (GDPR) to US tech giants. The GDPR is Europe's landmark privacy law, but in the eight years since its passage, Europeans have struggled to use it to reform the terrible privacy practices of the largest tech companies.

Meta is one of the worst on privacy, and no wonder: its entire business is grounded in the nonconsensual extraction and mining of billions of dollars' worth of private information from billions of people all over the world. The GDPR should be requiring Meta to actually secure our willing, informed (and revocable) consent to carry on all this surveillance, and there's good evidence that more than 95 percent of us would block Facebook spying if we could.

Meta's answer to this is a “Pay or Okay” system, in which users who do not consent to Meta's surveillance will have to pay to use the service, or be blocked from it. Unfortunately for Meta, this is prohibited (privacy is not a luxury good that only the wealthiest should be afforded).

Just like Apple, Meta is behaving as though the DMA permits it to carry on its worst behavior, with minor cosmetic tweaks around the margins. Just like Apple, Meta is daring the EU to enforce its democratically enacted laws, implicitly promising to pit its billions against Europe's institutions to preserve its right to spy on us.

These are high-stakes clashes. As the tech sector grew more concentrated, it also grew less accountable, able to substitute lock-in and regulatory capture for making good products and having their users' backs. Tech has found new ways to compromise our privacy rights, our labor rights, and our consumer rights — at scale.

After decades of regulatory indifference to tech monopolization, competition authorities all over the world are taking on Big Tech. The DMA is by far the most muscular and ambitious salvo we've seen.

Seen in that light, it's no surprise that Big Tech is refusing to comply with the rules. If the EU successfully forces tech to play fair, it will serve as a starting gun for a global race to the top, in which tech's ill-gotten gains — of data, power, and money — will be returned to the users and workers from whom that treasure came.

The architects of the DMA and DSA foresaw this, of course. They've announced investigations into Apple, Google and Meta, threatening fines of 10 percent of the companies' global income, which will double to 20 percent if the companies don't toe the line.

It's not just Big Tech that's playing for all the marbles — it's also the systems of democratic control and accountability. If Apple can sabotage the DMA's insistence on taking away its veto over its customers' software choices, that will spill over into the US Department of Justice's case over the same issue, as well as the cases in Japan and South Korea, and the pending enforcement action in the UK.

by Paul Arnote (parnote)

Like many people here, I occasionally help “spread the gospel” about PCLinuxOS. My best friend (let's call him John), who is the antithesis of tech-savvy, runs PCLinuxOS as his ONLY driver on his new laptop (Windows was wiped from the hard drive before ever being booted … I know, because I'm the one who did it).

Over the years, his “support staff” has one person: me. He likes PCLinuxOS, and knows that I'm too far removed from the Windows-world to be of much help to provide support for “that” cursed, commercially available operating system. So, in order to get the tech support he needs, he realizes that PCLinuxOS is his best choice. He also loves the idea of everything being free (as in beer), and the security that Linux provides against most viruses and malware.

Dell Vostro 1000

When John originally decided to go with PCLinuxOS, he was running Windows XP on a Dell Vostro 1000. Windows XP SP2 is what originally came on that laptop that he purchased in 2005 or 2006. On one of his visits, he was lambasting the continual, non-ending stream of security vulnerabilities, as well as having to pay for every little program he wanted to run (or so it seemed). Sensing that the time was “ripe,” I introduced him to PCLinuxOS. With very little hesitation, he asked me if I could put PCLinuxOS on his laptop. He/we have never looked back.

At first, he would bring his computer over to my house for me to apply updates. Eventually, I taught him how to do his own updates, and he updates his PCLinuxOS installation himself, weekly, like clockwork.

His needs are simple. He wants something to check his email with, watch a few movies, maybe create a super simple word processing document every now and again, and browse the internet. PCLinuxOS does all of that and more for him, without him having to worry about viruses and other assorted malware. For him, PCLinuxOS is the PERFECT daily driver for his laptop.

To keep things simple for me, he runs the Xfce desktop, like I do. That way, whenever I have to get into his computer to do “more advanced” stuff, the landscape is as familiar to me as being on my own computer at home.

Lenovo Ideapad 3 with 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD, 15.6” screen

He ran that Dell laptop for a LONG time, running PCLinuxOS. He would mention (fairly regularly) how slow his old laptop had become. I had been mentioning to him for a couple of years that the Dell Vostro had probably seen better days, due to newer, faster, better configured laptops becoming available. It has only been within the past year that he got a newer, more modern laptop. Again, his tech support staff (me) was the one who did all of the recon and purchase recommendations, and he purchased the new laptop entirely based on my recommendations. The new laptop (a Lenovo Ideapad 3 with a very up-to-date Intel i3 processor with 8GB RAM and a 256GB SSD) is a screamer, and I've heard no more talk about how slow his computer is. Do you want to guess who has his old Dell Vostro?

Of course, you're hard-pressed to find a new laptop today that has a built-in optical drive. So, to accommodate all of his audio CDs and movie DVDs, I also purchased an external USB DVD-RW drive for his new laptop (yes, I purchased it for him). They are not expensive. I recall that I spent under $30 for the external USB DVD-RW drive (and it works perfectly).

My friend LOVES (basically) two types/genres of music: country and Christmas music. He also loves some classic comedians (think Jerry Clower). In the past, I had made him MP3 CDs he could play in the in-dash MP3 CD player of his truck. It's not unusual to find him listening to Christmas music in July.

But then, he got a new truck. Just like with laptops today, you're hard-pressed to find a new vehicle that even offers the option of a CD player, much less an MP3 CD player. But, they do offer a USB port that is capable of playing music stored on a USB flash drive.

In short, he missed having access to his music and comedy files. While his new truck didn't even offer the option of an in-dash CD player (of any sorts), it did have a USB port that was accessible from the sound system in the truck.

So, I grabbed an inexpensive 32GB USB flash drive, and went to work.

This article isn't meant to be an in-depth look at some of the CD rippers that are in the PCLinuxOS repository. Rather, this article is intended to illustrate the process for ripping your CDs and storing those ripped results on a USB flash drive for playback in your car/truck/etc. Since I jumped down this “rabbit hole,” I'll take a more in-depth look at some of the CD rippers that are in the PCLinuxOS repository next month. There's a lot that's similar, but each of the three I tried goes about the process a little bit differently.

We/I used GRip to rip the audio from his CDs. I first started on my computer, ripping the music from the handful of CDs he brought over to my house. I ripped them while we visited over the course of the next couple of hours. Then, we installed GRip on his computer and continued the process at his house on another subsequent day. That is when I showed him how to do it himself.

Once the music files are ripped and encoded, it's just a simple matter of copying the files, in their directories, over to the USB flash drive.

Each car stereo implements reading from the USB flash drive slightly differently, especially when it comes to menu structure to navigate the content of the USB flash drive. But, once you find the right menu path to take on the car stereo, it's a trivial task to play back the songs stored on the USB flash drive.

One nice feature that I've found on multiple, different car stereos is the ability to randomize the playback of the files stored on the USB flash drive. Of course, you can just as easily play them in the order that they appear on the drive, or play just the files in the currently selected directory.

Yes, it's true. Streaming services have rung the death bell for many optical discs, whether they are CDs or DVDs. But what to do with the mountains of content we already purchased, stored on optical discs? No one wants to re-purchase the content that they already have a copy of (I'm in that camp). Of course, the studios want you to do just that. And, not everyone wants to subscribe to satellite radio services (I'm also in that camp … why pay for something that's plentiful and free, broadcast over the air?).

So while today's laptops and vehicles don't come with optical drives to read that content, we're forced to find a workaround. The lack of an optical drive to read our CDs and DVDs is easily overcome, just by purchasing an external USB optical drive. As for our vehicles, let's hope that the designers and manufacturers of our vehicles don't eliminate the USB port attached to the vehicle's sound system, because they have, intentionally or not, provided an excellent workaround. All we have to do is leverage it to fulfill our needs.

by Matthew Guariglia, Brendan Gilligan, and Cindy Cohn

Electronic Frontier Foundation

Reprinted under Creative Commons license

A bombshell report from WIRED reveals that two days after the U.S. Congress renewed and expanded the mass-surveillance authority Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the deputy director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Paul Abbate, sent an email imploring agents to “use” Section 702 to search the communications of Americans collected under this authority “to demonstrate why tools like this are essential” to the FBI's mission.

In other words, an agency that has repeatedly abused this exact authority—with 3.4 million warrantless searches of Americans' communications in 2021 alone, thinks that the answer to its misuse of mass surveillance of Americans is to do more of it, not less. And it signals that the FBI believes it should do more surveillance–not because of any pressing national security threat—but because the FBI has an image problem.

The American people should feel a fiery volcano of white hot rage over this revelation. During the recent fight over Section 702's reauthorization, we all had to listen to the FBI and the rest of the Intelligence Community downplay their huge number of Section 702 abuses (but, never fear, they were fixed by drop-down menus!). The government also trotted out every monster of the week in incorrect arguments seeking to undermine the bipartisan push for crucial reforms. Ultimately, after fighting to a draw in the House, Congress bent to the government's will: it not only failed to reform Section 702, but gave the government authority to use Section 702 in more cases.

Now, immediately after extracting this expanded power and fighting off sensible reforms, the FBI's leadership is urging the agency to “continue to look for ways” to make more use of this controversial authority to surveil Americans, albeit with the fig leaf that it must be “legal.” And not because of an identifiable, pressing threat to national security, but to “demonstrate” the importance of domestic law enforcement accessing the pool of data collected via mass surveillance. This is an insult to everyone who cares about accountability, civil liberties, and our ability to have a private conversation online. It also raises the question of whether the FBI is interested in keeping us safe or in merely justifying its own increased powers.

Section 702 allows the government to conduct surveillance inside the United States by vacuuming up digital communications so long as the surveillance is directed at foreigners currently located outside the United States. Section 702 prohibits the government from intentionally targeting Americans. But, because we live in a globalized world where Americans constantly communicate with people (and services) outside the United States, the government routinely acquires millions of innocent Americans' communications “incidentally” under Section 702 surveillance. Not only does the government acquire these communications without a probable cause warrant, so long as the government can make out some connection to FISA's very broad definition of “foreign intelligence,” the government can then conduct warrantless “backdoor searches” of individual Americans' incidentally collected communications. 702 creates an end run around the Constitution for the FBI and, with the Abbate memo, they are being urged to use it as much as they can.

The recent reauthorization of Section 702 also expanded this mass surveillance authority still further, expanding in turn the FBI's ability to exploit it. To start, it substantially increased the scope of entities who the government could require to turn over Americans' data in mass under Section 702. This provision is written so broadly that it potentially reaches any person or company with “access” to “equipment” on which electronic communications travel or are stored, regardless of whether they are a direct provider, which could include landlords, maintenance people, and many others who routinely have access to your communications.

The reauthorization of Section 702 also expanded FISA's already very broad definition of “foreign intelligence” to include counternarcotics: an unacceptable expansion of a national security authority to ordinary crime. Further, it allows the government to use Section 702 powers to vet hopeful immigrants and asylum seekers—a particularly dangerous authority which opens up this or future administrations to deny entry to individuals based on their private communications about politics, religion, sexuality, or gender identity.

Americans who care about privacy in the United States are essentially fighting a political battle in which the other side gets to make up the rules, the terrain…and even rewrite the laws of gravity if they want to. Politicians can tell us they want to keep people in the U.S. safe without doing anything to prevent that power from being abused, even if they know it will be. It's about optics, politics, and security theater; not realistic and balanced claims of safety and privacy. The Abbate memo signals that the FBI is going to work hard to create better optics for itself so that it can continue spying in the future.

by Corynne McSherry

Electronic Frontier Foundation

Reprinted under Creative Commons license

It's a simple proposition: no single country should be able to restrict speech across the entire internet. Any other approach invites a swift relay race to the bottom for online expression, giving governments and courts in countries with the weakest speech protections carte blanche to edit the internet.

Unfortunately, governments, including democracies that care about the rule of law, too often lose sight of this simple proposition. That's why EFF, represented by Johnson Winter Slattery, has moved to intervene in support of X, formerly known as Twitter's legal challenge to a global takedown order from Australia's eSafety Commissioner. The Commissioner ordered X and Meta to take down a post with a video of a stabbing in a church. X complied by geo-blocking the post so Australian users couldn't access it, but it declined to block it elsewhere. The Commissioner asked an Australian court to order a global takedown.

Our intervention calls the court's attention to the important public interests at stake in this litigation, particularly for internet users who are not parties to the case but will nonetheless be affected by the precedent it sets. A ruling against X is effectively a declaration that an Australian court (or its eSafety Commissioner) can prevent internet users around the world from accessing something online, even if the law in their own country is quite different. In the United States, for example, the First Amendment guarantees that platforms generally have the right to decide what content they will host, and their users have a corollary right to receive it.

We've seen this movie before. In Google v Equustek, a company used a trade secret claim to persuade a Canadian court to order Google to delete search results linking to sites that contained allegedly infringing goods from Google.ca and all other Google domains, including Google.com and Google.co.uk. Google appealed, but both the British Columbia Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court of Canada upheld the order. The following year, a U.S. court held the ruling couldn't be enforced against Google US.

The Australian takedown order also ignores international human rights standards, restricting global access to information without considering less speech-intrusive alternatives. In other words: the Commissioner used a sledgehammer to crack a nut.

If one court can impose speech-restrictive rules on the entire Internet—despite direct conflicts with laws a foreign jurisdiction as well as international human rights principles—the norms of expectations of all internet users are at risk. We're glad X is fighting back, and we hope the judge will recognize the eSafety regulator's demand for what it is—a big step toward unchecked global censorship—and refuse to let Australia set another dangerous precedent.

by Corynne McSherry

Electronic Frontier Foundation

Reprinted under Creative Commons license

There is a lot of anxiety around the use of generative artificial intelligence, some of it justified. But it seems like Congress thinks the highest priority is to protect celebrities — living or dead. Never fear, ghosts of the famous and infamous, the U.S Senate is on it.

We've already explained the problems with the House's approach, No AI FRAUD. The Senate's version, the Nurture Originals, Foster Art and Keep Entertainment Safe, or NO FAKES Act, isn't much better.

Under NO FAKES, any person has the right to sue anyone who has either made, or made available, their “digital replica.” A replica is broadly defined as “a newly-created, computer generated, electronic representation of the image, voice or visual likeness” of a person. The right applies to the person themselves; anyone who has a license to use their image, voice, or likeness; and their heirs for 70 years after the person dies. It's retroactive, meaning the post-mortem right would apply immediately to the heirs of, say, Prince, Tom Petty, or Michael Jackson, not to mention your grandmother.

Boosters talk a good game about protecting performers and fans from AI scams, but NO FAKES seems more concerned about protecting their bottom line. It expressly describes the new right as a “property right,” which matters because federal intellectual property rights are excluded from Section 230 protections. If courts decide the replica right is a form of intellectual property, NO FAKES will give people the ability to threaten platforms and companies that host allegedly unlawful content, which tend to have deeper pockets than the actual users who create that content. This will incentivize platforms that host our expression to be proactive in removing anything that might be a “digital replica,” whether its use is legal expression or not. While the bill proposes a variety of exclusions for news, satire, biopics, criticism, etc. to limit the impact on free expression, interpreting and applying those exceptions is even more likely to make a lot of lawyers rich.

This “digital replica” right effectively federalizes—but does not preempt—state laws recognizing the right of publicity. Publicity rights are an offshoot of state privacy law that give a person the right to limit the public use of her name, likeness, or identity for commercial purposes, and a limited version of it makes sense. For example, if Frito-Lay uses AI to deliberately generate a voiceover for an advertisement that sounds like Taylor Swift, she should be able to challenge that use. The same should be true for you or me.

Trouble is, in several states the right of publicity has already expanded well beyond its original boundaries. It was once understood to be limited to a person's name and likeness, but now it can mean just about anything that “evokes” a person's identity, such as a phrase associated with a celebrity (like “Here's Johnny,”) or even a cartoonish robot dressed like a celebrity. In some states, your heirs can invoke the right long after you are dead and, presumably, in no position to be embarrassed by any sordid commercial associations. Or for anyone to believe you have actually endorsed a product from beyond the grave.

In other words, it's become a money-making machine that can be used to shut down all kinds of activities and expressive speech. Public figures have brought cases targeting songs, magazine features, and even computer games. As a result, the right of publicity reaches far beyond the realm of misleading advertisements and courts have struggled to develop appropriate limits.

NO FAKES leaves all of that in place and adds a new national layer on top, one that lasts for decades after the person replicated has died. It is entirely divorced from the incentive structure behind intellectual property rights like copyright and patents—presumably no one needs a replica right, much less a post-mortem one, to invest in their own image, voice, or likeness. Instead, it effectively creates a windfall for people with a commercially valuable recent ancestor, even if that value emerges long after they died.

What is worse, NO FAKES doesn't offer much protection for those who need it most. People who don't have much bargaining power may agree to broad licenses, not realizing the long-term risks. For example, as Jennifer Rothman has noted, NO FAKES could actually allow a music publisher who had licensed a performers “replica right” to sue that performer for using her own image. Savvy commercial players will build licenses into standard contracts, taking advantage of workers who lack bargaining power and leaving the right to linger as a trap only for unwary or small-time creators.

Although NO FAKES leaves the question of Section 230 protection open, it's been expressly eliminated in the House version, and platforms for user-generated content are likely to over-censor any content that is, or might be, flagged as containing an unauthorized digital replica. At the very least, we expect to see the expansion of fundamentally flawed systems like Content ID that regularly flag lawful content as potentially illegal and chill new creativity that depends on major platforms to reach audiences. The various exceptions in the bill won't mean much if you have to pay a lawyer to figure out if they apply to you, and then try to persuade a rightsholder to agree.

Performers and others are raising serious concerns. As policymakers look to address them, they must take care to be precise, careful, and practical. NO FAKES doesn't reflect that care, and its sponsors should go back to the drawing board.

Make-Ahead Meat-Lovers' Lasagna Rolls

Serves: 16

INGREDIENTS:

Lasagna Rolls (to make ahead and freeze)

2 cups Original Bisquick™ mix

1/2 cup boiling water

2 tablespoons milk

1 egg, beaten

Sauce and Cheese (for baking lasagna rolls)

3 cups tomato pasta sauce

2 cups shredded mozzarella cheese (8 oz)

DIRECTIONS:

In a 5-quart Dutch oven, cook lasagna noodles as directed on the package. Drain; rinse with hot water. Drain well.

Meanwhile, in a 12-inch skillet, cook beef, sausage and onion over medium-high heat, stirring frequently, until meat is no longer pink; drain. Stir in 1 1/2 cups pasta sauce. Reduce heat to low; simmer uncovered 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. Remove from heat.

In a small bowl, mix ricotta cheese, spinach, basil and egg. Spread about 3 tablespoons ricotta mixture over each cooked lasagna noodle to within 1 inch of one short end. Spoon about 1/4 cup meat mixture over ricotta mixture on each. Roll up firmly toward unfilled end. Line 15x10x1-inch pan with foil. Place rolls, seam side down, on pan; cover loosely with foil. Freeze about 30 minutes, or until firm.

Place frozen rolls in airtight freezer container; label. Freeze up to 3 months.

To bake 16 lasagna rolls, spray two 13x9-inch (3-quart) glass baking dishes with cooking spray. Remove rolls from freezer bag; place 8 in each baking dish. Cover with foil; thaw in refrigerator at least 8 hours, but no longer than 24 hours.

Heat oven to 350°F. Pour 1 1/2 cups pasta sauce over and around rolls in each baking dish. Cover tightly with foil; bake 30 to 40 minutes, or until hot and bubbly. Sprinkle each baking dish with 1 cup mozzarella cheese; bake uncovered 3 to 5 minutes longer or until cheese is melted. Let stand 5 minutes before serving.

TIPS:

You can actually bake any number of these tasty lasagna roll-ups that you need, using about 3 tablespoons of your favorite pasta sauce and about 2 tablespoons shredded mozzarella cheese for each roll-up you are baking.

Save some time by using 4 cups frozen (thawed) Make-Ahead Seasoned Ground Beef and Sausage for the beef, sausage and onion in this recipe. Place the thawed mixture in a skillet, and add the pasta sauce; continue as directed in the recipe.

NUTRITION:

serving size 1 roll

Calories: 320    Carbs: 27g    Fiber: 2g    Sodium: 350mg    Protein: 21g

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Posted by Snubbi on May 2, 2024, on Mate

Posted by swarfendor437 on May 17, 2024, on Trinity

Posted by The_CrankyZombie on May 1, 2024, on KDE Plasma

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