Tag: corporations

A Reddit User Admitted To Pirating a Movie 12 Years Ago. Movie Studios Want To Unmask Him.

In what appears to be an escalating incursion into a user’s digital privacy, a collective of film companies continue to implore the court to compel Reddit to surrender its users’ personal details. This move is part of an ongoing piracy liability case against Internet Service Providers. Reddit, however, steadfastly resists, staunchly defending its users’ rights to anonymous speech.

While governments and law enforcement agencies have increasingly sought user details from Reddit — with over 1,000 requests, 277 search warrants, and 582 subpoenas last year, Torrent Freak reported — Reddit has staunchly resisted, drawing a firm line in the sand to protect its users’ privacy.

The battle over privacy rights came to a head earlier this year when film companies, involved in litigation against ISP RCN, attempted to extract personal details of Reddit users via a DMCA subpoena. Reddit objected, criticizing the subpoena as a sweeping and excessive invasion of user privacy, rather than a reasonable search for evidence. Reddit made a stand, yielding the details of only one user and rejecting the rest, underscoring its commitment to the right to anonymous speech.

The court sided with Reddit, ruling that the right to anonymity outweighed the copyright holders’ interests. US District Court Magistrate Judge Laurel Beeler further reinforced this stance, suggesting the film companies could obtain necessary information through alternative channels, such as directly from the ISP in question.

Undeterred by the earlier legal setback, the film companies are now making a similar push against ISP Grande, targeting a fresh group of Reddit users. Reddit, maintaining its position as a defender of user privacy, declined to release the requested information, triggering another motion to compel in court.

The film companies assert that they have exhausted all other options for evidence and insist on the need to reveal Reddit users’ identities. However, their earlier attempt to contact Grande’s repeatedly pirating subscribers failed to yield useful results, forcing them to resort to targeting Reddit users once again.

In response to this potential breach of privacy, Reddit has reiterated its commitment to preserving its users’ rights to anonymous speech. Reddit contends that the film companies have not presented a convincing case to justify the infringement of privacy, arguing that its users are not an “irreplaceable source” of evidence.

Reddit has further pointed out that the film companies already procured the identifying details of 118 of Grande’s most frequent pirating IP addresses. This action, according to Reddit, debunks the claim that violating user privacy is the only path to necessary evidence.

Reddit also questioned the film companies’ approach, noting they have yet to subpoena the Grande subscribers they contacted, an alternative step that could have been taken before pursuing Reddit users.

The film companies have singled out a Reddit user, “xBROKEx,” citing a 12-year-old comment admitting to pirating the movie The Expendables.

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No Warrant, No Problem

In 1928, the late Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis characterized the values underlying the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution as embracing the uniquely American right, and the right most valued by civilized persons, which he called the right to be let alone. Today we call it the right to privacy. He also warned that the greatest dangers to privacy lurk in the slow and insidious encroachments upon it by zealots in the government.

Last week, the Biden administration’s director of National Intelligence caused me to recall Justice Brandeis’ warnings when she revealed that the 16 federal spying agencies that she nominally supervises have begun to do indirectly what the Constitution prohibits them from doing directly.

Since they cannot obtain search warrants from a judge to surveil targets without first demonstrating under oath probable cause of crime by the persons whose surveillance they seek, these zealots in the government are purchasing private data about every American adult from the corporations and entities to which we all have unwittingly surrendered it.

This constitutes computer hacking – and it is as criminal as if federal agents had directly broken into the computers of those about whom and from whom they desire personal data.

Can the government do indirectly what the Constitution prohibits it from doing directly? In a word: NO.

Here is the backstory.

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A Delaware city is set to give corporations the right to vote in elections

The state of Delaware is famously business-friendly. With more than 1.8 million entities registered in the First State, companies outnumber its human residents by nearly two-to-one. 

One city is now moving to raise businesses’ influence in the state even further, with a proposal to grant them the right to vote.

Seaford, a town of about 8,000 on the Nanticoke River, amended its charter in April to allow businesses — including LLCs, corporations, trusts or partnerships — the right to vote in local elections. The law would go into effect once both houses of Delaware’s state legislature approve it.

The proposal has rekindled a debate over how much power corporations should have in local government, with fierce opposition from civic interest groups who say businesses already wield too much influence over politics.

“It was very shocking to see this attempt to have artificial entities have voting rights,” said Claire Snyder-Hall, executive director of Common Cause Delaware, a watchdog group. 

“We’re seeing voter suppression all over the county, and this is the flipside,” she added. “It’s not saying the residents of Seaford can’t vote, but it’s diluting their votes by allowing nonresidents to vote.”  

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BLACKROCK RECRUITER SAYS $10K ‘CAN BUY A SENATOR,’ CALLS UKRAINE WAR ‘GOOD FOR BUSINESS’

A recruiter for BlackRock said that the asset management firm is able to “buy a senator” for $10,000 and that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is “good for business,” according to a video recorded by an undercover journalist. 

“You could buy your candidates. First, there is the senators. These guys are f***ing cheap. Got 10 grand? You can buy a senator. I’ll give you 500k right now. It doesn’t matter who wins, they’re in my pocket,” BlackRock Recruiter Serge Varlay said in a video published Tuesday by the O’Keefe Media Group, which was founded by guerilla journalist James O’Keefe.

BlackRock, the world’s largest asset management firm, can “run the world,” he also said in the video.

BlackRock is also financially benefitting from the war in Ukraine, according to Varlay.

“Ukraine is good for business, you know that right? Russia blows up Ukraine’s grain silos and the price of wheat is going to go mad up. The Ukrainian economy is tied very largely to the wheat market. The price of bread, literally everything goes up and down. This is fantastic if you’re trading,” Varlay also said. “Volatility creates opportunity to make profit. War is real f***ing good for business. It’s exciting when s*** goes wrong, right?”

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AP Called Out For Claim That Target Staff Were Subject To “Violent Confrontations” Over Trans/Pride Products

The Associated Press has been forced into quietly editing an article that repeated a statement from Target claiming that the company’s staff have been threatened, with the newswire adding a baseless claim that there have been “violent confrontations” over huge collections of ‘Pride’ and transgender themed apparel in stores, including some with Satanist imagery.

It’s been the story of the week. Here’s the backdrop…

Target Becomes The Latest Target Of Anti-Woke Boycott As It Sells ‘Satanist Pride’ LGBTQ+ Products For Kids

Cotton Blasts “Target’s Partnership With Satanist To Push Trans Agenda On Children”

Target To Remove Satan ‘Pride’ Products; Democrat Accuses CEO Of “Selling Out LGBTQ+ Community”

As we highlighted yesterday, Target was clear in pointing out that it isn’t removing the stuff because it’s Satanist and pushing sexualisation and gender ideology on kids, but rather because they have “experienced threats impacting our team members’ sense of safety and well-being.”

The AP took it further, however, claiming that Target has seen “intense backlash from some customers including violent confrontations with its workers.”

The report was altered without notification after it was challenged by Katrina Trinko, the editor-in-chief of the Daily Signal. While the confrontations claim remains, the word “violent” has been removed.

It now reads “Target said that customers knocked down Pride displays at some stores, angrily approached workers and posted threatening videos on social media from inside the stores.”

Pointing out the deception, Trinko writes “Again, what are the specifics? What is a threatening video?” further demanding to know “What constitutes angrily approaching a worker? How many customers at how many stores knocked down Pride displays?”

It appears that one video surfaced of one person taking a part of a pride display and throwing it on the ground, which prompted gay Democratic California State Senator Scott Wiener to label it “terrorism”.

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What are open-source seeds? Why are open-source seeds important?

Perhaps you have heard the term open-source. Maybe you heard about it within the context of software and technology as the open-source movement originated within the software development community as a means to encourage innovation and knowledge sharing. As such, the open-source concept is best-known within the technological paradigm. However, the essence of open-source can be applicable across practically all fields and sectors. 

At the most basic level, open-source means that a technology or process is made freely available for modification and redistribution. It is common practice for one or more individuals or groups to work together to develop and refine the technology. Such distribution and organizational structures are in contrast to presently common economic models where a single entity works to create a product or process and retains exclusive ownership of the output (although the right to use the product or process can be sold). 

The characteristic of allowing participants to edit and change open-source products is also contrary to conventional production practices. In a sense, this suggests that open-source products belong not to one single entity or person but to the wider community that has contributed to the realization of that product. This organizational structure contrasts common economic standards where property rights are clearly defined (which helps to clarify the principal-agent dilemma). 

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Mystery buyer snaps up dusty California ghost town for $22.5million complete with abandoned bowling alley and café which housed prisoners until a deadly riot broke out during the 2003 World Series

A ghost town in California‘s desert has been purchased by a mysterious buyer for a cool $22.5million.

Eagle Mountain, a once-thriving community that sits on the border of California’s Joshua Tree National Park, was recently purchased by a company named Ecology Mountain Holdings.

Not much public information is out there about the company, aside from its Cerritos, California, business address.

According to SFGATE, the company is associated with Ecology Transportation Services, a company known for its red big rigs – the front part of a tractor-trailer.

The town was purchased from a company in Ontario, California, called Eagle Mountain Acquisition LLC, which was apparently the last of various Kaiser subsidiaries to own the town in the last 40 years.

Eagle Mountain was last a thriving company town in 1983, when the bulk of the area’s population worked for the Kaiser Steel mine.

The once-prosperous town was a bustling community with homes, businesses and a high school.

The decline of Eagle Mountain began in the 1970s with staffing cuts at Kaiser that eventually led to its closure four-decades ago.

Following the mine’s decline, Eagle Mountain became home to a doomed low-security prison called the Eagle Mountain Community Correctional Facility, which opened in 1988.

The town’s former bowling alley, café and other buildings housed 438 inmates who were serving time for parole violations and other nonviolent offenses.

The private prison promoted career development for inmates and reducing recidivism rates. In 1992, the Press-Enterprise wrote of the prison that it brought ‘a ghost town back to life.’

In October 2003, a riot occurred while inmates watched the World Series in the prison’s recreation room. Two inmates died and eight were later charged with murder.

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Spy Games: Why Private Companies Now Dominate Domestic Espionage

“The best way to predict the future is to create it.” That rhetorical gem, credited to various scientists and political leaders, shows up on mouse pads and posters and wherever else suitable inspiration is found wanting. It is also a remarkably accurate mission statement for two professions: financial investors and spies. In both occupations, a person is rewarded for either (1) collecting and processing enough available information to predict future events or (2) creating a set of preconditions that will make future events all but certain.

Any financial analyst who foresaw the likelihood of a global pandemic before the outbreak of COVID-19 could have made a fortune investing in the right pharmaceutical companies. Likewise, regardless of Pfizer’s motivations for doing so, its funding of numerous nonprofit organizations that actively pushed for COVID-19 vaccine mandates also benefited its bottom line. You could say that both market mavens and intelligence operatives invest heavily in creating a desired reality that will yield dividends. By successfully creating the future, prophets can turn profits.

It should be no surprise, then, that intelligence gathering and information warfare are just as prevalent in the corporate sphere as in the covert one. Nothing benefits investors more lucratively than the acquisition and use of market knowledge before anyone else, as can reportedly be seen from the investments of the family of former Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her husband, Paul, as well as others in government (here, here and here).

In the worlds of financing and espionage, the game is the same: stay ahead of competitors. What this means in practice is netting as much information about adversaries and allies as possible. In order to decide whether to double-down on an investment or run for cover, an analyst is interested in the likelihood of a company’s technological success, the risk of other investors swooping in and staking a claim, the potential for competing companies to introduce similar products, and the probability that regulatory authorities might act in ways that affect the company’s future profitability. You have to keep an eye on your company, its competitors, your rivals, and any number of government agencies. The complexity of such an arrangement is why private intelligence services are regularly used to monitor all these variables, collect information, analyze risks, and propose solutions.

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