"Thailand's Information and Communications Technology Ministry sought court orders yesterday to shut down about 400 websites and advised internet service providers to block 1,200 sites it considers a danger to national security or disturbing social order..."

At the Utah Open Source Conference yesterday I presented a dilemma. Briefly, the idea is that as open-source buyers grow comfortable with open source they will stop spending money on open source. This leads to tragedy of the commons-type problems and a difficulty in encouraging the creation of more open source.

The Green Party has called for an overhaul of patent laws that would prevent software being patented.

RMS: « The UK government plans to record all phone calls, all emails, and all web browsing.

"Stanford Law professor Lawrence Lessig details government plans to overhaul and restrict the Internet..."

RMS: «The evil aspect of the EU is revealed by a plan to merge surveillance with the US...»

"I have been talking to quite a few people about Hushmail and I have been getting mixed reviews. For a long time, Hushmail was considered a very secure email provider until an affidavit from a DEA agent in 2007 raised concerns. And now there's this sketchy post on Cryptome saying their PGP app might be backdoored.

When a genre of software is estimated to account for 15 percent of the total revenue generated by a given sector of the IT industry and that total is $A3.5 billion, then it is time to sit up and take notice. Which is what the government of the Australian state of Queensland has done.