The voluntary anti-piracy agreement between anti-piracy groups and ISPs in Portugal has resulted in some unusual collateral damage. In addition to hundreds of pirate sites, the blocklist now also targets the website of Carbon Games, an American indie game company.
Source: Portugal’s Piracy Blocklist Censors U.S. Game Developer (Updated) – TorrentFreak
It’s no secret that Sony has never been shy about wielding trademark like a cudgel. That said, there seems to be something new brewing with the company in its recent attempts to trademark fairly common terms, worrying some that it would use those trademarks in the same heavy-handed way. The first of those attempts was the recent Sony filing for a trademark on the term “Let’s Play”, which any gamer will recognize as the term for popular YouTube videos showing games being played, often offered by well-known YouTube personalities. While the USPTO had already refused the trademark on the grounds that a prior mark for “Let’z Play” had already been registered, a law firm that specializes in gaming law jumped in to try and have the court instead declare that “Let’s Play” is now a generic term.
Decision may kill off UK government spying law
Source: European human rights court rules mass surveillance illegal • The Register
Well, what did you expect?
Source: For fsck’s SAKKE: GCHQ-built phone voice encryption has massive backdoor – researcher
METAIRIE, La. (AP) — Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia said Saturday the idea of religious neutrality is not grounded in the country’s constitutional traditions and that God has been good to the U.S. exactly because Americans honor him.
Source: Scalia dismisses concept of religious neutrality in speech
Examining a national database of health insurance claims, researchers found that 91 percent of patients who suffered a nonfatal overdose of prescription opioid painkillers continued getting prescriptions for opioids following the overdose. And, the researchers found, overdose survivors who kept taking high dosages of an opioid—including morphine, oxycodone, and hydrocodone—were twice as likely to have another overdose within two years.
Source: 91% of patients who survive opioid overdose are prescribed more opioids | Ars Technica
