misleading claims

One of the key worries about copyright is how it can be used as a tool for censorship if not watched carefully.

Stephan Kinsella points us to an example I was not previously aware of, in which eccentric and reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes once purchased the copyrights on a series of articles about himself in order to try to block the publication of an unauthorized biography that was largely based on those articles.

Looking into this further, what's amazing is that this strategy almost worked.

MagicJack, a VoIP-dongle solution that I've used in the past, has a reputation as a product that actually works pretty well, but the company behind it has some serious problems.

It's marketed aggressively on cable TV, has put misleading claims on its website, hides important things in the fine print and is not particularly good with customer service.

Also, the software, once installed, is quite difficult to ever remove. In 2008, BoingBoing wrote a post detailing the shadier practices of MagicJack.

Businesswire: "Second, while many believe that Linux is a more secure software platform, in fact, Linux isn’t significantly more secure than the other uncertified systems that are currently on the market."