Guardian Project @guardianproject@librem.one

Fair use is not a loophole in copyright. It is a core principle that helps creativity, education, and culture thrive. ⚖️📖

In RECLAIMING FAIR USE, copyright scholars Patricia Aufderheide & Peter Jaszi explain how understanding copyright's balance make it easier for creators, educators, librarians, and researchers to confidently use their rights. ✍️🏛️

In conversation with Dave Hansen on the Future Knowledge #podcast.

🎧 Listen & subscribe:
https://futureknowledge.transistor.fm/episodes/reclaiming-fair-use

@AuthorsAlliance @paufder

We urge the @EUCommission to scrutinise Apple's announcement closely and reject it as non-compliant with the #DMA.

These concerns were already raised in a complaint to the European Commission filed by @Freiheitsrechte and @article19, which the FSFE contributed to.

https://www.article19.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/2025.10.22_Complaint-against-Apple-Digital-Markets-Act.pdf

A new fee waiver could help some not-for-profit projects, and we welcome that. But it changes nothing about notarization, developer accounts, or entry thresholds. For #FreeSoftware, this is not the substantial shift the #DMA should deliver, and we have been highlighting this in our latest report.

https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20523420

On top of that, every developer still needs an Apple Developer Account just to distribute software at all, no matter the channel.

Entry barriers for developers stay high: despite a waiver for not for profit projects, to open an alternative marketplace you need financial guarantees worth up to €1 million, or must already reach 1 million first annual installs. Small projects rarely meet either bar.

The biggest issue: #notarization. Every app must pass Apple's automatic and human review before it can run on iOS, even when distributed outside the App Store, via an alternative marketplace or a website.

No channel escapes Apple's gatekeeping.

Once notarized, Apple encrypts the binary. Nobody can run, inspect, or share that software freely. This makes it impossible to distribute #FreeSoftware apps, as the freedoms cannot be guaranteed.

#Apple has announced new terms for alternative app distribution in the EU (18 August 2026). The reduction of fees is welcome, but the core problems for smaller developers and #FreeSoftware remain there.

🧵A thread on why we're still concerned about #DMA compliance.🧵

A practical way to break #Android #hardware #attestation https://blog.quarkslab.com/bypassing-android-hardware-attestation.html

The "trusted device" debate reminds me of the late 90s debate whether its possible to #trust the #network. Its now clear that good security requires not trusting the network.

From where I sit, the "trusted device" debate is the same. Big companies are lazy and pretend the device can be trusted while companies pushing #DRM and other anti-democratic, anti-user functionality want #finance and #government as allies

The results are in: Our first crowdfunding round has raised more than $200k for projects working across privacy, censorship circumvention, and secure communications: https://blog.torproject.org/funding-internet-freedom-together/

A big thank you to our matchfunders, Octant, @cakewallet, @ethereumfoundation, Logos, @xeovo and @zcash Community Grants for helping turn individual contributions into ecosystem-wide support. Your participation made it possible for small donations to carry more weight.

In a major victory for digital rights and common sense, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has officially categorized Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) as "lawful technical tools" while establishing new boundaries for online copyright disputes.

The landmark judgment — handed down in July 2026 — stems from a complex legal battle over the online publication of Anne Frank's historical manuscripts. At its core, the case forced Europe's top judges to answer a highly technical question: if a publisher actively tries to block visitors from a specific country, are they still breaking the law if a user sneaks past the digital border using circumvention software?

According to the CJEU, the answer is no. As long as a website employs "state-of-the-art" geo-blocking technology, the publisher cannot be held liable for copyright infringement simply because a determined reader decides to fire up the best VPN to bypass the restrictions.

https://www.techradar.com/vpn/vpn-privacy-security/vpns-are-lawful-technical-tools-says-eu-court-in-landmark-anne-frank-copyright-ruling

Want to know more? Read our latest explainer on why ePrivacy matters, why cookie banners are only part of the story, and how we can move beyond today’s broken system ➡️ https://edri.org/our-work/cookies-and-consent-why-eprivacy-matters-for-our-browsing-life/

When I started building with React Native and Expo, it became much harder to write the recipe to be available on #FDroid.

#CastLab was my first one, with the help of maintainers. The last build of #HolosSocial failed (it happens with Expo upgrades). An F-Droid maintainer warned me first on my repo. Before I could act, they made the changes to the recipe so new builds were possible, and silently closed the issue.

Just a thank you to the #FDroid team, they help users and devs alike!

Today, July 18 (3:00–5:00 p.m.), we continue our four-part series on the topic:

“Digital Neocolonialism: Data, Resources, Dependencies—Who Benefits?”

This time: Content Moderation at Scale—How Labor Extractivism Powers Platform Models. With SANA AHMAD (https://social.bund.de/@Weizenbaum_Institut)

Event in English more information: https://www.topio.info/digitaler_neokolonialismus.html#3

#ContentModeration #DigitalNeocolonialism #berlin #moabit #mitte

The FSFE turned 25 this year!! Hurrah for a quarter century promoting and defending #SoftwareFreedom 🙌
Check out our timeline with our key achievements since 2001: https://fsfe.org/about/timeline/

#FreeSoftware

At the core of #AndroidDeveloperVerification are a couple potentially useful ideas. #Google has entirely wrapped them in a pile of anti-competitive garbage designed to defend their massive #monopoly profit margins, but nonetheless, those specific technical ideas might still be useful. #iOS's "notarization" is basically the same. That leads me to ask the key question:

What would a #FOSS-respecting system of #verification look like? What #identity info is useful for trusting the #developer?

RE: https://mastodon.social/@chatcontrol/116890892112806689

Chat Control 1.0 is extended. Via undemocratic procedural tricks plotted by the @EPPGroup, the national government, and most probably also the @EUCommission. The question is: What’s next?

Not only in terms of data protection but in terms of how do we defend democracy. And if you want to say *xit, then you can easily spare us this answer, especially given that this was national governments’ agenda in the first place.

Wow – pure SnakeOil, those so-called anti-virus or anti-malware scanners! "we are unable to proceed with the whitelisting request unless the application is available on the Google Play Store"?!? WTF?!? 🤯

And yes, that's part of a real response a dev got.

So they claim: your app is malware, as long as it is not at Google Play. I'd say we've heard it the other way around, too…

#SnakeOil #AntiVirus #MalwareScanner #falsePositive #Google

Public records confirm that the Austrian Ministry of the Interior bought Webloc, a geolocation mass surveillance system based on data from mobile apps and digital advertising = almost certainly illegal under the GDPR.

Austria is now - after Hungary - the second EU state known to use such a system.
https://mastodon.social/@wchr/116817729453918994