205 行
10 KiB
HTML
205 行
10 KiB
HTML
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<html newsdate="2014-06-04" type="newsletter">
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<version>1</version>
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<head>
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<title>FSFE Newsletter - June 2014</title>
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</head>
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<body microformats="h-entry">
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<h1 class="p-name">FSFE Newsletter – June 2014</h1>
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<h2>Security is interdependent: We are all Gmail users now</h2>
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<p>You care about privacy and you are either paying an e-mail provider, or even
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run your own mail server to keep autonomy, control, and privacy over your
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email. You do this because you want to make sure that no big company has copies
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of all of your personal email. Still, this does not prevent other companies
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from getting their hands on your data. It is not enough to merely take care of
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your own security, if you seek to increase your security. You have to convince
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your peers to increase their security, too: like Jacob Appelbaum says, <a
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href="http://www.roussos.cc/2014/05/14/our-privacy-is-interdependent/">security
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is interdependent</a>.</p>
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<p>FSF board member Benjamin Mako Hill wondered how much of his email has ended
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up in the hands of companies such as Google. So he wrote a small program to go
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through all his email since April 2004 (when Gmail was introduced) and analyse
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it. <a
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href="http://mako.cc/copyrighteous/google-has-most-of-my-email-because-it-has-all-of-yours">Read
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what Benjamin found out</a>, what <a
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href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/gerloff/2014/05/27/were-all-gmail-users-now-pt-2">results
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FSFE's Karsten Gerloff</a> and <a
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href="http://hroy.eu/posts/gmail-most-email/">Hugo Roy</a> got when they
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reproduced it, and why not try those scripts out for yourself?</p>
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<h2>Is it a torch light or a spy in your pocket?</h2>
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<p>A lot of programs that people install on their Android devices violate their
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security. It is common that those programs ask users to accept non-readable
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terms and conditions, once installed they might reveal where the device (and
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therefore the user) currently is, and access personal data like user's address
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books or text messages. A seemingly innocent app such as a torch light can thus
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violate the user's privacy.</p>
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<p>For owners of mobile devices it is important to have an app store that
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exclusively provides Free Software. Since this means that the source code can
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be checked by external parties other than the vendor, they can check what an
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app really does, and highlight or directly remove anti-features. The result is
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a repository providing software with licenses that respect the user's rights
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instead of violating them.</p>
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<p>In the last months we experienced that more and more people care about the
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software on their mobile devices. <a
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href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/mk/consumer-protection-for-mobiles-is-it-a-torch-light-or-a-spy-in-your-pocket/">Your
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editor summarised what is currently happening with Free Your Android</a>,
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including promotion in Greece, updating and translation status of our F-Droid
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leaflets, an interview with the F-Droid developer, and your editor
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participating in an event about consumer protection in the mobile phone sphere
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in the German Parliament.</p>
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<h2>Another security nightmare: DRM</h2>
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<p>After a <a href="http://lwn.net/Articles/584167/">possible setback for DRM
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in Europe</a> it is important to raise more awareness about this issue. We
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cannot stay quiet while some companies use Digital Restriction Management to
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write their own copyright laws, restrict us, and decrease our IT security. Many
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organisations including <a
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href="https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/05/how-drm-harms-our-computer-security">EFF</a>,
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April, and us participated in the <a
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href="http://www.defectivebydesign.org/thanks-for-a-great-international-day-against-drm">Day
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Against DRM</a>, organised by FSF to highlight the dangers of DRM. The FSFE
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used the occasion to <a href="/news/2014/news-20140506-01.html">contact the
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European Commission with an Open Letter about DRM in HTML5</a>. We explained
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that DRM is directly contrary to the interests of the vast majority of Internet
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users everywhere.</p>
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<p>Just a few days later the Free Software community received the bad news from
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Mozilla: DRM will be implemented in Firefox (the part is called EME). The
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reactions ranged from the <a
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href="https://www.fsf.org/news/fsf-condemns-partnership-between-mozilla-and-adobe-to-support-digital-restrictions-management">FSF
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condemning the partnership between Mozilla and Adobe</a>, <a
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href="https://hacks.mozilla.org/2014/05/reconciling-mozillas-mission-and-w3c-eme/">Mozilla
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justifying its decision</a>, <a
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href="https://leomca.github.io/2014/05/15/Mozilla-and-DRM.html">others
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supporting it</a>, and <a
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href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2014/05/whither-mozilla/index.htm">Glyn
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Moody criticising them by comparing Mozilla's mission with its current
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action</a>. As always we are interested in your opinion. What do you think
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about Mozilla's decision and its reasoning? What can the Free Software
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community do to counterbalance this move? Let us know on our <a
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href="https://lists.fsfe.org/mailman/listinfo/discussion">public discussion
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list</a>.</p>
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<h2>Something completely different</h2>
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<ul>
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<li>FSFE's country team Netherlands <a
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href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/flx/2014/05/07/the-importance-of-free-software/">wrote
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a short text "The Importance of Free Software"</a> (also <a href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/flx/2014/05/07/het-belang-van-vrije-software/">available in Dutch</a>) about the
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relevance of Free Software and its conclusions for policy makers. The text
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highlights the crucial question for our society about "who controls the
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software?". "Because if we don't control the software we use, it
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controls us. And whoever controls the software therefore controls us." The
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text then was used to convince candidates to sign the <a
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href="http://freesoftwarepact.eu">Free Software Pact</a> - a project run by
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<a href="http://www.april.org/">April</a> and supported by many organisations, including
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the FSFE.</li>
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<li>Fellowship Groups: After two years as a Fellowship representative in FSFE's
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GA, <a
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href="http://www.roussos.cc/2014/04/30/athens-free-software-monthly-meetups/">Nikos
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Roussos now started local FSFE meetings in Athens</a>. Furthermore we had a
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<a
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href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/guido/2014/05/report-from-the-first-fellowship-meeting-in-wiesbaden/">first
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Fellowship meeting in Wiesbaden</a>. In addition, new groups are establishing
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regular meetings since a while now in Zurich and Cologne.</li>
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<li>Our sister organisation, the FSF, awarded the <a
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href="https://www.fsf.org/news/tehnoetic-wireless-usb-adapter-now-fsf-certified-to-respect-your-freedom">Respects
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Your Freedom (RYF) certification to the Tehnoetic TET-N150 wireless USB
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adapter</a>. The RYF certification mark is awarded to products that meet the
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FSF's standards in regard to users' freedom, control over the product, and
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privacy. Visitors of FSFE's booth at FOSDEM might already know those adapters,
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as Tiberiu C. Turbureanu sold them at our booth.</li>
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<li>From the <a href="https://planet.fsfe.org">planet aggregation</a>:
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<ul>
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<li>Carsten Agger explains what the result of the <a href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/agger/2014/05/26/elections-14-not-much-to-celebrate/">Danish referendum on the European patent court and the unitary patent means for software patents</a>.</li>
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<li>Leena Simon published an essay about the importance of attributions and the flow of information named <a href="http://leena.de/standing-on-the-shoulders-of-free-culture/">"Standing on the Shoulders of Free Culture"</a>.</li>
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<li>Your editor wrote about the <a href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/mk/support-hardware-computing-platform-for-hackers-and-free-software-drivers-now/">Novena hardware computing platform for hackers and Free Software drivers</a> and documented <a href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/mk/how-to-generate-a-new-wifi-password-the-mobile-friendly-way/">how to generate a new wifi password the mobile friendly way</a>.</li>
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<li>Henri Bergius spent three days at the GNOME Developer Experience hackfest
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<a href="http://bergie.iki.fi/blog/flowhub-gnome-dx/">working on the NoFlo
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runtime for GNOME</a>.</li>
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<li>Mario Fux wrote that <a href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/mario/?p=231">Debian's
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KDE community needs help</a>.</li>
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<li>Our new intern <a
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href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/seeger/2014/05/23/linuxtag-2014/">Bela
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Seeger</a> as well as long term Fellow <a
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href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/padams/?p=303">Paul Adams</a> report from Linuxtag
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in Berlin.</li>
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<li>While Konstantinos Boukouvalas wrote about LPI affiliates, <a
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href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/boukouvalas/?p=556">openLabs and OSCAL, as well
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as the Albanian Free Software Community</a>.</li>
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</ul></li>
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</ul>
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<h2>Get active: Your experiences with programming resources for children</h2>
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<p>Beside <a
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href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/guido/2014/05/free-software-in-education-news-april/">publishing
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the monthly Free Software in education news</a> our education team answers a
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lot of question by people who want to use more Free Software in education.</p>
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<p>As the edu-team was asked for good resources to teach kids to program, Guido
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Arnold thought the answer (or more a summary of the answers) might be
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interesting to others as well. So he published <a
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href="https://blogs.fsfe.org/guido/2014/05/teach-programming-with-free-software/">the
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summary</a>. To improve our education website we ask you to give us feedback on
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those resources. How do you like them, did you already have experience with
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some of them, what was good, where did you have problems, and which resources
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did we miss?</p>
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<p>Thanks to all the <a href="/contribute/contribute.html">volunteers</a>, <a href="https://my.fsfe.org/donate">Fellows</a> and
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<a href="/donate/thankgnus.html">corporate donors</a> who enable our work,<br/>
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<a href="/about/people/kirschner">Matthias Kirschner </a> - <a href="/index.html">FSFE</a></p>
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</body>
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<sidebar promo="about-fsfe"><!--
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<h3>FSFE News</h3>
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<ul>
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<li><a href="/news/">Press Releases</a></li>
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<li><a href="/about/contact.html#community">Free Software Discussions</a></li>
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--></sidebar>
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<author id="kirschner" />
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<date>
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<original content="2014-06-04" />
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</date>
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<followup>donate</followup>
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<tags>
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<tag key="newsletter"/>
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<tag key="ayc"/>
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<tag key="drm"/>
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</tags>
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</html>
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