News broke Tuesday that a British police agency called the Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA), had taken control of the popular music blog RnBXclusive and arrested one of the site’s creators for fraud. The normal content from the site was completely unavailable, replaced with a new splash page: a notice from SOCA stating that it had taken control of the domain. Initial reports claimed that that the RnBXclusive.com domain had been seized by the UK government agency -- bringing to mind images of a post-SOPA fractured Internet -- but it turned out that the website takeover was done with the cooperation of the UK-based hosting company, Rackspace’s UK arm. For its part, Rackspace claimed that the music site was taken down for breaching its Terms and Conditions.

Everyone, take a deep breath: it seems we’ve had a moment of sanity in the patent wars. Last week, a jury invalidated the dangerous Eolas patents, which their owner claimed covered, well, essentially the whole Internet. The patents were originally granted for an invention that helped doctors to view images of embryos over the early Web.

A few years later, smelling quick cash, their owner insisted that they had a veto right on any mechanism used to embed an object in a web document. Really? The patents were obvious—now in 2012, and back in 1994, when the first one was filed. Thankfully, a jury realized that and did what should have happened years ago: it invalidated these dangerous patents.

Toby Hemenway is a teacher, consultant and lecturer on permaculture and ecological design. Toby is also a professor at Portland State University, a Scholar-in-Residence at Pacific University, and a biologist consultant for the Biomimicry Guild. In this lecture Toby explains how Agriculture has not actually helped mankind but instead has hindered our progress as well as causing a negative impact on our Earth.

Agriculture destroys our eco system by wiping away the lusciousness of our land and forests by depleting nutrients and destroying the topsoil by over growing huge amounts of food in designated areas. The land then requires massive amounts of fertilizer which now comes mainly from petroleum based products.

MPAA Chairman Chris Dodd gave an interview to the New York Times yesterday, in which "Mr. Dodd said he would welcome a summit meeting between Internet companies and content companies, perhaps convened by the White House, that could lead to a compromise." While framed by the Times as his acceptance of defeat (the MPAA had rejected a prior meeting), the article shows that Dodd still doesn't get it. 

File-hosting services all around the world will have looked on in horror yesterday as MegaUpload, one of the world’s largest cyberlocker services, was taken apart by the FBI. Foreign citizens were arrested in foreign lands and at least $50 million in assets seized. So what exactly prompted this action? We read every word of the 72-page indictment so you don’t have to, and we were surprised by its contents.

Yesterday a massive operation took down MegaUpload, one of the world’s leading file-storage services and one of the world’s biggest sites, period.

Visionary and eco-architect Mark Lakeman is founder of City Repair, Communitecture Architects, and the Planet Repair Institute. Mark goes against the traditional architecture teachings that humanity and nature are separate. Instead he brings these two concepts together, expressing them in beautiful artform. Modeling the plazas of Mexico and South America, Mark is teaching people the foundations of community by showing them the value of building open spaces to sit and gather, gardens, and places to read and drink tea. The end result is creative and beautiful.

Unlike modern architecture designed with a T-square and triangle, Mark designs in relation to the natural landscapes and natural curves and spaces in the community. He also designs according to the wants and needs of the people in the community.

“For each new morning with its light, for rest and shelter of the night, for health and food, for love and friends, for everything Thy goodness sends.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Insomnia is often the result of incessant thoughts and persistent emotions that keep us physically or mentally tossing back and forth. It is common to experience a sense of anxiety about what the next day holds or concern over things that have already happened throughout the day. All of these thoughts and emotions take us away from being truly present to the experience of slipping away into a peaceful slumber.

For a growing amount of people, the need for sustainable communities is clear and obvious and has been for a long time. You’ll be waiting a long time for governments to act and implement real sustainable communities. Governments are put into power by powerful business and lobby groups who don’t have an interest in sustainable communities. So the answer at hand right now is to do it yourself. 

One group, Open Source Ecology (OSE), are coming up with the tools and knowledge to be able to create sustainable communities. Whats better, is as the name suggests, their work can be accessed as they release what they do open source.