Respect Copyright, Says a Pious Hollywood. Sony, Disney, AOL and the other big movie studios have set up a cleverly named site, Respect Copyrights.org, as part... [Dan Gillmor's eJournal]

Most of the members of the Media Cartel lack any sort of originality, needing to rely upon public domain stories for their own media (i.e. Treasure Planet for Disney.) They will slowly continue to tick off their consumers. They hope that they can use the old boiling frog trick. If you turn up the heat slowly enough, a frog won't jump out of the kettle and will just get boiled. They forget that information flow progresses so fast now, that memes travel so rapidly. The water will boil much faster than they imagine and they will find themsleves facing a consumer revolt. The world will change very fast when it decides to.  11:42:11 PM    

Blocking The RIAA And MPAA From Sites?. It seems there's been quite a flurry of activity the last few days, with sites all over the place setting up their servers to block out any visitors from IP addresses associated with the RIAA or the MPAA. This was all started via a decision by Techfocus to do so, after the RIAA took a comment out of context from an interview they did with the EFF's Fred Von Lohmann. Now, the idea of blocking those IPs is snowballing, and lots of sites have been following suit. Since I'm no fan of either organization (what, you noticed?), you might think I'd want to do the same thing. However, it actually goes against what Techdirt stands for. While the move does have the benefit of raising issues by getting attention, I'm still hoping that people from the RIAA and the MPAA read what is written here and use it to get a clue. I know that there are some people associated with both organizations that do read Techdirt on a regular basis, and I'm still hopeful they'll realize I'm trying to help them to convince their member companies to offer consumers what they want - thereby increasing the overall market, and opening up new opportunities. [Techdirt]

This is interesting. In order to get to some of these sites, the RIAA may have to use some tricks that weaken their cases. At the very least it will slow them down. Anyone who allows them to use another IP address to launch from will open themselves up to the same death sentence. The resulting network wars could really hamper the flow of information for everyone but mostly for the groups that abuse the system, such as the RIAA.  11:31:19 PM    

Sprint PCS fires roaming salvo. Mobile workers can choose speed or ubiquity for wireless data, with costs that range from predictable to astronomical. A new deployment by Sprint PCS might limit bills and turn Wi-Fi into the preferred data bursting option. [InfoWorld: Top News]

But Verizon has been testing this in New York City. They are looking at providing FREE WiFI access to their DSL subscribers. That would be pretty cool. Get broadband at home and still receive it on the move.  11:09:28 PM