Friday, June 17, 2005

Yet More Copyright Woes. Copyright-Worried Photo Labs Spurn Jobs -- photo printers are now afraid to print pix that look "too good" or "too professional," for fear it might be a scan of a professional pic whose copyright is owned by the photographer (thanks... By Stephan Kinsella. [LewRockwell.com Blog] Those photo labs are cutting their own throats. Nowdays anybody can buy an Epson printer for $600 that will produce prints as good as those from a photo lab, while giving the photographer much more control over the process and results. All the paranoid photo labs are doing is driving more people to do their own printing. 12:54:16 PM    comment () DOJ Wants ISPs to Retain All Customer Records.. DOJ Wants ISPs to Retain All Customer Records. doubledoh writes "CNET reports that the Department of Justice is 'quietly shopping around' the idea of requiring ISP's to retain all data of their customer's online activities for at least several months. The SEC already mandates that publicly traded firms retain all company emails for at least 2 years, but it looks like John Q. Public may also soon be subject to similar Constitutional violations. Big Brother, here we come." [Slashdot] [Privacy Digest: Privacy News (Civil Rights, Encryption, Free Speech, Cryptography)] This means that it will certainly happen. It may take a few years, and the FBI may need to hide it inside another bill as they did with the universal wiretapping thing, but it will happen. It's best to prepare by learning about tools like Tor for web browsing and PGP for email. 12:45:50 PM    comment () quote of the day. Senator Dick Durbin: When you read some of the graphic descriptions of what has occurred here [at Guantanamo Bay]--I almost hesitate to put them in the [Congressional] Record, and yet they have to be added to this debate. Let me read to you what one FBI agent saw. And I quote from his report: On a couple of occasions, I entered interview rooms to find a detainee chained hand and foot in a fetal position to the floor, with no chair, food or water. Most times they urinated or defecated on themselves, and had been left there for 18-24 hours or more. On one occasion, the air conditioning had been turned down so far and the temperature was so cold in the room, that the barefooted detainee was shaking with cold. . . . On another occasion, the [air conditioner] had been turned off, making the temperature in the unventilated room well over 100 degrees. The detainee was almost unconscious on the floor, with a pile of hair next to him. He had apparently been literally pulling his hair out throughout the night. On another occasion, not only was the temperature unbearably hot, but extremely loud rap music was being played in the room, and had been since the day before, with the detainee chained hand and foot in the fetal position on the tile floor. If I read this to you and did not tell you that it was an FBI agent describing what Americans had done to prisoners in their control, you would most certainly believe this must have been done by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime--Pol Pot or others--that had no concern for human beings. Sadly, that is not the case. This was the action of Americans in the treatment of their prisoners. Via Daily Kos. Added: Excellent commentary from David Neiwert. [Al-Muhajabah's Islamic Blogs] I disagree with the statement that "...that is not the case." In fact, it most certainly is the case. Any government that behaves this way is by definition a mad regime with no concern for human beings. The monsters who rule the United States very clearly fit that description. 10:27:22 AM    comment ()

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