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Sunday, August 25, 2002 |
Sean Gallagher: "Both copyrights and patents, post-DMCA, are chilling to free speech and infringe on users' well-defined rights of the past. They've paved the road for anti-time and form shifting for personal use, the locking of users into consuming media in a certain way (and with hardware from a certain vendor), and preventing users from becoming anything more than consumers if possible." [Scripting News]
3:20:30 PM 
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I feel so much more secure. The Sydney Morning Herald is reporting on $253 million (US) worth of war games that took place this month, and the retired Marine Lieutenant General who protested the fixed result "by quitting his role as commander of enemy forces". (The Washington Post also has a story.) "The Army Times reported that, as commander of a low-tech, third-world army, General Van Riper appeared to have repeatedly outwitted US forces." Apparently the forces he commanded, which were meant to imitate an unnamed Middle-Eastern country, were able to get around a lot of the high-tech weaponry US planners have begun to depend on, such as the ability to eavesdrop on the communications of the other side (Van Riper used motorcyle couriers). This made the war machine look bad, or would have if it had been reported widely enough. Is the result, which Van Riper says was fixed in advance, supposed to make me more confidant in the ability of US planners and war-makers to roll over Iraq? All I get out of this is the feeling that, once again, this Adminstration is not being honest with itself about the costs of the actions it wants to take for political gain. [kuro5hin.org]
3:11:05 PM
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Bracing for the Digital Crackdown. The recording industry, with Congress as its weapon, is waging war against file traders. The coming battle looks eerily like the national crackdown that smashed the hacker networks in 1990. By Brad King. [Wired News]
3:08:29 PM
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John Robb: "That a puny $20 billion industry is on a path to potentially cause $100 billion in damage to the US economy based on less than $1 billion in suspected damages defies reason." [Scripting News]
3:06:13 PM
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SJ Merc interviews Janis Ian. "She credits Napster and its progeny with sparking renewed interest in her music, at a time when she can't be heard on contemporary-hit-obsessed radio stations. And she says her decision to offer free music downloads had done the opposite of what the industry predicts it would do: It caused a 300 percent spike in merchandise sales." [Scripting News]
3:03:26 PM
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Washington Post: "The most downloaded album in Internet history -- the recently released 'The Eminem Show' -- is also the best-selling album of the year, which suggests that at least some fans were spurred to buy the disc even though they already had it stashed on their hard drives." [Scripting News]
2:49:28 PM
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Ernie the Attorney links to two articles, one passionately in favor of reform in the music business, and one passionately supportive of music industry hacking of users' computers. Weinberger's third point was particularly stirring, to me: "The very thing the most conservative among us have dreamt of, have died for since the founding of this country, is now within our grasp: free markets, free speech, worldwide. And we're blowing it because some dinosaur companies insist on maintaining their grip on every last dollar before their industry dies. 500 million of us can see how close it is, how the world economy would blossom, how the human spirit would get dizzy with possibility, and we're arguing about how we can best prevent it?" [Scripting News]
Emphasis mine.
2:21:37 PM
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Taxpayer-funded lies. Antiabortion groups use "crisis-pregnancy centers" to scare women out of having abortions. Some lawmakers have cracked down on them. President Bush increased their federal funding. [Salon.com]
2:19:14 PM
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Stealing from Heritage What's plain is that few people in the halls of power are thinking any of this through all the way to the logical conclusions. The damage that is being done to innovation is going to cripple America before long, and almost no one seems to get it. [Dan Gillmor's eJournal]
1:58:24 PM
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"Glaciers Melting Worldwide, Study Finds" New surveys from satellites and aircraft document an alarming acceleration in the melting of glaciers around the world. The swift retreat of these great ice streams is helping to raise ocean levels and is threatening significant changes in human, animal, and plant life[~]some good, but mostly bad. [Daypop Top 40]
But according to Dumbya, no sense in doing anything about it.
1:54:18 PM
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SJ Mercury: Activists take on Hollywood cartel. Dan Gillmor. Now, people on another kind of network -- the Internet -- have found a way to challenge Coble. And Grubb, like others worried about industry's moves to control information flow, is learning quickly to take advantage of this new way of doing things. [Tomalak's Realm]
1:34:24 PM
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Secret Court Says F.B.I. Aides Misled Judges in 75 Cases The nation's secret intelligence court has identified more than 75 cases in which it says it was misled by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in documents in which the bureau attempted to justify its need for wiretaps and other electronic surveillance, according to the first of the court's rulings to be released publicly. [Daypop Top 40]
As if this is a surprise. The one thing we should have learned by now is that those who have power and no accountability will abuse that power. John Ashcroft and Dumbya want lots more power, and no oversight or accountability. Want to be they'll be abusive?
1:19:13 PM
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Secret Court Rebuffs Ashcroft The secretive federal court that approves spying on terror suspects in the United States has refused to give the Justice Department broad new powers, saying the government had misused the law and misled the court dozens of times, according to an extraordinary legal ruling released yesterday. [Daypop Top 40]
1:10:38 PM
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Ed Cone, in today's News & Record, continues the discussion of the digital vigilante bill sponsored by his district's Rep, Howard Coble. It's remarkable, don't miss what's going on. A fairly random district in America's industrial South is becoming a hotbed for one of the most interesting faceoffs in politics, economics and the Internet. [Scripting News]
1:09:05 PM
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© Copyright 2003 Michael Alderete.
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