June 17, 2004

Allan Rock to the UN: "You Suck"! Canada delivered a stinging rebuke to the UN Security Council yesterday, charging the world body has failed to protect civilians in conflicts around the globe. Allan Rock, Canada's ambassador to the UN, said the council shies away from many "sensitive and politically challenging" problems, but must become "more creative" if it hopes to fulfill its December, 2003, pledge to entrench civilian protection as a "central commitment." 4:17:56 PM

Taking Down the DMCA. Proponents of fair use have found 20 congresspersons willing to sponsor a bill to repeal the DMCA and make CD and DVD copying for noncommercial purposes possible again. "Congress crafted fair use to be case-by-case," said Fred Von Lohmann, senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which has sent Congress about 30,000 letters and faxes from Americans supporting HR107. "The problem with the DMCA is that those debates are never going to happen." Von Lohmann said the DMCA treats all unauthorized copying as a crime, rather than letting courts decide what constitutes fair use -- in a nutshell, a legal concept that allows people to copy other people's creative works if they intend to use it for noncommercial purposes, like teaching, criticism or journalism. Congress tried to codify these concepts with the 1976 Copyright Act. "The DMCA has supplanted the balance of the Copyright Act over the last century," Von Lohmann said. The bill isn't expected to pass this year, but at least there's some momentum out there. [Hit & Run] 2:45:30 PM

Bilingualism may ward off mental aging 1:51:53 PM

Richard Miniter, writing for TechCentralStation.com, details the wealth of evidence linking Iraq and al-Qaeda. "A wealth of evidence on the public record -- from government reports and congressional testimony to news accounts from major newspapers -- attests to longstanding ties between bin Laden and Saddam going back to 1994. " 12:11:11 PM

DEBKAfile Special Analysis lists the weak points – and glaring omissions in the US independent commission’s interim account of the September 11 terror attacks. 11:50:03 AM

Deposed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein did let al-Qaida operate out of Iraq, Downing Street insisted today. A US report yesterday said there was no conclusive evidence of a link between the former Iraqi dictator and Osama bin Laden's terrorist group. But Downing Street said Saddam had created "a permissive environment" for terrorists and al-Qaida operatives were in the country during his time in office.  10:24:35 AM