The CNet News.com story on Verizon has a horrible title: "Why telecoms back the pirate cause."

They have got to stop equating file sharing with piracy.  They're two completely different things.  Using the evildoers' vocabulary cedes half the battle right off the bat.  File Sharing != Piracy.

8:21:14 PM   

Sarah Deutsch, chief counsel for Verizon: "We oppose the Berman bill. It's very troubling in that it essentially permits one particular segment of the US industry to engage in vigilantism on the Internet." [Scripting News]

Awesome!  It's so good to see this.  Check out her comment on the Hollings bill: "We had no contact from either the copyright community or the Hill or any opportunity to look at drafts [of the Hollings bill]. The whole legislative attack came as a complete surprise to Verizon, because we had thought we had a long-term deal with the copyright community after spending three years negotiating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. That was supposed to be the end of the war."

Verizon is concerned that the Hollings bill is being broken into pieces which will be introduced into other bills.  That's definitely the kind of opaque, un-democratic, under-handed back room politics I've come to expect from the Hollings crew.  Remember, this is the guy who held rigged hearings with all business witnesses, then literally yelled at the one witness who had the guts to express an opinion contrary to the agreed-upon party line.

8:13:58 PM   

Dot-com dead pool pinned by Ford. After scrambling around copyright and trademark challenges for most of its existence, F***edCompany.com staggers after twin blows from Ford Motor and the Associated Press. [CNET News.com]

This isn't even subtle.  Ford sent a bigfoot letter to founder Kaplan regarding an FC headine, "Ford, where finding a job is job 1."  Funny, right?  Ford lawyers said the headline was "confusingly similar to Ford's advertising slogan 'Ford, where quality is job 1.'"

Err, it's not confusing, it's plainly satire.  Ford is using copyright law to abridge the free speech rights of a citizen of the US.  I don't see any other interpretation.  Kaplan is satirizing Ford while reporting news about them -- news they don't like. 

Ford can't bully him with copyright law.  That's not what copyright is for.  Seven years ago, this wouldn't even have come up.  But thanks to the 1995 Federal Trademark Dilution Act, the balance between free speech and business interest has tipped further out of whack.  Guess who bought that law?

10:57:30 AM