A US District Judge rejected the government’s arguments to keep the secret records of John Lennon sealed. The FBI argued that releasing the last ten pages would pose a risk to national security as a foreign government secretly gave information to the US Government. Looks like another big step in the Freedom of Information Act
Liberal party stooges and professional religious loons, Family First, want an annual levy of $7 to $10 on all internet users to fund a $45 million mandatory national internet filtering scheme aimed at blocking pornographic and offensive content at server level. And I’m sure that their idea of censorship would include a whole raft of things that wouldn’t be offensive to that vast bulk of society
Former President Jimmy Carter says that despite changes designed to eliminate voting problems in Florida — where the disputed 2000 presidential election was decided by only a few hundred votes — conditions for a fair election in that state still don’t exist
Eighty years after they were written, a previously unknown story and a handwritten letter ascribed to Ernest Hemingway have surfaced, stirring a literary and legal dispute between people who want to see them published and people who do not
More than 50% of Australian online shopping sites are selling goods or services with terms and conditions which robbed shoppers of their legal consumer rights. Deputy ACCC chair Louise Sylvan said many of these sites contained clauses which attempted to disclaim consumers’ warranty rights or limit liability
The chairman of the Motorcycle Council of NSW has expressed his outrage at the Road Traffic Authority’s neglect of motorcycle riders in its planned cashless tollways, saying the RTA has not considered motorcycle riders in their plans
Sanjay Kumar, a former chief executive of Computer Associates International, and Stephen Richards, a former vice president for sales, were indicted in what US prosecutors called a massive fraud that inflated the company’s sales by $2.2 billion
Singer Cat Stevens and his daughter were escorted off a diverted transatlantic flight by FBI agents. The pop star, who converted to Islam, was denied access to the US because his name was on a security watch list
, government security sources said. The Transportation Security Administration said the singer was denied access to the US on national security grounds
and would be returned to Britain
McDonald’s lost a legal battle in Singapore to stop a food company from distributing products named MacNoodles
, MacTea
and MacChocolate
What seems to be an embarrassing blunder by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) in its hunt for online pirates has prompted Linux Australia to contact its legal representatives and warn of a possible breach of Australian law
ginmar takes us on an enlightening look at the nanny mindset in charge of filtering content that US GIs can look at:
I can’t get to Victoria’s Secret any more. That means that Pat Robertson is, in fact, in charge of what we can see and read. And you know, I’m a girl, which means they’re censoring me from looking at halfway decent underwear! Jesus Fucking Christ, if I can be trusted with a fucking weapon, can’t I be trusted with a fucking thong? Because I’m really trying to see what kind of danger this could pose to anybody. I suppose I could make a slingshot out of the damned thing. That’ll terrify the insurgents!
Run, Ahmad! They’re using Rocket-Propelled Undies!
Having sex with corpses is now officially illegal in California after Schwarzenegger signed a bill barring necrophilia. The new legislation marks the culmination of a two-year drive to outlaw necrophilia in the state and will help prosecutors who have been stymied by the lack of an official ban on the practice, according to experts. I’m a little bemused to hear that there are necrophilia experts
A Wal-Mart-owned discount store rising less than a kilometre from the ancient temples of Teotihuacan has touched off a fight by a small coalition that doesn’t want to see the big, boxy outlet from the top of the Pyramid of the Sun
On 1 January 2005, Elvis Presley’s That’s All Right
— a 50-year-old tune currently enjoying the #3 chart spot in Great Britain — will enter the public domain. Anyone will be able to release it without paying royalties to the owners of the master or the performer’s heirs. BMG will start losing a significant piece of its catalogue income in Europe. As That’s All Right
is being hailed by some as the beginning of rock ‘n’ roll, the implications are that every year after 2005, more recordings that defined the genre will fall into public domain
A new federal law could allow authorities easy access to private, stored e-mails without a warrant, according to civil libertarians
The American Library Association recently published the new 100 most frequently banned books list of 2003. Of the banned books, Harry Potter was in the number 7th place in the most frequently banned. Also included were Where’s Waldo
and The Giver
along with Goosebumps
and How to Eat Fried Worms
. These books were banned from various public institutions. This means that they were banned from various public libraries and public schools around the United States
The Tories provoked a barrage of criticism yesterday after they signalled that the Human Rights Act would be scrapped or overhauled by a government led by Michael Howard
Senator Edward Kennedy was turned down for a flight from Washington, DC to Boston because his name turned up on the TSA No-Fly list. He eventually got on a flight, but was again denied on his way back to DC. It took three weeks of calls to Tom Ridge and the Department of Homeland Security for the ordeal to get straightened out. But what are ordinary citizens supposed to do if the Secretary of Homeland Security won’t take their calls?
The makers of two leading file-sharing programs are not legally liable for the songs, movies and other copyright works swapped online by their users. Among other reasons, the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals said Grokster and StreamCast Networks, unlike the original Napster, were not responsible because they don’t have central servers pointing users to copyright material
The California Supreme Court voided the nearly 4,000 same-sex marriages sanctioned in San Francisco this year and ruled unanimously Thursday that the mayor overstepped his authority by issuing marriage licenses to gay and lesbian couples. Proving that homophobic fundie scum aren’t just an American phenomenon, the sheep in the Australian Parliament happily introduced a ban on same-sex marriages in Australia [BugMeNot] that went over like a bucket of day old fish
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