American airport staff almost stopped Harry Potter author JK Rowling boarding a flight because she would not part with the manuscript for the final book. Rowling was not prepared to stow her top secret notes for book number seven in her check-in baggage when she flew back from a book festival in August. Eventually she was allowed to take them on the flight, bound in elastic bands — via BBC News
A US Department of Justice official has joined the debate surrounding Apple’s proprietary digital music technology by criticising European antitrust activities, but groups attacking Apple are defending their actions — via Macworld
Greg Palast and Matt Pascarella, a journalist and a TV producer working on a piece about Katrina refugees, have been charged with the crime of videotaping a critical national security structure
in Louisiana
Jimmy Wales has defied the Chinese government by refusing to bow to censorship of politically sensitive Wikipedia entries. He challenges other internet companies, including Google, to justify their claim that they could do more good than harm by co-operating with Beijing. Wikipedia has been banned from China since last October. Whereas Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo went into the country accepting some restrictions on their online content, Wales believes it must be all or nothing for Wikipedia. We occupy a position in the culture that I wish Google would take up, which is that we stand for the freedom for information
— via Slashdot
It turns out that to use UnBox, the user has to download software from Amazon that contains a Windows service (ADVWindowsClientService.exe). Tom Merritt over at C|Net reports that the service tries to connect to the internet quite frequently. Even tweaking msconfig could not prevent it. So, in summary, to be allowed the privilege of purchasing a video that I can’t burn to DVD and can’t watch on my iPod, I have to allow a program to hijack my start-up and force me to login to uninstall it? No way. Sorry, Amazon. I love a lot of what you do, but I will absolutely not recommend this service. Try again
— via Slashdot
An incredibly diverse coalition of high-powered public interest groups, industry associations, and corporations have signed an open letter to the US Patent and Trademark Office rejecting the Broadcast Treaty, a US-led UN initiative that could do untold harm to artists, tech and telecoms companies, scholars, and people with disabilities
New Zealand’s lead state sector agency yesterday responded to criticism of its new digital rights management guidelines, saying the policy does not alter its support for open source software in government agencies
The NSW Police Force has invested in a biometric tracking system that is capable of combining information from numerous video cameras to monitor people, vehicles and even packages or briefcases
In an effort to track down the source of information leaks by Hewlett-Packard insiders, private investigators working for the company obtained reporters’ telephone records without permission. The reporters’ records were accessed as part of a private investigation into news leaks that was initiated by company Chairwoman Patricia Dunn
Bush said that 14 of the most notorious terrorism suspects had been transferred to the Guant?°namo Bay detention center to face eventual trial
Canadian Ministers of Education are pushing a copyright proposal that will harm Internet access and a copyright group is seeking to create a new license for Internet content. Access Copyright, a copyright collective, wants to use a new international text standard to license everything from books to blogs. Geist outlines in his blog how Canadians can fight back against these proposals — via Slashdot
New Orleans resident Mark Morice is credited with having rescued over 200 people from the flood immediately following Hurricane Katrina, using an idle boat he comandeered. The owner of that boat is now suing Morice for using the craft to save fellow citizens’ lives without receiving permission
, and claims grief, mental anguish, embarrassment and suffering… due to the removal of the boat
— via Boing Boing
The iPod manufacturer at the heart of a recent sweat shop
allegation has been ordered by the Chinese government to allow workers to set up a union. This is not necessarily a wonderful thing for the workers, as the unions have a nasty habit of allying themselves with the managers
Remember Hymn? You should, back in the day (like, um, 2004) it allowed you to strip the FairPlay DRM right off iTunes Music Store bought files just like that; well, it’s been a long time in coming, but a new app called QTFairUse6 looks like it can now be used (with some amount of difficulty) to dump iTunes version 6.0.4 – 6.0.5 files of their chastely protection
The 41-year-old Lockheed Martin engineer had complained to his bosses. He had told his story to government investigators. He had called congressmen. But when no one seemed to be stepping up to correct what he saw as critical security flaws in a fleet of refurbished Coast Guard patrol boats, De Kort did just about the only thing left he could think of to get action: He made a video and posted it on YouTube.com — via Slashdot
Two whistleblowers — one in Italy, one in Greece — uncovered a secret bugging system installed in mobile phones around the world. Both met with untimely ends. The resultant scandals have received little press in the United States, despite the profound implications for American critics of the Bush administration — via digg
An 89-year-old man has been left both heartbroken and betrayed after his North York bungalow was stolen from him in the rising wave of title fraud. Paul Reviczky, who fled Hungary in 1957 is one of the latest homeowners to discover that Ontario law favors banks, mortgage companies and purchasers over victims of fraud — via digg
Ryanair today threatened to sue the government for compensation unless airport security measures are returned to normal within seven days. Michael O’Leary, the outspoken chief executive of Ryanair, described the new restrictions as farcical Keystone Cops security measures that don’t add anything except to block up airports
, as he issued the ultimatum
The warrantless Internet and telephone surveillance program authorised by the Bush administration violates the US Constitution and must cease immediately. The landmark decision makes US District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor in Detroit the first judge to strike down the National Security Agency’s once-secret program. The American Civil Liberties Union had filed suit against the government, claiming the program ran roughshod
over the constitutional rights of millions of Americans and ran afoul of federal wiretapping law
Macrovision’s best-known form of copy protection inserts noise into analogue video signals to make it difficult to get a good copy of the DVD or VHS recording. A company named Sima has products that eliminate this noise when digitising such video, as any good digitiser would do. Macrovision argues that this is a violation of the DMCA, and a court sided with them in June. Now the injunction is being reviewed, and several organisations are siding with Sima and Fair Use, including the American Library Association, the Consumer Electronics Association, the Home Recording Rights Coalition, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation. If it isn’t overturned, this decision could make it illegal to develop products for making copies of commercial analogue recordings
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