Movie studios want to punish legitimate customers for legally purchasing content, while the real pirates go right on stealing. ZDNet’s George Ou writes: There seems to be a persistent myth floating around the board rooms of the movie companies and Congress that analog content is the boogie man of music and video piracy. In fact, they’re so paranoid about it that they’re considering a mechanism called ICT (Image Constraint Token) that punishes law-abiding customers for content that they legally purchased. But ironically, the real content pirates who make millions of bootleg movies have no intention of ever taking advantage of the so called ‘analog hole’ because that is the slowest and lowest quality method of stealing content
— via Slashdot
Australian ISPs could face huge fines if they do not provide spam filtering or impose e-mail sending limits under new rules set down by a communications watchdog
The President of the Oglala Sioux Tribe on South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Reservation, Cecilia Fire Thunder, was incensed (by the signing into law of HB 1215, effectively banning all abortions in the state, and the comments of State Senators like Bill Napoli). A former nurse and healthcare giver she was very angry that a state body made up mostly of white males, would make such a stupid law against women. To me, it is now a question of sovereignty,
she said… I will personally establish a Planned Parenthood clinic on my own land which is within the boundaries of the Pine Ridge Reservation where the State of South Dakota has absolutely no jurisdiction
— via Warren Ellis
The FBI’s office in New York is supposed to be on the front line of America’s defences against terrorism, but it is so strapped for cash it cannot afford e-mail accounts for its agents — via The Guardian
ISPs will be forced to block violent and pornographic material before it reaches home computers if Labor wins the next federal election. Under the policy, announced by Opposition Leader Kim Beazley, international web sites would be banned by the Australian Communications and Media Authority if they contained graphic sexual or violent material, rated R or higher. The proposal has been dismissed by the Internet Industry Association as unnecessary
Marvel Comics is continuing in its bid to steal the word super-hero
from the public domain and put it in a lock-box to which it will control the key. Marvel and DC comics jointly filed a trademark on the word super-hero
. They use this mark to legally harass indie comic companies that make competing comic books
The UK government has threatened to cancel an order for US-built Joint Strike Fighter jets unless America turns over the source-code for the jets’ firmware. Britain is worried that the jets could contain back-doors that let the US remotely disable them. Australia has made the same demands — via Boing Boing
Playing DRM-crippled music will shorten the battery life of your music-player. Listening to DRMed iTunes songs on an iPod shortens the battery life by eight percent; playing back WMA-crippled files on a device from Creative Labs can knock 25 percent off the life of your device’s battery. The extra battery-drain is attributed to the computation necessary to decrypt the files and verify their licences — via Boing Boing
The Canadian Record Industry Association’s own research now concludes that P2P downloading constitutes less than one-third of the music on downloaders’ computers, that P2P users frequently try music on P2P services before they buy, that the largest P2P downloader demographic is also the largest music buying demographic, and that reduced purchasing has little to do with the availability of music on P2P services — via Boing Boing
The controversial American fundamentalist missionary organisation the New Tribes Mission is making weekly visits to a group of isolated Ayoreo-Totobiegosode Indians first contacted in 2004 — via Warren Ellis
In a legal win for Google, a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit filed by a writer who claimed the search giant infringed on his copyright by archiving a Usenet posting of his and providing excerpts from his Web site in search results. Thankfully, we can all still read Usenet articles on Google as well as other archive services
Reporters who write about government surveillance could be prosecuted under proposed legislation that would solidify the administration’s eavesdropping authority, according to some legal analysts who are concerned about dramatic changes in US law
Internet copyright pirates in France will face prison and large fines after French MPs pushed through laws to curb illegal music and film downloads
European Data Protection Supervisor Peter Hustinx criticised governments’ fondness for biometrics to identify citizens and warned that greater interoperability of databases may have serious implications for people
Cops in Orange County, California, have recently been issuing citations to public transit users who listen to music on headphones while riding the bus — via boingboing
Walter Soehnge, a retired Texas schoolteacher, and his wife had a little run in with the Department of Homeland Security. The crime? Paying off their credit card
A US state has signed into law a bill banning most abortions, in a move aimed to force the US Supreme Court to reconsider its key ruling on the issue. The South Dakota law — approved by the governor on Monday — makes it a crime for doctors to perform terminations. Exceptions will be made if a woman’s life is at risk, but not in cases of rape or incest. Harking back to the era of Jane, an organisation providing illegal abortions in the Chicago area in the 1960s and early 1970s, Molly has published a manual for setting up an abortion clinic
About 50,000 opponents of Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra are holding a peaceful protest in Bangkok, vowing to stay in the streets until he steps down. Thai television has been notorious for remaining silent when historic events are happening. Instead of covering the protest they aired Backstreet Boys concerts, MTV shows, commercials and chat — via Warren Ellis
The US Senate has passed a renewal of the Patriot act, 89-10, after two extensions caused by months of negotiations. The only thing standing in the way of a full renewal is a House vote, expected to pass next week. The renewal comes with some privacy protections attached, however, some worry they are only cosmetic
A special Australian committee on copyright and DRM has published its findings, and has recommended a drastic scaling-back of the protections given to DRM in most countries — via Boing Boing
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