Happy New Millenium!
Personal Notes
12/31/2000; 9:52:22 PM

Happy New Millenium from iRights!  May it be a great one for humanity!

(FYI, I'm of the "party every chance you get!" "The Real New Millenium" and "Three Zeros" are both great reasons to party!)

Privacy hits the fan in N.H.
Surveillance and Privacy from Government
12/29/2000; 5:54:26 PM

'The citizens of this sleepy bedroom community hit the proverbial ceiling when they learned that their property assessment data -- including homeowners' names, color photographs of their houses and diagrams showing exterior dimensions -- had been made available on the town's website, www.ci.merrimack.nh.us.

'In a town meeting that resembled the peasants-storming-the-castle scene from a Frankenstein movie, 650 residents demanded to be removed from the site, complaining that the information would prove to be a godsend for burglars. Despite the fact that the information on the site was public record, the powers-that-be in Merrimack concluded that discretion was the better part of valor and pulled the data from the site.'

New Patent Image
Patents
12/28/2000; 4:58:59 PM

The US patent office image was quite informative, but I was probably violating some regulation or other by using it.  The new patent icon is an image from Patent #1, which appears to be a tractor tire.  This image should be deeply into the public domain.

Free Links, Only $50 Apiece
Free Speech
12/28/2000; 4:08:36 PM 'Online news sites are turning to a novel way to make some extra cash: requiring fees for links.

'The Albuquerque Journal charges $50 for the right to link to each of its articles. Localbusiness.com and Latino.com are more generous, and permit one to five links without payment.'

I know!  Let's do everything we can to make sure nobody ever visits our site!  First we'll start by charging for links. Then after people get used to that, we'll charge people to follow those links. Then we'll see about charging people to see those links on all of those other nasty third-party sites.

I'm Moving (again)
Personal Notes
12/20/2000; 10:58:33 PM

I'm moving, and I don't know the internet connectivity story, so this site may continue to suffer from a lack of news.  LinkBack's been provided for, though, so it should keep working.

I hope this is the last one for a couple of years.  Moving every six/nine months gets old after a few years.

Napster urged to block Nazis
Free Speech
12/20/2000; 2:28:19 PM

'Germany's internal security agency called on media giant Bertelsmann Tuesday to help stop its online song swap partner Napster from being used to exchange music by extreme right-wing bands....

'Andreas Schmidt, head of the Bertelsmann eCommerce Group, the unit that handles the German media giant's alliance with Napster, condemned the use of the platform for the exchange of Nazi music but said the company was powerless to prevent it.'

Scary, Sneaky HR 46
Misc.
12/20/2000; 1:57:07 PM

'Congress may adjourn today — but not before inflicting a series of blows on civil liberties and federalism. As is usual for end-of-the-session assaults on civil liberties, the plan is to speed the new laws through as attachments to some innocuous law, before most people in Congress have time to notice.'

Note the addition to the National Review Online story: "Late on December 15, the sponsors of H.R. 46 agreed to remove all objectionable material from the bill, except for the encryption provision."

Censorware to be Mandatory in Schools, Libraries
Free Speech
12/20/2000; 11:30:40 AM 'Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a longtime proponent of censorware, introduced the amendment.... Essentially it says that any school or library which receives federal funds to build its network must install censorware. Since these funds are the chief way that poor and middle-income areas bring the internet into public institutions, effectively this means that only rich counties will have the option of an uncensored internet. '

Against Intellectual Property and an update
Personal Commentary
12/20/2000; 11:05:46 AM

I've been unwell the past couple of days, hence the lack of updates.  I'm going to catch up, so the next few links may seem a bit out of date

I read this essay a while ago, before I started this site, but I came across it again and want to link to it. Against Intellectual Property is an essay on why there should be no intellectual property. Personally, I disagree with it strongly, and I suspect that if we actually lived in the world the author desires, not only would things not be as peachy as he seems to think, but I think there would be a large movement towards re-instating intellectual property. In particular, I think his paragraph starting with "In a society without intellectual property, creativity is likely to thrive." uses a hand-waving argument; it seems OK from a distance, but trying to actually construct such a society is a challenge, if one is realistic about human behavior.

Prodigy to fight BT's 'shameless' hyperlinks patent lawsuit
Patents
12/15/2000; 8:46:14 PM

'Prodigy Communications Corp has reacted angrily to BT's hypertext links lawsuit branding it "blatant and shameless".... It intends to fight its case and expects other companies to band together to take on BT....

Yikes! I'm rooting for Prodigy! I never thought that day would come.

'It could take years before this matter is resolved.'

By which time the patent will nearly have expired.  Funny, in a sick way. I don't even want to think about the interest on the back royalties.