MPAA Sues to Stop DeCSS Linking DVD & DeCSS6/5/2000; 7:12:31 AM April 5, 2000: It's still true; if you intend to make people responsible for what's on the other end of the link then you will destroy the Internet. First to go will be the search engines and Yahoo.

Yeah, maybe it seems nasty to allow 2600 to link to sites containing the DeCSS program when they can't carry it themselves... but the alternative is just too wrong to even contemplate.

Cyber Patrol ban list published on the Web Censorship6/5/2000; 7:12:29 AM April 5, 2000: Cyber Patrol ban list published on the Web: Wanna go see it? Feel free.

Some highlights: Marshall University Personal Web Pages (Violence Nudity, Sexual Acts/Text) Beats me what this got whacked for.

Toast.net, an ISP provider.

And some local to me: An attempted block of all MSU web pages, except that they list off a string of servers no longer serving web pages! (I guess maybe I am on the block list, in a way.) byers.egr.msu.edu. I don't know why this one is blocked in particular.

Battling Censorware
Censorship
6/5/2000; 7:12:26 AM April 4, 2000: "If there is a fair-use right under copyright law, then as professor Peter Jaszi and others have argued, there should be a fair-use right under the anticircumvention provision of the DMCA. Just as free-speech rights get balanced under copyright law, so too should they be balanced under the copyright act.

"But balance is unlikely when district courts believe they are protecting the morals of America's children. And balance has not yet been the norm when courts have been confronted with circumventing code. Instead, control has been the judicial norm - control built into code, backed up by a law that reaches further than copyright law itself may constitutionally reach. A law that circumvents, one might say, the protections the First Amendment was to provide."

Cisco tells spam victims to reply with abusive emails Humor/Amusing6/5/2000; 7:11:48 AM April 4, 2000: At first I thought this might be some sort of late April Fool's joke.

"Spam is usually harmless, but it can be a nuisance, taking up time and storage space. The solution is to flame the perpetrators by sending them abusive messages, or to reply by dumping a very large and useless file on their Web server."

Then I realized... of COURSE Cisco wants you to retaliate by sending as much data as possible. Then you'll need to buy more and faster routers. Sometimes I can be so dense!

New Third Voice Version Website Annotation6/5/2000; 7:11:45 AM April 4, 2000: There is a new version of Third Voice out now. I don't have time to do a full analysis of it today, but you can take a look at their online tour.

My objections remain unchanged, neither added to nor subtracted from. I still object to the attaching (and therefore modification) of content to arbitrary webpages from arbitrary people. I still object to the systematic modification and profiting from copyrighted material that does not belong to Third Voice. I still think they'd lose a lawsuit if anybody sued them.

First Amendment lawyers take on DVD cracking case Free Speech6/5/2000; 7:11:43 AM April 4, 2000: "'The battleground over the First Amendment is now in cyberspace,' Jim Wheaton, senior counsel for nonprofit, public-interest law firm the First Amendment Project, said in a statement. 'Old media is lumbering into the new era and wants to knock down our civil liberties in a clumsy attempt to maintain the old paradigm.'"

I think the most distrubing thing is how readily the courts throw these arguments out as soon somebody with lots of money is involved. In a conflict between the laws concerning theft of intellectual property and the exercise of free speech... free speech wins, no matter how much it may cost some company, because free speech is constitutionally guaranteed and IP is not.

Junger v. Daley Patents6/5/2000; 7:11:40 AM April 4, 2000: A very interesting court opinion here... in the case of Junger v. Daley, the court has issued some stunning pronouncements!

Because computer source code is an expressive means for the exchange of information and ideas about computer programming, we hold that it is protected by the First Amendment.

The Wired story puts a spin on the story as a victory for privacy advocates (and of course the professor involved in the lawsuit "smile"), but I'd like to look at this from another point of view.

NSA Balancing Security, Privacy
Surveillance and Privacy from Government
6/5/2000; 7:11:38 AM April 3, 2000: I'd have sworn this was an April Fool's gag, but you'd think Wired would have retracted it by now in that case...?

Demon 'uncensored Internet' harms child porn clampdown Free Speech6/5/2000; 7:10:33 AM March 21, 2000: Damned if you do, damned if you don't. "But in a strongly worded letter to The Observer, David Kerr, CE of the IWF, said: ...'What if the UK industry had accepted the original position of shutting down newsgroups nominated by the police?

'Might we not have had an article today reflecting on the damage to freedom of speech and the threat to democracy of a situation where the state could dictate what is available on the Internet, irrespective of whether it is legal or not?' said Kerr."

Mixed on Taxes, Not Privacy Privacy from Companies6/5/2000; 7:10:24 AM March 21, 2000: "A federal panel that couldn't agree on Internet taxes managed to tell Congress to pass laws to protect Americans' privacy online.

"Nearly all members of an advisory commission on Tuesday afternoon said that the privacy implications of taxing electronic commerce are worrisome enough that Congress should hold hearings on the topic."

'Tis a start, but I'll believe it when I see it.