Money is Property, Not Speech
Political Speech
5/2/2000; 4:28:53 PM Jan 27, 2000: Money is property, not speech, says Supreme Court: This matters to us, as one of the things the Internet does is create questions about what speech is. I think we need to take a somewhat narrow view, otherwise things like will be accepted as 'free speech'. More on that sometime this week.

The full findings of the court are online at http://caselaw.findlaw.com/cgi-bin/getcase.pl?court=US&navby=case&vol=000&invol=98-963 . (Aside: Why don't online news sources like Salon provide a link to the decision? It doesn't even take any additional screen space!) I have posted a summary of the findings of interest into a discussion group message. Please feel free to comment on the case.

Comic about CBS
Humor/Amusing
5/2/2000; 4:27:23 PM Jan 27, 2000: A fun comic about CBS's recent of Times Square, replacing NBC's logo with their own.

WASHINGTON 451
Free Speech
5/2/2000; 4:20:10 PM Jan 27, 2000: Senate bill 486 contains broad and vague language that could affect the Internet. You may not like the pro-drug movement, but this could be too much. Can I get in trouble for supporting an article supporting an article criticizing an anti-drug law? Who knows?

MP3.com Fights Fire with Fire
Music & MP3
5/2/2000; 4:18:01 PM Jan 27, 2000: MP3.com is providing a new service where you "beam" them the contents of your personal CD collection, and you are then allowed to listen to the content of that collection from anywhere on the Internet. The record companies are not amused. Says MP3.com, With each music fan that adds their CDs to My.MP3.com, our position against the record companies grows stronger. "If each of you 'Tell 10' friends about My.MP3.com, we'll have an army of music fans to fight the good fight." Of course, it also massively increases percieved damages... :-)

Scraping
Glossary
5/2/2000; 4:16:07 PM Scraping is the process of using a computer program to automatically extract content from a normal web page and re-package it for some other purpose.

Deep Linking
Glossary
5/2/2000; 4:15:12 PM Deep linking is when you provide a link to a web site that goes directly into the structure of the site, possibly even pointing directly to a media source, bypassing the page structure of the site.

We'd Like To Have Our Cake And Eat It Too
Music & MP3
5/2/2000; 4:13:23 PM Jan 26, 2000: Napster, in trouble for creating software to extremely easily distribute MP3's, is asking a programmer to take down documents detailing Napster's protocol, which he reverse engineered. The company was not quoted as saying "We believe that people's rights are being unduly constrained in this new Internet era, except those rights as regards to our own products." but it might as well have been.

Original Poster of DeCSS Arrested
DVD & DeCSS
5/2/2000; 4:09:32 PM Jan 25, 2000: Norwegian police officers have arrested the original poster of the DeCSS software. Does anybody know anything about Norwegian copyright law? DeCSS would have been legal in the country (or at least less illegal) until a couple of years ago, when the DMCA was passed. Is it even remotely illegal in Norway? Or are they just bowing to pressure?

If they're just bowing to pressure, then be worried if you're not an American. Apparently, you're subject to our laws as well as your own copyright laws.

Excuse me, are you human?
Misc.
5/2/2000; 4:07:54 PM Jan 25, 2000: Should it be a crime to command a program to mis-represent itself as a human? Sounds like a good topic for Discussion. "I don't mean to suggest that companies like Nike and J.C. Penney will resort to reach-out marketing in the coming years. But some companies will, and it won't take many companies adopting these technologies before the online community is irreparably poisoned."