Country Watch: India: India Eyes Cyberlaws: "With estimates that nearly 2 million Indian citizens will be online by 2001, the world's second-most populous country is looking at ways to regulate cyberspace." OK, so let's take a look at what Wired said about these laws:

We need to stop relegating this point to parenthetical comments and bring it out into the public and legal discourse. If we lose this battle, we will lose the entire war.

Jakob Nielsen's Spotlighted Links: April 25, 2000: "The true danger comes from allowing access services and browser software to be integrated with content services. Thought police. The one way to ensure the continued growth of the Web, freedom of speech, and democracy is to keep bit transport and Web navigation as two separate layers that are not allowed to give preferential treatment to any content services." Emphasis mine.

TAP Controversy: Lawrence Lessig, Round Two: "But Raymond believes that no regulation is necessary here. That apparently the invisible hand will save us from networks of control. Where's the evidence? Putting aside ideology for a moment, can you point to one example in the history of the United States where owners of a telecommunications network voluntarily architected that network as open and maintained it over time as such? The Internet is not an example: It was, through the telephone network and the conditions the government placed on its birth, heavily regulated.

This is a problem Userland, Pita, and Blogger do not have. They have original content in spades, and a surprising amount of it is really quite good. Perhaps these companies should be actively looking around them, they may find good stuff.

04/25/00 BW Online--Dueling to Be the King of Web Content: "Even as they expand, both syndicators will face the challenge of sameness -- as in the degree of that they confer on customer sites. 'If you go to two different sports sites, they often have the exact same stories,' says Steve Outing, a columnist with trade magazine Editor & Publisher and co-founder of Content-Exchange.com, a specialized syndicator. 'As this evolves, I think there will be more need for more original content.

Well, THAT'S not good.

Maryland governor signs UCITA: "Glendening signed the Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act (UCITA) into law Tuesday. UCITA will take effect Oct. 1; as things stands now, Maryland will be the first state to enact the software licensing measure."

Dawn and Tommy in the Bay joins Linkback. Here's their page Additionally, I've bumped the system up to showing three days' worth of links. When a popular issue arises (which is what the system is really meant for), two is plenty, but three makes more sense for day-to-day operations.

There are some proposed odd scenarios in the article, like "What about a banner ad that promotes an anti-candidate Web site such as NotHillary.com or gwbush.com? Would those ads be deemed 'positive' (for the site) or 'negative' (against the candidate)?" Yeah, well, who cares? Besides, just to add some confusion into the mix, if those ads are considered libelous by someone in Britain, can they sue Yahoo?