On other Metallica lawsuit topics, Indiana University has banned Napster again.

You can use this site to make a non-guilt-admission donation to Metallica for any MP3s you may have. As the site owner says, "'It's strange that any band would choose to sue its fans, private companies, and schools without at least asking if anybody would be willing to pay,' said Mark Erickson, CEO of August Nelson, the technology development firm that created the site."

PayLar$.com: "PayLars.com gives Metallica fans the chance to make a donation to the band to make up for all the revenue the band thinks it's losing to online MP3 trading. Read more about what August Nelson is doing with the PayLars.com website."

This is insane. I'm sick of the tracking people claiming it's for my own good. If it's for my own good, then I grant permission for you to track me for 95% of the income, before costs and taxes. No deal otherwise.

PRIVACY Forum: "In brief, Predictive's business is to engage ISPs (not just 'free' ISPs where usage tracking has become typical, but conventional fee-based ISPs as well) in arrangements where the ISP will directly feed Web usage data to Predictive. The firm also claims to be working with Internet backbone providers."

This is the basic reason why integrity is so importent, and without some form of IP, we can kiss integrity goodbye. Unless we walk up to the server and extract something off of the disk, we'll never know for certain what somebody originally said. (There are ways to detect tampering with a message, but that doesn't mean you can reconstruct the original.)

A landmark verdict handed down on March 30 by the Osaka District Court states that, under certain sets of conditions, links used to connect one Web page to another could be considered an infringement of the law.

Web Links Can Be Considered Illegal, Osaka Court Judgment Says:

I love The Register.

THE REGISTER: Janet Reno licks chops over Mafiaboy arrest: "(Note to wannabe h4x0rz: IRC traffic is logged, Einstein, so always connect through a hacked ISP account or a freebie such as NetZero where you can register with fictional information; and always dial in from a phreaked telephone account [preferably in Tonga or Madagascar]. If you can't manage that much, then don't say anything in IRC that you wouldn't announce over a bull horn in the lobby of FBI headquarters.