The Supreme Court of California handed down its ruling in in Intel v. Hamidi today, finding for Hamidi and setting a strong limit on the grown of trespass to chattels.

This is good news; "tresspass to chattals" was a bad legal doctrine because "tresspass" cannot be truthfully applied to computers, as they are not a physical location in the traditional sense. It opened the door to poorly-thought-out questions about what web servers and email servers we're allowed to access, even if they are publically available. While that may yet be an issue, the analogy to the physical world is extremely misleading.

I'd like to join the people saying that I find Echo uncompelling. I had a post ready but I wanted to check something first, so I sent an email to Dave Winer that is probably at least partially responsible for the could somebody else write a spec for RSS 2.0 question on Dave's FAQ. That post covered almost point for point the rest of that FAQ ;-), with a heavy emphasis on the point that Dave is demonstrably not in control of RSS, proven by the very incident that started this whole thing.

Communication Ethics book part for Combating Censorship and Free Speech Suppression . (This is an automatically generated summary to avoid having huge posts on this page. Click through to read this post.)

Communication Ethics book part for The Difference. (This is an automatically generated summary to avoid having huge posts on this page. Click through to read this post.)

Communication Ethics book part for Censorship. (This is an automatically generated summary to avoid having huge posts on this page. Click through to read this post.)

The next chapter of the Communication Ethics essay will be delayed; it was a little unfinished and is subsequently getting somewhat re-written, plus I want to sit on it for at least a day and look at it with fresh eyes.

As an example of the types of serendipity I'm experiencing even as I write this, I found a new connection today between this chapter and the eighth chapter, which I think really helps clarify the eighth chapter and make it easier to understand. This, as you might expect, may also delay the eighth chapter as it may need to be somewhat re-written to accomodate this.

Communication Ethics book part for Free Speech. (This is an automatically generated summary to avoid having huge posts on this page. Click through to read this post.)

Communication Ethics book part for What's The Difference?. (This is an automatically generated summary to avoid having huge posts on this page. Click through to read this post.)

A free tip for all you telemarketers who may be reading this: You do not call the house of privacy advocate and go on about how "you are now in our database" and I can call them anytime about reducing my (non-existant) credit card interest. "You are now in our database" does not sound like a friendly thing to most people; such a phrase affords the question "So how do I get out?" or the question "So how did I get in it?". Even to a non-privacy nut that's gotta sound pretty ominous.

Communication Ethics book part for Censorship and Free Speech. (This is an automatically generated summary to avoid having huge posts on this page. Click through to read this post.)