[humorix] Finally, A Solution To The DMCA! Humor-Amusing 'The mission of the church is to make digital copies of every music CD, every movie DVD, and every printed book and then grep the digital version for any tell-tale signs of 'The Meaning Of Life'."'  

This is a Radio Userland weblog post, made from within Jabber. It looks bad because I've set my site up to expect titles and departments and stuff, not flat text. (That's actually why I created CustomWeblogPost.) But it worked, and on most blogs, this content would be indistinguishable from the rest of the content.

Excite\@Home snoops on user downloads Privacy from Companies 'Excite\@Home Australia users are up in arms over the telco's random raids on their broadband accounts in search of pirate activity, with many saying it's an invasion of their privacy.' 'The ISP informed users of its Optus\@Home broadband service that it would terminate customer accounts found to be downloading pirate software or copyright material. A message posted on a public newsgroup service from Cable & Wireless Optus, which half-owns Excite\@Home, said its network security team would investigate claims into activities such as downloading protected movies and "

Lobbyists Tied to Microsoft Wrote Citizens' Letters Humor-Amusing 'Letters purportedly written by at least two dead people landed on the desk of Utah Atty. Gen. Mark Shurtleff earlier this year, imploring him to go easy on Microsoft Corp. for its conduct as a monopoly....' 'The campaign, orchestrated by a group partly funded by Microsoft, goes to great lengths so that the letters appear to be spontaneous expressions from ordinary citizens.

Fingered by the movie cops DMCA 'This article does have a point, but it's not about piracy. It's about a flawed piece of legislation that allows a person to be penalized for an alleged action before he has the chance to defend himself. The moral of the story is that the DMCA allows you to be tried and judged guilty before you even know what has happened. The MPAA could have my account shut down immediately -- or yours -- and there's nothing any of us could do to stop it.

MP3.com blamed for `viral' copyright infringement Music & MP3 'A new lawsuit filed against MP3.com seeks to hold the San Diego music-locker service liable not only for songs it improperly copied and distributed, but also for every bootleg track exchanged through Napster and other underground file-swapping services.' We just crossed the line into absurdity. Regardless of how I and others felt about the Napster case, there was some merit in it.

Slashdot | The DMCA Is Just The Beginning DMCA From Slashdot: dr. greenthumb writes: ''With the Sklyarov-case still fresh in memory, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) wants to rally up against the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) in order to preserve privacy and freedom of speech. The FTAA is currently negotiating agreements with several countries in the Western hemisphere concerning, among other issues, intellectual property rights. According to the EEF, the FTAA organization is considering treaty language that mandates nations pass anti-circumvention provisions similar to the DMCA, except the FTAA treaty grants even greater control to publishers than the DMCA.

New essay: Information Is Too Scarce! Essays Partially prompted by this Slashdot article, where you can find a prototypical version of the essay if you look, this new essay strikes out at one of the foundations of the usual argument for abolishing IP in all of its forms, and supports the continued existence of some kind of copyright, albiet not necessarily what we have now.

Cyber Citizen lands Felony Charges? Witch Hunts 'A good deed may lead to prosecution for Brian K. West, a 24 year old sales and support employee for an internet service provider in SE Oklahoma. Mr. West has become a statistic for the Computer Analysis Response Team because he alerted a local business to a serious security flaw in their website.' 'On February 1, 2000, one of West's co-workers created a banner advertisement to be placed on the Poteau Daily News website as part of a legitimate advertising campaign for his employer.

Censorship in action: why I don't publish my HDCP results DMCA 'I have written a paper detailing security weaknesses in the HDCP content protection system. I have decided to censor myself and not publish this paper for fear of prosecution and/or liability under the US DMCA law.' 'My name is Niels Ferguson. I'm a professional cryptographer. My job is to design, analyse, and attack cryptographic security systems, a bit like a digital locksmith.