German's Anti-Hate Push Angers
Country Watch- Germany
'German Interior Minister Otto Schily has not even firmed up plans to visit Washington this fall to talk with U.S. officials about battling neo-Nazi websites through legal channels, and already the plan has generated controversy...'

'This week, the controversy over how to handle the problem of hate content on the Internet kicked up anew when Schily told World on Sunday, a German paper, that he planned to meet "with the responsible officials" in Washington and "examine together the possibilities of using civil laws to sue the creators of right-wing websites based in the USA that have an effect in Germany."'

OpenP2P.com: The End of Innovation?
DMCA
'So it's this kind of panic, that once there's any breach in the dam, then that's the end of all creative activity, which just seems to me to be completely unconsidered. You know, it's a messy world in all contexts and what we typically do is accept that freedom entails a certain amount of law breaking, and that doesn't mean you embrace law breakers or say that they should go free. People who are cracking copyright for the purpose of distributing content contrary to the legitimate control of the copyright owner or people who are cracking content for the purpose of redistributing for commercial purposes other people's content -- are criminals and they should be prosecuted as such. But you shouldn't lock up every technologist and make it impossible for them to experiment with encryption technologies merely because there are criminals out there. We don't do that with guns. I mean that's the bizarre thing, you know -- that employees at Smith & Wesson don't have to fear that the FBI is going to swoop down and arrest them because their products led to somebody being killed, yet employees of software companies need to fear that some FBI agent is going to swoop down and arrest them because it's possible that somebody used their code to steal the latest John Grisham novel.'

Judge: FBI must show high-tech spy trick
Surveillance and Privacy from Government
'A federal judge on Tuesday ordered the government to reveal the high-tech computer snooping technique used by the FBI to gather evidence against an alleged mobster.'

'In a case privacy advocates say smacks of Big Brother, U.S. District Judge Nicholas Politan ruled that the government must reveal the details of the computer monitoring system it used to gather evidence against Nicodemo Scarfo Jr., who is charged with running illegal gambling and loan-sharking operations for the Gambino crime family.'

The Sklyrov Complaint
DMCA
I haven't seen this yet, so maybe you haven't either. It's a PDF of the actual compliant filed against Dmitry Sklyrov. To my admittedly unlawyer eyes, I don't see any actions actually actively committed in the US in this complaint. Seeing this complaint only furthers my outrage; I really expected that the complaint had some sort of merit, if you were generous; I no longer believe that. We as a nation would never stand for one of our citizens being arrested on charges in Russia for activities done here that are legal here. This is an act of amazing hypocrisy on the part of our government.

More Commentary
Personal Commentary
Over time, iRights has become more and more news, and I've been increasingly self-censoring my personal opinions since I felt I had some sort of "obligation" to suppress that. I finally realized consciously that I'm doing that (it's been running around in my subconscious for a while), so I think I'm going to stop self-censoring. Looking around, even the focused successful weblogs don't limit themselves exclusively to news. (In fact, I suppose the better you know me, the better you can analyse my commentary on my chosen topic. At least that's my current rationalization...)

Slashdot | Sklyarov Released On $50,000 Bail
DMCA

From Slashdot: 'According to this live report from the courtroom, Dmitri will probably be out of jail real soon now.'

On $50,000 bail.

 

News: Governors plea for Net sales tax
Misc.

'Wyoming Gov. Jim Geringer is urging Congress to allow states to tax e-commerce to replenish state coffers. Geringer, speaking on the opening day of the National Governors Association summer meeting Saturday, warned that without such a tax, states stand to lose annual revenues topping $30 billion by 2003.'

A fair sales tax scheme on the Internet doesn't bother, just makes me generally nervous as any power grab does. I do have a huge problem with this "$30 billion" loss bit, though... as a general rule of thumb, you can't lose what you don't have. (That statement applies in a lot more places then you might expect.)

The Man Who Debunks Virus Myths
Misc.

'Rob Rosenberger is determined to shine the bright light of sarcasm into every dark corner of the computer security industry. His website, Vmyths, focuses on presenting the facts -- as Rosenberger sees them -- about computer viruses, dispelling any media-fueled hysteria about computer security and disputing the smallest shred of misinformation from the security industry itself.'

'Rosenberger carefully reviews the press coverage of every virus alert and rips into reporters who mindlessly repeat whatever "facts" they may have been fed by their sources.'

Custom Weblog Post
Personal Notes

The Custom Weblog Post tool allows the user to create (sub-)templates that have more structure then RU's default flat text box. It ships with a template that matches the behavior of Manila's News Items, using the RU 'blogs categories as the choosable categories. Thus, for people who are used to posting with Manila's News Items, this provides a nice migration path to the RU 'blog.

Ars Technica: Intellectual Property and the Good Society
General IP Issues
[Some people have a hard time committing to an opinion on current IP law.] 'There's a reason why so many of us are caught in the middle. It's because the morally absolute language of rights leaves us too little wiggle room for holding a useful dialogue about the ways a fair intellectual property system should look and function. What I intend to do in the following editorial is argue for a new type of discussion, one focused more on larger systems and structures than on the rights of the individual actors governed by those structures. To that end, I'll describe the way that the existing intellectual property structures are developing, and I'll then talk about how we can visualize some alternatives to them.'