] Jack Valenti, the chairman of the Motion Picture
] Association of America for 38 years, said on Tuesday that
] he would step down in the next few months.

I'm sure that there will be plenty of rejoicing about this in the geek community. Valenti's name has come to mean copyright maximalism in the computer scene. I think it is wrong to celebrate his retirement. You can rest assured that the Motion Picture Association's interests are not selected by Valenti, and they'll continue to press forward with their agenda. I don't agree with Valenti about most things. Who'll replace him and what they'll do is as yet unknown in these circles. However, thoughout this debate Valenti has carried himself with a certain amount of honor which is unusual in these times. He has always given his opponent room to be heard and shown respect for everyone's right to an opinion. We'll be quite lucky if he is replaced by someone with similar character.

Valenti Says He Will Leave Motion Picture Association

] From the first U.S. copyright statute in 1790 until the
] Copyright Act of 1976, the U.S. had a conditional
] copyright system that limited copyright protection to
] those who took affirmative steps to claim it.
]
] Our tradition of conditional copyright stands in stark
] contrast to what we have today — an unconditional system
] that grants copyright protection whether or not an author
] desires it.

This is excellent. Lessig is back in court. This time he is arguing that by ending the requirement that copyrights be registered, Congress created an undo burden on first amendment activities by requiring a speaker to "clear" any copyrighted content in cases where the author has not explicitely reserved any rights and/or is not available.

The concept of orphaned works is one of my personal problems with the copyright law. If you're not going to publish a work, and it has been published in the past (its not a secret), I ought to be able to redistribute it. If I cannot, then people simply have no way of accessing the work, whether legally or not, simply because you don't think its in your financial interest to publish it and you're not going to lift a finger to release it into the public domain. I've run into several instances in the past when I've tried to access works of technical or philosophical interest and found myself unable to access them because they are copyrighted, out of print, and my used book store (Amazon) can't find a copy. Its bullshit.

That having been said, I do not understand how it can be unconstitutional for Congress to allow unregistered copyrights for American authors but legal for them to allow unregistered copyrights for forgein authors in compliance with a treaty. The rights which are claimed to be infringed here are not those of domestic copyright holders, but of domestic speakers who wish to use those copyrighted works. Such an infringement must still exist in the case where the original author is forgein.

Seems like international treaties should not supercede the Constitution, and if we agree to something which is unconstitutional we need to go back to the table and renegotiate it, or create an amendment. Otherwise national executives could collude to create agreements which undo domestic constitutional protections without going through a proper domestic amendment process.

Lessig and Copyright renewal...

] In that statement, Clarke claimed that Slammer "disabled
] some root servers, the heart of Internet traffic." Not
] true. A report from the RIPE Network Coordination
] Center--one of the Internet's four regional
] registries--said that at most the worm slowed
] connectivity to two of the 13 root servers and did not
] disable any of them. "This did not cause any degradation
] in (domain name system) service," RIPE concluded.
]
] Clarke also claimed that "a national election/referendum
] in Canada was canceled" due to computer mischief. At
] best, that was a reckless exaggeration. What actually
] happened is that Canada's New Democratic Party held a
] leadership convention and found their Internet voting to
] be sluggish. CBC reported that voting was completed just
] 45 minutes behind schedule.

Declan republished this old article in which he accused Rickard Clarke of being a bit of an exagerator.

The credibility of Richard Clarke

Jeremy wrote:
] Sheik Ahmed Yassin, the spiritual leader and founder of the
] militant Palestinian group Hamas, was killed early Monday by
] an Israeli missile that struck him as he left a mosque in Gaza
] City.
]
] Black smoke curled over Gaza City as Palestinians began
] burning tires in the streets and demonstrators chanted for
] revenge.

This is quite perplexing. I can't find anyone outside of Isreal who has expressed support for this action. The UN, the EU, England, and France all condemed this action. The US has distanced itself from it and made a (likely futile) plea for calm. Stratfor has publically expressed that is doesn't understand the reasoning behind it.

Sure, this guy is a bad guy, but nevertheless, this is almost certainly going to provoke an escalation of violence in the region, mostly reactionary and senseless. What the fuck were they thinking?

RE: Leader of Hamas Is Killed in Israeli Strike

] Text messages were quickly circulating in Taiwan with
] questions about whether the shooting had been staged to
] gain a sympathy vote for the president.
]
] Sisy Chen - a defector from President Chen's party who is
] now an outspoken foe - also noted that his security
] detail had visited the shooting scene and the hospital
] beforehand.

Presidential assassination is the new pop.

eTaiwanNews.com/Shooting raises questions, provokes conspiracy theorists

] Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry (news -
] web sites), D-Mass., snowboards during the first day of
] his vacation at Sun Valley in Ketchum, Idaho Thursday,
] March 18, 2004

John Kerry snowboarding

] History, rather than geography, solves the puzzle of BNA,
] TYS, GEG, OGG and MCO. The main airport in
] Nashville, Tennessee, was named in honor of Col.
] Harry Berry who helped build it: BNA. Knoxville, also in
] Tennessee, doesn't have a single letter in common
] with its tag of TYS; however, a historian would
] know that the Tyson family donated the land in
] honor of their son killed in World War I.

Some interesting factoids if you fly alot...

Airport Codes: A History and Explanation

] LOAF creates and maintains a database of all your
] correspondents, defined as people to whom you have sent
] email at least once. Every time you send an email
] message, LOAF appends this information to the email
] message, using a format described further below.
] LOAF-enabled correspondents collect and store this
] information in their own local databases.

Shared hashed white-lists. Interesting idea...

loaf

] Al Qaeda would love to see Bush defeated, particularly if
] his defeat could be perceived -- particularly in the
] Islamic world -- as a consequence of the network's
] actions. That means U.S. allies are not the only possible
] targets. Al Qaeda has shown itself to be politically
] sophisticated. If it has operatives in the United States,
] then those operatives have friends who can advise the
] group on U.S. politics. Any attack will give Bush an
] immediate boost. It is a given in U.S. policy that the
] president's support increases during a crisis. It is also
] true that over time that support bleeds off, particularly
] if the president is not seen as moving toward solving the
] problem effectively. It follows that al Qaeda will not
] attack on the eve of the U.S. election, but months
] before, giving the American public time to come to the
] conclusion that Bush is unable to cope with the threat.

Stratfor puts its hat in the ring. This is the first time they've taken a position that I do not find my self entirely agreeing with. That almost certainly means I'm wrong, but I'll say it anyway and we'll see.

I knew they thought Al'Q wanted to topple Bush, but I didn't know why. I don't agree with this. I think that a Democratic president in the U.S. would close the gap with Europe, and thereby elminiate the weakness Al'Q is presently exploiting. (Possibly at the expense of creating other weaknesses, but thats an unknown. Partisanship easily takes you outside the realm of reason here.) In reading Stratfor's reasoning it makes sense. If they could get the Arab world to beleive that they toppled a U.S. president it might do wonders for their credibility, IF people beleived it. Honestly, I think that even if they did have an impact arguements that they are responsible will not be taken credibly, and what they loose strategically in the process (a US/Europe fissure, which most certainly real on the street and in the UN) is worth more then what they'd trade for. This alone is not going to galvanize the arab world into engaging in a war that really no one but a bunch of lunatic fundamentalists is interested in.

I also don't think that any attack in the U.S. is likely to topple Bush. I think more attacks are likely to drive Americans right, and I don't think you'll see them unless it looks like Bush will loose. Not until after the election anyway...

Stratfor's discussion of the fact that this wasn't a suicide operation is interesting. There are many ways to interpret that. Most of the press just isn't thinking about it.

What I think is also interesting is that Al'Q clearly are intelligent military strategists, whilst simultaneously they have very backward, feudal ideas about what political future is best for themselves and their people. Identity based politics knows no intellectual heights. No matter how smart you are, it is still entirely possible (and likely) that your concepts about governance and world order are completely broken. This is because people tend to decide who they are and how they feel before they decide what they think. Everyone has got it backwards. People who are different have thoughts that are outside the range of things we're capable of considering. So we think they must be evil. And so we kill eachother...

Strategic Forecasting: Analysis of Madrid

] ''We accept full blame for it,'' he said. ''We should
] have done a better job of catching that. It aired one
] time.''

"And we would have gotten away with it too, if it wasn't for you damn New Yorkers..."

'Daily Show' satirizes Channel 5 for running fake government news