Music Industry Wins 871 Subpoenas Against Internet Users.

...and they are not just going after people offering large amounts of mp3s either...

Notice the slightly conflicting statements:

" The trade group for the largest music labels, the Washington-based RIAA, previously indicated its lawyers would target Internet users who offer substantial collections of MP3 song files but declined to say how many songs might qualify for a lawsuit."

"We are identifying substantial infringers and we're going to whatever entity is providing (Internet) service for that potential infringer,"

[Brain21]So from these statements we think that, as the RIAA said a few weeks ago, they are only going after people who have huge mp3 collections online. However, other statements in the article show that this may not be true:

"In some cases, subpoenas cite as few as five songs as "representative recordings" of music files available for downloading from these users."

"the RIAA asked Depaul on July 2 to track down a user known as "anon39023" who was allegedly offering at least eight songs."

FOXNews.com

] The microchips, already available in the United States,
] could tap into a growing industry surrounding Mexico's
] criminal concerns. Kidnappings, robberies and fraud are
] common here, and Mexicans are constantly looking for ways
] to protect themselves against crime.

If Americans aren't stupid enough to get ID chips implanted in them, go south of the border! The most brilliant thing here is that it turns out they aren't putting any actual DATA on the chip itself. Its JUST a serial number. You have to cross reference it with a database, which would presumably be easy to get access to as they want readers all over the place. Hack the database, switch the records, and your vitcim disappears.

Mexicans LOVE tracking chips

] Wozniak said he set out trying to solve problems people
] encounter in their everyday lives. In his case, he wanted
] an inexpensive way to know if his dog crossed over the
] electronic fencing around his home without having to tag
] the pet with an expensive device like a cell phone or
] Global Positioning System receiver.
]
] Rifredi said he's interested in having a way to track and
] instantly locate his 2-year-old son, "who's just getting
] mobile now."

Highly hyped WoZ net could be orwellian nightmare

] Dockers recently came out with a new brand of pants, the
] Go Khakis, which promise to keep your legs stain-free
] using revolutionary nanotechnology.
]
] We couldn't help thinking that Dockers might be using the
] word "nanotechnology" more for marketing muscle than for
] true scientific purposes, so we called its customer
] service line to ask a few pointed questions. Here's a
] slice of the conversation.

Bahahahahahahahahahahahahaa!

CNN.com - Little robots in your pants - Jul. 18, 2003

I thought I would post and see what people's experience has been with various spam filtering tools. A few comments:

1. I see spam as a law enforcement problem. The VAST majority of the spam I receive contains forged headers and is being relayed through systems without permission. If the government simply enforced the laws it already has, it could prosecute these people for computer fraud. This would eliminate most of the problem that I see. The reason that I get all this spam is because the government won't enforce their laws. (Although they are happy enough to raid internet "bong" dealers. Gosh I'm glad to be safe from them.)

2. I have one email address that is basically useless because of spam. For every legitimate email I receive there, I get 30 or more spams. My other email address is rapidly approaching this state.

3. The basic requirement for a spam filtering solution that I have is no false positives. I can deal with deleting some spam. Its not THAT big of a deal. If I could delete LESS spam, and still get all of my legitimate email, I think I'd be alright.

4. I don't trust RBL based solutions. RBLs block legitimate mail. Lots of it. I'm interested in blocking SPAM, not people who are using SMTP relay. This effort to lock down SMTP has been going on for years, and the amount of spam has not been reduced.

5. My only experience with "AI" like filters has been the spam filter in MacOSX. It doesn't work. It ids spam as legit. More importantly, it regularily IDs legit email as spam. I'm not sure how it measures up with other filters. If I put more effort into training it, it might get better, but I could never TRUST that if I turned it on it would never block legitimate email.

6. This morning I was considering implementing Challenge Response for all of my email. This sounds like an effective solution. Unfortunately, its not. The problem is that there are a number of bots out there, mostly related to ecommerce sites, that I probably do need to see email from. I can try to list them in my whitelist, but I risk missing something.

7. It occurs to me that what might work better then these solutions is something that relies on a network. If 100 people get the same email, its probably spam. This, I imagine, is what yahoo is doing. I think I've heard of systems that allow large numbers of people to coordinate to filter spam, but I don't recall what it is.

What systems are you using? How effective are they?

Advertisements are a form of communication, not mere manipulation: they help make sense of the world. ... Discerning knowledge amid the claims and images makes us all cool-hunters in training.

New Encyclopedia Gives Cool-Hunters a Road Map for Ads

This book paints a picture of the state of the information revolution today and how it will likely progress in the near- to mid-term future (10 to 15 years), focusing separately on different regions of the world—North America, Europe, the Asia-Pacific region, Latin America, the Middle East and North Africa, and sub-Saharan Africa.

The Global Course of the Information Revolution | RAND

] Your readers already know about my opposition to useless
] airport security crap. I'm suing John Ashcroft, two
] airlines, and various other agencies over making people
] show IDs to fly -- an intrusive measure that provides no
] security. (See http://freetotravel.org). But I would be
] hard pressed to come up with a security measure more
] useless and intrusive than turning a plane around because
] of a political button on someone's lapel.

Politech: John Gilmore: I was ejected from a plane for wearing a button

This is an amazing story. Apparently Direct-TV is requiring everyone who ever bought a smart card reader from a company that sells D-TV priate equipment to pay then $3,500 or be sued. The problem is there are many people who bought smart card readers from these firms for legitimate reasons and can't afford to defend themselves.

This is the third example in the last few weeks of innocent people being forced to comply with unreasonable demands from large corporations because they can't defend themselves in court.

Direct-TV involved in widespread extortion; RIAA like tactics

] Townsend and others' similar experiences, no matter how
] limited today, point to a slowly widening hole in the
] Recording Industry Association of America's (RIAA)
] recently announced drive to identify and ultimately sue
] what could be thousands of file swappers online.
]
] Wireless Net access through free, open or publicly
] available hot spots is proving to be a last bastion of
] privacy on an Internet where the veil of anonymity can
] now easily be pierced. Wi-Fi access points give anyone
] who possesses the appropriate computer equipment within a
] radius of about 300 feet the ability to reach the
] Internet.

Hot spots elude RIAA dragnet | CNET News.com