] Tens of thousands are gathering right now on Market
] Street in downtown San Francisco. I've ducked into my
] office just off of Market to compose this article for
] Memestreams.

Randy Bias reports live from the streets.

Jan. 18th San Francisco Protest - Tens of Thousands Gather

Gibson's novel succeeds in being both up-to-the-nanosecond and also, in Cayce's highest praise, "curiously difficult to date."

NYT reviews the new Gibson novel. You can also listen to audio of Gibson reading an excerpt from the book (approximately 13 minutes).

'Pattern Recognition': The Coolhunter

] We have proposed a tiny tax designed to move unused
] copyrighted work into the public domain.

Lessig VS. Disney, Round 2, Fight!

I would take this one step further then Lessig. I have long thought that it ought to be illegal for people to claim a copyright or patent on a work they are not selling/publishing. If the purpose is to encourage the development and distribution of ideas, then your ideas ought to be published. Copyright law should not enable people to keep ideas OUT of the public's reach. This runs counter to the stated purpose of IP.

The Eric Eldred Act

] 2002 Year-End Zeitgeist offers a unique perspective on
] the year's major events and hottest trends based on more
] than 55 billion searches conducted over the past year by
] Google users from around the world.

The Google Zeitgeist has finally been updated for December...

Google Press Center: 2002 Year-End Zeitgeist

] Government officials and communications experts are
] assessing the public safety and security implications of
] a newly posted online article that provides directions
] for making cheap devices that can jam Global Positioning
] System (GPS) signals.

Classic Bill Joy moment here. The availability of that article is not what creates the risk associated with relying on GPS. Its the insecurity of the system that creates the risk. If that article was published in scientific american instead of phrack the wording of this article would be tremendously different.

Notice how the author goes around to different subject matter experts searching for someone who is willing to say "this is bad." Each expert says "this has no effect on my space, but it might cause problems in that space over there." The author then asks someone who works in that space, and is told the same thing over again. Basically, yes the authorities know this is a risk and they mitigate it like any other risk.

Homemade GPS jammers raise concerns - Computerworld

] Public Knowledge is a public-interest advocacy
] organization dedicated to fortifying and defending a
] vibrant "information commons" - the shared information
] resources and cultural assets that we own as a people.

A very slick new public domain oriented political group.

Public Knowledge

] Peace in a country like the Ivory Coast is a myth. It's
] tribe vs. tribe, religion vs. religion, till one side
] wipes out the other. And if that never happens, then the
] sneak attacks and small-time massacres will just go on and
] on. And if that seems terrible to you, try this thought on:
]
] Maybe they LIKE it.

An informative if also informal brief on the basic problems in Africa.

eXile #157 - War Nerd - Live from the Skeleton Coast - by Gary Brecher

] The Eldred decision, in the words of University of Buffalo
] law professor Shubha Gosh, "deconstitutionalizes" copyright,
] pushing it father into the realm of policy and power battles
] and away from the principles that have anchored the system
] for two centuries.

More fallout from Eldred. This call has been raised several times in the last few months. The Constitution does not protect us here. The only way we can win is in the voting booth.

However, I cynically beleive that the voting booth will only come into play after this decision has cost us a lot more then the public domain... It will come into play only after the significance of our culture has been overshadowed by those who operate outside of this system.

Salon.com Technology | After the copyright smackdown: What next?

] To link directly to some newspapers' content, Danish
] search firm Newsbooster now must use the sort of
] decentralized subterfuge utilized by companies that
] distribute file-sharing applications.

I said in one of the essays on this site that the reason news companies don't have the trouble with the net that music companies do is because news companies offer their consumers the ability to access and manipulate their content without copying it. If that practice ends, their troubles will begin...

Wired News: This Is Your Deep Link on P2P

] It is a freakish, doped-up, mutant clone which hasn't had
] sex for thousands of years - and the strain may be about
] to tell on the nation's fruitbowl favourite. Scientists
] based in France have warned that, without radical and
] swift action, in 10 years' time we really could have no
] bananas.

Bananas don't really reproduce and apparently have been maintained by human farmers for 10,000 years. They face destruction from fungus. Other stories in the news today indicate that a sequencing effort is underway.

The Guardian | Yes - in 10 years we may have no bananas