] The charges have hit home in a number of states. State Representative
] Rich Golick, who introduced legislation at MPAA's behest late in
] Georgia's 2003 session, now says he has "grave concerns about
] overreaching language they've got in their bill that could harm
] consumers and businesses." If his bill moves forward, he adds, it will
] be greatly altered.

Thank you!

Georgia Rep steps back from SDMCA

Elonka wrote:
] He went up before a review board today, and read them a
] statement (linked below). After hearing the statement, the
] board then voted unanimously to make the expulsion permanent.
]
] I have my own thoughts on the efficacy of the statement, but
] I'll leave it to you to make up your own minds.

The last thing the school wants is someone who not only seeks to break their rules but does it in a way they don't understand. What he told them with this statement is yes, I broke your rules, no I don't respect you, and regardless of what you do to me I'm going to keep breaking your rules. He has made them fear him. So they kicked him out.

I don't really see him as being in the wrong in the grand scheme of things, but at a certain point, as a youth, you have to be willing to negotiate with the powerful idiots in your environment. It is easy to lie to them and tell them that you understand them and your sorry and you won't do it again. Getting up in front of them and reading a manifesto is asking for it. They haven't read the authors you are referencing and they don't understand what you're talking about. They see a kid that will never obey, and could be dangerous. Thats all they can see.

Of course, what I'm wondering is what happens now. Where are his parents, and what are his plans? My experience is that school districts become very accomidating when you haul them into court. The question is whether you have a strong arguement. Can the school expell students for minor infractions? No, its almost certainly illegal. You need only explain to the judge that the infractions where minor, and the expulsion was mostly due to the school district's miss understanding of computers. Incidentally, I would not get up in court and read them a screed about Noam Chomsky, (who, incidentally, is a radical socialist, not a libertarian). The point to make is I'm a good kid and they are simply stupid, and not I didn't really do anything wrong but some day I'm going to start a suicide bombing campaign in third period.

Another option, if you have it, is to get the press to report the details of your expulsion. Find leaders in your community who understand technology and can explain you to the school better then you can.

RE: Statement from Student Expelled for Recommending Web Proxy at School

] The U.S. Congress is hard at work trying to punish
] Internet users who value their privacy.
]
] That's not how Capitol Hill politicians describe a new
] bill introduced last week, of course, but that's what it
] would accomplish if it becomes law.

Declan speaks out against last weeks Whois hearing...

Privacy reduction's next act | CNET News.com

] After suffering a legal defeat in December, the Recording
] Industry Association of America (RIAA) is modifying its
] approach to pursuing online file swappers, but pushing on
] with its program to stop illegal file trading with
] lawsuits, RIAA President Cary Sherman said Wednesday.

Somehow I missed this. This is great news. This means that the RIAA, and other claimants, must obtain a judge's approval before they can turn an IP address into a name and billing address. The DMCA subpoenas they were issuing last summer, which did not require a court, have stopped. This is a system which cannot be abused by stalkers and other kinds of criminals. Apparently, Ed Felton has argued that Congress might pass a new law which creates the subpoena right that the RIAA thought they had last summer, but it remains to be seen.

InfoWorld: RIAA sues 532 'John Doe' file swappers: January 21, 2004: By : E-business Strategies

] "The Government must play a greater role in punishing
] those who conceal their identities online, particularly
] when they do so in furtherance of a serious federal
] criminal offense or in violation of a federally protected
] intellectual property right," (Lamar) Smith said at a hearing on
] the topic today.

Congress wants to make it a federal crime to lie on your domain name registration. If you do not make your real address, telephone number, and email available to everyone on earth you can be sentenced to federal prison time (in this version you'd have a sentence for another crime extended). This came up in last years legislative session as well. The thing that makes my blood boil about this is that the spin is totally wrong. The copyright people are lying through their teeth, this journalist can't see through it, and the CDT/ACLU don't understand EITHER so they are providing the wrong counterpoints, almost assuring that this will pass!

This article lets slide absolute lies like:

] Smith and Berman drafted the bill after receiving complaints
] from the entertainment and software industries that much of
] their material is made available for free on Web sites whose
] owners are impossible to track down because their domain
] name registrations often contain made-up names.

No web site owner is "impossible" to track down!

DNS whois information is made available for reference. It is intended to assist communication between administrators who run networks, for security or network management related reasons. It was not designed for lawyers or police. It was also not designed with the modern spam and stalker infested internet in mind, and therefore often people fill it out with false information, especially if they aren't a business entity.

If you want to track down someone on the internet for a legal reason, you do not use the DNS whois system. That is not what the DNS whois system is for. You do a nslookup on the domain name and get the IP address. Then you use the ARIN whois system, (a completely different and totally unrelated database that used to run on the same software) which tells you what ISP an IP address has been issued to. ARIN whois is usually correct. If it is not correct you can complain to ARIN and they can check their records. Their records are always correct unless the IP addresses have been stolen (and if you're dealing with stolen IP addresses you're way past the point where DNS whois is going to help you, federal crime or not). Either way you'll get an ISP. You then go to a court and get a subpoena, and send that subpoena to the ISP, and the ISP produces contact information for the customer. This always works.

Let me be absolutely clear about this. Requiring people to keep accurate dns whois records has absolutely nothing at all to do with being able to track down domain holders on the internet. You can always do that today. Forcing people to keep accurate dns whois records is about being able to track down domain holders on the internet without court authorization. We should not allow that.

What really pisses me off here is that no one on "our side of the fence" in this debate is making that point. We're going to loose this one if the discussion isn't forced back into the realm of reality. If this is about people committing crimes on internet sites that can't be tracked down by any means, we'll be passing laws based on a complete fantasy.

Kids, this is exactly how bad law happens.

Congress Eyes Idiotic Whois Crackdown

] It is not the province of the courts, however, to rewrite
] the DMCA in order to make it fit a new and unforseen
] internet architecture, no matter how damaging that
] development has been to the music industry or threatens
] being to the motion picture and software industries.

Its been hard to find an article that really explained what was decided here. This is not really a victory. This isn't a judge saying "DMCA" subpoenas are illegal. This is a judge saying they only apply to content you are hosting on someone else's computer; Congress didn't envision P2P when they wrote the DMCA.

While in the short term this trips up the RIAA, if this decision holds it simply means that they need to go back to Congress and ask for even broader powers. Is there any doubt that after Congress has loosened the rule of law time after time after time for the benefit of their friends in the media industry that they will fail to do it again? No, they will pass another law, with more broad subpoena powers, and a lot of other nasty stuff that they'll add in while they're at it.

Stop celebrating and get ready to fight. Only if the RIAA fails to gain new powers can this be considered a victory.

U.S. judges blast music labels' attack on ISPs and users

] In the news, Kofi Annan thinks "a lot of web-based
] information is simply not relevant to the real needs of
] people;"

Someone blogging WSIS... I don't know if its relevant to watch these meetings. Apparently they are just going to do a study. Thats it. All the posturing, ranting, and booting of Paul Twomey is just a bunch of politicians doing what they do best, which is listen to themselves talk. I my limited experience I've found UN people to be the worst of anyone at this sort of thing. There'll be nothing to react to now, and maybe ever... If only I could say the same for Verisign.

The Daily Summit - Unlocking the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS)

] Paul Twomey, the president of the Internet Corporation
] for Assigned Names and Numbers, found out what it feels
] like to be voiceless.
]
] On Friday night, Twomey, who flew 20 hours to Geneva from
] a meeting in Vietnam to take part in a preparatory
] session for this week's United Nations summit meeting on
] Internet issues, was escorted to the exit of the meeting
] room by guards after participants suddenly decided to
] exclude observers.

Well, I must say, that was unreasonable.

Technology News: UN Takeover of Internet? Some Are 'Not Amused'

What is the optimal design for such a multitiered confidentiality system?

This essay appears in the December 5 issue of Science Magazine. The author is a division director at the National Science Foundation.

Privacy and Property on the Net: Research Questions

] Cease and desist letters can make such spurious claims
] and overreaching demands because they are not official
] legal filings and there has been, as yet, little
] accountability for their abuses. Even though recipients
] may have the legal right to engage in the threatened
] activity (in this case the facilitation of free speech),
] those without specialized legal expertise and a solid
] defense fund most non-corporate recipients
] may simply comply with the letter's demands out of
] fear, uncertainty and lack of resources. The Interz0ne
] conference organizers hardly had the time to even react
] to their cease and desist letter, which Blackboard sent
] on the eve of the students scheduled presentation.

A very good analysis. Again, I believe that knowingly sending overboard cease and desist letters should be a crime bearing significant punitive liability. Wealthy entities will continue to chill speech in their interests until this is resolved.

Analysis of the Blackboard Case