"Such laws only make sense if you have no idea what you are talking about."

Common sense commentary about video piracy. Not news to any of you, but maybe a breath of fresh air if you are sick of hearing from Valenti and Rosen, or you want a quality reference for discussions.

LawMeme: Legal Bricolage for a Technological Age - The LawMeme Guide to Spider-Man and Star Wars Bootlegs

"On Thursday, a federal appeals court unceremoniously rejected the latest attempt by 2600 magazine to fight the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA)."

Looks like 2600's case has finally had the biscuit. It is illegal to post DeCSS online.

2600's DMCA Challenge Blocked

"Web giant Yahoo! Inc. and several Internet trade associations filed papers Monday seeking to overturn a court ruling which they said could fill the offices of Internet companies with police officers overseeing the execution of search warrants. "

CNN.com - ISPs seek to void ruling on police searches - May 14, 2002

"As emeritus University of Virginia bioethicist John Fletcher has pointed out, "All of the (federal bioethics) commissions in the past have made recommendations that have had their effects in federal regulations. So they are a source eventually of regulations." Regulations like outright bans on certain biomedical practices, and even criminalizing mere research."

Who's on first, and why were they put there? This articles goes over the backgrounds of the various people on the President's BioEthics Council...

The President's BioEthics Council

"At its best, the Internet can educate more people faster than any media tool we've ever had. At its worst, it can make people dumber faster than any media tool we've ever had. The lie that 4,000 Jews were warned not to go into the World Trade Center on Sept. 11 was spread entirely over the Internet and is now thoroughly believed in the Muslim world. Because the Internet has an aura of "technology" surrounding it, the uneducated believe information from it even more. They don't realize that the Internet, at its ugliest, is just an open sewer: an electronic conduit for untreated, unfiltered information."

Global Village Idiocy

Making the humouse would be legal under federal law, as long as no taxpayer money was used and certain administrative rules were followed."

A very interesting way of raising questions about bio-ethics and the law. Highly recommended. This sort of thought experiment is exactly the way to make people think...

Patently Provoking a Debate

Einstein had socialist-anarchistic leanings.

New Details Emerge From the Einstein Files

"The court then ruled that the First Amendment was satisfied because the government's purpose was to control the "function" of the software rather than its "content," and that the statute did not ban more speech than necessary to meet its goal of preventing piracy and promoting electronic commerce."

This is similar to the New York decision. The courts are basically coming to the conclusion that its legal to talk about how to circumvent things, and that usually code is speech, but code can be banned, even as speech, if it is functionally easy to use to break the law, and that it is mostly used to break the law, just as its illegal to post credit card numbers to the internet even though this is, technically, speech. This is probably a fair balance on the speech vs. tool question. The problem that this poses for me is if the intent is fair use then this is a fundamentally different sort of behaviour then if the intent is piracy. However, that may not be a consitutional issue, but rather something that is determined on a case by case basis. I wish I had time to read the full decision. I may read it anyway...

EFF Media Release: Judge Rejects Challenge to eBook Case (May 8, 2002)

"WASHINGTON -- Burlington Northern Santa Fe agreed Wednesday to pay $2.2 million to settle charges of illegally testing workers for genetic defects in the government's first case against workplace DNA discrimination. "

Milestone Settlement in DNA Case

The second area in which libertarians have overreached themselves is in biotechnology. ... there are reasons to be skeptical of arguments that say that genetic engineering is just another choice.

Fukuyama raises the specter of September 11th and of society with a genetically engineered class structure as scare tactics to justify the restriction not of the *practice* of genetic engineering, but of the *research* of genetic engineering, something he clearly walks right into with his mention of stem cell research. This *is* the Republican party trying to find a secular argument that allows them to regulate what people are allowed to *think* about.

Do I think its wrong to abort a fetus because of it's sex? Of course I do. I wouldn't mind a law to that effect. It does not follow that research into genetic engineering should be banned. Knowing how is not the same as doing. Furthermore, Fukuyama is more then well aware that it is the distribution of knowledge that most greatly impacts people's relative position in society, and not their genetic makeup. What these people seek to do is place knowledge of biology in a safe that only they are entrusted to open. Fukuyama and Bill Joy are obviously more qualified to safely handle this knowledge then the rest of us. I'm sure they'll use this trust, once won, in the most benevolent manner possible. Yeah, right...

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