] Cary Sherman, president of the RIAA said that HR 107
] would allow the sale of hacking tools that would bust
] through the Digital Rights Management of iTunes and other
] services if the hacker is using the copies for
] "non-infringing purposes."
]
] His view was that there is no way to assure that any tool
] is only used for non-infringing purposes and that the
] only way to make this possible was to impose a tech
] mandate for copy controls, which HR 107 does not contain.
] And he went on to say that it is impossible to create a
] technology that will permit "fair uses" while prohibiting
] other uses.

How disconnected from reality is the RIAA? Its seems if something *could* be used in an unlawful way, we must control and/or restrict it.

[ As far as they're concerned, yeah, that's pretty much right. And he's also correct that there is no way to permit fair uses and prohibit illegal ones with the same technology. So the argument boils down to : Do my rights as a consumer trump their rights as producers? The answer has to be yes, and in a relatively free market, that's exactly the case. I'm not making a value judgement here, or I'm trying not to, but I think the US generally tries to be a free-market economy, and that generally means that it's up to businesses to ensure that their product is viable.

Ultimately, in the music industry, it may well be all of us who suffer the worst, because in the absense of any compensation mechanism, far fewer people will bother to pick up a guitar and create. But then, there's a decent argument that rarifying the landscape of professional musicians wouldn't be all bad, by the way, so maybe a post-music-industry world would be just as artistic as the current one, or more so, and things would be better as people compensate, directly, the artists that most move them.

I guess the point though is that the content industries may be fucked, and there may not be a solution for them in this world. The people need to feel that what they're getting is worth what they're paying, otherwise they won't do it.

No matter what, broaching this topic you get into deep discussions about how people don't have the long view to see that supporting musicians now keeps them around in the future, or about how most of the money made from music is concentrated in a relatively miniscule percentage of the whole (and not the most skillful percentage either).

I still think that in this economy, it's not right for laws and regulations to unduly cripple my computer so that the content producers can sell me movies that I probably don't even want to see. And for the record, I'm not anti-drm. I think Apple's Fairplay is fine. I bought it, so i can play it. I can authorize my other computers to play it across the network, and I can burn it onto a CD and re-rip it if I want to play it on my TiVo or non-apple player. As a consumer, this works great for me -- far better than Kazaa or whatever could hope to be.

I'd like to think that ultimately the dust will settle and a compromise will be found... ideally one in which marketing is a minimal factor and in which the artist gets a much greater cut of the profit. Certainly an issue to keep watch on... and write your congressmonkey if it's on debate, i suppose. -k]

Congress hears DMCA testimony | The Register

] NOW THAT Google's IPO is running, the company is on the
] verge of being sued by the family of a man who invented
] the word 'Googol' to describe a very big number.
]...
] [Peri Fliecher, great-neice of googol inventor Kasner]
] does not want cash just the opportunity to operate as
] insiders for the IPO.

[ What? And that is useful for what reason besides money?

I guess I've really never liked the idea of being able to invent words in this way. Like Phil Jackson and "threepeat". Anyway, now that it's public, I imagine Google will give them some money and bury the issue. Seems pretty silly to me. -k]

Googol may sue Google

Robert Wright, author of Nonzero, writes in the LA Times.

The revolution of grass-roots digital empowerment will change the nature of war and the place of war in American foreign policy.

Some people who see the Abu Ghraib scandal as technologically driven are suggesting technological reforms. At one level, Rumsfeld grasps the power of digital technology. It was because our troops were digitally empowered that we needed so few of them.

But this cuts both ways. Once you figure technology into both sides of the ledger, war looks different.

[ I continue to like Wright's way of thinking... he gives depth and structure to concepts I merely felt intuitively or thought about at a low level. I can't read this entire article because it's a reg-only site and google can't get me a cached version, but from the excerpt alone, I feel confident in agreeing with it, at least in sum.

I think we'll see a soft revolution in the way people engage government and politics. Multi-tiered topical forums will grow in relevance, and the populace will convey it's wishes in vast electronic versions of congress or parliament. Representation can become more direct.

Of course, all this assumes the infrastructure can be built in a fault-tolerant way... one which minimizes the ability of any one group or faction to take over the network surrepeticiously.

Still, I think it can come, assuming we don't run out of energy first. -k]

Creating a New Picture of War, Pixel by Pixel

] Indian stocks plunged as much as 17 percent on Monday in
] their biggest ever intra-day drop in a frenzied sell-off
] on signs that a new government dependent on leftist
] support will struggle to push through economic reforms.
]
] The market turmoil forced the Reserve Bank of India to
] make an emergency statement, reassuring investors that it
] would intervene if necessary to make sure the banking
] system and foreign exchange market worked smoothly.
]
]
] The comments helped drag markets off session lows, but
] stocks still ended down 11.1 percent on the day, at their
] lowest since October, with $27 billion of investor wealth
] wiped out.
] ...
] Indian markets have been heading down for three weeks
] since exit polls first indicated the pro-reform Bharatiya
] Janata Party-led (BJP) government may not return. Including
] Monday's plunge, share markets have lost some $75 billion
] since then.

[ Ouch. -k]

Forbes.com: WRAPUP 3-Indian stocks crash on fears left may stall reforms

started with a scam, and turned into the greatest prank ever.
You can read about it all in the detailed story
The P-P-P-Powerbook

[ Fuck yeah... it's a little long, but lots of pix, so doesn't take much time... pretty rad vengeance. -k]

Scamming the Scammer

] Scientists have created a miniature medical computer out
] of DNA that can detect cancer genes in a test tube and
] respond by releasing a drug. Proving what had been only a
] concept, the feat offers a vision of how medicine might
] look in the future.

[ NANOTECH! well, we're getting there, slowly... -k]

Injectable Medibots: Programmable DNA could diagnose and treat cancer: Science News Online, May 1, 2004

] The Washington think tank responsible for 'Linux aids
] terrorism' claims two years ago is at it again. The
] Alexis de Tocqueville Institution is now casting doubt on
] Linus Torvalds' authorship of Linux, and implying that
] it's a knock-off of Unix.

Can we say "libel?"

[ Leave it to the register to come up with exactly the right headline... just dripping with that british sarcasm. Anyway, this report is a huge load of crap... tailored perfectly to come out just in time to scare a few more fools out of their OSS plans. And they better get it out before IBM finally and definitively smacks SCO into utter oblivion and lays down the law, literally, on the validity of the code in Linux. Or at least, that's what seems likely at present.

I'd love to see the AdTI jackasses get pasted for defamation tho, that'd be great. -k]

Alien puppet Linus swiped Linux from SCO, says balanced study

They are cute. They are happy. And they bleed. Best Flash Ever.

[ Many days at my old tech support job were brightened by some happy tree friends action... -k]

Happy Tree Friends

] Field 13.02.2004
]
] 1301 fluorescent light tubes powered by the electro
] magnetic field emitted from the overhead powerlines.

wow. this is really cool. I saw this first in Smithsonian magazine-- artist who works in the physics department at the Univ. of Bristol planted 1301 unwired fluorescent lights into the ground underneath high-power transmission lines. Go read the press section of the site as well. he has done some other neat things, as documented on the site, as well.

[ Yeah, i saw this a while back too... very very cool... -k]

Richard Box- Archive

] FARGO, North Dakota (AP) -- A man who said he was fed up
] with his cellular phone service went to a Fargo mall and
] started hurling phones across a store, striking an
] employee and causing more than $2,000 in damage,
] authorities said.

Hahaha! Fargo! Go figure! Who would think there'd be crappy phone service in Fargo?!

At least he had sense enough to protect his eyes.

[ HA! Awesome...

Reminds me, a little, of the time ryan got so damn fed up with the cordless phone that he opened the front door of our apartment and hurled it to the ground... almost made it to the parking lot. We had to buy a new phone, which I guess is good since that one sucked so bad. -k]

CNN.com - Man angry at Verizon hurls phones - May 14, 2004