The trade group sent a wake-up call to the photofinishing industry when, in 1999, it sued Kmart Corp., alleging that the discount store violated federal copyright law by copying images without the permission of the copyright owners.

In 2000, Kmart settled the case by paying $100,000 and agreeing to implement procedures to guard against the unlawful copying of professional photos.

...

Watson said the manager of the photo department "felt" that three of the photos were possibly taken professionally. "I offered to sign anything, but there was just no way around it for them," Watson said. "They were not going to print them.

Decius Writes:
Man, I hate this crap. People that work behind the counter at Kinkos and Walmart do not understand copyright law and they are not well equiped to make spot judgements about what is and is not illegal. The result is that copyright enforcement consists of "I think you look like a punk kid so I'm not going to copy this." As a rule, I don't use Kinkos anymore because everytime I go in there I have some busybody trying to prevent me from doing business with them.

The absolute most annoying case was when I was required (by law) to make color photocopies of a government ID and the idiot at Kinkos insisted that I was commiting a crime and threatened to call the police.

There is a fundamental policy flaw in this, but I'm not sure where to pin it. The government has never required cash register clerks at these outlets to act as judge, jury, and executioner for copyright law. These companies have gotten sued by copyright owners who were not satisfied with actually suing the person who violated their copyright, but wanted to go after someone with big pockets (very honorable, indeed). The companies settled, partially because its cheaper then a suit, and partially because they didn't have the forsight to go through with a suit.

There ought to be a law which limits the liability of printing services.

SignOnSanDiego.com - Snap judgments

We show that network theory, combined with the analysis of roll-call votes using singular value decomposition, successfully uncovers political and organizational correlations between committees in the House.

A network analysis of committees in the US House of Representatives [PDF]

Centrist liberal Milblogger (yeah, there are some) Alexander the Average has done a lot of good stuff. His 2-part set of posts exploring the aftermath of nuclear terrorism is highly recommended.

Some MemeStreamers will find this up their alley. I'm memeing a blog posting of this series because its two parts and they've provided one convenient permalink for it.

Winds of Change.NET: Exploring the Impact of Nuclear Terrorism

The system of bracket quotations has been killed. Decius has cut the site over to using blockquote tags, and the italics that were popular early in the history of the site.

Text enclosed in "blockquote" tags, or "bq" for short, look like this!

We have not, and won't convert all of the old posts in the system. Such a process is fraught with peril. Going forward, things will look nicer. In a few weeks you won't even recall the old quoting system.

As always, let us know if there are any problems.

MemeStreams Update: Death to bracket quotes!

... "Never, ever talk to the federal government."

] Thomas Campbell Butler, at 63 years of age, is completing
] the 1st year of a 2-year sentence in federal prison,
] following an investigation and trial that was initiated
] after he voluntarily reported that he believed vials
] containing _Yersinia pestis_ were missing from his
] laboratory at Texas Tech University. We take this
] opportunity to remind the infectious diseases community
] of the plight of our esteemed colleague, whose career and
] family have, as a result of his efforts to protect us
] from infection by this organism, paid a price from which
] they will never recover.

The FBI sends a strong message to the scientific community...

Several annoyances with the threads have been repaired:

1. Previously the URL was displayed at the top of a thread. This made the thread hard to read in browsers that will not wrap long lines of unbroken text. The URL has been replaced with its title.

2. The redundant post cleaner is now smarter, and it lists the names of the people whose posts were cleaned at the bottom of the thread.

3. A small UI change was made to make the thread look more like a thread. This change was applied to the memebox as well. In particular, the sender's name was moved to the top. In a discussion you want to see the person's name first.

Another MemeStreams Update

Decius just posted a code update, which clears up some minor annoyances with the recommend function.

1. Escapped unicode characters in html selected by the bookmarklet should now be handled properly.

2. When you click recommend in the site there is no longer a pop-up.

3. You can now include HREF links in your posts. Standard html format.

Let me know if there are any problems.

MemeStreams Update

] If you want to appreciate how corrosive Guantánamo has
] become for America's standing abroad, don't read the Arab
] press. Don't read the Pakistani press. Don't read the
] Afghan press. Hop over here to London or go online and
] just read the British press! See what our closest allies
] are saying about Gitmo. And when you get done with that,
] read the Australian press and the Canadian press and the
] German press.

] Husain Haqqani, a thoughtful Pakistani scholar now
] teaching at Boston University, remarked to me: "When
] people like myself say American values must be emulated
] and America is a bastion of freedom, we get Guantánamo
] Bay thrown in our faces. When we talk about the America
] of Jefferson and Hamilton, people back home say to us:
] 'That is not the America we are dealing with. We are
] dealing with the America of imprisonment without trial.'"

Friedman is pissed about Guantánamo Bay. Enjoy your NYT Op-Ed while you still can..

Just Shut It Down - New York Times

] The FBI ran a sting where they posed as a electronic
] recycling company eager to get state law changed to
] funnel business their way.

A similar sting was under consideration in New Jersey, until the FBI realized there would be no state government left afterward.

Tennessee Senators arrested by the FBI!

Lets hope that the Illinois Senate comes off looking really stupid.

] The measure approved Thursday would require store owners
] to determine which games are too violent or sexually
] explicit for anyone under 18. Anyone selling them to a
] minor could be fined.

Brilliant!

This is just golden:

] The sponsor, Sen. Deanna Demuzio, denied the measure
] would interfere with free speech rights.
]
] "Video games are not art or media," she said. "They are
] simulations, not all that different from the simulations
] used by the U.S. military in preparation for war."

But the saddest thing in this entire article is:
] "I'm going to vote for this bill, but I'm voting for it
] for one reason: because this is a political bill,"
] said Sen. Mike Jacobs. "If I vote against it, it will
] show up in a campaign mail piece

Illinois Senate OKs Video Game Restrictions