] We have ideals too. We believe in a democtatic nation,
] where greatness is earned thru respect and criticims,
] where there's a moral compact where you can criticize
] without permission. A moral imperative that truth
] requires freedom. A duty, as the most powerful and
] threating nation, to build this freedom back into our
] culture. The honor of our nation has been speaking
] without calling a lawyer; the integrity of meaning what
] you say. We need to get this freedom back.
]
] As we threaten the world with extremism, it is our duty
] to reclaim the space where we can build a culture that
] truly respects those ideals.
]
] [standing ovation]

Lawrence Lessig's SXSW Keynote (Aaron Swartz: The Weblog)

] A talk with cyber-rights pioneer John Perry Barlow about
] Digital Restrictions Management and the future of human
] knowledge

Another great Barlow interview.

Wrapped up in Crypto Bottles

] This was, a Microsoft rep told Joe, "just a mistake." It
] is however perfectly legal. So, Neowin was blacked out
] and lost its live SQL database along the way without any
] kind of due process, without being informed of the
] alleged offence, and without any right of appeal. As we
] say, in the wonderful world we now live in this is now
] perfectly legal, and could happen to just about any site.
] And that, we submit, is the point.

The Register - MS shuts down site over P2P leak

] Replacing a car's transmission could become more
] expensive if automakers decide to embed auto parts with
] computer chips protected under a controversial copyright
] law.
]
] That's just one scenario critics of the Digital
] Millennium Copyright Act envision if the law is
] interpreted to include a broad range of digital devices
] beyond the scope originally envisioned by legislators.

Wired News: Lexmark: New Fuel for DMCA Foes

] IN A TYPICALLY DEFIANT move by the warez scene, no sooner
] does the US Department of Justice manage to shut down a
] site, it simply pops up somewhere else. Isonews had its
] collar felt yesterday with the DoJ promising to use the
] site to preach an anti-piracy message. The site simply
] upped and moved to the ironically named StoleMy.Com

The War on Technology rages on...

Black markets are nearly impossible to truly take down. Whether its drugs, warez, or information, they heal fast. Its going to be interesting to see how the DOJ reacts to this. If they go on a spree taking down web sites, its going to get nasty. It will just wind up being another technology arms race. Especially in regard to the warez scene. Those folks pride themselves on their ability to make information flow, and flow under the radar of anyone looking. If it comes down to the warez folks against the DOJ, the warez folks will win consistantally. They understand the network and how to use it. Both the data network, and the social network of people that make it all happen. I've always been fairly suprised by the organization inherent in that community. It may not wind up being "a search engine query away", but it will be available, and the people who use it regularly will know right where to find it.

Xbox pirate site torpedoed by DoJ is back online

The PHP-Nuke people mail the FSF, the FSF confirms that they are 'right' and Lawmeme is wrong.. huh. Doesn't this mean that any given linux system should have to display copyright notices to the user all the time?

I wonder if they'll send me a cease-and-desist for quoting their post without appending a copyright notice. . .

quoted:
===

MissS writes "Awhile back, questions were raised as to whether or not the copyright notice at the bottom of PHPNuke created pages could be removed. Now there is an answer to this question, straight from the GNU people.

The GNU website states that if you have any questions concerning licensing, you can simply email them for clarification. That is exactly what I did and what follows is my email to them...

(My email written to licensing@gnu.org on 9/19/2002 with their response indicated by '---gt'):

PHP-Nuke - PHP-Nuke GPL Copyright Removal Question Finally Solved

See, even open source authors can be dicks about copyright! (As if there were any doubt.. ;P)

quoted:
===

Lawmeme operates its website using PHP-Nuke, a GNU/GPL application used to maintain blogs. Ever since our inception, Lawmeme has used PHP-Nuke (since version 5) because it is rich in features, fast, and supported by the open-source community. However, some PHP- Nuke users and the author appear to have become angry at Lawmeme because we have removed a copyright notice from the footer of the page template.

PHP-Nuke's default setting is to display the following notice at the bottom of each page that it generates:

Web site engine's code is Copyright © 2002 by PHP-Nuke. All Rights Reserved. PHP-Nuke is Free Software released under the GNU/GPL license.

This default setting wasn't always so. When Lawmeme originally used PHP-Nuke, the footer was fully customizable via the administrator's interface. Naturally, we changed the footer to meet our site's needs. As PHP-Nuke was found to have numerous cross-site scripting vulnerabilities, we began to upgrade to the most recent versions of PHP-Nuke. With every upgrade came new features, and after heavily modifying PHP-Nuke's code to fit our needs, some of the upgrade scripts didn't work correctly. In fact, the most recent upgrade, where configuration settings are stored in a database, never copied the copyright statement.

Read on for more details.

LawMeme: Feature - PHP-Nuke's Copyright Notice

NOTE: The ISO news servers are still up, but currently have no nameservice. As soon as they do, I have a hunch the non-American servers will be back online, with nameservice. How pointless..

quoted:
===
WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Justice Department said on Wednesday it had seized a website that offered information on bootlegged video games and movies, but the site remained available to many Internet users.

The Justice Department said it had taken over the Iso News site after its owner pleaded guilty to selling computer chips that would enable users to play bootleg video games on Microsoft Xbox consoles.

Some visitors to the site found a warning against copyright infringement and a link to the Justice Department's computer-crime division, but others were able to reach a version of the original site, which serves as a meeting place for Internet users.

Wired News: Government Fails to Block Bootleg Site

] The United States assumed control of the domain name and
] website this week. Individuals who now visit www.iSONEWS.com
] will no longer find the latest news on new pirated releases
] by illegal software piracy (or "warez") groups. Instead, they
] will view information about the case of United States v. Rocci,
] as well as general information about copyright infringement and
] the criminal prosecution of individuals engaged in online
] piracy. In addition to this information, the site now contains
] links to the website of the Department of Justice's Computer
] Crime and Intellectual Property Section, www.cybercrime.gov,
] which contains further information on the Department's
] criminal anti-piracy efforts.

Coming next week.. High Times shut down.. Subscribers will be mailed pamplets about the War on Drugs.

#118: 02-26-03 JUSTICE DEPARTMENT SEIZES TOP INTERNET SITE INVOLVED IN COPYRIGHT PIRACY

] Below are some single frame snapshots captured February
] 15, 2003. The source station was KSBW-DT, channel 10 (195
] MHz), Salinas, CA. The program was "Law and Order", and
] the recording was made between 8 and 9 PM Pacific
] Standard Time.
]
] Samples were recorded to disk in real time at 20M
] samples/second using the mc4020-read-adc program provided
] with the GNU Radio MC4020 A/D card driver. Once the
] samples were on disk, they were processed using the GNU
] Radio HDTV receiver, atsc_rx. The output of atsc_rx is an
] MPEG transport stream consisting of a sequence of
] 188-byte packets. The MPEG tranport stream was then fed
] into the Xine MPEG player and displayed. The 2730 x 1088
] .png files were generated from within Xine.

Noticed this on BoingBoing. I think they are correct in their assumption that this is going to bring down some heat on the GNU Radio folks. They didn't do anything wrong, but Hollywood dosen't want this. They want strict control of coping in regard to HDTV. They are not going to get it.

The War on Technology rages on..

GNU Radio - HDTV decoding