response 3 of 154:

Apr 4 14:38 UTC 2003

The Norwegian government is appealing the aquittal of DeCSS writer Jon
Lech Johansen.  This is thought to be due to pressure from the MPAA;
they really need this legal precident to go the "right way". 
Prosecution is apparently complicated a bit by Norway's lack of anything
like the US's DMCA.  I'm not clear on exactly what the formal charges
are, mostly because I can't read Norwegian.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/30062.html


Also, an article on Security Focus about the FBI lobbying for "plug and
play" wiretapping capability on VoIP services and broadband Internet
connections, much like phone companies are currently legally required to
supply for ordinary phone service:

http://www.securityfocus.com/news/3466

response 5 of 154:

Apr 4 21:09 UTC 2003

*shrug* From all the long discussion, that's really difficult to say, 
although it looks like the RIAA will try anything it can.

resp:2 yes, two heavyweights going into the ring.. this could be 
interesting.

Really, the trend that I seem to consistently see is that the 
teenagers and young adults are doing the heavy p2p file sharing, and 
the middle-aged adults are the ones who are still buying music.  I 
really don't see too many exceptions.

I am among the pirates.  I can't afford to buy many CDs nowadays and 
really not at today's prices.  I don't figure to be a large threat-- 
most of my clips are more than 3 years old, quite a few are much older 
than that, and I know a few are out of publication as far as I know.  
That's not meant to be a justification, but my tastes are pretty 
electic and not at all in line with what is currently considered 
mainstream, period.  They're not unusual-- most were popular at one 
point-- but they don't fit into neat patterns.

response 7 of 154:

Apr 6 16:03 UTC 2003

According to /. this student wasn't even sharing files, just created a program
to index files on a network....the RIAA is full of idiots.

response 9 of 154:

Apr 7 15:57 UTC 2003

Incidentally, when I was at Tech the most common way to find movies and
songs on the dorm network was just to take a walk through Network
Neighborhood.  It wasn't always a beautiful day in the Neighborhood --
MS Windows networking is incredibly unstable when you have a several
hundred machines on one subnet -- but you usually found some pretty good
caches of stuff.  I wonder if the University could be sued for running a
WINS server, since it facilitated this kind of thing?

response 11 of 154:

Apr 7 16:51 UTC 2003

Re 8.  A jury verdict may be a precedent operationally, but juries do not
have the power to set legal precedent.

response 13 of 154:

Apr 7 20:26 UTC 2003

(Incidentally, I'm not sure how it compares to Windows 98, but Windows
2000 is definately faster than NT 4.0, which is what it was intended to
replace.)

response 15 of 154:

Apr 8 01:30 UTC 2003

I didn't say it was faster than 95.  My experience is that it's faster
than NT 4 on the same hardware, though.

95 is pretty fast until it chews itself up, which it does with amazing
regularity.

response 17 of 154:

Apr 8 15:18 UTC 2003

"Do Not Make Illegal Copies Of This Product From An Illegal Monopoly."

response 19 of 154:

Apr 10 05:39 UTC 2003

Did you like the 80s band The Smithereens?  Do you want to be a
patron of the arts?   Then Smithereens bandleader Pat DiNizio has
an offer for you!

DiNizio is seeking 100 subscribers, at $1200 each, for a series of
limited edition CD releases.  Subscribers will get quantities to
share with families and friends.

Each patron will also get a private house concert by DiNizio to
benefit a favorite charity.

In the article, DiNizio says this is an attempt to build a new
business model for the current file-sharing environment.

http://www.billboard.com/bb/daily/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=185906
6

http://www.patdinizio.com/
    DiNizio's own website goes on at length about his new business model.

(I'm not willing to go to $1200 for anybody, but I can see this
 tempting me if the numbers shift -- say $100 from 1000 people.
 But divided among members of a band, it's not that much, is it?)

response 21 of 154:

Apr 10 19:42 UTC 2003

I seem to remember a similar story a few years back.  Momus got sued for
making fun of Wendy Carlos and asked people to help subsidize his court costs.
Wasn't the reward having a track on his next album named after you?  

I'm curious whether that $1200 would count as tax-deductible, since it's going
to fund a concert whose proceeds go to charity.  If it does, then this seems
like a win/win situation for the donors: the same tax writeoff they'd get by
donating the $1200 straight to charity, plus entertainment and a whole
shitload of CDs.  (The ideal scenario, I guess, would be if the $1200 was
tax-deductible _and_ the house concert netted more than a $1200 profit to give
away.  Then the donor, the band _and_ the charity all come out better off.
I have no idea if that's realistic or not, but it's probably not.  If you can
fit 50 people in your living room, you'd still need to make $240 off of each
of them to "break even.")

But I digress.  It's a cool idea regardless, and I would definitely like to
see it work, if only out of curiousity.  It would be interesting to see how
it would change the music business if this sort of scheme caught on.

response 23 of 154:

Apr 11 13:34 UTC 2003

A federal judge has dismissed Ben Edelman's application for permission
to reverse-engineer the list of blocked websites from N2H2's filtering
software.  The software is often used to comply with government
requirements that libraries filter Internet content, and Ben (a Harvard
Law student and online activist) had wanted to investigate its accuracy.
 N2H2 claimed this would violate their rights under the DMCA, and U.S.
District Judge Richard Sterns upheld their claim, saying "There is no
plausibly protected constitutional interest Edelman can assert that
outweighs N2H2's right to protect its copyrighted material from an
invasive and destructive trespass."

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/30196.html

response 25 of 154:

Apr 11 17:30 UTC 2003

Right, the intersection of this ruling on the DMCA and the rules on
library/school internet filtering goes like this:

1)  Schools and libraries are required to install this product to 
    restrict what may be read on the internet.
2)  It is illegal to determine what you are not being allowed to read.