Dem says Bush should be waterboarded for charity CNews
A Rhode Island Democratic legislator says he’ll donate $100 to charity for every second former president George W. Bush withstands waterboarding. State Rep. Rod Driver also included former vice-president Dick Cheney and ex-secretary of state Condoleezza Rice in his offer. He sent letters to all three. Bush’s administration allowed the interrogation technique, which simulates drowning, to be used on terror suspects. Driver says that, if Bush is so confident it isn’t torture, he should try it for himself [Comment: Come on Georgey, its for charity.]

FCC’s Warrantless Household Searches Alarm Experts Wired
Got a cell-phone? Wireless router? Remote garage door opener? FCC claims the right to search your house“Anything using RF energy — we have the right to inspect it to make sure it is not causing interference,” says FCC spokesman David Fiske. That includes devices like Wi-Fi routers that use unlicensed spectrum, Fiske says. The FCC claims it derives its warrantless search power from the Communications Act of 1934, though the constitutionality of the claim has gone untested in the courts. That’s largely because the FCC had little to do with average citizens for most of the last 75 years, when home transmitters were largely reserved to ham-radio operators and CB-radio aficionados. But in 2009, nearly every household in the United States has multiple devices that use radio waves and fall under the FCC’s purview, making the commission’s claimed authority ripe for a court challenge. “It is a major stretch beyond case law to assert that authority with respect to a private home, which is at the heart of the Fourth Amendment’s protection against unreasonable search and seizure,” says Electronic Frontier Foundation lawyer Lee Tien. “When it is a private home and when you are talking about an over-powered Wi-Fi antenna — the idea they could just go in is honestly quite bizarre.” George Washington University professor Orin Kerr, a constitutional law expert, also questions the legalilty of the policy. Additional coverage:

Mark Helprin Writer of the book “Digital Barbarism: A Writer’s Manifesto”, Stole From Techdirt Commenters (Using The Logic Of Mark Helprin) TechDirt
… Now, while this might seem like a bit of a slap at Techdirt, I actually agree — wholeheartedly. I certainly hope that no one gets their copyright education solely from any blog, whether it’s written by me or by William Patry. However, it struck me as odd that Lessig specifically called out Techdirt, seeing as I hadn’t even noticed us being mentioned at all in the 1/2 (or so) of the book that I’ve gotten through (and I’ve never spoken to Lessig, nor seen him mention Techdirt in the past). So, I pulled out my copy of the book, and went to look at the endnotes for the first time… and realized that a rather large number of the quotes that Helprin spends his time deriding are pulled from Techdirt. But not from what I wrote… but from the comments (which he refers to, oddly, as “sections”). Now, I’ll be the first to admit that we have all types of folks who show up in the comments — from incredibly intelligent knowledgeable experts in the field of copyright law to interested amateurs to the totally clueless to trolls. To pick and choose a few crazy comments, and position them as if they’re representative of the common views of folks questioning Helprin’s logic, is incredible. Yet, Helprin believes that a random small error (which was actually part of a joke by an Anonymous Coward on Techdirt) gives him proof that all copyright critics are clueless? Even if you consider the “errors” of equal magnitude, we’re talking about an anonymous quick jokey comment vs. a “professional” book by one of the nation’s top authors, from a top publishing house with (one assumes) an editor. Of course, as Lessig then notes, the quoting is fair use — but according to Helprin’s own corn-story description of the importance of never stealing even an ear of corn, any “taking” of one’s words would also be stealing. So, by that reasoning, considering how he quoted (by my count) 12 separate comments from the Techdirt story, one can conclude that Helprin clearly believes he has stolen from the commenters here twelve times. If he’s willing to send us our royalty check, I’ll make sure the money is distributed to our commenters. Mark, we’re waiting! [Comment: I don't think I would read that book even if it was free.]

Social networking sites ‘keep deleted photos’ Canwest
User photographs can still be found on many social networking sites including Facebook after people have deleted them, British researchers said Thursday. The findings by a team from Cambridge University raise questions about the ability of users of the sites to permanently delete potentially embarrassing photographs. The researchers posted photographs on 16 popular websites and noted the web addresses where the images were stored, before deleting them. But researchers said that although the images appeared to have gone, they were still able to find them 30 days later on seven sites, including Facebook, by using the direct web addresses.

BSA Admits Calculated Losses Due to Swedish Software Piracy Entirely Hypothetical Zeropaid
It’s another blow to the studies that are put out by the industry to highlight the problems of piracy – one of the studies published by the Business Software Alliance to highlight the problem in Sweden is apparently “built on flat fees and estimates”. In other words, they effectively gave an educated guess. Will the pirates who believed all along that the copyright industry was making up these statistics on losses due to piracy please raise you hand? A new report in a Swedish news site, IDG, recently reported (Google translation) that officials from the BSA are now admitting that their own statistics shouldn’t be treated seriously or should be treated like a pinch of salt. From the report:…

Howard Berman Looks To Send More Hated US IP Cops Around The Globe TechDirt
… Either way, it should come as little surprise that the Chamber of Commerce is now applauding the fact that Rep. Howard Berman (the Rep from Hollywood, who’s never seen a copyright law he couldn’t make more draconian) is trying to increase the number of US IP cops trolling the world trying to bully and cajole other countries into implementing more draconian copyright rules, no matter how much it goes against their own self interest. The details are hidden in The Foreign Relations Authorization Act…

Lock Up Your Content… And Have All The Traffic Go To Your Competitors TechDirt
Kevin Stapp writes in to highlight a simple fact that has been discussed time and time again: that if a newspaper locks up its content behind a paywall, it will lose a ton of traffic beyond just the regular readers who refuse to pay, because the sites that send you links (and traffic and new readers) will simply point elsewhere. As an example, Kevin points out that with Slashdot’s post about Craigslist suing Henry McMaster, it initially had a paywall-blocked WSJ link… but quickly added a free link from another news source.

Judge Reviewing Pirate Bay Trial Bias Is Removed for Bias Wired
The judge assigned to review whether the trial judge in the Pirate Bay trial was biased has now been removed — for bias, of course.

Russians clone Macs again The Inquirer
Cheeky Russian have started churning out cloned Macs in defiance of Apple messiah Steve Jobs. Apple has failed to gain any ground in Russia because the pragmatic Slavs don’t see the point of not eating for a year to buy an MP3 player.

Computer virus strikes US Marshals, FBI affected Associated Press
Law enforcement computers were struck by a Mystery computer virus Thursday, forcing the FBI and the U.S. Marshals to shut down part of their networks as a precaution. In Thursday’s incident, the Marshals Service shut down its Internet access and some e-mail while staff worked on the problem. The FBI made similar moves to protect its system. [Found via The Inquirer]

“Worlds oldest Blogger” dies The Inquirer
The world’s oldest blogger, Spanish great-grandmother Maria Amelia Lopez, who had a global following, has died at the age of 97. According to the AP, her first post on December 23, 2006 said that her grandson, who is very stingy, gave her a blog for her birthday.

Details of Sky’s music download service leak The Register
Details of BSkyB’s long awaited music collaboration with Vivendi-owned Universal Music are circulating, and have seeped into our inbox. The joint venture, between the world’s biggest record label and the powerful media company which was announced with much fanfare last summer, will be branded “Sky Songs”. According to documentation seen by El Reg, four tiers of service will be offered – each offering unlimited streaming plus a bundle of a la carte downloads. The lowest tier of £4.99 per month makes five tracks available, while the highest permits 20 downloads or two complete albumsfor £11.99. Labels will be paid regardless of whether subscribers “redeem” the offer. [Comment: oh boy, what a deal!]

Marc – p2pnet

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May, 2009