Spotify ties make Pirate Bay judge bias: court The Local
A Swedish court ruled on Tuesday that a lay judge set to hear the next phase of the Pirate Bay trial is unsuitable for the job because he works for the Spotify digital music service. The Svea Court of Appeal ruled that the man`s employment as a product developer at Spotify and his ownership of stock options in the company constituted a conflict of interest for the appeal phase of the Pirate Bay trial. The court also cited the fact that some of record companies that are party to the case are partial owners of Spotify as additional grounds for their ruling. The court ruled further that the outcome of the Pirate Bay trial was of obvious interest to parties involved in Spotify`s line of business.

Facebook reinstates Playboy model Sun Media
Anissa Holmes, the Playboy model who had her personal profile shut down by Facebook, and CFRB host Ryan Doyle, whose profile was revoked after he interviewed Holmes on air, have both been reinstated on the popular social-networking site. Holmes, 28, and Doyle, 32, got word on Friday from Facebook that their profiles were back up and running after stories about their Facebook deletions in The Sun led to TV coverage as well. Holmes’ ordeal with the social networking site was first profiled in the Toronto Sun earlier this month. Doyle, who joked on air after interviewing Holmes on his Sept. 18 show that he might be next to have his profile revoked, saw his profile shut down four days later.

Grandmother Arrested For Buying Cold Medicine Twice In One Week Consumerist
Last March, Sally Harpold bought a box of Zyrtec-D cold medicine for her husband, then a few days later bought a box of Mucinex-D cold medicine for her grown daughter. That put her over the limit for how much pseudoephedrine-laced cold meds you can buy in a week in her small Indiana town, so she was arrested along with 16 other potential meth makers earlier this month. Her county has the unfortunate distinction of being the fifth-largest producer of meth in Indiana, despite being the 12-smallest county in the state, which may help explain the law enforcement overkill to some degree. The Tribune-Star notes that pharmacies in the area post a “Meth Watch” sign “alerting customers that their purchases of drugs containing ephedrine and pseudoephedrine are being monitored,” but we’re not sure whether Harpold paid attention or knew about the 7-day limit.

American Girl’s Homeless Doll: “Gwen” Hits Market At $95 Huffington Post
There’s a fine line between advocacy and, well, poor taste. The ever-popular American Girls brand has released a controversial new doll named “Gwen,” a character who’s actually homeless.CBS sent correspondent Hattie Kauffman to an L.A. shelter to gather some reaction to the doll: [One homeless advocate] observed to Kauffman that she finds “the whole concept to be extremely disturbing. It’s not a doll I would ever buy for a child.” There are between 7,000 and 10,000 homeless children in L.A. alone, Kauffman notes, and it’s doubtful many, if any, could afford Gwen’s $95 price tag. [Only in America ...?]

End in site for Yugoslav domains BBC
Websites using the .yu domain extension will cease to be available online from 30 September. The extension – assigned to the former Republic of Yugoslavia – has been replaced by .rs (for Serbia) and .me (for Montenegro). Icann – which oversees the assigning of top-level domain names – allowed extra time for sites to make the transition before removing the .yu extension. It is thought up to 4,000 websites have still not migrated to a new domain.

Wanted: Home Computers to Join in Research on Artificial Life New York Times
In October, a small team of Silicon Valley researchers plans to turn software originally designed to search for evidence of extraterrestrial life to the task of looking for evidence of artificial life generated on a cluster of high-performance computers, The effort, dubbed the EvoGrid, is the brainchild and doctoral dissertation topic of Bruce Damer, a Silicon Valley computer scientist who develops simulation software for NASA at a company, Digital Space, based in Santa Cruz, Calif. Mr. Damer and his chief engineer, Peter Newman, are modeling their effort after the SETI@Home project, which was started by the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, or SETI, program to make use of hundreds of thousands of Internet-connected computers in homes and offices. The project turned these small computers into a vast supercomputer by using pattern recognition software on individual computers to sift through a vast amount of data to look for evidence of faint signals from civilizations elsewhere in the cosmos.

EFF Supports New Bill to Repeal Telco Immunity EFF
Yesterday, four US Senators led by Senator Chris Dodd announced plans to introduce “The Retroactive Immunity Repeal Act”. That bill, endorsed by EFF, would repeal the law that Congress passed last summer granting immunity to phone companies that illegally assist in domestic spying by US intelligence agencies, and would revive EFF`s recently dismissed lawsuit against AT&T for its collaboration in the NSA`s warrantless wiretapping program.

Who Is the Poorest of Them All in 2009? It’s Still Nursing Program Students studentawards.com
The new school year is underway and for the second year running, of nine faculties surveyed by www.studentawards.com, it’s once again Canadian Nursing students who are starting the school year as ‘poorest of them all’. In fact, up to 91% of Nursing students will have less than $5,000 at the start of the school year, up from 77% in 2008. Following closely are those studying: Business; English; Education; Humanities; Social Sciences; Sciences; and, Engineering. As was the case in 2008, all faculties report one year of college or university will cost them between $10,000 and $20,000. It’s not surprising, then, that up to 76% of the 1,200 students surveyed across Canada this fall said they will borrow money to complete their education.

Press regulator hints at less privacy protection for publicity-seeking celebs OUT-LAW News
The [UK] Press Complaints Commission (PCC) will take into account how much of a celebrity’s private life they have chosen to expose in the past when ruling on new allegations of invasion of privacy, it has said. The PCC, which is a voluntary industry self-regulatory body, has published changes to its voluntary Code of Conduct which governs most national newspapers’ behaviour.In the section on privacy the PCC has added a caveat which could undermine some celebrities’ rights to take action under the Code. It implies that celebrities who choose to expose parts of their private lives will have less protection from the Code. The Code previously said: “Editors will be expected to justify intrusions into any individual’s private life without consent”. That section now continues: “Account will be taken of the complainant’s own public disclosures of information”. The PCC said that the rule change simply made clear the approach it had taken in the past. “When considering complaints of alleged intrusions into privacy the PCC has traditionally had regard for any relevant previous disclosures by the complainant. That has now been codified,” said Ian Beales, secretary of the PCC’s Code Committee.

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September, 2009

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