Lots to write about, but it’s all too long. Maybe I just shouldn’t explain and just provide links. Naw.

In an especially sneaky move, the Rave Act has been reintroduced in Congress. Under another name. Buried in S. 22, a popular omnibus domestic security bill proposed by Democratic Senator Tom Daschle. So what, you don’t go to raves, right? Somehow it has become my responsibility to make sure that tenants living on my property don’t do drugs. Of course it would be an illegal invasion of privacy for me to try to find out if they’rebreaking the law;they are entitled to their privacy and I can’t just show up at their door and demand to know what they’re doing.

Here is one take on this portion of the bill:

The RAVE Act unfairly punishes businessmen and women for the crimes of their customers. The federal government can’t even keep drugs out of its own schools and prisons, yet it seeks to punish business owners for failing to keep people from carrying drugs onto their property. It is a danger to innocent businessmen and women, especially restaurant and nightclub owners, concert promoters, landlords, and real estate managers. Section 4 of the bill goes so far as to allow the federal government to charge property owners civilly, thus allowing prosecutors to fine property owners $250,000 (and put them out of business) without having to meet the higher standard of proof in criminal cases that is needed to protect innocent people.

The “crack house” provisions would also make it a federal crime to temporarily use a place for the purpose of using any illegal drug. Thus, anyone who used drugs in their own home or threw an event (such as a party or barbecue) in which one or more of their guests used drugs could potentially face a $250,000 fine and years in federal prison. The provisions also effectively makes it a federal crime to rent property to medical marijuana patients and their caregivers, giving the federal government a new weapon in its war on AIDS and cancer patients that use marijuana to relieve their suffering.

For the point-by-point analysis, go here.

The name of the bill is the “Justice Enhancement and Domestic Security Act of 2003“. It covers everything from terrorism to a national Amber Alert system to telemarketing fraud. There ought to be a law against this type of legislation — the type that makes lawmakers look bad if they don’t support it because of some of the popular sections, but makes it easy to pass questionable things because they won’t be noticed.

[ChoicePoint] provided county electoral boards with a list of convicted felons to be used in purging voting lists during the last presidential election. Unfortunately, the state was Florida, the list was wildly inaccurate, and an estimated 8,000 citizens, many of them African-Americans, were deprived of their right to vote in the election — 15 times George Bush’s margin of victory over Al Gore. (source: http://www.choicepoint.net/news/gatrend.html)

What would happen if you woke up living in a quasi-police state? Since when did our Constitution become the problem rather than the answer? Professor Jonathan Turley writes in the L.A. Times about how once-guaranteed rights are now being scapegoated as threats to our security. (LA Times website requires free registration.)

GeoURL is a location-to-URL reverse directory. This will allow you to find URLs by their proximity to a given location. Find your neighbor’s blog, perhaps, or the web page of the restaurants near you.

There is isn’t much near me yet.

In the aftermath of September 11, freedom of speech has been under attack. Political cartoonists are not immune. In some cities cartoonists have been fired or lost freelance jobs because of cartoons critical of U.S. policy or for using “wrong” metaphors. Even nationally-known artists, such as Boondocks cartoonist Arron McGruder and Ted Rall have been censored or repudiated.

It is now posted at the ACLU’s US Patriot Art.

Unintended Consequences: Four Years under the DMCA is a very lengthy summary of the ways the DMCA has been used and misused. Examples include trying to eliminate aftermarket laser printer toner vendors, stopping a hobbyist who developed custom programs for Sony’s Aibo robotic “pet” dog from freely distributing the programs, and the effect that fear of DMCA lawsuits is having on research and public discussions.

Update May 2017: The original link to Four Years under… no longer exists, so I replaced it with the Five Years link. A more recent one is https://www.eff.org/wp/unintended-consequences-under-dmca. It looks like they gave up in 2010.

• Spybots code-named MicroStar are being developed that will have a six-inch wingspan, weigh only 86 grams, fly at 500 feet, and will use infrared and video sensors.
• Last week the Washington Post reported that the federal government may permit unmanned aircraft to fly above the United States. “I believe that the potential applications for this technology in the area of homeland defense are quite compelling,” said Sen. John Warner, added that the drones could be used by domestic police agencies.
• Last week, the Associated Press reported that an Oregon state task force wants a law requiring all cars to sport GPS receivers and recorders. The stated purpose: To measure how far you drive and calculate how much you owe in road taxes.
• In October, police in one Colorado county started pressuring businesses to require fingerprints when customers make purchases with checks or credit cards. Police in Arlington, Texas are asking businesses to participate in a similar program.
• The Electronic Privacy Information Center used the Freedom of Information Act in August 2001 to obtain government documents that talked about reading air travelers’ minds and identifying suspicious thoughts.

In September, the five top U.S. distributors of compact discs and three large music retailers agreed to pay $143 million in cash and CDs to settle allegations they cheated consumers by fixing prices. Part of the settlement, about $44 million in cash, is earmarked to pay customers who bought CDs between 1995 and 2000 cash:  from $5 to $20, depending on how many people wind up dividing the money.  But by the end of December, only about 30,000 people nationwide had applied for a piece of the pie at the settlement’s website.

Phobos’ list of the Top 100 SF Books is much more along the lines of what I would list than the Top 100 Sci-Fi Books. The later, which is voted on and updated weekly, contains way too much fantasy for my tastes. Between the two of them you’ll never be at a loss for a new book to read.

Steve Lopez writes a column for the LA Times, recently a semi-tongue-in-cheek piece about the Democrats not being able to get their message out (temporary link, the Times only posts articles for a couple of weeks and then you have to pay). Most of it describes the trouble that’s been causes by Shrubya’s policies.

One part I especially liked:

Dangerous men in charge:

Remember the Iran-Contra scandal? Remember John “Mr. Buck Stops Here” Poindexter getting convicted of lying to Congress and slithering free on a technicality?

Dubya loves him.

Poindexter’s the man behind the Homeland Security Act provision that allows government snoops to look at your e-mail, your phone records and virtually everything else about your private life.

Even William Safire was horrified by this guy, and he’s the nation’s preeminent conservative columnist. But I think Safire was even more horrified at the civil liberties abuses of Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft.

I found a fairly brief overview of TIA, which is what the reference to snooping is about. It was harder to find anything brief about Poindexter. For more TIA stuff, go to EPIC’s TIA page.

Journalists who write about government spending get clobbered on a regular basis for using the term “budget cut” to describe a smaller-than-expected rate of increase. Why don’t business writers get clobbered for doing the same thing when they tally holiday spending?

More of this article at Xmas Sales Did Not Tank

The U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) has a site where you can submit comments, ideas and analyses regarding reauthorization of the nation’s surface transportation programs.� In English, that means you can�expound upon�about bikes, trains and automobiles; public transportation in general or what causes you problems on the freeway.� Act quick: the last day to submit your thoughts is 1/1/03.

There is also a lot of entertainment available from the people that got there before you, who wrote about everything from being stuck in a traffic jam to submitting their resumes.

This article about Big Content suing 321 Studios pretty well proves to me that all the talk about needing copy protection is really about controlling the consumer and not about piracy.� The studios are asking a judge to stop the firm from selling or distributing�its software because it violates the DMCA.� But copies made with the latest version of their software include watermarks that identify the original owner so that any versions making their way onto the Internet or the black market can be traced. The software also does not allow copies to be made from copies. That pretty much covers allowing fair use without providing a tool to trade content; and it provides a mechanism to trace back to the “pirate” that posts content on the internet.

In October 2002, credit card giant Visa convinced a Las Vegas federal court to prevent the small business JSL Corp. from using the term “evisa” and the domain “evisa.com” for its website offering travel, foreign language, and other multilingual applications and services. The court ruled that the website “diluted” Visa’s trademark, even though the site uses the word “visa” in its ordinary dictionary definition, not in relation to credit card services. Source: EFF, 3D Tree, Wired.

It seems that Groucho had similar problems.

March 7, 2003 7:30 AM Update

The original link is gone.  (Perhaps the Marx heirs claimed copyright infringement on Groucho’s letter.)

The story goes that while working on the movie “A Night in Casablanca”, the Marx brothers received a letter from Warner Bros. threatening legal action if they did not change the film’s title. Warner Bros. deemed the film’s title too similar to their own Casablanca, released almost five years earlier in 1942. In response Groucho Marx dispatched a very Marxian letter to the studio’s legal department.  There are two links to it below.  Hopefully one will keep working.

Groucho’s Warner Brothers dispute at Chilling Effects
Here it is at The Register (UK)

A great new comic: Lab Inito. It will take me a few days to go through these: there are hundreds of comics about science, philosophy and a few bad puns. So I guess that it’s not really a new comic if there’s that many of them. All are very well drawn — I can’t believe that this guy isn’t published somewhere.

Worth1000 has themed contests for users of PhotoShop. There are hundreds of incredible pictures made by manipulating and merging photos and works of art. As a minimum, check out their Top 25 images. I spent an hour checking out some of the contest entries. (Just because it’s on the web doesn’t make it a waste of time. It’s like looking at an art book that doesn’t clutter the coffee table when you’re done.

Lifted, then edited, from boingboing. The whole speech is worth reading, it’s not that much longer, but I include this because it seems everyone has ADD when there’s more then a couple of sentences involved:

Ken Hertz’s 2002 ACLU Bill of Rights Award speech: What’s wrong with the war on ‘Net piracy?
Here‘s a copy of the acceptance speech given by entertainment industry attorney Ken Hertz (of the firm Goldring, Hertz, Lichtenstein and Haft, LLP) at last week’s ACLU Bill of Rights Award dinner.

For those unfamiliar with Mr. Hertz’ distinguished career, the significance of his speech–and his firm’s stance on the issues at hand–should not be underestimated: “Ken represents Will Smith and Alanis Morissette (last I checked, amonst others, might want to confirm)… Not aware of others publicly endorsing a compuslory as a solution to P2P trading; they could be first. For these reasons this speech is no small matter.

Speech excerpt:

I’ve gained weight. I eat poorly. I don’t exercise enough. I’ve gotten older and it’s harder to take it off or keep it off. So I was more than a little intrigued by a recent commercial for a prescription medication designed to help people like me lose weight. Somewhere towards the end of the commercial, the announcer adds in a very pleasant voice, that the possible side effects might include: oily spotting, gas with discharge, uncontrollable bowel movements, and primary pulmonary hypertension — which is fatal to 45% of its victims. The treatment — it seems — can be worse than the problem. You see, you can’t treat a disease like obesity by only attacking its symptoms. Treating the symptoms and ignoring the underlying problem can allow the problem to fester — and worsen.(…)

How do the War on Crime, the War on Drugs, the War on Terrorism and my personal War on Obesity, relate to the entertainment industry’s War on Internet Piracy? Our point is that treating the symptoms without addressing the problem will only worsen the problem and generate more daunting symptoms. (…)

Peer to peer file sharing is really just interactive radio — consumers get to listen to exactly what they want — when they want it. This demand is not addressed by the record industry. In fact, it can’t be offered legally at any price. And as I think I’ve illustrated, technology and reality will insure that supply finds its way to meet that demand.

Did you buy a CD between January 1, 1995 through December 22, 2000? You may be a winner! Or at least a member of the Settlement Group in the Compact Disc Minimum Advertised Price Antitrust Litigation Settlement.