Rep. Rick Doucher, D-Va, a noted consumer and internet rights activist, has said that “Comcast has made a major mistake” in policing P2P networks under the auspice of network management.
According to CNet’s News.com, Boucher is telling Comcast to “Knock it off.”
We at subter say, “Damn right!”
Wired.com is reporting that the House is moving ahead with a bill to punish companies that help foreign governments censor the internet.
I wonder if that bill is going to apply here in the US, Comcast?
Recently, the Senate Intelligence Committee, working with the White House, 
penned a bipartisan bill that would change the (quesitonably) legal NSA wiretapping process. Part of that bill seeks to retroactively immunize the phone and internet companies from legal action.
Also recently, the Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Senator John “Jay” Rockefeller received a veritable explosion in donations from…telephone companies being sued due to cooperating with the NSA…
You do the math.
***
Jan 17, 2006 – The ACLU and the Center for Constitutional Rights each, separately, sue the NSA over the wiretapping program.
May 2006 – The ACLU sues AT&T Corp. and Verizon Communications for sharing data with the NSA.
March 2007 – Top Verizon executives donate $23,500 to Senator Rockefeller. From 2001 through February 2007, Verizon executives had donated a total of $3750 to the Senator. Only one of 2007’s donating executive actually lives in Senator’s state, West Virginia.
April – June 2007 – Top AT&T executives donate $19,350 to Senator Rockefeller. Prior to April 2007, only one donation (of $300) had been made to the Senator from
Oct 2007 – The Senate Intelligence Committee passed a bipartisan bill that immunizes various phone companies from legal repercussions and legalizes domestic wiretapping.
***
Not looking good for democracy. But, the weaker dollar means that’s now cheaper than ever to buy your own legislation. Want to know who to “donate” to? Check OpenSecrets.org.
Data Source: Wired’s Threat Level
Granted, these are dated and require more than a casual understanding of tech culture. As you’re reading this, I’m going to assume that’s cool with you.
There are about a dozen of these, check ‘em out.
Walter Mossberg, a columnist and editor writer for the Wall Street Journal, has leveled his sites on the American wireless phone industry, and he’s not pulling any punches. Mossberg has dubbed the Wireless Telcos “Soviet ministries” and shed a little light onto just how stifling the mobile industry is.
And…he’s right too. Sad as it is, most American’s don’t seem to know how confined our mobiles are.
And you thought Macs were proprietary!
No, I don’t have a second source for this one, but it’s just so out there that I’m going to run with it anyway.
The Associated Press is reporting that J.K. Rowling told a packed Carnegie Hall that “Dumbledore is gay.”
Rowling then went on to laugh, “Oh, my god, the fan fiction.”
Yes…that’s exactly what we were thinking.
On a trip to the middle east this past weekend, Secretary of State Condie Rice visited with both Israeli leaders and then, a day later, with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. Following the meetings, Abbas said that certain Israeli demands had already been met, but the Palestinian President failed to state which ones.
For the United State’s part, it seems that the future Palestinian state must be a democratic one.
Source: CNN
Looks like the “Children of the Mao” are once again up to their old tricks. The net-saviest amongst the billion plus in China knew for years that RSS feeds* were the key to getting around the “Great Firewall of China”. Sadly, it looks like China has now severed access to all incoming feeds.
*RSS is a family of Web feed formats used to publish frequently updated content such as blog entries, news headlines or podcasts. subter has feeds for both Shots and the monthly issue.
According to the folks over at ArsTechnica - certain feed providers (such as FeedBurner) as well as blogs hosted by BlogSpot (Google) and Wordpress are now being blocked. Also, URLs that contain the words “feeds”, “rss”, and “blog” have been blocked.
Looks like Big Brother is at it again.
As many of you may or may not know, the once rockin’ band Metallica led the charge that took down Napster and in many ways opened the door for Itunes. It was a victory for record labels everywhere, since it meant the law was on their side in helping them create new ways to take your hard-earned money, all for the right to possess a song that has no mass, no taste, no smell, no physicality whatsoever: an MP3. Metallica’s victory over Napster shut down the company briefly, but after a restructure is back and as present as ever. In effect, they forced one company to do a processing overhaul and opened the floodgates for lawsuits against the very fanbase that supports the Music.
As evidence of this, the RIAA (the Recording Industry Association of America has begun to launch a full-on assault against the beaches of so-called pirates. They claimed a victim, Jammie Thomas, who was found guilty by a jury of peers on 24 counts of copyright infringement for downloading 24 seperate songs illegally. Thomas is 30, a single mother, and is an environmental coordinator working with Native Americans in Minnesota. This jury of peers fined her nearly $10,000 for each of the 24 counts levelled against her. This figure reaching nearly a quarter million dollars by multimillion dollar label Capital Records is roughly five times her annual salary. Justice is a dish best served cold…
For details about the case, go to these links:
Times Online
ars technica or simply google Jammie Thomas.
A Three Step Process
1. Buy the album.
2. Listen to it.
3. Thank me later.
