Draft of UK DMCA even worse than the US original
The Register story.

“As it stands, the UK implementation of the European Copyright Directive will hinder research into cryptography (in contravention of the express intent of the Directive itself), make criminal current common practices of the music industry, give software companies unwarranted control over the creation of software products interoperable with their own, and provide an inadequate and entirely impractical mechanism for beneficiaries of the Directive’s exceptions to obtain access to copyrighted works protected by technological measures,” the report concludes.

British Telecom Hyperlink “Patent” Invalid [ Dan Gillmor’s eJournal] Yippee! As Dan says, the weird thing is that the case ever got to court. Here is The Register‘s report. And here is the “NYT” take on it.

Reinventing the wheel at AOL Time Warner
“NYT” story on new Chairman Jonathan Miller’s fantasy that the Web is really just another kind of television.

Larry’s Last Big Speech

” I have been doing this for about two years–more than 100 of these gigs. This is about the last one. One more and it’s over for me. So I figured I wanted to write a song to end it. But then I realized I don’t sing and I can’t write music. But I came up with the refrain, at least, right? This captures the point. If you understand this refrain, you’re gonna’ understand everything I want to say to you today. It has four parts: * Creativity and innovation always builds on the past. * The past always tries to control the creativity that builds upon it. * Free societies enable the future by limiting this power of the past. * Ours is less and less a free society.” [More…]

How downloading Microsoft ‘security updates’ gradually erodes your freedom

Nice piece in The Register. Includes a close reading of the Microsoft fine print, viz:

“You agree that in order to protect the integrity of content and software protected by digital rights management (‘Secure Content’), Microsoft may provide security related updates to the OS Components that will be automatically downloaded onto your computer. These security related updates may disable your ability to copy and/or play Secure Content and use other software on your computer. If we provide such a security update, we will use reasonable efforts to post notices on a web site explaining the update.”

Useful review of David Weinberger’s Small Pieces, Loosely Joined: A Unified Theory of the Web

“Weinberger explains how the metaphors of “document” and “building” become conflated (or even mutated) into a single concept on the Web, saying “with normal documents, we read them, file them, throw them out, or send them to someone else. We do not go to them. We don’t visit them. Web documents are different. They’re places on the Web. … They’re there. With this phrase, space — or something like it — has entered the picture.” (p. 39) But this space isn’t measured by inches or miles. “On the Web, nearness is created by interest.” (p. 49) In this place, the closest distance between two points is measured by relevance.” [More…]

1984 on its way

“Tuesday, 20 August, 2002, 10:30 GMT 11:30 UK Privacy fears over EU snooping plans Your online life could be visible to a lot of organisations

The records of who you contact via phone, web, fax or mobile could soon be stored for years under a proposal drafted by European governments.

If passed, the law would force anyone providing communication services to keep records for at least a year of what customers have been doing.

The records would be available to police forces across the European Union investigating almost any crime.” [More…]

Send Perle to Baghdad?
The disagreements among Republicans over the Bush administration’s obsession with invading Iraq are becoming a gaping divide. Brent Scowcroft’s Wall Street Journal op-ed, arguing that an invasion in the short term would be a disaster, is getting most of the press, but this quote in this morning’s New York Times lead story jumped out at me for its sheer venom directed at Richard Perle, the hawk who has been ring-leading the “Get Saddam” campaign: “Maybe Mr. Perle would like to be in the first wave of those who go into Baghdad.” That’s not some pinko talking — it’s Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel. [Scott Rosenberg’s Links & Comment]

Lessig asks “What have we done about it?” in re technology patents. Here’s what we can do and are doing. Develop new ideas and don’t patent them. That’s the most any developer can do. How about a conservancy for developers who don’t take patents. Get people intellectual credit for their creations to balance the proprietary credit they are not demanding. Lessig is so damned irritating. He says “We’ve not done anything yet.” Arrrrgh. Incorrect. He’s not done anything yet. Perhaps his friends haven’t done anything yet. Does Dr Lessig understand technology any better than Rep Coble? [Scripting News]

My Observer column about the Berman Bill is on the Web.