Morning news items

Google Restores Web Page Critical of Scientology -this one is going to bear watching for a little while. It seems to kind of go back and forth on a daily basis. Did the sites commit copyright infringement, or are they using it for public education and therefore, fair use? I don’t know, but until someone decides that no one should have to stop linking to it. Of course that’s not really what the DMCA says, which is yet another reason why it’s bad law!

Senators Hollings, Stevens, Inouye, Breaux and Fienstein stand directly in the way of technological progress. There are so many things wrong with this statement I don’t even know where to begin. The assertion that it’s only the unavailability of content that keeps people from getting broadband, and the assertion that media companies don’t put their content online because there’s too much piracy of it all over the internet would seem to be contradictory, at best. That it’s an outright lie is more likely. After all, if the piracy is so bad that just about everything is available online, it’s not the lack of content that keeps people away from broadband, is it? Naming this bill The Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Act of 2002 isn’t fooling anyone, this has nothing to do with consumers and everything to do with protecting the big media companies who gave so generously to your campaign efforts, and who want nothing more than to control the Internet as a content pipe, instead of the community space that it really is. We know what you’re doing, and we won’t forget.

Also see Dave Winer’s article about this stuff. (It’s only fair, I posted something yesterday where I totally disagreed with Dave, and today I posted something where I agree. That’s the way I see most blogs, some days I agree and some days I really don’t)

Finally on this subject, you can Go here and the fine folks who run DigitalConsumer.org will fax your letter of displeasure with the bill to your representatives in Congress for free!

In my wanderings online, I’ve found another open source news aggregator, AmphetaDesk, so now you can subscribe to XML or RSS feeds without paying for a full version of Radio, especially if you’re not using it for your own blog.

Doc has a nice little rant about news organizations making their online content available only to subscribers. Another bit I agree with, they want to take their content off the ‘net and hide it away, fine let ’em. If CNN took all their online content away from us, would we even notice? If all the “news” organizations went this direction, I’d just have CNN or FoxNews going on my TV while I came here and discussed the news the same way I do now, only without the links to news stories. Not a big loss for me. I’m already paying for access to the cable channels, as convenient as it is to read it online instead, I wouldn’t pay for it again.

C.C. Holland over at ZDnet had some problems with web hosting but her position in the media gave her the power to do something about it. Maybe those THC customers just need to find someone with a big enough audience to put the pressure on? I don’t think my meager audience is going to do the trick. Of course I’m more than willing to keep writing about it, if you all will spread the word :).

ZDnet also has a review of the new version (3.0) of Zone Alarm Pro. No word on when version 3.0 of the free version will be released.

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