People who loudly condemn software (or music, or film) “piracy” often confuse the concepts of a) taking something from someone else and b) getting something for nothing. Their reasoning seems to be based on the idea that since there’s no such thing as a free lunch, if you get something for nothing, you must be stealing it.
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I’m still appalled by the fact that the new wiretapping bill passed both Senate and House last Friday. 16 Senators and 41 Congresspersons crossed party lines to vote with Republicans.
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One of the problems America has that I didn’t mention yesterday is the number of people it imprisons—another thing I haven’t heard much about from the Democratic Presidential candidates.

Over two million Americans were in prison in 2006, more than in any other country. American per capita rates of incarceration are generally between three and eight times as high as other Western developed nations. For a country as rich as the United States, that’s ridiculous, and for a country that claims to be based on ideals of individual freedom, that’s shameful.
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Is there a showdown between the Executive and Legislative branches looming? The White House is treating Congress rather contemptuously, telling ex-Counsel Harrier Miers not to even show up to her Congressional hearing after getting subpoenaed.
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I’m not sure how many people still believed that the rule of law still functioned in this country, but the commutation of Scooter Libby’s sentence more or less puts paid to the idea.
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I am completely disgusted by the outcome of the “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” case. It doesn’t seem that surprising, but the expansion of powers of school administrations is simply awful.
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I just read an article about the ACLU’s plans to give out video cameras to local residents in St. Louis for the purpose of videotaping the police, and I also read the Fark thread on it. I’m rather disturbed by the number of people in that thread who exhibit such hostility towards the idea that the police should be monitored in such a fashion.
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I can’t get over the testimony James Comey gave to the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday, specifically that White House political operatives (one of whom is now the Attorney General of the United States) attempted to do an end-run around an acting Attorney General by pressuring a recovering post-gall-bladder-operation John Ashcroft into signing documents (Ashcroft refused).
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I’ve covered some of this groud before, but I’ve been reminded of its importance once again, primarily in relation to free speech issues: when you prohibit something, and allow some authority to enforce that prohibition, you are also granting to that authority the power to define the thing prohibited.
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The DMCA is, as discussed two days ago, a piece of legislation with a rather broadly-reaching grasp. Particularly in giving copyright holders a lot of leeway in preventing the dissemination of “circumvention devices”. I suspect that certain approachs could exploit this latitude and make the absurdity of the law even more evident than it already is.
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In this entry I’m going to share a series of colored squares which it could be illegal for me to post.
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If he had any shame, he would. He’s clearly engaged in shameful behavior as Attorney General, and just as clearly the Senate (even the Republicans) have no faith in his ability at all. (You know it’s bad when a prominent Republican says that questioning Gonzales looked like “clubbing a baby seal”. But I don’t think Gonzales will leave on his own. His conception of doing a good job as Attorney General is to “protect” the President.
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“Booster bag” is the term for a bag that’s been lined with aluminum foil for the purpose of foiling anti-theft tags in/on retail merchandise in order to make easier the feat of taking said merchandise out of the store without paying. Today’s San Francisco Chronicle has an article about the practice and a proposed bill that would outlaw the bags.
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This article about Lego, power, and property in an elementary school was completely fascinating to me. It recounts the experiences in a clearly “alternative” school when the teachers and children attempted to unravel what was causing conflict over the resources of “Legotown”.

If you have any interest in politics, equality, children, education, or the nature of property, read the article.
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Glenn Greenwald highlights the fact that neither Mitt Romney nor Rudy Giuliani oppose the idea that the executive can arbitrarily detain people without trial. Romney wanted to talk to “smart lawyers” before deciding the issue, while Giuliani says that he’d use the power “infrequently”.

Wow. Clearly this whole “presidency-as-absolute-dictatorship” thing has gotten out of hand. Because, as many people pointed out when the Military Commissions Act was passed, removing habeas corpus protections makes a mockery of the idea that we’re in a functional democracy.
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A classic example of trying to deny the obvious can be found in this clip on the allegations of partisan misuse of government resources. The woman being interviewed is the head of the General Services Administration, which is supposed to deal with logistical support like supplying the government and finding/managing office space—and which, as a publicly-funded agency, is prohibited from using its funds, facilities, or employee time for partisan purposes.
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It should be apparent that a combination of power and secrecy is an invitation to abuse. I’m not sure why that would ever be controversial. It’s not a guarantee of abuse, but it certainly makes it more likely.

And yet significant numbers of people seem sympathetic to arguments otherwise—arguments that such-and-such an authority should be allowed to operate in secret, and should simply be trusted. Such a susceptibility must exist, I think, in order for authorities to consistently trot out the obviously inane reasons that they concoct to defend their secret practices—these excuses must take hold, or at least confuse, some people, or they’d try something else. I wonder if the main target they aim to confuse is the press, who will fall over themselves to give equal (or more than equal) time to these claims.
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It’s worth spending the time to consider what licensing/copyright/usage terms to apply to one’s output, whether creative or otherwise. The default is copyright, which applies (at least in the US and the EU) as soon as one creates something. This means that the work is given the full range of legal copyright protections—regardless of whether they’re wanted or not.
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The US government claims to have lost interrogation video footage of Jose Padilla, in a case where such footage is critical to Padilla’s claim that he was tortured while in custody. Padilla’s imprisonment was already a disgrace, but this appears to bring it into the realm of the truly ludicrous.
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Recently the Washington Times featured an editorial by Frank Gaffney (cached here) in which Gaffney called for an examination on “what constitutes inappropriate behavior in time of war”—after opening with a (fictitious!) quotation from Abraham Lincoln calling for the hanging of Congressmen who damage morale during wartime.
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I re-read Powers today (and it’s still simply fantastic), and then read the interview that Oeming and Bendis did for the fiftieth issue. In it, Bendis mentions that he loves interrogation scenes, that they’re a lot of fun because you get to lock two characters in a room and see what happens.
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A scenario I’ve held in my mind for most of my life involves questions of principle, practicality, and transgression. Or, to put it another way, questions about the extent to which your society (which, for these purposes, includes the state) punishes you for stepping outside its bounds.
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A few years ago, I wrote this article about mame.dk closing. (mame.dk was a site hosting game files for MAME, an arcade game emulator.) I get more email in reference to that article than, I think, anything else I’ve put up. Most of the email is in agreement with my viewpoint, and some ask for where one can get ROMs now (sadly, I have no idea). Last week I got a negative email, from “Mark”, and decided to post it and my reply.
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