Build Date: Sat May 18 06:20:07 2024 UTC
We don't need brow sweating ogres like you coming on here, in a frenzy of chicken lust and cocaine jitters, attacking everyone like some kind of 400 pound, hopped up Truman Capote.
-- Ratsnatcher
Russian Programmer Imprisoned for DMCA Violations
2001-07-18 11:03:21
Yesterday the U.S. busted a Russian programmer Dmitry Sklyarov for breaking the infamous DMCA act. It is not really clear to me if Dmitry was jailed (and he is currently sitting in a Las Vegas jail) for writing a piece of code that defeats Adobe's PDF file encryption schema or for talking about it at the notorious hacker convention, Defcon, held this year in Las Vegas.
Both acts violate the DMCA.
And in both cases, I'm appalled.
That, one, the U.S. has jailed someone for creating content it disagrees with while they were outside the United States. This is horrible and sets a precedent that is truly frightening. How would you like to be responsible for anything and everything that you've ever created in every jurisdiction in the world? That scares the hell out of me, as after some of the crap I've written, I probably qualify for the death sentence in several dozen Middle Eastern countries.
Or, two, the absolute irony that a former Soviet citizen was arrested for speaking his mind while in the United States. Whatever happened to free speech? I thought WE won the Cold War.
While I do love the theory that America was founded on, I have to say that I'm becoming less and less enamored with the way in which the ideals of our founding fathers are being implemented and put into practice. That people in our government even remotely think that the DMCA doesn't violate the First Amendment is truly an indictment of the absolute corruption that corporate soft money has wrought on this once fine system.
It should be pointed out that because Adobe's encryption scheme doesn't permit the user to make at least one copy, it is currently breaking Russian copyright law. Horrors. A U.S. company breaking the law? We can't have that.
So I urge the Russian government to immediately begin legal proceedings to extradite the entire management team at Abode and then send them all to Siberia to count trees. Not because I feel that people should be imprisoned for breaking copyright law, but because I believe in poetic justice.
T O P S T O R I E S
In 2010 Dr. Cheng-Huai Ruan discovered a way to cause a patient with an abnormal heartbeat to get back into a normal rhythm by sticking a finger up the patient's ass. (More...)
WKRP in Cincinnati aired from 1978 through 1982. Howard Hesseman played Dr. Johnny Fever, a DJ from Los Angeles who was fired from his previous job for saying the word "booger" on the air. In the show Hesseman would do some dialogue, introduce a song, and start the song. You'd hear a few notes, but never the whole song. (More...)
SF Hippies Can't Get Their Act Together
The annual 420 Hippie Hill event in Golden Gate Park, where large crowds of hippies, wannabe hippies, and hippie poseurs drape themselves in tie dye t-shirts and gather on a hill on 4/20 to smoke weed, was cancelled this year because the organizers couldn't get their act together. (More...)
Mozart to be inducted into the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame
Joining such hard-rocking inductees as Abba, Chet Atkins, Nat King Cole, and Neil Diamond, the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame is proud to induct Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. (More...)
Gary Busey definitely involved in a hit and run accident
Gary Busey was definitely involved in a hit-and-run accident, but won't face any charges because he's rich and famous. (More...)
Gary Busey allegedly involved in Malibu hit-and-run
"Sir! You hit my car! I need your information!" the woman yelled at Gary Busey driving a battered Volvo station wagon before he sped off. (More...)
C L A S S I C P I G D O G
So I was walking around the Tenderloin looking for stray twenty-dollar-bills that might have fallen into gutters, and I was thinking, as I often do, about my mother. (More...)
Clowns Take on God in Mysterious Annual Ceremony
Last Sunday's (the 6th) Grimaldi Service at a small church in East London was a red-letter day for clowns worldwide. About a hundred old-school red-nosed clowns made the sombre trip to darkest Dalston to pay their respects to clowns who died in the last year and to thank God for the gift of laughter in a bizarre ceremony presided over by the eccentric Reverend Clown Roly, resplendent in a garish red lumberjack shirt with oversized gold lapels. (More...)
Report from Spiritual Machines
Arkuat gives you the inside scoop on the "Spiritual Machines" panel and conclave. Wacky excitement ensues! (More...)
Three Days and 25 Spocktails: A Cautionary Tale
Johnnie Royale picked me up from the dental surgery. I felt warm, safe, cradled in the anathesia's loving embrace. The pharmacy downstairs gave me a bottle of Vicodin and a few instructions: take it with food, don't mix with alcohol, don't operate heavy machinery. I put it in my pocket and we left. "Do you want to go home, or do you want to go to a bar?" asked Johnnie. (More...)
What do Computers and Skateboards have in Common?
They both sprang from the mind of John Mauchly that's what. (More...)
Brother Wayne Lays Down the Truth
Flesh interviews Wayne Kramer of MC5. (More...)