Build Date: Fri Oct 4 11:40:07 2024 UTC
There is a very good chance now that the most powerful nation in the world is about to become an irrational killing machine, and I don't think it will know how to stop once it gets started.
-- Tjames Madison
DMCA Protest At Stanford
2000-05-17 11:50:54
Get up, get up, get busy, people now! It's time once again to don your freedom-loving apparel and head out to the latest coolio INTERNET PROTEST. Do it! Get ready! Get out there! Get funky now!
All right, so here's the deal: you've heard of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, right? It's the new (1998) law that was rammed through YOUR Congress by media-mogul heavyweight lawyers to try and keep the Internet genie in the bottle and protect their middleman interests. Two egregious clauses of the Act include making it illegal to subvert copyright protection, making it illegal to aid in illegal distribution of copyrighted materials, and making it illegal to reverse engineer software.
If this was just a case about Chinese software pirating factories owned by the People's Army, well, that'd be all well and good. I've got no problem with SPA goons running down Third-World alleys trying to catch street-market disk sellers. The BIG problem is that the DMCA has been used VICIOUSLY by corporate attack lawyers to limit YOUR FREEDOM in cyberspace.
For example: it's been used to sue various John Does in the DeCSS case. It's been used to ream Napster. The threat of DMCA suits is probably what got the AOL weenies shut down Gnutella. Jon Johanson, Emmanuel Goldstein: there are literally hundreds of people in courts TODAY fighting DMCA charges. It's time that this has to STOP.
There's an opportunity now to give the DMCA a good KICK in the PANTS. The US Copyright Office is holding hearings at Stanford University on May 18th to make some decisions about enforcement of DMCA issues. This is an EXCELLENT opportunity for freedom-lovers like you and I to make our voices known. The EFF, SVLUG and 2600 Mag are sponsoring a big ol' picketing, chanting, brick-throwing, bomb-tossing PROTEST right outside the hearing rooms of the USCO. You should be there, now, shouldn't you?
T O P S T O R I E S
Another Nobel Prize-Winning Author Describes Drunkenness
This book won a Pulitzer Prize. Here's its famous paragraph on getting drunk... (More...)
'Why I'm pretty sure JD Vance had sex with a couch'
True or false? The answers await us in that magical land where all truths are revealed -- the internet. (More...)
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...)
C L A S S I C P I G D O G
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...)
The Liquidation of Hobo Junction
Albany, CA's homeless hooverville by the Bay, "Hobo Junction," is going to be torn down by The Man. Entrances are already being blocked off, and it's now difficult and dangerous to get there. Worse, these obstacles are making it hard to get to the nearby HORSE TRACK on foot. Local historian, Pao Tzu, has an overview of situation. (More...)
Paranoid Strippers & Psychotic Crack Dealers (Tales of Christmas Eve)
Christmas day, for the last 17 or so years has bored me. I find that the real fun and excitement always takes place on Christmas Eve. Every other year, it's the excitement of the metaphorical hunt instead of the kill. Otherwise, it's just plain bad craziness. (More...)
Skunk School -- Learn Why Not To Keep Skunks As Pets
There is an alarming trend in pet purchasing habits this fall. People inspired by the WWII film, "Life is Beautiful" -- the one with that annoying Italian guy -- are buying descented skunks by the millions. (More...)
Australian Troops Set for Days of Debauchery to the Tunes of Kylie Minogue
This weekend Australian troops in East Timor will be able to put their feet up and push all the images of mass graves and charred remains from their minds as they relax to the giddy melodies of Kylie Minogue - including exclusive unplugged performances in the militia-ravaged and blood-spattered border towns of Balibo and Suai. (More...)
The Walken / Country Bear Conspiracy
As has been recently reported in the PDJ, Christopher Walken, evil s00per villain extraordinaire, will be appearing next month in Disney's newest release, The Country Bear Movie. Always playing some wicked and very disturbed badass in movies like Sleepy Hollow, Illuminata, The Prophecy I, II, III, Pulp Fiction, Batman Returns, The Milagro Beanfield War, A View to a Kill, The Dogs of War, Heaven's Gate, and The Deer Hunter, Walken is unsuprisingly a big favorite in the PDJ news room. (More...)
