Episode44

Lets make all this weeks stories short sharp and to the point

News from the world of Yaaar

Owner-Free File System takes aim at copyright
- What was the name of the previous effort at this? - we covered this in an early technolotics show
- System creates situation (using encryption) whereby copyrighted data can be claimed by two copyright owners.
- Since two copyright owners is not allowed, neither owns the data.
- Legal validity of approach untested and unlikely to hold water.

Pirate Party launches darknet
- A heavily encrypted commerical Virtual Private Network at a cost of €5 per month.
- Purports to offer, secure and most importantly anonymous communications.

BPI show how wonderful they are by banning a 12 year old from the charts merely for signing to a label that doesn't support sueing file-sharers.

Judge rules government's warrantless wiretapping program violates the rights to free speech and privacy.
Appeal to Supreme court almost certain.
Experts believe Supreme Court likely to rule that state secrets privilege overrules the Constitution as they have done in the past.

broken and entertaining engrish first post is a lengthy and heavily propagandist autobiography
'The last year of my high school, I prepared myself for university admission test-conquer. And later on that year, I took the test. Although I had nose bleeding during the test, but I became 132nd student among over 400 thousand participants.'
Seems part of a campaign (including recent BBC interview ) to reach a wider international audience.
Iran uses one of the most sophisticated internet censorship systems in the world making the blog one of the few websites an Iranian can legally read.
Amusingly Ahmadinejad also refers to the 'unecessary' referendum which ensured a democratic rise to the theotratic Mullahcracy
- The Iranian presidents power is limited in the extreme - with all bills passed by the Majles parliament are open to veto by a a variety of bodies composed primarily or exclusively of religious leaders - as are electoral candidates

Journalist Seymour Hersh (the first to write about abuses in Abu Ghraib) alledges in the New Yorker that the two nations planned the attack as long ago as spring
These were not merely strategic talks - but Israels obtaining official permission to attack
The aim of the attack may have been to reduce the threat posed by Hezbolla in the wake of an American attack on Iran
The NSA and Pentagon deny the allegations

Anyone whose attended 3rd level education in recent years will likely have had run ins with problems related to onorous copyright restrictions
- in my case it was clas notes for advanced neuroscience courses - which lacked all illustrations - making them meaningless!
A year long study by Berkman Center for Internet and Society - has found problems
- unclear rules, DRM locking up content, difficulties obtaining rights, undue caution by publishers

How airport security has become an irrational nightmare
End of a week of false alarms and overblown threats and growing skepticism as to the legitimacy of these threats.
Evidence non-existent or tenuous for UK bomb threat, 1 year of surveillance had turned up nothing, torture of prisoner produces "a plan by terrorists to cause untold death and destruction."
Only solution is to send luggage in an unmanned plane and strip and drug passengers during flights so that can't get up to mischief.