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United States

Submission + - China: U.S. violated Iraqis' rights

Submitted by firedragon852
firedragon852 writes: China's Xinhua News Agency has published a report in response to the U.S. Department of State Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2006. As in previous years, the State Department pointed the finger at human rights conditions in more than 190 countries and regions, including China, but avoided touching on the human rights situation in the United States. To help the world people have a better understanding of the situation in the United States and promote the international cause of human rights, we hereby publish the Human Rights Record of the United States in 2006.
Music

Submission + - FoxTrot comic jokes about RIAA

Submitted by MX
MX writes: The last Sunday drawing by Bill Amend, the creator and author of FoxTrot comics, pokes some fun at the RIAA. By teaching his Iguana how to use Bittorrent, he can one-up "Hollywood" because while they would go after "single moms, widows, grandmothers, dead people and children" they would have to insane to sue an Iguana.

The strip mentions bittorrent, hollywood, RIAA (picture), and Metallica. Quite a laugh.

Note the author does not have a link-to policy or any kind of "reuse" policy that I can find on his website. The direct link is http://images.ucomics.com/comics/ft/2007/ft070304. gif
The Almighty Buck

Submission + - Copyright deal threatens Internet radio businesses

Submitted by Zecheus
Zecheus writes: The US Copyright Office has released their new set of rates for the payment of royalties by Internet Radio. The new rates are high enough to put the nascent internet radio industry out of business. Checkout the blog of Radio Paradise founder Bill Goldsmith for an operator's perspective and plea for help.
Media

Submission + - Election candidate faces EUCD charges in Finland

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: The Open Life blog reports that activists in Finland have partly succeeded in challenging the EUCD's constitutionality, that is, they have succeeded in getting themselves tried in court:

Mikko Rauhala and Einar Karttunen have on February 13th, 2007 been charged with breaking [...] the EUropean Copyright Directive, our equivalent of the DMCA. The charges are that they participated in an online service organised by Mr Rauhala to provide advice on how to circumvent DRM and in addition Mr Karttunen has published online a computer program written in the Haskell programming language. The charge is especially serious because Rauhala paid Karttunen 0,05€ for this program. Rauhala, Karttunen and 37 others did these supposedly criminal actions in January 2006, the first week that the new law was in force. [...]
Mikko Rauhala and the organiser of the 2005 demonstration Mikko Särelä are both running for parliament in the elections to be held on March 18th, 2007. [...] some of the momentum really might still be there [...] this week [...] they put out a website to collect pledges and within 24 hours had collected 8000 to buy a full page ad in Finlands main newspaper.
The blog also informs us that

Under current Finnish laws, the maximum penalty for filesharing is higher than for simply stealing an actual music CD from a shop
Biotech

Submission + - SPAM: New technology removes viruses from drinking water

Submitted by
FiReaNGeL
FiReaNGeL writes: "University of Delaware researchers have developed an inexpensive, nonchlorine-based technology that can remove harmful microorganisms, including viruses, from drinking water. The new technology could dramatically improve the safety of drinking water around the globe, particularly in developing countries. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), over a billion people — one-sixth of the world's population — lack access to safe water supplies. Four billion cases of diarrheal disease occur worldwide every year, resulting in 1.8 million deaths, primarily infants and children in developing countries. Eighty-eight percent of this disease is attributed to unsafe water supplies, inadequate sanitation and hygiene."
Encryption

Submission + - Final AACS key found

Submitted by julie-h
julie-h writes: The PowerDVD AACS private key for playing Blu-Ray and HD-DVD's have been found. This was the last key needed. What does this mean? We don't have to sniff/snoop Volume IDs anymore. We can create a program that can decrypt (or play if you will) a disc without any need for WinDVD or PowerDVD. So no sniffing/extracting of keys anymore. And more over: it can work on all platforms... In other words: we can make our own independent, user friendly player (or decrypter).
Censorship

Submission + - Back to the Soviet Future?

Submitted by
reporter
reporter writes: "According to a disturbing report by the "New York Times", "An unusually large and unruly protest against the government of President Vladimir V. Putin ended here Saturday in clashes with the police and the arrest of opposition leaders. [...] As [Sergey V. Gulayev] spoke, riot police shoved through the crowd and grabbed the bullhorn from his hands, smashing it against the wall of a building. A policeman put Mr. Gulayev, grimacing, in a headlock and dragged him into a police vehicle as members of the crowd yelled 'Shame! Shame!'" Is Russia regressing back into the Soviet Union?"
Power

Submission + - Saudi Arabian oil production declines 8% in 2006

Submitted by
BadOctopus
BadOctopus writes: "The guys over at The Oil Drum have the story that the world's biggest oil exporter, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, experienced an 8% drop in oil production since the beginning of 2006. This decline coincides with a large increase in the number of oil rigs in the country, which implies that either the Saudis are preparing for a large future increase in production, or it is getting ever harder to extract the oil. What seems more likely? What does this mean for the KSA's internal and external political relations?

If the world's largest producer joins the multitude of other nations that are post-peak, can a global peak in oil production be far off?"
Republicans

Submission + - Latest Poll on Canadians political feelings

Submitted by
Scott Hobbs
Scott Hobbs writes: "http://verbalrandomness.blogspot.com/2007/03/are-p olls-finally-right.html Most Conservatives are skeptical of poll numbers, and rightly so. One only needs to look at the previous election to remember why one should take poll numbers with a grain of salt. That said, the latest Angus Reid numbers were a bit surprising. The usually "liberal friendly" Reid polling shows the Conservatives slowly creeping toward majority territory. Now I am not going to even try predicting how voter sentiment will look if and when an election takes place, but surely these numbers compared with the earlier Leger and SES polls show an interesting trend forming. It seems people trust our Prime Minister and our government more as time goes on. This bodes well for any future election. As it is, at least in theory if there was an election tomorrow, the balance of power would shift right of where it is now. I wouldn't speculate on what kind of numbers we'd be looking at, but I feel very strongly we'd pick up at least 5-10 seats more than we had last election, and possibly more. I predict that the Liberals will vote down the budget to force an election. The reason I think this is that it seems to me like the Grits are already looking for a way to offload Stephane Dion. They know he cannot win an election so they want him to be the fall guy in the next election without the Conservatives getting to majority status. I hope the Liberal plan backfires..."
Media

Submission + - Library of Congress Screws Internet Radio

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: The RIAA convinces the government to set unreasonable royalty rates on song "performances" streamed over internet radio. Over the air broadcast radio pays no royalty rates. Stations like http://www.radioparadise.com/ will die. Goodbye to the "radio" button in iTunes.

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