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Censorship

IWF Backs Down On Wiki Censorship 226

Posted by kdawson from the that-streisand-thing-again dept.
jonbryce writes "The Internet Watch Foundation, guardians of the Great Firewall of Britain, have stopped censoring Wikipedia for hosting what they considered to be a child porn image. They had previously threatened to block Amazon for hosting the same image." Here is the IWF's statement, which credits the Streisand Effect for opening their eyes: "...in light of the length of time the image has existed and its wide availability, the decision has been taken to remove this webpage from our list. Any further reported instances of this image which are hosted abroad, will not be added to the list. ... IWF's overriding objective is to minimize the availability of indecent images of children on the internet, however, on this occasion our efforts have had the opposite effect."
Toys

Lego Loses Its Unique Right To Make Lego Blocks 576

Posted by CmdrTaco from the this-could-be-huge dept.
tsa writes "The European Department of Justice has decided that the Danish company Lego does not have exclusive rights to the lego building block anymore (sorry, it's in Dutch). Lego went to court after a Canadian firm had made blocks that were so like lego blocks that they even fit the real blocks made by Lego. The European judge decided that the design of the lego blocks is not protected by European trademarks and so anyone can make the blocks." If true, hopefully this will open doors for people interested in inexpensive bulk purchase of bricks of specific sizes and colors. Perhaps at long last I can build a life-sized Hemos statue for my office.
Government

Submission + - What does an election judge need to know?

Submitted by squarefish
squarefish writes: I was recently chosen as an election judge in Illinois and will be training for this position later this month. What do I need to know and be aware of outside of the 3 hour training they provide? I do not know the location or details of the precinct I will be working yet, but the voting methods and machines vary throughout all areas of state. What should I watch for in the training and on election day that would make me a better and less partial judge? I'm an independent and offered to judge for either party. I will not know anything about my assignment until 10 days prior to the election. My training is one week prior to the general election.
The Courts

Mom Sues Music Company Over Baby Video Removal 391

Posted by Zonk from the they-thought-of-the-children dept.
penguin_dance writes "A Pennsylvania mom is fighting back, suing Universal Music Publishing Group for having a home movie taken down off of YouTube. The movie, featuring her 18-month old bouncing to Prince's song, 'Let's Go Crazy,' was cited for removal by the Group for copyright infringement. Mom Stephanie Lenz was first afraid they'd come after her — then she got angry. She got YouTube to put the video back up, she's enlisted the help of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and she's filed a civil lawsuit (pdf). 'I thought even though I didn't do anything wrong that they might want to file some kind of suit against me, take my house, come after me. And I didn't like feeling afraid ... I didn't like feeling that I could get in trouble for something as simple as posting a home video for my friends and family to see.'"
Media

Submission + - Canadians believe Bush is a threat to peace: Poll

Submitted by
denisbergeron
denisbergeron writes: "From the article "Canadians believe the world has become a more dangerous place since George W. Bush was elected U.S. president and a majority believe he will launch military strikes in Iran or North Korea before his term ends in 2008, according to a new Toronto Star poll."(...) "The same questions were posed to respondents by pollsters in Britain, Israel and Mexico."(...)"Mexicans ranked Bush the second-most dangerous of the five, behind Al Qaeda's bin Laden." (...) The good part of the article is this "[The] analysts here say anti-Americanism has become more intense under Bush than any other U.S. president before him."
Anyway, who care about what canadians and mexicans thinks."
Businesses

Submission + - IBM legal block failed, cancer study now published

Submitted by localoptimum
localoptimum writes: Dan Ferber of Science magazine recently reported (2nd page, on the right, pdf version) that, after IBM failed in its attempts to block a study by Richard Clapp of Boston University, the study has now been published.

From the article:
Clapp analyzed mortality data on 31,941 American IBM employees, many retired, who died between 1969 and 2001. ... He reported last week in Environmental Health that men and women in that group were 7% or 15% more likely respectively, to have died from cancer than were those in an age- and sex-matched subset of the U.S. population.

IBM's lawyers argued for almost 2 years that the study could be used only for litigation, but a New York district judge ruled in February that Clapp was free to publish it.

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