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HobbsOnline has broken an incendiary story about the circumstances surrounding the handling of SB3101, the latest version of Tennessee's "SDMCA," now on the Senate Judiciary Committee calendar for today's 3:30pm hearing. It appears that the opponents of SDMCA legislation, including Tennessee Digital Freedom and other organizations, may have been intentionally excluded from the process early on, with the intention of slipping this bill through the General Assembly with as little citizen involvement as possible. Wish TNDF luck in the hearing today!

The Ohio State Legislature has passed House Bill #179 (PDF / HTML / Status) which, among other unrelated issues, makes it illegal to make an AV-recording in any theater or retail store where a motion picture is being displayed. Walk into a store that sells video gear and hit 'Record' on any camcorder, digital camera or PDA; the first click is a misdemeanor, the rest are felonies. Oh, and the janitor (or any employee) can detain you in or near the store until police arrive if they think you hit 'Record'. Actually recording any of a film (or even knowing that a film was being shown) is not required for a conviction. This bill now awaits Governor Bob Taft's signature--Ohioans, let him know what a bad law this is!

Members of the Tennessee Digital Freedom Network turned out in force as Tennessee's Super-DMCA Bill, its hour come round at last, slouched back to Nashville's Legislative Plaza. The industry heavyweights made their pitches, but were thwarted by thoughtful, intelligent comments and questions from our Joint Committee on Communications Security. My favorite quote of the day: "I stand here before you as representing the MPAA, one of the leading advocates of First Amendment rights..." I think I blacked out for a minute after that.

Stories in the Associated Press and London Times refer to an an article in this week's Chemical & Engineering News (paper subscription required), about the Monell Chemical Senses Center's contract with the Department of Defense to develop an "odor bomb," which could be used to quickly clear an area of human life, without directly causing injury (except death by trampling).

What we need is some kind of clearing house of opt-out info, a la SpamCop, that would allow us to look up all the companies that we do business with and see what their real policies are. A nice feature would be the ability to generate legally binding letters of notification that we could send to those companies, preemptively opting out of all possible dissemination of our data.

Is this already available, or is someone working on it? If not, I'll get busy. Comments and suggestions welcome!