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P Crewe writes "A complaint filed by the Computer & Communications Industry Association accuses the NFL, MLB, and a number of studios of deceptive trade practices, saying that their far-reaching copyright claims systematically misrepresent the rights of consumers to use copyrighted material. 'According to the complaint, such warnings "materially misrepresent" US law. Fair use is given short shrift, and as a result, consumers are left with the impression that any use that the rights-holders do not expressly approve is illegal. "Consumers have the right to use the content in legal, non-infringing ways," CCIA spokesperson Jake Ward told Ars Technica. "Putting these warnings on broadcasts, videotapes, and DVDs is both misleading and threatening."'"

1up is reporting (via MCV) that Rockstar has decided to appeal the BBFC ruling on their uber-violent Manhunt 2 title. The 'next step' is to get a hearing scheduled, which will allow the game to be demo'd and arguments given. "Rockstar Games had been given six weeks to appeal the decision, and with that opportunity about to expire, the company lodged its formal appeal yesterday ... The appeal was filed with the Video Appeals Committee, which can overturn the BBFC decision. As noted in our first article about the ban, the VAC overturned the BBFC's ban of Carmageddon back in 1997, giving Rockstar a glimmer of hope in its current situation."

eldavojohn writes "While there's been a lot of talk of the open document formats in the states, China is facing the same dilemma. A ZDNet blog examines the issue by pointing out they will most likely merge their current standard with either OOXML or ODF. The bulk of their post points out why OOXML shouldn't be ISO certified and is the biggest problem for Microsoft's standard: 'Another Standard, Microsoft does not support, is the specification RFC 3987, which defines UTF-8 capable Internet addresses. Consequently, OOXML does not support, to use Chinese characters within a Web address.' This would be problematic for many languages, not just Chinese."

Kraisch writes with a link to the Guardian website, which again revisits the subject of reconstructing the internet. This time the question isn't whether it should be done, but what should the goals of a redesign be? From the article: "'There's a real need to have better identity management, to declare your age and to know that when you're talking to, say, Barclays bank, that you're really doing so,' said Jonathan Zittrain, professor of internet governance and regulation at the Oxford Internet Institute. At the moment we are still using very clumsy methods to approach such problems. The result: last year alone, identity theft and online fraud cost British victims an estimated £414m, while one recent report claimed 93% of all email sent from the UK was spam ... Many ideas revolve around so-called "mesh networks", which link many computers to create more powerful, reliable connections to the internet. By using small meshes of many machines that share a pipeline to the net instead of relying on lots of parallel connections, experts say they can create a system that is more intelligent and less prone to attack."

Joe Kauzlarich writes "The 'pattern' book has become a familiar genre for frequent readers of technical manuals. The idea is to sift through mountains of architectural or design schemes and then to categorize and catalogue the most frequent ideas and present their strengths and weaknesses. This type of book has been a success in software engineering, but can it translate to website design, where designers have everyday and frequent access to other designs? At worst, these books provide a common industry vocabulary (assuming it was read by everyone in the industry). How many people knew what a factory method referred to before Erich Gamma's Design Patterns was released? At best, as in the case of that 'original' software design patterns book, mountains of complex ideas are archived into a single reference and will sit within arm's reach for the rest of your life. So, is the web design discipline full of patterns that evade common sense?" Read below for the rest of Joe's review.