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Submission + - Federal Anti-Obscenity Program Comes Up Limp

Submitted by kotj.mf
kotj.mf writes: The New York Times reports that the Federally funded anti-Web pornography campaign run by Morality in Media, a conservative religious group, has yet to result a single prosecution for obscenity, despite having generated more than 67,000 citizen complaints. The group, better known for its campaign to have Cosmopolitan removed from supermarket checkout stands, is pushing the Justic Department to more agressively pursue cases against what it sees as 'a prime threat to society, the growth on the Internet of sexual material involving consenting adults.'

Comment Re:Ents (Score 1) 296

by gordette (#20177905) Attached to: RIAA Campaign Against Students Hits Stormier Seas
TPTB underestimate the power of the Internet as an organizing tool. Many of them really don't use the internet all that much (for instance, they know about myspace because they've read about it in the news but many have never heard of livejournal) and networking is just a concept. Speaking of bullies. After reading similar stories about ASCAP extortion in Florida - fleecing a restaurant owner for having the televison on while Hank Williams Jr. "Are You Ready for Some Football?" played because the song was carried on the "Monday Night Football" telecast - this warms the cockles of my heart. Go gen-y. Anyway - here's a link to the Florida story. http://www.floridatoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article? AID=/20070708/NEWS01/707080343/1006
The Courts

RIAA Campaign Against Students Hits Stormier Seas 296

Posted by Zonk from the get-out-of-the-pool dept.
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "It's been astutely observed that the RIAA's "ex parte" campaign against "John Doe" college students seems to have run into much stormier waters than its campaign against regular folks. Discovery motions were thrown out by the judges in cases involving the University of New Mexico and the College of William and Mary, and motions to quash have been made by students at Boston University, Oklahoma State University, and the University of South Florida. The RIAA might find it particularly troubling that the students are coming in armed with substantial expert witness declarations attacking the entire underpinning of the RIAA's case, that the students are finding each other and banding together, and that the Chairman of Boston University's Computer Science Department went to bat — as an expert witness — for the BU students."
Power

NASA Tests Hydrogen-Fueled BMW 420

Posted by kdawson from the hold-the-lox dept.
Rio sends us word that NASA has completed an 8-week test of a fleet of BMW luxury sedans powered by liquid hydrogen at Kennedy Space Center. The new BMW Hydrogen 7 sedan uses the same fuel that powers the space shuttle and reduces CO2 emissions by 90 percent, according to a news release. Its engine can burn gasoline or liquid hydrogen and can switch seamlessly between the two. From the article: "One hundred BMW Hydrogen 7s have been built, and 25 are used in test programs in the US. The cars have already covered more than 1.3 million miles in test programs around the globe."
Space

Rare Meteor Event to Inform on Dangerous Comets 64

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the lucifer's-nails-before-his-hammer dept.
David Shiga writes "September 1, 2007 may be a once in a lifetime opportunity to see a rare meteor shower called the alpha Aurigids, New Scientist reports. Unlike better-known displays like the Perseids that occur every year on the same date, the alpha Aurigids have only been spotted three times before, in 1935, 1986, and 1994. NASA's Peter Jenniskens predicts they will return again this year, only to disappear again for the next 50 years. Meteor showers are caused by debris shed from comets, and the rarity of the alpha Aurigids is due to the exceptionally infrequent passes of its parent comet through the inner solar system, just once every 2000 years. Studying the alpha Aurigids could help astronomers turn these rare showers into an advance warning system for long period comets with potentially dangerous orbits, which would be hard to spot ahead of a collision with Earth."

Bank Run in Second Life 336

Posted by CmdrTaco from the just-like-in-the-first-one dept.
Jamie found an interesting bit about a bank run in Second Life. The recent ban on gambling combined with a $12k theft from the 2L stock market has caused people to try to get their money back. The article mentions that this could supposedly affect 8.5M players even tho most estimates of actual hard core players in the system are in the 5 to low 6 figure range.
The Media

Federal Journalist Shield Law Advances 79

Posted by kdawson from the little-bird-told-me dept.
A journal entry by twitter alerts us that the US Free Flow of Information Act cleared the House Judiciary Committee last week. It is designed as a shield for the confidential sources of journalists, and the bill's sponsors intend that the definition of "journalist" be broad enough to encompass at least some bloggers. The language voted out of the Judiciary Committee stipulates that protections apply only to those who derive "financial gain or livelihood from the journalistic activity" — this could cover anybody with a blog and an AdWords account, and this worries some opponents. The Register's coverage notes "several exceptions regarding terrorism, national security, imminent death and trade secret leaks." If this act becomes law, it would override all state shield laws, some of which may now provide stronger protections. The bill seems unlikely to go anywhere any time soon as its counterpart in the Senate has received no attention, and in its present form it would likely be opposed by the Bush administration.

Feed Chilling Effects In Action: Canadian Bloggers Worried About Legal Threats Stay Q (techdirt.com)

From feed by techdirtfeed
A few months ago, we had the story of a guy in Canada who was suing a whole bunch of sites because commenters on those sites said things he believed were defamatory. He supposedly even went after a few sites that simply linked to the defamatory material (and then there were claims that he went after sites that simply linked to sites that linked to the supposedly defamatory content). That seems a bit absurd, for obvious reasons. However, an article in Toronto's Globe Mail notes that it may actually have been effective. Various bloggers have stopped writing about the guy out of a fear of getting sued as well. That, of course, is exactly what the suits were intended to do: to create some "chilling effects" against free speech. While the US laws clearly protect publishers and online services from content they didn't write, Canada doesn't have such protections -- and the chilling effects from that gap in the law are quite clear in this case. There's nothing wrong with using the law against those who actually are making defamatory remarks. However, suing sites that host those remarks or those who simply write about the story itself isn't protecting against defamation. It's going beyond that to intimidate anyone who might normally write about a perfectly legitimate legal issue.
Communications

Submission + - You know it's bad when the trades blast Comcast (multichannel.com)

Submitted by
gordette
gordette writes: "I'm reposting this with some trepidation. I'm only doing so because the I noticed the Multichannel site was down for hours today but it appears to be back up. And also because Comcast did the same thing to me described by this journalist — held my HD channels hostage by insisting that I shell out for an expensive cable package. Anyway — here's the rap — this journalist is blasting Comcast for their 'shakedown' of consumers, in full view of industry insiders. She also links to an earlier blog post describing Comcast's Motorola DVR problems."
Security

Submission + - New Web Exploit at 1,000 Machines and Growing (trendmicro.com)

Submitted by JoergVader
JoergVader writes: Trend Micro has been receiving several reports of a new batch of hacked Italian Web sites that trigger a series of malware downloads once a user visits them. These infection series begin with a malicious IFRAME tag. Trend Micro detects Web pages hosting the said malicious tag as HTML_IFRAME.CU. All the compromised sites are hosted in Italy and, to date, Trend Micro identifies 1,174 affected Web sites.

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