shouting loudly

An attorney for the company behind “Second Life,” the much-hyped virtual world, has given a blogger explicit permission to keep his very funny parody online.
The parody, which invites visitors to “Get a First Life,” is a statement about the popularity of the virtual world. The parody’s creator, Darren Barefoot, knew the letter was coming; he [...]

All this week, Princeton computer science prof Ed Felten is discussing the problem of US House race undervotes in Sarasota County, Florida. As Felten notes:
The big e-voting story from November’s election was in Sarasota, Florida, where a congressional race was decided by about 400 votes, with 18,412 undervotes. That’s 18,412 voters who cast votes in [...]

In a nationally representative sample conducted last year, Solutions Research Group found that millions of Americans are downloading movies and music illegally, and a majority think it is not a serious offense.
The study found that 32 million Americans age 12 and over have downloaded at least one full-length movie.

The state of Maine has passed a resolution refusing to implement the Real ID Act.
The federal law, passed in 2005, orders states to adopt Department of Homeland Security-approved ID cards. It also requires citizens to have one of these cards or other federally-approved ID, such as a passport, to fly, open a bank account, or [...]

In a child porn case in Texas, a federal judge dismissed Yahoo! as a defendant on the grounds that service providers are not responsible for the content posted by others.
The case, Doe v. Bates (pdf), involves a man who moderated a Yahoo! group that traded in the illegal content. In addition to going after the [...]

The CIA’s National Clandestine Service has a new recruiting tool: a Facebook account (login required). Here’s how Wired News sums it up:
Since December 2006, the Central Intelligence Agency has been using Facebook.com, the popular social networking site, to recruit potential employees into its National Clandestine Service. It marks the first time the CIA has ventured [...]

The New York Times has created a searchable database for studying the words used during Bush’s State of the Union addresses.
The database provides a total of how many times he’s used a word in each speech, and you can see each use of a word in its context. Play with it for a minute; it’s [...]

Internet Archive head Brewster Kahle and Richard Prelinger of Prelinger Associates have been turned away in their attempt to use works that have long since fallen out of publication.
Their legal team, Jennifer Stisa Granick, Lawrence Lessig, and Christopher Sprigman, of the Stanford Center for Internet and Society, had hoped to argue against the constitutionality of [...]

The final version of my net neutrality paper, Opening Bottlenecks: On Behalf of Mandated Network Neutrality (pdf), is online at the Federal Comm Law Journal website. Any feedback is very welcome.
I’ve also submitted it as a comment with the Federal Trade Commission’s broadband connectivity workshop. They’re taking comments on connectivity issues (including the issue of [...]

At their annual meeting in Cannes, the music industry is still trying to manage its digital rights, but it’s angering customers while failing to stop piracy.
For starters,, here’s a choice quote from the article:
Chris Anderson, the editor in chief of Wired magazine, argues that some form of piracy should simply be accepted.
“You cannot have zero [...]