Reason's Weekly Dispatch
By Jeff A. Taylor and the Reason staff

March 1, 2005
Vol. 8 No. 9

In this issue:

1. Iraq: Simmering or Post-Boil?
2. Familiar Bedfellows
3. Compliance Means Forever
4. Quick Hits
5. New at Reason Online - Neal Stephenson’s Past, Present, and Future
6. News and Events

1. Iraq: Simmering or Post-Boil?

Iraq continues to be a mix of good and bad news as the jostling for political power continues, but as a whole, conditions in the country could be a lot worse.

Even the horrific car bomb that killed over 100 in Hilla tells us that the construction of a functioning Iraqi security force is what the insurgents fear the most. It is an ugly, cruel calculus, but if the U.S. can train more recruits than suicide bombers can kill, then the insurgency is doomed to fail. Attacking recruits is also a tacit admission that, at the moment, operations in the field are too dangerous for the insurgents to mount.

A trained security force is only part of functioning government; another crucial part is being viewed as a real government. That is why Syria's delivery of Saddam Hussein's brother-in-law seems so significant. When Syria deals with the new Iraqi leaders as legitimate office-holders, it enhances the standing of that government both domestically and abroad. And if it also turns out that Syria is having second thoughts about hosting any cross-border troublemakers, so much the better for the future of Iraq.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/28/international/middleeast/28cnd-iraq.html

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2. Familiar Bedfellows

From the headlines-from-another-planet collection comes this doozy: Unlikely alliances form in file-sharing case. No. Not at all.

Anyone paying attention to the ongoing revolution in content distribution knows that religious conservatives and Hollywood execs have a common interest in beating back any change in the status quo. Conservative groups want as narrow a distribution channel as possible, the better to bring pressure on it at key points and choke it down unless their demands are met. Hollywood, of course, wants to maintain control of distribution because it always has controlled it and that is how it has made money in the past.

File-sharing tech like Morpheus and Grokster runs counter to both groups' aims, as it puts individuals in charge of picking and choosing the content they want, which blows up both limited/exclusive distribution deals and the pressure-group myth that top-down marketing "forces" decent folk into experiencing content they would otherwise avoid.

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/business/3059631#121

3. Compliance Means Forever

Fallout from the Sarbanes-Oxley Act continues, with every sign that the costs of complying with the record-keeping law will grow. Publicly traded companies subject to the law have moved into the data archiving realm with very little guidance from the Securities and Exchange Commission. The result? Companies are trying to keep everything forever.

Old e-mail alone presents a huge storage and retrieval issue, yet Sarbanes-Oxley's pursuit of complete disclosure of companies' internal business decisions mandates such efforts. The requirement that requested records be produced with 48 hours is resulting in the construction of huge arrays of disk drives devoted to that task.

It is safe to say that, if nothing else, the law has become a full-employment act for database designers and compliance consultants. That should help stamp out securities fraud.

http://www.internetnews.com/storage/article.php/3485651

4. Quick Hits

Quote of the Week

"Oh my God! They used Spartacus to sell fucking Pepsi! Fuck that! I'm never drinking goddamn Pepsi again!" -- movie uber-geek Harry Knowles reacting to the telecast of the Oscars.

http://www.aint-it-cool-news.com/display.cgi?id=19517

New Discs for China

Here's some fun blowback: DVD licensing fees drive the Chinese to develop the EVD. Should the format take off in Asia, the DVD could die a slow death worldwide.

http://www.theregister.com/2005/02/25/china_chooses_evd/

Wine and Complain

Relative wine upstarts like Australia and Chile embrace new technology and in the process leave the old guard in places like France and Spain wondering what happened.

http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,66675,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_2

Bada-Bing Bada-Boom

The FBI gets one mobster to turn on his own dad, even wearing a wire to get info for prosecutors.

http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-mob28.html

5. New at Reason Online

6. News and Events

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