Reason Magazine - Staff

Induce Vomiting

info@reason.com (Hanah Metchis) — Wed, 01 Dec 2004 00:00:00 EST

Last year a U.S. district court in Los Angeles held that Grokster, a peer-to-peer file sharing network, could not be held responsible for copyright infringements by its users. Since then, the Recording Industry Association of America has been suing individual downloaders rather than companies, but the entertainment industry is still itching to shut down file trading networks at the source. Their latest attempt is the Inducing Infringement of Copyrights Act, sponsored by Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), which would make it illegal to "intentionally induce" copyright violation.

With such vague, broad language, the bill endangers not just file sharing networks but many other technologies as well. To illustrate the legislation's reach, the Electronic Frontier Foundation has produced a sample legal complaint targeting Apple (for creating and marketing the iPod), the webzine CNET (for explaining how to use it), and Toshiba (for providing the hard drives).

The potential wrath of consumers probably would prevent an actual lawsuit against the iPod, but the possibility of legal action could stifle innovation. If Hatch's bill had been law in 2001, would Apple have been willing to take the risk of introducing the iPod? Or of promoting the iMac with the "Rip. Mix. Burn." campaign?

Widespread public criticism has prompted the Senate Judiciary Committee to consider revisions to the bill. At press time, the affected parties have not been able to agree on new language for the legislation. It's not dead yet, though, and technology companies and civil liberties groups remain wary.

Secession Fever

info@reason.com (Hanah Metchis) — Mon, 01 Nov 2004 00:00:00 EST

Residents of Killington, a ski town in Vermont, were so mad about their high state taxes that in March they approved a plan to secede from the state and join neighboring New Hampshire. Now other towns want to flee Vermont as well, and they're asking Killington officials for ad-vice. Dorset, Ludlow, and Manchester have already held town meetings to learn about secession; other towns may follow.

David Lewis, town manager of Killington, says the state of Vermont is bleeding the resort towns dry to benefit less prosperous towns. Killington residents pay $10 million in property taxes but receive only $1 million from the state government. Dorset pays $7 million and gets back $3.6 million.

After a town passes a secession plan, the move must be approved by the legislatures and governors of both states and by the U.S. Congress. "The odds are not with us," Lewis admits. "But just because something is a long shot does not mean that you don't do it." Killington has drafted a bill for secession and will introduce it to the legislature soon.

Judge, Jury, and Cop

info@reason.com (Hanah Metchis) — Mon, 01 Nov 2004 00:00:00 EST

Since 1996 the U.S. Border Patrol's "expedited removal" procedure has allowed it to ship illegal immigrants home from airports and seaports without a hearing before an immigration judge. Now this power is being expanded to cover people crossing at the borders with Mexico and Canada.

Bill Strassberger, a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security, which runs the Border Patrol, says deportation procedures that could take up to 12 months in the past can be processed in just a few days under the new policy. Many illegal immigrants are confined for months in detention centers while awaiting their court dates. "It's an effective use of the resources to enforce the immigrations laws of the country," he argues. "At the same time, we are protecting the rights of those persons who are seeking protection in the United States."

But Eleanor Acer, director of the asylum program at Human Rights First, says the expedited process cannot adequately protect the rights of asylum seekers. "It's destined to fail," she says. "It has no meaningful safeguards. This change gives border patrol officers the power to act like judges." In 2000 her group published "Is This America?," a study of expedited deportation in U.S. airports that cited many abuses as well as mistaken deportations of asylum seekers, businesspeople, and American citizens.

Subway Searches

info@reason.com (Hanah Metchis) — Mon, 01 Nov 2004 00:00:00 EST

Most people are resigned to being searched every time they enter an airport. Now baggage searches are spreading to light rail, subways, and buses. Just before the opening of the Democratic National Convention in Boston, the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority (MBTA) introduced a new security policy: All carry-on bags are now subject to search. The policy remained in place even after the convention was over.

The bags of randomly chosen passengers entering a station are swabbed with a chemical-sensing cloth, which is inserted into a machine. If the machine reports a positive result, in come the bomb-sniffing dogs.

The National Lawyers Guild and the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee have sued to stop the new policy. Lawyers Guild President Michael Avery argues that the searches are too intrusive, especially given that the policy was not prompted by any specific threat. "Law enforcement has only the vaguest, most general, speculative information," he says. "And I just don't think that kind of information is enough to compromise the privacy and freedom of everyday life."

Other cities are watching the case closely. "Virtually every other transit system in America has contacted us for information" about the new policy, according to MBTA Deputy Police Chief Tom McCarthy. On the other hand, none of the three major transit systems near the site of the Republican National Convention in New York --
MTA, New Jersey Transit, and Amtrak -- searched carry-on bags as part of their heightened security measures.

Cleaning Up E-Mail

info@reason.com (Hanah Metchis) — Fri, 01 Oct 2004 00:00:00 EDT

Thanks to the ingenious CAN-SPAM Act passed by Congress last year, junk e-mail in the United States has been drastically reduced, rendering many inboxes completely spam free.

Just kidding. Despite the new law, spam continues to increase, and recent studies by makers of anti-spam software found that less than 10 percent of junk e-mail complies with CAN-SPAM.

Fortunately, Congress isn't the only group working on the spam problem. The Anti-Spam Technical Alliance (ASTA) is a coalition of some of the largest e-mail providers on the Internet, including Microsoft, AOL, Yahoo!, and Earthlink. In late June it published some proposals designed to slow the onslaught.

Most of the recommendations consist of practices the alliance hopes Internet providers will adopt voluntarily, such as closing mail servers to nonsubscribers and limiting the number of messages per day each user can send. But the most promising suggestion is the anti-forgery technology ASTA members are developing.

The SMTP protocol, used for sending and receiving e-mail, has no built-in way to authenticate senders. Spammers use this weakness to hide their identities and send mail that looks like it's coming from somewhere else. CAN-SPAM makes this illegal, but the law is almost universally ignored. ASTA hopes to create methods to digitally sign content and make this kind of "spoofing" not just illegal but technologically impossible.

If that works, it might finally be possible to make some headway in the battle against junk e-mail.

E-mail Privacy

info@reason.com (Hanah Metchis) — Mon, 06 Sep 2004 10:18:18 EDT

The good thing about lower courts is that when they make a really stupid decision, they can be overruled. I blogged a while back about a court that decided that an e-mail provider can read his client's e-mails for any reason. Now the Justice Department and some civil liberties groups are trying to get the case reheard.

I was just struck by something when I reread the capsule description of the case in this article:

Councilman was charged in 2001 by the U.S. Attorney's office with violating the Wiretap Act, which outlaws most interceptions of phone calls and e-mails. The case never made it to trial, as the court dismissed the charge.

A three-judge panel from the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the dismissal, arguing that the wiretap law did not apply since the e-mails were stored, even if only for seconds, on Councilman's computer.

It seems to me that a surprising number of legal problems are created by the way computers deal with moving files around. When I started to study computer programming in college, I learned to adjust to the fact that you can't directly move things - a file, a stored variable, or anything else - to a different memory location. That's just not the way computer memory works. Instead, you simulate the process of moving by making a copy to the location you want the thing in, and then deleting the original. Copying is a fundamental activity of a computer, and moving is only derivative. It's not at all like the world of physical objects, where moving things around is trivial (unless they are very heavy) and making a copy is cumbersome.

So, when you try to apply laws created for the physical world to the digital world, you come up with all kinds of problems. The Wiretap Act may not apply because e-mail files are almost always "stored" somewhere instead of "in motion". Taking a legally-downloaded mp3 from your computer and putting it on your portable device can be blocked by a DRM scheme designed to prevent illegal copying. And so forth. It's really quite troublesome. Much more so than I thought during Programming 101.

Backdoor Censorship

info@reason.com (Hanah Metchis) — Thu, 26 Aug 2004 00:00:00 EDT

Irwin Schiff believes the income tax is unconstitutional. He believes it so strongly that he's built a whole business out of promoting his theories. He's written books and lectures, and teaches seminars about how to pay zero taxes. The IRS, unsurprisingly, takes a dim view of this. Schiff is currently being prosecuted for tax evasion. The court has also issued an injunction that prohibits the sale of Schiff's book, The Federal Mafia: How the Government Illegally Imposes and Unlawfully Collects Income Taxes. Earlier this month, the 9th Circuit upheld the injunction on appeal. Schiff claimed that the prohibition violated his right to free speech, since the book is primarily a political and historical argument. The court disagreed, saying that the book is commercial speech.

Commercial speech has historically been granted fewer protections than other kinds of speech. In particular, fraudulent and misleading advertising is illegal, whereas there is no law against false or misleading political speech. Anyone who wants to can argue, "Income tax is illegal" or "The end of the world is upon us" or "Property is theft," regardless of the merit of those beliefs. On the other hand, if a manufacturer claims his chocolate is fat-free when it really isn't, he's in for some heavy fines.

The line between commercial and noncommercial speech, however, is anything but clear. Many publications have a commercial component along with a political, religious, or artistic component. A movie with product placements for Pepsi and Domino's pizza surely should not lose its status as artistic speech. Even a clever TV ad for Pepsi or a cutting-edge music video—each designed primarily to sell a product—can strike the viewer as being a work of art, not just a commercial advertisement.

The Federal Mafia is a political tract explaining Schiff's views about United States tax law. Along with his legal theories, he alerts the reader to his other products, which are designed to help people apply his theories to their own tax returns. As Judge Procter Hug Jr., writing the majority opinion, points out, "Schiff can relate his long history with the IRS and explain his unorthodox tax theories without simultaneously urging his readers to buy his products." That may well be true. But in banning the book, the opinion does not make clear which portions of the book constitute commercial speech and which would be protected if published separately. Surprisingly, no material from The Federal Mafia itself is quoted in the opinion to establish that it contains commercial speech. Instead, the opinion quotes "inserts" from the book, which presumably could be easily removed, and advertising of the book itself from Schiff's website and the cover of the book.

Based on the fact that The Federal Mafia is advertised and sold together with Schiff's other products, the judge claims that the book plays an "integral part...in Schiff's whole financial program" and thus is commercial speech. Unfortunately for free speech believers, a huge number of books take part in this soft form of advertising. Science fiction paperbacks with order forms at the back, astrology books that advertise personalized readings, even any book with a list of other books by the same author could be seen as commercial speech under such a broad interpretation. Allen Lichtenstein, general counsel of the ACLU of Nevada, which filed an amicus brief in the case, says the expansive definition of commercial speech in the ruling "opens a Pandora's box for the government to decide what theories are correct and what theories are incorrect." Any publication that a court decides is false and that is packaged with any kind of advertisement could be banned. This could open a huge backdoor for censorship.

The courts have said that regulating commercial speech is unproblematic because commercial messages are not important in the way that political, religious, and artistic speech is. But commercial speech can be critical to decision making in a free-market economy, just as political speech is critical to decision making in a democracy. Even more important, an expansive power to regulate and ban commercial speech could erase many of the protections we take for granted. In our society, speech has a commercial component more often than not. Irwin Schiff's beliefs about the legality of the income tax may in fact be wrong and dangerous to others, but taking away his right to advertise those beliefs is even more dangerous.

Who's Fair and Balanced?

info@reason.com (Hanah Metchis) — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 04:46:37 EDT

This analysis of media bias on the major networks is quite interesting. It looks like negative news is dominating. (Link via InstaPundit)

Induce or Don't Induce?

info@reason.com (Hanah Metchis) — Tue, 24 Aug 2004 03:31:51 EDT

The software industry has come up with an alternative to the absurdly broad Induce Act. It's called (don't you just love this law-naming creativity?) the Don't Induce Act. It sounds a lot better than the original bill:

The Don't Induce Act describes three requirements that would have to be met before a software distributor could be found liable: The "predominant" use of the program would have to be the mass, indiscriminate infringing redistribution of copyrighted works; the "commercial viability of the computer program" would have to be dependent on revenue derived from piracy; and the software distributor would have to have "undertaken conscious, recurring, persistent and deliberate acts" to encourage copyright infringement.

The proposal would also indemnify venture capital firms, payment services, financial services, Internet service providers, librarians and e-mail utilities. If the measure becomes law, anyone filing a "baseless lawsuit" under the Don't Induce Act could be heavily sanctioned with damages that are triple what would normally be levied.

Because the measure would only apply only to "commercial" activities, the proposal would not target free or open-source P2P clients.

But it still would be a shift in the law from "ban the infringing action" to "ban the technology". And of course it's facing heavy opposition from the entertainment companies that support the stronger version.

King John vs. King George

info@reason.com (Hanah Metchis) — Mon, 16 Aug 2004 03:26:35 EDT

I'd think this was satire if it wasn't on MSNBC. British genealogical researchers claim that every U.S. Presidential election has been won by the candidate with the best connections to European royalty. On this basis, they're predicting a Kerry win this year.

Kerry is a descendant of bygone kings of England, Henry III and Henry II, and is distantly related to Richard the Lionheart, who led the third Crusade in 1189, according to Burke�s.

He is also descended from Henry I, King of France, and his wife, Anne of Kiev, giving him kinship with the royal houses of Sweden, Norway, Denmark and the House of Rus.

Bush's bloodline is not so shabby, either:

Similar research carried out on Bush ahead of the 2000 presidential race showed that he beat Al Gore in the royal stakes, claiming kinship with Britain�s Queen Elizabeth as well as with Kings Henry III and Charles II of England.

I guess this means I have no chance of ever becoming President.

Thinking outside the, um, box

info@reason.com (Hanah Metchis) — Mon, 16 Aug 2004 01:36:35 EDT

Indian citizens are being flooded with free condoms because of their high population growth and AIDS problem. But enterprising people are using them in some innovative ways:

Of the 891 million condoms meant to be handed out free, a considerable proportion were acquired by road-building contractors who mixed them with concrete and tar and used the mixture to construct roads, rendering road surfaces smooth and resistant to cracks.

Builders spread a bed of condoms beneath cement plastering on roofs, ingeniously preventing water seepage during the monsoon rains.

Weavers in Varanasi used around 200,000 condoms a day to lubricate their looms and to polish the gold and silver thread used to embroider the saris they produced.

They're also being used as fashion accessories, if you can believe the picture on the news article. (Link via Boing Boing)

State-Run Spelling

info@reason.com (Hanah Metchis) — Thu, 12 Aug 2004 05:20:02 EDT

Talk about language prescriptivism! Six years ago, the German government instituted spelling reforms, trying to make the language simpler. Now, the peasants are revolting:

Since then opposition to the changes has grown. It culminated in Germany's two leading publishing houses, Axel Springer and Der Spiegel, announcing on Friday that their publications would revert to the old spelling.

The reforms had failed, the publishers said, providing neither 'enlightenment nor simplicity'. They urged other newspapers to follow the example of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, which had gone back to old spelling.

We are all creatures of habit, of course. It reminds me of this Plan for the Improvement of English Spelling that made the rounds as an e-mail forward a few years ago.

Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld.

Downloading Laws

info@reason.com (Hanah Metchis) — Wed, 11 Aug 2004 00:00:00 EDT

A few short years ago, technology enthusiasts used to claim that technology moves too fast for the law to hold it back. Those predictions turn out to be overly optimistic. In fact, lawmakers trying to put a stop to one evil are likely to create dozens more with legislation about a field they don't fully understand. Vague language designed to catch potential technological workarounds can put a stop to innovation in completely unrelated areas.

The latest example of this dangerous mix of law and technology is the Induce Act, sponsored by Sen. Orrin Hatch. Its intent—to stop downloading of copyrighted material by making peer-to-peer file trading networks illegal—is bad enough. P2P networks have legitimate uses, like the distribution of taped Senate hearings. But the language of Hatch's bill is so open-ended that many other electronic devices, from the iPod to TiVo to email-to-RSS converters, would be called into question.

The Induce Act, also known as the IICA, says that anyone who "intentionally aids, abets, induces, or procures" a copyright violation can be sued for copyright infringement. That surely applies to the file trading networks, which make it easy to find and download a free copy of any song you desire. Apple's iPod could also come under fire for its huge hard drive, which would cost about $10,000 to fill with legally downloaded music. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has prepared a sample complaint against the iPod, pointing out the dangers of the Induce Act against established, respectable companies and technologies.

Others have gone even farther in pointing out the absurdities that could result from an expansive reading of the Induce Act. Tech blogger Ernest Miller is keeping track of an Induce Act "Hit List", pointing out products and companies that might be seen to "induce" copyright infringement. Among the everyday companies on Miller's list are The New York Times, which in a recent article "painted a romantic picture of copyright infringers who violate the public performance right for films," and Lego, which lets users upload pictures to create a Lego mosaic template. One commenter even joked that the manufacturers of Silly Putty could be liable for promoting the gooey toy's ability to lift an impression off a printed page.

The Induce Act would have a definite chilling effect on technological innovation. Even if judges are not inclined to interpret it broadly, the vague language opens the door to harassing lawsuits. Companies creating multipurpose technologies would have to be prepared to defend themselves against copyright infringement allegations. To avoid that, the Business Software Alliance has proposed changes to the bill, including a limit on frivolous lawsuits and a provision for products with legitimate commercial purposes to be exempted from liability. The latter would reaffirm the Supreme Court's 1984 Betamax decision which held that the VCR maker was not responsible for copyright infringement by its customers.

Faced with so many unintended consequences, Congress needs to consider whether this solution to copyright infringement is worse than the original problem. Digital content distribution is still in its infancy, but iTunes and other legal download services are growing in popularity. The digital music landscape could change next year, or even next month, in ways that the Induce Act would be unprepared to deal with. The law can undoubtedly cut off some avenues of technological innovation. But at the same time, the tech lovers of 1999 are right—the law cannot anticipate where technology will turn next. In the worst case scenario, a bad tech law could be simultaneously stifling and irrelevant.

Name That Business

info@reason.com (Hanah Metchis) — Tue, 10 Aug 2004 12:37:11 EDT

Fun tidbit of the day from GeekPress: Ever wonder where your favorite company's name comes from? Find out here. Some of my favorites:

Arby's - the enunciation of the acronym of it's signature food- roast beef, or RB, thus Arby's.

Hotmail - Founder Jack Smith got the idea of accessing e-mail via the web from a computer anywhere in the world. When Sabeer Bhatia came up with the business plan for the mail service, he tried all kinds of names ending in 'mail' and finally settled for hotmail as it included the letters "html" - the markup language used to write web pages. It was initially referred to as HoTMaiL with selective upper casing. (If you click on Hotmail's 'mail' tab, you will still find "HoTMaiL" in the URL.)

Nintendo - Nintendo is composed of 3 Japanese Kanji characters, Nin-ten-do the first two of which can be translated to "Heaven blesses hard work"; do is a common ending for any store.

Pirates or Fans?

info@reason.com (Hanah Metchis) — Tue, 10 Aug 2004 07:14:18 EDT

Via Techdirt, here's a fascinating article about anime fandom and production.

Japanese anime has won worldwide success in part because Japanese media companies were tolerant of the kinds of grassroots activities that American media companies seem so determined to shut down. Much of the risks of entering Western markets and many of the costs of experimentation and promotion were born by dedicated consumers. A symbiotic relationship existed between fans and producers that warrants closer consideration as we watch American media companies take a scorched earth attitude toward their most dedicated followers.

There is definitely such a thing as excessive copyright protection. I don't think the media companies know how much they're hurting themselves with their enforcement and harassment policies. The whole article is definitely worth reading.

The War on Doctors

info@reason.com (Hanah Metchis) — Mon, 09 Aug 2004 12:20:38 EDT

Expert testimony in malpractice lawsuits turns out not to be very expert after all. Via Paul Hsieh of GeekPress, who is a diagnostic radiologist himself:

The study by Johns Hopkins University radiologists found that medical experts who testified on behalf of plaintiffs in asbestos suits almost always found something suspicious on their X-rays, whether it was asbestos dust or a likely malignant tumor.

But six disinterested radiologists asked to review the same 492 chest X-rays found something wrong only 4.5 percent of the time.

And people wonder why the cost of medical care has gotten so high.

Election-Watching

info@reason.com (Hanah Metchis) — Mon, 09 Aug 2004 12:10:48 EDT

Okay, this just gives me the creeps. An international team of observers will be monitoring the presidential election right here in the U.S.

"The presence of monitors will assure Americans that America cares about their votes and it cares about its standing in the world," she [Democratic Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson of Texas] said in a news release.

Yeah, that's exactly what I'll think if I see a European bureaucrat paying very close attention to my polling place. What are the chances that they won't find anything to complain about?

Can Spam?

info@reason.com (Hanah Metchis) — Fri, 06 Aug 2004 01:54:27 EDT

The FCC is busy protecting us from mobile phone spam:

But the FCC exempted from its spam definition any short message service, or SMS, messages that go directly to phone numbers, which could create a large loophole through which millions of junk messages may travel.

The agency also exempted "transactional" and "relationship" messages -- such as billing statements or simple customer information. But it left the definition of what messages fall under those classifications to the Federal Trade Commission.

[...]

FCC chairman Michael Powell said he was "very proud to have just flatly prohibited spam on wireless devices"

For some definition of "spam" and "flatly".

Whose DNA?

info@reason.com (Hanah Metchis) — Wed, 04 Aug 2004 12:25:47 EDT

What happens when you can't get tested for a genetic disease because the company that makes the test doesn't have enough money to pay the company that owns the patent on the gene in question? Okay, this hasn't happened yet, but it's likely to become an issue soon.

"Fortunately, it doesn't appear that we're in a lot of danger," Stone said. "We've (been) doing this for a year and have not encountered a problem. But not encountering a problem in a year doesn't mean there will be no problems forever. Even a single problem that would require legal representation is just incredibly expensive for a completely non-moneymaking operation."

The ultimate answer, Stone believes, is to amend the Rare Diseases Act of 2002 to include patent freedom for nonprofit organizations that want to provide gene-testing services to patients with or at risk for rare diseases.

The law currently gives financial incentives to pharmaceutical companies to develop drugs for diseases that affect fewer than 200,000 people in the United States and would not otherwise make much revenue. But the law does not address genetic testing.

This is just another example of how unfit the system of patent and copyright is to new developments in science and technology.

Because Chickens are Inherently Amusing

info@reason.com (Hanah Metchis) — Wed, 04 Aug 2004 03:29:21 EDT

This cartoon, explaining the terror warning system, is too funny to pass up.

iPod Down Under

info@reason.com (Hanah Metchis) — Tue, 03 Aug 2004 02:50:39 EDT

Think U.S. copyright law is bad? In Australia, almost every possible use of an iPod is illegal.

Most people know it is illegal to download songs from the internet without paying. But far fewer people know it is illegal to copy music from a CD you have legally bought.

Anyone who has copied songs from a CD onto an iPod or computer hard drive has fallen foul of Australian copyright laws, which critics argue are failing to keep pace with technological change. Copying music for personal use is generally OK in the US and Europe. But not in Australia.

Australian users are not allowed to use the U.S. version of iTunes to pay for and download songs, and there is no local Australian version as of yet. So what does that leave? Well, if you've got your own band, you can make an mp3 of that music... but that's about it. (Thanks to Boing Boing for the link.)

Hope Is On The Way?

info@reason.com (Hanah Metchis) — Fri, 30 Jul 2004 12:41:48 EDT

Edwards's "Hope is on the way" is a really stupid campaign slogan. If Kerry and Edwards are supposed to make the country better, and if we are to believe that they can win, shouldn't hope be here now? But no, instead they're saying that if Kerry and Edwards get elected, then we can have hope that sometime in the future things might get better.

Maybe they should change their slogan to "Kerry/Edwards. We won't actually make anything better, but we'll make you feel good about it."

The Tethering Game

info@reason.com (Hanah Metchis) — Thu, 29 Jul 2004 03:17:15 EDT

What is it about copyright that seduces companies into making really stupid decisions? Okay, to be fair, companies can make stupid decisions about tethering all by themselves, but the Digital Millenium Copyright Act is helping.

Printer makers, garage-door-opener companies, and electronics manufacturers are busy installing useless �handshake� code as an interface between the replaceable, disposable product (ink cartridge, remote control, battery) and the more durable host device. Soon we will see automobile companies limit the replacement market for batteries, filters, and tires by installing useless code or contractual restrictions on those who lease.

By using computer code as an �access control device,� they can invoke the power of the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act to stifle competition from generic competitors.

The tethering of secondary goods within the extra-copyright industries is yet another piece of evidence that the DMCA is among the stupidest laws every passed. It is by all measures a complete failure that has retarded innovation and done nothing to protect copyright holders. And it has punished consumers.

Sure, locking your customers in to your replacement products can make a lot of money for your company. But is it really worth consumer anger over higher replacement prices and lack of choice? Plus, what's the consumer to do if the company goes out of business?

Also getting in on the tethering trend are coffee makers and mp3 players. The whole article is really worth a read. Thanks to Boing Boing for the link.

Flip-Flopping

info@reason.com (Hanah Metchis) — Wed, 28 Jul 2004 07:13:57 EDT

Speaking of ads, I just watched this 12-minute video designed by the RNC to highlight Kerry's flip-flopping on the Iraq war issue. Strange to say, it had the opposite of its intended effect. Kerry is clearly comfortable and sincere when he says we need to go to war against Iraq. He's clearly playing for political advantage and uncomfortable about what he's saying when he tries to position himself against the war and reinterpret his previous statements. It made me believe, at least for now, that if Kerry is elected president, he'll be strong on terror because he won't need the votes any longer.

Ad or Entertainment?

info@reason.com (Hanah Metchis) — Wed, 28 Jul 2004 06:42:01 EDT

I watch almost no TV. In fact, the only reason I bought a TV in the first place is that my computer screen is too small to watch DVD's with other people. In my opinion, the average TV ad is better than the average TV show. Networks may be starting to catch on to this concept.

Meanwhile, here's an awesome ad in which an Audi drives through some of Escher's impossible mazes. (Link via Donald Sensing)