bingoathome writes with a link to a BBC article on China's criticism of the US over its complaint to the WTO. The Bush administration is breaking its long-standing policy of backroom conversations with Beijing to condemn the country's continued 'failure to address copyright piracy and counterfeiting.' "The US says that China's failure to enforce copyright laws is costing software, music and book publishers billions of dollars in lost sales ... The US has been threatening a WTO complaint against China since 2005. It said on Tuesday that the two cases had been submitted to the WTO. One case claims that Beijing's poor enforcement of copyright and trademark protections violates WTO rules. The other contends that illegal barriers to hamper sales of US films, music and books. "

Federal regulator Mark Pryor, in a Senate Commerce Committee hearing, has stated that spyware distributors should face harsher penalties than fees. His solution: imprisonment. "Federal Trade Commissioner William Kovacic said most wrongdoers in the spyware arena 'can only be described as vicious organized criminals. Many of most serious wrongdoers we observed in this area, I believe, are only going to be deterred if their freedom is withdrawn,' so it's important for the FTC to collaborate on its cases with criminal law enforcement authorities, Kovacic said."

reporter writes "According to a disturbing report just published by Bloomberg, 'As the Kremlin gears up for the election of Putin's successor next March, Soviet-style controls are being extended to online news after a presidential decree last month set up a new agency to supervise both mass media and the Web.' However, unless the Kremlin pursues Chinese-style/Turkish-style blocking of the Internet-Protocol addresses of web sites like 'The Economist', even the Kremlin cannot control the online media. If Putin pulled the plug on an anti-Putin web site inside Russia, the anti-Putin web site could simply be migrated offshore to a server in, say, the United States."

ZJMX writes "Microsoft is going through its email and phone lists asking people to support their opposition to California A.B. 1668 — 'Open Document Format, Open Source' — by writing to the California Assemblymen involved in this bill (contact info in the link). Apparently they fear that California will join Massachusetts in wanting documents based on open standards in their government. Let's see if this community can raise as much support for the California ODF bill as Microsoft can raise opposition."

msblack writes "The RIAA and MPAA are lobbying California legislators for an exemption to proposed legislation that would outlaw pretexting. Pretexting is the practice of pretending to be someone else in order to obtain personal information on a person, such as telephone or banking records. According to an article in the LA Times, the RIAA and MPAA sometimes need to lie in their pursuit of bootleggers. They would like the legislation to exempt anyone who owns a copyright, patent, trademark, or trade secret from restrictions against pretexting. An interesting line from the article is, '[RIAA's Brad] Buckles said the recording industry had never, nor would it ever, assume someone's identity to access that person's phone or bank records.' Fortunately, Senator Corbert, the bill's author, is unlikely to accept these hostile changes."

mikesd81 writes "Over at C|Net there is an article about Michigan spending $38 million to distribute an iPod to every kid, for learning purposes. From the article: 'On Thursday, House Democrats delivered a spending bill that includes the idea of putting $38 million worth of public funds toward outfitting every student with a digital music player.' The plan included measures to tax soda and satellite TV services to pay for it, among other things, to raise funds. If you recall, Duke University tried something like this with mixed results. How financially strained will Michigan residents feel about paying higher taxes to buy someone else's kid an iPod?"

frdmfghtr writes "Over at CNN is a report that a blogger has been freed after spending 226 days in jail — a record for a journalist held in contempt. 'Wolf had been found in contempt for refusing to obey a subpoena to turn over his video from a July 2005 protest during the G-8 economic summit where anarchists were suspected of vandalizing a San Francisco police car. One city officer was struck during the rally and his skull was fractured ... California's shield law allows reporters to keep sources and unpublished material secret. But there is no federal shield law protecting reporters from federal investigations. The National Writer's Union, which represents freelance writers, said in a statement that Wolf should never have been jailed. "The abuses visited on Josh and other journalists are part of an effort by governments at all levels to control the volume, flow and content of the information that reaches the public," the union said.'"

unity100 writes "CNN has some news about a recent development in Turkey where the Turkish assembly, totally out of line with Turkey's commitment to EU membership, has voted to have sites that 'insult to the founder of modern Turkey' censored from entire Turkish population. This, just about a month after the decision to censor YouTube was reached by the Turkish courts. 'On Thursday, lawmakers in the commission also debated whether the proposal should be widened to allow the Turkish Telecommunications Board to block access to any sites that question the principles of the Turkish secular system or the unity of the Turkish state -- a reference to Web sites with information on Kurdish rebels in Turkey.'"

space_hippy writes "The next step for a project we've previously discussed has now come around: thanks to a sales tax increase it seems as though the residents of Dona Ana county in New Mexico will be playing host to the first American commercial spaceport. From the BBC article: 'Residents in the US state of New Mexico have approved a new tax to build the nation's first commercial spaceport. Dona Ana County is a relatively poor and bleak swath of desert in southern New Mexico with fewer than 200,000 residents. But voters passed a 0.25% increase in the local sales tax to help contribute to the cost of building Spaceport America. Sir Richard Branson has signed a long-term lease with the state of New Mexico to make the new spaceport the headquarters of his Virgin Galactic space tourism business. The spaceport is expected to open in 2009, and Virgin Galactic says space flights will cost around $200,000 for a 2.5-hour flight.'"

gollum123 writes with a link to a kind of grim BBC story. According to a report drawn up by 'hundreds of international environmental experts', billions of people face drought and famine, as well as an increase in natural disasters, as a result of climate change. Individuals in the poorest countries face the most danger, due to a lack of infrastructure and geographic location. "The scientific work reviewed by IPCC scientists includes more than 29,000 pieces of data on observed changes in physical and biological aspects of the natural world. Eighty-nine percent of these, it believes, are consistent with a warming world. Several delegations, including the US, Saudi Arabia, China and India, had asked for the final version to reflect less certainty than the draft."

newsblaze writes "China, having recognized there are major gaps in its science and technology arsenal, released their Technology Development Plans. The plans cover five main areas — geology, mechanical engineering, metallurgical engineering and aeronautical engineering. Three areas are prioritized in space technology and six major goals are announced. All this comes after having first set out their 100 Year Vision of Greatness. They appear to be giving themselves a breathing space, telling the world they are interested in cooperation and also giving themselves a major target, in much the same way as John F Kennedy did for the USA."

eldavojohn writes "Recently, the city government of Tokyo has requested that political speeches to be pulled from YouTube, claiming that it gave certain hopefuls an advantage over others for Sunday's election. You may recall YouTube being in trouble with more than a few countries in the past. 'Japanese election law limits the broadcasting of speeches, which are aired only on public broadcaster NHK. Soon after the race kicked off last month, the speech by one fringe candidate, street musician Koichi Toyama, 36, has become a popular attraction on YouTube due to his eccentric, confrontational approach.' Is it fair that some government officials are being viewed more on YouTube than others or is it simply leveling the playing field for anyone with a message since it costs very little to put a video on YouTube?"

Nomihn0 writes "The RIAA has announced that the House Education and Labor committee is considering an amendment, HR1689, to the Higher Education Act of 1965. The proposal would allocate federal education funds to anti-piracy measures on college campuses. Most concerning is the bill's wording. It's claimed that the proposal would 'save telecommunications bandwidth costs.' In other words, the government will fund private packet filtering and preferential bandwidth allocation. 'The Higher Education Act (HEA) generally allows schools to spend the money they receive only on certain prescribed areas such as financial aid grants and Pell loans. The new bill would allow that money to be used for more things, but does not contain a request for additional funding. Whether schools would be interested in using a limited pool of federal money to police student file-swapping remains to be seen.'"

BillGatesLoveChild writes "CNET reports VeriSign has made its move, increasing domain name prices by 7%. From October 15 2007, .com domains will now cost $6.42 (up from $6) and .net domains $3.85 per annum. ICANN had previously voted to support the increase. Despite annual income of $323.4M from .com domain names alone, VeriSign claims it needs the increase to provide "a high level of security and reliability for .com." This increase comes in the face of complaints by customers, registrars and senators alike that VeriSign is abusing its ICANN monopoly. Yet the furrowed brows and promises of senators of investigations have come to nothing, even though the only people seemingly in favor of the monopoly are ICANN and VeriSign. With complaints about the pair running back to 2002, what can we the public do to get our elected representatives to take the great domain name ripoff seriously?"

An anonymous reader writes "The new government of Thailand that forced its way into power last year has banned the website YouTube after a 44 second clip was found of someone spray painting on a picture of Thailand's king. When Google refused to remove the 'offending' clip the website was redirected to a different page. This comes days after a Swiss man was jailed 10 years for spray painting on pictures of the king while drunk, and is the same government that earlier this year slammed open source software for being useless and buggy."

CNet is reporting that the door has closed on the H1-B visa application process for this year, one day after it began. The US Citizenship and Immigration Services said that it had received 150,000 applications as of yesterday afternoon. 65,000 H1-B visas can be issued for foreigners with bachelor's degrees. The USCIS will choose randomly from the applications to determine the winners.

beetle496 writes "ComputerWorld reports that last week a judge denied Diebold's request to block ES&S pact with Massachusetts. This is a follow-up to the earlier discussion here after Diebold contended that the state had erred in selecting the machines of its rival, citing accessibility provisions of the HAVA law. Quoting: 'Diebold's request for an injunction to block the execution of the contract with ES&S was rejected... The judge also denied Diebold's request to have an accelerated discovery process and to keep the state's legal team from viewing internal Diebold documents... "The suit is still there, but they went zero for three yesterday," the spokesman said.' The actual accessibility concerns have been discussed over at the TEITAC listserv, including a few telling observations from experts familiar with accessible voting and at least one state insider."

Brett writes "Results from energy companies are coming in, and the word is that moving Daylight Saving Time forward three weeks had no measurable impact on power consumption. The attempt by the US Congress to make it look like they were doing something about the energy crisis has been exposed as the waste it is. But the new DST is probably here to stay — letting the bill expire would mean re-patching a lot of systems again next year. So much for saving energy."

rprins writes "In what is perhaps a reaction to recent Homeland Security demands, a strategic report by ICANN suggests that it should take on the model of a private international organization (PDF). That would make ICANN immune from US law and regulations. However, it's unlikely that the Bush administration would grant ICANN these privileges. So the organization might opt to relocate to Switzerland where such privileges are easier to attain."

G0rAk writes "The BBC is reporting that hacker Gary McKinnon has lost his High Court appeal against extradition to the United States. The fight is not yet over yet: 'We will certainly be applying for this court to certify a point of law of public importance and to grant leave.' said his lawyer, referring to alleged threats by US authorities. One New Jersey prosecutor apparently has stated that that 'he would fry,' a statement that would be among issues raised when they take they appeal to the House of Lords."