I was composing an e-mail inviting someone to something, and I wanted to write “starting roughly at 8:30.” What I began to type instead was “startlingly rough at 8:30,” but fortunately caught myself. What a difference a few letters would have made . . . .
Archive | August, 2004
BNA’s Internet Law News:
By the way, quite a few of the cyberlaw news stories on which I report have come from BNA’s Internet Law News, a free online service from The Bureau of National Affairs. The service covers international news — Australian and Maldive stories below, for instance, were prompted by this morning’s edition of Internet Law News […]
Great Firewall of Australia? (Great E-Barrier Reef?)
Earlier this year, I criticized the U.S. government’s planned crackdown on obscenity — either it would be futile, because people could still get all the porn they want from off-shore sites, or the government would have to go considerably beyond just prosecuting pornographers: [One possible outcome of the visible futility of the obscenity crackdown may […]
Maldive Islands block Internet access:
The AP reports: The government Friday declared a state of emergency, blocking access to the Internet, arresting about 100 democracy activists and using tear gas to disperse thousands of protesters who rallied in a rare show of dissent. . . . Earlier Friday, pro-democracy protesters had gathered outside police headquarters in Male to protest the […]
Anarchists debating
whether they should vote, or whether that’s too inherently anti-Anarchist. Thanks to Robert Racansky for the pointer.
Know Your Candidate:
On several occasions, most recently on Aug. 6, the Kerry campaign has said that “John Kerry is an Experienced Leader in the Intelligence Field — John Kerry served on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence for 6 years and is the former Vice Chairman of the Committee. Kerry joined the Committee in early 1993 and […]
Keyes Moves to Calumet City, Illinois!
As you all know by now, Alan Keyes has chosen to run for Senator in Illinois. While this not the sort of news item on which I normally comment, I was startled to learn that he chose as his place of residence my home town of Calumet City (and which is also the home town […]
Czeslaw Milosz
Other than Michael Young over at Hit & Run, very little blog-reaction so far to the death of Czeslaw Milosz at 93. (One of the century’s great anti-Communists, democrats, defenders of intellectual freedom, and poets seemed like a natural candidate for an outpouring of blog-obits: Oxblog? Crescat? MR? Eugene?) So instead of reading the pieces […]
Sunday Song Lyric:
It’s no surprise that Pearl Jam has joined the anti-Bush bandwagon, as their politics have been clear for some time. But they also recorded the 1996 song, “Olympic Platinum,” written by Nick Didia, which seems an appropriate choice for this week’s lyric. olympic dream, olympic dream… if i could reach to the sky and touch […]
TWO NEW FTC COMMISSIONERS AND THE NATIONAL DO-NOT-CALL REGISTRY:
Debbie Majoras takes over as Acting Chair of the FTC, along with Jon Leibowitz. Both are very able lawyers and people of great character, smarts, and integrity. Which will be needed, of course, to help the Commission recover from the “Zywicki interregnum.” Seriously, Majoras and Leibowitz are excellent choices to continue the amazing successes of […]
EXCELLENT ART EXHIBIT IF VISITING DC:
If you are visiting DC in the next few months, there is an excellent exhibit at the National Gallery of Art on “Hudson River School Visions: The Landscapes of Sanford R. Gifford.” I’ve admired the Hudson River School for some time, but will confess to be a bit of novice; nonetheless, I had never heard […]
Victims of Communism Memorial:
Tim Sandefur (Freespace) has more on this.
Is downloading obscenity constitutionally protected?
In Stanley v. Georgia (1969), the Supreme Court held that private possession of obscenity (i.e., hard-core pornography) is constitutionally protected, partly because of the sanctity of the home. This happened at a time when the distribution of obscenity was thought to be constitutionally unprotected; and when in 1973 the Court confirmed that distribution of obscenity […]
License to access pornography:
I am, I suspect, one of the few people in America who had a license to access pornography. Our rarity comes from the fact that most people in practice don’t need such a license: In theory, accessing obscene material on the Web, even from your own home, might subject you to criminal liability (that’s an […]
Update on NYT Privacy Story:
On Tuesday, I wrote a post about the questionable New York Times privacy story from July 30th involving the disclosure of Census Bureau information to the Department of Homeland Security. As I noted then, the story oddly did not mention the fact that all of the information disclosed was already publicly available from the Census […]