What’s the deal with that? Is it boring or exciting?  Frustrating or empowering?  Useful or useless?

I don’t really know.  I will say that it’s good for Democrats throughout the country to get to have some say in the nominee.  It’s pretty cool that even in these last weeks that people are still getting excited about having a chance to go out and vote.

I’m pretty sick of pundits talking about crap at this point but I already don’t watch the news or political shows (and actively discourage others from doing the same thing) so I don’t really know what else I can do.  It’s hard to believe that the first ballot was cast just a little over 4 months ago.  It seems much longer than that.

Still, with the changing of the seasons hopefully we’ll get a nice clean start and a nominee here in the next couple weeks, letting the general campaign can begin in earnest.

Either way, I hope we don’t end up hosed for another 4 years because people are pissed off at each other from the primary.  There are so many things that happen just based on the letter next to whoever is president that we can’t really afford another term of the status quo.

Who am I kidding, at this point in my life I’m more invested in GTA IV than I am in the political process.  Cops ‘n’ Crooks is a lot of fun though so I think you’ll understand.

Ok, I really should be working right now but I just saw a news article that I thought really needed to be commented on. As mentioned in my post about SACD’s earlier, it appears that sometimes companies go too far in trying to protect their copyrights and impinge on a persons fair use rights (see the entirety of the DMCA).

So far, consumers have been without a reliable voice in congress arguing for their position. Well it appears that finally, at least at first glance, that someone is trying to introduce a bill that restores some sort of control to the consumers.

I saw from the Washington Post blog on technology that Representatives Rich Boucher and John Dolittle introduced legislation called the FAIR USE (a ridiculous acronym - Freedom and Innovation Revitalizing U.S. Entrepreneurship).

It certainly seems like a step in the right direction. You can check out the full text of the bill here: HR 1201 (PDF).

• ability transmit a work over a home or personal network
• skip commercials
• for use in a library or classroom
• to extract public domain works
• to “gain access to a work of substantial public interest solely for the purpose of criticism, comment, news reporting, scholarship, or research”

I like it, but using my amazing legal knowledge (none since I am not at all lawyerly) I see that there are some loopholes that I think may end up making it effectively useless. Consider this paragraph that is supposed to contain a modification to the DMCA:

The prohibition contained in subparagraph (A) [of the DMCA] shall not apply to … an act of circumvention that is carried out solely for the purpose of enabling a person to transmit a work over a home or personal network, except that this exemption does not apply to the circumvention of a technological measure to the extent that it prevents uploading of the work to the Internet for mass, indiscriminate redistribution; (emphasis added)

This loophole, of allowing the technology for the purpose of prevention of online distribution indicates to me, that all DRM will be able to continue as is. Almost every copyrighted work that is DRM’d is done so to prevent it from ‘getting on the internet’ or some such nonsense.

Who decides why DRM was added to something? It is added to prevent copying but copying on your network is allowed but copying on the internet is not? How can you possibly engineer a solution that would prevent TCP/IP distribution on the internet but still allow it on your local subnet. It doesn’t make sense.

While I recognize that sentence was added to increase the likelihood that the legislation would pass. I feel that it still allows too much DRM on the copyrighted materials.

Also, it includes a note that circumvention is allowed “to skip past … personally objectionable content in an audiovisual work.” Will this allow more online stores that cater to individuals who would like to edit out certain sections of works and sell them online? Are we allowing people to continue to neuter works of art to fit their personal taste?

Anyway, it really is starting to seem like Steve Jobs “Open Letter” did do something to shake up the whole landscape. Interesting stuff.

[UPDATE] The Mark Foley story blew up right after I posted this. I’m not going to bother to link to new stories about it though. I’m sure you can find those on your own.

Lost in all of this talk of who is or who really is destroying America is the topic of our children. Children our most precious renewable resource (and next to hydrogen are our greatest hope to removing the gasoline powered car) and need to be protected.

Thankfully, in addition to passing laws that will redefine how the president can screw over people our elected members of congress find time to communicate with the children.

How exactly they do this can take many forms. Consider this picture of Senator Kerry taking a break from milking the ketchup cow (hmm, I just realized that is sounds disturbingly sexual … too late to take it out now!) to do a little meet and greet in Iowa.

Or perhaps we should consider the less innocent communications. Like those of Representative Mark Foley. Who as detailed in a report by ABC had sent creepy messages to a minor.

Like this one:

I am in North Carolina..and it was 100 in New Orleans…wow that’s really hot…well do you miss DC…Its raining here but 68 degrees so who can argue..did you have fun at your conference….what do you want for your birthday coming up…what stuff do you like to do

or perhaps this:

how are you weathering the hurricane…are you safe….send me an email pic of you as well….

While nothing too terribly overt here, they are all just SLIGHTLY creepy. This makes it more surprising though when we learn that Rep. Mark Foley resigned today.

Maybe this guy should get a job in a secret prison somewhere. If he’s half as good at torturing prisoners as he is the written language we’ll get a lot of good intel out of them.