Matthew Gifford

I've really been digging these songs by The Batterie. Especially Bright Summer.

Ohio's current budget bill contains language that forbids state government agencies from freely publishing information if two or more private companies sell the information. This is wrong. The people of Ohio own the information. Their government should be doing everything possible to give them easy, free access.

Mark your calendars.

Poorly-written tech journalism drives me nuts. This time it's the fault of Bob Tourtellotte from Reuters. His article, Hollywood Faces Key Court Battle Over DVD Copying, is clearly skewed in favor of the copyright industry.

He begins the article by framing the case as Hollywood vs. pirates:

Hollywood's movie studios face a key test in their battle to defend copyright holders from digital pirates, when a federal court in California this Friday hears a case filed by a maker of software that allows users to copy DVDs.

After describing the horrible damage that the DVD pirates could do, he calls the motives of 321 Studios into question:

But the privately held software maker, St. Louis-based 321 Studios, argues that its software is designed to protect DVD owners by allowing them to make backup copies in case their DVDs, which can cost as much as $30, get damaged or are lost.

This case has nothing to do with the motives of 321 Studios. The MPAA doesn't care about your motives. If you do something they don't like, you're a threat that needs to be dealt with.

Later in the article, the author quotes some nonsense from an MPAA lawyer without challenging it:

Not so, say the studios. “321 isn't making any fair use. They are stripping my copy protection,” said Russell Frackman, the attorney for the Motion Picture Association of America, which represents Hollywood's major film studios.

“The law has never provided you have the right to get two-for-one” when you buy a DVD, Frackman said.

That's just not true. The MPAA refuses to recognize fair use, even though it was outlined by the courts in the Betamax case.

Then, near the end of the article, he rolls out a classic:

Illegal copying and Web-based free swapping of digital music has wreaked havoc on the record industry. Global music sales in 2002 fell 7.2 percent from 2001 to $32.2 billion.

The correlation between the sharing of music and the drop in music sales is not at all clear. Many other factors could be contributing to this, such as the weak economy, the ever-rising price of music discs, or the music industry's failure to put a good product on the shelves.

Pretty weak, Mr. Tourtellotte.

Wilco has made their new EP available for download to people who own Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. Good move.

Why can't Microsoft have IE render XHTML and CSS like everyone else does? It drives me nuts. From now on, I'm writing code so that it looks good in the browser I use, Camino. The rest get what they get.

Also, why does <acronym> only partially work in Safari? Safari users might notice that IE, XHTML, and CSS earlier in this post have a dotted underline. For people using other browsers, a little box that explains the acronym pops up when you roll over one. You get nothing. Stupid, huh?

I try to avoid writing about stuff like this, but I just can't let this one go. Morris County NOW President Mavra Stark is opposing charging Scott Peterson with double murder because to consider the killing of an eight-month-old fetus a murder would hurt the abortion-rights cause.

“There's something about this that bothers me a little bit,” Stark said. “Was it born, or was it unborn? If it was unborn, then I can't see charging (Peterson) with a double-murder.”

By that rationale, it ought to be okay to abort any fetus, regardless of how developed it is, as long as it has not left the womb. Never mind the fact that babies are born weeks, even months, prematurely and survive. Can someone please explain to me how whether a human is born or not makes such a huge difference?

In related news, Bishop Robert Carlson of Sioux Falls has directed Senator Tom Daschle to stop describing himself as a Catholic in biographies and campaign literature because he has failed in his “duty to be morally coherent.” It's about time someone said something.

Hollywood sends enforcers with night-vision goggles into movie theaters and puts metal detectors outside advance screening rooms, but still the industry can't stop pirates from recording films and selling illegal copies before their theatrical debuts.

Night-vision goggles? I'm sure they'd love to frisk everyone going into a theater. They could do it in the name of homeland security. Everyone else is doing it.

Now to the real point of the article [via Slashdot]:

Cinea LLC, which created an encryption system for DVDs, and Sarnoff, a technology research firm, are developing a system to modulate the light cast on a movie screen to create a flicker or other patterns that would be picked up by recording devices, making the resulting images unwatchable. The disruptive flickers would be unseen by the human eye in the movie theater.

I have doubts about how well they'd be able to hide this effect from people in the theater. However, it actually sounds like a decent idea. Those of you who know me or read this site know how much I hate copy protection on media such as CDs, DVDs, and electronic books. Copy protecting a performance seems reasonable to me because it's not intended for reuse like a recording is. I am still working this out in my head and would appreciate hearing other people's points of view.

On Friday aircraft designer Burt Rutan unveiled his spacecraft launch system. This is amazing stuff.