With little money and barely any means to defend themselves, college kids have been the perfect targets for industry harrassment since the beginning of the file-sharing lawsuits. As the RIAA continues its ridiculous war on technology, they're taking another stab at college kids (who probably buy more music than any other demographic.) The RIAA would like to poke around on the private networks of major Universities. So, are schools there to educate, or to be monitored by monopolies and indoctrinate students with a particular, skewed corporate viewpoint? I guess it depends on who you ask.

According to CNET News, there's a new copyright bill in the works that takes those anti-technology, anti-consumer DMCA regulations that we loathe and the corporate juggernauts love, and gets them all jacked up on steroids. This does not bode well at all for those of us interested in reasonable copyright policies.

According to Editor and Publisher, a new Act introduced in Congress will further protect the interests of trademark holders against their biggest foes - corporate whistle-blowers and indie-artists.

Warner Home Video have taken on movie pirates in foreign lands with a unique strategy - by undercutting the pirate's prices. Wait, you mean that DVD I bought wasn't actually worth $30 dollars? I guess WHV figures it's better to make a little money than none at all, and they can still count on those of us living in the lap of luxury to pay inflated prices.

The major studios continue to prove that they just don't get it in terms of providing online content. Continued adherence to their assinine business model finds industry approved websites offering mainstream movie downloads haunted by the specter of DRM, crippling the consumer's ability to - you guessed it - spend his/her money and get the product s/he wants in return.

A quick blurb on Boing Boing about a recent video interview with President Bush raises some serious questions about how far the RIAA's increasingly shrinking conception of what constitutes fair use and it's scorched earth policy against violators will extend. It appears that the President himself may have run afoul of the RIAA's recent attempts at rule revision.

Canada, you wild land of contradiction, you! I've spent a decent amount of time discussing Nettwerk Records, the Canadian label who is taking on the RIAA on behalf of a consumer being sued for downloading an Avril Lavigne song, and I've also discussed the CRIA (that is, the Canadian Recording Industry Association) and their boasts, in direct contradistinction to their own in depth studies, that file sharing is tearing apart the fabric of the universe. The current media levy in Canada is probably one of the sanest things you could imagine, which is exactly why the CRIA hates it, and wants a legal paradigm shift towards a much stupider, meaner, greedier DRM based way of doing business.

The EFF reports on an impending legal case that could have a huge impact on online criticism - namely big corporations are fighting against your right to party - and by party, I mean criticize them online and keep your sources confidential like every other journalist protected under the First Amendment. I guess democracy is a scary thing if you're used to getting away with things.

Indie music review site Pitchfork offers an in-depth, maybe slightly frustrating, and uncharacteristically un-smarmy interview with entertainment lawyer Steve Gordon on the ins-and-outs of what exactly the RIAA are trying to pull. The article is appropriately titled Live at the Witch Trials, and anyone with even a cursory knowledge of some of the industry positions on file sharing know that Pitchfork isn't invoking the title of The Fall's debut for no good reason.

If you want to talk about slippery slopes, take a look at which direction the MPAA is attempting to push the anti-technology snowball this time (I'll give you a hint, it's not up-hill...) - the newest lawsuit that they've filed is against TorrentSpy, a site that doesn't offer BitTorrent files, just indexes them - much like Google does. Here we get the distinct impression that not only does the MPAA not want you sharing their movies, they don't want you sharing any movies, or running a service that points consumers anywhere in that direction. A resounding "who on earth does business this way?!" once again echoes from my room.

As reported by the EFF:, libertarian interest group The Cato Institute has come out against the DMCA, a testament to the intstitute's thoroughness in a commitment to a libertarian conception of justice. It's just that idea of justice that finds many (especially me) butting heads with the libertarians on a range of issues and being in bed with them on others, but it's good to see another positive outcome of their slavish devotion to "hands-offness."

Paul Newman is a damned handsome man - I'm not the first one to say it. Whether he's gobbling down 50 hard boiled eggs in Cool Hand Luke or emblazoning the box of cookies with his clasically chiseled visage, nobody can deny the magnetic power of his Newmanness. He's found himself oddly at odds with the MPAA recently, and I'm a little torn over this one - the complex topic of today's conflict that has brought chaos to the Newman Zone? "Image Rights."

Times columnist Esther Dyson has come out in support of "Goodmail," a company I've mentioned before that AOL would use as a proxy to charge senders of e-mail to get their messages across "priority," with the ostensible intent of limiting spam. Her arguments in favor of it are full of holes like a giant digital slice of swiss cheese.

On the Canadian Recording Industry Association's web page, you'll find some run of the mill, apocalyptic anti-file sharing headlines that comes off as even more alarmist than the American variety of this propoganda. But according to Michael Geist, a 144 page CRIA-commissioned study on the allegedly pernicious problem of peer-to-peer piracy contradicts the chiseled-in-stone industry notion that file sharing is the prime cause of all of society's ills.

In a stunning but obviously not unprecedented example of politicians not having anything resembling a clue regarding the value of new technologies and the way that they function, a bill has been proposed in New Jersey that would require all open forums on the whole (frickin'!) internet to demand ID from everybody, you know, to keep tabs on who's saying what. Is this 1984 knocking at our door, or just tech-phobia taken to a ludicrous extreme? Maybe a bit of both.