wilderness living

An eviction notice was recently pinned on the home of a couple in San Mateo County, California. They've lived there for the last twelve years. Last week, police came up to their tree, and stapled an eviction notice to it. Yes, their tree. They live in a tree. If Henry David Thoreau were alive today, I have a feeling that he would be tempted to move into the oak tree next door.

copyright study donation

Duke University's Law School has received an anonymous gift of one million dollars, which they will use to build a center studying the expansion of copyright and intellectual propety protection and try to find ways to curtail it. The gift will be officially announced at a conference in Washington, DC, tommorrow.

I fought the law...

You've probably heard about the blocked sale of Napster by a Bankruptcy Court Judge in Delaware. The file sharing service did, at one time, threaten to change the face of the internet. Its web site now holds only a good bye message to all who visit:

Napster's story is perhaps best described by the most popular downloads on its last full day of operation. The songs included Give it Away by the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Send Lawyers, Guns and Money by Warren Zevon, and I Fought the Law (And the Law Won) by The Clash.

Another file sharing service also found itself on the downside of fortune today, as Madster, aka Aimster, will have an injunction issued against them to cease any illegal file sharing activities. It's a bit of a hollow victory for the recording industry in that the company had declared bankruptcy in March, and most of its users had already migrated to other services.

china, my china

On Monday, news was released that China was blocking the use of Google by its residents. Today, we learned a litle bit about Google's efforts to have that ban removed.

How was this practice discovered? It appears that researchers at Harvard Law School came up with a Real Time Test of Internet Filtering in China as part of a documentation of filtering world wide. I'm happy to say that the Delaware Law Office is still accessible in China. You can visit the Harvard site and test other pages if you like.

We had written about their report on filtering in Saudi Arabia a while back. Another group, called Reporters without Borders is also conducting research on internet filtering across the globe.

ps. Remember how important it used to be to have your web site listed with Altavista? Well, it looks as though they've been blocked by China also.

new courthouse

The Wilmington News Journal has a nice spread on the New Castle County Court House today, including a photo gallery. Some proceedings were put on hold while courts moved into the buidling during the past few weeks. As of today, it was business as usual.

greece not playing games

There's a new law in Greece, and it has people who play games a little worried. Actually, it has them threatened with fines and jail time:

The Greek government has banned all electronic games across the country, including those that run on home computers, on Game Boy-style portable consoles, and on mobile phones. Thousands of tourists in Greece are unknowingly facing heavy fines or long terms in prison for owning mobile phones or portable video games.

The law is an attempt to prevent illegal gambling. Has it been used against people with handheld portable games? It's impossible to tell from the article, though they write that people have been "fined tens of thousands of dollars for playing or owning games."

will the wolf survive?

The federal government has been spending considerable efforts and resources to help reintroduce the the gray wolf (warning -- audio of wolf howl upon visiting the page) to the lower 48 states under the Endangered Species Program. ABC has a story about how ranchers are coping with sharing leased federal land with these predators. (image via the Fish and Wildlife Service National Image Library)