Rattle wrote:
] ] To reward those who can attract a paying audience, and
] ] the firms that support them, much shorter copyrights
] ] would be enough. The 14-year term of the original
] ] 18th-century British and American copyright laws,
] ] renewable once, might be a good place to start.
]
] The economist presents a radical copyright proposal.

"Intellectual property" is an oxymoron, a completely bogus concept that has been foisted on everyone. There is no "copy right" ...

The right answer, IMHO, is that "intellectual property" is transformed to "copy tax entitlement" ... you as the creator are granted no control (which is control that noone can really grant anyway) but are entitled to receive a royalty whenever someone copies your work.

RE: Economist.com | Copyrights

]
] ASHINGTON, July 29 - The Pentagon office that proposed
] spying electronically on Americans to monitor potential
] terrorists has quickly abandoned an idea in which
] anonymous speculators would have bet on forecasting
] terrorist attacks, assassinations and coups in an online
] futures market.
]
] Senator John W. Warner, the Virginia Republican who heads
] the Senate Armed Services Committee, said today that he
] had conferred with the program's director at the
] Pentagon, ``and we mutually agreed that this thing should
] be stopped.''

HAH! That was fast...

Pentagon Abandons Plan for Futures Market on Terror

] Software flaws in a leading US electronic voting system
] could be used to subvert the outcome of an election,
] claim researchers from Johns Hopkins University and Rice
] University in the US.

Ack! ... the code for this stuff absolutely MUST be subject to public scrutiny. Computer experts have been screaming about this stuff for awhile now...

New Scientist

]
] ASHINGTON, July 23 — The House of Representatives
] overwhelmingly passed legislation today to block a new
] rule supported by the Bush administration that would
] permit the nation's largest television networks to grow
] bigger by owning more stations.

Yay!

F.C.C. Media Rule Blocked in House in a 400-to-21 Vote

] CHICAGO, July 16 — Though he once opposed the idea, Gov.
] Rod R. Blagojevich said he would sign a bill on Thursday
] that would make Illinois the first state to pass
] legislation requiring police to record their
] interrogations of homicide suspects.

This should have been obvious...

Illinois Will Require Taping of Homicide Interrogations

] Their legislation, introduced Wednesday, would punish an
] Internet user who shares even a single file without
] permission from a copyright holder with prison terms of
] up to five years and fines of up to $250,000.

Totally asinine.

House proposal targets file swappers | CNET News.com

] In the age of the leak and the blog, of evidence
] extraction and link discovery, truths will either out or
] be outed, later if not sooner. This is something I would
] bring to the attention of every diplomat, politician and
] corporate leader: the future, eventually, will find you
] out. The future, wielding unimaginable tools of
] transparency, will have its way with you. In the end, you
] will be seen to have done that which you did.

William Gibson on Orwell.

NY Times | The Road to Oceania

This just in: in a 6-3 ruling, the Supreme Court has reversed its 1986 decision and struck down Texas's anti-sodomy statute.