Free Republic

Circulating on the web tonight: During an appearance on the Alex Jones Show, Drudge asserted that copyright laws which prevent websites from even linking to news stories were being advanced. “I had a Supreme Court Justice tell me it’s over for me,” said Drudge. “They’ve got the votes now to enforce copyright law, you’re out of there. They’re going to make it so you can’t even use headlines.” “To have a Supreme Court Justice say to me it’s over, they’ve got the votes, which means time is limited,” he added, noting that a day was coming when simply operating an...

In a statement to The Daily Caller, Girl Scouts of the USA confirmed on Wednesday that its literature will no longer refer scouts to Media Matters For America as a source of information to balance bias in news reporting. “Girl Scouts constantly reviews our materials based on feedback and suggestions we receive from our members and we update our materials on a regular basis,” said the statement. “As a result of this process, upcoming reprints of journeys materials will not include links to Media Matters.”

I wrote earlier about how the new PROTECT IP Act guts parts of the DMCA, but as you dig deeper, it's looking even worse. The original (and now updated) article focused on the use of the term "interactive computer service," which was in a draft copy of the bill. At the last minute, that was changed instead to be "information location tool." While, at first, this may seem to be a narrower definition, there are some serious concerns that this effectively makes it illegal to link to any website that is accused of being "dedicated to infringing purposes." That's because...

Those who wish to keep the internet free and open had best dust off their legal arguments. One of America's most influential conservative judges, Richard Posner, has proposed a ban on linking to online content without permission. The idea, he said in a blog post last week, is to prevent aggregators and bloggers from linking to newspaper websites without paying: Expanding copyright law to bar online access to copyrighted materials without the copyright holder's consent, or to bar linking to or paraphrasing copyrighted materials without the copyright holder's consent, might be necessary to keep free riding on content financed by...

WASHINGTON, June 12, 2007 – The nonprofit group “Operation Homelink” provided 100 Massachusetts National Guard families with refurbished desktop computers earlier this month to ensure they can communicate with deployed loved ones via e-mail. Fiona Canavan picks up a computer for her mother, Bridget Angela Durkin, on June 2 during an Operation Homelink event at the National Guard Armory in Wellesley, Mass. Durkin will use the computer to communication with her daughter, Army Spc. Ciara Durkin, who deployed to Afghanistan in February with the 726th Finance Unit of the Massachusetts National Guard. Photo by Tom Markham  (Click photo for screen-resolution...

Deeply disturbing, Google lawyer saysA court in Dallas, Texas has found a website operator liable for copyright infringement because his site linked to an 'audio webcast' without permission. Observers have criticised the judge for failing to understand the internet. Robert Davis runs Supercrosslive.com and put direct links on his site to audio streams of motorcycle racing. Those streams were created, owned and hosted by SFX Motor Sports, which is behind some of the events covered. A preliminary injunction was granted on 12th December by Judge Sam Lindsay in the US District Court for the Northern District of Texas. Judge Lindsay...

Exile enrages Syria by linking Assad to Hariri assassination By Harry de Quetteville (Filed: 02/01/2006) Syria's ruling Ba'ath party yesterday expelled one of the country's most senior politicians after he implicated President Bashar al-Assad in an assassination plot last year. The party denounced Abdel-Halim Khaddam, 73, a former vice-president and a stalwart of the Ba'ath regime, as a traitor to the "party, the homeland and the Arab nation" for his remarks. Earlier the Syrian parliament had called for him to be put on trial for high treason. Mr Khaddam, who resigned six months ago, is already in exile in Paris....

Australians win Nobel for linking bug to ulcers 13:56 03 October 2005 NewScientist.com news service Andy Coghlan Two Australians have won the 2005 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for establishing that bacteria cause stomach ulcers, it was announced on Monday. Working at the Royal Perth Hospital, Barry Marshall and Robin Warren established beyond all doubt in the 1980s that Helicobacter pylori causes stomach ulcers by infecting and aggravating the gut lining. Moreover, they showed that ulcers could be cured altogether by killing the bacteria with antibiotics. Hitherto, ulcers had been considered uncurable. Instead, patients' symptoms were treated with a...

WASHINGTON (Army News Service, Sept. 8, 2005) -- More than 100 Army Knowledge Online members from all over the country have offered their homes, support and care for families left homeless due to the destruction of Hurricane Katrina. The “Need Shelter, Have Shelter” forum reads like a classified ad section with AKO members who are eager to help out victims of Katrina posting their contact information, the space they have available, the number of people they are willing to take in, and any other type of information they feel would persuade a soldier or displaced military family to come stay...

The purpose of FreeRepublic.com's multiple message boards is to limit the topics for each board to particular topics. Posting the same message on all the boards defeats the purpose of multiple-boards for special topics. It is very annoying to see the same message on every bulletin board. PLEASE! DO THE READERS A FAVOR. STOP CROSS-POSTING YOUR MESSAGES!

One of the trends in modern computer science is the push for larger, more generic building blocks. In theory, this leads to faster development cycles but with a less granular flexibility. In practice, I've found that the arrangement of object files (the actual machine-readable code generated from the source code) and their interdependcies plays an often overlooked role in determining the effort necessary to complete a given project. What do I mean by this? Let's take an example from the physical world. A bed of rocks, perhaps alongside a river, "arranges" itself such that the smallest grains of sand slip...

I've finally completed indexing, by date, all of the FreeRepublic.com 'Terri' threads. There are four hundred and eighteen ( 418 )of them at this moment. It's all in a Quattro Pro file, and I'm trying to figure out how to put the file on the internet and link it to FR for FReeper review. I want to post it to the internet as a read only file, and I'll simply renew it ( replace it )daily.

To some, ownership of intellectual property rights in cyberspace simply reflect corporate values that treat virtual space no differently than physical space, where private lots and businesses are protected by walls, fences and gates. This article was excerpted from the book, "Digital Dilemmas: Ethical Issues for Online Media Professionals." Robert I. Berkman Posted: 2003-10-01Christopher A. Shumway In addition to enabling users to efficiently trade music and movie files, the Internet also allows users to circulate news content, to which they may attach their own comments. By simply cutting and pasting an article from an online news service to a bulletin...

This article features pages of the Chilling Effects Clearinghouse. Most of us know that we should exercise proper judgment in quoting stories under the doctrine of fair use and copyright law. However, some media companies seek to control access to their content even further. Some companies contend that simply linking to their stories is illegal. A court in Denmark has actually ruled linking to be illegal. Most companies don't like you linking directly to media files such as pictures, or audio and video clips. In that, they might have a point where there is no attribution and you are simply...