Salon’s interview with Adam Isacson addresses a lot of my questions about the downing of a civilian flight transporting missionaries by Peruvian antidrug forces. The plane was shot down by a plane made in the US, paid for with US drug war funds, and given to the Peruvian air force for the purpose of shooting down drug trafficers (or whoever else flies by, I guess). The surveillance plane was also a US plane, operated by US mercenaries, provided by the CIA.
Is it possible to destroy the music industry without eliminating the prospect of income for musicians and songwriters? I hope so, because I firmly believe that if we don’t destroy the music industry, it will continue to subvert our constitutional freedomes one by one. The latest example is the SDMI’s threat of legal action against the team that cracked its content protection schemes as part of a contest they held last year. Some of the academics who participated in the contest want to publish a paper on the techniques they used, and the RIAA is attempting to stop them, citing a click-through agreement and the DMCA. Bastards.
More details on the SDMI thing: the rules of the contest included a “no publishing clause. The Princeton research team did not participate in the contest. Apparently, the SDMI greedheads are arguing that by clicking through on an agreement to download the sample files used in the contest, the Princeton team implicitly agreed to the rules of the contest, despite the fact that they did not participate. This could end up being the case that does away with clickthrough agreements altogether (if we’re lucky).
Ford is suing 2600 (and Eric Corley, natch) for redirecting a profane domain name to their Web site. That’s silly. This is the first I’ve heard of this case, and I can’t find anything about it on the 2600 Web site. I must know immediately: what is that profane domain name?