Hitchens didn't experience the half of it. The existence of a "prearranged signal" that he could use to make it immediately stop makes it many, many times more tolerable. People being tortured do not have the ability to make it stop. So yes, Hitchens now understands how it physically feels. He can correctly surmise that waterboarding non-consenting victims is torture. However, he (and I, thankfully) has no clue as to the abject terror and horror of being subjected to those physical sensations without any control over when it stops, whether it stops, or what comes next.

Cut off internet access for corporations? Interesting, but why create new punishments when the existing ones have never been enforced? The DMCA actually envisioned something harsher: Infringement complaints are required to be signed under penalty of perjury. Perjury carries a five year prison term and a fine. So the next time you get the ear of McCain or Obama, ask them whether they will instruct their Justice Department to enforce perjury law evenhandedly, even if it means putting some of Viacom's lawyers in prison.

Once we're doing the "I've got a ____ on my ____" thing, click here http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/06/10/baby-born-with-second-pen_n_106316.html

It would be tough to beat that one in the "I've got a ____ on my ____ category".

Well, once we're doing "I've got a ____ on my ____", click through here. I think this may be the final word on the "I've got a ____ on my _____" thing.

This points out a provision that needs to be added to future creative commons or similar licenses:

"This license, and any rights hereunder, shall immediately terminate as to any licensee who attempts to exert exclusive rights over this work. Without limiting the foregoing, any person who issues a DMCA notice requiring that this work be taken down because it infringes their rights shall immediately lose any rights to ever use this work."

The exact text probably needs work, but the idea is that if you claim an exclusive right to the work, you lose all rights to use it in any manner.

Funny, I ordered some rare earth magnets from Thinkgeek, and they arrived today. Just as I was reading this post. Mmmmmmm, low tech solution.

The best overall solution is to do what I do: Travel with a clean laptop and store your files, encrypted, on a secure network location. If you need to work on sensitive files on the plane, encrypt them very well and store them on a usb key shoved deep in your carry-on. Side benefit: A stolen laptop is just a hardware loss, not a data loss.

The low tech solution (assuming you've backed your hard drive up before leaving home) is magnets (cue Simpsons quote "magnets, always with the magnets"). Before you leave for the airport, put a rare earth magnet where you can get it quickly, say stuck to a key on your keyring (which you don't store next to your wallet or computer, duh). Assuming you are traveling into a country where doing so is not illegal, when that country's customs officer asks to inspect your laptop, pull the laptop out of the bag with the same hand holding your keys. Make darn sure the magnet rubs right up against the hard drive (sorry, airbook users). Seriously, a rare earth magnet the size of a pencil eraser will hold a one pound weight against my fridge. Your data won't have a chance. Combine the encryption with even partial data destruction from the magnet, and its no easy task to recover the drive's contents. Yes, the customs officer will be very annoyed that the laptop no longer boots, much less provides access to all of your client files and confidential agreements. But machines malfunction, right?

Seriously, though, why are you even thinking about taking years worth of data you have no intention of working on in and out of the country?

I've been giving this more thought. The ability to create the copyright rules is a specific power of Congress granted in the U.S. Constitution. I cannot figure out how permitting copyright in a state's statutes falls within the power granted to Congress by the Copyright Clause.

"To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;"

Even reducing to a claim that the copyright is in the numbering of the statutes, how is the act of a state in numbering or otherwise providing order to its own statutes promoting the "useful Arts"? I know that the RIAA and MPAA have scared the world into thinking that you can copyright anything and be put in prison for even thinking a copyrighted thought, but it simply isn't so. I think this is a use of copyright not permitted by the U.S. Constitution.

This is one of those things where you ask, "What's the point?" I would love to hear an explanation of what they think they are getting out of this notice.

Just because you have a legal right to do something that harms the public and benefits nobody -- including yourself -- does not mean that you should exercise that right. Of course, when the claim to a legal right is as weak as this one, it is even more senseless to try to enforce it simply to harm others.

Now all that said, isn't there an interesting criminal defense available? Imagine that a person tried to look up the law, was unable to find it because of the combination of lack of handicapped accessibility on the official site and intentional restriction of the availability of handicapped accessible copies from third party sites. Now imagine that the person violates the law not intentionally, but because the State of Oregon used copyright to essentially prevent him from succeeding in his good faith efforts to look up the law, thereby frustrating his good faith efforts to comply with the law.

It is clear that you cannot prosecute somebody for violating a "secret" law that is passed in private, never published, and never made known to the public. There must be a continuum between an unenforceable secret law and a normal, published, and available law. At some point on that continuum, where a state takes affirmative steps to prevent citizens from learning what the law is, the state puts at risk its very ability to constitutionally enforce its laws.

I would argue that software patents are far less damaging than permitting copyright to extend to object code alone. The price that the patent system demands for the issuance of patent is that the inventor publish lengthy discussion of how the invention operates and the best modes to operate it. Once the patent application is published, everybody is free to learn from it, improve on it, and, if it never issues as a patent, use it however they want. In this way, the universe of globally available knowledge expands.

By contrast, the copyright system makes no sense with regard to object code alone. Software object code behaves like a machine. Its main goal is to perform functions for the user. Sure, there is some tangential expression of ideas as to how the software looks and feels, but no more so than in any other machine -- and people don't copyright machines. Copyright for object code functions like a patent, but with these huge disadvantages to the general public:
(1) A much longer lifespan -- the writers of the code will almost certainly have an enforceable copyright for their entire lives;
(2) No requirement that any part of the source code be made available for public review;
(3) No requirement that the general public be taught how the copyrighted code does what it does

Before people attack (relatively) short-lived software patents, they should first ask themselves "Is our time better spent making sure that the public gets some benefit from the monopoly it grants over use of object code?" I think the answer is yes.

In response to the idea that "we already have enormous innovation" in the software field, of course we do. But this is not proof that patents do not drive innovation. Rather, this innovation is largely because software object code gets copyright protection that is far more powerful (see DMCA notices for example) and far longer lasting than patent protection.

I would propose reforming software copyright law so that a copyright to object code only be available where the copyright holder publishes the source code. Since object code copyright functions in all practical ways like a super-patent, it should at least come with the same "share the knowledge" requirements that a patent has.

Very stupid by the banks. They could easily talk to the owners and get them agree to not make any mortgage payments for say 10 years while leaving the mortgage in place. No foreclosure costs, no dispossessed homeowners, and gee, less evil in the world. And the banks get to retain at least the hope of collecting on the debt one day.

There is a way to avoid the censorship issue: Create two comment views. One is the "standard", or "moderated" view, just as described in your policy. The second is the "original", unmoderated view. Posts deleted from the "moderated" view still appear in the unmoderated view. That way, rather than censoring your users, you are providing them with a value-add -- namely, your opinion on which comments provide positive contributions to the discussion.

Good thing that cockpits now have steel reinforced doors so nobody disturbed them during their nap or other non-flight-related activities.