Slashdot Mirror

I hoped that I kept the article summary relatively free of my personal opinion, which I will indulge in this comment:

Thomson Reuters has too many asshats.

Let us set aside the fact that academic software and those who develop academic software should embrace interoperability and knowledge sharing.

I'll even set aside that, despite the (rewritten) title, Zotero has many fundamental differences from EndNote.

The complaint is, in the words of Bruce D'Arcus, "a nuisance lawsuit designed to intimidate." Zotero's style repository contains no EndNote .ens styles and seems to contain no styles derived from those styles. CSL styles are created manually and through an online style creator. There is no way to get a new CSL style from an .ens file--the Zotero beta had mapped fields internally to allow .ens files to be used independently of CSL (but even this feature has been disabled in the trunk). Zotero thought about copyright issues surrounding this feature and came to the right decision--not to distribute .ens files or .csl files derived from .ens files, but to retain the feature to work with user-provided .ens files (similar to the way OpenOffice.org can open and save MS Office files).

I have decided not to purchase EndNote and I am asking my employer to do the same, unless the suit is dropped. I intend to donate at least as much as an EndNote license costs to George Mason University, the Software Freedom Law Center, the Electronic Frontier Foundation or any other applicable entity that both defends Zotero in this case and solicits donations. (I don't know any organization who has stepped in on this case yet, but I imagine that one of these organizations can provide some sort of legal support in the future.)

I encourage you to stop purchasing Thomson products too. There are plenty of reference managers for all platforms (some proprietary, some free/open source) that you can choose instead, not the least of which is Zotero.

Disclaimer: I am a developer of refbase, a free and open source reference manager that might be seen to compete with Thomson Reuters's EndNoteWeb. I have and continue to use many reference managers. While I have many technical complaints about the EndNote products, they aren't the worst technical products. Thomson may be the worst socially, though--in addition to inane and baseless lawsuits, they are very slow to respond to general feedback.

You may be right about the details, but I'm hearing that it's VERY likely to pass right now. And I'm not going to hold my breath and hope that Bush vetoes it, because it apparently has nearly unanimous support, which would be veto-proof. Bush probably wouldn't bother vetoing a veto-proof bill and if he did, it wouldn't matter.

In other words, I was in a bit of a hurry here, because I do NOT like the bit about civil forfeiture, which Bush does NOT appear to object to. And we don't have much time to oppose this :(

Thanks for fact-checking things, though.

- I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property

I think Abort, Retry, Ignore summed up early MS-DOS frustrations beautifully. From what I remember, it never mattered which option you selected -- you were trapped in an endless cycle. Does anyone else remember the Abort, Retry, Ignore poem, in the meter of Poe's "The Raven"?

I agree entirely, equal punishment or none at all. I suggest we take this guys punishment and multiply it by the population of the US when we punish the guys named in this lawsuit.

Yes, that was in Lenz v. Universal.

I'll let Scientology know!

Now is the time to donate ...

https://secure.eff.org/site/SPageServer?pagename=DON_splash

EFF donation/membership page. "Get swell EFF gear with your donation!"

You can donate here.

The EFF does not of course always win, but it does frequently and has effected quite a bit of change to bad law as a result.

http://www.eff.org/victories/

Outlines just some of the major victories.

The EFF also sometimes engages in cases where probability of victory is lower, but we judge that the case must be fought, and that public benefit will come just from the fighting, and the hearing of evidence in open court. Of course we hope to win, but we also know that even if we don't win, there are other upsides.

This case (and the case vs. AT&T) get much of their benefit simply by having a court examine this illegal wiretapping program. Part of our message is that this program has not been subject to review by the courts, and that in of itself is bad.

The ACLU won early victory but fell down due to standing. We have well established evidence of massive interception of traffic. While some might think there is only an illegal wiretap if the government listens to you, it is unlawful for them to even intercept your communications, even if they toss them away later. Warrants must name specific targets, and it is the job of phone companies to isolate the traffic of targets and hand it over under lawful warrants. The government does not get to just intercept all the traffic and pull out what it desires.

1. He almost never checks his 'facts'.
2. You are wasting time that could be more productively spent banging your head against your desk.

There's a nice long list of cases they won, but somehow the fact that Orlowski cited half a dozen where they'd lost (including at least one where they'd dropped the case because they'd won a victory in a related case that made it irrelevant) started the meme that they always lose.

If you were ever planning to donate to the EFF at all, now might be a good time.

http://www.eff.org/support/

I will. I just donated another $100 to the EFF.

Hot damn, that's an awesome idea. I did too, and I'm even getting a nifty t-shirt in the process. Wow, I think I just became an activist. Way to go, RIAA!

Here's the link, to everyone else who is sick of just sitting there waiting for the problem to be solved by other people.

Damn, I don't even download copyrighted stuff, and what the RIAA/MPAA is doing makes me sick.

There's a key distinction you're missing. When you get a piece of proprietary software, you generally engage in a financial transaction. You exchange money for the opportunity to utilize that piece of software. Under the terms of the Uniform Commercial Code, this establishes a contract. Check out the box of software you are buying. On the outside, it will say that a EULA is included within which must be agreed to prior to utilizing the software. That license is incorporated into your contract where you are exchanging money. The enforceability of a contract you can't inspect in its entirety beforehand remains a debatable legal question depending on your jurisdiction. Hence some suppliers of software insure you can inspect the EULA beforehand, if you ask to do so.

Downloaded, free-of-charge software is in a slightly different circumstance, where the consideration the supplier receives is solely in terms of the license you're bound to when using it. It has been argued that this makes the EULA more valid as the initial contract is established at the time that the EULA is presented. If you don't agree to the terms of the license for the software first, you have no contract, and no right to copy, modify, make derivative works of, or redistribute the software. But mere use or dis assembly of the software prior to agreement of the EULA? An interesting question.

There have been numerous court cases both upholding and dismissing EULAs ("shrink wrap licenses") in specific circumstances. For instance ProCD Inc. v. Zeidenberg is often pointed to by opponents of EULAs. This has been an issue of significant suits for well over a decade, coming up somewhat recently in the Bnetd case.

The groupthink of Slashdot will tell you that you can do whatever you want. But philosophical zealotry does not caselaw (nor morality) make. I'd trouble myself more about the parenthetical.

No!

As upset as I am with the things they're doing, I do not advocate violence. They already call us "terrorists" because we question the value of the laws they bought. I would never stoop to actually become what they accuse us of being. Then, I would be down on the RIAA's level.

I suggest writing Congress, instead. And, more importantly, trying to run for Congress (or helping reasonable people to do so). There are plenty of "safe" districts for one party or another and the incumbents all retire eventually. A motivated pool of private citizens can help someone win their party's primary and, in certain districts, once you do that, you might as well be in Congress.

It's not impossible. There are already a handful of people who are reasonable in Congress. We just need more of them.

- I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property

> Dude, did you read TFA? Because, if the way ars describes it is accurate, the whole law is pretty much inflammatory.

Feel free to read the EIPA for yourself. Anyone who says I'm making this up is encouraged to cite whichever part of the law they think I got wrong.

I mean, this *is* a bill that contains this statement in its "findings" --

"(20) The Department of the Treasury's Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence would be an effective tool in combating intellectual property theft."

That's right. They want to use the people who fight terrorism for this. Shouldn't they, I don't know, worry more about terrorists than infringement?

- I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property

*SUPPOSEDLY* firefox memory use can be curbed by going to about:config and setting browser.cache.memory.capacity, but that doesn't seem to be respected by either firefox 2.x or 3.x, and it's excessively slow to boot.

Being as most browsers use firefox's gecko engine it's doubtful they perform much better.

IE is even *WORSE* since it doesn't really have a well defined plugin system let alone adblocking.

That being said, I don't plan to use chrome at least until it gets adblocking *AND* they package terms of service that actually make sense. I read the god-awful tos myself when chrome was released and wondered how long it'd be until I saw something about it on slashdot :)

Oh, and if you're worried about privacy, there's always Tor, Privoxy, and Freecap (or tsocks on *NIX)

I really hope that EFF gets involved on this one (it really is right up their alley after all...it is about free speech and it is online), perhaps in founding the class and leading the charge. I have donated money to the EFF for several years now and I would encourage everyone here who has not already done so to please consider giving something if you can. The EFF is in many ways the last and best defense of the anonymous masses against the abuses of the organized and powerful interests who are lined up against our freedom of speech, fair use, right to reverse engineer, and the public domain.

I really hope that EFF gets involved on this one (it really is right up their alley after all...it is about free speech and it is online), perhaps in founding the class and leading the charge. I have donated money to the EFF for several years now and I would encourage everyone here who has not already done so to please consider giving something if you can. The EFF is in many ways the last and best defense of the anonymous masses against the abuses of the organized and powerful interests who are lined up against our freedom of speech, fair use, right to reverse engineer, and the public domain.

I believe the GP was referring to the RIAA/Verizon case, not FISA.

If IT wants to unionize, forget traditional labor unions. Lobby. Make the economy and tech labor issues move to the top of the campaigns. Spread your propaganda to all your union employees and astroturf the hell out of it. MADD and AARP are far more effective "unions" than the teamsters. Bend the laws to make it unprofitable to offshore. Spread beyond IT, many of us EE/CS/ME types feel the same pain you do. I'd pay dues for an organization that had real power in Washington for issues I care about.

Exactly.

Lets start with simple things. There are a number of "Trade Organizations" that relate to what most of us do.

How many of us have joined http://www.ieee.org/ [ieee.org] and/or http://www.acm.net/ [acm.net]?

How many have joined http://www.eff.org/ [eff.org]?

Take a look at this list of money spent by PACs in the 2004 election http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_action_committee#2004_Presidential_election [wikipedia.org] and tell me why we shouldn't form one to watch over OUR interests?

Those are better options for IT. Join professional organizations (and your MSCE isn't what I mean), and found a PAC or Lobbying group to support our interests, and we'd be in much better shape than trying to unionize.

Well, I'll be honest, I probably wouldn't have found either of those orgs (IEEE or ACM) if it hadn't been for a professor who mentioned them when I went back to college to finish up my degree. This was after I was already working in the field and had been for almost 8 years. This probably isn't uncommon in a group that has a large contingent of "self taught" people.

Slowing or delaying p2p is one thing, but actively forging packets, for any reason, should be punished severely.

Forging reset packets does not equal "throttling", even if it does reduce the load on the network.

Perhaps slashdotters should write to the production company and tell them to give the finger to TI and to the other companies involved in the conference do the show and just fuzzy out the names in the show when it airs.

Here's the deal, they've already got a case (to help back them up in case of a lawsuit) that has been proven that such information is legal to release. (MBTA smack down) They don't even have to do it step by step. I remember an episode where they skipped some steps when making "laughing" gas.

Seems to me people should know about this and possible false advertising or instilling a false sense of security that can come out of using these cards. Although I could see the Feds stepping in seeing as the National ID is supposed to have RFID (I think).

If IT wants to unionize, forget traditional labor unions. Lobby. Make the economy and tech labor issues move to the top of the campaigns. Spread your propaganda to all your union employees and astroturf the hell out of it. MADD and AARP are far more effective "unions" than the teamsters. Bend the laws to make it unprofitable to offshore. Spread beyond IT, many of us EE/CS/ME types feel the same pain you do. I'd pay dues for an organization that had real power in Washington for issues I care about.

Exactly.

Lets start with simple things. There are a number of "Trade Organizations" that relate to what most of us do.

How many of us have joined http://www.ieee.org/ and/or http://www.acm.net/?

How many have joined http://www.eff.org/?

Take a look at this list of money spent by PACs in the 2004 election http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_action_committee#2004_Presidential_election and tell me why we shouldn't form one to watch over OUR interests?

Those are better options for IT. Join professional organizations (and your MSCE isn't what I mean), and found a PAC or Lobbying group to support our interests, and we'd be in much better shape than trying to unionize.

Bypassing digital rights management is prohibited _except_ as provided for fair use (and a select few other uses).

If only that were true. Although the text of the DMCA mentions fair use, it doesn't really offer any protection for people who violate "technological protection" of the media in order to exercise those rights. Just look at http://chillingeffects.org/ for examples. The only real protection for people who have legitimate needs to get around DRM come in the form of exemptions which are reexamined and granted every 3 years. Here is the latest set of DMCA exemptions. The EFF specifically notes that no provisions have been made for the sort of fair use rights relevant to this discussion:

...all the proposed exemptions that would benefit consumers were denied (space-shifting, region coding, backing up DVDs).

Bypassing digital rights management is prohibited _except_ as provided for fair use (and a select few other uses).

If only that were true. Although the text of the DMCA mentions fair use, it doesn't really offer any protection for people who violate "technological protection" of the media in order to exercise those rights. Just look at http://chillingeffects.org/ for examples. The only real protection for people who have legitimate needs to get around DRM come in the form of exemptions which are reexamined and granted every 3 years. Here is the latest set of DMCA exemptions. The EFF specifically notes that no provisions have been made for the sort of fair use rights relevant to this discussion:

...all the proposed exemptions that would benefit consumers were denied (space-shifting, region coding, backing up DVDs).

Ya, no censorship in the USA...

http://www.eff.org/Censorship/Indymedia

That may be old news, but it continues. The cops are harassing lots of Indymedia (and related) people in Minnesota right now. Lots of people being charged with felonies for "rioting" even when they are in their *homes*.

The censorship is already here. They have intimidated people to *not* report (but plenty reports come through).

Oh and Amy Goodman of Democracy Now was arrested this week too.

Not to talk of the control of the radio/tv exerted by the govt, and how often they shut down "pirate" radio....

With the public now knowing that their phones and emails are recorded, the intimidation is already in place. Who wants to speak up or protest in Minnesota now for example? A few remaining die hards, but the rest have been (reasonably) scared away. That itself is censorship (if not state terrorism).

The people who claim "no censorship" are likely people who have never said anything.

patents cover methods of implementation, and not all encompassing ideas

Not true.

Patent applications are drafted to be as broad as the prior art will allow. Patents claiming "all encompassing ideas" are usually harder to get than narrow ones and at greater risk of later invalidation, but - as Acacia and other trolls are well aware - they are more valuable: http://w2.eff.org/patent/ and software is particularly troubled by them: http://www.researchoninnovation.org/dopatentswork/dopat9.pdf

Your government monitors all your communications on an arbitrary basis

But seriously... Posting AC in a discussion you moderated (badly) is way more annoying than signing an AC post.

And FWIW, GP was a pretty great read.

- I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property

(Not really... Just in spirit)

Thanks! Even if I goofed in the article, we all still learned something from it. It makes me wish I had looked up pair production to begin with, though. I spent quite a while looking things up and still got the wrong answer.

- I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property

> I'd just like to point out that I Don't Believe In Imaginary Property is more prolific now than Roland was in his prime, yet there's no griping. I wonder why...

Not really. For one, look at the Hall of Fame. Rpiquepa is #2 with 455 submissions. Yes, that's Roland's account.

Secondly, there have been many threads with random curiosity/griping. Mostly they stopped caring once they found out that I'm a nobody who does this for fun, but I guess my name gets a lot more attention than prostoalex (the #1 submitter of all time), or most of the rest of the top 10 (except maybe for Mr. Beckerman who has a personal hand in many of his stories).

I'm probably the only submitter who submits this much without using their Slashdot account (I have max karma, I don't really care). I think that also accounts for a lot of the attention.

I don't have any relation to any of the Slashdot editors, though, if that was your implication. I don't know if you've noticed, but they'll write submissions under their own name from time to time. They don't need to invent someone to submit via :-)

I'm also not affiliated with the EFF except that I support their goals. That said, I encourage people to take up the name if they support the goals I do. Feel free to submit to Slashdot under my name. You probably won't make any goofs worse than I have. I spent about an hour trying to figure out what caused the electron/positron pair production only to get it wrong, even though I don't get a thing for doing this.

But I figure I'm staying true to my principles if I don't even lay claim to my own name. It's not like I own it or something :-)

- I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property

Actually, that's my fault. I submitted the story, samzenpus just approved it. I did my best to figure out why a gamma ray produces an electron/positron pair and the photoelectric effect seemed right. Well, except for the positron part, I guess. I should've noticed that, because you're right--it just ejects electrons, it doesn't create antiparticles. It's been too long since my last college physics class. None of the articles I linked to bothered to explain that point, so I did my best to look up the reason.

I also figured that if I was wrong, it would spark some discussion and I'd learn the actual reason. Care to explain more? I would like to know.

- I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property

(Prize money comes from a special donation provided by an individual EFF supporter, earmarked specifically for this project. Prize money does NOT come from EFF membership dues, corporate or foundation grants, or other general EFF funds.)

To what use will this long, long prime be put?

That depends. If it's over 10,000,000 digits then it will be cashed in for $100,000.

Based on what they told me at the time and everything I've learned since then:

(Phil) Zimmermann never even uploaded PGP files for public access.

(Kelly) Goen studiously limited his uploads to U.S. systems, as permitted
by law and routinely done with identically-regulated AT&T and RSA software.

They certainly didn't care about exporting PGP. Hell, most of the
rest of the world already purchases public-key products from numerous
vendors except U.S. companies.

They did want to pre-empt S. 266 before it became law - just as millions of
people do all the time regarding all sorts of pending legislation. And the
offending mandate was later deleted from S. 266, anyway.

Zimmermann and Goen wanted to protect this nation's citizens. S.
266 wasn't threatening other nation's citizens; it was threatening
Americans!"

Wired also posted an overview of PGP and S.266 on the 10th anniversary of the shebang in 2001. It's worth noting that Biden introduced the legislation, but also was one of the Senators responsible for removing the anti-crypto section.

Biden's still a thorough douche toward tech, specifically peer-to-peer networking and free speech on the Internet.

If you look at the firehose, you will see that I, the submitter, was the one to add that XKCD link. The editors didn't do it.

I also changed the SQL injection because I didn't want to guess or type in all 463 tables. DROP DATABASE is so much more efficient.

- I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property

is a great solution (Windows, OS X, Linux, *BSD, Solaris, etc). Once you've started the daemon, it's available everywhere you go, transparently. Just proxy your web surfing, mail access through the VPN server.

(Of course in the FA's example, it only encrypts half of the transmission - to your proxy - but it's these edge networks that are generally most vulnerable - home wireless, Starbucks, random offices, hotels, airports and local ISPs. That said, never forget the NSA is listening on core networks.)

Actually it doesn't work on kids either. They sent some similar crap out to my oldest nephews school last year,and he handed me one to show me when I went to pick him up. When I asked him and his friends(most of which were females,I swear that boy's a magnet for them) thought about it they all said in unison "Greedy Pigs!". I just smiled,wiped a fake tear away,and said "What wonderfully smart little subversives you are! I'm so proud!".

The simple fact is today's kids are not only smart,but cynical as hell. They also have iPods. When I went to pick up my nephew it was an equal mix of iPod,Creative,and Sandisk MP3 players,so rich and poor all had 'em. They see that to buy songs on iTunes it would cost 40K to fill it up so no wonder so many of them share files. And instead of trying to find ways to make it more affordable for kids,what does the RIAA do? One of their own with a straight face gets on the stand and says ripping your OWN CD isn't fair use. So it isn't like they have been sneaky with their greed. They see these companies making record profits,yet the price never seems to go down,why should they care if the greedy bastards get ripped off?

I personally am quite happy the new generation is so cynical. They don't believe ANYTHING just because someone in authority says it is so. It is nice to see the newer generations seem to have a lot more wolves and a lot less sheep. Maybe their lack of gullibility will help turn it around when they get old enough to get their own power. But as always this is my 02c,YMMV

> Apparently, the printers really were downloading music, but they had a fair use! I totally misread that story before. I, for one, will not stand for fair use rights being taken away from our electronic friends!

I do my best when writing the stories, but it's not like I'm getting paid for this :)

I know you're kidding, but maybe I wasn't as clear as I hoped to be. I was trying to point out why I think that some lawyers are relying on programs instead of critical thinking when sending out notices. Obviously, if the computer does all the thinking, it's not going to consider Fair Use.

That said, who knows? There are days when I could swear that this stupid printer has a mind of its own...

- I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property

A brief recap for those who haven't been following the case:

Around Feb. 2007, Stephanie Lenz posted a Youtube video of her toddler laughing and dancing to Prince's "Let's Go Crazy". The song is heard somewhat indistinctly in the background of the low resolution, low fidelity 29 second video. Four months later, Universal sent a takedown notice to Youtube to remove the video. Mrs. Lenz with the Electronic Frontier Foundation filed a counter-notice and sued under a provision of the DMCA.

Universal wanted the case dismissed with their brief arguing:

• Fair Use is not a defense for copyright infringement
• The DMCA does not require copyright holders to check for Fair Use before sending a notice
• There is no such thing as "self-evident" Fair Use
• There was no way Universal could have know it was Fair Use

In court, Universal also tried to argue that their takedown notice wasn't a DMCA takedown notice because the notice had a disclaimer saying it wasn't. The notice however followed the same procedure as a DMCA takedown and was sent to the DMCA takedown email address at Youtube. This point is important as the DMCA has a provision that allows for lawsuits if copyright holder abuses the DMCA. The Judge didn't address this point in particular but apparently disagreed given his ruling.

Universal however seemingly admitted to ABC News that it doesn't really check material for Fair Use before sending out takedown notices and doesn't care:

Prince believes it is wrong for YouTube, or any other user-generated site, to appropriate his music without his consent. That position has nothing to do with any particular video that uses his songs. It's simply a matter of principle. And legally, he has the right to have his music removed. We support him and this important principle. That's why, over the last few months, we have asked YouTube to remove thousands of different videos that use Prince music without his permission.

This is another important point because copyright law requires copyright holders should be diligent when pursuing legal actions. From what we know of the RIAA lawsuits, Universal doesn't seem to think this applies to them.

Yeah, that is a little confusing. Microsoft opposed Google and Comcast opposed Net Neutrality.

But then I had trouble fitting the headline in there, and I guess that made the summary misleading. Sorry about that.

That said, it's still true that both Microsoft and Comcast are hiring PR firms to astroturf, even if the summary came out wrong.

- I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property

Oh come now. I dislike DRM (and the buggy, slow program that has somehow become the most popular method of digital distribution on the PC) quite a bit, but you can get least get your facts straight if you're (not your) going to argue about it. Microsoft extended the PlaysForSure authentication to at least 2011, and you don't lose the ability to play the music you already have on your computer. What would happen is that you would no longer be able to move the music to a different computer or operating system. While certainly not a good thing, this is a far cry from all of your music being instantly gone and unplayable.

Don't all carriers now connect the same warrantless federal wiretap device to lines without even so much as a march in the streets?

I know that specifically AT&T is the NSA's pet.

Eerily relevant is todays EFF Article pointing out that the Free Ad-Supported music sites imeem.com and lala.com both stream unenctrypted mp3s with the blessing of the record business. Indeed it was revealed that Warner Brothers Music invested millions of dollars in both of these (although their imeem investment looks a whole lot better). There are some speed bumps to filling your iPod with the music that fans have uploaded to imeem, but it's only sufficient to keep the honest people honest.

First, the rings are a trademark of the IOC. Those don't expire like copyrights do.

Secondly, 36 USC 380 gives special status to that trademark specifically (the Red Cross also has a trademark like that, but I don't remember if anyone else has one).

I don't know what lawyers call them (statutory trademarks?) but I personally call them "super trademarks" because they confer extra rights.

Anyhow, a lot of people are confusing copyrights and trademarks here. I don't know why they're using a DMCA notice for what (most likely) they think is trademark infringement (and it isn't; I believe it to be "nominative fair use"). It's possible that they think from the title alone that there's copyrighted footage in there (something they're very zealous about), but they obviously aren't putting any thought into their takedown notices.

Most likely, they've hired some lawyers who just trawl the internet looking for words like 'Olympic' [TM] and sending out notices as needed.

Which is just one of the reasons I personally hate the Olympics [TM].

- I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property

yesterday there was an article of the EFF website commenting that other colleges (Virginia Tech mentioned) were trying to deflect RIAA harassment.

Formal complaints are much better, but the article did bring up a good point; maybe things would be easier for the campuses that didn't log student's network behaviour, or made logs such that certain behaviours weren't linked to any particular student. Would this be reasonable?

> What, does the IOC have copyright on the word "Olympics"?

No, they have a trademark. And not just any trademark, but a very special one written into law that mentions the Olympic [TM] trademark very specifically and which grants it additional rights (see 36 USC 380).

Seriously, other than a small exemption for small, local businesses in the northwest (where there's a local mountain range they might be named after), the IOC [TM] essentially controls everything relating to those damned five rings.

That said, I'm not sure why the DMCA gets pressed into service over trademark disputes, but I don't think the IOC [TM] actually cares. They're very possessive and very commercial.

Which is why I hate the Olympics [TM] with a passion.

Disclaimer: I have (and want) nothing to do with the International Olympic Committee [TM], the International Paralympic Committee [TM], the Pan-American Sports Organization [TM], or the corporation, my mention of the trademarks is covered by nominative fair use, and I am not affiliated with Cornell (which I linked to just to in order to reference the statute), so I am not doing this for the purpose of trade, to induce the sale of any goods or services, or to promote any theatrical exhibition, athletic performance, or competition.

- I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property

http://action.aclu.org/site/PageServer?pagename=FJ_donationhome

https://secure.eff.org/site/SPageServer?pagename=DON_splash

https://www.naacp.org/contribute/contribute.php ...and just in case those donations aren't enough to protect your rights,

http://membership.nrahq.org/

Why is it that every time I read about the EFF or Lesig I hear about how they are going down in flames in once case or another? Are we taking about the Washington generals here? Whats it going to take for them to actually win something for a change.

http://www.eff.org/victories