Slashdot Mirror

The small Brazilian town of Candido Godol is noteworthy for its large German population and remarkable for its twin birth rate. The town has approximately 80 families and 44 sets of twins, a rate that is 1000% higher than normal. Many theories have sprung up over the years to account for the anomaly. National Geographic explores one of the latest and perhaps the most disturbing, the possibility that the twins are a result of an experiment conducted by Nazi scientist Joseph Mengele.

An anonymous reader writes "At the height of the Cold War, the Central Intelligence Agency paid renowned magician John Mulholland $3,000 to write a manual on misdirection, concealment, and stagecraft. All known copies of the document were believed to be destroyed in 1973. Turns out one survived — and is now available on Amazon."

suraj.sun passes along this excerpt from the Consumerist: "The Motion Picture Association of American wants to rent movies to TV viewers earlier in the release window, but they don't want anyone potentially streaming that video out to other appliances. That's why last week they went back to the FCC to once again ask for the power to disable analog ports on consumer television sets. This capability is called selectable output control or SOC, and the FCC banned it back in 2003. SOC would allow 'service operators, such as cable companies, to turn off analog outputs on consumer electronics devices, only allowing digital plugs' such as HDMI. The MPAA is arguing that if they could directly turn those plugs on and off, they could offer more goods to consumers."

theodp writes "Want to work at Winthrop Hospital? Roll up your sleeve, and we'll talk. TIME reports that every employee at the Long Island hospital — from doctors and nurses who care for patients to the administrative, housekeeping and food-service personnel — must be vaccinated against both seasonal and H1N1 flu or face termination. The mandate comes from the health department of New York, the first state to require all health-care workers to be vaccinated against influenza. Meanwhile, two-thirds of parents say they'll avoid flu shots for their little ones like, well, the flu. So who should you believe — Dr. Bill Frist or 'Dr.' Bill Maher? Before you decide, perhaps a consultation with Dr. Google is in order."

theodp writes "Big Blue may know what you did last summer. Or at least who you called. In a move out of the NSA's playbook, IBM Research has been scrutinizing the call-detail records of 'one of the largest mobile operators in the world' (PDF). By analyzing who calls whom, and for how long, IBM claims its patent-pending snooping software can now identify circles of 'friends' who tend to exhibit the same profit-threatening behavior. 'We believe that our analysis is a first of its kind that exploits the underlying social network in a telecom call graph,' boasted a team of IBM researchers and a UMD prof. For now, IBM seems to have focused on using the info to see if your friends are churners, so you can be dealt with pro-actively lest you follow their lead and bolt. However, IBM suggests its SNAzzy data mining technology (Social Network Analysis for Telecom Business Intelligence) has a bright future, noting it 'is also capable of analyzing any kind of social network or graph, not just telecom networks.'"

jamie found this roundup on the status of the Waxman-Markey climate change bill, which is about to be voted on by the US House of Representatives. (The article notes that if the majority Democrats can't see the 218 votes needed for passage, they will probably put off the vote.) The AP has put together a FAQ that says, "[The bill, if passed,] fundamentally will change how we use, produce and consume energy, ending the country's love affair with big gas-guzzling cars and its insatiable appetite for cheap electricity. This bill will put smaller, more efficient cars on the road, swap smokestacks for windmills and solar panels, and transform the appliances you can buy for your home." The odds-makers are giving the bill a marginal chance of passing in the House, with tougher going expected in the Senate.

testadicazzo writes "Micheal Lynton, the guy who said 'I'm a guy who doesn't see anything good having come from the Internet. Period.' has posted an editorial at the Huffington Post titled Guardrails for the Internet, in which he defends his comment, and suggests that just as the interstate system needs guardrails, so too does the information superhighway. The following is pretty indicative of the article: 'Internet users have become used to getting things when they want it and how they want it, and those of us in the entertainment business want to meet that kind of demand as efficiently and effectively as possible. But what has happened online is that if it is 'beyond store hours' and the shop is closed, a lot of people just smash the window and steal what they want. Freedom without restraint is chaos, and if we don't figure out some way to prevent online chaos, the quantity, quality and availability of the kinds of entertainment, literature, art and scholarship we need to have a healthy, vibrant culture will suffer.'"

The Vermont Legislature is considering making sexting between teenagers legal. Under current laws, participants can be charged with child pornography, but lawmakers are considering a bill to legalize the consensual exchange of graphic images between people 13 to 18 years old. The bill passed the state Senate earlier this month. Hiding in the bushes and peering through windows will remain a crime.

Snoskred writes with the story of a blogger who chose to remain pseudonymous, who has been outed by an Alaskan politician in his legislative newsletter. Alaska Rep. Mike Doogan had been writing bizarre emails to people who emailed him, and the Alaskan blogger "Mudflats" was one of those who called him on it. (Mudflats first began getting noticed after blogging about Sarah Palin from a local point of view.) Doogan seems to have developed a particular itch to learn who Mudflats is, and he finally found out, though he got her last name wrong, and named her in his official newsletter. The Huffington Post is one of the many outlets writing about the affair. The blogger happens to be Democrat — as is Doogan — but that is immaterial to the question of the right to anonymity in political speech. Does an American have the right to post political opinion online anonymously? May a government official breach that anonymity absent a compelling state interest?

Combating the stigma that investigative journalism is dead or dying, the Huffington Post has just launched a new venture to bankroll a group of investigative journalists to take a look into stories about the nation's economy. "The popular Web site is collaborating with The Atlantic Philanthropies and other donors to launch the Huffington Post Investigative Fund with an initial budget of $1.75 million. That should be enough for 10 staff journalists who will primarily coordinate stories with freelancers, said Arianna Huffington, co-founder and editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post. Work that the journalists produce will be available for any publication or Web site to use at the same time it is posted on The Huffington Post, she said. The Huffington Post Web site is a collection of opinionated blog entries and breaking news. It has seven staff reporters. Huffington said she and the donors were concerned that layoffs at newspapers were hurting investigative journalism at a time the nation's institutions need to be watched closely. She hopes to draw from the ranks of laid-off journalists for the venture."

BuhDuh writes "Despite previous reports, and as subsequently discussed here, it appears that Sen. Feinstein's amendment (PDF) did not make it into the approved 'HR1' version of the stimulus bill (PDF). Of course, I cannot aver to having read all 680 pages, but searching for the terms Ms. Feinstein used came up blank, so it looks like we can breathe a collective sigh of relief until someone tries to bury similar proposals in the next wide-ranging, must-pass piece of legislation."

seanpark writes "Who will President Elect Obama select for the recently established post of Copyright Czar? Biden has a longstanding relationship with Big Content, and he was partly responsible for the PRO-IP Act that created the position. The short list according to the article includes a few lobbyists (who would likely be disqualified by stringent ethical guidelines) and Lawrence Lessig, who was a technology adviser to the Obama Campaign."

On August 18 and 19, you submitted questions for NewsTrust founder Fabrice Florin about his (non-profit) site's ability to live up to its claim, "Your guide to good journalism." We sent selected questions to Fabrice on August 19. Here are his answers.

1) News to me?
by conner_bw

Why haven't I heard about your site until reading this on Slashdot five seconds ago?

Fabrice:

NewsTrust kept a low profile during our first year's beta phase, so we could grow the quality of our service with a select group of founding members. We're now getting ready to launch a new and improved site in coming weeks, and will be promoting it extensively this fall. In the meantime, the word is getting out quickly, and our traffic is doubling every quarter, thanks to our first partnerships with leading news and information providers like PBS, Huffington Post and Scientific American. We've also received some great advance press coverage from many prominent journalists and bloggers. As a result, our nonprofit news site has rapidly gained momentum with concerned citizens, journalists and educators, and we expect to expand rapidly in coming months. To find out more, please sign up on our site.

2) So why should I trust your 'users'?
by anomnomnomymous

What's there to assure me that these newssites rankings aren't being astroturfed?

Fabrice:

NewsTrust is unique in that it involves experienced journalists (over 24% of our members have 5+ years of news experience), along with educators and thousands of news consumers. By using NewsTrust's state-of-the-art news review tools and interacting with professionals, our reviewers can effectively evaluate fairness, evidence, context and other core principles of journalism -- based on quality, not just popularity. Independent research by the University of Michigan confirms the reliability of our review process.

To insure the reliability of our feeds, we rate our reviewers based on performance, expertise, transparency and recommendations from our staff and other members. We then weigh their ratings accordingly, so that trusted member ratings count more than new member ratings. The weights used in rankings are posted on our site, and you're most welcome to test the math used by our sophisticated computer algorithms.

NewsTrust's innovative evaluation methodology brings together the diverse fields of journalism, content analysis and computer science. We are the first to combine these disciplines into an integrated, effective review process, which is designed to help the public gain a deeper appreciation for good journalism.

3) Forgive me if I seem a bit jaded
by dedazo

But after a quick look-see on Slashdot, Digg, Reddit, Propeller and a few other "important" social websites, I see that the prevailing majority is still parroting the usual "OMFGWTFBBQ BUSH 9/11 ANTHRAX MSM MIKKRO$AFTZ RON PAUL SHEEPLE TAH POLICE R BAD" line.

On the other hand, Musharraf stepping down hardly got a peep from them as of this morning, probably because most of them can't figure out the importance of that event. Lots of funny lolcat links though.

How exactly are your users any different from these?

3a) Re: Forgive me if I seem a bit jaded
by zappepcs

Wow, I agree with dedazo. How will you foster a user base that is news centric rather than lolcat centric?

It's casual common sense to understand that the MSM is not going to go in-depth on news stories. Musharraf's resignation is huge, but there is (so far) no in depth analysis of this news. Anything that vaguely smells of conspiracy gets all too much of the wrong attention. How will you avoid falling foul of these types of news ruts?

Fabrice:

We share your concerns about the low information quality of first-generation social news sites like Digg or Reddit. Thesepopularity-basedservices are too unstructured to be reliable, and threaten to displace quality news and information with a growing stream of hit-driven infotainment and misinformation -- in our view, this trend jeopardizes good journalism and puts democracy at risk.

NewsTrust offers a smart, practical and well-designed alternative to these popular entertainment sites. A quick comparison between the NewsTrust home page and Digg's on any given day makes this very obvious, as noted by numerous industry observers.

NewsTrust is very different from these mob-based social news sites. We offer a novel solution to help people find good journalism - by tapping into a growing network of reviewers that sharethe same journalistic values. Our community creates its own front page of quality news and opinion from trusted sources, combining nuanced computer algorithms with professional and consumer reviews. And to extend the quality of our service, we partner withtop news and information providers, independent journalists and digital media innovators.

4) Re: Javascript
by _xeno_

It would be nice if there was actually content displayed without turning on javascript.

It's especially retarded because if you view the source, the content is all already there. The reason it doesn't show up is because of the little tab thingies. Rather than have a single tab already visible, it has all the tabs initially unselected and then selects one of the tabs when the page loads, thereby making a single tab visible.

There are several ways to solve this. Method A is to have a tab selected in the HTML and just accept that the tabs will be broken if JavaScript is broken (the easy way). Method B would be to have JavaScript create the tabs, and default to having all content displayed in a list. This is arguably "the right way" unless NewsTrust really has to have those tabs. Then they could use Method C, which is to allow the generating page to display different tab content based on query strings and linking the tabs appropriately as a fallback when JavaScript is not available.

But displaying nothing by default is kind of silly. The content is already in the page, it just needs to be made visible.

And I disagree that the parent is offtopic. It's a legitimate complaint, and the article is about the website. There are a ton of ways to browse the web these days, and not all of them fully support JavaScript if they support it at all. For example, if I pull the page up on my cellphone, which supports enough CSS to hide the stories but not enough JavaScript to support the tab JavaScript, I get an effectively contentless page.

Since this is an interview, I'll make this a simple question: why don't you add "sel" CSS class to the first tab? That should fix the problem without breaking the JavaScript tab system. (It's Method A above.) Note that, as with all Slashdot advice, I haven't actually tested that.

Fabrice:

Thanks for your thoughtful recommendations about improving our web site. I'm not an engineer, so I cannot respond directly to your concerns - but I have forwarded your suggestions to our engineering team and we will address this issue in the next version of our site.

In the meantime, keep in mind that we're a small, underfunded nonprofit startup, with a couple part-time engineers - and we are outspent 20-to-1 by other, well-funded commercial news sites. As a result, our technology is not as slick as theirs, and it takes us longer to develop it. Thanks in advance for your understanding.

5) Rewards?
by eldavojohn

How do you reward your users? What mechanisms will/do you employ to promote meaningful and thoughtful tagging and discourse?

How is this better or different than the 'diggs' or 'mod points' people on other News sites acquire?

Naturally, I am concerned with positive reinforcement being given to those that deserve it and the ability to overlook the inevitable negative material the internet is so adept at producing en mass.

Fabrice:

Most of reviewers appreciate the informational value of our service and are happy to contribute to our cause because our collective evaluations make us all better informed.

They also find our review process useful for their personal development, because it helps them tell good journalism apart from misinformation, making them more discriminating news consumers and growing their news literacy skills.

Besides these important benefits, we reward our top reviewers by featuring them prominently on our home page, our blog and email newsletters. We also invite them to participate in regular nationwide conference calls, where they can talk to experienced journalists and help define our editorial and community objectives.

The most active and trusted reviewers are invited to become hosts, and the best hosts can also become editors. At each step of the way, they are entrusted with more privileges and recognition. As members gain trust in our network, their member levels rise and their ratings are weighted accordingly, giving them more influence and a greater stake in our community.

6) Accuracy over Fairness or Balance
by internic

It's clear that some news sources are just plain bad at getting the facts correct. It's also true that many of us feel there are news sources out there that are very biased in their presentation of matters, in some cases (e.g. with state media) becoming little more than propaganda. But in talking about issues of fairness and balance isn't there a danger of getting bogged down in these more subjective matters, to the detriment of a focus on more objective things like factual accuracy?

It seems to me that any community rating system on "balance" or "fairness" runs a big risk of falling prey to groupthink. For one thing, if a majority of users favor one sort of bias, users with a minority viewpoint may feel marginalized and eventually stop contributing. I haven't seen any systematic research on the topic, but I think many of us feel we see this happen on various user-driven sites. It isn't even clear to me how one can have an objective standard for fairness or balance.

To put a fine point on it, I am part of the group that loathes Fox News (among others) for their exceedingly bad news coverage. People seem to focus on the issue of bias, and this argument usually quickly devolves into a a stalemate between ideological camps, with people arguing about, for example, whether Fox News is worse than CNN. I wish people would just focus much more on all the facts they get wrong or make up: Obama's so-called "terrorist fist bump" and labeling Mark Foley as a Democrat come to mind as two examples. I think most reasonable people can agree that these are simply false and constitute bad journalism, and we can agree to work against any source prone to such errors on that basis.

Fabrice:

Thanks for sharing your insights on this important topic. We agree with you that accuracy and factual evidence are the most important criteria for determining the quality of news and information. However, these qualities take much longer to evaluate, because they require extensive fact checking, which a casual reviewer doesn't have the time or the resources to conduct regularly.

So we have designed a review process that helps people quickly and reliably evaluate information quality by looking at how that information was gathered. Our diverse rating criteria reveal a great deal about a reporter's professional standards and methods, based on core principles of journalism.

You are correct that some subjective rating questions like fairness and balance can sometimes be hard to answer - and that answers can be influenced by the reviewer's pre-existing viewpoints. But we provide helpful review tips to make the task easier, and increasing our reviewers' impartiality and news literacy is a major part of our mission. On average, our research shows that our group ratings are generally quite reliable, because we carefully weigh each rating criteria based on its importance for the story under review, as well as each reviewer's overall member level.

7) Partnerships with left-leaning organizations
by guanxi

I happen to lean left myself and I've read Newstrust daily almost since it came out; it's an excellent resource. But I think it's clear that the selection of articles leans left:

For example, see this list of the most highly rated posts. You see the NY Times, Wash. Post, NPR, Huffington Post, The Nation, Alternet, FAIR, which range from moderate to liberal. What is missing is right-leaning publications, like the Weekly Standard, National Review Online, OpinionJournal, etc.

Also, a few months ago, NewsTrust formed a partnership with a partisan liberal publication, The Huffington Post to find news about John McCain. Not surprisingly, the articles that were posted leaned very heavily left.

What can NewsTrust do to address these issues?

Fabrice:

Thanks for your kind words about NewsTrust. I am glad that you find it an excellent resource, and am grateful that you have used it regularly since it came out.

Your point is well taken that many of the articles featured on our site tend to reflect liberal values. This is not intentional, as we try hard to run a nonpartisan news evaluation service. This temporary leftward tilt may be caused by the fact that some our early adopters share liberal views, a trend shared by many other popular Internet sites.

But we plan to address this issue in coming months, in a variety of ways.

First, we already state our nonpartisan policy clearly on our site, encouraging our members to check their ideology at the door and review the news with a neutral viewpoint. When we find reviewers who systematically rate stories in a partisan manner, we contact them and politely remind them of our nonpartisan mission, encouraging them to adjust their review style, so we can increase their member level accordingly. Until they do, we keep their member levels low, so their ratings have little influence on our service.

Second, our staff submits every day many stories from publications that appeal to political viewpoints from the right and center. As a result, we've seen ratings for publications like the Wall Street Journal increase in recent months, which suggests that our members do appreciate the quality of their coverage, given an opportunity to review it.

Third, we are reaching out to many publications from the right and center to partner with NewsTrust as we have with the Huffington Post. Specifically, we have contacted or started discussions with editors at Fox News, InstaPundit, the Moderate Voice, National Review, Real Clear Politics, TownHall.com, USA Today, U.S. News & World Report, the Wall Street Journal and the Weekly Standard, to name but a few. We hope that several of these publications will partner with us this fall to engage their communities in a shared quest for quality information. Partnering with NewsTrust can help the public develop a better appreciation for quality news and opinion from these leaders -- and support the journalistic values we all share.

8 - 12) Echo Chamber?
by PoliTech

Will this site be encouraging homophily, or will there be a negative feedback mechanism such as LibraryThing's UnSuggest to encourage more dynamic balance?

Are the News stories and blog posts themselves subject to this "balance" or is it the "perceived credibility" of the source news outlet that determines ratings and discussion?

For example if a given story is from LGF (Little Green Footballs), ones preconception may be that the news presented will be heavily slanted to the right regardless of the facts, and if the source were Daily KOZ one may expect the opposite.

Do you think that "balance" is currently reflected in the site's "front page" results?

Is any evident "political" bias currently on display subject to any editorial change or negative feedback mechanism in the future?

Is this to be simply another clone of politically leaning news/blog conglomerations like Pajamas Media or Village Voice?

Do you think that all social networks are eventually destined to become echo chambers in one form or another as evidenced by Digg's deterioration, and as currently on display at NewsTrust?

Fabrice:

Issues raised in this question have already been addressed in previous answers.

We believe these issues will be solved over time, as we broaden our community to make it more representative of the public we serve. We've started discussions with several large online portals who have told us they can solve that concern with just one flip of a switch, by sending more visitors to our site.

In the meantime, we welcome a wide range of political viewpoints on our site, and constantly invite individuals with diverse perspectives to sign up and play a leading role in our community. We are delighted to have a mix of republicans, independents and democrats as advisors, hosts and members: they have all made significant intellectual contributions to this project, and we are thankful for their willingness to put their differences aside to work on this common cause.

By focusing on factual evidence and constructive dialog, we hope NewsTrust can bring Americans closer together and that we can all learn from each other, across party lines.

-----

An anonymous reader points out a story in the Huffington Post about the status of funding for election voting systems. It contains an interesting section in which Chris Riggall, a spokesman for Premier (formerly Diebold) acknowledged that less money is spent making an electronic voting machine than on a typical ATM. The ironically named Riggall also notes that security could indeed be improved, but at a higher price than most election administrators would care to pay. Also quoted in the article is Ed Felten, who has recently found some inconsistencies in New Jersey voting machines. From the Post: "'An ATM is significantly a more expensive device than a voting terminal...' said Riggall. 'Were you to develop something that was as robust as an ATM, both in terms of the physical engineering of it and all aspects, clearly that would be something that the average jurisdiction cannot afford.' Perhaps cost has something to do with the fact that a couple of years ago, every single Diebold AccuVote TS could be opened with a standard key also used for some cabinets and mini-bars and available for purchase over the Internet."

museumpeace writes "This community constantly chews on stories like the first sale doctrine and the endless maneuvering of RIAA, MPAA, follies of DMCA and DRM in general. I think of each of those stories as like trying to make sense of a particular earthquake. In the Huffington Post, blogger Jonathan Handel succinctly lays out six tectonic market and technology forces that provide a map for all of this. Sample his point #5, the media is the money: 'Fifth is market forces in the technology industry. Computers, web services, and consumer electronic devices are more valuable when more content is available. In turn, these products make content more usable by providing new distribution channels. Traditional media companies are slow to adopt these new technologies, for fear of cannibalizing revenue...'"

wtansill recommends the saga of Jeff Price, who traveled from successful small record label owner to successful Internet-era music distributor. His piece describes clearly what the major record labels used to be good for and why they are now good for nothing but getting in the way. "Allowing all music creators 'in' is both exciting and frightening. Some argue that we need subjective gatekeepers as filters. No matter which way you feel about it, there are a few indisputable facts -- control has been taken away from the 'four major labels' and the traditional media outlets. We, the 'masses,' now have access to create, distribute, discover, promote, share and listen to any music. Hopefully access to all of this new music will inspire us, make us think and open doors and minds to new experiences we choose, not what a corporation or media outlet decides we should want."

dangerz writes "CNN has fired one of its producers because of his personal blog. Chez Paziena, the ex-producer, has stated that he started the blog 'mostly to pass the time, hone my writing skills, resurrect my voice a little, and keep my mind sharp following the [brain tumor] surgery.' After a few months, CNN found out about it and ended up letting him go because his 'name was "attached to some, uh, 'opinionated' blog posts" circulating around the internet.'"

Parallax Blue writes "Millionaire adventurer Steve Fossett, who risked his life seeking to set records in high-tech balloons, gliders and jets, was declared dead Friday, 5 months after he vanished while flying in an ordinary small plane. The self-made business tycoon, who in 2002 became the first person to circle the world solo in a balloon, was last seen Sept. 3 after taking off in a single-engine plane from an airstrip near Yerington, Nev., heading toward Bishop, Calif. He was 63."

otakuj462 sends in an important followup to this morning's story on telecom immunity legislation. "Senator Chris Dodd won a temporary victory today after his threats of a filibuster forced Democratic leadership to push back consideration of a measure that would grant immunity to telecom companies that were complicit in warrantless surveillance... [T]he threat of Dodd's filibuster... persuaded Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-NV, to table the act until January. A compromise on the immunity will ostensibly be worked out in the interim period."

The FCC has set rules for the upcoming auction of 700-MHz spectrum and they went halfway on the four open access principles that Google and others had called for. The agency said yes to "open devices" and "open applications," thus requiring the auction winner to permit consumers to use any device or application on the network. But the FCC turned down "open services" and "open networks," so the winners will not be obligated to let others buy access at wholesale prices in order to offer network services. This vote would seem to mean that Google won't bid in the spectrum auction. Ars has a more in-depth look at the outcome.

Raul654 writes "Philip de Vellis, the author of the anti-Hilary Clinton viral video was outed yesterday on the Huffington Post. The company he worked for, Blue State Digital — a Democratic Internet strategy company that does work for Barack Obama — has now fired him as a result. Said Vellis: 'I made the "Vote Different" ad because I wanted to express my feelings about the Democratic primary, and because I wanted to show that an individual citizen can affect the process.'"

An anonymous reader writes "The WIPO is currently engaged in negotiating a new treaty on digital IP rights, but they're having trouble agreeing on the particulars. Though the world of YouTube and podcasts seems like a place that 'requires' laws, the WIPO seems confused about what to do about it. From the article: 'The proliferation of low cost video cameras and editing software, higher bandwidth cable, satellite and Internet connections, are creating a highly diverse and dynamic environment for creating, distributing, redistributing and remixing information. To this exciting world the UN's specialized agency for intellectual property wants to impose a new legal regime. The problem is, no one here has a clue what the legal regime should look like.' The U.S. is also pushing for reviving a 1962 treaty (never ratified) that would give the large cable distributors (like Discovery, Sci-fi, Spike, etc) ownership of even public domain content if they carry it. This would be in addition to any rights normally afforded the distributors. "

VE3OGG writes "It would seem that scientists are not the only ones facing censorship from the White House. According to several news sources the New York Times originally had intended to run an article co-authored by a former employee of the National Security Council, critical of the current administration's policies toward Iran. The article had passed the CIA's publication review board, but was later redacted on orders from the White House. Article authors Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann were former advisers to the White House, and thus all of their publications are scrutinized by a board before they can be published. Of the numerous documents this pair has published since leaving their positions, they say this was the first that was actively censored.

jamie writes "On 'Larry King Live' Wednesday night, Bill Maher said many of 'the people who really run the underpinnings of the Republican Party are gay... Ken Mehlman, OK, there's one I think people have talked about. I don't think he's denied it.' When CNN re-aired the interview, the mention of Mehlman was edited out with no indication anything was missing. When a minute-long video of the original vs. censored clips was posted on YouTube, a DMCA takedown removed it (the original poster plans to resubmit a shorter clip he hopes will qualify as fair use — good luck, since the DMCA doesn't recognize fair use). Relatedly, the Washington Post today was caught silently editing its published stories to make them less informative. Unnamed GOP officials are also saying that Mehlman will step down from his post when his term ends in January."

Newer Guy writes "Former RIAA head Hilary Rosen now believes that the RIAA is wrong by pursuing their lawsuits of individuals for using P2P programs. In a blog post, she writes that she believes the lawsuits have 'outlived their usefulness' and states that the content providers really need to come up with their own download systems. She also is down on DRM, calling Apple's DRM 'a pain.'"

mijkal writes "Hilary Rosen, the former RIAA CEO and chairwoman, has spoken out against Apple's "lock-in" with iPod and the iTunes Music Store." From the article: "The problem is that the iPod only works with either songs that you buy from the on-line Apple iTunes store or songs that you rip from your own CD's." Ironically, she appeals to consumer rights and anti-monopoly tactics."