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Read the bill

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c109:H.R.+54 17:

Pretty plain language.

"However, how long till lobbyists blah blah, cynicism, blah blah..."

So what do you suggest? You offer no solution or insight, just a fear mongering nay-saying deliberately cynical opinion.

Rise to the occasion, please. I'm very tired of seeing carbon-copy responses like yours dominating the discussion.

Vinyl is also regarded by many as the longest lasting medium for storing music. It does not break down as fast as magnetic tape or cds or dvds. More than half of the Library of Congress's music collection is on vinyl (in the form of LPs, 78s and 45s).

Check out H.R. 2795 on Thomas. Especially Chapter 32, "Post-Grant Opposition Procedures". It gives anyone the right to challenge a patent claim's validity within 9 months of issue, provided evidence is presented and a fee is paid. Different people can simultaneously challenge different claims, if needed.

Yes, it is. Oh, by the way, they'll be able to do that shortly... see H.R. 1528, the "Defending America's Most Vulnerable: Safe Access to Drug Treatment and Child Protection Act of 2005" for details:

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c109:H.R.152 8:

You thought you were being clever, but you were only being relevant. :)

then so is any speech made against the President on the House or Senate floor, or any Congressional override of a Presidental veto.

The rantings of one member of Congress is just that, a person excercising their freedom of speech. The consensus of Congress to convict and punish a specific citizen (or group of citizens) who is not a Congressional office holder is a Bill of Atainder. Censure proclaims someone guilty of a crime (real or imaginary) and prescribes a formal punishment (public denouncement of said person).

From the Report on Impeachment of President Clinton, Article VI, Section A:

Defenders of presidential `censure' argue that it does not really punish and therefore cannot be a Bill of Attainder. In determining whether a law is punitive within the context of the prohibition of Bills of Attainder, courts look to what are understood as the motivational, functional, and historical tests: (1) whether the legislature intended the law to be punitive; (2) whether the law reasonably can be said to further non-punitive legislative purposes; and (3) whether the punishment was traditionally judged to be prohibited by the Bill of Attainder clause. See In re McMullen, 989 F.2d 603, 607 (2d Cir.), cert. denied, 114 S. Ct. 301 (1993).

The motivational test is clearly implicated here. As the Congressional Research Service has noted, any argument that censure provisions were not intended to be punitive would `face the task of overcoming express statements by individual Members concerning the appropriate `punishment' in this particular case.' Censure of the President by Congress, Jack Maskell, Legislative Attorney, American Law Division, CRS Report for Congress, September 29, 1998, at 9. Indeed, the record is replete with such references. As Representative Pease stated during consideration of the joint resolution of censure:

It seems to me, after all this discussion of what exactly is a resolution of censure regarding the President, there is still no agreement. It is either an action to punish the President or it is an action that doesn't punish the President. If it is an action to punish the President, it is a bill of attainder and unconstitutional. If it is a resolution that does not punish the President, it is meaningless. For that reason, though I have the greatest respect for those who have offered it, I cannot support the resolution.

Censure is a formal reprimand by one of the chambers of Congress on a member of that chamber.
The Constitution clearly defines the separation of powers of the bodies of government and the only form of reprimanding the President or Vice-President that the Congress has is impeachment. If they were to censure the President, it would be one of two things 1) an Unconstitutional power the Congress has over the President which directly defies the written power of Congress to punish, via public shaming*, the President or 2) a direct bill of attainder.

Article 1, Section 9:
Clause 3: No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.

Public shaming, such as scarlet letters, stockades, and perp walks, is most definitely a long standing traditional punishment.

See the Report on Impeachment of President Clinton, Article VI for more info on Presidential censure

Just as the subject is written, do you?

Your concern to genetically-modified (and patented) varieties of crop is a legitimate concern -- intellectual property can travel by wind and "taint" a neighbors substrate, causing a tournament for the forced subjection to a foreign private law. Recently as of February of 2006, CONGRESS was receiving a Bill from that HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES as H.R. 4167, the "National Uniformity for Food Act." Despite the misleading title of the Bill, among the content was that whomever bought any food were not allowed to know of certain ingredients or qualities on its nature.

How this all sets is, as of recently, it is a known fact that "Aspartame" causes cancer; its an artificial sweetener in many beverages, mostly in them branded as diet drinks. Another recent discovery is at microwave-popcorn factories, where everyone working among the "artificial butter flavoring" had all caught severe allergies and atrocious lung cancers. It was such a dangerous cancer that the remedy for one worker was a lung transplant! The chemical that caused the damage is "Diacetyl" and also is used in various brew of beer and who knows what else.

That Bill would allow those corporations to simply use any ingredient, method, or application of artifice to provide an incomplete and misleading report to the Contents of all packages lading the product assembled of them. It's no different than postal fraud, when someone intentionally mis-presents the contents of a parcel, where harm can be incurred by the worker that moves said parcel (even from grocery store to their domicile and house). I don't drink diet beverages, but I know some people that do. Nearby me is a box of microwave-popcorn, where on the Contents is no list for the ingredients of the artificial "light butter"; there is information on oiled popcorn kernels, but nothing on the butte flavoring -- into the trash it will all go.

If there ever was false advertising for a product, the above Bill would only try to seal someone's prior and future effort at fraud; brought from the end of genetically-engineered and patent crap and into the lives of people.

References are...
thomas.log.gov (Four versions of 4167 to this hour)
MSDS for butanedione
DRAYMANS.COM on Diacetyl
Ambulance-chasing lawyers
RENSE.COM on the Bill(a conspiracy theorist/fact never hurt anyone to prove)

oh no! I found this PrionPlanet.com article, therefore there shouldn't be anything to worry about this Bill or aritificial butter flavouring. Keep grazing the grocery aisles, and take your monthly shots (money-pill/vaccine shots)

Those that aren't hosted or downloaded in countries with dumb laws that prohibit free DVD players?

"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." -- Thomas Jefferson

Fair enough, but keep in mind that the founding fathers were more than willing to fight wars. In 1801, Thomas Jefferson (and the American people) went to war against Tripoli (in North Africa, for the historically and geographically challenged) for reasons that would confuse most Americans today (Tripolitan War). Today's society is paralized by the death of 3000 Americans in a conflict that they themselves have not come anywhere near experiencing first hand. Do you truly believe that a civil war, arguably the most brutal type of war, fought on American soil will be more pleasant than the Iraq war?

Don't look now, but such a repeal has already been proposed.

Now, this seems to be a fairly standard thing, actually. Someone seems to propose the elimination of term limits every administration or so, but these are truly unusual times...I wouldn't be at all surprised to see this proposed again and ratified in the hysteria following another 'terrorist attack'.

The day this passes is the day I either join the Michigan Militia or move to Canada.

Specifically, under section 1201, subsection c, you will find this text:

(c) OTHER RIGHTS, ETC., NOT AFFECTED
(1) Nothing in this section shall affect rights, remedies, limitations, or defenses to copyright infringement, including fair use, under this title.

The really atrocious thing about the DMCA (IMHO) is that while it allows users to all their fair use defenses that are provided in normal copyright law (including reverse engineering for interoperability, ripping media you purchased legally for personal use, etc.), it outlaws the distribution (and manufacture, which may or not be the creation) of tools which facilitate such actions. We're being fundamentally dishonest with ourselves: we allow people do engage in certain activities, but disallow the distribution of tools that make it feasible for common users.

This, for example, is what makes certain Linux distros have to use offshore (or volunteer run) servers for programs like dvdcsslib, which is used in lots of programs like Xine and Mplayer. It forces distributions like Fedora and Suse to rely on 3rd party servers like livna.org and pacman to host mplayer RPMs.

Well no shit, this is a Republican congress. Look at the list of public laws. I'd be willing to bet none of them have come from Democratic congressmen, excepting the odd naming of a post office.

One of the rules of being in the majority party is making sure the minority doesn't get any bills passed. This allows the majority to cast the minority as ineffective and without ideas or a coherent strategy. If the minority does put forth something that has bipartisan or widespread constitutent support, the majority will often just copy most of the bill and submit it themselves. That way they can take all the credit.

The Internet is also a better source of what I call controlled bias, where the bias is strong and clear enough that you can easily take it into account by reading something clearly biased the other way. For example, reading both rnc.org and dnc.org will provide a better picture than a news anchor who is trying (but invariably failing) to be neutral.

The closer to the horse's mouth, the better. english.aljazeera.net is great for an Arabic perspective. I get sports news directly from my teams' web sites. I get entertainment news directly from local venues' mailing lists. I read and sometimes watch the video of the white house press briefings.

It sounds like a lot of effort, but it isn't. In the half hour I would have wasted waiting for the one story in the newscast that interests me, I can use my laptop to google the subject from the teaser commercials and get to the other news I want more quickly, while I am watching a show I like.

a Texan, with a marvelous record of supporting what's right for the people, Rep. Joe Barton?

In which case, why do I feel worried?

I am NOT voting for this lady. Everything that she does just makes me angry.

A citizen of Saudi Arabia, Mazin Salih Musaid al-Awfi, was one of at least half a dozen men whose crime was the possession of a Casio model F-91W watch. These watches have allegedly been used in terrorist bombings. "I am a bit surprised at this piece of evidence," Mazin said. "If that is a crime, why doesn't the United States arrest and sentence all the shops and people who own them?"

That's the right question. The journalist apparently makes no effort to corroborate his story, other than an oblique reference to a FOIA request. "Man, I don't know why I was arrested, I ain't done nuthin'" is hardly basis for good reporting. There's something more to the story. Occam's Razor says if they're not rounding up everybody with Casio watches, these guys were detained for more than that.

How 'bout just don't vote Republican? ;)

Yeah, for a change it seems the Libertarians have their heads screwed on tighter than the rest of the lot. If the Detainee Treatment Act this article mentions has you concerned you can't vote for any of the Senators in office (97-0 yea vote) or most of the House (398-19) summary but if treatment of detainees is a voting issue for you, the best candidate would be John McCain who offered the ammendment to this bill to reign in inappropriate treatment of detainees. Party politics are a fool's game - parties obstruct, individuals progress.

A citizen of Saudi Arabia, Mazin Salih Musaid al-Awfi, was one of at least half a dozen men whose crime was the possession of a Casio model F-91W watch. These watches have allegedly been used in terrorist bombings. "I am a bit surprised at this piece of evidence," Mazin said. "If that is a crime, why doesn't the United States arrest and sentence all the shops and people who own them?"

That's the right question. The journalist apparently makes no effort to corroborate his story, other than an oblique reference to a FOIA request. "Man, I don't know why I was arrested, I ain't done nuthin'" is hardly basis for good reporting. There's something more to the story. Occam's Razor says if they're not rounding up everybody with Casio watches, these guys were detained for more than that.

How 'bout just don't vote Republican? ;)

Yeah, for a change it seems the Libertarians have their heads screwed on tighter than the rest of the lot. If the Detainee Treatment Act this article mentions has you concerned you can't vote for any of the Senators in office (97-0 yea vote) or most of the House (398-19) summary but if treatment of detainees is a voting issue for you, the best candidate would be John McCain who offered the ammendment to this bill to reign in inappropriate treatment of detainees. Party politics are a fool's game - parties obstruct, individuals progress.

You are mixing up two things (and perhaps I did too, though I thought I spelled them out).

1) The family copyright act thing was signed into law last year, I quoted from some of that.
2) the H.R.4077 from which I was quoting is NOT law.
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d108:h.r.0 4077:
"Latest Major Action: 9/29/2004 Received in the Senate."
Which incidentally confirms what the article linked by this story says:
"The provisions were included in H.R. 4077 as passed by the House."

But this new proposal (which again has NOT passed into law):
H.R. 2391 The Intellectual Property Protection Act
Includes elements from all the bills listed in the article, INCLUDING H.R.4077.

So your quote"Get it through your thick, thick head: this became the law of the land LAST YEAR. It's done. It is not a bill, it is not something that might be signed into law, it is signed, and it is the law, right now. Has been for a while."
Is not correct. At least not in reference to that portion of what I was actually talking about, which was the proposed legislation HR4077 that exempts ad skipping from being infringment.

Quote from you:
"And you know what I don't recall? I don't recall lawsuits around ad skipping buttons. In fact, as a copyright lawyer, who knows more about copyright law than you ever will, I don't even see how that would be possible."
Your expert legal copyright career must have been pretty short up to this point. Starting around 2003 or 2004 perhaps, so you missed the sonicblue/replaytv lawsuit?

Lets pick a couple hits from google regarding sonicblue (original owners of replayTV driven into bankruptcy)
http://news.com.com/2100-1041_3-1015121.html
"The company said its upcoming ReplayTV 5500 boxes, which are expected to be released in August, will not contain the Send Show and Automatic Commercial Advance tools as the company tries to "address the concerns of copyright holders.""
"Two years ago, the major movie studios and TV networks filed a lawsuit against Sonicblue, which at the time owned ReplayTV."

The exact name (if you want to do more specific research):
Paramount Pictures v. SonicBlue

http://www.eff.org/IP/Video/Paramount_v_ReplayTV/2 0011031_complaint.html
There's the complaint.
Since you said
"I don't recall lawsuits around ad skipping buttons. In fact, as a copyright lawyer, who knows more about copyright law than you ever will, I don't even see how that would be possible."
Well here's how its possible, quotes from the complaint:
"Defendants' unlawful scheme attacks the fundamental economic underpinnings of free television and basic nonbroadcast services and, hence, the means by which plaintiffs' copyrighted works are paid for. Advertisers will not pay to have their advertisements placed within television programming delivered to viewers when the advertisements will be invisible to those viewers. In effect, by eliminating the embedded advertising, defendants' copying-and-commercial-deletion feature will (as to those viewers who employ the feature) eliminate the source of payment to the copyright owner for the very program being viewed."
"For subscription television program services that depend in part on advertising revenues, use of the AutoSkip feature has the same effect. In both cases, the AutoSkip feature would fundamentally and inevitably erode the means by which copyright owners are paid for their works and hence the value of the programming they create."

H.R.4077 http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/F?c108:3:./tem p/~c108QoEUCV:e26552: I also wrote a longer reply to someone else's response to this which may contain more detail that you need.

Short answer:
H.R.4077 which is in the article under the H.R. 4586 part.
Text:
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/F?c108:3:./tem p/~c108QoEUCV:e26552:

I have a longer comment that may contain more details, that I wrote in reply to someone else:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=183890&cid=151 93034

Actually where have YOU been?

I'm well aware of the bill you quoted, Family Entertainment and Copyright Act of 2005:
http://www.publicknowledge.org/content/legislation /s167
Or:
http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi ?dbname=109_cong_public_laws&docid=f:publ009.109

Are you aware that the text you so fondly claim to have read of the bill passed and signed also contains things like:
1) Using any kind of audiovisual recording device, such as a cell phone camera, inside a movie theatre, even if its to take a quick snapshot, is illigal? And that you can get 3 years in jail for it?
2) As well, theatre operators/employees can detain and interrogate you and are made IMMUNE from federal and criminal lawsuits if they do so?
3) Having certain types of movies on your computer can get you jail time, even if you never share or distribute those?

If you cant find the specific text I'm referring to, lemme know and I'll quote it.
Ok thats all from the already signed into law bill.
Now lets move on.

First lets check some of the text of the current law, "Section 110 of title 17, United States Code"

"the following are not infringements of copyright:"
Ok got it, these are copyright exclusions. Now lets see the text of the family copyright thing:
"Exemption From Trademark Infringement"
Ok, so this is about exclusions from trademarks as well.

Ok next, some specific text:
"the making imperceptible, by or at the direction of a member of a private household, of limited portions of audio or video content of a motion picture, during a performance in or transmitted to that household for private home viewing, from an authorized copy of the motion picture"
Ok, it applies to a private house watching a legit copy. Who else does it apply to?
"or the creation or provision of a computer program or other technology that enables such making imperceptible and that is designed and marketed to be used, at the direction of a member of a private household"
Ok so it applies to anyone who creates such technology as well.
Lets see what else we can learn.
"A manufacturer, licensee, or licensor of technology that enables the making of limited portions of audio or video content of a motion picture imperceptible as described in subparagraph (A) is not liable on account of such manufacture or license for a violation of any right under this Act"
Ok, if you make such technology (that makes parts of a movie imperceptable), you aren't liable. But wait:
"The limitations on liability in subparagraph (A) and this subparagraph shall not apply to a manufacturer, licensee, or licensor of technology that fails to comply with this paragraph."
Ok so you CAN be liable if you dont comply with that paragraph (which currently says you have to have a notice saying this differs from the original movie).

So thats it for the already signed into law part. Now lets look at what will be modified until the proposed law.
The text of that proposal is here:
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/F?c108:3:./tem p/~c108QoEUCV:e26552:
"no changes, deletions or additions are made by such computer program or other technology to commercial advertisements, or to network or station promotional announcements, that would otherwise be performed or displayed before, during or after the performance of the motion picture."

Got it. In other words, a private person in thier home, and companies making such technology, are no longer exempt when they are skipping stuff, if they skip ads.

Now does that directly say they are violating laws by doing so? No, but now they are not exempt now. And being as the movie companies were already moving to sue the origin

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?c108:1:./tem p/~c108Cy5DFG::

I have found nothing on Lamar Smith's webpage.

It is too new to show up on the THOMAS (Library of Congress) website. Oh, wait. It hasn't been introduced yet.

H.R. 2391 only comes up as the Safe Communities and Safe Schools Mercury Reduction Act of 2005.

That said if TFA is accurate then it will be something I oppose and will write to my state Rep about.

I have found nothing on Lamar Smith's webpage.

It is too new to show up on the THOMAS (Library of Congress) website. Oh, wait. It hasn't been introduced yet.

H.R. 2391 only comes up as the Safe Communities and Safe Schools Mercury Reduction Act of 2005.

That said if TFA is accurate then it will be something I oppose and will write to my state Rep about.

I have found nothing on Lamar Smith's webpage.

It is too new to show up on the THOMAS (Library of Congress) website. Oh, wait. It hasn't been introduced yet.

H.R. 2391 only comes up as the Safe Communities and Safe Schools Mercury Reduction Act of 2005.

That said if TFA is accurate then it will be something I oppose and will write to my state Rep about.

Under French law, fashion designs are considered to be protected intellectual property, but not under American law.

Claiming copyright in works that appear in RL-in-context pictures is of course utter BS. And there I think it is a matter of liberty and freedom of expression: I may not be able to claim the chicago bean as my own work, but I sure as hell should be able to take pictures of it.

Correct link: Library of Congress.

http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/ - Listing over 25,000 free books on the Web

For dead tree books, you can search the LoC online catalog: http://catalog.loc.gov/

Bias isn't only about what is reported, it's also about how it is reported. People don't continue to watch the news without analysis, and it's near impossible to provide political analysis without favoring one side or the other. Only on the short, facts-only news reports is it impossible to detect a bias in the reporter. The only political web site I consider truly neutral is http://thomas.loc.gov.

In my opinion, the next best thing is to not try to hide your bias at all, but to cite sources that clearly disagree with you. Fox News is often maligned as an example of conservative bias. As a conservative myself, I freely concede that. However, all their biased reports include a lengthy debate with at least one person who feels strongly in the opposite direction. Without that, it would be too biased for my taste, even though I usually agree with the hosts.

What I don't understand is why "liberal media" is a negative phrase to liberals. I'd think the fact that the media tends to side with them would be viewed as a positive.

other countries (esp the ones that always show the highest test scores) let kids out of school as early as age 10 if they aren't suited to education

Could you please name the countries that 1) always show the highest test scores and 2) let kids out of school as early as age 10?

Finland is, as I remember, one of those high-scoring countries, but the Basic Education page at the Finnish National Board of Education site says "Basic Education means the general education provided for each age group in its entirety. It is intended for children from seven to sixteen years of age, and its completion in comprehensive school takes nine years."

Japan is another of the high-scoring countries; the US Library of Congress Country Studies information on Japan says under "Primary and Secondary Education" that, at least as of 1994, "Education is compulsory and free for all schoolchildren from the first through the ninth grades" and a diagram in the report (PDF) indicates that this runs up to age 14. (The page on "Upper-Secondary Education" indicates that, even after age 14, "94 percent of all lower-secondary school graduates entered uppersecondary schools in 1989".)

other countries (esp the ones that always show the highest test scores) let kids out of school as early as age 10 if they aren't suited to education

Could you please name the countries that 1) always show the highest test scores and 2) let kids out of school as early as age 10?

Finland is, as I remember, one of those high-scoring countries, but the Basic Education page at the Finnish National Board of Education site says "Basic Education means the general education provided for each age group in its entirety. It is intended for children from seven to sixteen years of age, and its completion in comprehensive school takes nine years."

Japan is another of the high-scoring countries; the US Library of Congress Country Studies information on Japan says under "Primary and Secondary Education" that, at least as of 1994, "Education is compulsory and free for all schoolchildren from the first through the ninth grades" and a diagram in the report (PDF) indicates that this runs up to age 14. (The page on "Upper-Secondary Education" indicates that, even after age 14, "94 percent of all lower-secondary school graduates entered uppersecondary schools in 1989".)

FTFLA:
A growing number of cities and towns want to develop their own public Wi-Fi networks. But they face stiff opposition from telecom and cable providers.

You will find that there are several state laws on the books as well as US House and Senate bills pending that would prohibit or limit a city's ability to provide WiFi services. To make things fun, there is a competing bill in the Senate that would make it illegal to make it illegal to make a law that would prohibit cities from offering services (!!=1).

Our political system amazes me...if we could only harness all that wasted energy.

FTFLA:
A growing number of cities and towns want to develop their own public Wi-Fi networks. But they face stiff opposition from telecom and cable providers.

You will find that there are several state laws on the books as well as US House and Senate bills pending that would prohibit or limit a city's ability to provide WiFi services. To make things fun, there is a competing bill in the Senate that would make it illegal to make it illegal to make a law that would prohibit cities from offering services (!!=1).

Our political system amazes me...if we could only harness all that wasted energy.

FTFLA:
A growing number of cities and towns want to develop their own public Wi-Fi networks. But they face stiff opposition from telecom and cable providers.

You will find that there are several state laws on the books as well as US House and Senate bills pending that would prohibit or limit a city's ability to provide WiFi services. To make things fun, there is a competing bill in the Senate that would make it illegal to make it illegal to make a law that would prohibit cities from offering services (!!=1).

Our political system amazes me...if we could only harness all that wasted energy.

Sec 5. (1) ...The encryption of such data, combined with appropriate safeguards of the keys necessary to enable decryption of such data, shall establish a presumption that no such reasonable basis exists. Any such presumption may be rebutted by facts demonstrating that the method of encryption has been or is likely to be compromised

This is going to lead to a certain amount of data hysteria once it gets passed.

Since most people don't know that shit like this happens on a regular basis, once it starts getting reported regularly, the news media is going to pick up and run with it.

"Your information is unsafe" will become a new media theme, along with "kids shooting up schools", "female teachers sleeping with students" and "pretty white girl goes missing".

BTW - businesses cannot go around redefining "breach" or "personal information", because the bill defines exactly what those are.

If you read the text of the bill they've dodged out on specifying some of the trickier parts by using language like "Not later than 270 days after the date of enactment of this Act" to require the definition of certain aspects of the bill. Very poor idea, as it gives the lobbyists something to aim at weakening.

It's sponsored by a Republican from Florida and co-sponsored by a stack of other R's. Good idea, possibly poor implementation.

You're correct. The Iraqi surrender apparently resulted in a cease-fire agreement, not a peace treaty.

What is in dispute here? That Iraq surrendered and agreed to a cease-fire?
That Iraq subsequently violated the cease-fire? (Note that the coalition commanders claimed that the squashing of the Kurdish uprising was also a violation of the cease-fire agreements.)
It's a pity I'm not easily finding any good, detailed reports of Iraq's actions against US/UK aircraft patrolling the designated "no fly" zones, but I highly doubt that was ever in question.

Or is it the fact that the US grabbed the UK and went off to clean up its mess without the agreement of the toothless UN (reminds me of the League of Nations, honestly)? I'll admit that could be an issue for the lawyers - I don't know.

If anything, the real item the disgruntled folks should be focussing on is the reason the war was sold to the general public: that Iraq had or was going to have nukes/WMD, and we need to do something now-now-now! Then again, since "intelligence" is, by nature, uncertain, that ultimately wouldn't get you very far, either.

Weeks after his first auction went live, Blizzard, Vivendi, and the ESA began sending repeated takedown notices under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), asking eBay to yank the auctions because of copyright and trademark infringement concerns.

In effect, if the video game industry's actions are upheld, "then selling a how-to book about Microsoft Word would infringe Microsoft's copyright, especially if the book contained one or more screenshots of Word's user interface," said Paul Levy...

I'm guessing the law you speak of is the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005. Here's Bush's signing statement. For the reason you predicted, Public Citizen has already sued to have this law declared unconstitutional.

I envision the lawsuit failing because the courts will essentially say, "Close enough. It's too cumbersome to send this back to Congress and the President to fix a 'harmless' error." Besides, how can a court strike down a law that gives so many agencies funding for a whole year, especially after they've started spending that money? It would be a budgetary and administrative nightmare. No court is going to penalize all those agencies for Congress' and Bush's error.

Your best bet would be using the Library of Congress system (i.e. LOC). The LOC search page URL is posted below.

http://catalog.loc.gov/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?DB=lo cal&PAGE=First

I performed a fully manual update, first searching by ISBN then inserting the full record and price into a StarOffice calc sheet. This was quite tiresome. You should do BETTER by ordering LOC on a CD. This way you might perhaps write a quickie program to scan the ISBN and retrieve LOC information. Does anyone know of an pre existing program that also works like this? PLEASE LET US KNOW if you can point to a pre existing program (thanks).

I sorted my 570 book library by LOC number.

I did not label any books. My future plan is to scan a book's ISBN to locate info from a MySQL db.

A half dozen books were not found in LOC. Here LOC may list the first edition but not the second edition. Obviously you can make a good educated guess this way.

LOC's exist for VERY OLD books. For example 1908 "The Telegraph Instructor"

LOC order results in an interesting sort order, for example, where Tuft's "Visual Display of Quantative Information" is in QA276 Statistics-Graphics Methods while Tuft's "Visual Explanations" is in P93 Visual Communication. Also fascinating are the adjacent books after organizing them in LOC number.

Any librarians out there, please feel free to add to this!

Good luck,
Jim

Go to a public libray. Pick one that uses the Library of Congres system and look what they do then copy thier system. This will save you much effort because all your books will already have card catalog information that you can use and the system will be understandable to anyone who has been to school. But the biggest and best reason is so you can make use of other people's work. There are widely used standards for keeping library information -- don't reinvent the wheel. One good place to find out more is at the library of congress web site. Here is an example page http://www.loc.gov/marc/faq.html

I would probably use LC. You can look up the call number online easily at http://catalog.loc.gov/ and have the description downloaded easily. I would probably use a simple database to keep track of the books that I have. I would make labels with the ISBN number for on the book, and use the isbn to track the book. Note that this assumes that you only have one copy of each book. If you have multiple copies of each book, I would add a number after the ISBN to keep track of each copy.

Some insights on using Dewey:

I classified my library of about 1000 books using the Dewey decimal system. It's great! I deviated from the strict classifications in the 800's (fiction), there I just alphabetized by author's last name. If you do the 800's strictly, you'd be seperating your fiction by country of origin, which makes it harder for find a book later.

I agree with the earlier poster about how a library specialized in computer stuff can get overloaded near the front. But, you know, if 25% of your collection is about networking and programming, then so be it. You're going to have 25% of your wall space be about computer crap no matter how you arrange it. (And after 5 years, it's mostly outdated too, if it's anything like mine.) So it might as well be coherently organized.

Yes, 005 is for all computer science stuff, but 005.13x is for traditional programming languages, 005.27x is internet and internet programming, 005.447 is for networking, 005.75x is for databases... please don't throw this back at me if I got those numbers wrong, but my point is just that Dewey is designed to allow for classifications, sub-classifications, sub-sub-classifications, as far as needed. And if you don't like the way it looks when it's on your shelf, you can always rearrange all the 005's to your liking, like I did for the 800's (see above).

Has anyone posted on how to get Dewey numbers for books that don't have them on the title page? I did it at the Library of Congress website. Click on "basic search", search on the title, and click on "Full Record" when it comes up.This will give you the dewey Decimal number.

I did about 10-20 books a night until I was through my library. This may sound like a chore to many, but if you have 3500 books like you say, then I expect you'll find it to be a labor of love. It is surprisingly entertaining to see how books will be categorized, and how two books that you read 20 years apart that you never thought of as being related may land right next to each other on the shelf.

Good luck & have fun.

That's not what librarians do - librarians use a couple of different classification systems (Dewey Decinmal, Library of Congress, etc.) that provide rules for generating unique alphnumeric codes for specific holdings... look at the little decal on the spine of a library book. The items are then organized by those codes, which has the effect of sorting by subject. See the LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CLASSIFICATION OUTLINE or the Dewey Decimal Classification System.

Second, the Congressional bill status system says that today's action so far is "Introductory remarks on measure" in the House Judiciary Committee. It's not shown as passed by that Committee yet. Nor is it shown as being referred to the House Financial Services Committee at all.

Third, the bill is notable for what it doesn't have. It doesn't, for example, make credit card debts for gambling unenforceable, or prohibit banks from cooperating in money transfers for that purpose. That would actually work, but the banks wouldn't like it.

The real inventor of telephone is Antonio Meucci, Bell stole the idea from him.
What is amazing is the fact the two names quoted in the original post are Bell and Gray : The person who tried to patent the idea.
Recognition of Meuci by the Congress

They set it up like it's some sort of idea that all flights into the US require all US citizens to be recognized and accounted for, so that if it goes down? or something like that? that they can know for sure who was on board, and can start contacting people ahead of time?

AVIATION DISASTER FAMILY ASSISTANCE ACT OF 1996

Second, while the original patriot act did create several civil liberties concerns, the main focus of this bill was to solve a vast majority of those problems. That was done to the satisfaction of all but 10 senators, including several who are not up for re-election this year, and also including some of the most liberal, Bush-hating senators from liberal, Bush-hating states like Kennedy, Kerry, Schumer, and Clinton.

Lastly, the mainstream media has a liberal bias in general. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that bad news about a republican beats a republican congressional victory. Ironically, if the democrats hadn't been so openly obstructionist, they might have been able to spin this as a democratic victory due to the many civil liberty concerns that were addressed. Now, it is much easier for the republicans to spin it that they were able to renew the crucial patriot act and address several important civil liberty concerns in the process (republicans like liberty too, believe it or not), in spite of democrats' attempt to block the legislation.

I know you haven't read H.R. 3199, the bill that just passed the senate, because it actually vastly increased the protections for the case you are referring to.

See here.