The Long War: Music Piracy in 1897 (NYTimes) Via Michael Masnick at Techdirt: The fact that it focuses on Canadian copyright laws as the problem…nearly perfectly mimics today’s claims from the recording industry. The article even talks about a recent conference held by industry members to create a committee to fight piracy. Basically, it’s the same exact story we see today — and the same bogus complaints. If the industry has shown one thing, it’s that it will consistently...

My headline is ripped from Jon Stewart’s Daily Show graphic. The story is here and here. Fire the guy! Statement from Louis Caldera, Director White House Military Office, on Air Force One flight over New York “Last week, I approved a mission over New York. I take responsibility for that decision. While federal authorities took the proper steps to notify state and local authorities in New York and New Jersey, it’s clear that the mission created confusion and disruption. I apologize...

newsmap.jp. Very cool. Click-through for live view. Newsmap blog. More here.

The Centers for Disease Control is tweeting updates on the swine flu outbreak. Meanwhile, over the weekend Evgeny Morozov at Foreign Policy’s Net Effect looked at Twitter’s power to misinform: [D]espite all the recent Twitter-enthusiasm about this platform’s unique power to alert millions of people in decentralized and previously unavailable ways, there are quite a few reasons to be concerned about Twitter’s role in facilitating an unnecessary global panic about swine flu…...

Time has a report on a new study by Glenn Greenwald — yes, that Glenn Greenwald — finding that decriminalizing drugs in Portugal has worked: The paper, published by Cato in April, found that in the five years after personal possession was decriminalized, illegal drug use among teens in Portugal declined and rates of new HIV infections caused by sharing of dirty needles dropped, while the number of people seeking treatment for drug addiction more than doubled. “Judging by every...

ET: Arthur passed away at her home on Saturday. The spokesman said she was battling cancer, but did not elaborate on the cause of death. In the video above Rosie sings the theme from “Maude” after Bea Arthur tells her that they [used to!] sing it instead of happy birthday at The Universal Grill in the village. I love that Bea went there. My friend Sam and I used to celebrate birthdays together there. Rest in sweet eternal peace Bea. UPDATE: Joe Gandelman adds this: As a professional...

Following up on my earlier post, minutes ago the CDC issued an Outbreak Notice — Swine Influenza in the United States. Time reports: The CDC is working with the World Health Organization to keep track of any additional cases to determine whether and when a warning of a pandemic would be warranted. In preparation for such a scenario, the CDC has created a seed stock of a vaccine against the swine flu, which could be pushed into production should the number of cases jump significantly. The CDC...

UPDATE: ScienceBlogs: There will be an update from CDC later today and WHO’s expert committee established under the new International Health Regulations (IHR) meets via teleconference this morning North American east coast time at 10 am (4 pm Geneva time) to consider whether the swine flu situation merits declaring it “a public health event of international concern.” [...] One of the puzzling things about this outbreak is the stark contrast between the clinical and epidemiological picture...

Music to my ears: President Obama went on the offensive today, telling student-loan companies that he was prepared to fight them over his plan to end bank-based lending. Lenders “have mobilized an army of lobbyists,” he said in a speech that was introduced by Stephanie Stevenson, a financially struggling college student. “They are gearing up for battle. … So am I.” “And for those who care about our future,” he added, “this is a battle we can’t lose.” Calling government subsidies...

Gizmodo: Tomas Norström, the judge who sentenced the Pirate Bay Four, was recently found to have been a member of two copyright advocacy organizations, prompting rumblings about a mistrial. Some Swedish attorneys believe that Norström’s membership of the Swedish Copyright Association and the Swedish Association for the Protection of Industrial Property (where he is a board member) represent a full-on conflict of interest, a charge that, naturally, he denies. The story broke on Swedish National...

I have been more than a little irked to hear pundits & pols proclaim their concern for the indebtedness of future generations when they’re happy as clams to let students go deep into publicly subsidized student loan debt and sit by silently as nothing is done to shore up the broken public education system. Especially so given that those same pundits & pols were perfectly happy to send our kids off to a war that was funded by debt. Go to any college and you will find credit card companies...

Douglas A. Blackmon won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize in General Non-fiction for Slavery by Another Name – The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II. In a brief interview yesterday with the AJC’s Jennifer Brett, Blackmon said: I hope that the real relevance of the book is to advance the idea that if we really want to understand America in terms of race, we have to be much more honest about the terrible things that were happening in the early 20th century. There are...

On the day after Michelle Obama planted an organic garden at the White House, I was at the Georgia Organics Conference at Agnes Scott College in Decatur, GA. The weekend of workshops — I went to one on worms and another on successes in meat processing — was topped off with 1,100 people gathered under a tent for a Farmers Feast. The main attraction was Michael Pollan. He was there throughout the conference and presented the keynote address that night. His full 60 minute speech is now...

This one’s been making the tech blog rounds… If that didn’t quench your tech-machinery-plays-music thirst, here’s a laser cutter playing the Super Mario Bros. theme. And here a CNC router plays Still Alive from Portal. For Queen fans, here a guy in a car rocks so hard to Bohemian Rhapsody that the airbag goes off and knocks him out. (Check it out soon. It’s been pulled from elsewhere due to terms of use violations.)

Jeff Jarvis casts a skeptical eye on Mark Penn’s Wall Street Journal column today: [Mark Penn says] there are now more paid bloggers than CEOs… As much as I would like to believe that blogging is a lucrative profession, I’m not sure I buy it — not quite yet. He says that bloggers with 100,000 readers a month are making $75k. Name a few. Still, the trend is heading this way and I’m certainly happy to hear talk of blogging as a business model. From Penn’s column: Paid bloggers...

For your Saturday morning viewing pleasure, Stop Motion Wolf & Pig…

Copyright criminals: A court in Sweden on Friday convicted four men linked to the notorious Internet file-sharing service The Pirate Bay of violating copyright law, handing the music and movie industries a high-profile victory in their campaign to curb online piracy. The court found that the men — the three founders, Frederik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg and Peter Sunde, as well as Carl Lundstrom, who provided financing — had aided copyright infringement by operating the site, which provides...

From the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals opinion: On October 22, 2008, Troy Anthony Davis (“Davis”), a Georgia death row inmate, has filed an application with this Court seeking authorization to file a second or successive 28 U.S.C. § 2254 federal habeas petition, raising for the first time a freestanding actual innocence claim.  Davis had previously filed a federal habeas petition in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Georgia in 2001, alleging, among other things,...

Gizmodo’s Odelia Lee takes Honda’s new cyborg legs for a spin: I’m definitely not the target demographic for [Honda's fresh-from-the-labs Stride Management Assist and Bodyweight Support Assist rigs], which Honda’s Fundamental Research Institute hopes will help mobilize and rehabilitate Japan’s rapidly aging population or lessen the leg fatigue of factory workers who stand and crouch for hours on end. But of course, this didn’t stop me from jumping at the opportunity...

Over the past few weeks the traditional media have discovered Twitter big time. You can hardly tune in to any radio or television program without being pestered to send a tweet or subscribe to their Twitter feed. They’ve liberally used the CommonCraft video above — often without attribution – to help acquaint their audience to the service. So do you Twitter? TMV’s Twitter feed carries links to our posts. Me, I’m a consumer of feeds more than a producer of tweets. I...

The Inside Higher Ed headline, Can We Be Buds? The story is about a student group, SAFER (Safer Alternative for Enjoyable Recreation), pressing the same college presidents pushing lowering the drinking age onto the national agenda to pick up pot. Figuratively, of course: SAFER, a nonprofit organization that supports the reform of marijuana laws, is calling on college presidents to join its cause, arguing that students would be safer taking bong hits than tequila shots. The group is specifically seeking...

Yesterday I quoted Jeff Jarvis that AP is the enemy of newspapers. The story that’s making the rounds today proves his point. Erick Schonfeld at TechCrunch: Here is another great moment in A.P. history. In its quest to become the RIAA of the newspaper industry, the A.P.’s executives and lawyers are beginning to match their counterparts in the music industry for cluelessness. A country radio station in Tennessee, WTNQ-FM, received a cease-and-desist letter from an A.P. vice president of...

Peter Kafka at All Things Digital got some of what AP is thinking from Jim Kennedy VP/director of strategic planning. It boils down to: …AP’s ire is indeed aimed at Google, and that the drum-beating has a purpose. The search engine has a deal with the AP that expires at the end of this year, and the AP is setting the table for upcoming negotiations. … The AP’s “stick” approach is aimed at Web aggregators: It plans on “fingerprinting” its content so it can track where its...

Barry Eichengreen and Kevin H. O’Rourke say we’re in one: [T]he world is currently undergoing an economic shock every bit as big as the Great Depression shock of 1929-30. Looking just at the US leads one to overlook how alarming the current situation is even in comparison with 1929-30. The good news, of course, is that the policy response is very different. The question now is whether that policy response will work. I’m reminded of recession dating. We may be in one for a while before...

Reuters: Vermont lawmakers on Tuesday overrode a veto from the governor in passing a bill that would allow same-sex marriage, clearing the way for the state to become the fourth in the nation where gay marriage is legal. The Vermont House of Representatives passed the bill by a 100-49 vote after it cleared the state Senate 23-5 earlier in the day. In Vermont, a bill needs two-thirds support in each chamber to override a veto. To override the veto, the House needed a minimum of 100 votes. That’s...