attempted thinking

US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is proposing a new bill that would “increase criminal penalties for copyright infringement, including “attempts” to commit piracy.” [link]
Apparently the Bush administration is supporting the bill which is entitled  the Intellectual Property Protection Act of 2007 [link to pdf of the bill]. Naturally, the intellectual property laws are aimed at protecting big music and movie industries.

Here are some of the proposed measures in the law:

• Criminalize “attempting” to infringe copyright. Federal law currently punishes not-for-profit copyright infringement with between 1 and 10 years in prison, but there has to be actual infringement that takes place.
• Create a new crime of life imprisonment for using pirated software.
• Permit more wiretaps for piracy investigations.
• Allow computers to be seized more readily.

What’s next? criminialize ‘attempted thinking’?

cyber war

A three-week wave of massive cyber-attacks on the small Baltic country of Estonia, the first known incidence of such an assault on a state, is causing alarm across the western alliance, with Nato urgently examining the offensive and its implications. [The Guardian]

According to The Guardian, “Alarm over the unprecedented scale of cyber-warfare is to be raised tomorrow at a summit between Russian and European leaders outside Samara on the Volga.” If the Russians are proven to be behind the attacks, the Guardian says this would be considered the first officially known attack by a state on another.

Not really. In fact in the Frontline film Cyberwars, one Pentagon official acknowledges that the US conducted a cyberwar attack on Iraq during the first Gulf War in 1992. In addition, cyberwars have been very common between Israel and the Palestinians. In particular, Israel as a State, and Palestinians as individual computer-savvy people.

the twitter phenomenon

Does anyone remember FlashMob? It was just another crazy Internet phenomenon where a group of people who did not know each other met in a predetermined public place, did something unusual and then disappeared. They connected only through the Internet. Flashmobbing still exists [link], but I am not sure how many people out there still do it.

And now there is the Twitter phenomenon. I call it a phenomenon because it really makes no sense whatsoever. Twitter is “a global community of friends and strangers answering one simple question: What are you doing?” Everybody from all over the world responds to that single question. You do not write an essay, you do not write a paragraph; you only write one sentence that describes what you are doing right this minute.

Here is one answer:

Run out of tobacco, but can’t be bothered to go out in the wind and rain to get some more, could today be the day I stop smoking?

And here is another:

Moderate takes reins as France’s PM: French President Nicolas Sarkozy named a consensual, reform

The site keeps updating of course every second as people from all over the world keep posting what they are doing.

The creators of Twitter are a group called Obvious from California. They claim they like to create “interesting things that matter to the world”.

Matter to the world? Maybe. Perhaps there is something I am missing.

A few weeks ago NPR had a segment about Twitter on its program On Point:

Non-stop, instant communication from anywhere, all the time. Hyper-connectivity, always present, in a non-stop global mind-share of twittering micro-thoughts.

You may listen to the program here as its founders explain what they wanted out of Twitter. And here is the link to the Twitter pheonomenon.