MEGAN BOLER

the NYtimes: “The Federal Communications Commission is considering new rules and enforcement decisions that would force the cable and telephone companies to more clearly disclose to consumers the circumstances in which they might delay some traffic.”

The LA Times: “The first salvo was fired by the original Napster, which defined itself as a file-sharing network. That won the semantic high ground by defining unauthorized downloading as “sharing,” not “copying” or “duplicating.” The implication was that users of these networks were merely being generous with something they possessed, not usurping the rights of copyright holders.

Record labels, music publishers and movie studios contend that copyrights are indeed property, entitled to the same protection as a home or a car. To counter the notion of “sharing,” they’ve advanced an equal powerful metaphor: downloading as theft.”

The Financial Times: “The government will on Friday tell internet service providers they will be hit with legal sanctions from April next year unless they take concrete steps to curb illegal downloads of music and films.Britain would be one of the first countries in the world to impose such sanctions. Service providers say what the government wants them to do would be like asking the Royal Mail to monitor the contents of every envelope posted.”

the blogherald: “In this post-9/11 world, transportation security remains a major global issue.In light of that fact, The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) in America has launched a blog in order to inform the public of future initiatives and give frustrated travelers a place to air their grievances.

The TSA’s Evolution of Security blog aims to explain to the public, in non-political terms, why certain processes work the way they do. At some time or another, many upstanding citizens have felt violated, as the air travel process has shifted from a luxury to an inconvenience.

Is the blog nothing more than propaganda to justify intrusive security checks and long delays?

According to the blog, “Terrorists Evolve. Threats Evolve. Security Must Stay Ahead. You Play A Part.”

danah boyd blogs about her frustration when publishing work that requires an institutional subscription to access: “On one hand, I’m excited to announce that my article “Facebook’s Privacy Trainwreck: Exposure, Invasion, and Social Convergence” has been published in Convergence 14(1) (special issue edited by Henry Jenkins and Mark Deuze). On the other hand, I’m deeply depressed because I know that most of you will never read it. It is not because you aren’t interested (although many of you might not be), but because Sage is one of those archaic academic publishers who had decided to lock down its authors and their content behind heavy iron walls.”

She does post a link to her work in its earlier essay form for those who don’t have access.

“Fouad Mourtada, a 26-year old IT engineer has been held under arrest in Casablanca since February 5th for “villainous practices linked to the alleged theft of the identity” of King Mohammed VI’s younger brother, Prince Moulay Rachid, on the popular social networking website Facebook. Fouad appeared in court on Friday February 15th. The trial has been postponed until February 22.” link

boingboing: “Random House Audio — a division of Bertelsmann, one of the largest publishing conglomerates in the world — has announced that it will now allow its audiobooks to be sold without DRM by all of its online retailers.”

InfoWorld has an article about the implications of attacking whistle blowers as more info surfaces about the closure of wikileaks.

nettime:  “Mary Flanagan is an artist and media theorist invested in developing games for social change and performance/action installations. Based on her interests Flanagan produced [giantJoystick] in 2006, and gallery {AT} calit2 is proud to present this working large-scale game-interface from February 4 to March 17 of 2008.  [giantJostick] brings together Flanagan’s diverse interests as a cultural producer.”

The blogosphere is abuzz with reports that the main wikileaks DNS page is unavailable due some sort of restraining order, because of reports published on the site about offshore bank accounts in the Cayman Islands.