Last night i had a strange dream. The DRMocrats have just been re-elected, sweeping all three houses of government in a virtual landslide. When MBC/Disney declares the victory at 7 a.m. EST -- 10 seconds after the polls open -- Supreme Court Chief Justice Jack Valenti certifies the results and activates four more years of rights to the Raikes-Allchin ticket.

President Jeff Raikes and fourth wife Britney Spears celebrate at the Northwestern White House. Vice President Jim Allchin remains secluded, working on the latest update to the U.S. operating system -- code-named Bill-o'-RightsXP.

I flash back to the history that brought us to this state of events. The headlines synchronize with Michael Jackson's authorized Sgt. Pepper II Surgery Edition soundtrack.

New England Journal of Medicine - Perspective: The New Federal Medical-Privacy Rule This link is an indirect one via Moreover.com - Paid subscription required and I don't have a subscription so I can't provide any interesting pull quotes from the article.

The full text of the Journal is available online for all subscribers to the print version. For Original Articles and Special Articles, six months after publication the full text becomes available to all registered users.

Business News from Wired News - Wired News: A Kiddie GPS for the Masses?

You go to RadioShack and buy a casing for your teen's cell phone that tells you his or her whereabouts at all times. You simply log on to a website for a map of the phone's location.

If the child is too young to own a cell phone, you stick a pager-sized device with a global positioning system (GPS) chip and wireless radio into his or her backpack. Have any doubts as to your kid's location? Simply look it up on the Web.

San Jose Mercury News - Taiwan rejects U.S. copyright demands.

Taiwan has turned down a U.S. demand on Friday to extend copyrights on works including earlier Walt Disney movies for another 20 years as negotiators on both sides held talks on intellectual property rights.

Taiwan told a delegation led by Joseph Papovich, assistant U.S. trade representative, that it would not extend copyright protection to 70 years from 50 years, a Taiwan Ministry of Economic Affairs official said.

The U.S. Supreme Court considered on Wednesday whether Robert Frost poems and Mickey Mouse movies made more than 75 years ago should become public property or remain in the hands of their owners for another 20 years.

Slashdot | Your Rights Online - New Anti-Circumvention Rulemaking Coming Soon.

zurab writes "According to CNet, copyright regulators are considering a rare public comment (pdf) process on the controversial DMCA law. The article states they are mostly looking for what kind of exceptions they should make to the law." --- If you recall, the Librarian of Congress is required by law to conduct a review process every three years to see if there are any specific types of works which should be exempted from part of the DMCA. You can see loc.gov for some information about the current and previous rulemaking procedures, and this piece I wrote after the last rulemaking was finished, examining what did and didn't work to convince the bureaucrats.

O'Reilly Network: Why Human Rights Requires Free Software.

Human rights is the global currency of modern politics. Whenever the United States attacks a country, diplomatically or physically, it cites human rights claims. And by a not-so-surprising irony, the critics of the United States and its allies complain of human rights violations as well.

So human rights workers should be universally feted and supported. Instead, however, they are chronically underfunded, goaded to justify every detail of their work, and threatened with dire harm.

For these reasons, human rights work requires free software.

I heard this unusual call for free software (and I think it's obvious in this context that the proper term to use is "free" and not "open source") in a speech on October 5th by Dr. Patrick Ball, the spirited and plain-spoken deputy director of the Science and Human Rights Project of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

[ ... ]

There is a good deal of overlap between Patrick's work and the mission of Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility, which has recently started a project called Privaterra, which provides software support to human rights workers. The creator of Privaterra, Richard Guerra, knows Patrick and invited him to speak at the 2002 CPSR annual meeting. I recently wrote a Weblog on the conference.

[ ... ]

Imagine an American scientist bringing a closed, proprietary encryption program or statistical package to political activists in a foreign country and saying, "Just use this; take my word that it works right." That's a non-starter. If the software is open source, even though the human rights staff might not be able to personally verify that it's accurate and free of bias, they can take the source to a university or other expert and have it vetted.

The same challenges arise when a human rights organization publicly presents its results. The politicians, generals, and other power-holders will dispute every step in reasoning. A lot of an organization's credibility lies in its process for collecting data and its use of statistics, but the software has to be certified to be trustworthy, as well. An open package whose source can be checked by any technically qualified person removes a potential area of dispute.

Slashdot | Why Human Rights Requires Free Software.

andyo writes "Why Human Rights Requires Free Software: Report on a practitioner's view of the critical role free software plays in the work of human rights activists around the globe."

Slashdot | Your Rights Online - A Digital Certificate For Every Canadian.

thepacketmaster writes "September 27 of this year, the Canadian government took a quiet step into the online world. Called Government Online, this broad project involves giving every Canadian citizen a digital certificate, which will allow citizens to access their personal government records online. So far they only have the Custom & Revenue Agency online with a simple Change of Address, but there are over a hundred more applications from various agencies ready to be put online. Could this be the start of something good, or is this Big Brother? How about voting online?"

Lawrence Lessig - from the front line .

So there's an extraordinary (and extraordinarily interesting) range of reporting about the argument before the Court. As I was on the front line, let me add a bit more. My hope in doing this is to put this in a bit of context, and to highlight at least what we should be looking for. (EV predicts a 6-3 victory, which is significant, because he and I have a bet, and he took the other side.)

Aaron reports Brewster's statement to him that "it was a dance for which I don't know the steps." That's close. I think the better analogy for someone viewing an oral argument for the first time is the first time you see a cricket match. There are some moves you are certain you know are bad (a swing and a miss); but there's lots that plays into something you can't quite get till you know the context of the game. Here, then, the context of the game, as well as the moves from last Wednesday.