Blackmoor Vituperative

This is a novel legal strategy. And so far it’s working. Last month, in an effort to preserve the state’s monopoly on legal gambling, Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear sued to have 141 online gambling sites’ domains transferred to the state’s control. According to the Washington Post, a big part of Beshear’s election was based on bringing casinos to Kentucky.

Kentucky circuit court judge Thomas Wingate granted the request, ordering domain registrars to do just that. Wingate found that Kentucky’s anti-gambling statutes allowed such a court order in that gambling website domains are “gambling devices” under the state’s law.

But what jurisdiction does the Kentucky court have? Opponents say none, since none of the sites or the registrars are based in Kentucky.

(from Poker sites fight to get domain names back from Kentucky, ZDNet)

If a court in Elbonia is permitted to seize assets in Freedonia because an Elbonian law says they can, this is a HORRIFIC precedent. What’s next, if this travesty of jurisdiction is permitted to stand? China charging Americans with “crimes” like “counterrevolutionary acts”, or the USA charging foreign citizens with “crimes” like “copyright violation”, would not be too far behind.

This is a gross injustice and perversion of the law, and it needs to be stopped stone dead right now.

The best news, for me, is that a Knights Of The Old Republic MMO is on the way.

Also, I dig Cory Doctorow.

I do not dig the death of the Public Domain. I thought Europeans were smarter than this. Or at least, less under the thumb of the media robber barons.

The 5 real reasons to avoid iPhone 3G

• iPhone completely blocks free software. Developers must pay a tax to Apple, who becomes the sole authority over what can and can’t be on everyone’s phones.
• iPhone endorses and supports Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) technology.
• iPhone exposes your whereabouts and provides ways for others to track you without your knowledge.
• iPhone won’t play patent- and DRM-free formats like Ogg Vorbis and Theora.
• iPhone is not the only option. There are better alternatives on the horizon that respect your freedom, don’t spy on you, play free media formats, and let you use free software — like the FreeRunner ().

We can trade our freedom and our money to get something flashy on the surface, or we can spend a little more money, keep our freedom, and support a better kind of business. If we want businesses to be ethical, we have to reward the ones that are. By not enriching companies that want to take away our freedom and by rewarding those that respect us, we will be helping to bring about a better future.

In solidarity,

John, Josh, Matt, and Peter

(from Defective By Design)

The JMRI Defense fund is a worthwhile cause. Think about sending a few dollars their way.

Net neutrality is a complex issue, but here is the main thing you need to know about it in order to support it:

The Digital Rights Mafia is against it.

In case you needed more reasons to hate the media robber barons, the Digital Rights Mafia, and their government shills, here’s an article from Crave.

Check out Scott Moschella’s Silent Protest at Plastic Bugs. This guy is braver than I am, but I applaud him and people like him.

He’s also the guy who hacked GIMP to make it usable by human beings: Gimpshop. The Windows version is pretty out of date, unfortunately. It’s a pity the GIMP developers have such a “not invented here” attitude toward Gimpshop. If they’d incorporate Scott’s improvements (and make no mistake: they are huge improvements), they’d see the GIMP community double in three months. I pretty much guarantee it.

UK denies copyright extension to British music publishers

Way to go, Parliament! Woot! Go, UK!

Microsoft is back with more vague threats and bogus claims concerning their patents being violated by open source software.

In an interview with Fortune, Brad Smith, Microsoft’s general counsel, claims that the Linux kernel violates 42 of its patents, the Linux graphical user interfaces run afoul of another 65, the Open Office suite of programs infringes 45 more, e-mail programs violate 15, while other assorted free and open-source programs allegedly transgress 68.

(from eWeek, Microsoft Claims Open-Source Technology Violates 235 of Its Patents)

You first heard this noise back in 2004. It was piffle then, and it’s piffle now. The fact that a company would continue to make empty threats like this, year after year, should be enough reason for you to stop doing business with them.

That’s aside from the practical ramifications of using Microsoft’s software. Anyone who runs a mission-critical server on a Windows machine rather than a Linux or Unix machine, anyone who runs a web server on IIS rather than Apache, anyone who chooses to use Microsoft Office instead of OpenOffice, anyone who chooses to use Internet Explorer rather than Firefox — these people are all technological illiterates who shouldn’t be allowed near a computer keyboard or an IT architecture meeting.

Amazon.com Inc. (Nasdaq:AMZN –news) said on Wednesday the company will launch a digital music store later in 2007 with millions of songs, free of copy protection technology that limits where consumers can play their music.

(from Yahoo! News, Amazon to sell digital music free of copy curbs)

Way to go, Amazon. Great move.