http://www.prisonplanet.com/…

Lawrence Lessig, a respected Law Professor from Stanford University told an audience at this years Fortune’s Brainstorm Tech conference in Half Moon Bay, California, that “There’s going to be an i-9/11 event” which will act as a catalyst for a radical reworking of the law pertaining to the internet.

There’s going to be an i-9/11 event. Which doesn’t necessarily mean an Al Qaeda attack, it means an event where the instability or the insecurity of the internet becomes manifest during a malicious event which then inspires the government into a response. You’ve got to remember that after 9/11 the government drew up the Patriot Act within 20 days and it was passed.

The Patriot Act is huge and I remember someone asking a Justice Department official how did they write such a large statute so quickly, and of course the answer was that it has been sitting in the drawers of the Justice Department for the last 20 years waiting for the event where they would pull it out.

Of course, the Patriot Act is filled with all sorts of insanity about changing the way civil rights are protected, or not protected in this instance. So I was having dinner with Richard Clarke and I asked him if there is an equivalent, is there an i-Patriot Act just sitting waiting for some substantial event as an excuse to radically change the way the internet works. He said “of course there is”.

Skip to 4:30:

Lessig is the founder of Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society. He is founding board member of Creative Commons and is a board member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and of the Software Freedom Law Center. He is best known as a proponent of reduced legal restrictions on copyright, trademark and radio frequency spectrum, particularly in technology applications.

Anyone who doesn’t think the Internet as we know it can be controlled by the government is missing the obvious. The telecoms, which own all the major hubs and backbones, are in bed with the government. They now have immunity from instances where they work with the government to spy on subjects. They work with the NSA to tap major internet hubs with machines able to do realtime analysis of all traffic passing through it. The government even provides them with monopoly status in many parts of the country isolating them from competition. Just like all large corporations which are regulated… they are in bed with the corporatists running the government.

Find more on the bill here.

http://www.foxnews.com/…

A Canadian court has overturned a father’s punishment for his daughter after she refused to stay off the Internet, his attorney said Wednesday.

The girl, 12, took her father to Quebec Superior Court after he refused to allow her to go on a school trip for chatting on Web sites and then posting “inappropriate” pictures of herself online using a friend’s computer, AFP reported.

The punishment was for the girl’s “own protection,” according to the father’s attorney, Kim Beaudoin, who is appealing the ruling.

“She’s a child,” Beaudoin told AFP. “At her age, children test their limits and it’s up to their parent to set boundaries. I started an appeal of the decision today to reestablish parental
authority, and to ensure that this case doesn’t set a precedent.”

Otherwise, she continued, “Parents are going to be walking on egg shells from now on.”

According to court documents, the girl’s Internet usage was the latest in a rash of disciplinary problems. But Justice Suzanne Tessier, who was presiding over the case, found the punishment too severe.

I’m almost speechless. How exactly are they going to enforce this? What happened to “my house, my electric bill, my internet bill, my rules?” That girl would be out on her ass. If the State is so concerned with her life they can raise her… totally.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/…

• 13. Infowars.com
• 16. LewRockwell.com
• 20. Antiwar.com
• 23. PrisonPlanet.com
• 36. National Rifle Association
• 68. Ron Paul 2008
• 89. Alex Jones’ Prison Planet.tv

Congrats to Alex Jones, Lew Rockwell and Ron Paul supporters.

Sorry for the downtime but I’ve been working to move the site to a new host and upgrade. I accidentally forwarded all email to /dev/null so if you had sent me a personal email please resend it.

Changes:

• Wordpress upgrade to 2.5.1
• New hosting provider
• New domain: blogofbile.com
• landofbile.com/blog/whatever will still work as it’s redirected to blogofbile.com
• New javascript based menus on the main page
• New slideshow for images. Any links to images on a page or post will be part of the same slideshow.
• New Quotes page, I need to transfer all my quotes over and rework the layout still.
• I’ve used a plugin to auto tag all old posts without tags. Many don’t make all that much sense but it’s not all that important.
• A new feature to let logged in users add tags to articles.
• Ajax comment editting
• a WP plugin to catch broken links. I’ll slowly clean those up as I have the time.
• Misc backend things to make my life easier.
• A mobile version. If you use a mobile web browser you should get a very simple version of the page without the advanced comment form.
• A contact form.
• An auto suggest tags plugin. (bottom of write post page)
• random theme changes.

I’m not done with changing everything or tweaking things but it’s usable. I think the RSS feeds will still work but I’m not sure yet. If you come across any issues please email at bile at landofbile dot com or use the contact form.

http://www.reuters.com/…

A roommate-finding site cannot require users to disclose their sexual orientation, a U.S. appeals court ruled on Thursday, in the latest skirmish over whether anti-discrimination rules apply to the Web.

The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals said Roommates.com, which obliges users to list their sexual orientation, was different than Internet sites where people can volunteer or withhold personal information.

To inquire electronically about sexual orientation would not be different from asking people in person or by telephone if they were black or Jewish before conducting business, the panel said in an 8-3 ruling that partly overturns a lower federal court decision.

“If such screening is prohibited when practiced in person or by telephone, we see no reason why Congress would have wanted to make it lawful to profit from it online,” 9th Circuit chief judge Alex Kozinski wrote. “Not only does Roommate ask these questions, Roommate makes answering the discriminatory questions a condition of doing business.”

Can someone please tell me why sexism is allowed and orientationism is not? How exactly are these people “obliged?” oblige: 1. To constrain by physical, legal, social, or moral means. 2. To make indebted or grateful. 3. To make indebted or grateful. No one is requiring them to use the service. There is craigslist and dozens of other roommate sites. Are they going to outlaw people from asking each other in person next? Or making a descision on that information?