Download the mp3 here.

Declan McCullagh:

Rep. David Dreier wants to force all Americans to carry a national ID card around with them. The California Republican is not about to describe his new bill in those terms, but that’s the reality.
Dreier’s legislation would prohibit employers from hiring people unless the job applicants first obtain new federal ID cards with their photograph, Social Security number and an “encrypted electronic strip” with additional information. Any employer who fails to comply faces hefty fines and prison terms of up to five years.
Dreier is smart enough to realize that these federal IDs would be immediately forged, so he takes the next step of linking them to an employment eligibility database that’s queried by card readers whenever the ID is swiped. The employment database is required to include “all such data maintained by the Department of Homeland Security,” combined with what the Social Security Administration has on file.

Andy McCue:

Billing Microsoft as the good guys and Apple the villains of the piece – at least as far as corporate America, rather than users, is concerned, Ballmer said: “We?ve had DRM in Windows for years. The most common format of music on an iPod is ‘stolen’.”
“Part of the reason people steal music is money, but some of it is that the DRM stuff out there has not been that easy to use. We are going to continue to improve our DRM, to make it harder to crack, and easier, easier, easier, easier, to use,” he said.
However, Ballmer conceded it isn’t going to be an easy battle to win. “Most people still steal music,” he said. “We can build the technology but there are still ways for people to steal music.”

Microsoft would rather that we have only one choice – their DRM (Digital Restrictions Management Software). Learn more about DRM here…..

Andrew Chin on missed opportunities in US v Microsoft:

But freedom of contract is expressly limited by the antitrust laws. The courts therefore had authority to order Microsoft to license and distribute its software so as to offer a neutral choice of Web browser. Microsoft could easily have done so without undoing its programming innovations.
Instead, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals created a special antitrust immunity to license Windows and other “platform software” under contractual terms that destroy freedom of competition.
The security hazards that have resulted from Microsoft’s unredressed actions are serious, and already being felt. Equally serious, but perhaps less tangible, is the D.C. Circuit’s waste of judicial resources in issuing precedential opinions that fallaciously treat Microsoft’s flagship software product as consisting of lines of code rather than intellectual property rights. The courts have missed a golden opportunity to affirm the freedom to compete in the information age.

Chin is an associate professor at the UNC School of Law and a former legal extern to Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson, the trial judge in U.S. v. Microsoft.
Related Article on Microsoft’s now dormant and flawed Internet Explorer browser. (use firefox)

Tom Scheck:

One car insurance company now offers discounts to drivers who allow the company to track when and how fast they drive electronically. Privacy advocates are worried that outside groups could eventually see that information.

Adam Curry:

Doc Searls has been following the iPodder explosion and points to a piece in Forbes about the history of the NAB and how they are succesfully regulating satellite radio out of business. It’s going to get interesting when iPods are outlawed and assault rifles are legal.

Read more about the latest Hatch/Leahy absurdity, the Induce Act here. Will Senator Kohl also carry water for Hollywood? Kohl is a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which meets to discuss the Induce Act on Thursday.
The Librarians are also against this bill…..

Michael Liedtke:

Google Inc.’s recently launched news service in China doesn’t display results from Web sites blocked by that country’s authorities, raising prickly questions for an online search engine that has famously promised to “do no evil.”
Dynamic Internet Technology Inc., a research firm striving to defeat online censorship, conducted tests that found Google omits results from the government-banned sites if search requests are made through computers connecting to the Internet in China.
Steered by an identical search request, computers with a United States connection retrieved results from the sites blocked by China.
“That’s a problem because the Chinese people need to know there are alternative opinions from the Chinese government and there are many things being covered up by the government,” said Bill Xia, Dynamic’s chief executive. “Users expect Google to return anything on the Internet. That’s what a search engine does.”

Let Google know how you feel about their support of Chinese censorship: press@google.com

David Weinberger:

[F]or one moment, I’d like you to perform an exercise in selective attention. Forget every other consideration even though they’re fair and important considerations and see if you can acknowledge that a world in which everyone has free access to every work of creativity in the world is a better world. Imagine your children could listen to any song ever created anywhere. What a blessing that would be!
…We publish stuff that gets its meaning and its reality by being read, viewed or heard. An unpublished novel is about as meaningful and real as an imaginary novel. It needs its readers to be. But readers aren’t passive consumers. We reimagine the book, we complete the vision of the book. Readers appropriate works, make them their own. Listeners and viewers, too. In making a work public, artists enter into partnership with their audience. The work succeeds insofar as the audience makes it their own, takes it up, understands it within their own unpredictable circumstances. It leaves the artist’s hands and enters our lives. And that’s not a betrayal of the work. That’s its success. It succeeds insofar as we hum it, quote it, appropriate it so thoroughly that we no longer remember where the phrase came from. That’s artistic success, although it’s a branding failure.

Via Boing Boing
Related: Cory Doctorow’s recent anti-DRM (Digital Restrictions Management) speech to Microsoft is now available in a PDF file:

In this transcript of a speech he gave at Microsoft’s campus, Cory explains why DRM doesn’t work, why DRM is bad for society, bad for business, bad for artists, and a bad move for Microsoft.

Related 2: I recently emailed Dave Black, General Manager of the UW’s excellent WSUM radio station, complementing him on their “Student Section” sports talk show. I liked the fact that these student broadcasters, unlike many in the local sports media, are not ‘homers” with respect to UW Football. I also urged him to post their shows online in a iPod friendly mp3 format. Note his comments on the restrictions that the Hollywood paid for DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act) places on their ability to share locally produced shows. The right solution? Cut deals with local artists/clubs and route around the outage.
Dave Replied:

Thanks, Jim,
What a pleasure to hear your kind words. Glad you enjoy the show, it is one of my favorites.
I have forwarded your email to our sports director, Joe Haas. He will take it up with our webmaster to see how feasible. As you may or may not know, the Digital Millenium Copyright Act makes archiving on a site difficult when it includes any musical content (e.g., the songs they play during the breaks). We will do the best we can under the circumstances.
All the best and please keep listening,
Dave Black
General Manager
WSUM-FM 91.7
University of Wisconsin-Madison
602 State St #205
Madison, WI 53703
608-262-9542 (no sales calls, please)
gm at wsum.wisc.edu
http://wsum.wisc.edu
visit our alumni organization at http://www.wsumfriends.org/

Yet another example of the “best law money can buy approach” is before the Senate: the Leahy/Hatch sponsored Induce Act. I recently emailed Senator Kohl to express my opposition to this bill. His reply was not great. Let him know what you think. Russ Feingold and Tim Michels should also know what you think.

Stephen Kinzer:

A highly advanced system of video surveillance that Chicago officials plan to install by 2006 will make people here some of the most closely observed in the world. Mayor Richard M. Daley says it will also make them much safer.
“Cameras are the equivalent of hundreds of sets of eyes,” Mr. Daley said when he unveiled the new project this month. “They’re the next best thing to having police officers stationed at every potential trouble spot.”
Police specialists here can already monitor live footage from about 2,000 surveillance cameras around the city, so the addition of 250 cameras under the mayor’s new plan is not a great jump. The way these cameras will be used, however, is an extraordinary technological leap.