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The EFF’s Deeplinks section has a pretty alarming post about the RIAA and MPAA’s attempts to freeze the progress of consumer electronics technology and then start turning back the clock on all of us. Fair use, meet your successor: “customary historic use.”

The post points to broadcast flag draft legislation sponsored by Senator Gordon Smith (R-Ore.) that contains provisions which appear to limit digital broadcast media reception devices to “customary historic use of broadcast content by consumers to the extent such use is consistent with applicable law and that prevents redistribution of copyrighted content over digital networks.” In other words, if it does anything heretofore unheard of with the digital content that it receives, then it’s illegal. And if it does anything “customary” that could also possibly lead to unauthorized redistribution, then it’s also illegal. So all the bases are covered!

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But I hate to end a post on a sour note, so here’s a thought to cheer you up. This “customary historic use” thing reminds me of something I once read in a history of Japan that I picked up on sale at Borders. (I’d give the title, but I’m not at home so I don’t have the book handy. It wasn’t very good anyway.) At the height of their cultural power, the samurai were authorized to kill peasants for an insane number of reasons, including “acting in an other than expected manner.” So look on the bright side: at least we don’t live in feudal Japan… yet.

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De SP is verbijsterd over een plan van Tweede Kamerleden om negatieve inkomenseffecten door het nieuwe zorgstelsel voor zichzelf te compenseren. „Dit is werkelijk schaamteloos. Door het nieuwe zorgstelsel gaan veel groepen er flink op achteruit. Een Kamermeerderheid laat hen in de kou staan, maar wil de achteruitgang wel voor zichzelf compenseren? Dit is niet uit te leggen�?, aldus SP-Kamerlid Kant vrijdag.

Kant baseert zich op een brief van de zogeheten commissie Emolumenten, waarin vier Kamerleden onder voorzitterschap van VVD’er Hofstra zich bezighouden met de beloning van de politici in Den Haag. Deze adviescommissie schrijft in de brief aan Kamerleden dat het begin februari met minister Remkes (Binnenlandse Zaken) spreekt „over de wijze waarop en de omvang waarmee�? negatieve effecten gecompenseerd kunnen worden met terugwerkende kracht tot 1 januari 2006.

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Proponents for a broadening of industrial property rights in the computer sector have declared a new round in the fight about software patents in the EU opened. “It starts again”, announced Günther Schmalz, head of SAP’s software department, according to the Intellectial Property Watch online service by mid of last week on the Digital Europe meeting of the neoliberal US-american Progress & Freedom Foundation (PFF) in Prague. At the same time, the patent proponent expressed hope that his camp will be better prepared this time than during the last struggle. A “brigde position” must be reached, which both sides could live with.

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According to the PFF’s conference blog Schmalz justifies SAP’s commitment for a EU-wide regulation with SAP seeing patents as the only way to ensure returns on its development investment. Copyright is no solution, he continues, as the actual writing of code only makes up about 20% of the development of software. “Those who drive innovation need patents”, Schmalz stresses. “Those who don’t imitate.” This proposition resembles a statement of SAP head Shai Agassi. Not long ago, he characterized the camp of open source developers, which strongly oppose software patents, as only being minimal innovative but dangerous for the proprietary development of computer programs.

It’s like asking if you’d like to burn at 1000 degrees for an hour, and when you say no, they decide there must be some middle ground you can agree on, say 30 minutes?

There are no new views, no new points to consider. Yet here we are again.

They’ll try again and again, and they only have to win once. We have to win every time. Democracy is dead, replaces by capitalism. Everything is for sale to the highest bidder including your government.