As I read through my emails, the news, and other people’s blogs, I note various things that I want to blog about. If it is a website, I typically bookmark it with Mento.info, which feeds del.icio.us and ma.gnloia. ma.gnolia, in turn posts entries on this blog.

Sometimes, these notes turn into full blog entries. Other times, I just don’t get enough information, interest, or time to develop full stories, but I still look for opportunities to write about them. Sometimes they show up in blog posts with titles like “Random Stuff”. With that, let me go through my notebook to highlight some of the more recent random stuff.

McCain, DMCA and PRO IP

CNET News has an article about the McCain campaign protesting YouTube’s DMCA policy. They are claiming that their “advertisements or Web videos have been the subject of DMCA takedown notices regarding uses that are clearly privileged under the fair use doctrine”.

Unfortunately, for the McCain campaign, the DMCA process is pretty weak on due process, and even if it wasn’t, YouTube’s Terms of Service state, "YouTube reserves the right to discontinue any aspect of the YouTube Web site at any time."

About the same time as the McCain campaign sent their complaint to YouTube, President Bush signed The Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property Act of 2007 which creates a national IP czar to increase intellectual property protection for movie studios, recording companies and others.

Personally, I’m very concerned about the lack of due process in DMCA takedowns and a lack of proper consideration of Fair Use issues. I hope that this will get some better focus on IP issues.

IPv6

I want to thank people who commented on my blog post about IPv6. I always worry about writing really geeky posts and losing the interest of my readers. amoration commented about the benefits of IPv6 for people needing less laggy connections, such as musicians or gamers. Since my connection is via an IPv6 tunnel, it is pretty laggy. I look forward to the day of being able to get a direct IPv6 connection.

As to games, I note that there appears to be at least one MUD that has been modified to support IPv6 and people are talking about doing that for MOOs as well. Apparently, one of the early tests was a Quake3 server on IPv6. The question is, will OpenSim support IPv6? Hpw about Second Life, Entropia or others?

During the presidential debate, I connected to an IRC server over IPv6. Then, last night, I did a little more IPv6 hacking. It turns out that Microsoft Research built an IPv6 protocol driver for Windows NT a long time ago, and I’ve managed to add it to my old NT box. It takes a little tweaking, but I’ve gotten Firefox to access IPv6 based websites. I updated cygwin, which has IPv6 extensions. However, I didn’t have much luck getting that to work on IPv6 on my NT box yet. I did, however, have success getting ssh in cygwin on my Vista box connected to my Linux server over IPv6.

Meanwhile, I’m still looking for other interesting IPv6 sites and applications.

Talking about the Issues

Yesterday, I received an email about Minekey’s Presidential Election Site. It looks like an interesting place to explore issues from different viewpoints. Also, yesterday, I received an email about whereIstand, another site focused on discussing the issues. Both of these remind me a bit of essembly. A good todo is to compare and contrast the three different sites.

More about ACORN

Also showing up in my email yesterday was information about the FBI investigating ACORN for Voter Fraud. The section that jumped out at me was

Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because Justice Department regulations forbid discussing ongoing investigations particularly so close to an election.

So, the reporter chose to aid and abet senior law enforcement officials in violating Justice Department regulations. The Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics says, that journalists must “always question sources’ motives before promising anonymity.” Was the reporting by the Associated Press not only aiding and abetting senior law enforcement officials in violating Justice Department regulations but also violating the ethics of journalists?

House Judiciary Committee Chair John Conyers, Jr. of Michigan had this to say to the Attorney General and the Director of the FBI:

It is with shock and disappointment that I read today's
Associated Press report that the Federal Bureau of Investigation has
opened and leaked an investigation into whether ACORN, a longstanding
and well regarded organization that fights for the poor and working
class, is involved in nationwide voter fraud.

As an initial matter, it is simply unacceptable that
such information would be leaked during the very peak of the election
season. Such leaks of information about ongoing criminal
investigation matters are always inappropriate, and likely violate
the provisions of the U.S. Attorney manual governing release of
information about ongoing investigations ... More significant in this case,
however, they also run afoul of valuable Department traditions
regarding the need for cautious and sensitive

Chairman Conyers wasn’t the only one to note this. Talking Point Memo had these posts about it, Returning to the Scene of the Crime, Short Memories, Oldie But Goodie (And Still Going On?) and Iglesias: "I'm Astounded" By DOJ's ACORN Probe. It will be interesting to how this continues to develop.

Supreme Court and Ohio

In a related issue about trying to make sure that all appropriate voters get a chance to vote in Ohio, US Supreme Court sides w/Ohio Sec’y of State Brunner.

Abusing Journalists

Jill, whose story about the Supreme Court I linked to was among many twittering about a journalist being physically abused by a McCain supporter at a Palin rally. Unfortunately, this is not particularly surprising. However, there is an interesting addendum to the story.

In the comments, Maria Barton encourages people experiencing this sort of abuse to immediate alert campaign staff. “We will immediately & dutifully fetch a couple of police officers to throw out anyone (especially if that person threw the first punch - or kick) who physically attacks any other attendee.”

Maria Barton is listed as the campaign chair of the Greater Greensboro Republican Women’s Club. I don’t know much about Ms. Barton. I suspect we probably disagree on a lot of issues, but I have to say we need more Republicans, and Democrats to stand up the way she did.

Other Random Links

Yeah, these links are on my ma.gnolia posts, but I wanted to highlight a couple of them anyway. Check out The Great Schlep for a funny effort to get people to go to Florida to campaign for Obama. Check out this blog post about security cameras. I did the Google search and checked out some security cameras that way. Makes you think a little bit more about the surveillance society.

And, if your tired of politics and want to put it all into perspective read about this effort to explain politics.

Enough random stuff for now.