Interesting that Jennie Levine, a librarian who started the Sugar Quill Harry Potter fan fiction site, with her friend, Megan Morrison, should have nearly the same name as the Shifted Librarian, Jenny Levine.

Larry Potter v Harry Potter? The Scholastic, Inc. v. Stouffer ended in September 2002 with a federal judge siding with J.K.Rowling and her publishers. Nancy Stouffer had been claiming that Rowling had infringed the copyright of Larry Potter books she had written in the 1980s.

The White House and Congress have reached a compromise about the FCC's new media ownership rules raising the limit to 39% market share.

"Army Quietly Opens JetBlue Probe" says the Wired headline explaining the US Army are looking into the recent JetBlue passenger data scandal. They've not been too successful in keeping it quiet if Wired has got hold of the story.

Looks like Diebold have agreed not to sue at least some of the people publicising their embarrassing internal memos online. The company's submission to the court to this effect is available online.

According to the Register, via Kevin Poulsen at SecurityFocus, the Nachi worm infected Diebold ATMs. Yes the same Diebold that make electronic voting machines. Diebold have a nice list of links to media stories that treat them favourably or at least gently. Some of these provide exemplary examples of the unfair tactics of persuasion that advocates use to persuade people of their point of view. Attacks on people who have criticised Diebold are prominent are is praise for those implementing or defending Diebold. Wonderful "we're the good guys, they're the bad guys" stuff. Pity.

"Reporters Without Borders today urged the Zimbabwean authorities to drop charges against 14 people who were arrested for circulating an e-mail message criticising President Mugabe's economic policies and calling for his departure. They were all released on bail but have been ordered to appear in court on 26 November."

The Australian music industry have decided to sue ISPs "who failed to stop consumers illegally downloading music."

Lawmeme point us to some links on the latest troubles for e-voting machines and some policy proposals over broad copyright claims; and finally one for US 4th amendment scholars on new dog sniffing technology.

Apparently John Johansen of DeCSS fame has released a program on his website called QTFairUse which demonstrates how to get round Apple's iTunes anti-copying technology. Given that he is facing re-trial next month on criminal charges related to the release of DeCSS, I'm not sure that's the best of tactics on his part.

Censored Dance-why Fair Use plus $3.25 will get you a nice latte. Elizabeth Rader razor sharp on how Carol Loeb Shloss’s new biography Lucia Joyce: To Dance in the Wake had to get re-written repeatedly due to intellectual property threats on the part of Stephen Joyce.

"Think of this story the next time someone tells you that fair use is the down parka that
will keep writers from being chilled by virtually limitless copyright terms and
ever-expanding copyright scope. As my mother told me when I wanted to walk out in
the street into moving traffic, “you may have the right of way, but it doesn’t do you
much good after you’re run over.”

Ernest Miller sees end to end as fundamental to a free society.

"The government shall neither create nor sustain a monopoly carrier in the distribution of speech that discriminates in what it will or will not carry.

Sounds suspiciously similar to the end-to-end principle, don't you think?"

Too right!

Eben Moglen, a professor of law at Columbia University Law School and the general counsel of the Free Software Foundation, has done an analysis of SCO's case against IBM on linux/unix and found it wanting.

Patents on human organisms are to be banned in the US according to the Washington Post.