Topic: COPYRIGHT - on March 4, 2009 at 12:20:00 PM CET
Hollywood-Funded Study Concludes Piracy Fosters Terrorism
Here's a snippet from Film Piracy, Organized Crime, and Terrorism:
Moreover, three of the documented cases provide clear evidence that terrorist groups have used the proceeds of film piracy to finance their activities. While caution must be exercised in drawing broad conclusions from limited evidence, further investigation is a timely imperative. These cases, combined with established evidence for the broader category of counterfeiting-terrorism connections, are highly suggestive that intellectual-property theft — a low-risk, high-profit enterprise — is attractive not only to organized crime, but also to terrorists, particularly opportunistic members of local terrorist cells.
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Topic: COPYRIGHT - on March 4, 2009 at 12:18:00 PM CET
Pirate Bay Trial Ends; Verdict Due April 17
The Pirate Bay trial wrapped up here Tuesday amid a media circus as attorneys for the four accused founders of the world's most notorious BitTorrent tracker proclaimed their clients' innocence to charges of facilitating copyright infringement.
One of the attorneys declared the 2-week trial a mockery.
"These kinds of abstract case are not supposed to be brought to the court at all," attorney Per E. Samuelson said during his argument. "The prosecutor has not managed to keep calm in light of the enormous pressure and lobbying from record and film companies."
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Topic: POLITIK - on March 4, 2009 at 12:15:00 PM CET
Obama unseals Bush-era wiretap memos
The Bush administration secretly concluded after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks that it had the authority to wiretap the Internet and telephone calls with virtually no limitations, restrict free speech, and use the U.S. military domestically against suspected terrorists.
Those legal opinions came in a series of memorandums written by U.S. Department of Justice lawyers, including deputy assistant attorney general John Yoo, which were disclosed by the Obama administration on Monday.
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Topic: Green - on March 3, 2009 at 12:39:00 PM CET
Beyond Green Roofs: 15 Vertically Vegetated Buildings
Vertical gardens bring lush, verdant life to even the coldest and barest of surfaces, both indoors and out. These ‘living walls’ increase interior humidity, purify the air and provide a much-needed touch of nature in spare, angular urban spaces like airports, museums and shopping centers. Here are 15 buildings with stunning vertical greenery, from 6-story elevator shafts to subterranean restaurants.
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Topic: STRANGE - on March 3, 2009 at 12:34:00 PM CET
Gulp! She swallowed her own engagement ring
Woman’s boyfriend hid it in milkshake to propose; happily, the crisis passed.
A lot of guys try to come up with proposal scenarios that their girlfriends will remember forever. So give Reed Harris credit for accomplishing that goal — even if it turned out to be in don’t-try-this-at-home fashion.
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Topic: NATURE - on March 3, 2009 at 12:33:00 PM CET
Pink dolphin appears in US lake
The world's only pink Bottlenose dolphin which was discovered in an inland lake in Louisiana, USA, has become such an attraction that conservationists have warned tourists to leave it alone.
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Topic: POLITIK - on March 3, 2009 at 12:31:00 PM CET
Digital politics is different
In November 1988 Stuart Weir, at the time editor of the New Statesman, published a special edition of the magazine asking those concerned with the health of British democracy to stand up and be counted. The proposal, which he called 'Charter 88', called for a new constitutional settlement, one which would guarantee civil liberties and the rule of law.
Shortly afterwards 348 people paid for and signed an advert in the Guardian newspaper asking people to offer support, and a year later an organisation called Charter 88 was founded to take the campaign forward, with Anthony Barnett as its first Director.
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Topic: NEWS english - on March 3, 2009 at 12:29:00 PM CET
Age and Californian cities
THE lawns are green and well-tended. The swimming pools are filled with water, not mosquitoes. Steve Cushman, head of the local chamber of commerce, counts just 27 empty storefronts out of 410 along the city’s main shopping street—a rate that many cities in California would envy. In the past year Santa Barbara County has seen a slight increase in employment. The secret to its health? Hostility to development and lack of youth.
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Topic: DRUGS - on March 3, 2009 at 12:27:00 PM CET
Is Marijuana Prohibition America’s ‘Berlin Wall’?
It is said that almost everyone in the marijuana law reform movement has a seminal moment they can point to when their public activism started. My moment was in the fall, six years ago.
I’m a past president of our local Kiwanis Club. I’ve been a member for years; we meet for breakfast at 6:30am, every Wednesday morning. My fateful “activism moment” was meeting face-to-face with one morning’s Kiwanis Club program, our town’s newly acquired dope dog. Some rock-ribbed citizen had left money in his will for the city to buy a dope dog for our town of 3,000, in a county of 18,000 people. The dog’s handler and the police chief were up at the speaker’s table. I had to fight back the urge to turn around and run.
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Topic: DRUGS - on March 3, 2009 at 12:25:00 PM CET
Everybody must get stoned
A new plan to legalize marijuana in California would create a $1 billion tokin' tax and thousands of green jobs. Now that's a stimulus plan!
Can Californians help dig themselves out of their historic fiscal crisis by getting high? Tom Ammiano thinks so, and he isn't smoking a thing.
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Topic: Glaubensfragen - on March 3, 2009 at 11:10:00 AM CET
Snoop Dogg joins Nation of Islam
Look who just had his name rise to the top of the FBI “Watch List.”
Rapper Snoop Dogg has announced that he has joined the Nation of Islam and therefor we must assume he is a terrorist.
Snoop Dogg has revealed he has joined the Nation of Islam after appearing at the religious group’s annual Saviours’ Day event in Chicago.
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Topic: ART - on March 3, 2009 at 11:08:00 AM CET
Banksy Returns To The Streets Of London
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