18. April, 2002 - saying what I want

Rybak asks police chief to step down, but Is Rybak aiming at wrong target? It's not just Olson's fault that the Minneapolis Police Department have been accused of excessive violence. But he is the head guy in the MPD, and that makes him an easy target. Will firing him solve the problems? No. Will it help? Maybe. [strib]
Supreme Court refuses to order book store to turn over records of which customers bought books about making drugs. Seems that doesn't qualify as "terrorism". There's maybe a little hope for the first amendment. [librarian]
Professor says Disney, other firms typify what's wrong with copyrights. We came from a free speech tradition, Lessig said. What happened? It's been bought off.
Authors rally against Amazon's online selling of used books. I can see where authors would be upset with getting no additional royalties for the sale of a book, but this is just the same old used bookstore problem that's upset some authors for years. Personally, I'd recommend half.com [warning: popups] over amazon for used books, but that's just me, and I comparison-shop using either bestbookbuys or isbn.nu. And since the initial story I linked to is gone, take a look at InformantBitz Book Publishing News [warning: popups] for a list of other, similar stories.
The battle over Web radio continues with dueling articles about where the money's going.
The AMERICAN OPEN TECHNOLOGY CONSORTIUM and GeekPAC. Do you think having a PAC of geeks would be a good thing? I wonder.... [doc]