I published an O’Reilly Network Weblog on Friday that clarifies the circumstances behind the Department of Justice’s dropping the charges against Dmitry Sklyarov.

Check out: Dmitry Sets the Record Straight.

MusicNet and Pressplay are up and running now, and the consensus is that they both more than a little disappointing.

See:
Analysis: Music Label Services’ Debut
Lackluster , by Bernhard Warner for Reuters in London.

Reviewers have criticized Pressplay and MusicNet for offering
fewer songs and fewer features than the illegal services.
Furthermore, the services won’t be available to consumers
outside the U.S. for months.

Music fans have been blunt on Internet message boards too.
For MusicNet, the most common complaint on the message
boards is that would-be customers cannot view the music
library until after they’ve paid the $9.95 monthly subscription.

And, MusicNet does not permit the download of tracks to a
portable MP3 player or to be burned on a CD, a feature that
rival Pressplay includes.

“Pay 10 to 20 bucks for music that you CANNOT listen to in
your portable MP3 player or burn to CD and have the music
vaporize once you terminate your subscription,” reads one
UseNet message about MusicNet. “Is the music consumer that
stupid?!”

MusicNet could not be immediately reached for comment.

FreeDrive has been forced to shutdown its publicly available swapping space. See:
News: File-swapping site breaks under DOJ pressure by By John Borland and Lisa Bowman.

FreeDrive’s Public Share utility allowed subscribers to publicly post files of all types–both illegal and legal–for anyone to download. People could find the files by searching keywords on public searching services such as AltaVista. Once they found the file name located on the FreeDrive storage system, they could join FreeDrive and download the software.

However, the public system opened the company to charges that pirates were using it to distribute software.

Three months ago, Falter said he received a phone call from the DOJ and a large maker of office automation software, notifying him that pirates were using his system to store illegal software. After consulting with company executives and attorneys, Falter said he decided to close the public system. He would not identify the software company.

“There is no easy way to stop this other than to shut down the public sharing,” Falter said, adding that he hoped the closure would “stem the tide of software piracy.”

Falter said the move would affect just 1 percent of the 11.5 million members who use its service. Most FreeDrive subscribers use a private sharing system, where people can get files only if they’ve been invited to do so. That system will stay up and running, Falter said. FreeDrive, like its rivals, collects revenue largely from advertisements shown to those visitors.

Until the closure, FreeDrive was one of the few online storage companies that had allowed its members to open their files to the general public. Other companies decided against it because of the liability. Competitor MySpace.com spokesman Ari Freeman said his company considered starting a public sharing system but didn’t because of the “potential problems behind it.” Instead, the company has a password-protected service.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission plans to supply potassium iodide pills to any state that wants them.

See: CNN.com – Residents near nuclear plants may get cancer prevention pills by By Rea Blakey and Elizabeth Cohen.

More than two decades after the accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor, the United States is again confronting the fear of an unexpected release of radiation. This time the concern isn’t about an accident, but about a terrorist attack on a nuclear power plant.

The specter of such a strike has prompted the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to take a step many advocates have been demanding for years: supplying potassium iodide pills to people at risk of radiation exposure.

Potassium iodide, known as KI, is a cheap, nonprescription drug that is proven to prevent thyroid cancer — one of the main causes of death after radiation exposure — if administered within three to four hours of a nuclear release. But unlike many other countries, the United States has not stockpiled the drug as a precautionary measure.

Here’s a cool site that catalogues Clear Channel’s suggestions for songs that shouldn’t see the light of day:
A Brief History of Banned Music in the United States – Clear Channels List of Songs with Questionable Lyrics.

Partisan politics are alive and well.

See the Wired article, Madcap Maneuvers Halt MS Hearing, by Declan McCullagh and Ben Polen.

Upset at what the Senate Finance committee was doing with a trade bill, the crafty Sen. Robert Byrd (D-West Virginia) tried a procedural gambit that pulled the plug on all committee hearings. It was the political equivalent of Windows’ blue screen of death.

Byrd is one of the Senate’s crusty old men, elected to the Senate in 1958, and a wily parliamentarian. He’s a former majority leader and even co-authored a two-volume history of the Senate, called The Senate 1789-1989.

He also, for the record, is the guy who objected to laptop computers on the Senate floor in 1997.

Byrd knew that a Senate rule prohibits committees from meeting for more than two hours while the main chamber is in session, but this is usually bypassed daily with unanimous consent. On Wednesday, Byrd refused to consent, which required committees to halt what they were doing after 11:30 a.m.

Leahy, who was just getting started in the Judiciary committee a block or two away, was visibly peeved. “This committee will be recessed because of a motion made on the Senate floor to stop hearings,” he said.

A judiciary aide said afterward that the hearing won’t be rescheduled until sometime next year.

Looks like oxygen isn’t part of the deal when you surrender to the Northern Alliance.

See the New York Times article Witnesses Recount Taliban Dying While Held Captive by Carlotta Gall.

Dozens of Taliban prisoners died after surrendering to Northern Alliance forces, asphyxiated in the shipping containers used to transport them to prison, witnesses say.

The deaths occurred as the prisoners, many of them foreign fighters for the Taliban, were brought from the town of Kunduz to the prison here, a journey that took two or three days for some.

Colonel General Jurabek, the Northern Alliance commander in charge of some 3,000 prisoners being held here, said Saturday that 43 prisoners had died in half a dozen containers on the way, either from injuries or asphyxiation. Three others died from their wounds after arrival, and had been given a Muslim burial at the town of Dasht-i-Laili, he said.

But the number of deaths may be much higher. Several Pakistani prisoners interviewed in the prison have said that dozens of people died in their containers during the journey here. Omar, a pale and slight youth, who clutched a blanket round his head and shoulders, said through the bars of his prison wing that all but seven people in his container had died from lack of air. He estimated that more than 100 had died. Another Pakistani said 13 had died in his container and that the survivors had taken turns to breathe through a hole in the metal wall.

One prisoner, Ibrahim, a 30-year- old Pakistani mechanic interviewed in the presence of General Jurabek, said he thought some 35 people had died in his container en route from Kunduz. “No oxygen, no oxygen,” he said urgently in English. The general corrected him and said only five or six had died.

Now Larry Ellison denies having ever advocated National ID cards. See the NetworkWorldFusion story:
Oracle