Washington D.C. officials have been negotiating with landowners in an attempt to purchase land where the Washington Nationals new ballpark will be built. It appears that those negotiations have failed, and now the city will use eminent domain to acquire the land. A Supreme Court ruling earlier this year makes it possible for municipalities to use eminent domain even when the land will be placed in the hands of a private entity, as long as the tax revenue from the resulting use is greater than the original tax revenue. The Supreme Court ruled that tax revenue is a public good. I disagreed with that very reckless decision, but until President Bush nominates me for the Supreme Court (which, with my lack of qualifications, could be any day now) I will have to stand idly by and watch this country fall apart.
Landowners must yield to ballpark - Nation/Politics - The Washington Times, America's Newspaper

Australian courts ruled that a mod chip seller was not violating technological protection measures, because the mod chip did not exclusively allow for the violation of any copyright. The mod chip was sold as a device that would allow the Sony Playstation to play games from outside of Australia. Since these imported games are not a violation of copyright law, the mod chip's purpose does not violate any such copyright laws. Courts had earlier ruled that the mod chips could be used to allow people to play unauthorized copies of games, but that argument did not hold up in the latest decision.
GROKLAW

Here's a really fascinating article by Wired about the arrest of Randolph Hobson Guthrie III, an heir to the Phipps fortune. You history buffs will remember that Phipps was Andrew Carnegie's business partner. The family is worth billions of dollars. They now own Bessemer Trust, which just happens to be the bank that manages the massive wealth of the Bush family. So what does the heir to such a fortune do for a living? He pirates DVDs. No, he doesn't subscribe to Netflix and make copies of each disc he receives, he is one of the leading pirates in the world. When he was arrested, over 120,000 pirated DVDs were confiscated from his luxurious apartment in Shanghai.

There's six pages of grade A reporting in this article, so I won't go much further. Maybe at some point in the future I'll explore the possibility that the recent Bush campaign was funded by counterfeit DVD money. But that's just a crazy conspiracy, this administration is yet to do anything even remotely illegal (ha ha ha).
Wired 13.10: The Decline

A woman in Oregon has fought back against an RIAA lawsuit, countersuing the RIAA for basically being an organized crime syndicate. As crazy as this sounds, her claims make the suit seem very credible. The RIAA represents billion dollar companies, and they hire a company to invade people's private computers and collect data about a private citizen's home activities. They then use this data to file mass lawsuits and intimidate private citizens.

Look, I realize copyright infringement is illegal, but have we considered whether or not the RIAA's methods are also illegal? Can we really just ignore the RIAA's actions if it leads to copyright infringers being caught and punished? I don't think so.
Recording Industry vs The People