Underage Drinking Laws Put Young People in Jeopardy

"Society can enforce the law in as draconian a manner as it pleases. The law will never stop underage drinking. But the law, enforced as Valparaiso police claim it is, will stop intoxicated individuals from seeking medical care if they make the mistake of drinking too much."

Watching the news tonight (something I try to avoid whenever possible) I caught a story about the evils of underaged drinking and how as graduation season nears, even parents are having to be careful that they don't break the law and actually buy alcohol and hold supervised parties for their graduating sons and daughters since we all know that alcohol before you turn 21 is listed in the Bible as one of the 7 deadly sins.

After you turn 21, on your 21st birthday even, you suddenly gain the knowledge to know how to drink responsibly since you are most likely away from home and no longer under your parents watchful supervision.

I'm not saying that all parents would supervise their children's forays into drinking. Or that all children experiment with it as soon as they turn 21. But I think that our attmosphere of "You can't do this" makes it more likely that a child will do it, most likely before they turn 21.

A victory? Of Sorts

Commons Music Blog � Blog Archive � A victory for us all: "In a stunning victory for hardware makers and television buffs, a federal appeals court has tossed out government rules that would have outlawed many digital TV receivers and tuner cards starting July 1.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled Friday that the Federal Communications Commission did not have the authority to prohibit the manufacture of computer and video hardware that doesn’t have copy protection technology known as the “broadcast flag.” The regulations, which the FCC created in November 2003, had been intended to limit unauthorized Internet redistribution of over-the-air TV broadcasts.

One result of Friday’s ruling is that, unless it’s eventually overturned by a higher court, the fight over digital TV piracy will return to Capitol Hill. The D.C. appeals court noted that the FCC “has no power to act” until “Congress confers power on it” by enacting a law explicitly authorizing the broadcast flag."

It's quite likely that unless you subscribe such magazines as 2600 (The Hacker's Quarterly) or Maximum PC, or know someone who does subscribe to magazines like that and suggested to you that you go ahead and purchase that DVD recorder that you'd had your eye on for a while, that you never even heard of the July 1 deadline. There was no fanfare, no hoopla, no grand parade to mark the date when you could record any television program that you wanted to and when you couldn't record any television programs at all, but behind the scenes, not quite as quiet as a whisper, the FCC was trying to stop you from recording your favorite television shows. And it was how they went about it that was really insidious. They didn't tell you, their "adoring" public that you could no longer record your favorite episodes of Survivor or American Idol. Nope! Instead, they told the television channels that they were going to have to install a flag on all of their shows that they aired. And then they told the electronic manufacturers that they were going to have to update their equipment so that all equipment sold after July 1 would read those flags.

Thank goodness for the judges in DC!!!

But...the battle isn't over yet.

To quote Commons Music Blog

"The next effort will be for lobbying groups to step in and try to force Congress to stop this.

But you can help prevent this!

First go to this address: http://www.house.gov/writerep/

On there is a way to write to your Congressman to tell them what a terrible idea you think it is to allow the FCC, or any governing body, such control over consumer culture.

I’d recommend writing a quick, easy, direct letter. CM does not think a “form letter” to them would be appropriate, as they tend to be lumped together. However, I will get you started, as this is how I began my letter:

Recently, a U.S. district court ruled that the FCC overstepped it’s authority when it proclaimed that all HDTV (and other) tuners would have to recognize the broadcast flag, making it impossible for consumers to record their favorite television programs, creating an unfair marketplace for tuner manufacturers, and placing all the power in the hands of a few broadcast organizations with an interest in squeezing as much money from consumers as possible.

This is a spectacular victory for consumers and technology manufacturers, but I worry that now the broadcasters will attempt to use their lobbying ability to make Congress bow to their demands. I believe letting them have their way will be a horrible idea because…

Finish in your own unique (and polite) fashion.

Please, spread this to as many people as possible, use this blog post address as a way to quickly get people to read about it.

Thanks to you all, and keep fighting the good fight!

———-

UPDATE: If you really want to see the full letter…


To the Honorable Ted Strickland:

Recently, a U.S. district court ruled that the FCC overstepped it’s authority when it proclaimed that all HDTV (and other) tuners would have to recognize the broadcast flag, making it impossible for consumers to record their favorite television programs, creating an unfair marketplace for tuner manufacturers, and placing all the power in the hands of a few broadcast organizations with an interest in squeezing as much money from consumers as possible.

This is a spectacular victory for consumers and technology manufacturers, but I worry that now the broadcasters will attempt to use their lobbying ability to make Congress bow to their demands. I believe letting them have their way will be a horrible idea because it will unfairly imbalance the power consumers have with the power they have just had taken away.

My family has a copy of The Thorn Birds that has been recorded on some old VHS tapes when it broadcast years ago on television. Every now and then we take them out and watch them together. We look through all the old commercials that were recorded and laugh at the culture of yesteryear, while enjoying the show. It’s a great time. I’m sure that you have tapes like that yourself that you enjoy with loved ones on occasion.

This is the problem, you see. Piracy has become such a widespread worry, that the rights of technological innovation, the fair use rights of citizens, and the right to be secure in property that is rightfully ours is being drained away by a group of companies trying to force us to buy DVDs of television shows under the auspice of reducing piracy. In reality, this is all a slow, steady effort to put complete control of technology into the hands of content manufacturers, when it is clearly not their right to have such overwhelming power.

So if you are lobbied to allow the FCC or another governing body to reduce the rights of citizens and technology manufacturers, don’t give into them, stand up for the rights of consumers, citizens, and innovation.

Regards and thanks,
John Holowach"

Use a Firewall, Go to Jail

Freedom to Tinker: "Use a Firewall, Go to Jail
[by Edward W. Felten, at 01:04 PM]

The states of Massachusetts and Texas are preparing to consider bills that apparently are intended to extend the national Digital Millennium Copyright Act. (TX bill; MA bill) The bills are obviously related to each other somehow, since they are textually similar.

Here is one example of the far-reaching harmful effects of these bills. Both bills would flatly ban the possession, sale, or use of technologies that 'conceal from a communication service provider ... the existence or place of origin or destination of any communication'. Your ISP is a communication service provider, so anything that concealed the origin or destination of any communication from your ISP would be illegal -- with no exceptions.

If you send or receive your email via an encrypted connection, you're in violation, because the 'To' and 'From' lines of the emails are concealed from your ISP by encryption. (The encryption conceals the destinations of outgoing messages, and the sources of incoming messages.)

Worse yet, Network Address Translation (NAT), a technology widely used for enterprise security, operates by translating the 'from' and 'to' fields of Internet packets, thereby concealing the source or destination of each packet, and hence violating these bills. Most security 'firewalls' use NAT, so if you use a firewall, you're in violation.

If you have a home DSL router, or if you use the 'Internet Connection Sharing' feature of your favorite operating system product, you're in violation because these connection sharing technologies use NAT. Most operating system products (including every version of Windows introduced in the last five years, and virtually all versions of Linux) would also apparently be banned, because they support connection sharing via NAT.

And this is just one example of the problems with these bills. Yikes.


UPDATE (6:35 PM): It's worse than I thought. Similar bills are on the table in South Carolina, Florida, Georgia, Alaska, Tennessee, and Colorado."