Hacker zine 2600 reports that Emmanuel Goldstein (aka Eric Corley), the publication's founder and editor, was among hundreds arrested at demonstrations against the Republican National Convention in New York City on Tuesday. Snip:

The march which Emmanuel was apparently trying to videotape ended at 16th Street near Union Square when the police surrounded the marchers and began arresting everyone in the area -- at least 150 people. Officers at the scene reported that the arrested will be charged with "parading without a permit," but reliable information will probably not be available until arraignments take place over the next day or two.

At least 900 people were arrested on Tuesday, August 31st, most if not all for nonviolent and minor offenses, offenses which in non-protest situations would generally not result in spending any time at all locked up. People arrested at previous protests have usually had their charges eventually dropped or significantly reduced as the judicial system notices that their is little or no evidence that the protesters have committed any crimes at all.

Link to report on 2600. Portrait of Emmanuel Goldstein from Declan McCullagh, original here: Link. (via Engadget, thanks, ford)

Whups -- the Pentagon censored portions of a video used to teach about FOIA and public information, according to this report by Ted Bridis at AP:

The Defense Department spent $70,500 to produce a Humphrey Bogart-themed video called "The People's Right to Know" to teach employees to respond to citizen requests for information. But when it came to showing the tape to the public, the Pentagon censored some of the footage.

Officials said they blacked out parts of the training video with the message, "copyrighted material removed for public viewing," because they were worried the government didn't have legal rights to some historical footage that was included.

Link to story, Link to video clips (Real) (via Politech)

Hundreds of shoppers crammed into a brand-new Ikea store as it opened in Saudi Arabia, crushing three or more people to death.

A Saudi man and a Pakistani man were among those killed, officials in the port city of Jeddah said. The incident occurred after shoppers rushed into a branch of Ikea to claim a limited number of credit vouchers being offered to the public. More than 8,000 people had gathered near the store for the $150 vouchers, some of them having camped overnight. The nationality of the third person killed was not given. Sixteen people were injured.

Link (Thanks Siege)

MSN Music launched today. From a CBS Marketwatch report:

Microsoft on Wednesday unveiled details of a new service for downloading digital music, placing it squarely in competition with Apple's rival iTunes music service. Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft will launch a preview version of its new MSN Music service tomorrow that will allow users to legally download songs mostly for 99 cents each. The service will also make entire albums available, the majority of which will cost $9.99, the company said. Microsoft's push into the arena for downloadable music trails Apple's hugely successful iPod digital music player and its own iTunes music service. Apple also charges 99 cents for each song downloaded through iTunes.

Link to news report, and Link to MSN Music home page. (Thanks, Jean-Luc)

Update: Jason Schultz points out the system requirements list:

HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS
Windows 98 SE, Windows 2000, or Windows XP
Internet Explorer 5.01 (or later), which supports 128-bit encryption
Windows Media Player 7.1 (or later), we recommend the latest version
A 233 megahertz (MHz) processor (such as an Intel Pentium II or Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) processor) or faster
64 megabytes (MB) of RAM or more
Speakers and sound capability
Payment with a valid credit card with a U.S. billing address
To enjoy high-quality audio as a Radio Plus subscriber, you will need Windows Media Player 9 Series (or later)

Link

The self-described "American Jerk" behind Tokyo Damage Report says "This page is about interesting (meaning, fucked up) things that one can do in Tokyo. punk, visual, cosplay, s/m, gothic, street trends, capsule hotels, bizarre magazines, random subcultures, and bad Engrish. . . . .also it is about tokyo's urban legends: square watermelons, Sanrio condoms, politically incorrect vending machines, etc."

Here, you'll find photos and first-person accounts of odd things in Japan -- like this beauty product expo filled with bizarre gadgets and obliquely degrading experiences. Image at left: "fake treatments helping beautify fake people." Elsewhere, the blogger discusses "PORNO GAME CHEAT CODES" (Link):

"Welcome to REBEL 100. apparently for some guys, not only is it too difficult to have sex with living human females, it's ALSO TOO DIFFICULT TO SCORE WITH THEM IN X-RATED VIDEOGAMES TOO. here is the concept behind rebel 100: guys are getting turned down by PORN."

Here's another winning entry (Link):

"I noticed that JAPANESE PUNKS HAVE THE MOST FESTOONED BUTTS OF ANYONE EVER. Like a middle-aged man. . . as the hair has gotten smaller, the butts have gotten bigger. Consider how many little doodads dangle from the cellphone of a stereotypical schoolgirl. Then multiply that by ten, and turn the cellphone into a denim-and-leather butt, and you have a punk. Today's punks have not just wallet chains and cigarettes in their behinds, but so much booty fashion I had to make a whole glossary (how did I conduct this research? I'll leave the actual process of asking people about their butts to your imagination.)"

Tons more like this at his main archive page. Link (Thanks, RogueAI)

August 29th was the annual "Bats Day in the Fun Park" -- an annual gathering of goths at Disneyland. Here are Livejournal entires and photogalleries from the event. Batty's Livejournal, Foxfire's Livejournal, DrunkRockers gallery one, DrunkRockers gallery two (via The Disney Blog)

Follow-up on this previous BoingBoing post from Cory: Link. As he steps out the door to "lead another sortie of dancing fools out into the streets of Manhattan," John Perry Barlow reports on the dance protests he's been organizing this week in NYC:

After four missions, Dancing in the Streets has exceeded my fondest expectations. It was my objective, as it usually is, that we afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted, and this is what we have been doing by all appearances. We generally make the credentialed Republicans we encounter visibly nervous and spread good will and humor to most of the rest, including the police, who could well use it at the moment. People dig it when they see other people dancing in incongruous places. The most surprising people will join in, falling on the dance with a kind of hunger.

Republicans were hard to encounter at first. They are being quarantined behind the blue membrane of the NYPD (for whom my affection and respect has only increased through this experience). In addition, they spend much of their time inside the Garden having a lot less fun than we were. (As several of them told us.) Levels of engagement have increased with fine-tuning. The results vary, ranging from the Stepford husband whom we made so nervous that he walked into a plate glass window to the sweet young delegate from Oklahoma who tore off his tie and joined us for the balance of the evening.

We've had many interactions with the police. They certainly weren't interested in arresting us, though they kept us moving. Several of them said wistfully they wanted to join us. In general they only interfered because they are trying to maintain as familiar a peace as they can. Major variations from standard reality worry them. But not enough to go maximum on us.

Link

From alt-weekly New York Press:

# Delegates from Kansas spotting Dave Chappelle on the streets 50 times a day.
# Protest war stories from people who spent previous 364 days watching MTV.
# You find yourself annoyed by the protesters, until you pick up the Daily News and find the editors bitching about the supporters of "anarchy or communism or nihilism or baby seals or Bobby Seale -- whatever."
# That's when you wish that someone would do something really drastic. And then you're back to being annoyed with the protesters.
# Chinese Communist Party will think this is "what Democracy looks like," setting democratic reforms back 50 years.
# City should be emptier than this during Burning Man.

Link (via MeFi)

BoingBoing reader Alex points to this purportedly XXX image (organic teabagging?) ripped from the Kama Fruitra, and says, "This Ananova story contains images of Maoam fruit wrappers which appear to show fruit in sexual positions. A Catholic college has complained. What is interesting is that Haribo doesn't seem to have denied this interpretation, calling the packaging 'very racy,' and saying, 'The new wrapping is certainly fruitier than the old. But we have not had any other complaints. In fact until now the feedback has all been positive."

Link to news story. Link to Maoam website with barely legal hothothot fruity porn wrapper pics.

Update: BoingBoing reader ix says, "The reader quoted in your post says, A Catholic college has complained. That's not quite right. It seems, as this site says, that it has been a joke by graduates (abiturienten) of a catholic school (jesuitenkolleg zu sankt blasien - really, more a highschool than a college) back in March. Not really hot this story, but a German magazine made it a story again a couple of day ago (more on that here: Link)."

My short story collection, A Place So Foreign and Eight More, has won the 2004 Sunburst Award for Canadian Literature of the Fantastic, winning out over such worthy competitors as Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake and Robert Charles Wilson's Blind Lake. I am bursting with pride.

The Sunburst Award for Canadian Literature of the Fantastic is a prized and juried award. Based on excellence of writing, it will be presented annually to a Canadian writer who has had published a speculative fiction novel or book-length collection of speculative fiction any time during the previous calendar year. Named after the first novel by Phyllis Gotlieb, one of the first published authors of contemporary Canadian science fiction, the award consists of: a cash award of $1000 and a medallion which incorporates a specially designed "Sunburst" logo. The winner will receive his or her award in fall 2004.

Link

Scotto has converted my Microsoft DRM talk into pig-latin. Link

Science Fiction World, a Chinese magazine, recently published an issue with a translation of my story "Nimby and the D-Hoppers" (originally published in June 2003). They didn't ask first, so technically this is a "pirate" edition, but hell, I'm not all that worked up about it -- I'm pretty pumped to know that there are people in China reading my stuff (and for what it's worth, foreign publishers usually pay teeny little pittances for translation rights to short stories).

My only peeve here is that they never sent me a copy, and never put their translation on the Web. I sent 'em some email but they never answered.

So here's my challenge to the lazyweb: track down a copy of the September issue of Science Fiction World and re-type the story that starts on page 12 ("Technological Opposition and the Dimension-Hopper") and send it to me. I'll post it on the Internet and make it available under a Creative Commons license for free reproduction. Link (Thanks, Joel!)

HooptyRides is a new blog from "Mr Jalopy," an anonymous friend of mine whom I consider to be one of the best, most engaging obsessive writers I know. He's taken to refurbing beautiful old jalopies, and his lyrical and nutso descriptions of his loves are delightful.

To increase automotive safety, I installed seat belts and Jesus tapestry reupholstery. The seats are top quality vinyl with extremely desirable Jesus tapestries. The tapestries are not a matched set, but they go together very nicely. I have a great deal of reverence for this automobile, for Johnny Cash, for the settling of the West, for the big giant huge grandeur of Rocky Mountains, for the buffalo, for the railroads, for exploration and the Grapes of Wrath. I bought this car in Wyoming and drove it to Los Angeles. I was so grateful for the trip and for the arrival, so relieved it was over and so disappointed to hit the Pacific Ocean with nowhere else to go, that I felt, these seat covers, this overarching presence in the front seat was the perfect answer to the trip taken. I have tried to explain this when asked in parking lots. It is a feeling that you get when driving in hailstorms in Yellowstone and under a layer of dust in Zion, it does not translate to Von's parking lot. When they ask, just say, 'Yes, I love Jesus.'

Link

News, links, and updates related to this week's Republican National Convention in New York, from geeks who read BoingBoing:

* Joshua Dickens says, "Webzine founder and filmmaker Ryan Junnell is doing this documentary installation on the RNC and managed to find his way not only into the convention center but also onto the news with this 'Girly Man for Arnold' sign. He's selling it on eBay to hopefully help fund the project and get his producer out of jail." Link

* Christian says, "CNet's Download.com lists among the 'New Releases,' a 'Re-elect George Bush Screen Saver.' Hilariously, the W-saver installs spyware. Even funnier are the negative comments submitted by CNet readers --"Since installing I've lost my job and all my private files were stolen."... "This is the worst software ever. Since installing I lost my job to India, my child owes $24,000 plus interest to pay off the national debt and my buddy who got injured in Iraq came home to no job and no benefits. I tried to call tech support and was told I was an enemy combatant for calling to complaign (sic).'" Link

* Tim says, "My friend Mark was arrested at the same Critical Mass rally that Joshua Kinberg got nabbed at. He wrote a real harrowing and detailed account of his experience; it is worth reading. The story actually lives on his website (Link), but that server is down now, so I've sent you the url for my mirror of it: Link."

* Anonymous says, "A look at the soon-to-be-launched (right before 9/11) Emergency Preparedness Month, in which the White House and more than 50 other agencies will spend a month reminding us that terrorists could strike at any time. This should be a nice bump for Bush leading right into the election. It examines the elements of the 'fear appeal' propaganda technique, and includes an interesting side-by-side comparison of 'Duck and Cover' propaganda from the 1950s, with an eerily similar image from FEMA's website today." Link

* Jean-Luc says, "Edouard, a French guy in NYC, photoblogged a lot about the anti-Bush march in NYC this Saturday." Link

* And following up on our earlier mention of a clever geek protest sign, reader Bing says, Here's a /BUSH shirt that predates the sign you posted (and subsequent cafepress store)." Link.

Previous BoingBoing RNC-NYC roundup: Link. See also: Secret Service and Indymedia servers. Michael Moore at the RNC. Update on Joshua Kinberg's arrest and release.

An idiotic principal at a middle school in Kansas is cracking down on goths, sending them home if they dress in a way that may "disrupt the school environment or impede learning in the classroom." Principal Cherle Crain's quotes in this MTV.com article are amazingly asinine. Here's my favorite:

"Last week, a parent told me her two kids were talking about this at dinner," Crain said. "And one of them said 'I'm so glad Ms. Crain did this, because a Goth sat behind me last year and every single day he'd hiss at me like a snake.' And that impeded his learning."

Link (Thanks, Meri!)

In today's Wired News, a report I filed about Kaiju Big Battel -- a multimedia event in which costumed combatants spew toxic ooze on audience members. The phenom is growing in popularity. There are already websites, message boards, monster profiles at online social networking services, and a DVD series. Coming next: a book and TV pilot... and a live show in LA on September 08.

A Kaiju commissioner presides over these battles to ensure fairness. The clandestine Kaiju Regulatory Commission also functions as a sort of secret United Nations of monster fighting, regulating league activity and protecting humans from harm. As the group's slogan warns, "Danger can happen." "It's their job to ensure that these events continue as a safe form of monster therapy," says [Kaiju Studios' Bill] Woods. "Monsters who have legitimate grudges need to work things out without destroying Cleveland in the process."

(...)Show videos are streamed on the group's website, where one also finds a monster manifesto. "Planet Earth is under threat," the website warns visitors. "Scattered throughout the galaxy is a monstrous mob of maniacal villains, menacing alien beasts and giant, city-crushing monsters waging war against one another." Global monster terror threats aside, organizers are optimistic about at least one thing: the size of their growing fan base. Nearly 2,000 are expected at the L.A. event.

"Now is a great time to be a monster -- people really need a little distraction," said David Borden, who co-founded the performance troupe with his brother Randy. Given America's current fixation on the approaching 2004 elections, could Big Battel's creators imagine one of their domination-craving members seeking office? "I could definitely imagine a monster running for president," says Borden. "In fact, I think there may be two of them running for president right now."

Link to story. Image: Kaiju announcer Louden Noxious exchanges heated words with Dr. Cube.

Swiss firm Logitech today launched a new product which they say is the world's first cordless laser mouse. Link (Thanks, Jean-Luc Raymond )

BoingBoing reader Bobcat says, "Apparently Japan is having their first trial where the creator of P2P file sharing software is being prosecuted because they say he knew 'it would facilitate Internet piracy.' The defendant, Isamu Kaneko, created the P2P program 'Winny' -- which I've never heard of, personally. According to the article Winny 'allows users to swap files without revealing their IP addresses.' Link to news story.

Update: Joi Ito has more: Link

JP says:

Thanks to newfangled satellites and high speed computers Floridians now enjoy many days fair warning that disaster approaches -- unlike many other natural and voting disasters-- but will everyone get out of the way? Frances' projected path now shifts towards Cape Canaveral. Unfortunately some prized national treasures cannot be moved and NASA workers are already powering down the Space Shuttle orbiters, closing their payload bay doors and stowing their landing gear. Fingers are crossed as the launch control center is built to withstand a Category 5 storm but many buildings at KSC can take only a Category 3 storm or less, including the buildings that house the space shuttles.

Forecasters say conditions are "favorable" for Frances to strengthen within the next 48 hours into a Category 5 storm.

Only three Category 5 storms have ever landed in the U.S. since 1900. If Frances hits Florida it will be the first time since 1950 that two major hurricanes have slammed into the state within a month. American taxpayer dollars fund the ongoing research and early warning Geostationary Satellite Server Storm Floater 1 Satellite. If you live in Florida pay heed to the visible image loop as well as the Hurricane Hunter researchers. Even if the current computer models are not accurate it seems as if yet another chunk of Florida is about to have a very bad Labor Day weekend...

Link to image of storm's approach

Patricio Lopez says, "Let's hope this becomes the norm in a few years! For about $10 million, city officials believe they can turn all 135 square miles of Philadelphia into the world's largest wireless Internet hot spot." Link to news story

Oh, the (glitter-covered, body-painted) humanity! The American Society for Composers, Authors, and Publishers -- ASCAP -- demanding cash from Burning Man?

When [a] composer's tune is played, ASCAP collects a fee from the venue performing it and delivers it, minus administrative costs, to the composer. For venues wishing to play copyrighted music for their visitors, ASCAP typically offers a package deal where, for an annual fee, subscribers can play as much of their members' music as they wish. The fee is scaled according to the number of people who will be present at the venue and, therefore, will be exposed to the music. "It's very reasonable," says Wilcox. "You'd probably spend more per month on heating and electricity than for one of our licenses."

Burning Man, however, has never obtained a performance license, says Wilcox. Music is one of the staples of the week-long event, with mostly electronic music playing around the clock. 25,000 people are estimated to have attended Burning Man last year alone. That size concerns Wilcox. "Sometimes we'll let smaller venues like nightclubs slide on past royalties, provided they obtain a current license. But this is just too big to ignore."

According to Wilcox, Burning Man organizers had rebuffed previous ASCAP attempts to secure a royalty agreement, claiming that the organization itself does not provide the music. All music is brought in by the visitors. Further, Burning Man is expressly non-commerical -- the use of money of any kind during the event is forbidden. However, says Wilcox, that doesn't matter. "Whether the venue itself makes any money or not, the artist's music was still used in a large venue, and he or she deserves to be paid for it. Our job is to make sure that happens."

Link to Kuro5hin article (which is 100% fake) (Thanks, Secret Agent M!)

Jeremy sez, "I just posted a new story from Tom Doyle called 'Art's Appreciation' to Futurismic Fiction. The title character is the kind of psychotic violence-prone anti-hero we'll all be cheering for if the spammers, the ad flacks and the copyright goons get their way." Link (Thanks, Jeremy!)

The Federal Circuit Court of Appeals has brought down a verdict in the "Skylink" case. That's a DMCA case whereing a garage-door-opener company asserted that another company, which makes interoperable clickers (in case you lose yours or want a spare for your spouse) violated the DMCA by circumventing the protection on the copyrighted software in the garage-door-opener. Yeah, you read right. Copyrighted garage-door-openers.

Anyway, the court delivered the clearest and most ringing condemnation of the overbroad application of the DMCA yet:

The DMCA does not create a new property right for copyright owners. Nor, for that matter, does it divest the public of the property rights that the Copyright Act has long granted to the public. The anticircumvention and anti-trafficking provisions of the DMCA create new grounds of liability. A copyright owner seeking to impose liability on an accused circumventor must demonstrate a reasonable relationship between the circumvention at issue and a use relating to a property right for which the Copyright Act permits the copyright owner to withhold authorization-as well as notice that authorization was withheld. A copyright owner seeking to impose liability on an accused trafficker must demonstrate that the trafficker's device enables either copyright infringement or a prohibited circumvention. Here, the District Court correctly ruled that Chamberlain pled no connection between unauthorized use of its copyrighted software and Skylink's accused transmitter. This connection is critical to sustaining a cause of action under the DMCA. We therefore affirm the District Court's summary judgment in favor of Skylink.

Link

Here's the video of Dennis Hastert calling George Soros a druglord. What a dirtbag that Hastert is. I mean, I don't know where he gets his money from. He's a dick, so maybe he gets his money by selling little children to trolls to bake into pies. Can we be sure he doesn't? 900k WMV Link (via Joi)

On eBay, a box of twenty SFX artificial eyeballs.

"Made of a durable polymure-resin-glass compound these eyes are lifelike. Very high quality. Great to collect, use for props or Halloween coming up soon. Professional. Many colors."

Link (Thanks, Michael-Anne!)