Over at Wired News Threat Level blog today, Ryan Singel and David Kravets have been liveblogging the U.S. 9th Circuit hearing in San Francisco on the NSA's domestic surveillance program, and AT&T's alleged assistance.

Here's a blow-by-blow from earlier today: Link. The money quote:

Judge McKeown: "I feel like I'm in Alice and Wonderland."

And here's a snip from Singel's analysis, posted after the hearings:

While the same three 9th Circuit Appeals Court judges heard arguments in two different spying cases today, they seemed to be two entirely different sets of judges.

When listening to the government attempt to bury, on the grounds of national security, a lawsuit against AT&T for allegedly helping the government engage in a dragnet surveillance program aimed at Americans, the judges expressed dismay that the government and AT&T could not simply show documents proving the surveillance did not exist.

That case relies heavily on company documents provided to the Electronic Frontier Foundation by former AT&T technician Mark Klein. Large chunks of those documents were published by Wired News last year.

But in the second half of Wednesday's hearing, the judges hardly asked any questions of the government attorney.

Link to full text of post.

BoingBoing reader Chris says,

In 2002 my friend Phil Smart took a minidisc recorder to Burning Man. He then got together with his mate Davey B and the pair crafted a wonderful sonic meditation on the aural experience of the wonderous and magical Black Rock City, chopping and slicing and layering the best bits to make it more than the sum of its parts. On their approval, I've posted the tracks for all to enjoy. Best with headphones to really immerse in the playa goodness.

Link.

Image: Snapshot I took of two people in love on an art-car, at Burning Man a few years ago.

Global Voices co-founder Ethan Zuckerman says,

There's been a huge conversation in the Arab blogosphere about the treatment of Iraqis who are attempting to visit Jordan for a break from the miserable situation in Baghdad. Jordan is suffering under the strain of a huge influx of Iraqi refugees, and Jordanian officials have become increasingly hostile to visiting Iraqis, assuming that they're coming to Jordan to stay.

One Iraqi (Mohammed from Last of the Iraqis) who had was turned away at the airport is an active blogger. His documentation of his experience attempting to get out of Iraq for a vacation and into Jordan has turned into a giant argument between Iraqis and their supporters, who think Jordanians should be ashamed of their country's actions, and Jordanians, who are begging their compatriots to understand that a) they're not responsible for their government's actions and b) that Jordan is struggling with the refugee influx.

Several Global Voices authors are actively involved in the blog spat - on both sides - and Mohamed Nanabhay (a South African who works for Al Jazeera in Qatar) has just posted a very thorough roundup of posts on both sides of the dispute. The sort of story that's unlikely to get much attention outside the Middle East, but shows the tensions and consequences of the ongoing war...

Link

Journalist and blogger C.J. Schexnayder, who is based in Lima, Peru, writes: "At 6:40 p.m. a magnitude 7.7 7.9 (USGS has updated the rating) earthquake struck Lima, Peru shaking buildings across the city." Link. Reuters has an item here: Link.

Update: Hundreds are reported dead or missing: Link.

Charles Platt says:

Hans Moravec, the robotocist and author of the brilliantly predictive book Mind Children, propounded exactly the same concept as this guy Bostrom back in the 1990s. I mentioned this in a profile of Hans published in Wired 3.10 in 1995. The concept was identical, including the ingenious argument that we are more statistically likely to be living in a copy of reality than in reality itself, because there will be multiple copies and only one original.

I'm not saying that Bostrom ripped off Moravec, but -- well, I have suspicions.

Here's the relevant extract from my interview with Hans:

But by this logic, our current "reality" could be nothing more than a simulation produced by information entities.

"Of course." Moravec shrugs and waves his hand as if the idea is too obvious. "In fact, the robots will re-create us any number of times, whereas the original version of our world exists, at most, only once. Therefore, statistically speaking, it's much more likely we're living in a vast simulation than in the original version. To me, the whole concept of reality is rather absurd. But while you're inside the scenario, you can't help but play by the rules. So we might as well pretend this is real - even though the chance things are as they seem is essentially negligible."

And so, according to Hans Moravec, the human race is almost certainly extinct, while the world around us is just an advanced version of SimCity.

[When I was a book editor at Wired, I published a line of science fiction books called The Cortext Series which included Charles Platt's excellent science fiction novel, The Silicon Man, that explores these concepts (yes, Platt credits Moravec in his book). -- Mark]

Mac Montandon is writing a book about the history of jetpacks, due to be published by Da Capo Press next year. He wrote the following report for Boing Boing.

Well, the convention was, of course, totally fun. I drove up from Brooklyn for research for the jetpacks book I'm writing. My friends Jofie and Paul and my three-year-old daughter, Oona, went with me. Paul took some great photos, I'm attaching three of my favorites here: the first is Eric Scott flying for GoFast!; the second shows the work of Minneapolis Rocketman Ky Michaelson and the last, as you probably guessed, is Oona trying on a mini 'pack.

The second annual Rocketbelt Convention was held this past weekend as part of the Thunder of Niagara air show on the Air Force’s reserves base in Niagara Falls. So when GoFast! pilot Eric Scott blasted off for a 15-second, 110-decibel rocketbelt demonstration, he flew in the same air space where F-16s were wowing the crowd with gravity-defying stunts and turns at mind-bending angles—like practically perpendicular to the ground.

In addition to Scott’s daily demos, jetpack and rocketbelt enthusiasts (read: obsessives), could check out Gerard Martowlis ground testing the rocketbelt he’s built from scratch in his New Jersey basement. (And he has the hydrogen peroxide fuel burns to prove it).

The self-proclaimed Rocketman, Ky Michaelson, drove 15 hours from Minneapolis to show off his shiny rocket-powered chair, scooter and a kid-sized ‘pack that my daughter Oona was lucky enough to try on. (In case anyone doubts how serious Ky is about all this, consider the fact that his son's middle name is legally "Rocketman").

A couple of the rocketbelt scene’s biggest stars were on hand: the Mexican rocket wizard, Juan Lozano, who has affixed high-octane propulsion to just about anything you can think of, including four rocketbelts; and the man some call Mr. Jetpack, Bill Suitor.

If you witnessed the opening ceremonies of the 1984 Olympic games in Los Angeles, have seen Thunderball or certain episodes of Lost in Space, or ever searched “jetpack” on YouTube, you’ve seen Suitor’s work—the former Bell Aerospace pilot has taken some 1,200 rocketbelt flights in his lifetime.

The convention’s technology was so inspiring Oona appeared to be just as happy trying on the mini rocketbelt as she was ripping down the giant inflatable slide in the kiddie zone. Perhaps the best way to sum up this year’s convention is by paraphrasing the words of the great Stephen Colbert: For years we’ve been promised little wrist-sized televisions, a meal in a pill and jetpacks —- let’s hope this year that promise finally becomes a reality. Link

Jay Kinney says: "The following piece was originally written several months ago for Salon, which for unfathomable editorial reasons ended up spiking it. It predates my recent BoingBoing review of Zeitgeist, the Movie - an on-line documentary encompassing religion, 9/11, and international banking that has been an underground sensation on the Web.

The review was critical of Zeitgeist, though not because of its chosen subjects, per se, a distinction lost on some defenders of the film who misread the review and took me to task for sins they were certain I had committed. As the following should make clear, I believe that conspiracies - of one sort or another - are a real component of our world, but that doesn't mean that we have to toss out our common sense and critical reasoning when investigating or confronting them. -JK"

The Conspiracy Boom
Why is nothing what it appears to be anymore?

By Jay Kinney

Say what you will about conspiracy theories, they are unlikely to go away as long as real life, courtesy of the daily news, keeps tossing us events that seem like, well, conspiracies.

Take the Litvinenko assassination. Russian ex-spy turned journalist, who is a vocal critic of the Putin regime, flees to London, where he swallows a radioactive appetizer over lunch and dies shortly thereafter.

British cuisine may have an unsavory reputation, but no one in their right mind assumes that polonium-210 has become a staple at London restaurants. Someone, it would appear, was out to get Litvinenko.

Mind Hacks has an interesting post about locked-in-syndrome, "where people are completely paralyzed despite having intact minds."

Some people with locked-in-syndrome can communicate by blinking or moving their eyes. Jean-Dominique Bauby wrote a book called The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by having someone sit next to him and slowly recite the alphabet. Bauby would blink his left eye when the person said the letter he needed.

But others are so locked-in they can't even blink. A recent article in New Scientist describes a 46-year-old woman who was totally locked-in. Her doctor, Dr. Birbaumer, wanted to ask her if she'd like to have electrodes implanted in her brain to help her communicate, but they couldn't figure out a way for the woman to answer.

[W]alking past an electronics store one day, Birbaumer's colleague Barbara Wilhelm spotted a medical device for measuring the pH of saliva, and had an idea. They trained the woman to change the acidity of her spit by imagining either the taste of lemon, or the taste of milk. She learned to push the pH one way to say "yes", the other to say "no".

Link

Reader comment:

Philip says:

Let me recommend to you I Raise My Eyes to Say Yes by Ruth Sienkiewicz-Mercer. She wrote a whole book with binary responses to large cardboard word boards.

Ruth died in 1998. She was discussing writing a murder mystery, her favorite flavor, right before her death. The sleuth was going to be paraplegic, like herself, with the hopped-up observational skills paraplegics tend to have. It would have been a great book.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation's Danny O'Brien sez, "Wired News' correspondents are attending the appeal hearing of EFF's AT&T case (the government lost the first round to have the case thrown out over state secrets). It looks like it's fun time:"

Garre counters that the courts should give "utmost deference" to the Bush administration.

Judge Pregerson: "What does utmost deference mean? Bow to it?"

Link (Thanks, Danny!)

Jonathan Lee Riches, a prison inmate in South Carolina, filed a "$63,000,000,000 billion dollar" lawsuit against NFL quarterback Michael Vick, alleging that Vick stole Riches's pit bulls, sold them on eBay, and then bought missiles from Iran with the cash. (Vick is in the news already for involvement in dogfighting.) From Fox News:

The complaint also alleges that Vick would need those missiles because he pledged allegiance to Al Qaeda in February of this year.

“Michael Vick has to stop physically hurting my feelings and dashing my hopes,” Riches writes in the complaint.

Riches wants $63 billion dollars “backed by gold and silver “ delivered to the front gates to the Williamsburg Federal Correctional facility in South Carolina. Riches is an inmate at the facility serving out a wire fraud conviction.

Link (Thanks, Carlo Longino!)

Natalie says: "Lenore at Evil Mad Scientist Labs shows off her fantastic Quiltbert, a Q*bert inspired quilt and shows you the steps to make one yourself." Link

SF Gate ran a piece in July about a man that flew across the country to deliver a "113-year old dime, one of only nine surviving examples made in 1894 at the San Francisco Mint" to a collector. It was purchased for $1.9 million.

It was on Monday afternoon that [John] Feigenbaum, a 38-year-old coin dealer from Virginia Beach, donned his best grubby clothes to meet the seller's representative at an Oakland bank vault. Feigenbaum was slumming it so as not to attract attention, he said.

"There's no reason to dress up in a suit and make a big production,'' he said. "You don't want to stand out.''

Feigenbaum put the dime, encased in a 3-inch-square block of plastic, in his pocket and, accompanied by a security guard, drove in an ordinary sedan directly to San Jose airport to catch the red-eye to Newark.

The overnight flight, he said, was the only way to make sure the dime would be in New York by the time the buyer's bank opened in the morning. People who pay $1.9 million for dimes do not like to be kept waiting for them.

Feigenbaum had purchased a coach ticket, to avoid suspicion, but found himself upgraded to first class. That was a worry, because people in flip-flops, T-shirts and grubby jeans do not regularly ride in first class. But it would have been more suspicious to decline a free upgrade. So Feigenbaum forced himself to sit in first class, where he found himself to be the only passenger in flip-flops.

Link (Via Schneier)

The Trends in Japan blog posted an amazing photo taken yesterday at the Tokyo Summerland wave pool. Follow the link to see the whole photo and an insane video of the wave pool in operation. Link (via Neatorama)

New Scientist reports that squirrels have evolved an interesting defense against rattlesnakes -- tails that heat up.

The ground squirrel heats up its tail then waves it in the snake's face - a form of harassment that confuses the rattler, which has an infrared sensing organ for detecting small mammals.

Link

Patrick says: "Here are some very clever 'still life' pictures of ceramic figures by artist Martin Klimas, taken as they're being destroyed." Link | More at Klimas' site

Queensland, Australia farmer David George, 53, scaled a tree to escape threatening crocodiles and ended up spending seven nights there. Injured and dazed after falling off his horse in the outback, George didn't realize that the animal had brought him deep into a swamp. From BBC News:

Mr George, manager of the Silver Plains cattle station near Coen in Queensland's far north, said he was stalked each night by two crocodiles that would sit at the bottom of the tree staring at him.

"All I could see was two sets of red eyes below me and all night I had to listen to a big bull croc bellowing a bit further out," he said.

Although Mr George's two sandwiches ran out after three days, he was able to get running water during the day and knew rescuers were looking for him as he could see helicopters in the air above his tree.

Link

Over at Edge.org, John Brockman has recently published two essays representing two very different views on climate change.

Snip from the first, by Freeman Dyson, physics professor at the Institute for Advanced Study, in Princeton (also known as the dad of Esther and George):

My first heresy says that all the fuss about global warming is grossly exaggerated. Here I am opposing the holy brotherhood of climate model experts and the crowd of deluded citizens who believe the numbers predicted by the computer models. Of course, they say, I have no degree in meteorology and I am therefore not qualified to speak. But I have studied the climate models and I know what they can do. The models solve the equations of fluid dynamics, and they do a very good job of describing the fluid motions of the atmosphere and the oceans. They do a very poor job of describing the clouds, the dust, the chemistry and the biology of fields and farms and forests. They do not begin to describe the real world that we live in. The real world is muddy and messy and full of things that we do not yet understand. It is much easier for a scientist to sit in an air-conditioned building and run computer models, than to put on winter clothes and measure what is really happening outside in the swamps and the clouds. That is why the climate model experts end up believing their own models.

Link to Dyson's essay, HERETICAL THOUGHTS ABOUT SCIENCE AND SOCIETY.

And snip from the second, by research biologist and former editor-in-chief of New Scientist Alun Anderson:

Knowing that Arctic climate models are imperfect, it would be reassuring for me, if not for the scientists, to be able to write that scientists keep making grim predictions that just that don't come true. If that were so, we could follow Dyson's line that the models aren't so good and "the fuss is exaggerated". Scarily, the truth is the other way around. The ice is melting faster than the grimmest of the scientist's predictions, and the predictions keep getting grimmer. Now we are talking about an Arctic free of ice in summer by 2040. That's a lot of melting given that, in the long, dark winter the ice covers an area greater than that of the entire United States.

Link to Anderson's THE CHANGING ARCTIC: A RESPONSE TO FREEMAN DYSON'S "HERETICAL THOUGHTS." (image: Mr. Anderson in the arctic, shot by John McConnico)

BB reader Matt Kelly says,

ABC News is reporting on a new study by the NYPD of the threat of home-grown terrorists. Here's a quote from the story: "The report identifies mosques, bookstores, cafes, prisons and flop houses as what it calls "radicalization incubators" that provide 'extremist fodder or fuel for radicalization.'" What would Thoreau do?

Link.

Neuromatrix is a new educational vidgame out next week that's designed to teach people neuroscience. It's marketed to ages 10-15. The developer, Morphonix, writes that they "are developing a series of video games which make abstract concepts of brain science fun and comprehensible to children and teens. Many software games spur kids to use their brains, but this is the first series of video games which also teaches children the science of their brains." From the game description:

You play a secret agent infiltrating a top-secret neuroscience research facility. Your mission: to track down and root out the Nanobots that have invaded the brains of the scientists there. If you fail, the Nanobots and the secret entity that spawned them will take over the Earth, reprogramming the human brain into docile submission.

Link to Neuromatrix page, Link to preview video (via Mind Hacks)

Street Anatomy posted a gallery of several fantastic anatomical tattoos.
Link (via MAKE: Blog)

Over at Wired.com, BB pal Gareth Branwyn looks at the history of the hovercraft, from mid-1950s Popular Mechanics covers (image left) to Survival Research Laboratory's Pulse-Jet Hovercraft, the "loudest robot in the world" (image right).

From Gareth's piece, "Fifty Years of Hovercraft: The Tech That Barely Takes Off":

An artist friend of mine once said: "When I think about the future, all I wanna know is: When do we get to wear the tinfoil?" That statement perfectly encodes those kitschy, iconic images we have of the future, a world in which we dress like space people from bad '50s sci-fi, and travel through elevated cities on jetpacks or in flying or hovering cars. We're still waiting for the jetpacks and skycars, but, to paraphrase sci-fi author William Gibson, "the hovercraft is already here, it's just not evenly distributed yet." And it likely never will be.

Link

The Russian region of Ulyanovsk holds an annual Day of Conception where people are given time off work to make babies. The aim is to boost the birthrate in an area where the population has been declining for more than a decade. The Day of Conception is scheduled for September 12. Nine months later, on Russia's national day, couples who "give birth to a patriot" can win prizes. From the Associated Press:

Everyone who has a baby in an Ulyanovsk hospital on Russia Day gets some kind of prize. But the grand prize winners are couples judged to be the fittest parents by a committee that deliberates for two weeks over the selection.

The 2007 grand prize went to Irina and Andrei Kartuzov, who received a UAZ-Patriot, an SUV made in Ulyanovsk. They told reporters they were planning to have another child anyway when they heard about the contest.

Irina Kartuzova had to have a Caesarian section to deliver the baby and it was scheduled for June 12.

The selection committee chose the Kartuzovs from among the 78 couples because of their ``respectability'' and ``commendable parenting'' of their two older children, a spokesman for the governor said.

Link (Thanks, Lindsay Tiemeyer!)

Boing Boing pal Alice Taylor from the Wonderland blog has passed us this review of Australian fantasy novelist Grace Dugan's debut book, The Silver Road, a cracking summer read.

This is a great summer read, a hop-along story of three characters whose lives are fatefully intertwined: Zuven, an orphan peasant, but of rather more interesting blood; Yelela the noblemwoman, the sole female to ever enrol in soldier school, and Haga the Baron, swordsman adventurer, and rebellious traitor to the false king.

Lighter and quicker than fantasy tomes from George R.R Martin or Robert Jordan, /The Silver Road/ is a discrete story - not part of an indefinite series - set in a familiar fantasy medievalesque world. Happily, it manages to remain fresh and interesting, despite the traditional setting; Grace Dugan's heroines are curious and thoughtful, and while set in a supposed time of great patriarchy and female subjugation, both find strength and break rules in mostly satisfying ways. Her heroes are a headscratcher - like him or loathe him? - and the fantasy land invokes the interestingness of great massively multiplayer games of today: one minute highlands jungle, a small trek from searing-heat desert ports, and a skip away from highland castles. Variety aplenty. Grab it for your beach holiday, and hope for a sequel.

Link to author's site, Link to online store

Swapatorium bought this obsessive scrapbook, filled with stick-on letters, flag and bunting decals, and semi-sensical statements for $10. It looks like a something the insane antagonist in a Stephen King movie would have. Link

Last night's edition of Dan Rather Reports (on HDNet) presented "conclusive evidence of the failure of touch screen voting machines across the country." Link to "The Trouble With Touchscreens," and Link to episode on Google Video.

Court filings reveal that YouTube asked Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, whose shows are historically among the most-viewed on the video sharing site, to testify in court proceedings as YouTube defends itself in a billion dollar lawsuit from Viacom. Link.

Fringe comix archivist Ethan Persoff tells BoingBoing,

This is one of the rarest items we will ever offer, and one of the most historically significant.

George Wallace produced a comic book in his bid for the Governor's office in 1962. Includes a blatant defense of segregation.

Takes jabs at the NAACP, freedom workers, many others. It is very easy to state the 60s might have been very different without this booklet, as it was credited with helping Wallace win the election and become Governor. This booklet has since been heavily suppressed.

We offer it now for the first time ever since its original printing over 45 years ago. Initial printing was very scarce and limited in distribution itself, as it was printed solely for white voters in Alabama USA.

Offered online in two presentations. One as issue 19 of Comics With Problems: Link, the other as a stand-alone piece: Link. There are no black people in this comic.

Reader comment: Neil H. in Raleigh, NC says,

One thing that struck me about the Wallace text was how the writer actually called the civil rights activists "freedom riders." In the age of Karl Rove, lesson number one is to always "re-frame" the opponent, a la "mobile communist agitating defilers". Also, the whole comic was a bit light on the red-meat race-baiting. I'm sure that was taken care of at the citizen council meetings.

The U.S. Customs computer outage that left nearly 20,000 international flyers stranded on the tarmac for hours last weekend? That whole sprawling mess -- so bad, some people got sick and had to be taken to the hospital -- was caused by a single screwy network interface card on one single desktop computer in LAX international terminal. Snip from LAT story:

The card, which allows computers to connect to a local area network, experienced a partial failure that started about 12:50 p.m. Saturday, slowing down the system, said Jennifer Connors, a chief in the office of field operations for the Customs and Border Protection agency.

As data overloaded the system, a domino effect occurred with other computer network cards, eventually causing a total system failure a little after 2 p.m., Connors said.

"All indications are there was no hacking, no tampering, no terrorist link, nothing like that," she said. "It was an internal problem" contained to the Los Angeles International Airport system.

Whew. For a minute there, I was thinking this could be the work of Anonymous!

Link to LA Times story.

Previously on BB:

Flyers stuck at LA airport after computer screening system fails

Snip from Ryan Singel's report at Wired News Threat Level blog:

On Wednesday, secret documents that purportedly chronicle parts of the governments' secret warrantless spying on Americans' communications will collide with the government's most powerful legal tool -- the state secrets privilege -- whose invocation virtually forces judges to disappear lawsuits into the memory hole once the government says a lawsuit involves national security.

At stake in the battle in the 9th U.S. Circuit Appeals Court is whether the U.S. court system has the power to review the government's wiretapping of Americans if that surveillance is conducted in the name of the so-called "War on Terror." The government is asking the court to dismiss two lawsuits aimed at shutting down warrantless surveillance and data-mining of Americans' calls and emails, despite the two cases having evidence that seems to back up the claims of illegal surveillance. Bush Administration lawyers say the courts have no business second-guessing the President when it comes to national security.

While the Administration has already been able to quash an ACLU challenge to its post 9/11 secret spying by arguing that no one could actually prove they were spied on, the pending hearing brings together the two cases that experts say have the best chance of overcoming that test and forcing a showdown over the legal merits of the controversial spy program.

Link.

On Saturday, 25 August and Sunday, 26 August, I'll be a guest at the Melbourne Writers' Festival in Melbourne, Australia. I met a ton of wonderful people on my last pass through MEL -- hoping to see all of you again. Here's my schedule:

Saturday, 25 August, 9PM: Free and easy, interview by The Chaser's Charles Firth, Merlyn Theatre

Sunday, 26 August:
11:30AM: Creative commons or common theft?, panel, Merlyn Theatre
3PM: This just in from cyberspace, panel, Beckett Theatre
5:30: Publish or perish: An A-Z of alternative ways to get your name in print, panel, Tower Theatre

I'm also teaching an all-day writing class on Saturday, called "Generation next," but I believe that most of the slots are now taken.

Link

George Orwell wrote "Wounded by a Fascist Sniper" this passage from Homage to Catalonia (thanks, Aaron) after being shot in the throat in Spain. The essay starts, "The whole experience of being hit by a bullet is very interesting and I think it is worth describing in detail."

Roughly speaking it was the sensation of being at the center of an explosion. There seemed to be a loud bang and a blinding flash of light all around me, and I felt a tremendous shock - no pain, only a violent shock, such as you get from an electric terminal; with it a sense of utter weakness, a feeling of being stricken and shriveled up to nothing. The sandbags in front of me receded into immense distance. I fancy you would feel much the same if you were struck by lightning. I knew immediately that I was hit, but because of the seeming bang and flash I thought it was a rifle nearby that had gone off accidentally and shot me. All this happened in a space of time much less than a second. The next moment my knees crumpled up and I was falling, my head hitting the ground with a violent bang which, to my relief, did not hurt. I had a numb, dazed feeling, a consciousness of being very badly hurt, but no pain in the ordinary sense.

Link (via Why That's Delightful)

The DefectiveByDesign folks picketed outside of the BBC last week to protest the Beeb's adoption of Microsoft DRM for their Internet TV service, iPlayer. The BBC has chosen to webcast its programming under a set of restrictions that are far more binding than those in place for its broadcasts -- and it has chosen to launch the service in a Microsoft format than more than 25 percent of Brits can't view. Using Microsoft for iPlayer means that it's impossible (and illegal) for Brits to make an open source player, or even a proprietary player without permission from Microsoft.

Free Software Foundation executive director Peter Brown sez, "This is the problem we have. The executives in charge at the BBC don't champion open access. In 2003 the BBC came under the same sort of pressure to encrypt their digital satellite broadcast - they stood up to Murdoch and Sky and Hollywood and all rights holders, and won. These BBC/Microsoft guys want DRM because it gives lock-in to Windows - simple really. If the BBC doesn't stand for the public good - and DRM is not in the public good - then what is the BBC for?"

This is a great location for our protest. We start outside BBC TV Centre and then move to BBC Worldwide a 1/4 of a mile away. This is where the iPlayer development team are based. We have a large audience of BBC staff come to the windows to wave and watch us. A few start to open windows and then a few more. We get supportive shouts and smiles. One staff member starts to put apples on the the outside of the window frame - a message about Mac development maybe? Anyway, an executive comes out of the building and shouts up to all the staff to get back inside and close their windows. We jeer in appreciation.

Link (Thanks, Peter!)