The Electronic Frontier Foundation's international policy crimefighting duo, Eddan Katz and Gwen Hinze, have published a scholarly article analyzing the secret Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement in light of US law and policy. Called "The Impact of ACTA on the Knowledge Economy," it was recently published in the Yale Journal of International Law, and constitutes a fantastic, reference-heavy resource for understanding just how creepy it is that the Obama administration is sneaking around behind Congress's back (not to mention the backs of the American public) to create a privacy-invading, internet-breaking trade agreement that the US will be bound to bring into its law.

In brief, the ACTA process has been deliberately more secretive than customary practices in international decision-making bodies to evade the debates about intellectual property (IP) at established multilateral institutions. The Office of the USTR has chosen to negotiate ACTA as a sole executive agreement. Because of a loophole in democratic accountability on sole executive agreements, the Office of the USTR can sign off on an IP Enforcement agenda without any formal congressional involvement at all. But the negotiations do not have to be secret, and the sole executive agreement process does have mechanisms for oversight: they have not been used in ACTA, but can and should be.

The excuse for using sole executive agreements is that ACTA will be fully respectful of U.S. law. But the constraint of coloring within the lines of US law, as one anonymous trade official described it, is a fragile linchpin upon which the weight of public trust and democratic legitimacy is bearing down.

Stopping the ACTA Juggernaut

"Bhaiya," a Hindi word meaning "big brother," has remarkable nuance, depending on how it is spoken and to whom. Dave Prager catalogs some of these inflections in a recent article on his life-in-India blog, "Our Delhi Struggle."

Jenny tasted the power of bhaiya while watching friends negotiate with autos, seeing housewives beat down stubborn vegetable wallas, observing clever coworkers convincing recalcitrant art directors to meet impossible deadlines. A woman takes a simple bhaiya--"buy-yaa", to transliterate--and bends the word around the fulcrum of the "y", modulating the final syllable to do her dastardly bidding.

Making that final syllable short and sharp expresses contempt ("Who do you think I am to quote me such a price?").

Adding a long, upward-fluctuating suffix feigns shock ("You would take such advantage of the sweet, innocent girl standing so humbly before you?").

And turning that final syllable into an angry cadenza up and down three different octaves--think John Coltrane at the end of Giant Steps, an animal howl, the fire in her belly that would have singed the quivering beedi right out of the hapless auto driver's mouth if she hadn't stuck a bhaiya in front of it--chastens even the most determined male foe...

on Hindi: the power of "bhaiya" (Thanks, Dave!)

Uitgeverij De Vliegende Hollander is the Dutch publisher for Little Brother, and they've really put a big push behind it. Unfortunately, they're also locked into distributing their catalog as DRM-crippled ebooks through an online retailer that is the only major ebook vendor in the Netherlands.

But they're good folks at my publisher, and they're not fond of DRM either. When I asked them if there was some way we could sell the ebook without DRM, they told me that it was impossible (only one major ebook vendor, remember?), but would I mind if they just gave away the ebook in DRM-free ePub form?

Would I mind? That's a dandy solution! Here's a link to the free, DRM-free Dutch ePub version of Little Brother. Tell your (Dutch) friends, and be sure to stay clear of that infected DRM copy that's being sold.

Little Brother ePub (DRM-free) (Thanks, Rienk!)

JZ sez, "The OpenNet Initiative, a joint effort of U. Toronto's Citizen Lab and Harvard's Berkman Center, tracks Internet filtering by governments around the world. We published a book detailing such filtering in 2008 called Access Denied, and the sequel is about to come out, called Access Controlled. ONI colleagues Ron Deibert and Rafal Rohozinksi were at the Internet Governance Forum today in Egypt, where they hosted a reception about Access Controlled. It featured a poster describing the book. The poster contained the following sentence: The first generation of Internet controls consisted largely of building firewalls at key Internet gateways; China's famous 'Great Firewall of China' is one of the first national Internet filtering systems. That was apparently enough to trigger concerns on behalf of the Chinese government, and UN-liveried security guards knocked over the poster and then later removed it."

IGF 2009 event rattled by UN Security Office (Thanks, JZ!)

Alice spent the weekend in a Scottish hotel that Winston Churchill was a regular guest at -- even though he seems to have hated it, as is demonstrated by this sign in the lobby.

... and he hated it. by Crys

You can find a lot of crap on YouTube, but you know what? You can find gems like this, too. I don't know much about the origin of this video, but it's one in a series of three ten-minute chunks on YouTube -- rare color footage of Tibetan tantric masters meditating, in retreat. Looks a few decades old. Start at 0:39 and just zone out. According to the notes from the uploader, the last 3 faces you'll see in the video are:

1) His Holiness Dudjom Rinpoche, head of the Nyingma lineage in India
2) Venerable Kalu Rinpoche, great realized master in the Kagyu lineage.
3) His Holiness, the 16th Karmapa Lama (...) head of the Karma Kagyu lineage.

Video: Part 1. Part 2. Part 3.

Davesbit made his own globe using maps from the Generic Mapping Tools project; he used a beachball for a mold and cast the sphere with fiberglass and foam.

here is the plastic beach ball covered in paint for the inside of the sphere-half mold...

the stand was made from scraps of red oak from a computer table i built...

globe with stand (via Make)

Danny from the Electronic Frontier Foundation sez, "Copyright lobbyists often indulge in what's called "policy laundering" -- if you can't get an amendment to copyright in one country, just shop it around until you find somewhere that will take it. Keeping track of changes and variations in over 180 countries and dozens of international venues is a challenge, but necessary if we're going to stop ill-advised copyright law from taking hold and spreading. That's why EFF, librarians, and researchers all around the world have teamed up to start Copyright Watch. We've spent months pooling together every copy of every country's copyright law that we could find. From now on, Copyright Watch will be spotting new changes, identifying quirks and novelties in different laws, and keeping watch at the IP fronter -- wherever in the world that might be."

Copyright Watch collects and monitors copyright laws from all over the world. (Thanks, Danny!)

Here's a 20-minute, must-see lecture on the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement -- the secret copyright treaty currently being negotiated, which stands to fatally wound all user-generated content sites from mailing lists to YouTube; which stands to criminalize kids for noncommercial file-sharing; which stands to put your internet connection in jeopardy if anyone in your house is accused of infringement, and much, much more.

The ACTA Threat: My Talk on Everything You Need To Know About ACTA, But Didn't Know To Ask

Joe sez, "The McDonald's franchise at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba is looking for an assistant manager. The ideal candidate will have previous restaurant management experience, a valid U.S. passport and a willingness to relocate to Cuba. Apparently, no special security clearance is required. Perks include great weather, potential tax free status for year-round residents, and half of the successful candidate's stateside rent paid by the company. The Gitmo McDonald's has been in operation since 1986, and serves the base's 6000 inhabitants, including military personnel, their families, Jamaican and Filipino guest workers. and 215 detainees, who can make take-out orders for Big Macs, fries and other items."

Guantanamo-based McDonald's seeks applicants (Thanks, Joe!)

The global crime ring that hit ATMs in 280 cities worldwide last year simultaneously for $9 million have allegedly been busted.

A federal grand jury in Atlanta has indicted eight men in connection with the scheme, including five Estonians, one Russian, one Moldovan and one unidentified man. Prosecutors allege that the men "used sophisticated hacking techniques" to defeat the company's encryption system. The scam, which hit RBS WorldPay last November, involved an elaborate plan in which the attackers first bypassed the encryption on the debit cards, which RBS WorldPay issues to customers for employee payroll purposes. They then raised the limits on the accounts attached to the cards.

Once that was done, the gang then allegedly "provided a network of 'cashers' with 44 counterfeit payroll debit cards, which were used to withdraw more than $9 million from more than 2,100 ATMs in at least 280 cities worldwide, including cities in the United States, Russia, Ukraine, Estonia, Italy, Hong Kong, Japan and Canada. The $9 million loss occurred within a span of less than 12 hours," the Department of Justice said in a statement on the indictments released Tuesday.

U.S. Takes Down $9 Million RBS WorldPay Hacking Ring (via /.)

Lavie sez, "The Apex Book of World SF is the first anthology of SF/F/H stories from around the world, including Yang Ping's tale of Chinese hackers in a future game world, Aleksandar Ziljak's Men in Black meets Boogie Nights thriller and S.P. Somtow's classic examination of post-World War II Thailand and its most notorious serial killer. This rare anthology of international SF sets out to showcase some of the best international writers have to offer and the different perspectives of people from outside the American-British sphere of publishing - with authors from Malaysia, China, the Philippines, Israel and Palestine, France, the Netherlands and elsewhere."

The Apex Book of World SF (Amazon)

Apex Book of World SF Released! (The World SF News Blog)

(Thanks, Lavie!)

These newspaper carrier bags are made in India by an NGO that provides education and shelter to street kids. The bags themselves are very sweet and good for several uses before they're ready for the recycling box, and make good use of the striking designs from the newspapers they're folded from (I like the Bollywood poster ones, too!).

Newspaper Bags (Thanks, Alice!)

Christian sez, "Just now it has been announced in the press by the official Danish Anti-Piracy agency, Antipiratgruppen, that they are throwing in the towel and will seize their operations completely; to find and prosecute music copyright offenders. Here is a translation of the first published article in today's Danish press."

"We have to, because it is has been announced by the state court, that it takes very strong and concrete evidence to have these people prosecuted. We have simply not been able to establish the necessary evidence..."

An overview of Danish trials shows an extremely small possibility of getting sentenced - unless the the accused confesses. Four principal state court trials last year lead to three acquittals and only a single sentence for illegal file sharing. And this sentence only came into place because

"Out of the four cases we can establish, that the courts do not sentence owners of Internet connections simply because of technical identification of IP-adresses and technical recognition of files," they say.

Danish anti-piracy agency throw in the towel (Thanks, Christian!)

Michael Geist sez, "The latest round of Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (the secret copyright treaty) talks have now wrapped up with the usual bland press release confirming that the talks focused on Internet and criminal enforcement, indicating that the next meeting will be in Mexico in January 2010, and pledging to complete the treaty as quickly as possible. More interesting is the unofficial release - the leaked document that provided the information on what the Internet enforcement chapter actually says."

The Leaked ACTA Document (Thanks, Michael!)

I knew that more economic development tends to mean smaller families, and I knew that people were having fewer children in many developing countries. But I hadn't grasped how quickly that shift was happening until I read this comparison from last Thursday's issue of The Economist:

The transition from a [birth] rate of five [births per woman] to that of two, which took 130 years to happen in Britain--from 1800 to 1930--took just 20 years--from 1965 to 1985--in South Korea. Mothers in developing countries today can expect to have three children. Their mothers had six. In some countries the speed of decline in the fertility rate has been astonishing. In Iran, it dropped from seven in 1984 to 1.9 in 2006--and to just 1.5 in Tehran. That is about as fast as social change can happen.

But, while it's easy to assume that slowing population growth means a more sustainable future, it's not really as cut and dry as all that. Like The Economist points out: With development, you also get more people living the fossil-fuel heavy American lifestyle. Their argument: The problem of creating a sustainable future isn't really tied to birth rate. That's taking care of itself and couldn't go much faster without China-like impositions on personal freedom. Instead, the focus needs to be on the technology and policies that will help those children grow up in sustainable, energy efficient societies.

The Economist--"Demography, Growth and the Environment", via Follow the Energy blog.

Guido Núñez-Mujica, a 26-year-old Boing Boing reader in Venezuela who is an avid gamer, writes in with this extensive personal observation piece about a new law that widely criminalizes video games in the South American country. As you read the piece, please also bear in mind that publishing this sort of thing under one's full name is not done without personal risk.

These games are a cherished part of my life, they helped to shape my young mind, they gave me challenges and vastly improved my English, opening the door to a whole new world of literature, music and people from all around the world. What I have achieved, all my research, how I have been able to travel even though I'm always broke, the hard work I've done to convince people to fund a start up for cheap biotech for developing countries and regular folks, none of that would have been possible hadn't I learned English through video games.

Now, thanks to the tiny horizons of the cast of morons who govern me, thanks to the stupidity and ham-fisted authoritarianism of the local authorities, so beloved of so many liberals, my 7 year old brother's chances to do the same could be greatly impacted.

After the jump, Núñez-Mujica's essay in full.

You might have seen that the EU's "Telecoms Package" squeaked through with some protection for users' rights intact -- specifically, the proposal to allow "3-strikes" rules (whereby everyone in your house would lose internet access if any member was accused, without trial, of copyright infringement) was killed. But it's not as good as it could be, nor as good as it was before the content industry's lobbyists got their chums to rewrite it.

Jérémie Zimmemrmann writes,

The European Parliament and the Council of the EU came to an agreement on the "Telecoms Package" negotiations. They laid down legal and procedural guarantees against restrictions of Internet access. The new provision gives[1] "effective judicial protection and due process", guarantees "the principle of presumption of innocence and the right to privacy" and the respect of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms.

However, the text only speaks of "a prior fair and impartial procedure" instead of a prior ruling by the judicial authorities, guaranteed by the original "amendment 138", and contains loopholes and ambiguities. The invalidation of freedom-killer measures such as "three strikes policies" will now depend on interpretation by the European Court of Justice and national courts. Moreover, the text only relates to measures taken by Member States and thereby fails to bar telecom operators and entertainment industries from knocking down the founding principle of Net neutrality.

Europe only goes half-way in protecting Internet rights.

The following is an update to this previous post. So here's another video gem from Supreme Master TV, uploaded and blogged by Robert Popper.

Why doesn't every television news network run stuff like what's in this clip? Say what you will about "God's Direct Contact," at least her broadcast devotees say thank you to journalists and photographers for doing all we do for "humans and animals," and "especially while on duty." I'd like to hope they think that what we do here at Boing Boing "uplifts the atmosphere of the world."

A number of Boing Boing readers responded to my earlier post with personal stories of (apparently quite tasty) meals eaten at the vegan restaurant chain owned by personality cult leader Supreme Master Ching Hai. But BB reader HiTek LoLife takes the tofu cake, with a personal anecdote re-blogged in full after the jump.

Michael Geist sez, "According to the official agenda, in a few hours the Anti Counterfeiting Trade Agreement talks will continue on the Internet provisions and then move into the criminal provisions chapter. It is worth highlighting the ongoing criminal provisions as well. As previously leaked, the U.S. and Japan supplied the initial text for this chapter. Their proposal included extending criminal enforcement to both (1) cases of a commercial nature; and (2) cases involving significant willful copyright and trademark infringement even where there is no direct or indirect motivation of financial gain. In other words, non-commercial infringement could lead to criminal penalties. Plus, jail time for unauthorized camcording of films and even for fake DVD and CD packaging."

ACTA Negotiations, Day Two: What's On Tap (Thanks, Michael!)

Robert Popper has posted an appreciation of Supreme Master Television, a cult-backed satellite television network I've seen advertised in airports around the world, but never before bothered to google. There's a lot to love in this clip. Robert: I'd like to know when we can say "hebbo!" to a Tarvuist Faith television channel.

Supreme Master TV has a website, the cult behind it operates a chain of vegan restaurants, and they have offices in Southern California. Their leader is one Supreme Master Ching Hai, and Rick Ross says it's more like ka-ching. That's her, at left (click for large size), and here's a Wikipedia article. She sells hair extensions and stuff. She has opinions on global warming. She sings spiritual lounge music. She designs "celestial clothes and sleeping mattresses for dogs," which are spiritually themed costumes designed to bring your "blessed canine friend" closer to enlightenment. If you do one thing today, please: watch the dog video.

Shanghai will host the World Expo next year, and city officials are preparing for the influx of foreigners with a campaign to ban citizens from wearing their pajamas out in the streets. An article in the Chengdu Business Daily expresses outrage over the campaign as a civil rights abuse. Snip:

Many Shanghai residents are used to loitering around the streets in their pajamas. But now the municipal government is making every effort to stop them from doing so, because it would be a "loss of face" for city authorities if a foreigner sees people walking the streets in pajamas during the 2010 World Expo. (...)

As a modern international metropolis, Shanghai has been playing host to foreigners for decades. So why have pajamas become embarrassing only now? And will it be okay for people to walk the streets in pajamas after the World Expo? Why should we change our habits and customs to suit foreigners' taste when we travel abroad as well as when we play host to them? Do we suffer from a sense of inferiority?

What's wrong with a person in pajamas? [via Rebecca MacKinnon]

A quick Google of "shanghai" + "pajamas" reveals many articles in Western media over the past decade about Shanghai's pajama-wearing citizenry, and their government's fruitless attempts to mandate their fashion choices. Apparently, walking around in the street in your jammies is a familiar part of local culture in old neighborhoods there, in part because the realms of public and private space are so blurred in daily life.

The internet chapter of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, a secret copyright treaty whose text Obama's administration refused to disclose due to "national security" concerns, has leaked. It's bad. It says:

• * That ISPs have to proactively police copyright on user-contributed material. This means that it will be impossible to run a service like Flickr or YouTube or Blogger, since hiring enough lawyers to ensure that the mountain of material uploaded every second isn't infringing will exceed any hope of profitability.

• * That ISPs have to cut off the Internet access of accused copyright infringers or face liability. This means that your entire family could be denied to the internet -- and hence to civic participation, health information, education, communications, and their means of earning a living -- if one member is accused of copyright infringement, without access to a trial or counsel.

• * That the whole world must adopt US-style "notice-and-takedown" rules that require ISPs to remove any material that is accused -- again, without evidence or trial -- of infringing copyright. This has proved a disaster in the US and other countries, where it provides an easy means of censoring material, just by accusing it of infringing copyright.

• * Mandatory prohibitions on breaking DRM, even if doing so for a lawful purpose (e.g., to make a work available to disabled people; for archival preservation; because you own the copyrighted work that is locked up with DRM)

The ACTA Internet Chapter: Putting the Pieces Together

Next: More on secret copyright treaty: your kids could go to jail for noncommercial music sharing

The man widely considered to be the father of modern anthropological study has passed away at 100 years of age. NYT, Bloomberg, Wikipedia, AFP.

"Among the more striking conclusions of his work was the idea that there is no fundamental difference between the belief systems and myths of so-called 'primitive' races and those of modern western societies."

Author Jasmina Tešanović writes this guest-essay on the work of 63-year old Serbian artist Marina Abramovic (above), the "grandmother of performance art" whose work will be honored in 2010 in a MOMA retrospective:

All her work is centered on body, her body which went through severe trials all these years: cutting, beating starving, public exposure... the dividing line between spirituality and trials is almost invisible, the path of living leads to death. An artist should be prepared to die and prepare her own funeral, that the last performance of her life.

Read Jasmina's entire essay, after the jump.

Lobbyists at the EU have gutted the definition of "open" (part of a proposal to require more open standards and open source tools in European government) to mean "the willingness of persons, organisations or other members of a community of interest to share knowledge." This meaningless drivel replaces a more robust definition that included, "The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit organisation, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an open decision-making procedure available to all interested parties (consensus or majority decision etc.)."

According to this line of thinking, if everyone were forced to use Microsoft Word for document interchange, then that would provide interoperability. Except that it wouldn't, because interoperability implies at least two *different* things are are operating together: self-interoperability is trivial. Version 2's "homogeneity" is better described as a monopoly and a monoculture - and the last two decades have taught just how dangerous those are.

It's not hard to see why some companies might prefer the wording of Version 2. Version 1 specifically says: "The intellectual property - i.e. patents possibly present - of (parts of) the standard is made irrevocably available on a royalty-free basis." This would allow alternative implementations from the free software community, which is unable to pay royalties. The current wording, which allows patented, proprietary solutions as part of the "open continuum" would mean that free software could not compete. How convenient.

EU Wants to Re-define "Closed" as "Nearly Open" (via /.)

You think you got problems, huh? Air India got real problems. One of them being rats on a plane. You know what I say? Enough is enough! I have had it with these motherfucking rats on this motherfucking plane!

The struggling government-owned carrier's already uneven reputation has been further tarnished in recent months by rats on a plane, a strike by senior pilots and a midair fistfight between pilots and flight attendants. In September, a flight to Riyadh was grounded after a passenger saw sparks coming from an engine.

Hey, sounds like a party to me. At Air India, Losses, Rats and a Brawl in the Sky [NYT]

Yesterday marked exactly one year since Iranian blogger Hossein "Hoder" Derakhshan was arrested. Cyrus Farivar has been covering the story on his blog and in various news outlets. He posts an update today, after a Skype chat with Hossein Derakhshan's brother, Hamed Derakhshan (who lives in an undisclosed country). We now know that Hoder is being held in the notorious Evin Prison, where many other political detainees have been taken, and where human rights abuses are commonplace and extreme.

"Hossein confirmed the recent Human Rights Activists in Iran reports that claim he had been forced to do squats in cold showers and has been beaten repeatedly," reports Cyrus.

His family doesn't know when they'll see him next, and does not know all of the details of his detainment.

Hossein Derakhshan's brother, Hamed, speaks out [ cyrusfarivar.com ]

[Photo: "Keyboard Cat," by Fluffy Avenger.]

On Friday, I joined Rachel Maddow for a segment on the Rachel Maddow Show about news that ICANN will soon begin supporting truly internationalized domain name extensions -- in other words, dot-com, dot-(country name), and the like, typed out non-Latin character sets. Chinese, Hebrew, you name it.

You can watch the video here.

A number of Boing Boing readers commented on that video clip, and had questions. What about scripts that go right to left, like Arabic or Hebrew? Will we all have to buy new keyboards (and keyboard cats)? Is this the end of the internet as a unifying force, and the beginning of greater cultural rifts? WHAT ABOUT THE CATS AND THEIR CATSPEAK WHICH MUST BE TYPED? The Internet is serious business.

Paul Hoffman was one of the authors of the original standards that led to this news. I asked him to address our commenters' questions, and to go into a little more of the geeky techno-historical detail that wouldn't really work in a five-minute television news segment. Paul kindly obliged -- his thoughts follow, and he answers your questions after the jump:

Ever since the DNS was created, many people had the feeling that requiring all names to be only in a limited set of characters was not going to work for the whole world. The Internet was never just a US invention; there were plenty of Europeans soon after things got going. Names are *very* important to people, and the old DNS rules basically forces many people to misspell their names, their company's names, and even worse, their country's names.

Starting almost exactly ten years ago, there was a groundswell of interest in the IETF to fix this. The IETF is the standards organization that makes the technical rules for how the Internet works. Unlike most standards organizations, anyone can contribute in the IETF, and all of its standards have always been open and freely available. This helped make fixing this part of the DNS easier, because people from all over the world could help without having to pay anything, or even formally "join" the IETF.

The work from 2000 to 2003 was fairly intense. People unfamiliar with how the DNS works, but who wanted it to work for their languages, had to learn the technology so they could weigh the various proposals for fixing it. People who knew the DNS technology intimately had to learn to let go of their "it works just fine" mentality. Everyone had to get over "the keyboard issue", and to remember that most people go to web sites and send email by clicking, not by typing.

French copyfighter Jérémie Zimmermann sez,

The negotiations on the Telecoms Package may come to a close this Wednesday. The Council of the European Union is still pushing for 'three strikes"' policies in Europe but is also attempting to allow private corporations to restrict citizens' Internet access. Will the European Parliament continue to hide behind a disputable legal argumentation provided by the rapporteur Catherine Trautmann, and accept the unacceptable for the future of Internet access in Europe?

A campaign page has been set up to allow everyone to contact Members of the European Parliament and urge them to refuse any proposal from the Council allowing "three strikes" policies in Europe, and to explicitly protect EU citizens' freedom to access the Net.

The new version of the compromise amendment presented by the Council of the EU still allows for restrictions of Internet access such as "three strikes" policies in Europe. Moreover, contrarily to the Parliament's version, the Council's proposal also permits private corporations to restrict Internet access, notably enabling entertainment industries to pressure Internet service providers in order to police the Net.

(Thanks, Jérémie!)

Update here, with Q&A.

Rachel Maddow, host of all that is worth watching on television, very kindly invited me back to The Rachel Maddow Show tonight for a "Moment of Geek" on the big ICANN news today: starting soon, domain name extensions will be available in non-Latin character sets. Chinese, Greek, Arabic, or any one of the more than 20 official languages in India. In other words, the alphabet you're reading this blog post in will no longer be the default for web addresses.

You can watch the video here.

When Ms. Maddow's team invited me in earlier today, the first thing I did was phone Hong Kong-based journalist and global 'net culture researcher Rebecca MacKinnon (Twitter: @rmack), who was in Seoul attending the big ICANN meeting. She has written extensively on this topic, and helped me parse the news.

First up for the "non-Latin" extensions? Country-specific domain names (.cn for China, for instance). Later on, everything else (.com and the like). Don't expect to see "dot china" in Chinese characters right away, explained Rebecca: starting November 16, registrars can begin to apply, but it'll be a while before the domains show up in the wild.

Some US tech reporters covering the news ran with but what about meeee! headlines. "This is a bad day for the English language," wrote one. Well, someone call the whaambulance -- it's an awesome day if you read in Farsi or Hebrew. It's not about our language, it's about the languages spoken by the next billion people to come online, and most of them don't speak English or write in a language based on our Latin character set.

Somebody is going to lose the World Series. It's true. I have heard this is how these things work. But, when the inevitable happens, where do all their commemorative hats, T-shirts, shoelaces, giant foam hands, etc. go? After all, nobody knows which team will win. To meet the instant, post-game demand, manufacturers have all that championship memorabilia--for both teams--made up and sitting in a warehouse before the final game is even a twinkle in an announcer's eye.

If you guessed that it ends up in a dump, you'd be wrong. Mental_floss investigated and found the World Vision, an international Christian charity, gets the losing gear from baseball, football and basketball.

The merchandise doesn't go to waste, people living in poverty receive new, clean clothes, and the clothing makers recoup some of their losses--they get tax credits for the charitable donations. Why don't the clothes go to needy families in the United States? Overseas donation is part of the agreement between World Vision and the leagues. The farther away the clothing is, the less likely it is to offend a losing player (or heartbroken Buffalo Bills fan).

In fact, fear of fan alienation used to keep the MLB from donating. Up until two years ago, they required all inaccurate championship clothing be destroyed.

News reports earlier this month created a global stir around an odd "made in China" product marketed to the Middle East - cheap artificial hymens. They're intended for use by brides who feel compelled to fake virginity, in countries where not being a virgin at marriage is a very big, very bad thing. Conservative Egyptian politicians wanted to ban the product. One curious (male) blogger in Egypt decided to order one.

Mohammad Al Rahhal picked up the contraband gyno-goods at his local post office in Egypt:

it had been opened by various puzzled customs and postal employees who, at a loss, defined the product in writing as "containing an unknown red liquid" - and awaited my description.

Al Rahhal told inspectors it was "cinematographic make-up," and took his hymen home.

Marwa Rakha over at Global Voices has more from Al Rahhal's product review (he explains how it works, sort-of NSFW if only for use of anatomically specific language). Also, a report at the UK Guardian.

Spoiler: Al Rahhal's verdict? This thing, and the thinking behind it, are totally stupid. "Morality is worst interpreted by anatomy," he says. Bravo, dude.

A Japanese property developer has rebuilt a 100-year-old English country church at 3/4 scale on the 22nd floor of a tower in central Osaka. The developer hopes to capitalise on the Japanese vogue for being married in traditional English churches, offering a low-cost, local alternative to flying to England.

On the same floors as the reproduced church are photographic studios and restaurants, while a hotel and honeymoon suites are above.

The Grade-I listed church is one of the few with a thatched roof in England.

Reverend Will Pridie said the developers had visited the church and took laser measurements to enable the new one to be built...

"We are a very tiny village and congregation. I think everyone is just astonished that anyone would do such a thing - especially when you consider it is 21 floors up."

English church rebuilt in Japan

(Image: BBC)

Rishab sez, "Knowledge Ecology International is organising a petition to President Obama to make the US position in negotiations on the secret Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement transparent to the public. Boing Boing readers may remember previous posts on ACTA, the 'throw people in jail for sharing' agreement being developed in secret by rich countries who find the semi-public consultations in forums like WIPO tiresome."

Obama's administration has refused to disclose the drafts of ACTA on the grounds of "national security" (yes, really!), but we know from leaks and memos that it includes universal surveillance of the net; mandatory loss of Internet connections without trial for households where one member is accused of violating copyright; and a duty to search your laptop and personal devices at the border for infringing material.

Petition to President Obama, regarding transparency of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (Thanks, Rishab!)

Thug life, Kabul-style, courtesy of American tax dollars. The New York Times reports that "Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of the Afghan president and a suspected player in the country's booming illegal opium trade, gets regular payments from the Central Intelligence Agency, and has for much of the past eight years, according to current and former American officials."

A related story out in tomorrow's paper covers the push for more US troops in Afghanistan's cities and agricultural areas, where the poppies that support the Taliban are cash crop numero uno.

Boing Boing readers: wonder what kind of cellphone he's using in the photo above? Better yet: your caption, please! A brick of CIA-funded heroin to the winner, but you'll have to fly to Bagram to pick it up. [ via Wired Danger Room on Twitter. ]

Two car bombs exploded in Baghdad today, killing at least 136 and wounding more than 520, according to news accounts: Al Jazeera, New York Times, CNN, WaPo. So far on this Sunday morning, American cable news networks aren't talking about it much, so why don't we do so here, in the comments. [Image: AFP]

I am digging these photographs of very large turbans -- perhaps for ceremonial occasions? -- worn by holy men of the Sikh faith in India. If someone is more familiar with their traditions than I, do pop in the comments and tell us more about what we're seeing.

"Check Out These Enormous Sikh Turbans" (urlesque, thanks Stephen Lenz!)

Things look bad for the European Internet: "3 strikes" (the entertainment industry's proposal for a law that requires ISPs to disconnect whole households if one member is accused -- without evidence or trial -- of three copyright infringements) is gaining currency. Efforts to make 3-strikes illegal are being thwarted by the European bureaucracy in the EC.

The Pirate Party, which holds a seat in the European Parliament, proposed legislation that said, essentially, that no one could be disconnected from the Internet without a fair trial. When the proposal when to the European Commission (a group of powerful, unelected bureaucrats who have been heavily lobbied by the entertainment industry), they rewrote it so that disconnection can take place without trial or other due process.

On the national level, France's Constitutional Court have approved the latest version of the French 3-strikes rule, HADOPI, which has created a kind of grudging, joke oversight by the courts (before your family's Internet connection is taken away, a judge gives the order 1-2 minutes' worth of review, and you aren't entitled to counsel and the rules of evidence don't apply -- the NYT called it similar to "traffic court"). Under this rule, there is now a national list of French people who are not allowed to be connected to the Internet; providing them with connectivity is a crime.

The only bright light is that this will play very badly in the national elections coming up in many European jurisdictions; the Swedes, in particular, are likely to kick the hell out of the MPs who voted for criminal sanctions for downloading and replace them with Pirate Party candidates, Greens, and members of other parties with a liberal stance on copyright.

3-Strikes For Pirates Makes European Comeback Tour

Fershteh Ghazi (@iranbaan) tweets that Hamed Derakhshan, brother of jailed Iranian blogger Hossein "Hoder" Derakshan, just said on @bbcpersian his brother has been held in solitary confinement for 10 months. Hoder was first arrested on November 1, 2008.

Yesterday, Hoder's father wrote a letter to Iran's judiciary to appeal for his son's release. That letter was published on the website of Salaam, a reformist newspaper from Iran. (both items via Cyrus Farivar).

In Tokyo today, Sony unveiled a 3D display that can be viewed from any direction. No glasses required, and several users can see the 3D images simultaneously from various angles. Snip:

The cylindrical display case is 27 cm tall with a base of 13 cm in diameter, and features a 96 by 128-pixel resolution that looks better than might be expected. The screen displays 3D objects including a cartoon character, car, globe, and people. Sony created these objects either in 3D on a computer or by taking photographs of them from various angles. The result is that the objects appear to have depth, and can be viewed from any angle on the horizontal plane by walking around the display screen.

Sony's keeping details under wraps, and hasn't explained how it works. We do know that it uses an LED light source, and that Sony claims it took about three years to develop the two demo models shown off today. The company has no immediate plans to commercialize the device, but a rep says they will develop versions with larger displays within the coming year.

More: physorg, Network World TV. (via @GreatDismal)

(Download MP4 video or Watch on YouTube, or view with subtitles on Dotsub).

Institute for the Future teamed up with Sun Microsystems and Boing Boing Video to co-host the Digital Open, an online tech expo for teens 17 and under around the world.

We're publishing an 8-part series of videos profiling the winners. Today, meet 16 year old Harry Lee of Melbourne Australia. He talks with us about his "Sneaky Card" game concept, which explores social interactions between people. He was inspired by ARG and indie projects like "Bite Me," by Gamelab, and Jane McGonigal's Top Secret Dance-Off, both of which we've covered previously on Boing Boing.

"I love index cards," says Harry, "And I was thinking -- hmm, how can I incorporate them into a project?" So he designed and printed these game cards, and "spread the seeds of sneakiness and espionage" into the unsuspecting pockets, math books, binders and bags and jackets of his schoolmates.

I tracked most of the cards and found, with much satisfaction, that a majority of them had been passed down at least three times. The most successful story is of the card passed from student to student three times before ending up in a math teacher's jacket. The teacher found it and gave it to another math teacher, who inserted it into a student's corrected test before giving it back to him. The card passed hands once again before I lost track of it.

Below, some sample cards in Harry's game. (Link to PDF). More after the jump.

David Hlynsky's striking collection of store windows from Communist Europe is a peek into a weird, bleak, and sometimes comical view of consumer culture in a non-consumer society:

Between 1986 and 1990, I made approximately 8,000 color, Hasselblad images on the streets of Communist Europe. I purposely avoided dramatic moments and newsworthy events. In a cityscape without commercial seduction, banality seemed to signify everything. At first I was interested in simple pedestrian traffic. Later I doggedly documented store windows. These seemed to signify the real difference between East and West. Without the garish ad campaigns of the West, these streets felt more neutral... devoid of trumped up and pumped up urgency.

David Hlynsky Communist store windows (Thanks, Zoran!)