Balance sheet

Reason, August-Sept, 2004 by Jeff A. Taylor

iPod Person

It took buying an iPod to do it, but Rep. John Doolittle (R-Calif.) says he now understands that consumers really do have a stake in digital copyright issues. Congress weighs tweaking copyright laws to make it clear that fair use is not theft.

Cell Hopping

FCC Chairman Michael Powell is one of 2.8 million cell phone customers who have switched providers since November and kept their old phone numbers. Number switching had been a big disincentive to move to cheaper cell plans.

Nuclear Flower Power

The originator of the Gala mythos, James Lovelock, declares that humanity's dependence on fossil fuels can be broken only by nuclear energy. For this, greens blast him.

Radio Traffic

City officials in Munich are looking at using radio frequency ID tags to help control and monitor traffic. The tags may help the city come up with a congestion pricing scheme for roadways or smart toll roads.

Baby Bell Bundle

Local Bell provider Verizon now permits consumers in about a dozen states to ditch their old dial-up phone service and still have a high-speed DSL line from Verizon. Such unbundling is the holy grail of telecom deregulation.

Route Around

An easily programmable $70 network router that runs Linux could one day be at the heart of grassroots, wireless Net providers. Adding one high-speed Net connection to a series of the routers results in more networking power than could be had for thousands just a few years ago.

Universal Disservice

The Wyoming Public Service Commission decides to do away with some subsidies that kept phone service artificially expensive in the state.

Special Skullduggery

The Bush administration presides over an explosion of covert "special access projects" designed to wage the war on terror with little oversight. A mere determination that "extremely sensitive activities" would help advance foreign policy objectives is all that is needed to create such a black project.

CAN-SPAM Opener

The authors of last year's federal CAN-SPAM Act notice that spare has not, in fact, been canned. Their solution? More law.

Discount Discounting

Medicare drug-discount card programs get off to a rocky start, with senior citizens often unable to find reliable info on what non-discounted drug prices might be.

Liquor, Up

The Seattle City Council votes to make it impossible to buy less than a six-pack of beer in certain areas of the city. The problem is too many drunks--who'll now have to drink even more.

Benito's Better

Italy updates its Fascist-era copyright laws to outlaw using Kazaa or other P2P services to distribute copyrighted works. Doing so is now legally the same as burning and pirating physical media and may result in prison.

All Thumbs

The FBI relies on a poorly processed digital copy of a fingerprint to arrest Oregon lawyer Brandon Mayfield in connection with the Madrid terror bombings. The bungle reflects the bureau's continuing misfires with investigative technology.

Day Dreams

In New Jersey, parents of kids who went on a three-day Oxford Central School field trip want six teachers punished for having a drink during the trip. The infraction occurred while students were under the watch of a security guard brought along on the trip.