About the only story that could rival that huge javascript hole in IE for pure explosive power, is this one: Microsoft is trying to force Slashdot to remove certain reader postings that supposedly violate their copyright under the DMCA (which is the very evil Digital Millennium Copyright Act.) Talk about opening a can of worms. I almost wonder if they did this to divert attention from the javascript blunder. Read all about it here including the full text of the letter from microsoft lawyers, and the initial slashdot response (which cleverly reminds them that internet service providers - like, oh I don't know, let's say HOTMAIL - are not responsible for their users content. If microsoft was responsible for everything on hotmail (which every law dodging, warez trading, black hat in the world uses as a throwaway mailbox for all sorts of nefarious deeds) Bill Gates would be going to jail for a long time.) Anyway, the noise from this one is going to be huge. Admittedly, one or two of the many posts in question actually did contain the entire text of some microsoft copyrighted materials, but the question is still open about whether Slashdot (now Andover.net) is responsible for all the reader posted content on their system. And the rest of the posts microsoft is asking to have removed are clearly legal (they are mostly links to other copies of the copyrighted material, and link are legal no matter what they point to as 2600 proved in their fight against the MPAA over decss - how's that for tightly packed insider news?) For slashdot this must be like a cake of gold falling from heaven into their laps. "Just make sure you spell our name right" is all they really needed to reply. All ready this story is spreading like wild fire across the net (and the document in question has been mirrored at dozens of sites.) And, who knows, maybe slashdot can fight this one through to the eventual defeat and repeal of the DMCA itself ?!!?! Talk about David slaying Goliath (even when David is worth a couple hundred million,) this is going to be great for slashdot. I caught the story about an hour ago, and their were 520 reader comments. I just checked back and it's way over 800. Go, you geeky freedom fighters.
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- jim 5-11-2000 9:56 pm