(of the phone variety). I’ve been driven mad by telemarketers; one of the more irritating local innovations (thankfully ‘sales cold calls’ are pretty hard to operate with European privacy laws, so it wasn’t a problem back home).
Well, Congress over here recently passed a ‘do not call’ list, so you could ring up the maintainers and ask for your number to be added, and hey presto, no more phone spam. Well, CalPundit writes:
The federal law doesn’t cover banks, airlines or phone companies or calls made within a state.
Wow. That’s like saying ‘the law doesn’t cover calls made on a day ending in ‘y’.’ In my experience, those companies make 95% of the calls. Great.
Think I’ll stick with the tried-and-trusted ‘ring through to answerphone during the afternoon and early evening’ filter…
DMCA: IP: Using treaties to lock in DMCA enforcement:
On May 6, President Bush and Prime Minister Goh of Singapore signed the U.S.-Singapore Free Trade Agreement (the ‘FTA’). President Bush has termed the FTA ‘the first of its kind’ – apparently meaning that it is the first free trade agreement between the United States and an Asian nation.
But the FTA is also the first of its kind in another sense, as well. It is the first international trade agreement to demand that the signatories implement anti-circumvention provisions similar to those of the hotly controversial Digital Millennium Copyright Act (‘DMCA’).
It’s Naomi Klein meets Slashdot ;) Hopefully it’ll be blocked though, since it has serious domestic results too:
This step will have international, as well as domestic consequences: If Congress approves the FTA, it will not able to alter the DMCA without violating its obligations to Singapore.
Of course, according to some correspondents, Ireland’s copyright regime (reformed in 2000) quietly inserted its own DMCA provisions. Of course, nobody noticed, except for the legal lobbyists who were hoping this would happen. Doh. Is nowhere safe for freedom-to-tinker these days?