We aren???t the only ones to come up with the idea of revealing the BitTorrent habits of copyright advocates. Yesterday, the Dutch blog Geenstijl exposed how someone at the local music royalty collecting agency Buma/Stemra downloaded a copy of the TV-show Entourage and video game Battlefield 3.

In a response Buma/Stemra issued a press release stating that their IP-addresses were spoofed. A very unlikely scenario, but one that will be welcomed by BitTorrent pirates worldwide. In fact, they???d encourage Sony, Universal and Fox to say something similar. After all, if it???s so easy to spoof an IP-address, then accused file-sharers can use this same defense against copyright holders.

The cat among the other cats.

powerful corporate copyright interests have taken advantage  of the post 9-11 era to obtain the services of Homeland Security to enforce commercial interests.

To be fair they also paid a lot to obtain those services.

Netflix has been given the legal green light to integrate information of customer???s video viewing habits on social networks following the passing of a bill by the US House of Representatives.

The bill, HR 2471, effectively lifts 23 year old restrictions imposed under the Video Privacy Protection Act, which forbids the disclosure of video rental records. Under the new bill, consumers will be able to give a one-time consent to release their rental data.

The proposal still needs to be approved by the US Senate.

There are so many things about this story that are crazy, it’s difficult to know where to start, so let’s give the most important point first: The US government has effectively admitted that it totally screwed up and falsely seized & censored a non-infringing domain of a popular blog, having falsely claimed that it was taking part in criminal copyright infringement. Then, after trying to hide behind a totally secretive court process with absolutely no due process whatsoever (in fact, not even serving papers on the lawyer for the site or providing timely notifications — or providing any documents at all), for over a year, the government has finally realized it couldn’t hide any more and has given up, and returned the domain name to its original owner. If you ever wanted to understand why ICE’s domain seizures violate the law — and why SOPA and PROTECT IP are almost certainly unconstitutional — look no further than what happened in this case.

If you’ve done nothing wrong, you’ve nothing to fear. Yeah, right.

The Post Office saw this coming.  Over a decade ago the Post Office asked if it could enter new businesses in record retention (medical, income, taxation), automated bill payment, social security check administration and a raft of other opportunities that would provide government delivery and storage services to various agencies and to under-served users such as low-income and the elderly.  But its mandate did not include these services, and expansion into new markets required a change in charter which was not approved by Congress.  Thus, USPS was stuck doing what it has always done, as market shift pushed the Post Office increasingly into irrelevancy.

In fact there may be nothing wrong, if the excerpt is to be believed. They saw, they adapted, they weren’t permitted to succeed.