George Frost's blog

The Obama administration has taken a big step back from transparency in one area of critical importance to the FOSS movement. Just like George Bush did, the President is asserting that draft trademark and copyright agreements with Japan and the EU are "state secrets," and has refused to release them to the public -- even though the same drafts have been widely distributed among corporate lobbyists.

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Today's Wall Street Journal features an article by Vishesh Kumar and Christopher Rhoads, Google Wants Its Own Fast Track on the Web. The article reports:

Google Inc. has approached major cable and phone companies that carry Internet traffic with a proposal to create a fast lane for its own content, according to documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. Google has traditionally been one of the loudest advocates of equal network access for all content providers.

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The Free Software Foundation (FSF) has filed its first-ever copyright infringement lawsuit, accusing networking giant Cisco of refusing to distribute GPL’d source code embedded as firmware or used in router products sold under Cisco’s “Linkys” brand. In court papers filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, the FSF claims Cisco's Linksys routers violate terms of the GNU General Public License, version 2, and the GNU Lesser General Public License.

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The United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit -- the leading intellectual property court in the US -- has delivered a major victory to the Free and Open Source Software (“FOSS”) movement by explicitly holding, for the first time, that FOSS licensors are entitled to copyright infringement relief.

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It is time for Google to put its mouth where its money is. The Internet search and advertising delivery giant has again opposed shareholder resolutions that would have required it meet minimum standards of internet freedom. These are very modest proposals, that if adopted would have allowed Google to demonstrate that it understands that a totalitarian internet is evil, and that Google will not be evil.

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SNAPSHOT ANALYSIS OF OBAMA AND CLINTON PRIMARY VICTORIES IN THE 2004 SWING STATES -- A WAY OUT OF THE ALLIGATOR PIT? The Democrats are up to their eyeballs in alligators these days. Obama says he has won more states and racked up more delegates and raw vote totals, and so it would be “undemocratic” for superdelegates to award the nomination to Clinton even if he has failed to clinch the 2,025 delegates needed for victory. Obama makes this fairness argument while at the same time trying to block the staging of new primary contests in Florida and Michigan, important swing states that may determine the outcome of the general election on November. Obama appears ready to poison the well if he does not get the nomination.

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The American people overwhelmingly (and correctly) believe that George Bush misled them about the need to go to war in Iraq, polls show. But the debate has continued about whether Bush deliberately lied, or was merely duped. Either conclusion is, of course, corrosive to trust in our democracy and the ability of the press and Congress to provide a reality check on presidential war powers.

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The 5-year consent decree issued in the Microsoft antitrust case is about to expire. Microsoft says it has learned its lessons, won't misuse its market power again, and argues that the competitive environment has fundamentally changed with new threats from Google and other disruptors. Many people even believe Microsoft when it says these things. So was this a successful remedy?

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Cheney "gets it right" in 1994 -- Warning that Iraq invasion would lead to a "quagmire" -- and so very wrong today. "And the question for the president, in terms of whether or not we went on to Baghdad, took additional casualties in an effort to get Saddam Hussein, was how many additional dead Americans is Saddam worth? Our judgment was, not very many, and I think we got it right."

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Molly Ivins, one of my personal heroes of the "old media" died of cancer yesterday. Here is her last newspaper column. I hope the new, Internet based, journalism finds voices as authentic, graceful and intelligent as hers. There may be much wisdom in crowds, but qualitative change in socciety and politics often turns on the actions of brave individuals, speaking with clarity and passion, pointing the way. Molly Ivins is a nationally syndicated columnist. Ivins: Stand up against the surge POSTED: 4:59 p.m. EST, January 11, 2007

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