Students Do Not Have Free Speech Rights on the Internet?

A federal court has rejected a former student's First Amendment suit against school officials who punished her for calling them "douchebags" in a LiveJournal post. Right now, the scope of student rights to online speech is anything but clear.

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House of Representatives Votes NO DELAY for Digital TV Switch

The Senate passed a delay bill unanimously, but the HOR wasn't so kind. They defeated the bill 258-168.

The defeat was a setback for the Obama administration and Hill Democrats, who are concerned that too many Americans are not ready to get digital programming. House Republicans have argued that postponing the date would cause confusion for consumers and cost millions for broadcasters who have planned to make the transition.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2009/01/28/ST2009012802327.html

Cox Communications Proves Network Neutrality is Still an Important Battle to Win

Cox Communications is the next in a long list of companies wanting dictate how you use the internet.

"In February, Cox will begin testing a new method of managing traffic on our high-speed Internet network in our Kansas and Arkansas markets. During the occasional times the network is congested, this new technology automatically ensures that all time-sensitive Internet traffic – such as web pages, voice calls, streaming videos and gaming – moves without delay. Less time-sensitive traffic, such as file uploads, peer-to-peer and Usenet newsgroups, may be delayed momentarily – but only when the local network is congested. Our goal is to ensure that customers continue to experience the consistently fast, reliable Internet service they’ve come to expect from Cox."

http://www.cox.com/policy/congestionmanagement

Thanks for deciding what's "time-sensitive" and what isn't on my behalf, assholes.

New Law Will Require Camera Phones to 'Click'

A bill being presented is attempting to make it a law that all cell phone cameras must made a digital "click" sound when taking pictures, in order to stop "predators" from taking pictures of people against their wishes. The law also makes it illegal to include anyway to disable the click.

This law is stupid, of course, as it won't take much for someone to make a third-party app or other such quick hack to disable it.

Or, you know, people will just use cameras that AREN'T attatched to cellphones and therefore don't make clicking sounds. And the photos will be in better quality!

You can read the proposed law here:

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d111:HR00414:@@@L&summ2=m&

Staff Finds White House in the Technological Dark Ages

I haven't posted here in forever, which was stupid, since so much has gone on in the political-technology world.

First of all, congrats to the world for Obama's presidency.

Let's not get complacent, and let's try to hold him accountable to us.

Here's a funny article from the Washington Post:

Staff Finds White House in the Technological Dark Ages

If the Obama campaign represented a sleek, new iPhone kind of future, the first day of the Obama administration looked more like the rotary-dial past.

Read the whole article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/21/AR2009012104249.html