Following secret negotiations that took place through the past weekend, this morning in a joint statement Jack Valenti, president of the Motion Picture Association of America, and Jack Balkin, director of the Information Society Project at Yale Law School, announced that LawMeme would now be the Voice of the Copyright IndustryTM. "I'm very excited to be working on behalf of a visionary organization that saw the dangers of the VCR well before anyone else," said LawMeme editor Ernest Miller, as he attempted to stuff large stacks of hundred dollar bills in his trouser pockets. "Hopefully, LawMeme will be able to serve the long-term interests of consumers by convincing the Information Technology and Consumer Electronics industries to surrender unconditionally to the irrational demands of the Voice of the Copyright IndustryTM."
"I take back all the mean things I said about legal academics," said Mr. Valenti. "Really, compared to politicians, they are quite a bargain."
UPDATE 1120 EST 01 April 2002
Happy April Fools!
The Register (You've got Blogs! AOL buys into homegrown media).
GigaLaw (Napster Buys Microsoft, Plans to Sue Itself
).
Slashdot (Do Programming Languages Affect Your Sexual Performance?).
WIRED (Blow Out a Candle for OS X).
Newsbytes (AOL Merger Doesn't Add Up) - okay, so it is not a joke, but it is funny.
UPDATE
Newsforge (Why does information want to be free? Why not cupcakes?).
10EAST, Inc. (Microsoft to base next generation OS on OpenBSD).
Supreme Court Determines "Reasonable Person"
Raul Ruiz reports that: In a landmark decision today, the Supreme Court of the United States identified Robert Zalawan, 15 years old and from El Paso, as the 'reasonable person'. The relevant case, RIAAMPAADMCA v. The World, has allowed justices to identify Zalawan as the reasonable person and subsequently establish an Office of the Reasonable Person, to be headed by Zalawan.
The vote to create such an office was almost unanimous, 8-1. The dissenting vote was Justice Antonin Scalia. In the dissent, Scalia proposes numerous reasons why Zalawan would be inadequate for the job, namely that Scalia himself, through his superb intellect and logical reasoning, would be a much better director. Scalia also suggested that Supreme Court cases should be handled like military tribunals and that "federal funds for the arts should be diverted to research programs that study hair loss."
When asked for comment, Zalawan responded that, "Choosing me as the director, well, that was reasonable!"